What You Need to Know About Sibling Brand Ambassadors

Everything You Wanted to Know About Celebrity Siblings as Brand Ambassadors Yet Were Afraid To Ask

Sibling rivalries have dotted history since the days of Cain and Abel – yet most are playful and competitive. In the spirit of National Siblings Day, we’ve used artificial intelligence and image-based analytics to explore the visual buzz surrounding some of the most famous celebrity siblings in assessing their potential as brand ambassadors

Whether we notice it or not, we’re bombarded every day with celebrity adverts and brand endorsements. For many brands, hiring celebrities to appear in adverts and act as brand ambassadors is a costly but worthwhile investment.
 
Many of these siblings have already formed partnerships and endorsed a number of larger brands  and a cultivated online visual presence leads to a higher return on investment for those companies. In most cases. (Sorry Pepsi and Kendall Jenner try again next time.)

What’s a Brand Ambassador?

A brand ambassador can be used to not only represent a brand and embody its image, but to provide third party credibility and target a much broader audience of potential customers or clients. They can also be highly effective in creating a personality behind a brand, which is essential for encouraging your target audience to identify with your brand’s culture and image. 
 
Let’s use face recognition technology and look at five of the most powerful sibling brands today.
 

#1: Serena Williams vs. Venus Williams

These formidable sisters are two of the tennis world’s most lucrative brands. They’ve dominated the sports arena for more than twenty years, and today have a combined worth of over $116 million. The Williams sisters have been circling each other like caged tigers for the best part of two decades. In the early days, their matches were turgid affairs both had a natural killer instinct but neither wanted to maul the other and it took years until they were able to play freely against each other. When they met on the court most recently in January 2017, Serena was on the verge of becoming the woman to win the most Grand Slam titles ever. Her sister Venus was also on the verge of a long-awaited, and, perhaps, never-to-be major title the first since 2009. 
 
Visual Presence: Unsurprisingly, the visual presence of Serena dominates that of Venus, however it’s more close than we expected. While Serena has taken over three-quarters of the sisters’ visual landscape, both athletes represent powerful sports brands with heavy visual presence. At the age of 15, Venus signed a five-year contract with Reebok. Once that deal expired in 2000, she signed a new contract with the company for a reported $40 million, making it one of the richest endorsement deals ever for a female athlete. Serena is currently the world’s highest-paid female athlete sponsored by Nike and Wilson sports brands. Serena Williams now counts more than a dozen brands in her endorsement portfolio including Beats, Delta Air Lines, IBM, Burlei bras and Audemars Piguet.

#2: Chris and Liam Hemsworth

 
One of Hollywood’s most popular sibling bromances, these two Aussie brothers are noted for their visual support for one another both online and off. Maintaining a fun social media war on Instagram, combined with their increasing popularity channeled by their blockbuster characters, these two are ideal candidates as brand ambassadors. Chris Hemsworth, Thor of The Avengers, already represents TAG Huer, Tourism Australia and Audi Australia. Meanwhile brother Liam of the Hunger Games trilogy, was the first celebrity brand ambassador of fashion brand Diesel, when he was chosen to front a new fragrance campaign. 
 
Visual Presence: When we assessed their online visual presence, these two brothers are as close to an equal 50-50 with Liam owning a so-very-slight edge over Chris. This is probably due to his highly public relationship with Miley Cyrus, of whom the media cannot get enough. While these two share a healthy rivalry when vying for film roles, they epitomize the happy-go-lucky nature of successful sibling relationships. Being Australian doesn’t hurt either.
 

#3: Jake Gyllenhal and Maggie Gyllenhal

 
This talented brother-sister duo starred together in the cult hit Donnie Darko, before Jake went on to be one of the most popular actors in Hollywood thanks to his roles in a number of highly popular and confronting films. Both have received Oscar nominations Jake for his role in Brokeback Mountain and Maggie for Crazy Heart and when both were nominated for the 2015 Golden Globes awards, they brought each other as their dates.
 
Visual Presence: When assessing the visual presence of these two, the results are hardly surprising. Jake Gyllenhal takes up more than 90% of the total images of the brother and sister most probably due to the popularity of his films.  It’s been reported that stealthily and steadily, Jake Gyllenhal has become the most magnetic male lead in American film. Since starring in the Disney flop Prince of Persia, he has cast off cynical Hollywood blockbusters in favor of more eclectic, smaller films. Neither are listed as ambassadors for any major brands, which only stands for us to ask: why not? 
 

#4: Beyonce and Solange Knowles

While Beyonce has achieved one-name status as the Queen of Pop music, Solange has also recently achieved fame with her latest chart-topping album. Solange wrote, co-produced and staged all of her music—a one-man-band instinct she learned early on from her big sister.
Like the Gyllenhal’s above, these two sisters have also taken each other as dates to numerous events like the Grammys, the VMAs and Fashion Week. 
 
Visual Presence: Of course Beyonce conquered the visual presence rivalry but what was most surprising is that Solange put up a good fight. Beyonce took more than 80% of all visuals of the sisters and Solange’s 20% is not laughing matter. It shows how strong a presence she commands as an up-and-coming musician, despite being Beyonce’s little sister. Internal family politics about the two sisters may have also contributed to her strong presence, but when competing against one of the most famous popstars this century, Solange’s effort is impressive.
 

 #5: Kardashian Sisters

Assessing the visual presence of the most famous reality TV family isn’t easy especially when they loved being photographed so much! Spearheaded by matriarch Kris Jenner, their television show and cultivated celebrity status has taken the siblings beyond their Los Angeles enclave, and into the global spotlight. 
 
Visual Presence: Arguably the most famous of the clan, Kim Kardashian scored the highest visual presence. Her carefully curated online presence and marriage to Kanya West has led to her being one of the most famous celebrities and brand ambassadors of recent memory. Next in line is Kendall Jenner, who’s recently becoming more famous in her own right. While Kendall took only a third of Kim’s visual chatter, nobody would be surprised if in a few years Kendall surpassed her older sister in status. This is clearly seen in her recent brand ambassador partnerships with Pepsi which, in backfiring completely, Kendall broke the internet. 
 
 We had fun exploring the visual buzz surrounding celebrity siblings for National Siblings Day using PicScout’s artificial intelligence-driven Insights for Business, assessing the ROI of brand ambassadors have never been easier,
 

Is Brand Awareness Essential for Small Businesses?

Brand Awareness In An Age Before It Was A ‘Thing’

 Generations of Israeli children have grown up on HaShachar HaOleh (Rising Dawn) the dense chocolate spread that’s cheap, tasty and spoil-proof. You’ve probably never heard of it, but its local brand awareness is so strong, it’s mostly associated with the national religious holiday of Passover, much like Easter Eggs are associated with Easter. No real connection, but it’s chocolate and it’s sweet and – you’ll learn more about the why later on. Introduced more than 60 years ago by a small candy factory in Haifa, it’s become the the leading chocolate spread producer in Israel, with over 50% of the domestic market share. But not for long.
 
brand awareness

Opening The Markets Can Threaten Small Businesses

The introduction of Israel’s Cornflakes’ reform in 2015 has allowed freer competition for food imports, lifting protectionist policies for domestic manufacturers. The reform was mainly aimed at the large company monopolies strangling food affordability, but it’s also affected smaller Israeli companies with narrow product ranges, such as HaShachar HaOleh.

Testing Brand Strength of Passover

Israel consumes about 6.5 tons of chocolate spread a year, in a market that costs about NIS 160 million per annum. Passover is an especially popular time for eating chocolate spread in Israel, with sales spiking as people look for something to spread on their matzah. Marketing campaigns advertising chocolate spread evoke nostalgic childhood memories while advising customers of the delicious combination of chocolate and matzah.  
 
In anticipation of the upcoming holiday next week, we explored the visual impact of the two chocolate spread competitors HaShachar HaOleh and Nutella. Whose visuals dominate the digital space? How does this influence the affection Israelis have for HaShachar HaOleh? And does this affect sales?
 
Nutella dominates the Chocolate Spread market in every country in which it operates, except for Israel.
The visual chatter is a close tie between the two, with HaShachar HaOleh holding a slight advantage over Nutella. When we saw the results, those familiar with the Israeli brand were surprised, expecting a stronger impact when measured against the foreign chocolate spread invader. 
 
Taking a straw poll in the office everyone associated Passover with HaShachar HaOleh. Like peanut butter and jelly, bangers and mash, Passover is synonymous with HaShachar HaOleh. Talk about brand awareness and strength.

Does Brand Recognition Affect Sales Figures?

Sales figures place it first in the chocolate spread market in Israel, but Israeli and international competitors have been chipping away at HaShachar HaOleh’s sales in recent years. Nutella dominates the chocolate spread’ market in every country in which it operates a jar of Nutella is sold every 2.5 seconds with the exception of Israel. 
 
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Hard Lesson in Brand Awareness

The HaShachar HaOleh brand was built almost without any advertising investment – it didn’t need to with brand awareness so strong. But after competitors began targeting their customers with strong marketing campaigns, the company followed suit: they  developed new product lines and invested heavily in advertising, reminding Israeli consumers that they grew up on HaShachar HaOleh. 
 
The company understood that the main strength of the brand, apart from its taste and its nostalgic connection to childhood, is its Israeliness. Where its campaign slogan was once enjoy like a child’, it’s now Also Israeli, also tasty’.  
 
Passover is quintessentially a family holiday with a focus on children and national pride. HaShachar HaOleh has capitalized on these emotions and held strong to its market leadership. But, if the visual chatter continues this trend, the dawn of Israeli chocolate spread may be over soon.
 
 

5 Ways Artificial Intelligence is Changing the Future of Photography

Photography is more important today than at any other time in recent history. It’s used across every space where someone wants to sell you something: services, products, news, education the list goes on. The demand for photography has led to a number of innovations in photo-management both for the browser (front-end) and the editor (back-end). And this is where recent developments in artificial intelligence and image recognition technology are set to cause a near-revolution across the industry.

With artificial intelligence, we’ve have taught computers to identify content, style and context within photographs so that they can help automatically tag and organize our image libraries. Image recognition technology is changing the photography industry in ways we could once only imagine, and here we’ll explore how artificial intelligence can impact some of the major aspects of how we use and manage photos.
 
Artificial Intelligence
 
 

Behind the Scenes with Artificial Intelligence

Professional photographers take thousands of photos and spend countless hours manually organizing their visual content processing, uploading and tagging. Photos taken at events (such as weddings or awards ceremonies) are so very similar, making the final selection time-consuming and expensive. Taking this into account, speed to market is a crucial factor in photography, as the faster the images are available following an event, the faster they will sell. Hello, artificial intelligence. Help make my workflow easier and faster.

#1: Visual Search Organizes & Cleans 

Artificially intelligent image recognition technology can help photographers and editors in organizing and cleaning their image libraries by automating the process. When faced with a gallery or series of images, the editor balances complex sequencing decisions based on visual similarities or dissimilarities. Functions like Visual Search helps editors determine if certain images were uploaded before and are already online, thus avoiding duplicating content. It automatically groups similar photos based on visual similarities, and can find the exact match of the image you’re looking for.  

#2: Suggested Auto-tagging Speeds Up Metadata Input

Another function that can help editors cut down time-consuming mechanical tasks is suggested auto-tagging. Suggested auto-tagging labels your images with appropriate keywords and are then part of your image metadata. At this stage, the technology isn’t going to replace actual photo editors, but will help speed up the process by labeling submissions and learning from the editor’s choices. Auto-tagging can also enable enable automatic recognition of certain landmarks that can only be sold as editorial licenses, for example. 

#3: Facial Recognition Spots Famous Faces Fast

Face analysis technology automatically sorts and groups photos according facial landmarks the computer recognizes and stores within its memory. When editors upload images of high-value talent, facial recognition technology enhanced with artificial intelligence identifies the face automatically, eliminating the need to manually input the metadata. What’s more, when cleaning large image collections of duplicates or unwanted images, the facial recognition function quickly sorts through the files and recovers all images of a specific person.

Front of House with Artificial Intelligence

A key part of visual content marketing is stock photography. A key part of news consumption is photojournalism. A key part of getting any message across today is using visuals more often than not, using stock photography. To keep up with the increasing demand for photography, many photo agencies and stock photography sites are keen to implement innovation that will help grow their customer base. Here we’ll explore some more ways artificial intelligence helps create a more fluid front-end for consumers.

#4: Visual Search Helps Consumers Find What They Can’t Describe

One of the biggest advantages of Visual Search is its independence from language. You can only tag so many keywords to make each photo discoverable but Visual Search overcomes this challenge with suggestions or identical matches based on your visual preferences. 
How it works: consumers can narrow down search results to the most visually relevant content by providing a reference image. You can filter further by combining Visual Search with the results of a keyword search, guaranteeing the most accurate search results contextually and stylistically.

5#: Finding Faces in a Crowd with Facial Recognition & People Analysis 

Not only does people analysis technology detect faces within photos, but it also identifies the gender, age and ethnicity of those faces. This helps consumers narrow down their search results when looking for specific images, while also promoting diversity in image selection. If consumers have a reference image with which they’d like to find other similar images, People Analysis helps find visually similar images with similar faces.
 

The Future of Fotos: Artificial Intelligence Can Predict the Visual DNA

The advent of artificial intelligence can lead to computers effectively learning” what types of images are popular, and which ones are less appealing, based on its content and style. Photography is subjective to taste, but in marrying art with science, image recognition technology can guage a photo’s likely value, potentially influencing the subject, style and content of the photos we take and consume.
 
Not every photography company wants to invest in building their own computer vision engineering team and they shouldn’t have to. PicScout’s Visual API is crucial for both the back-end and front-end of photography sites. It puts these sites front and center of industry innovation, speeding up processes while helping photographers and consumers organize and find the images they’ve always wanted, but may not have had the words to describe.
 
 
 

March Madness in Film Marketing? Yep, it’s a Thing.

Hollywood waged its own form of March Madness in cinemas and online, although Beast Wars’ might be a better name for the box-office film marketing battle between Disney, 20th Century Fox, and Warner Bros. studios.
 
The monster mash of movies that dominated both the screens and the online visual chatter included Disney’s Beauty and the Beast”, Fox’s X-Men spin-off Logan” and WB’s Kong: Skull Island”, each with enormous production and marketing budgets that dwarfed any competition.

movie marketing film marketingfilm marketing
 
In the past, such fantastical films would have opened in the summer or around the Thanksgiving-Christmas holiday season, but in recent years, March has become prime real estate for studios that want to get a jump on the summer movie season. Consequently, the March film marketing budgets and box office hit an all-time record of $1 billion in the USA alone.
 
We wanted to explore the visual buzz surrounding the top ten movie releases of March 2017, and how the hype influences box-office success. 
 
First, we measured where the visual conversation was taking place. The United States took close to 50% of the film marketing chatter surrounding these movies, more than seven times as much as other countries, including the UK, Canada, India and Malaysia. 
 
What was also interesting to note was the distribution of the visual buzz. This leads to insights as to who was pushing the marketing message was it PR and the press, or movie-goers and fans sharing user-generated content?  On average, most of the visual chatter took place on editorial sites, clearly highlighting how dependent movie PR depends on the press for its hype. This proved to be the trend for all but the most visible movie of March Beauty and the Beast. Disney’s marketing magic harnessed the nostalgia and anticipation of the life-action adaptation, leading to an explosion of user-generated content in response to the film. One of the most tweeted images of the entire month of March was Emma Watson’s behind-the-scenes snap published on the day the film was released in the United States. 
 

The spike in visual chatter about each film corresponded with its rolling release across the four weeks of March. Logan” was first off the blocks as the most visible film during the first week of March. This corresponded with it taking top spot at the box office as well. Soon, Kong: Skull Island” took first place as the most visible movie both in the United States and around the world. With each week that passed since its release, each film’s visibility dropped along with its box-office earnings. Then came along the record-breaking Beauty and the Beast” against which Logan” and Kong: Skull Island” couldn’t compete. Disney has held the top spot since its release, and it doesn’t look as if it’s going anywhere.

 

film marketing
 
By using PicScout’s Insights for Business, we gained gain deeper insights into Hollywood’s marketing strategies and the results of its PR machine. With the huge success of March 2017, this month has now been declared the pre-summer blockbuster season. Subject matter and target audience definitely contribute to the overall visibility and box-office success of each film. However Disney’s expertly crafted marketing push in cultivating the hype to produce a wealth of user-generated content increased its visual chatter to far outweigh its competitors. 
 
It sure makes the decision of what film to see a decidedly hairy one.
 

Who’s Your Celebrity Doppelganger?

Have fun with PicScout’s facial recognition software on MyTwinCeleb mobile app, available on Google Play. Within seconds, you can match a picture of yourself with that of your ‘twin’ celebrity, ready to be shared with friends.
Getting ready for the upcoming Doppelgänger Week (February 1, don’t tell us you forgot!), PicScout’s techies had some fun in creating the game, testing it on themselves and their friends.

While just a taste of PicScout’s technical expertise, MyTwinCeleb is already off to a roaring success:

“Quite Accurate!!! I can always see some similarity between the faces!”
“Very good, the only one that really works in the shop, I’m having mucho fun 😊”
“Cool!!!”
“So much fun ❤❤❤”
“Wow!”

So download the app and share the results with your friends!

Happy #doppelganger2017 from #PicScout !