The Amazing Business Potential of Instagram Direct

Instagram announced today their release of Instagram Direct, a new tool for sending on the spot photo and video messages to fiends. What significant more than the 150 million who will be using this tool, is amazing potential for what could be called “residual advertising effect.” Making imaged moments part of life, leaves the door open for brands to grab free, earned media on a massive scale. While this may not be readily apparent to all, Instagram can be shown to have altered the whole game a bit here.

Let’s face it, those Coca Colas and Nike shoes you see everywhere on the big screen, that’s just the tip of a marketing and advertising bonanza not many have realized yet. Somehow the same people that invented soap operas have not done the transference to platforms like Instagram, but this latest 5.0 version of the app alludes to a community of brand sharers, whether they be personal, collective, or out and out corporate ones. If I’m being too cryptic here, I noticed sometimes back while experimenting with Twitter-Instagram interplay for a client, so often Instagram sharers end up unknowingly branding all manner of businesses within their personal moments. Now, with Instagram Direct, the developers where (probably wittingly) may soon power a whole new revolution in ad monetization. At least a great many companies had better look  out how their storefronts look.

Available now at the Apple App Store and on Google Play, version 5.0 offers the one of then most useful means of visual communication available. From my own perspective, part of the utility is long awaited. Which means Instagram was, for me, a bit unnecessarily confusing where function was concerned. And this is one of the things they changed.

Now when you open Instagram, an easy to see icon in the upper right directs you to an “inbox”of photos and videos you’ve received. The new version also makes it easier to differentiate when sending to the public or to individuals, but that’s not all. While the new features seem fairly simple, the speed with which users can become conduits of moments in time, it’s pretty amazing. For me, making Instagram directly instant, opens a whole new world for me and people in my circles. The video below betrays my ideas a bit better.

Now here’s the thing. The whole experience thing, this is the age of connectedness everyone talked about for years. Imagine how much better business has to be, to be seen instantaneously and impromptu, across a vast market of consumers. Can you envision someone in an Instagram moment, capturing some jerk desk clerk? How about some amazing hotel or barber shop manager? For the “rest” of the new age ad story, sorry, you’re going to have to pay for that.

It’s YouTube taken to the moment. If we’re friends, or if we’re not, the world of Instagram extends advertising so far beyond TV and even the web, it’s a paradigm. For those who do not “get” my meaning here, this kind of imagery meets life, the sharing of it, applies pressures that should always have been in place. Word of mouth becomes NOW. Thanks for this one Instagram, watch me make consumer advocacy a new game soon. :)