Today in Digital Marketing - 184: Oh Canada! 🇨🇦

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Starting point is 00:00:28 Get the Rakuten app or join at Rakuten.ca. R-A-K-U-T-E-N dot C-A. Today, Christmas comes early to e-commerce brands, and you can thank COVID-19 for that. How a change to Facebook's algorithm might affect your company's blog posts. Were you right to ignore the smart speaker marketing push? And why on earth did TikTok shut down in one of its biggest markets? It's Tuesday, June 30th, 2020. Happy International Asteroid Day.

Starting point is 00:01:00 I'm Todd Maffin, and here's what you missed today in Digital Marketing. If you've ever wrestled with having to convert your promotional videos from regular landscape form into a vertical format for phones, you might appreciate the new ad for Starburst. For one, it's vertical, but they're going to run it that way even on television and YouTube. So, yes, there will be huge black bars on the left and right. Why? Well, first, the product is a kind of rope stick version of their candy, and their positioning statement for it is best enjoyed vertically. Starburst swirlers. And when the ad first starts, you're in a hair salon and everything is on its side by 90 degrees. So it just looks like some poor marketing person forgot to rotate it.

Starting point is 00:01:50 But then you notice gravity is working just fine. In other words, things fall down the screen when they fall. So if you were looking at it with your head tilted, things would be falling to the right, which, you know, isn't how gravity works. Starbursts roll. It's like starburst, but vertical. I've got a link in the notes if you want to see the video. It turns out there was almost no special effects used here. The actors were on a special stage that was 90 degrees rotated. They were held in place by harnesses and cables that got erased digitally.

Starting point is 00:02:22 The campaign is running on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube, and on Pandora Streaming Radio with special audio effects. Some interesting news from Facebook that might affect the way you roll out a content strategy. As part of their reaction to the planned ad boycott, Facebook says it will now try to put more authentic news sources in the feed and downgrade the reach of inauthentic sources. And how do they decide what's real or not? Partly, and here's where your website comes in, the Facebook algorithm will start looking for bylines. While they say this is applied primarily to news publishers, there's really no reason why

Starting point is 00:03:02 they wouldn't also apply this reasoning to blog posts, article bylines, or a staff page on a publisher's website, by the way, that also works. A Facebook rep today said, quote, we've found that publishers who do not include this information often lack credibility to readers and produce content with clickbait or ad farms, all content people tell us they don't want to see on Facebook, unquote. This is only one of many, many signals, of course, but if you'd like to stay on the good side of the algo, it might be worth testing whether adding bylines to your company's blog posts keeps your reach up. Snapchat has launched its first shoppable AR ad campaign.

Starting point is 00:03:43 It's with Gucci and lets people try on a shoe. These are ad campaigns using augmented reality. The user points their phone's camera at their foot. Snapchat digitally puts a shoe on that foot. Then you can rotate your foot and look at the virtual shoe from any angle. This isn't the first time, of course, there's been AR in Snapchat, but this is the first use of Snapchat's shoppable AR ad placement, which will let people buy the shoes right there if they like it.

Starting point is 00:04:14 A year or two ago, the big thing was smart speakers and voice assistants, and people started pitching us marketers on making sure our brand was ready for the big voice wave coming. There are Alexa skills that you can make. Apple opened up Siri to third-party phrases. But consumers still aren't really using it that much. Every year, an agency out there called Proficient Digital asks more than 1,000 American consumers about their use of voice search and virtual assistants.

Starting point is 00:04:40 This year's results are in, and things are basically flat. When asked, how are you most likely to ask questions on your smartphone? Voice was in fourth place, basically where it's always been. A survey also asked how often people use smart speakers to search for information. A majority of people said never or less than twice per week. So if you chose to not invest a lot of your marketing dollars there, that was money well not spent. There are 193 days until Christmas. I tell you that for two reasons.

Starting point is 00:05:18 One, you've got lots of time still to get me a gift. I like Xbox gift cards, by the way. Denominations over $100, please. And second, Pinterest says they are seeing a lot of people already searching for Christmas-related topics. And that's way earlier than in previous years. Quoting the company today, In the face of COVID-19 and stay-at-home orders, people are looking forward to looking forward. 2020 has been a hard year, and consumers are craving the comfort of the holidays.

Starting point is 00:05:47 They want this season to feel more festive than ever before and they're asking brands to help them get there, unquote. So yeah, holiday searches on Pinterest jumped 70% year over year this April compared to April of last year. That includes a tripling of searches for Christmas gift ideas, while other queries like holiday recipes and Christmas were up more than 90% and 80% respectively. As for what they're looking for specifically, in fashion, searches for holiday party outfits quadrupled. In travel, a 90% increase in Disney Christmas decorations. And in grocery, a five-fold increase in Christmas baking. So if your brand relies on December for a lot of your revenue, you may want to get started planning sooner than you usually might.

Starting point is 00:06:36 Finally, India has banned 59 mobile apps, including TikTok and WeChat. Why? Because they are majority owned by Chinese entities. India and China have been having a bit of a political spat lately. Prior to this ban, India was actually TikTok's fastest growing market. The Indian government says they're doing it to protect the privacy of its citizens. One notable thing, Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba? Not part of the plan. So it's Canada Day here tomorrow.

Starting point is 00:07:13 That's like the American 4th of July holiday, except with free healthcare. So no episode tomorrow. Patch 20 of Fallout 76 is out today, so let's face it, I will probably be spending my time there tomorrow. Our theme music is by Mark Blevis. Ad sales by Podcorn. I'm Todd Maffin. I'll talk to you from the true north, strong and free, on Thursday. Studies show the most important factor for a successful business is timing. Thank you.

Today in Digital Marketing - 184: Oh Canada! 🇨🇦

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