Today in Digital Marketing - Flirting with the Accidental Influencers

Starting point is 00:00:00 It's Thursday, October 6th. I'm Todd Maffin. Today, cease and desist? More like peace and exist? The new everything app that might reject advertising? The legal battles looming for social platforms? The birth of the mixed media tweet? And TikTok wants to be... Instagram now? Here's what you missed today in digital marketing.

Starting point is 00:00:25 Begin today with a look at the marketing story of White Claw, the widely popular hard seltzer drink that has inspired many memes and social content. Its rise to prominence in 2019 was unexpected, had little to do actually with the company's marketing strategy as it was a fairly new player in a relatively unknown beverage category at the time. So what is it that made them go viral seemingly overnight? According to one study just published, the rapid success of White Claw was due to a social media influencer, but not the one the brand hired. Instead, it was a rogue influencer. Chris Taylor, one of the researchers behind the study, believes it was all because of

Starting point is 00:01:03 a catchphrase. Quoting Dr. Taylor, one of the researchers behind the study, believes it was all because of a catchphrase. Quoting Dr. Taylor, He came up with a slogan, Ain't no laws when you're drinking claws, and it took off from there. Last thing a company wants is their alcoholic product associated with law-breaking, but it started selling out everywhere, unquote. The influencer flooded social media with the slogan,

Starting point is 00:01:22 even printing it on t-shirts, suddenly demand soared for a product that hadn't been on the beverage industry's radar. This led the researchers to identify a new viral trend that they have dubbed rogue marketing. Rogue marketing occurs when an unaffiliated individual creates and posts an informal message about a brand on social media that becomes viral. Think of the guy on a bike and what he did to a cranberry juice brand. Although the post is not funded nor endorsed by the company that owns the brand, the viral status provides free and unexpected advertising. So how effective is it? The research team surveyed more than 200 people,

Starting point is 00:02:00 and most could not tell a significant difference whether a message they were seeing came from a company or an influencer. In fact, the survey found that rogue marketing is, perhaps unsurprisingly, more compelling than company-produced ads. And those who found the rogue marketing message more compelling were more positive about the company's response.

Starting point is 00:02:22 So, next time someone does something with your product, even if it's a little off-brand, send them merch from marketing, not letters from legal. Well, it's probably really happening. Elon Musk is offered to buy Twitter again. CNBC reports today that a deal could be as close as early tomorrow. But there's more. Musk recently tweeted that the social media platform could help speed up the development of X. No, X is not the

Starting point is 00:02:51 name of his ninth child. X is Musk's idea for a new app, a kind of everything app. You see, Musk is a big fan of WeChat, which in China lets consumers do everything from ordering food and paying bills. He told Twitter employees a few months ago that no equivalent app exists in the U.S., and he sees Twitter as an opportunity to create it. He also said consumers essentially live on WeChat, and that even getting close to the super app's ubiquity with Twitter would be an immense success. In a Twitter-based super app, payments would also play a prominent role, according to Musk. To be fair, the demand for a super app isn't just Musk's.

Starting point is 00:03:28 7 out of 10 US adults say they want one to manage their digital world. As for advertising in this not-yet-existing app, don't hold your breath. Everything Musk has said so far about his preferred business model has pointed toward monthly subscription fees rather than an advertising-based program. The real question, of course, is would users trust a single app that would contain a ton of information about them? Clearly, it's not an issue in China. Color me skeptical. And if the thought of Elon Musk being in charge of a super app wasn't enough to send you spiraling, it's possible that three looming U.S. Supreme Court cases may change the face of social media as we know it. In these cases, the Communications Decency Act is challenged,

Starting point is 00:04:15 which gives companies legal liability protection over their hosting of third-party content. The first case involves a lawsuit against Google over whether ISIS videos posted on YouTube played any role in a U.S. citizen's death in a 2015 Paris attack. The complainants claim that Google, quote, knowingly permitted ISIS to post on YouTube hundreds of radicalizing videos inciting violence, unquote. Insider intelligence suggests a prominent theme in court arguments will be whether the platform's algorithms recommended ISIS videos to users or simply displayed them in feeds. Google asked the court to not take the case, saying the lawsuit was too ambiguous and that it has since overhauled its terrorism-related content policies. There are two other cases as well. The second case involves Twitter asking how aggressive tech companies must be to prevent terrorists from using their services.

Starting point is 00:05:05 The third potential case is related to state laws in Texas and Florida that bar tech companies from removing large swaths of content. Though the cases target social media, they could, of course, have ramifications for any website that incorporates user-generated content. We don't cover a lot of legal stuff here, but these do have the potential to upend some social media platforms, which could trickle down, of course, to the platform's ads management. Watch this space. Do you have business insurance? If not, how would you pay to recover from a cyber attack, fire damage, theft, or a lawsuit. No business or profession is risk-free. Without insurance, your assets are at risk from major financial losses, data breaches, and natural disasters.

Starting point is 00:05:53 Get customized coverage today, starting at $19 per month at zensurance.com. Be protected, be Zen. TikTok has introduced new editing tools within the creation flow. It is a lot closer to the track based system in CapCut, which is also owned by TikTok's parent. With the new tools, you can be more specific about your editing from within TikTok, like adjusting clips, sounds,

Starting point is 00:06:14 images, text and even video speed. You may actually have had access to this new workflow, but TikTok today said they have started a wider rollout. And here's something I didn't see coming. While other platforms pivot to try to catch up with TikTok, TikTok is pushing, drumroll please, still photos? Yes, TikTok announced today that it's releasing Photo Mode, a new carousel format available on mobile for still image content. This will let you share carousel posts of images that automatically display one after another. It could be a way to showcase your brand's products, and you can add music to the soundtrack of the images. Viewers can swipe through them and so on. You can also pair your videos made in photo mode with descriptions of up to 2,200 characters in length.

Starting point is 00:06:58 So, for those of you playing at home, Instagram is now TikTok. Twitter is Spotify. TikTok is becoming Instagram, of all things. Actually, I take back what I said earlier. Elon, sign me up for X. Twitter announced late yesterday that it has finally rolled out mixed media tweets. This will let you add a circus of stuff to a single tweet, including videos, GIFs, and images. You've been able to upload these to a single tweet before, but never been able to combine different types of media in a single tweet. Now you can. Accounts can add up

Starting point is 00:07:35 to four pieces of content per tweet. The update is currently only available on mobile, sorry, desktop marketers, but tweets with different content types can still be viewed on both mobile and desktop. Is your agency finding it more challenging to acquire new business this year? You're not the only one. According to a new study, four out of 10 agency executives say obtaining new business in 2022 is much harder than it was last year. That is compared to three out of 10 who said the same last year comparing to 2020. Respondents also indicated that they've seen the number

Starting point is 00:08:10 of new business opportunities decrease compared to 2021. Only 30% said new business opportunities increased this year. 50% said that last year. The data comes from RSW's US survey of more than 150 agency professionals. Well, that didn't take long. On the heels of Meta's make-a-video debut, which we reported on last week,

Starting point is 00:08:36 Google has announced its own text-to-video AI system. But you can't play with this one either, as this one is also in the research phase. According to Google's research paper, the system is capable of producing 1280 by 768 videos at 24 frames a second from a text prompt. That is a big improvement over Zuckerberg's version. Other notable features include generating videos based on the work of famous painters, creating 3D rotating objects while preserving object structure, and rendering text in a variety of animation styles. But it still might be a long way from auto-generated video ads,

Starting point is 00:09:11 similar to Meta's Make a Video. The clips that we've seen so far are jittery and distorted in parts with objects that blend together in weird ways. That said, based on what I'm seeing, it beats Meta. Still cannot get into Overwatch 2 three days after it launched. The error message I'm getting apparently is because I merged my accounts, which, by the way, Overwatch said you had to in order to play and only people on console who did that followed their instructions apparently are the ones that can't get in. But never mind that, I'm now making more than 45,000 coins every time I harvest my field of canola in Disney Dreamlight Valley.

Starting point is 00:09:53 I had been making a colossal mistake up until now. I'd been taking Goofy with me, because I thought Goofy was my buddy who would buff my gardening. But it turns out he's the foraging guy. He buffs my picking fruit off of trees. It's Donald Duck that is... Anyway, long story short, I made a colossal mistake, and it's cost me thousands of coins, and I'm a little bit more upset about it

Starting point is 00:10:21 than an adult should be in a game like this. Anyway, talk to you tomorrow. It's alright to let the fear come. It's alright. It's alright to embrace your heart. It's alright. What are you crying for? Are you serious?

Today in Digital Marketing - Flirting with the Accidental Influencers

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