Today in Digital Marketing - In a McPickle 🥒

Starting point is 00:00:00 It is Thursday, July 13th. Today, jumping into a TikTok trend that's not brand safe. Instagram updates its product tagging, the new boost mode that turns creator content into ads, and Twitter's blue checkmarks are so universally mocked now, you'll be able to pay to hide them from your profile. I'm Todd Maffin. That's Ahead. Today in digital marketing. When Gen Z hijacks your campaign, don't fight it. Live, laugh, and love it. The viral Grimace Shake TikTok trend recently generated massive interest in the limited edition birthday meal at McDonald's. But the brand exposure wasn't exactly what the company had in mind.

Starting point is 00:00:43 The trend involves users pretending to be injured or even faking their death after drinking the milkshake. The hashtag Grimace Shake has two and a half billion views on TikTok and has generated millions of mentions across the platform. Despite the tremendous reach it brought the brand, McDonald's says it didn't plant the phenomenon. The company's social media director

Starting point is 00:01:05 in the U.S. shared his perspective on LinkedIn yesterday about how they dealt with the unconventional trend. Quote, If you think we would never acknowledge the trend, well, I thought so too at first, so I won't blame you. Honestly, I think my very first text to the team and agencies was, not sure we should jump in. It took us a bit of time to process what was happening. The campaign was already wildly successful, both on a social and business standpoint. So why would we take the risk to jump in? But hours of watching, reading the comments, trying to learn and genuinely understand helped us see what this was all about. Brilliant creativity, unfiltered fun, peak absurdist Gen Z humor, just the way a new The fast food chain finally broke its silence on social media by posting a photo of Grimace at his birthday celebration with the caption,

Starting point is 00:01:58 Me pretending I don't see the grimace shake trend. Instagram is still working on in-stream shopping tools. The platform is now testing a new commerce option that automatically tags products from a brand's catalog in stories when it detects them. Some brands now have product tags included in their stories during the upload process. These tags can be removed, edited, or updated. Instagram recently made product tags in feed posts

Starting point is 00:02:28 available to all US users and said it was developing new ways to add product tags to stories as well. Currently, the system only seems to tag products from a connected accounts catalog rather than identifying products in every story from all users. Adobe is facing tighter scrutiny of its $20 billion Figma acquisition by the UK's competition watchdog. Earlier today, the Competition Markets Authority announced it will conduct a Phase 2

Starting point is 00:02:59 in-depth investigation to determine whether the merger should be approved or blocked. The decision comes after Adobe and Figma failed to address concerns regarding the potential negative impact on competition for designers in the UK. In its first phase one investigation last month, the CMA found the acquisition could eliminate a significant competitive threat to Adobe due to similarities between Figma and Adobe's XD product. The companies were given until July 7th to propose acceptable measures that could let the merger proceed without further scrutiny. The CMA has now set a deadline of December 27th to finish the second phase. A spokesperson for Adobe expressed confidence in their case, stating that Figma's

Starting point is 00:03:42 product design is an adjacency to the company's core creative products and that Adobe does not have plans to compete in the product design space. Adobe's Figma bid is also being assessed by regulators in the US and Europe. As Twitter and threads battle over the future of text, a new photo app on the block called Retro is coming for Instagram by bringing an OG concept back to users' feeds. They're actual friends. No brand marketers, no ads, no influencer reels, just regular people you follow. Retro sets itself apart with specific constraints. It's private by default, so users have to request to follow each other. And users have to share photos from their camera roll to view other people's photos.

Starting point is 00:04:32 The app organizes photos into weekly albums, spanning as far back as the user's native camera roll history. Only photos from the past four weeks are accessible. Any photos from earlier than that are locked, and friends need a private key to view them. Unlike Instagram, Retro currently lacks photo filters and limits video clips to 60 seconds. A report from Wired today, though, points out that a free glorified camera roll and a commitment to an ad-free platform

Starting point is 00:04:58 does not make a sustainable business model. The company says it eventually plans to introduce a premium version of the app that includes more advanced photo features. 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. Get customized coverage today, starting at $19 per month at zensurance.com. Be protected. Be Zen. PearPop, a marketplace for social collaborations, launched a new tool called Boost Mode today

Starting point is 00:05:41 that lets brands turn creator content posted by creators into paid ads. The feature lets brands analyze content to determine which posts perform well in terms of likes, views, and engagement, and then turns them into ads, and creators receive a bonus if their content is selected. If this sounds a little familiar, it might be because TikTok released a similar feature recently called the TikTok Creative Challenge. This feature lets creators submit video ads to brand challenges and earn money based on their video's performance if their spec work is selected. A spokesperson for PearPop says boost mode differs from TikTok's new product by letting marketers focus on content that is already proven to perform.

Starting point is 00:06:22 And unlike TikTok, the platform compensates creators first based on their organic views in a PearPop challenge and then pays them a bonus when a brand chooses their content. Twitter is reportedly now blocking links to its competitor, Meta's Threads, in searches. You can still tweet a link to a Th thread's post and it'll show up, but several users trying to look for threads links by searching url colon threads dot net report that the platform is limiting results. There is a workaround, though. Just enter the term url

Starting point is 00:06:57 colon threads net. In other words, remove the period from the search term and the platform will show results and links to those threads. It's not yet clear if the platform is intentionally blocking links, but it certainly isn't the first incident. Earlier this year, Twitter restricted user engagement with Substack. While Substack's issue was resolved fairly quickly, it remains to be seen how long Twitter will filter out threads links. And in other news, Twitter is working on a new option that will let brands and users hide their blue checkmark. But you'll have to pay to do it. Yes, soon paying Twitter blue subscribers will get access to a toggle that will mask their blue tick. The toggle also comes with a warning that certain actions may reveal you're still paying for the app, like posting longer tweets or using text editing tools.

Starting point is 00:07:51 We have a big all-hands-on-deck day at the agency tomorrow, so no regular newscasty show, but I won't leave you hanging. Tomorrow, a look at some fascinating new research showing that when brands try to be part of their own fan base's community on social media, it can backfire and increase the number of trolls that comment negatively on your posts. It's definitely something you'll want to listen to if you are the social media manager for your brand. So I'll see you tomorrow with that. It's the season for new styles and you love to shop for jackets and boots. So when you do, always make sure you get cash back from Rakuten. And it's not just clothing and shoes.

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Today in Digital Marketing - In a McPickle 🥒

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