Today in Digital Marketing - When Good Tweets Go Wrong

Episode Date: July 5, 2022

EA Tweets Itself in the FootAl to Predict Consumer TasteTikTok Shelves Live ShoppingAmazon Pulls BackEU: Stop Dark PatterningCookiepocalypse UpdateSecond-Hand TrendingGoogle Workspace for OneTwitter PlaybookWant to contact us? Tap here: http://todayindigital.com/contact Go Premium! No ads, weekend editions, story links, audio chapters, better audio quality, earlier release time, and more.Get each episode as a daily email newsletter (with images, videos, and links).HELPFUL LINKS:ADS: Reach thousands of marketers with our ad options.CLASSIFIED ADS: Only $20 — more infoMORE CONTENT: Email newsletter, expert interviews, and blog posts.HANG OUT: Join our Slack communityEnjoying the Show? Tweet about us • Rate and review • Send a voicemailFOLLOW US:The Show: LinkedIn • TikTok • FB Page • FB GroupTod: Twitter • LinkedIn • TikTok • TwitchDEALS:Jyll Saskin Gales — Inside Google Ads Andrew Foxwell — Foxwell Founders Membership • Scaling After iOS14 • All CoursesOthers — AppSumo lifetime marketing deals • Riverside.FM podcast recording siteCREDITS:Today in Digital Marketing is hosted by Tod Maffin and produced by engageQ digital on the traditional territories of the Snuneymuxw First Nation on Vancouver Island, Canada. Our associate producer is Steph Gunn. Ad coordination by RedCircle. Production coordination by Sarah Guild. Theme music by Mark Blevis. All other music licensed by Source Audio.(If the links in the show notes do not work in your podcast app, visit https://todayindigital.com )Some links in these show notes may provide us with a commission.Our Sponsors:* Check out Kinsta: https://kinsta.comPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Today, behind the scenes of a brand's Twitter meltdown, meet the smell-o-vision of our generation. Both Amazon and TikTok cut back on plans. Europe smacks down more dark pattern UI. And still don't know what to do about the cookie-pocalypse? Yeah, you're not alone. It's Monday, July 5th. I'm Todd Maffin. Here's what you missed today in Digital Marketing.

We start today with a rare inside peek into a brand caught in the middle of a Twitter crisis of its own making. The brand is the video game publisher EA. Late last week, they tried to piggyback on a Twitter meme where people tweet, he or she is perfect, but, and then usually a character flaw is inserted. Here are a couple of examples. She's a 10, but she's obsessed about looking perfect like a doll. Or, he's a 10, but he kisses his car goodnight. That was from Shania Twain, by the way. So, EA tweeted,

They're a 10, but they only like playing single-player games. And perhaps they meant it to say, this person's cool, but I can't play in the same game as them. Perhaps. But most gamers on Twitter took it as, single-player games are trash. And while it's true that EA is known for its multiplayer games, it also has a whole lot of single-player games of its own.

Not only EA-specific games, but also dozens of games from other developers, of which it's the distributor. But never mind. Out the tweet went, and within an hour, EA's internal slack was buzzing. Employees started posting some of the tweet's replies, like, should have kept this in the drafts. And popular YouTuber Jacksepticeye tweeting, they're a 10, but thought this tweet was a good idea. Rather than post a mea culpa and be done with it, EA, let's just say not known for its absence of arrogance,

decided to double down and recruit its sibling studios into the effort. Quoting for thewind.com, there was a call to action in the Slack channel featuring a plan where EA Studios would publicly ridicule their publisher online. Quote, social managers, I need all hands on deck. We are actually going to pitch the roasting EA strategy. If you're around, please add what you might feel comfortable replying in your respective social media accounts. The idea with the roasting was to get more attention on the tweet,

then use it to highlight some of EA's single-player games. They wanted to flip the narrative and turn it into a marketing win. As you can probably imagine, multiple social media managers for the other brands and studios basically noped out right away, including those who handle Bioware's major series, Mass Effect and Dragon Age. With a lack of solidarity, the plan fell apart, unquote. You may wonder how a tweet like that isn't prepped in advance and signed off on by at least a couple of the sub-brands, or maybe even reviewed by a manager. The reason, according to ForTheWayne, is that the main EA Twitter account isn't even owned by the social media teams at EA. It's not under the branding people, and it's not under the communications

people. In fact, it's reported by a source that EA's own social media director doesn't have any say in or access to the EA Twitter account. Eventually, the CMO stepped in and told the team to own the mistake, and so by the end of the day, the accountMO stepped in and told the team to own the mistake. And so by the end of the day, the account anemically tweeted, Roast well deserved. We'll take this L because playing single player games actually makes them an 11. Good one? In the late 70s, a sandwich shop in New York released a groundbreaking new technology into its television ads.

Scratch and sniff. Simply scratch and sniff the television screen to smell fresh baked bread. The ad had a shaded box reading scratch here overlaid on top of photos of its menu items. Of course, it didn't actually work. Not that this hadn't been tried before. Cinema partners have been giving it a shot since the 50s. General Electric actually had two competing systems at the same time, Smell-O-Rama and Aroma-Rama. Then there was Smell-O-Vision,

which was only ever used with one film, a low-budget flick called The Scent of Mystery. And you thought there might have been one other? Un'altra, si, by perfume The Scent of Mystery. And you thought there might have been one other. Un'altra, she by perfume. Scent of Mystery. Magnifico. Irresistible, si. It was a flop. Not only the movie, but also the technology.

The scent machines were said to have been really, really loud. The smells really only got to the first couple of rows, causing everyone else in the audience to sniff incredibly hard, which was even louder and more distracting than the machines. When the film aired on TV in the 80s, viewers would watch the screen for numbers flashing in the corner, then flip to that page in a scratch-and-sniff booklet they'd have purchased ahead of time to smell what was on screen. All of it, of course, just a gimmick. In today's digital marketing world, we have our gimmicks too. One that I think sounds a little sus has actually been purchased by a big brand.

So maybe not so much a gimmick after all. The ownership group behind the Johnny Walker brand has bought an AI firm called Diageo, which claims it can use machine learning to analyze and predict what flavors consumers would be most likely to enjoy based on an online questionnaire. Answers are matched to a huge proprietary database of foods and smells, and the system spits out an estimation of someone's palate. Then the company could recommend specific drinks that might appeal to them. Quoting Adweek, Diageo has already harnessed this technology via its online What's Your Whiskey tool, which crunches some numbers to decipher individual preferences for a variety of sweet, fruity, spicy, and smoky aromas. The outcome is a personalized flavor print for each consumer

that uses the tool, as well as the recommendation of which Diageo single malt best matches their taste. According to McKinsey, more than 70% of people now consider such tailored branded experiences as a basic expectation, unquote. Incidentally, a Time magazine reader survey in 2000 listed Smell-O-Vision in the top 100 worst ideas of all time list. Let's hope this taste test tech doesn't end up offering a similar fate. Gonzales is not responsible for any head injuries sustained while attempting to smell your television screen. Poor sales.

Apparently, that's the reason TikTok has quietly shelved plans to expand its live e-commerce initiative outside of the UK. This is a significant development in the e-commerce space, as many people believe live, influencer-led shopping shows on social media are one of the big forthcoming trends. Quoting TechCrunch, Expansion plans have been abandoned after influencers dropped out of the project in the UK and the venture struggled to gain traction with users. A TikTok employee told the Financial Times that general consumer awareness and adoption is still low in the UK,

as many TikTok shop live streams achieved poor sales, despite efforts to encourage brands and influencers to sell through the app. The company had reportedly planned to launch TikTok shop in Germany, France, Italy, and Spain in the first half of this year, then in the U.S. later this year, unquote. TikTok had seen pretty solid levels of success with the live shows in Asia through TikTok's Chinese sister app, Doyin. Of course, they haven't slowed their e-commerce efforts elsewhere. They've been testing a dedicated shop feed tab, much like Instagram's in Indonesia. Another surprising pullback in the e-commerce space, this time from Amazon,

which is said to be delaying or cancelling plans to open 13 warehouses. This after the company admitted a couple of months ago it had probably expanded its warehouses a bit too rapidly. It had nearly doubled its operating capacity over the past two years to handle the pandemic-related buying surge. The company is trying to reduce its operating expenses after underwhelming Q1 earnings. One of its biggest costs is labor, so not having warehouses for people to work in just quite yet will hold that off. This wasn't something Amazon announced. Word came from local media and chambers of commerce in some of the affected communities.

Still, Amazon looms large over the commerce space. It has almost 1,200 active distribution facilities. By comparison, Walmart has 197 such facilities and Target has 52. Today's premium newsletter has a full list of each location and the details of the postponement or cancellation. 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. Another change Amazon is making is one it's being forced into, making it easier for consumers to cancel their Prime memberships. Prime is Amazon's program that drops shipping charges from items it has in nearby warehouses, as their Netflix competitor, and a bunch of other things for around 15 bucks a month. European regulators

last year told the company the process for cancelling was too confusing and bordered on dark pattern use. At the time, Amazon made a couple of changes, like making the cancel button more visible and shortening some of the fine print. Apparently, that wasn't enough, as European regulators last week announced Amazon was going even further, letting consumers unsubscribe from the program in two clicks, and said they'd watch to make sure Amazon's commitments to compliant didn't slide back into the sludge, as they put it. Quoting TechCrunch, a two-click cancellation process is certainly a radical simplification compared to the multi-layered, friction-filled cancellation dance Amazon has been deploying in some member states.

At the time the complaint was filed, Norway's Consumer Council published a report detailing the cynically convoluted workflow Amazon had devised to discourage consumers from cancelling Prime, finding the process to be riddled with manipulative design techniques, unquote. As for non-European countries, no changes. So it looks like those consumers will still need to jump through the dozens of flaming hoops. The hard work has started as the industry gears up for the looming death of the third-party cookie. Digiday has released the results of a study it did surveying agencies and brands on how prepared they will be when Google stops supporting the cross-platform trackers at the end of next year. This was a small survey, I should note. Only 146 industry professionals polled. But in case you're looking for a benchmark to measure how you fare against

others in your space, 70% of agency and brand executives said their businesses are now actively preparing for the end of the third-party cookie. That's the good news. The bad news is there's still no consensus on how to replace the functionality cookies brought us. Quoting Digiday, first party data, ad tech built cookie alternatives and contextual targeting did come close. 49% of agency and brand execs said their businesses are investing more in technology to acquire first party data. 45% plan on using ad tech built alternatives to third party cookies. Another 45% are spending more on contextual targeting campaigns. Meanwhile, a third of agency and brand execs are looking to second party data partnerships,

unquote. Second party data, if you're getting lost in all of this, is where you basically rent the use of the first party data that a platform like, say, Walmart has collected without an intermediary. Google itself does have a replacement in mind. It first floated something called the Federated Learning of Cohorts, or FLOC, which was soundly smacked down by the industry. Their current solution is something they call Topics. Most people in the survey couldn't decide if they thought Topics would eventually be their replacement third-party cookie. More data is out supporting a growing trend of upcycling and second-hand shopping in the

commerce space. The reasons are obvious. Inflation, energy bills, supply chain problems, and of course the continued move toward more environmentally friendly options. The research from eBay found 30% of consumers have to make more considered purchases in order to get better value for money, and a fifth are buying more second-hand items in order to save money. In the fashion space, that's even bigger. The resale market in the UK, for example, now consumes 25% of the overall market. If you need more proof, even the reality shows are getting into this. Love Island will apparently have contestants wearing pre-owned clothes instead of the usual fast fashion brands.

eBay says searches for the phrase upcycled rose 40% this past January on its UK site compared to the month before. Searches for secondhand and repair kit rose 24% and 21% respectively. The numbers track year over year as well. Google has a few nice additions to its workplace platform coming, and this time it's coming even if you are a brand of one. These additions being rolled out to Google's workspace individual plan.

And they're pretty big additions, actually. The kind that most one-person businesses are probably using a third-party tool for right now. For instance, electronic signatures, now built into Google Docs. You select that item from the menu. A little side panel opens up on the right where you can drag out a signature and an auto-filled date field. This is very much like HelloSign or PandaDocs, although it seems those are the only two fields available. Fields like title or company name weren't shown in the demo. Also being added, a pretty fully featured email marketing campaign system complete with templates.

This is something they added to other plans last year and are now making it available to the individual plan. And appointment scheduling gets some updates, such as being able to customize the time of reminder emails and having users verify their email before booking. If you're not on that plan and want to be, they have it at 20% off until October. And finally, Twitter has released a new 45-page Twitter Connect playbook, which provides tips on using the platform's ad formats and tools. It also includes expanded detail on Twitter's core audiences and a few case studies. Here is the URL. It's a bit of a nasty one, so I will try to go slow here. business.twitter.com slash en slash resources slash connect hyphen playbook dot html. Well, my voice sounds a little shaky. There's a reason for it.

Boy, was I sick for the weekend. Really, really sick. So sick. My wife in the essentially middle of the night, basically, had to drive out to a drugstore, pick up one of the three COVID test kits that were out there. It was the third COVID test I've ever had. First one was when I thought I was exposed. I went to the little government facility.

I got to spit for that one. And then I wanted to attend an event. I had to spit for that one. This time, not so lucky. The three COVID tests that the Canadian government is providing, or the BC government, I should say, are the old stick-up-the-nose tests. Actually, it wasn't as bad as I thought.

They're tiny. I think this is like the half version. Nope, did not have COVID. My wife didn't have COVID. As far as we can tell, maybe food poisoning. I've been trying to get on the Mediterranean diet because I want to live longer, and every Googling that I do says that that's supposed to be the one.

So we've been eating a lot of nuts and fish and olive oil and grape juice because I'm a recovering alcoholic. I can't drink wine. I can, but it would be a disaster. So we're drinking grape juice to hopefully get some of the benefits. And I guess grape juice is particularly susceptible to fermentation. I left it out on the counter and I took a couple sips of it. It tasted a little weird. So I did what every normal person would do. I doubled down and sipped a

little bit more just to make sure. And yeah, it was, I think that's maybe what it was, but who knows? It was not a man cold. Let me tell you, I was actually really, really sick. But I think I'm 90% better, hopefully back up to 100%. So with that, with any that. Sick of that story. Sorry if that's all. Sick of that jacket. Sorry. Sick of that story. Sorry if that makes you sick of that.

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