IG adds short-vids, Snapchat does business, Google goes shopping, and Country Time gives lemon(aid).
Your weekly digital marketing matchbox to kindle creative content.
July 23, 2020
The Competition Is Gettin’ Reels
TikTok gets another reality check. This time, it’s coming from the social media trendsetter, Instagram (where all forms of entertaining content seem to end up eventually). Short-form videos may be the next Gram-worthy trend as the new in-app Reels feature is ready to launch next month. With more than 1 billion active Instagrammers, Reels should have an audience that rivals TikTok from the start. We love having hours of ever-so-addicting and short-attention-span-satisfying video content fused with our regularly scheduled Instagrams. But the best part is: this in-app feature will make it easy for us digital marketers to reach our targets with a quick 3-in-1 combo — Reels, stories, and posts, oh my! If TikTok’s eclectic vibe isn’t for your brand, Reels is your chance to try out this short-form content while staying true to your brand persona in the friendly confines of Instagram’s curated wonderland.
Get Ready for Takeoff
Three, two, one ... takeoff! Snapchat is launching into the world of eCommerce and curated feeds with its new brand profiles feature. Looking to rival Instagram and capitalize on the timely Facebook boycott, Snap is spending some time orbiting around the ad space. And this certainly isn’t its first trip into advertising. In the past year, it’s added three tiers of ad capabilities, from six-second long videos to three-minute features to Snap Maps for local businesses. But the big news is that companies can upload videos to their profiles permanently — so unlike Snapchat! The curated pages will include a tab for brand highlights that allow brands to save and feature past posts (similar to IG's Story highlights) and a tab for branded AR lenses (another feature it shares with the Gram). This newfound Snap-mosphere will be sure to challenge the advertising and eCommerce programs of Facebook and Instagram and give brands a permanent home in the ephemeral messaging app. The space race continues!
Stuck in a (Shop)Loop
Social media and eCommerce go together like Millennials and house plants — they just thrive as a pair (most of the time). Enter Shoploop, an experimental new video shopping platform from Google, where brands and content creators upload up to 90-second videos of product reviews and mini-tutorials. Users scroll through product categories, save and share videos of items they’re interested in, and visit merchants’ sites directly from the platform to purchase. As Google aims to beef up its eCommerce capabilities to compete with Instagram, Pinterest, and the like, the platform could become a significant consideration for brands (mainly if the search engine serves up the videos in search results). Short-form videos have been a success for nearly every social platform — combine that with witty, glowing, or scathing reviews from users’ favorite influencers, all in one place? This TikTok/Yelp/YouTube combo is like the fiddle-leaf fig of influencer marketing.
WHAT LIT US UP THIS WEEK
Country Time’s Lemon(Aid)
When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade. But what happens when life throws in a pandemic with those lemons? With social distancing guidelines making it next to impossible for kids to set up lemonade stands this summer, Country Time has found a way to help the smallest of the country’s small business owners. The brand’s latest marketing campaign is a “Littlest Bailout Relief Fund” that will send a commemorative check and a $100 gift card to 1,000 kids whose lemonade stand businesses have been affected.
Per Country Time, these “stimulus checks” are meant to help kids preserve the values of lemonade stands and entrepreneurship while putting a little juice back into the economy. (Plus, it’s a humorous play on the bad PR big companies got for receiving PPP loans meant for small businesses.) Country Time is undoubtedly feeling the financial effects of a lemonade stand-less summer. So, this campaign doesn’t just get them some great coverage (with mentions on CNN, USA Today, and Business Insider, to name a few). It also helps the company promote its products and gather that sweet, sweet customer data (via the microsite where parents must enter their info). The campaign recognizes the challenges of the moment while focusing the messaging around meaningful discussions (small businesses, the economy, etc.) in a smart way. It’s another excellent example of how an intelligent marketing campaign can be worth its weight in gold (or lemons). We’ll raise a glass to that!
