Christmas came early for social media marketers, c-commerce is FB's latest MO, and Oracle + GIPHY make a great pair.
September 27, 2019
Winter Is Coming
We know it’s the first week of autumn — and we’re just as excited for Halloween as the next guy — but it’s only a matter of time before brands start launching their holiday campaigns. In preparation for the upcoming festive (and lucrative) season, social platforms are bolstering ad capabilities to provide marketers increased flexibility and creativity. Facebook expanded its AR and interactive ad options, Snapchat extended the maximum length of video ads from 10 seconds to three minutes, and Pinterest enabled “Shop the Look” ads and customizable business profiles. While many Christmas and Hanukkah campaigns have probably been in the works since, like, last summer, brands who incorporate these new ad features into their wintry marketing mix are sure to have a holly, jolly holiday.
Thank U, (Twitter) Next
Thought we’d end up with retweets, but it wasn’t a match. Wrote some tweets about branding, now we read them and laugh. Twitter taught us likes, Twitter taught us hashtags ...
Okay, enough Ariana Grande. In all seriousness, Twitter loves to help brands, and this week it introduced two things that do just that. First, it revamped its brand strategy team as Twitter Next. Partnering with some of the largest global brands, its mission is to assist with content strategies, brand voice, campaign design, measurement, etc. The platform also released Influencing Culture: The Participation Playbook, a free resource that gives insight into said large global brands’ most popular Twitter campaigns. The playbook breaks down six pillars of successful posting and is full of marketing food for thought. For example: If your brand disappeared from Twitter tomorrow, would your audience miss you, or say, “Thank you, next?”
Hats off to Chatbots
Move aside, e-commerce. We’re talking c-commerce now. Facebook released a study this week on conversational commerce — the connection of businesses and consumers via messaging. The study highlights some of its uses and benefits for brands, and (most importantly) why the practice can’t be ignored. As consumers want quicker and more personalized interactions with brands (whether they have a product question, need a service, or want to book an appointment), messaging and chatbots are increasingly expected. And according to FB’s study, half of consumers like to keep these interactions on social media. So while chatbots on your website are definitely a great touch, marketers should be sure to also keep their brands’ DMs open for business.
SPARK OF THE WEEK
You Say GIF, I Say GIF
The debate between pronouncing a hard G or soft G may continue forever, but one thing is certain: GIFs are awesome. These animated images are a fun and quirky way to show off brand personality and humor, as well as add a little movement to social feeds. Brands have been using GIFs for years, whether selecting from pre-made ones on Twitter or making their own on GIPHY.com, the largest GIF search engine. Now, through the recent partnership between Oracle and GIPHY, marketers can, for the first time, track the delivery and viewability of their branded GIFs.
If you’ve never considered using GIPHY as a marketing platform before, don’t feel bad. Until now, branded GIFs may have been fun, but they had no data behind them to make them a truly viable marketing asset. But as GIPHY builds out its GIPHY for Marketers platform (complete with Oracle Moat integration), this could be a major consideration for content marketers, creators, and advertisers. Brands’ GIFs can be found on GIPHY in trending feeds, top searches, and on brands’ own channels. (Take some inspiration from NBC, NASA, and Pepsi.) Oh, and did we mention the platform serves more than 700 billion GIFs per day, seen by more than 5 million daily users? All in all, GIFs are an untapped opportunity for brands — to be seen in a new way, to become active participants in trending conversations, and to spice up Twitter feeds in the process.
