You see how I write this first edition of my marketing newsletter? Very demure. Very mindful. I be considerate before I go and add more content to the marketing world without thinking it through.
No idea what on earth I’m talking about? You’re in the right place (ps – go watch a tonne of @joolieannie’s content on TikTok, you’ll be adding ‘very demure’ to your lingo in no time).
Writing a fortnightly newsletter has been on my list for a while, and while sharing the latest updates from Mr Mosseri is fun (cough not fun at all) to do, I wanted somewhere to really dive deeper into the biggest things happening in the world of marketing. So, here we are. Volume 1. What’s been running through my marketing mind this fortnight? Here’s my three biggest roman empires right now.
The Olympics 🤝 Online Content
The 2024 Paris Olympics did things a little different this time around, redefining content creation by integrating athletes and celebrities as central figures in the coverage. Whoever hired Snoop is a dead-set genius, but the real magic came from unscripted moments created by those at the heart of the games.
With younger audiences moving away from traditional TV, and Stan adding an additional $15 charge to watch the games – many instead experienced the Olympics through social media highlights. Whether it was Raygun’s performance, Simone Bile’s dig at former olympic team mate MyKayla Skinner or Yusuf Dikec (if you don’t know his name – the old guy who won silver in the shooting range with zero specialist equipment lol) – these moments became the new way to engage with the games.
This shift raised the question for me: Are we seeing the future of how large events, from awards shows to olympics to concerts, will be marketed? The emphasis is moving away from trying to get people to watch hours of live TV to creating authentic, shareable content that resonates on a global scale.
People didn’t want to watch 3 hours of athletes waving on boats, they wanted to watch 30 seconds of scrappy unboxing videos from the athlete’s hotel rooms.
The real story isn’t the events themselves, but the raw, behind-the-scenes moments that unfold online. For anyone thinking about marketing an event of any kind in the future, it’s something you simply can’t ignore anymore.
PS – If you haven’t checked out the Paralympics TikTok official account, I’d love to hear your thoughts. The reactions have been mixed, but it’s a perfect example of how content creation is evolving in real-time to suit the expectation of those consuming it.
A Very Demure, Very Mindful Brat Who Fell Out of a Coconut Tree #HAWKTUAH
It genuinely feels like there’s a new ‘TikTok era’ every day. Seriously, I’m not sure if this is just finally me feeling my age and not up with the kids, or if internet culture is moving at insane speeds. 4 weeks ago it was Hailey Welch, the Hawk Tuah girl, followed by the legendary Kamala Brat campaign (kudos to her social team) – oh and we can’t forget the genz boss and a mini blow up.
The latest culprit: A very demure, very mindful way of life thanks to Jools Lebron.
For brands, this pace demands agility – and you know what? That would be a really easy place to stop. Just say the learning is that we all need to have our finger on the pulse and be ready to engage ASAP and capitalise on the opportunity pronto… But I really don’t think it is.
Reacting too quickly can be super risky. Jumping on trends without understanding the full context might backfire. And when trends are demanding us to jump on them within hours – I’m really starting to wonder if it’s wise to dive headfirst into every viral moment, or should brands take a breath, assess the situation, and ensure they’re not just riding a wave but doing so with purpose and care?
It’s starting to remind me of fast fashion and the changing attitudes towards that – are we going to see a shift where brands decide that it’s just not realistic to be able to keep up with every single trend that pops up and that becomes a no-go? How do all the likely-very-burnt-out social media managers feel? Do people even want brands to jump on these trends? (If I see one more dance to Apple on my feed from a brand, imma riot). I HAVE SO MANY QUESTIONS AND THOUGHTS.
What is everyone else feeling? Am I just getting old? Or can we find success on social media without jumping on trends?
A Cookie-Filled Celebration, Or Is It? 🍪
Okay so technically this happened at the end of July, but it’s definitely been a BIG topic of conversation the last two weeks with a lot of my marketing colleagues.
ICYMI: After 4 years of Google telling everyone cookies – aka third party tracking – will be going away and continually pushing the date back (kinda like me telling myself I was going to launch this newsletter every week for the past 6 months) – they decided to come out and scrap the whole plan.
I think a lot of us breathed a sigh of relief that we didn’t have to deal with that right this instant, but realistically – it doesn’t mean we can just continue on in our merry-cookie filled land. The world is increasingly cross-device and fragmented – and regardless of whether or not we have cookies; brands and business’ need to think about alternative methods of measurement.
I really could bang on about attribution models, measuring and tracking for DAYS, but the reality is – I’m not sure there will ever be a solution that can accurately capture all touch points across channels, campaigns and customers? With the average touch points a customer has before purchasing sitting around ~8; how do we assign value to those? How do we account for offline touch points, word of mouth, the value of a good reputation from PR to name a few?
Recently I was working with an e-comm client advertising to the US, and we were getting frustrated that the Meta Ads were not giving us the ROAS we had hoped. The easy answer? They don’t work, switch them off. But we instead did some digging – and after cross referencing the abandoned carts on our website with the details of recent Amazon customers, we found that 10% of the Amazon orders were people who had abandoned their cart on our site (most likely being Prime members and getting better shipping). So yeah, maybe Meta ads were working in building awareness and product education – but people preferred to checkout where they felt comfortable.
It’s this kind of thing that people need to start thinking about – really starting to consider how they assess the effectiveness of their efforts, without relying on things like the Meta pixel to tell them a purchase occurred. How are you going to make sure you’re not jumping to conclusions because the tracking you have available is not accounting for what’s really happening?
I know there are a heap of people out there building some awesome tech to solve this problem, but how is a piece of software EVER going to track whether someone looks at a poster on the street? This truely keeps me up at night (I’ve got a life outside of marketing, I swear) – so if anyone has any solutions, please put me out of my misery right now.
Got thoughts? I’d love to hear them!
See y’all on August 30, where there will no doubt be another 82 TikTok trends to dissect.
