Just days after Twitter announced its “transparency center” to demystify their ad-targeting algorithms and force political advertisers to disclose information on their campaigns, Facebook released a blog detailing precisely the same transparency features for Facebook ads as well.
“When it comes to advertising on Facebook, people should be able to tell who the advertiser is and see the ads they’re running, especially for political ads,” said Rob Goldman, vice president of Facebook Ads. “That level of transparency is good for democracy and it’s good for the electoral process. Transparency helps everyone, especially political watchdog groups and reporters, keep advertisers accountable for who they say they are and what they say to different groups.”
This feature will apply to Instagram and Messenger in addition to Facebook proper.
Although the service in its current state will only display active ads, the blog detailed future updates, including a searchable archive of political ads and details on the amount spent, impressions delivered and demographics targeted.
Additionally, Facebook may require some political advertisers to verify their identity and location to buy ads in the first place. Once the ads are live, users will be able to see both details on the advertiser and an explanation as to why they are seeing that specific ad.
Facebook said it will first test these features in Canada and roll them out to the US “by this summer” before the midterm elections in November.
The newly implemented ad features come less than a month after Facebook testified before Congress over its political ads during the 2016 presidential election, and less than two months after the company came under fire for allowing advertisers to specifically target ads to anti-Semites.
Other social media platforms could potentially jump on board the advertising transparency bandwagon too. Senator John McCain announced a bipartisan bill earlier this month to apply FEC broadcast and print regulations to internet sites earlier this month.
“US laws requiring transparency in political campaigns have not kept pace with rapid advances in technology, allowing our adversaries to take advantage of these loopholes to deceive millions of American voters with impunity,” Senator McCain said in a press release. “Our bipartisan legislation would address this serious challenge by expanding landmark campaign finance law to apply to internet and digital communications platforms that command a significant audience.”
Snap has simmered ever since its intensely anticipated initial public offering earlier this year.
Facebook and Instagram have started rival functions and features, bringing Snap’s user growth and value proposition increasingly into question. If imitation is the greatest form of flattery, then the camera company should be thrilled. But how does Snap intend to stay ahead of the mounting curve and quell concerns from Wall Street and marketers alike?
For starters, they’re continuing to create unique user experiences and engagement opportunities, which in turn opens new doors to work with advertisers before the competition can. Since Snap unveiled its Maps feature in late June, it’s reportedly enjoyed a 40 percent rise in Stories posts, somewhat stalling Instagram’s onslaught of new user share.
Earlier this month, eMarketer predicted that the platform’s global revenues will only reach $774.1 million this year, down from their March prediction of $900 million. Also contributing to Snap’s declined growth is the slow adoption of Spectacles.
Telling figures that were released from Snap’s Q2 earnings report in August include generating $181.7 million in revenue (compared to the $189 million that was expected) and flaunting more than 173 million daily active users worldwide, two million less than what was originally projected. The public company, however, added four million more daily users in North America and indicated that the average daily user creates more than 20 messages per day.
To get a better understanding of the happenings at Snap and what marketers need to know, AListDaily sat down for an interview with Marni Schapiro, director of sales at Snap.
What kind of conversations are you having with brand marketers amid all the reports? How are you advising them to leverage Snap as a platform?
Brands should know that there’s a highly unduplicated, extremely engaged young audience on Snap that is 13-to-34 years old. People under the age of 25 use Snapchat for 40 minutes on average every day. You won’t find these users in the places you used to find them. You should be engaging them in the way that they talk, in the way that they are with their friends and with their families on Snap. Just be a part of that conversation. It’s not about tricking them into thinking you’re something else. It’s really about engaging with them in a fun way. That’s it.
If you’re not working with us, I would ask you why? What are you scared of? At this stage, if what you’ve been doing isn’t working, why wouldn’t you be looking at trying to do something new? This isn’t just about going out there and asking for your business—we prove value, but the model’s different.
I’m a mother of three. I’m not the demo, and I can’t live without it. I literally can’t live without Snap. My parents can’t live without it now. They engage with my children in a way that they were never able to before, and that’s a no-bullshit answer. Snap is a life-changing way to communicate. I will post a perfect photo of my kids on Instagram, and on Snap my mom is seeing my daughter have a meltdown. It’s my life.
Snap’s dancing hot dog from this past summer was somewhat of an AR star. What kind of an impact will Snap’s use of AR have on the future of marketing?
Oh my god—I think anything is going to be possible. AR is just the beginning. The hot dog was viewed over 1.5 billion times in the app. What is most important is to make it fun and accessible to everybody, and that’s what Snap is trying to do. We’re simply making AR fun and accessible to use. We’re learning as we go, too. I hope that I get to see a world one day where you can do anything that you want with AR, and make it easy, where your camera becomes a tool. That’s what Snap’s shooting toward doing.
We’re seeing brands really utilize and owning their locations. That means being able to deliver specific geofilters to customers whenever they walk into a store. What’s important for brands is to really be able to engage with their users after a customer has used something of theirs. You can then communicate in a different way.
Even though we say that consumers aren’t going to stores anymore, the fact of the matter is that a ton of people still do. A lot of brands are online-only companies. We work with big brands who have to really figure out how to keep driving in-store sales at the same time as online, website and apps.
I see that as an important yet scary thing for a brand—they have to figure out to not only rely on what used to drive consumers their stores. They have models that will prove it one way or another, so they have to really assess what’s been working, what’s not been working and be ready to change. They have to be ready to do something different in order to get their customers into their store, and be able to engage with them in a fun way.
This isn’t brain surgery. It’s ‘how do you want somebody to engage with your brand and have fun with it so that they buy from you?’
Do you believe legacy brands, whose core consumers sit outside of your main demo, hesitate to use Snap?
I have to be honest, I don’t see anyone scared to work with Snap at all. I think that it’s scary for a marketing director to say to a CMO, ‘Our print isn’t working’ or ‘TV isn’t working’ because a brand may have been doing it for so long. It’s very scary for a marketer to say, ‘What we’re doing isn’t working.’ You just have to test something new and see how it compares. That’s the way that marketers have to do it.
What’s a specific case study that you can point to?
Brands that do it the best are the ones that do everything that makes sense for the goal that they’re trying to accomplish. When a brand comes onto Snap, they really should know what they’re trying to accomplish for a campaign. If they don’t know what they’re trying to accomplish, then it’s really hard to track the success.
But what we see over and over again—Hollister is a great example—is when a brand utilizes multiple products in multiple ways. When they shoot content that’s specific for Snap, it’s usually a pretty good equation and that usually ends up to be successful.
Why did your union with Hollister and its VP of marketing Michael Scheiner turn out to be a good one?
Hollister is an amazing partner of ours because of the mutual trust that we’ve built together. It doesn’t happen overnight, and it’s something that we take seriously at Snap—that we earn our clients’ trust, and we earn the right to go in there with a big idea, and we earn the right to say ‘sorry if it doesn’t work.’
I hope that everyone feels that they can do the same thing with Snap, with Instagram—with anybody. We have to stop taking ourselves so seriously. Let’s prove our value, let’s have fun doing it and let’s build from there.
What are the holiday marketing trends you’re monitoring this year?
All of the ways that a user can express themselves, and ways that marketers can join in that ability. Is it AR? Is it filters? Is it content? With all of those things combined, I think this holiday you’re going to see more brands take more chances with their creative and content to have more fun.
What are your thoughts on the current state of the advertising and marketing industry?
I’ve worked in advertising for over 20 years ever since I graduated from the University of Georgia. I think that there’s this shift to accountability and creativity. I really believe that marketers need to take chances from a creative perspective and create by platform. They need to stop siloing their marketing plans.
When thinking about a reset and the future, it’s time to get creative and really think about the consumer versus your internal organization. Think about what your customer really wants to engage with, understand what they want and what turns them on versus a headline that you’ll be able to show your boss.
How do you see marketing changing at large over the next few years?
I think the conversation started a while ago with AdWords. All of a sudden media became accountable with more than just a gut feeling. What you have to be able to do is take the idea that we’ve put on performance marketing—like search, Facebook—and figure out how to have a human aspect to that.
There’s still a qualitative result, but everything should be accountable and tracked back to something you’re trying to accomplish. That also forces a brand to have very clear goals. Everyone has to be more accountable. At the end of the day, there’s an evolution occurring. We have to be ready to change, and can’t be scared doing so.
Fear has a lot to do with it—marketers and executives are scared that they’ll get fired, they’re scared that their brand will go out of business. So instead of making change, they’re just frozen, which is even worse.
Hamburger Helper launched its pasta-in-a-box in 1971 and has been a familiar addition to the family dinner table ever since. The brand’s mascot, Lefty the “helping hand,” made quite a stir on social media when a Twitter user contemplated the cartoon glove’s anatomy.
The ensuing lighthearted debate—and speculative drawings—ranged from the comical to the downright disturbing. Hamburger Helper finally chimed in from the brand’s official Twitter account two days later. The Twitter exchange earned the General Mills-brand some welcome attention, timed perfectly with Helper’s fourtieth anniversary and Halloween.
To calculate how much marketing General Mills would’ve had to invest to receive similar marketing results, we calculated the earned media value from posts about Hamburger Helper from October 14 to 21.
“Earned media” is the value of engagements a brand receives across channels as a result of their marketing efforts. To help quantify what the value of those engagements is worth, Ayzenberg Group established the Ayzenberg Earned Media Value Index (AEMVI) and assigned a quantifiable dollar amount for marketing gains a brand receives from a campaign or individual engagement that includes social media networks and similar digital properties. (Editor’s note: AListDaily is the publishing arm of Ayzenberg Group. To read the updated AEMVI report reflecting the rapid changes in social, click here.)
Over the span of one week, the original post by Twitter user @soongrowtired was retweeted over 51,000 times and received more than 128,000 times. The official response from Hamburger Helper was retweeted over 15,000 times and liked more than 44,000 times, especially when news outlets picked up the story.
This isn’t the first time Lefty got a little sassy on Twitter. For the past several years, the brand has built a reputation for making witty comments. On April Fool’s Day last year, Hamburger Helper dropped a rap album called “Watch the Stove,” a riff on “Watch the Throne” by Jay-Z and Kanye West.
“Doing anything with millennials is always like walking a tightrope,” Liana Miller, a marketing communications planner at General Mills, told Forbes when speaking about the rap album’s success. “Is this going to be cool, or is this going to be something that they’ll totally roast us for? That was something that was on all of our minds during the entire process, up until the morning we released it. This is either going to go really well or really bad.”
Lefty’s skeleton debate arrived just weeks after Hamburger Helper brutally roasted a Twitter user for making a sexist comment.
Hamburger Helper joins brands like Wendy’s and Moon Pie who use humor and self-awareness instead of sterile PR messages. Brands are joining the conversation when it comes to its competitors, fans and even the haters. As Hamburger Helper said, “All my haters salty. I’m too seasoned for ’em.”
Not all sarcastic tweets have a fiery ending, however. When a user tried to recreate the success of Wendy’s #NuggsForCarter incident, Hamburger Helper mocked her spelling. Then actually mailed her a ton of food, no retweets required.
What’s next for the helpful hand? Figuring out how Lefty would wear pants.
Guy Cross, head of games partnerships for North America at Facebook
Facebook has always been a natural platform for big brands and large sports leagues to connect directly with consumers. The social-media giant has also become a mainstay for the burgeoning esports ecosystem, most recently partnering with Hi-Rez Studios and the World Esports Association for the Paladins Premiere League, which will stream exclusively on Facebook.
Guy Cross, head of games partnerships for North America at Facebook, told AListDaily that companies trying to grow their businesses have been looking to Facebook to help market and build their brands and fan bases.
“With esports, there’s a really interesting intersect where we have over 800 million people playing Facebook-connected games each month,” Cross said. “The fact is, gamers are using Facebook in some way, and companies are trying to grow their businesses across our family of products.”
Cross said the key is that Facebook is a digital community platform and people connect to each other either through or around games.
“That’s what we’re built on, and hopefully we can deliver that sort of community connection around esports,” Cross said. “And it’s not just professional players connecting with fans, but fans connecting to each other around the player, around the team, around the game and around the genre.”
Facebook is making a sizable investment in the long-form video experience on Facebook. Cross said that since it’s a new platform, there is no lock of the top six esports on Facebook yet, and that opens up an opportunity for various players in the game to claim that position. For example, Team Dignitas and Immortals are some of the early esports organizations to utilize Facebook to broaden their fan reach.
“We saw it happen once with casual gaming, where Zynga was a start-up and small companies like Playfish and Playdom grew massive communities on Facebook,” Cross said. “That happened about 10 years ago, when we were just entering the games space. We have a long relationship with game companies now, and we’re being very thoughtful about how to build out a platform for the gaming community at large. Esports is going to be a huge component of that. It won’t be the only component, but it will be a big one.”
Team Dignitas CEO Jonathan Kemp previously told AListDaily that the company added Facebook livestreaming to the mix because advertisers already were familiar with that platform.
“When you have a company like Johnson & Johnson spending a big portion of their marketing on Facebook already, it might not be a big stretch to explore esports,” said Cross. “From an advertiser’s standpoint, there’s a lower barrier to entry.”
“When you have a company like Johnson & Johnson spending a big portion of their marketing on Facebook already, it might not be a big stretch to explore esports.” — Guy Cross, head of games partnerships for North America at Facebook
Cross believes that type of global diversity is important for brands that want to engage with different audiences and connect with all types of gamers from PC to console and mobile–Facebook’s ability to connect with people’s identity serves as a boon for the social platform.
“This idea that there’s an authentic identity tied to Facebook is something that we’re exploring,” Cross said. “What does that bring to the equation and how does that manifest for not just players, but the community experience of watching together? What does that mean for brands? I don’t think we’re in a place right now where we want to share any results, but behavior is different on Facebook than it is on other platforms where real identity isn’t part of the equation.”
Facebook is also integrated into multiple gaming communities across PC, mobile and console so that it understands the gaming audience a bit better on how and what they play. The company then uses that information to connect them to experiences. Facebook also has evolved from a platform where casual games used to spam friends’ lists into a place where everyone from game developers to esports teams are conversing and livestreaming with communities.
Cross said that means brands no longer have to advertise to a generic age bracket. Instead, marketers both endemic (and non) are refining their strategies to serve the right ad or brand experience, in the context of games.
Facebook’s investment in gaming and esports comes as the company is under increased pressure with regard to micro-targeted advertising in the wake of the Russian election interference. The company is adding new manual checks for ads involving “politics, religion, ethnicity or social issues” before they go live.
With this in mind, Cross described one hypothetical way all of the collected data could be used by brands in the future to connect directly with gamers. He pointed to the healer character Mercy in Blizzard Entertainment’s game Overwatch.
“I like to play a lot of healing and support roles in games, so if a brand steps in and offers me a first aid kit that’s something I could actually use,” Cross said. “I’m also a real outdoors guy, so if I was targeted with advertisements for a kickass soft-sided first aid kit that fits in your adventure pack, that’s something I’d find interesting and might buy. This is where I think this data play gets really interesting.”
Facebook brought brands yet another way to engage their followers with video on the platform by officially launching Watch in the US last month.
A quick survey for Watch already reveals a smorgasbord of original TV-like content native to the network, designed to satiate a voracious consumer appetite for video.
Watch, which feels like Facebook’s self-funded version positioned to compete with titans like YouTube and Netflix, is personalized to help its billion-user base discover new shows. It’s organized around what friends and communities are watching on mobile, desktop, TV and apps. Viewers can even comment in real time as they’re watching any given program.
By creating consumer affinity to watch video for longer periods of time—a reality show centered around Los Angeles Lakers rookie Lonzo Ball, anyone?—Facebook is also helping marketers monetize mid-roll ads, and giving content creators a split-ad revenue incentive.
“Watching video on Facebook has the incredible power to connect people, spark conversation and foster community,” wrote Daniel Danker, Facebook’s director of product. “On Facebook, videos are discovered through friends and bring communities together. As more and more people enjoy this experience, we’ve learned that people like the serendipity of discovering videos in News Feed, but they also want a dedicated place they can go to watch videos . . . Watch is a platform for all creators and publishers to find an audience, build a community of passionate fans and earn money for their work. We think a wide variety of Facebook shows can be successful.”
Whether the publisher-centric format has a long-term shelf life still remains to be seen. According to a report from social video analytics company Delmondo, Watch videos are being viewed for an average of 23 seconds, compared to 16.7 seconds that Facebook reported for video viewing on its News Feed.
Facebook’s ambitions of being a Hollywood-like tour de force is fully in effect, as evidenced by their potential $1 billion investment into original content through the end of next year. The likes of the NFL, NBA, Billboard, Cosmopolitan, Harper’s Bazaar, The Atlantic, Thrillist, A&E, Wired, Vox, Comedy Central, Funny or Die, Mashable, Tastmade, IGN and GameSpot are already flooding the Watch feeds with feature videos.
Since the seeding of the ecosystem has officially started, AListDaily interviewed executives from two of the companies that are bringing their budgets and marketing to social video.
National Geographic, for one, is exclusively debuting three social-first original series for their Facebook audience because the social media giant provided them a unique distribution outlet that also complemented their new premium content strategy.
“Watch is the first to transition long-form content into the social landscape,” JP Polo, director of social and digital video content for National Geographic, told AListDaily. “We’re excited to tell stories that fit the long form, and are still snackable and captivating. Watch brings followers of specific shows together. Once you have niche communities, the opportunity for marketers is limitless. Our social and digital teams understand that social media is a powerful tool for video—a powerful tool for conversation and ultimately a powerful tool for change.”
Polo said Watch also gives Nat Geo, one of the top social media companies in the world with over 350 million followers across their social and digital channels, a socially optimized platform meant for active and habit-forming content consumption.
“Watch is unique in that it gives us the world’s largest social platform and a unique way to reach not only our current audience but also Facebook’s audience,” Polo said. “It also gives individuality to each series we produce. The show page is unique in that it allows each show’s followers a place to call home. Show pages create communities and a place to engage with show content, and the advertisers who partner with that content. We’re creating content that encompasses our unique editorial voice so our advertisers can feel confident that they’re sponsoring content that is both brand safe and leaves the audience wondering. We want to produce inspiring stories that excite both our advertisers and our fans.”
JP Polo, director of social and digital video content for National Geographic
Polo said that over the years, social and digital platforms got a reputation for being the place where low-quality video would live and possibly shine. He and the Nat Geo team saw it differently and took advantage of their vast library of quality footage and produced engaging and educational material, all while remaining true to their core content mission. The next natural step was to start producing digitally-and-socially native original series and content that tapped into their science, exploration and storytelling ethos.
“While there is no doubt that social platforms could drive traffic and help companies build their audiences, no real effort was put behind producing content specifically tailored for social platforms,” he said. “We’re not a celebrity-driven company—we’re a mission-driven company. When you analyze and understand that, you realize that the reason we have a massive social following is because people across the planet truly and passionately believe in what we do.”
Polo said once a brand has a loyal social following, the key is to continue to engage and evolve content at the rapid pace that social and digital platforms require—all while making sure not to veer away from what brought consumers to your brand in the first place.
We’re Wired That Way, for one, which tells various stories behind humans, won one of the three programming allocations for Watch because Nat Geo tapped into their user insights for Facebook to better understand demographics. Which Extreme Animal Am I? and Safari Live rounds out their current content lineup. Polo said their Facebook user insights lead them to realize that their diverse Facebook pages are not all built the same.
“If you become data-obsessed, then your videos will quickly deteriorate and lose their appeal,” he said, adding that they don’t use data to drive video production decisions, but rather, use it to inform decisions. “In social and digital platforms, data is important, but it’s also ephemeral, so basing everything on the data of last month can have devastating effects on the long run.”
Polo said Nat Geo will continue to explore and push further, because that is what’s made them who they are as a brand.
“While other companies were reactionary to social and digital platforms, Nat Geo embraced it from the get go,” Polo said. “Social-and-digital storytelling has become our primary way to tell stories. These platforms, combined with our first-class storytelling and access, allow people across the planet to not only experience the world from another perspective but to actively find ways to be part of the changes and projects we need in order to protect this planet. Humans need to adapt to a changing planet in order to survive. Legacy media entities need to do the same in order to survive the changing industry landscape.”
Another media powerhouse diving into Watch is Time Inc. with the new series Homemade vs. the Internet.
Regina Buckley, SVP of digital business development and business operations at Time Inc., told AListDaily their programming on Watch reinforces their commitment to providing premium and engaging video content to consumers on all platforms, and underscores the ways the company entertains consumers across the distributed web.
Regina Buckley, SVP of digital business development and business operations at Time Inc.
“Over the years, we’ve come to know our Facebook consumer pretty well—and we knew that our viewers love to watch food content from some of our brands’ success in this space. The video effort on Facebook goes beyond the Watch tab specifically and is also about the communities that are being created around shows consumers love,” said Buckley. “Watch will help create a community of dedicated viewers who will ultimately create a unique audience for advertisers to connect with, in a different environment and in a different way than existed before on Facebook.”
Watch complements Time Inc.’s overall video strategy—which has tripled in total video views over the same period last year—because Buckley said they’re reaching consumers on every platform they want to be reached.
Time Inc. was one of the first brands to begin delivering unique content as publishers for Snapchat Discover, hoping to continue to attract advertisers and marketers looking to magnetize millennials. Time Inc. also recently launched two social video brands—Well Done and The Pretty—which have driven nearly 500 million combined views since March.
“As a multiplatform content company, we continue to experiment with new platforms and deliver the best content to our consumers when they want it, and where they want it,” Buckley said. “Our iconic brands are known and trusted among our audiences, which allows us to create immersive and engaging content for new platforms like Facebook’s Watch as well as on our own existing platforms. Video is an important part of Time Inc.’s revenue today, and critical to its growth into tomorrow.”
Capitalizing on an opponent’s moment of weakness, a superpower spreads propaganda through social media. The American public doesn’t know who to trust in a conflict between incompatible ideologies. Yes, Burger King and Wendy’s are back to beefing on Twitter again.
A refresher for those uninitiated in fast-food history: Wendy’s discontinued its spicy chicken nuggets and was met with the sort of passion that tends to getmustered up exclusively by fried poultry.
Wendy’s may not have listened to fan feedback, but the Burger King was silently watching, monitoring, recording. On October 10, the quick-service restaurant announced their own take on spicy chicken nuggets, even buying billboards near Wendy’s locations to roll out the news.
However, they’ve begun advertising the menu item with subterfuge as well. On October 12, Burger King promoted several of the most outraged tweets by spicy chicken nuggets fans, without comment.
It’s an oddly democratic move, spending marketing dollars to expand the reach of a completely organic, unedited message by average consumers. And in the brand-safety era, where many marketers are tightening their control over as many aspects of their messaging as possible, it’s certainly an unorthodox decision.
However, it seems to be working. Twitter users are picking up on the jab, and even egging the companies on. Only time will tell how Wendy’s will respond, but given the brand’s penchant for social media sass, expectations are high.
It’s that time of year to watch the leaves turn, grab a jacket and pumpkin spice all the things. Starbucks, creator of the infamous Pumpkin Spice Latte, is feeling the annual love as customers flock to partake in sensory nostalgia.
“Nobody knew back then what it would grow to be,” Peter Dukes, Starbucks product manager who led the development of the Pumpkin Spice Latte, said in a statement. “It’s taken on a life of its own.”
The original Pumpkin Spice Latte—or PSL or short—returned to Starbucks locations September 1 to a social media fanfare as it “hatched” on Facebook Live. The activation parodied the Hatchimals craze of last holiday season when one of the toys opened on Facebook Live and received 1.4 million views.
We’re pretty sure Starbucks said something to the effect of, “Hold my latte,” because one post about the PSL Pumpkin Hatch earned over 933,000 views alone, not to mention the livestream, itself. To be fair, there were kittens. Kittens.
Last year, the coffee brand created a verified social media account just for the seasonal drink called “The Real PSL.” Portrayed as a latte wearing sunglasses posing in a variety of fall settings, PSL celebrated its fourteenth birthday with a cake and wished for more fall.
Just how beloved is Starbucks’ fall tradition? The official PSL Instagram account boasts over 37,000 followers and 115,000 followers on Twitter, each with tens of thousands of engagements.
While Starbucks is far from the only brand adding pumpkin spice flavoring to its products, the seasonal-favorite latte never fails to get the internet talking.
To calculate how much marketing Starbucks would’ve had to invest to receive similar marketing results, we calculated the earned media value from posts about pumpkin spice from September 1 to October 9.
“Earned media” is the value of engagements a brand receives across channels as a result of their marketing efforts. To help quantify what the value of those engagements is worth, Ayzenberg Group established the Ayzenberg Earned Media Value Index (AEMVI) and assigned a quantifiable dollar amount for marketing gains a brand receives from a campaign or individual engagement that includes social media networks and similar digital properties. (Editor’s note: AListDaily is the publishing arm of Ayzenberg Group. To read the updated AEMVI report reflecting the rapid changes in social, click here.)
Since the original “pumpkinated” coffee drink returned on September 1, social media posts mentioning the official Starbucks account, combined with hashtags like #PumpkinSpiceLatte, #PSL, #PSLIsBack or #PumpkinSpice have exceeded 50,000. These calculations do not include individual posts to TheRealPSL social accounts or the PSL Pumpkin Hatch, so the EMV is actually much higher.
The drink’s popularity has prompted Starbucks to release exclusive Pumpkin Spice Latte products, including ready-to-drink bottles of Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Latte, Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Flavored Ground Coffee and Spice Caffe Latte K-Cup Pods.
McDonald’s Szechuan sauce is (sort of) back thanks to a cartoon rant, a whole lot of fans and one inspired chef. On April 1, after a two-year hiatus, Adult Swim surprised fans with the Season 3 premiere of its hit cartoon show Rick and Morty. Looping for four hours, the surprise stream pulled in three million unique viewers.
The show is a hit, especially among millennials, because of its twisted sense of humor and pop culture references. Audiences latched onto Rick’s drunken rant on the show about Szechuan sauce—offered for a limited time in 1998 to promote Disney’s Mulan.
“I’m not driven by avenging my dead family,” Rick says in the episode. “I’m driven by finding that McNugget sauce. I want that Mulan McNugget Sauce. That’s my series arc, Morty. If it takes nine seasons, I want that McNugget Szechuan sauce.”
Fans took to social media with Rick’s fictional cause, starting very real petitions and asking—nay, demanding—that McDonald’s bring the sauce back. The official Rick and Morty Twitter account challenged the brand to play along, to which it responded with a McNugget version of the show’s catchphrase, “Wubba lubba dub dub.”
The exchange caught the attention of McDonald’s corporate chef, Mike Haracz, who also happens to be an avid Rick and Morty fan. He tweeted, “I’ll see what I can do.” And see he did. After mailing Roiland a specially-packaged jug of Szechuan sauce, McDonald’s began tweeting images of Rick’s most-coveted dipping sauce, teasing a possible comeback. Three jugs were given away on Twitter—one of which ended up with former AListDaily contributer Robert Workman, whose subsequent bidding war made more than a few waves online.
On Sunday, McDonald’s officially announced the return of Szechuan sauce for one day only, as part of its buttermilk crispy tenders promotion. Each of the featured sauces received their own collectible poster and specially marked packaging for the occasion. Not surprisingly, the poster for Szechuan sauce has a distinct Rick and Morty aesthetic.
The sauce may not be back for good, but McDonald’s embraced its place in pop culture to be part of the story. We calculated the earned media value from posts about Szechuan sauce over the past 12 months ending October 1.
“Earned media” is the value of engagements a brand receives across channels as a result of their marketing efforts. To help quantify what the value of those engagements is worth, the Ayzenberg Group established the Ayzenberg Earned Media Value Index (AEMVI) and assigned a quantifiable dollar amount for marketing gains a brand receives from a campaign or individual engagement that includes social media networks and similar digital properties. (Editor’s note: AListDaily is the publishing arm of Ayzenberg Group. To read the updated AEMVI report reflecting the rapid changes in social, click here.)
Over the past year, the phrase “Szechuan sauce” has been mentioned 85,154 times on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. While the elusive condiment was mentioned over a thousand times on Facebook—mostly on McDonald’s or Adult Swim’s walls—Twitter was where the trend really took shape.
The official McDonald’s Twitter account created an interactive community around the request, responding to fans. Since the October 7 engagement was announced, Justin Roiland helped drive over 11,000 tweets about Szechuan sauce.
On Instagram, fans have anticipated the sauce’s return, while others paired the hashtag #RickandMorty and #SzechuanSauce together to share playful cosplay costumes, reactional memes, or videos.
Learn everything you need to know about turning insights into data at AList Sessions, a new invite-only event series for marketers, on October 26 in Los Angeles.
Beauty brand Glossier created a body-positive campaign to promote its new “Body Hero” products. Its combined digital efforts garnered an impressive amount of Earned Media Value in just one week.
The campaign features five models from different walks of life and different body types, all posing in the nude. Body Hero is modeled by plus-sized model Paloma Elsesser, a very pregnant Swin Cash (retired basketball player and Olympic Gold medalist), Trialspark clinical research coordinator and influencer Mekdes Mersha, LPA clothing brand creative director Lara Pia Arrobio and Tyler Haney, founder of sportswear brand Outdoor Voices.
According to the campaign’s PR language, Body Hero is an oil-based body wash and lotion combo that “immediately perfects and enhances the look of skin, tightens and smooths skin’s surface, increases skin’s elasticity and melts in for all-day hydration.”
Glossier has already created a cult-like following for its beauty products thanks to an active social media presence largely because of its charismatic founder, former model and Vogue fashion assistant Emily Weiss. Now loyal and new consumers alike are praising the campaign for its body-positive messaging.
Elsesser wrote that she cried three times before the shoot because of insecurity, but kept telling herself that the photos would allow her to “be of service.”
“I did this to show that being fat isn’t a burden. Being fat isn’t ugly or shameful. To prove to one person that it isn’t brave to be fat, but bountiful,” Elsesser wrote on Instagram. “And for that young girl looking on Instagram, or walking down Spring St., that she is fucking perfect despite the precarious and irresponsible versions of beauty we are urged to digest.”
Elsesser made waves last summer when she modeled sports bras for Nike—a tastefully low-key acknowledgment that curvy women work out, too.
Model and “self-care advocate” Iskra Lawrence has taken to social media to show her support for the Body Hero message, as well.
We calculated the earned media value from posts about Glossier and Body Hero from when the campaign began on September 13 to September 22.
“Earned media” is the value of engagements a brand receives across channels as a result of their marketing efforts. To help quantify what the value of those engagements is worth, the Ayzenberg Group established the Ayzenberg Earned Media Value Index (AEMVI) and assigned a quantifiable dollar amount for marketing gains a brand receives from a campaign or individual engagement that includes social media networks and similar digital properties. (Editor’s note: AListDaily is the publishing arm of Ayzenberg Group. To read the updated AEMVI report reflecting the rapid changes in social, click here.)
Since the Body Hero campaign launched on September 13, the hashtag #Glossier has been used 3,536 times across Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. The hashtag #BodyHero has been mentioned 741 times and there were 378 mentions of the two hashtags together. Together with other engagements across these platforms, the total EMV is calculated at $33,439.49.
The top driver for this engagement was the Body Hero announcement on Instagram, which has received nearly 39,000 likes to date. Instagram continues to be a strong engagement platform for beauty brands, who can easily “show, not tell” with the help of influencers.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BY-5U5JBRfa/
Learn everything you need to know about turning insights into data at AList Sessions, a new invite-only event series for marketers, on October 26 in Los Angeles.
Welcome to day two of Advertising Week. Talks this morning have focused heavily on data and diversity, but a common theme runs through them: any message that doesn’t hit the mark won’t just fail to drive sales—it can cause long-term damage to your brand.
Keith Weed, CMO of Unilever, opened the discussion on Monday with an anecdote about a failed ad experience. “There was an advertiser in the U.K. – I won’t say which one – that advertised in the middle of my run,” he said. “Who would not only advertise in the middle of a run but also give you a five-point question? We all need to think as advertisers a little more about where people are when we advertise to them.”
While research shows that 95 percent of those surveyed considered themselves loyal to brands they like, there’s little protection for brands that lose the support of their base: 78 percent of millennials believe that they have the power to influence large brands.
Jeremy Randol, Pandora’s vice president of sales strategy, picked up the thread at The Next Era of Programmatic panel discussion: “Ninety-two percent of Pandora’s userbase is on the ad-supported model,” she said. “Ads need to be relevant or people will jump.”
Panelists at Woke, Lit & Ready: A Perspective On Black Twitter & The Ad Industry also commented on the harm that can come from improperly-implemented messages—especially toward minority communities: “It’s better to not try at all than miss the mark,” said Jasmyn Lawson, culture editor at Giphy. “You need to start from scratch. If you haven’t done it yet, don’t half-ass it.”
While hostile to brands that reach out poorly, speakers emphasized the simplicity of crafting the rightmessages. “If you think about what tone-deafness really is, it’s laziness,” pointed out Tiyale Hayes, senior vice president of consumer insights at BET.
“You can buy goodwill,” he added, “just by crediting original creators in the community.”
Overall, the best solution to reach consumers is inclusion. Across the board, panelists urged to marketers and agencies that the easiest way to reach consumers is to hire people who understand their experience.
“Step number one,” said Hayes, “is you have to see the beauty in every member of the community.”
