Spark_0110

Your weekly digital marketing matchbox to kindle creative content.

 
April 10, 2020
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Virtual Events Everywhere

Professionals everywhere are learning, working, and socializing in biz-cas on top, loungewear on the bottom, as companies pivot their events calendar to consist of online meetups, livestreams, and webinars. To help brands keep up the virtual connectivity, LinkedIn announced it made its recently introduced Events feature available to all company pages. Now, all businesses can use LinkedIn’s Event feed to market and expand the reach of their virtual gatherings above and beyond their immediate network. While hosting digital events may be a new practice for many marketers, this simple addition can take a lot of the guesswork out of promoting them on the professional platform  — helping brands to (virtual) conference with confidence.
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Time’s Up for TikTok?

YouTube wants in on the whipped coffee-making, Kardashian-lip syncing games: While it hasn’t made an official announcement yet, the video platform is developing a TikTok rival called Shorts. With its huge catalog of licensed music and massive monthly user base (2 billion to TikTok’s 300 million), YouTube has quite a few advantages over TikTok — giving Shorts leverage against competitors heading into its launch. Another huge asset? Influencers. With Shorts, YouTube stars won’t have to add yet another social media app to their repertoire. That, and the fact that YouTube already has significantly more advanced monetization systems in place for those influencers, could prove to be key to Shorts’ success. No short video platform has been able to monetize to a significant enough degree to keep its viral users, but YouTube is poised to do just that. So marketers, while you finish perfecting your Savage dance, you might want to get prepared for viral trends to start backing it up on Shorts.
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COVID Consumers

As coronavirus turns our world upside down, some trends are emerging that experts expect to stick around long after we start eating in restaurants again and stop hoarding toilet paper. First: Tried-and-true brands have the market advantage. Consumers look for brands that are familiar to them in this time of uncertainty and that mindset is likely to last. That means it may be best to stick to your roots and pause on any rebranding projects you may be planning. Second: Social distancing is changing the way people do their everyday errands. From banking to grocery shopping, most tasks have gone digital. It’s doubtful this newfound comfort for handling everything on the web will fade when we return to “normal” — and industries and individual brands that have been slow to hop online need to adopt a digital-first mentality for the long-run. Because as they say, this too shall pass … but these consumer trends probably won’t.
WHAT LIT US UP THIS WEEK
Steak-umm twitter thread.

Steak-umm Bless

The past few weeks have certainly exposed a lot. And we’re not talking about society — we mean the unlikely social media heroes that have come to light amid all the craziness. This week’s star? Steak-umm. Yes, the maker of thinly sliced frozen beef. The brand caught the internet’s attention after going on a Twitter rant discussing misinformation and the importance of relying on quality data rather than sensationalized news. It was thoughtful and well-written, providing an unexpected voice of reason. 

Coming from a processed meat brand, the thread was objectively absurd. But it has been met with praise from many corners of the online community. And when looking into Steak-umm’s Twitter history, it makes total sense. For years, the brand has built a voice that combines humor and woke-ness and isn’t afraid to discuss major social and economic issues. Like past Twitter rants, this week’s thread was posted off the cuff — the thoughtfully developed and consistent tone of the brand’s social media is that of spontaneity (contradiction at its finest). Most marketers likely can’t get away with Steak-umm’s style of social, but all can admire and should aim to create brand voices that are as bold, strong, and steady as this frozen beef’s has been over the years. 

I C Y M I

Copyright © 2020 Tier One PR, All rights reserved. Tier One Partners is a national, full-service PR, digital, and content agency that helps challenger brands redefine the meaning of value in their industries through innovation and inventiveness. Specializing in consumer, technology, digital health, financial services, and clean energy, Tier One delivers measurable programs that help companies demonstrate market leadership and meet key business objectives through a unique approach powered by senior talent. For more information, visit www.tieronepr.com.


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