The Marketing Industry is definitely spiralin’

I got the industry trends tapped, To make sure that you’re dialed in. (Friday Review)

No one wants to be a negative nancy, but sometimes you have to be one. Spoiler: 1st Point connects with 9th.

Hi, writing the newsletter takes time and efforts. If you do like to support my work. You can by choosing the option below to join the paid newsletter. (It’s your decision, I’m not your boss).

1. Instagram is not your friend, Don’t change your strategy.

What happened:

1. Instagram announced an algorithm update with a message to support small creators and original content.

2. IG’s CEO doubled down on his statement regarding followers don’t matter. He is not backing down, posted about it again during my writing process.

3. Instagram last week confused others by saying: Don't add certain CTAs. Update on that, they were referring to engagement baiting, no threat to use of manychat and prompts to comment below on a reel or so.

Why this change means nothing:

1. The message of fighting against content aggregators is ironic. Why weren’t you doing this from years? Plus, It’s not applicable. The aggregators still hold a bigger audience than someone with few hundred followers.

2. The update to priortize small creators is deeply connected to Mosseri’s followers over engagement ideology. It’s promising reach but not consistent engagement from your existing audience.

3. Instagram’s own strategy is reposting content. This was pointed out by

   Rachel Karten
   in a tweet, 68% of IG’s feed content was reposts for the month of April.

Instagram is promising you a dinner with new strangers everyday, but you can’t dine with your family.

The Good Part isn’t what you think: Instagram is the content aggregator

1. Don’t cry about your content getting reposted, cry for credits. Your content not getting stolen by Barstool, Daily Mail or Other pages is Awesome. But listen to Mr.Beast, This is Internet. It’s an attention game. Even Instagram’s CEO agrees with his idea of engagement over followers.

2. Small Creators? You said, followers don’t matter. How do you define small? It differs from industry to industry.

What really matters:

1. IG’s focus on promoting original content means stop creating for algorithm. But you can’t completely do that. You should still utilise trending audios, IG trends and more. Original means we’re improving our systems.

   1. Google gave the same advice when they rolled out an helpful content update. That update didn’t mean you should stop focusing on site authority or On-page SEO.

2. IG is out to fight TikTok, by building a similar distribution model. This supporting creators element is a facade, when you learn IG’s ad revenue was more than Youtube in 2023. But they are nowhere near Youtube in terms of paying creators.

   1. TikTok is known to promote random creators and users and driving new trends. IG’s preparing to replicate that model but it would be hard. As TikTok’s success comes from the platform culture, not the viral factor.

   2. Also, Instagram until now has been remixing your algorithm with your friend’s algorithm. They are moving away from that with this promoting small creators and original content. That again, impacts the importance of followers, while improving experience for people who don’t like to consume their friends content. You can read more about that in this post from

      Embedded
      and my previous post about algorithms with
      Logan Thorneloe

3. Instagram acts like people remember every video they watch. Don’t fear repurposing your content. You keeping focus on brand messaging matters more than anything IG has to say.

All this to say, Followers are dead. You have to do what publishers did, They added a paywall on every article. You have to add very CTAs and prompts on every post.

2. Google isn’t dying, but you should change your ways.

The data from Statcounter made everyone scream, Google is dying. The updated data shows Google’s market share decreased only 0.26% in April. Both Bing and Yahoo did increase their market share by few points.

What’s happening:

1. Independent sites are disappearing from Google’s SERP pages. Despite their promises to promote original and authentic content.

2. Replacing Google: 21% of 18- to 24-year-olds start with TikTok search, while 5% start on YouTube. (ES)

3. Google’s Senior VP, incharge of search is worried about increasing competition. He’s trying his best to keep with the industry changes and maintaining the quality.

4. The Man Who Killed Google Search, This Article from Edward Zitron reveals how Google has been making the search experience worse. (Spoiler: It’s Senior VP)

5. Questions Google can’t answer. (read)

The Challenger, Defender & People’s King:

1. In my Q1 review, I removed a segment about Sam Altman mentioning, he isn’t interested in building another Google. OpenAI is launching a ChatGPT Search Engine in upcoming week.

2. Rand Fishkin, Founder of SparkToro shared Gartner’s prediction of Google losing 25% search market share to AI alternatives by 2026 is unclear. The research from Datos exposes how inaccurate Gartner’s prediction was.

3. Google itself challenged what Edward Zitron said about their declining user experience. But Ed came back to share important points about Google’s search business.

What Really Matters: Your Task

1. People are lazy, they care about accessibility. Browsers aren’t the most accessible platforms to search, people are searching where they are. If they are on TikTok, Youtube, ChatGPT, Bing AI or Claude, many won’t go back to a browser to search. Activate your content on multiple platforms, before you create more.

   1. Ex: IG brought back chronological feed, but 1000s of people are unaware of it. As it isn’t the default feed for IG.

2. It isn’t worth creating long blogposts if you are on a tight budget. You should be doing HARO, reddit comments, niched Youtube, FB groups and TikTok videos.

3. Established publishers will always have an advantage to show up in Google’s SERP & SGE AI. More DTC businesses should invest in affiliate partnerships with these publishers.

[An Expert Opinion]

Sharing Insights of

Amanda Natividad

, VP of Marketing at Sparktoro about the SEO & content landscape:-

We're beholden to the tech behemoths' whims. It seems that it used to be more predictable or rather, gameable, but it's becoming clearer and clearer that we're all just using borrowed land. The algorithms keep changing, and at some point, it's like we're just biding our time until the next drastic change. As I type this, the latest is that Instagram has outright said that follower count doesn't matter as much. This should theoretically be a good thing for smaller accounts, but we'll all just have to see how the next few months play out. 

So what are marketers supposed to do? Seems like we're going back to basics. We need to go where our audiences are and market in the places/channels/platforms where they're already paying attention. This could be as simple as finding the influential YouTube channels and podcasts, and paying for sponsorships. But not everyone has that budget, and so they've got to roll up their sleeves and uncover the arbitrage opportunities — reach out to creators with 5,000 highly engaged newsletters subscribers, hang out in Subreddits where folks are geeking out in a niche topic, or follow the smaller social accounts that are most relevant to one's audience.

3. Authenticity of Influencers doesn’t matter.

The new equation seems like content authenticity > influencer authenticity. If your ad gives the vibe of influencer genuinely engaging with your product. It works.

The proof:

• Creators like Alix Earle, Chris Olsen and Hailey Baylee are notoriously known for not disclosing ads. Plus, they are very frequent with brand collaborations. People have called them out in the past for this behaviour. Still, they get the best engagement and results for branded content.

• New Report: Only 35% of Gen Z consumers shared they cared most about authenticity from influencers.

Why this works:

1. People forget.

2. Many brands agree to these creators and undisclosed ads. As these partnerships tend to perform better.

3. As many people pointed out on reddit post about Alix Earle & Poppi Coachella collaboration. Sometimes audience knows it’s an ad without disclosure.

4. Most Influencer content has too much stuff going on, people who need the product will buy it. The others will scroll past it.

Expert’s Take: Alice Bull, An Influencer marketing veteran, known for her immaculate insights on TikTok. In an email, She shared her insights on this change in Influencer marketing:

I LOVE Bee.Better - interesting that he did a recent video on Bloom (the supplement powder) which was then taken down; they are the worst for not disclosing in the work they do with influencers, the majority of their profile has been built on nefarious practices. The savviest of consumers are well aware of this though and I don't think it's done their brand any favours in this regard (I have a visceral reaction every time I see a 'bloompartner' hashtag over an 'ad'). 

In my opinion ad disclosure isn't such a big deal for Gen Z as it is for millennials. Having grown up on social media they are much more immediately aware of an ad being an ad - and the feeling is 'it's not that deep'. Completely anecdotally, I go into my kids' school for careers day once a year (so speaking to 12/13 yr olds) and their view on influencers is fascinating: they don't see influencers as such, they just see people on social media with large audiences. 

So I guess the TLDR of it is that, with Gen-Z (and to your point above), they know it's an ad without disclosure and they don't really care. - Alice Bull.

---

4. Youtube Drama: If you don’t frame your paid content right, the audience will lose its sh*t.

Youtube channel: Watcher

The Paywall/Subscription model isn’t as simple as we think. These creators had 1000s of people supporting them through Patreon. They felt confident to launch a content streaming platform, saying Goodbye to Youtube. But they failed and announced a comeback.

Their streaming platform still exists, but the positioning is completely changed. It went from ‘we are exclusively here now’ to ‘we will be on Youtube, but you can get our content early on watcher TV’.

What went wrong: They designed for 2000s, marketed like 2010s and failed.

1. They wanted to be Netflix, but never used the framing and psychology structure used by the streaming giants. Making people subscribe is less about what you offer, more about how you do it.

   1. In Streaming & Publishing, Conversion relies on custom paywalls and product design. Creators either don’t have skills to focus on these two or they overlook them.

   2. Services like Amazon Prime & Netflix are known to use dark patterns and triggers to make people upgrade or watch.

2. Once you move from ‘Hey, Support us & get more content’ to ‘Subscribe to get more content’. You went from content model to product model. When that happens, change your position, focus on the overall product, instead of content.

3. In 2010s, When media giants realised the impact of Netflix. They did what Watcher is doing, putting their library of content on Internet. And it barely worked and tanked in the upcoming years. The cause: accessibility and bad positioning.

My Experience running a paid newsletter on Substack

1. Tools like Substack, Ghost, Patreon, and Skool allow creators to build paid communities and content businesses. But they limit the ability to trigger audiences. Using different experiments and design patterns. You need to build your own strategy to add triggers in the content.

2. Using tactics like FOMO and Scarcity is doing the bare minimum.

3. You need courage and calculation to paywall your content. I’m not that courageous, My friend

   Lucy Werner
   is. You can learn a lot from her about prompting the audience and growing her paid newsletter.

To go deep, consume: Voidzilla’s video on WatcherTV / Hooked by Nir Eyal to learn product design and psychology / The Content Trap by Bharat Anand on history of news publishers

5. 2024 continues to be the year of being a hater

Surprisingly a creator posted on TikTok about 2024 being the year of hating on the New Year’s Eve.

What’s happening:

1. The Katt Williams interview from January set the tone for this year: Being a hater is speaking the truth.

2. In Feb 2023, Hating on Taylor Swift was trending and only made her brand stronger than ever.

3. March was rise of negative hooks on TikTok. With this creator growing to 500k+ followers using downfall/scam hooks about brands and influencers.

4. In April, The Drake hate trend rose to the sky with Kendrick Lamar as the leader. Now, the cultures are uniting to hate on him.

What it means for brands:

• Salomon has already jumped on the Drake train with BBL Drizzy video.

• The audio from Kendrick Lamar’s track euphoria is being used to show individual hate against X,Y,Z person.

• You need to be more lose with your content guidelines when it comes to talking about the product, competitors or others. The advice isn’t to make it authentic, make it rough

Using random comments to build content guidelines + ideas:

1. I’m not a hater i’m a fact collector.

   1. show the facts against a product in a video

2. Being a hater is fun, cause I’m smart and can talk sh*t about everything.

   1. a parody of corporate politics

3. I’ve been too quiet for too long, it’s my time to shine baby.

   1. show someone going into hater-mode when X or Y gets exposed.

4. I’m a extremely nice person I just judge everyone in silence.

   1. (side-eye video)

5. We don’t judge we question.

   1. You questioning the decisions of your work friend.

6. When someone says I’m mean it’s a compliment to my personal growth.

   1. Show yourself being a Regina George, Dwight Schrute or Parisian.

I don’t encourage use of hate speech, this is preaching truth speech. Saying what needs to be said in different ways.

6. They’re the same picture, Stop having this mentality.

Many digital marketers have acquired this mentality of overlooking what marketing means.

1/ Social Media is the creature, advertising is parasite.

No one is there to watch your ads. Don’t be a culture vulture, you can only go so far with paid social or performance marketing. If not today, maybe tomorrow you will need to organic social.

2/ Organic social media is only a waste of time if you waste people’s time.

If you consider Social Media a waste of time, you aren’t wrong. But you can’t market with that mentality. Teens are spending 4.5 hours per day and adults spend 2.23 hours per day on social.

Isn’t marketing about reaching people when they are more likely to pay attention? OOH is built on the idea of reaching people when they are outside and active. Direct Marketing works the best when people are at ease.

A lot of Marketing is reaching people when they are doing time pass. Time pass is a very soulful term used by most Indians. It is used to describe the act of doing nothing of much importance. As a marketer, you need to respect the consumer’s act of doing nothing.

3/ Lead Generation & Conversions are about Trust.

Trust exists everywhere, if people are active on social media. You should build it there.

About B2B vs B2C, B2B customers are known to be more emotional about their buying-decisions, relying on beliefs and personal values. Doing organic social content about B2B experiences is likely to result in improving your conversion rate.

7. Apple’s latest ad campaign is a replica and disaster.

Whats happened:

1. Apple launched their latest ad campaign for the new iPad. (watch)

2. Someone from China reversed the original ad, improving the messaging for many viewers.

3. LG’s phone ad from 2008 makes the ad from apple look like a stolen idea.

4. Thursday: Apple apologies and pulls back the ad campaign. Then, people were back to calling others sensitive for making Apple do it.

What’s the tea:

1. Most People, including creative marketers like Tom Goodwin are upset about the destruction of creative tools in the campaign.

2. Japanese consumers were unhappy to an even wider extent. It makes sense, considering the amount of respect they have for creative work and stationary products.

3. From The Age of AI and Big Tech angle, I like what

   Bianca Dămoc
   said in her note: Apple placed a mirror that shows society's relationship with technology and people got upset because they didn't like what was reflected back.

4. Nick on X highlighted the change in Apple’s marketing relationship with TBWA\Chiat\Day could be the reason behind decline in Apple’s advertising quality.

5. This never happened: Unbelievably LinkedIn-coded.

My Take on the ad campaign:

1. LG doesn’t make you think of creativity when someone mentions their product. Plus, How people think about tech is different now.

2. It’s the visuals and music. I get that many people liked the ad and see the vision. People who hated it saw more than a vision, through the tone deaf visuals and very downbeat music. (example)

3. Creatives are highly emotionally people. To Apple’s vision, the productivity-obsessed creative culture took over the west, not the globe. This being a global campaign was predicted to get a mixed response.

4. The reversed campaign sitting well with audience shows how much pre-launch feedback can help with ad campaigns.

5. Gen-Z and Millennials loves nostalgia. Plus, Physical Media is making a comeback with love from Gen-Zers. This concept of destruction is very boomer, as explained by Seema R on TikTok.

8. Brands getting cooked on the Internet

A lot of these stories immediately get discussed in the discord, Have you joined yet?

1. With Steak menu launch, Sweetgreen is receiving some backlash on social media.

2. YouthForia is getting well-deserved backlash for their 600 Deep foundation shade.

3. Chick-Fil-A fired a creator employee, She was getting a ton of views for the brand. Still, She was fired. Burger Shack took their chance and sponsored her immediately. Other businesses followed, so far she has received PR package from Claire’s and partnership with Duck Donuts and El Pollo Loco.

4. A creator’s $180 dress from Jaded London had Shein brand tag, Fast fashion drama continues.

9. Meta’s new paid subscription tiers are outrageous.

Maybe don’t tell people, “followers don’t matter.” If you are planning to promise better engagement and enhanced profiles.

What happened: Meta launched 3 new subscription tiers, priced; $44.99 per mo / $119.99 per mo / $349.99 per month. 

Offering Benefits: web links in reels, enhanced profile, featured account and employee impersonation protection. Even more customer support, the current plans to do offer support.

The Simple Problems with this offering:

1. A lot of these offerings should already exist for free. Website links?

2. When advertisers paying millions to Meta can’t get support. It’s hard to trust the ‘more support’ promise.

3. Someone said, IG & FB aren’t promising more reach. To that, Even if they haven’t this whole subscription gives the vibe of ‘Pay-to-Grow’ mode. Featured Account?

4. The Idea of website links in Reels is enough to attract many businesses.

Nonetheless, the backlash from social media marketers like Jordan, Brock Johnson and me will disappear in few days. Meta will be fine and earn more millions.

If you would like to discuss news/stuff like this with other marketers, you can upgrade to paid newsletter. It doesn’t cost $350/month like Meta, plus you can count on our support system.

10. Creative Ideas & Insights for the week

1. Product Positioning Insight, taken from a Rap Beef discussion: Commercial product that happens to have artistic value. 

2. This TikTok audio is quite useful to make troll videos about people who rant/yap a lot.

3. If you are building creative campaigns on the back of academia papers, be careful. (TikTok) (Youtube)

4. Use of background sounds and very funny transition results in good engagement from Gen-Z: LA Times & RSPB.

5. The Paid Social Ads universe is getting saturated with ‘Us vs Them’ ad creative. The concept is evergreen but the same visual style is getting bullied.

6. Olivia Kory’s useful insights on Paid Media and Attribution.

11. Ad of the Day: Uncommon’s ad for The Ordinary

Source

This Hand-wash Ad from India had a really good copy structure/slogan: If your hands are dirty, they aren’t your hands.