Stop Hate for Profit and its Impact on Facebook Inc.

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Many marketers in 2020 have begun to rely on Facebook Inc’s incredible ability to drive highly engaged and targeted traffic to advertisers’ digital properties. Facebook promises a vast majority of adult internet users who spend upward of 25 minutes per day on their properties.

Many DTC businesses have been built off of the fairly cheap and good-quality traffic they’ve gotten via Facebook ads.

However, with the rise of social justice movements, Facebook has been criticized for not doing enough to protect minorities and other folks from hate speech and online vitriol.

Politics

FB is looking at banning political advertising – this would result in a loss of $100-200 million but not significant in Facebook’s grand scheme of revenue; interestingly, this isn’t something the boycott advertisers have been emphasizing but this is probably due to the stain left on FB’s rep from the Cambridge Analytica scandal
France has banned political advertising altogether on Facebook and other platforms – other governments may choose to do the same with some jurisdictions not allowing advertising

Consumer Attitudes on Stop Hate for Profit

39% weren’t aware
29% weren’t sure
18% approved of the boycott
12% disapproved
People who self-identified as liberal felt more positive about brands who were boycotting vs conservatives were less likely to feel positive about brands who participated in the boycott
Young people were more likely to know about the boycott

Where are those dollars going instead of Facebook?

Brands on the record

VF Corp (holding company for a number of brands including Vans, Timberland, The North Face and Jansport)
- Jansport is shifting the launch of their Back to School campaign to YouTube, Tiktok
- The North Face is looking to spend more on Pinterest and Tiktok
Eddie Bauer redirecting to Google, Gmail, Tiktok, Snapchat
Eileen Fisher – CTV, Roku, Hulu
Some brands are pocketing savings due to the economic troubles that COVID-10 has brought along
Interesting that YouTube was mentioned as a Facebook alternative – they have been embroiled with many ad scandals themselves

Big questions

Oppenheimer (bank) projects ad losses ranging from $150 -250 million – which is under 0.01%
If all top advertisers moved away it would only account for 1% of their revenues
Almost makes sense that FB isn’t doing more
What will happen on August 1^st?

What does Facebook need to do to continue to grow – much of their growth is from digital endemic ads, if they want to grow they’re going to have to pull budgets from large advertisers who still invest more in TV

You can listen to the podcast here.

What do you think the long-term effects of the Facebook boycott will be?

Fenty Launch Timing Analysis

Luxury Fashion Marketing, Marketing

Rihanna, the brand, the legend, the queen is a marketing genius. If you’re stumped on how to execute a flawless tease and launch strategy for your product or collection, don’t look any further than the master, Robyn Rihanna Fenty. Below, you’ll see how she expertly launched the Fenty House using a brilliant Tease, Launch and Sustain strategy.

Here’s an analysis of the House of Fenty’s launch timeline.

TEASE

Jan 15: Rihanna is spotted wearing sunglasses that say ‘Fenty’ on them causing intrigue and speculation that she is launching a sunglasses collection (building hype and intrigue early on as she knows she has many fans and fashion bloggers cataloguing everything she wears)

image via Getty/W Magazine

April 2019: @Fenty IG and Twitter accounts established. The Rihanna Navy doesn’t quit watching the star’s every move. The establishment of the Fenty social media accounts continues to cause a stir and intrigue amongst Rihanna and industry folks alike.

May 10: We get an official LVMH press release + Rihanna posts about Fenty on her Instagram and Twitter accounts.

.@FentyOfficial https://t.co/NXpjzyYZ2T pic.twitter.com/RWHyDElZOs

— Rihanna (@rihanna) May 10, 2019

LAUNCH

May 20: Exclusive media release with T Magazine with a conversation with Rihanna. To secure a top media placement such as this one, it’s important to offer the publication an exclusive – of course for the Fenty launch I’m sure Fenty’s publicist had no problem securing this coverage but they did a good job in selecting a high fashion and well-respected publication such as T. Rihanna then posted shots from her T Magazine feature on Instagram – she’s wearing pieces from the Collection.

May 24: The pop-up launches in Paris’s Marais district, running until June 2. Throughout, Fenty is aligned with high-fashion so it makes sense that the pop-up launches in the French capital. Of course, Rihanna again posts it on her social channels and a ton of fashion press covers the pop-up.

May 29: online Fenty.com launch where the general public can purchase

SUSTAIN

The sustain phase is key to any launch as once a brand has a ton of work on the tease and launch phase, you don’t want to lose momentum and want to ensure the collection sells out.

May 30: Vogue publishes content around the Fenty collection, primarily on YouTube

June 2: Sonam Kapoor posts about her Fenty outfit on Instagram to her 23 million plus followers

View this post on Instagram

DETAILS @gqindia

A post shared by Sonam K Ahuja (@sonamkapoor) on Jun 2, 2019 at 3:09am PDT

June 5: Bella Hadid is seen wearing head-to-toe Fenty on the street, and also posts a Fenty look on her Instagram. Mobilizing influencers is a key way that Rihanna chose to expand her brand’s reach and show different people, aside from herself wearing the collection which provides outfit inspiration and also aligns the brand with an international supermodel.

View this post on Instagram

@Fenty only, Summer ‘19

A post shared by 🦋 (@bellahadid) on Jun 3, 2019 at 3:45pm PDT

What do you think of Rihanna’s Fenty Launch strategy?

Burberry Holiday Campaign 2018

Advertising, Luxury Fashion Marketing, Marketing, YouTube

Check out Burberry’s new holiday campaign created by artist/photographer Juno Calypso.

It also features Naomi Campbell and her mom, M.I.A., the dude from The Crown and a bunch of other people

https://www.thecut.com/2018/11/naomi-campbell-m-i-a-stars-in-burberry-christmas-campaign.html?utm_campaign=thecut&utm_source=tw&utm_medium=s1

They are leveraging the hashtag #BurberryChristmas

It’s a departure from some of Ricardo Tisci’s past Christmas campaigns or launches but still has an edge. https://hypebeast.com/2010/11/givenchy-by-ricardo-tisci-2010-christmas-t-shirts

IGTV and what it means for advertisers and mental health

Advertising, Instagram, Marketing, Social Media

Instagram recently announced Instagram TV (IGTV) meaning you can now watch long-form video content within the Instagram app (Version 50 iOS, Android) in addition to the new IGTV App. The launch of IGTV has big implications for time spent on Instagram’s properties, advertisers and users’ mental health.

So far, I haven’t been enthralled by any of the content I’ve seen on IGTV but recognize were in the very early stages and more will come as content creators get accustomed to this time length.

IGTV Advertising Opportunity

When Instagram launched Instagram Stories, they were able to increase average daily usage time to 32 minutes for users under 25; users over 25 began using the app for 24 minutes a day. The larger the portion of your day that Instagram can have, the more they can appeal to advertisers. Undoubtedly, the intention of implementing IG Stories and IGTV is to increase the time that users spend with the platform.

As advertisers and content creators, this can be a huge game changer for us in terms of how we create content as the medium will support up to 1-hour long video! The app launched available within the IG app to their community of 1B right off the bat with an additional dedicated IGTV app which will start playing content as soon as it’s launched – like traditional TV. 25 minutes of dwell time may seem like a lot, but it’s nothing compared to the 1 hour, 33 minutes per day spent with Netflix and 5 hours and 4 minutes the average American adult watched in 2016. Clearly, moving to a video-only format is a strategic decision that makes investors salivate.

Instagram is only second to YouTube in terms of internet platform for Gen Z. In the great Google vs. Facebook war, stealing more time spent and ad dollars from Google’s video platform and cash cow would make any Facebook Inc. exec salivate.

Being able to tout that IGTV will increase time spent on Instagram properties will please both advertisers and investors. While the stock price has climbed significantly since the Cambridge Analytica scandal, it peaked slightly around the IGTV announcement which indicates that investors are optimistic about the revenue potential for IGTV.

Source: Google

IGTV and Mental Health

As a human, I wonder how this will affect mental health. 63% of Instagram users report feeling “miserable,” which is higher than any other social network. Users reporting feeling “miserable” is not good PR in the slightest. As such, Instagram founder Kevin Systrom has recently announced that the app would have usage data easily available to users – which I haven’t seen rolled out yet at the time of writing. That being said, we can’t discount the negative effects that traditional TV has on our mental wellbeing. TV, does, in fact, rot your brain and can cause apathy and a host of other unsavoury neurological losses.

The solution? As with all media usage, be mindful and critical of your own habits. Personally, I’ve started measuring and limiting my time on the app. As my absolute most-used app, I learned that I spent over 2 hours and 25 minutes on Instagram one Sunday scrolling through my friends’ feeds, outfit photos and travel scapes. You can measure your usage through apps like Moment (iOS) or Quality Time (Android) but you can also do this within the native iOS and Android platforms that measure time spent, data and battery usage from apps which can also give you an indication of the energy you extend using certain apps. I’ve set a limit of 25 minutes which I end up hitting every day since I implemented the cap, but I feel more in control and I find I’ve been hitting the cap later and later into the day, meaning that I feel like I’m using the app less and less throughout the day.

As IGTV matures, I wonder will the content be uplifting? Will it “steal” timeshare from traditional TV and streaming services or even YouTube? Will IGTV negatively impact user mental health even more? Let me know what you think.

Ads from Verizon, Always, & More Challenge Female Stereotypes

Advertising, Beauty, Marketing

Big Brands Are Finally Getting That Empowering Women Will Make Them Money

2014 may just be the year that Big Brands are finally figuring out that female empowerment is cool and that there’s lots wrong with messages we are sending women and girls in the media. The ads listed below are compelling because they cite statistics like 66% of Grade 4 girls say they enjoy math and science whereas only 18% of women major in those fields (Verizon, Pretty Brilliant) or show examples like in the interview conducted for the Always #LikeAGirl campaign. In addition, these ads do a great job of quantitatively and qualitatively demonstrating that gender inequality exists. By appearing like they are aligning with women and fighting for equality, these brands can score some big wins in the eyes of equality-minded consumers.

Verizon

Verizon challenges parents, society, whomever, to stop focusing on women’s looks. Instead of telling a girl she looks cute or pretty, we should be inspiring them to care about more about than just how they look.

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3 Social Things I’m Watching This Week

Facebook, Instagram, Social Media, Twitter

Instagram Popular Page

What I’ve loved and at times gotten annoyed with Instagram is the lack of personalization. What I do like about Instagram is that for the most part I can see what everyone I follow has posted and there is no algorithm blocking me from seeing what friends or brands I follow post. I don’t frequent the popular page within my Instagram app often, because when I do it usually features random teeny boppers taking selfies who somehow have tens of thousands of followers or superstars from a far off country that I am unfamiliar with. Generally, it’s a negative experience. However, the other day, I tapped the Popular Page by accident, only to find quite a few photos I was actually interested in. To my surprise, one of the images that was of interest, only had 30 likes, which is strange as in the past, to end up on the Popular Page, a photo or video needed to have hundreds of thousands of likes which is usually reserved for the Beyoncés of the world.

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Top 3 Tips To Combat Chapped Lips

Beauty, Lips

Dry lips are a symptom of mouth breathing, too much lip licking, making out with your high school crush, and yes, dry and cold weather. There’s nothing more unappealing than speaking to someone whose lips are peeling off before your very eyes. To combat the unattractive effects of dry and chapped lips, here are a few of my favourite tips to keep your lips soft, hydrated, and dare I say it, kissable.

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