Introduction
This week, between political news and businesses leveraging this unique moment in time to get people to the ballots we continue to see how the digital world is diversifying. We saw the cast of New Girl and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez take advantage of various digital platforms to increase voter action, and Harry Styles and Paris Hilton using their online presence to sky-rocket music and business sales. In addition to these tactics, social media apps such as Instagram and Snapchat are constantly updating to benefit personal and professional usage, and adapt to their ever-growing population.
Celebrity
Harry Styles Hints at New Music Video with Interactive Website
COVID has created problems for virtually every industry pushing people to adapt in new creative ways. This evolution has been specifically prominent in the music industry where artists are constantly finding new ways to create hype for releases. Press junkets and concerts are, at least for now, a thing of the past so artists are turning to digital channels to create a buzz. Harry Styles turned to the power of digital marketing in a very effective way, using rumors and speculations to get people excited. With a possible new music video on the way, the singer has updated his personal website that was used to promote the album last December to include new experiences and prompt fans to engage by answering one simple question ‘Do you know who you are?’. Once fans enter their name to the website it creates and presents a personalized message signed by Styles asking them to share it on Twitter using the hashtag #DYKWYA. The hashtag and Styles went on to global trend after the website update.
The cast of New Girl Comes Together for Voting PSA
Zooey Deschanel, Zoe Lister-Jones, Lamorne Morris, and Jake Johnson reunited with a hilarious yet important voting PSA through IG Reels. The cast of New Girl produced a short video clip giving valuable information about how to transition to mail-in voting and the steps that viewers need to take to have their vote accurately counted. The video was posted on Deschanel’s account (6.3 million followers) 2 days ago and it already received over 170K likes and 6M views.
Brands/Industry
Instagram Implementing New Prompt for Influencers who Fail to Disclose Commercial Partnerships
As social media influencers and paid partnerships are on the rise, Instagram has recently vowed to protect consumers by establishing features to disclose paid and sponsored posts. According to SocialMediaToday, when social media influencers are posting on behalf of a brand, they are required to tag the post with hashtags like #ad and #sponsored. However, with a large amount of paid posts going out every day, not everyone is following this rule nor is it being regulated. To fix this issue, Instagram is looking to add a new prompt that would require influencers to select whether they are receiving compensation to promote a product or service. In addition, Instagram is implementing a new algorithm to detect potential paid content, which would then alert the account to follow the newly added promptly. These tactics are all in attempts to make Instagram an overall better experience that seamlessly bridges the gap between personal postings to paid promotional postings.
Snapchat Adds “Sounds” Feature Aligning with TikTok
TikTok is the gatekeeper of short-form video platforms being the largest and most important amongst competitors. It’s unsurprising then that many competing platforms are now taking hints from TikTok and adding new features to their own services. From Instagram creating Reels to Triller using influencer houses, it seems like every platform is trying to adapt. Snapchat is hopping on the trend of adding a “sounds” feature through a third-party music publisher. According to Variety, “Users of the iOS app worldwide can add music to their Snaps (pre- or post-capture) from a curated catalog of music. Snapchatters can add music before recording video by selecting the Sounds tool (with the music notes icon) on the right-hand side of the Camera screen and choosing a track from the Featured Sounds list.” Providing exclusive clips and early releases of songs such as Justin Bieber’s recent single Lonely, Snapchat is looking to compete with the other platform and bring their interface and features to 2020.
Influencer
Paris Hilton from Reality Star to Entrepreneur
Paris Hilton, one of the most iconic celebrities and the world’s first influencer, continues to expand her brand and capitalize on business opportunities. Hilton wants to leverage her longevity in the entertainment world as well as her business, Paris Hilton Entertainment, to bring her name back amongst a younger audience. Her integrated media and product organization, which encompasses 19 products, has accumulated over $4 billion in revenue over the past ten years. According to AdWeekly, Hilton is the leader when it comes to developing brand partnerships, she stated, “The ways I and others have worked with brands in the past needs to continue to evolve. With the launch of my broader media company in digital, social, audio, and television, I’m building a platform to take a more holistic approach to how I work with brands.” This sheds some light on Hilton’s newly found presence on TikTok where she holds over 3 million followers and averages 8 million views on each post. Paris demonstrates once again how personal brands can adapt to new platforms and gain relevance across generations.
Campaigns
MLB World Series Created #WorldSeries on TikTok to Increase Engagement
In the age of live sports having little to no audience due to COVID-19, professional league sports have been having to get creative in ways to incorporate an audience without them physically being present. In attempts to achieve this, Major League Baseball has taken to TikTok to promote the World Series and make it more engaging for fans. Using the hashtag #WorldSeries, MLB encourages TikTok users to create a video showing how they are getting in the baseball spirit, whether that be from your couch, practicing a curveball, or chasing a trophy. So far, the campaign has reached over 630 million views and is trending on the discover page.
AOC plays Among Us on Twitch to Encourage Viewers to Vote
With election day fastly approaching, celebrities and political figures are teaming up to encourage more people to get to the polls. U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez took to the streaming platform Twitch to play the viral online game Among Us and inspire the players to vote. Playing alongside professional Twitch streamers including Pokimane and Hasanabi, AOC drew a large number of people into the stream. After streaming for three-and-a-half hours, viewership ranged from 300,000 to 400,000 the entire time, peaking at 439,000 views. This has since become the third-highest-viewed single stream of all time. While it’s not entirely measurable how many people took action because of the stream, the strides that public figures are taking to spread awareness of voting has gotten more and more digital.