Connect with us

MARKETING

5 Trending Topics Brands Leveraged in 2022 [+ How They Did It]

Published

on

5 Trending Topics Brands Leveraged in 2022 [+ How They Did It]

As we head toward the end of 2022, it’s time to look back at examples of brands that have successfully “newsjacked” a trend.

In this article, we’ll cover some of the top trending topics of the year and the brands that took them on.

1. Popeyes

In late September, artist Rihanna announced via Instagram that she would be performing at the Superbowl.

Advertisement

The image, which confirmed earlier speculations of the singer’s participation, quickly made its rounds.

5 Trending Topics Brands Leveraged in 2022 How They

Wasting no time, Popeyes then shared its own version of the popular image just one day later.

1666005905 610 5 Trending Topics Brands Leveraged in 2022 How They

Popeyes is one of the few brands that executed this newsjacking correctly (and legally). Many brands wanting to jump on this news took a great legal risk.

Instead of following Popeyes lead, which replicated Rihanna’s image with its own product and hand model, many simply Photoshopped their products into the artist’s hands.

This could be considered copyright infringement, as the recreation of the image in this way is considered derivative work and requires explicit authorization from the copyright holder.

Secondly, it can also violate the artist’s right of publicity, as their likeness is used in a manner they have not agreed to.

Advertisement

Is this likely to escalate? Probably not as it serves as additional publicity for the NFL and Rihanna. However, in another case, it could. The legal consequences are simply not worth the temporary boost in reach or engagement.

The key takeaway here is that when newsjacking, it’s still important to review the trend before jumping in to ensure you’re not putting your brand at risk.

2. Lay’s

The reality TV competition show Big Brother isn’t where you’d expect to see Lay’s advertisement. But when one contestant showed a love for Lay’s chips, the brand started shouting out the contest on its Twitter account.

Brands leverage trending topics: lay's food brand

This particular contestant, and subsequent winner Taylor Hale, become one of the most popular faces of the franchise due to the bullying she faced in the house. With many Americans rallying around her to show their support, Lay’s also joined in.

Judging by Lay’s recent Tweets, their posts on Hale earned them over 50x more engagement than they typically get on the platform.

Once Hale was announced as the winner, the brand also contacted her – seemingly for a potential partnership.

Advertisement

This is a great example of how a brand can leverage a seemingly trivial situation and turn it into something special.

3. LEGO

Remember when Wordle has us all agonizing over five-letter words? Well, LEGO capitalized on that buzz and joined in – in LEGO fashion, of course.

Something like this is so simple yet can be incredibly effective. Because the point of newsjacking isn’t necessarily to get sales, but instead to increase your reach, get engagement, and connect with your audience.

When you think of it this way, it’s much easier to leverage.

4. Norwegian Cruise Line

The conversation around NFTs started gaining steam in January 2021 and peaked one year later in January of this year, according to Google Trends,

Advertisement

Since then, brands have been scrambling to both understand what it is and how they can use NFTs for marketing.

NCL took the leap by leveraging the buzz around NFTs to announce its new cruise line. They released a collection of six NFT art pieces available for auction that depict the new cruise line at sea.

how brands leverage trending topics in 2022: norwegian cruise line NFTs

Image Source

According to a press release, the winner of the auction will also win a room on one of the ship’s inaugural voyages.

5. K18

BeReal has made a big splash this year as the better, more authentic version of Instagram.

As a quick refresher, the concept behind BeReal is simple: At some point every day, users are prompted to share a picture of themselves in real-time using both front and back cameras.

Advertisement

There are no pre-taken pictures allowed and once you miss the two-minute countdown, that’s it.

The idea is quite interesting and has garnered the attention of many consumers as well as brands.

The thing is, many brands are still unsure how to use the platform. Not K18 though.

Joining brands like Chipotle, E.L.F, and Rare Beauty, K18 is one of the few brands that are exploring this platform.

1666005905 729 5 Trending Topics Brands Leveraged in 2022 How They

Image Source

Because spontaneity is required, it makes it difficult for brands to add structure to their BeReal strategy. However, K18 has taken this as an opportunity to build community and take users behind the scenes.

Advertisement

The takeaway here is that not every platform will allow the same approach. Having some flexibility will give you more room to explore these trends as they come.

Trends come and go – the key is knowing which ones to join and which ones to skip. However, when done right, they can earn you a stronger community, more engagement, and more reach.

New Call-to-action



Source link

Keep an eye on what we are doing
Be the first to get latest updates and exclusive content straight to your email inbox.
We promise not to spam you. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Invalid email address

MARKETING

YouTube Ad Specs, Sizes, and Examples [2024 Update]

Published

on

YouTube Ad Specs, Sizes, and Examples

Introduction

With billions of users each month, YouTube is the world’s second largest search engine and top website for video content. This makes it a great place for advertising. To succeed, advertisers need to follow the correct YouTube ad specifications. These rules help your ad reach more viewers, increasing the chance of gaining new customers and boosting brand awareness.

Types of YouTube Ads

Video Ads

  • Description: These play before, during, or after a YouTube video on computers or mobile devices.
  • Types:
    • In-stream ads: Can be skippable or non-skippable.
    • Bumper ads: Non-skippable, short ads that play before, during, or after a video.

Display Ads

  • Description: These appear in different spots on YouTube and usually use text or static images.
  • Note: YouTube does not support display image ads directly on its app, but these can be targeted to YouTube.com through Google Display Network (GDN).

Companion Banners

  • Description: Appears to the right of the YouTube player on desktop.
  • Requirement: Must be purchased alongside In-stream ads, Bumper ads, or In-feed ads.

In-feed Ads

  • Description: Resemble videos with images, headlines, and text. They link to a public or unlisted YouTube video.

Outstream Ads

  • Description: Mobile-only video ads that play outside of YouTube, on websites and apps within the Google video partner network.

Masthead Ads

  • Description: Premium, high-visibility banner ads displayed at the top of the YouTube homepage for both desktop and mobile users.

YouTube Ad Specs by Type

Skippable In-stream Video Ads

  • Placement: Before, during, or after a YouTube video.
  • Resolution:
    • Horizontal: 1920 x 1080px
    • Vertical: 1080 x 1920px
    • Square: 1080 x 1080px
  • Aspect Ratio:
    • Horizontal: 16:9
    • Vertical: 9:16
    • Square: 1:1
  • Length:
    • Awareness: 15-20 seconds
    • Consideration: 2-3 minutes
    • Action: 15-20 seconds

Non-skippable In-stream Video Ads

  • Description: Must be watched completely before the main video.
  • Length: 15 seconds (or 20 seconds in certain markets).
  • Resolution:
    • Horizontal: 1920 x 1080px
    • Vertical: 1080 x 1920px
    • Square: 1080 x 1080px
  • Aspect Ratio:
    • Horizontal: 16:9
    • Vertical: 9:16
    • Square: 1:1

Bumper Ads

  • Length: Maximum 6 seconds.
  • File Format: MP4, Quicktime, AVI, ASF, Windows Media, or MPEG.
  • Resolution:
    • Horizontal: 640 x 360px
    • Vertical: 480 x 360px

In-feed Ads

  • Description: Show alongside YouTube content, like search results or the Home feed.
  • Resolution:
    • Horizontal: 1920 x 1080px
    • Vertical: 1080 x 1920px
    • Square: 1080 x 1080px
  • Aspect Ratio:
    • Horizontal: 16:9
    • Square: 1:1
  • Length:
    • Awareness: 15-20 seconds
    • Consideration: 2-3 minutes
  • Headline/Description:
    • Headline: Up to 2 lines, 40 characters per line
    • Description: Up to 2 lines, 35 characters per line

Display Ads

  • Description: Static images or animated media that appear on YouTube next to video suggestions, in search results, or on the homepage.
  • Image Size: 300×60 pixels.
  • File Type: GIF, JPG, PNG.
  • File Size: Max 150KB.
  • Max Animation Length: 30 seconds.

Outstream Ads

  • Description: Mobile-only video ads that appear on websites and apps within the Google video partner network, not on YouTube itself.
  • Logo Specs:
    • Square: 1:1 (200 x 200px).
    • File Type: JPG, GIF, PNG.
    • Max Size: 200KB.

Masthead Ads

  • Description: High-visibility ads at the top of the YouTube homepage.
  • Resolution: 1920 x 1080 or higher.
  • File Type: JPG or PNG (without transparency).

Conclusion

YouTube offers a variety of ad formats to reach audiences effectively in 2024. Whether you want to build brand awareness, drive conversions, or target specific demographics, YouTube provides a dynamic platform for your advertising needs. Always follow Google’s advertising policies and the technical ad specs to ensure your ads perform their best. Ready to start using YouTube ads? Contact us today to get started!

Keep an eye on what we are doing
Be the first to get latest updates and exclusive content straight to your email inbox.
We promise not to spam you. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Invalid email address
Continue Reading

MARKETING

Why We Are Always ‘Clicking to Buy’, According to Psychologists

Published

on

Why We Are Always 'Clicking to Buy', According to Psychologists

Amazon pillows.

(more…)

Keep an eye on what we are doing
Be the first to get latest updates and exclusive content straight to your email inbox.
We promise not to spam you. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Invalid email address
Continue Reading

MARKETING

A deeper dive into data, personalization and Copilots

Published

on

A deeper dive into data, personalization and Copilots

Salesforce launched a collection of new, generative AI-related products at Connections in Chicago this week. They included new Einstein Copilots for marketers and merchants and Einstein Personalization.

To better understand, not only the potential impact of the new products, but the evolving Salesforce architecture, we sat down with Bobby Jania, CMO, Marketing Cloud.

Dig deeper: Salesforce piles on the Einstein Copilots

Salesforce’s evolving architecture

It’s hard to deny that Salesforce likes coming up with new names for platforms and products (what happened to Customer 360?) and this can sometimes make the observer wonder if something is brand new, or old but with a brand new name. In particular, what exactly is Einstein 1 and how is it related to Salesforce Data Cloud?

“Data Cloud is built on the Einstein 1 platform,” Jania explained. “The Einstein 1 platform is our entire Salesforce platform and that includes products like Sales Cloud, Service Cloud — that it includes the original idea of Salesforce not just being in the cloud, but being multi-tenancy.”

Data Cloud — not an acquisition, of course — was built natively on that platform. It was the first product built on Hyperforce, Salesforce’s new cloud infrastructure architecture. “Since Data Cloud was on what we now call the Einstein 1 platform from Day One, it has always natively connected to, and been able to read anything in Sales Cloud, Service Cloud [and so on]. On top of that, we can now bring in, not only structured but unstructured data.”

Advertisement



That’s a significant progression from the position, several years ago, when Salesforce had stitched together a platform around various acquisitions (ExactTarget, for example) that didn’t necessarily talk to each other.

“At times, what we would do is have a kind of behind-the-scenes flow where data from one product could be moved into another product,” said Jania, “but in many of those cases the data would then be in both, whereas now the data is in Data Cloud. Tableau will run natively off Data Cloud; Commerce Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud — they’re all going to the same operational customer profile.” They’re not copying the data from Data Cloud, Jania confirmed.

Another thing to know is tit’s possible for Salesforce customers to import their own datasets into Data Cloud. “We wanted to create a federated data model,” said Jania. “If you’re using Snowflake, for example, we more or less virtually sit on your data lake. The value we add is that we will look at all your data and help you form these operational customer profiles.”

Let’s learn more about Einstein Copilot

“Copilot means that I have an assistant with me in the tool where I need to be working that contextually knows what I am trying to do and helps me at every step of the process,” Jania said.

For marketers, this might begin with a campaign brief developed with Copilot’s assistance, the identification of an audience based on the brief, and then the development of email or other content. “What’s really cool is the idea of Einstein Studio where our customers will create actions [for Copilot] that we hadn’t even thought about.”

Here’s a key insight (back to nomenclature). We reported on Copilot for markets, Copilot for merchants, Copilot for shoppers. It turns out, however, that there is just one Copilot, Einstein Copilot, and these are use cases. “There’s just one Copilot, we just add these for a little clarity; we’re going to talk about marketing use cases, about shoppers’ use cases. These are actions for the marketing use cases we built out of the box; you can build your own.”

Advertisement



It’s surely going to take a little time for marketers to learn to work easily with Copilot. “There’s always time for adoption,” Jania agreed. “What is directly connected with this is, this is my ninth Connections and this one has the most hands-on training that I’ve seen since 2014 — and a lot of that is getting people using Data Cloud, using these tools rather than just being given a demo.”

What’s new about Einstein Personalization

Salesforce Einstein has been around since 2016 and many of the use cases seem to have involved personalization in various forms. What’s new?

“Einstein Personalization is a real-time decision engine and it’s going to choose next-best-action, next-best-offer. What is new is that it’s a service now that runs natively on top of Data Cloud.” A lot of real-time decision engines need their own set of data that might actually be a subset of data. “Einstein Personalization is going to look holistically at a customer and recommend a next-best-action that could be natively surfaced in Service Cloud, Sales Cloud or Marketing Cloud.”

Finally, trust

One feature of the presentations at Connections was the reassurance that, although public LLMs like ChatGPT could be selected for application to customer data, none of that data would be retained by the LLMs. Is this just a matter of written agreements? No, not just that, said Jania.

“In the Einstein Trust Layer, all of the data, when it connects to an LLM, runs through our gateway. If there was a prompt that had personally identifiable information — a credit card number, an email address — at a mimum, all that is stripped out. The LLMs do not store the output; we store the output for auditing back in Salesforce. Any output that comes back through our gateway is logged in our system; it runs through a toxicity model; and only at the end do we put PII data back into the answer. There are real pieces beyond a handshake that this data is safe.”

Source link

Advertisement



Keep an eye on what we are doing
Be the first to get latest updates and exclusive content straight to your email inbox.
We promise not to spam you. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Invalid email address
Continue Reading

Trending