So-Called Social: Week of October 29
Your weekly dose of social news.
It’s officially November which means the wait to put up holiday decorations is finally over! Turn on that Michael Bublé, pour some mulled wine, and let’s do this. This week in social land, Twitter is tinkering with a new redesign, we launched our latest Adobe Remix, and a pretty excellent Slack costume. Read on.
Social nets update stuff
Brand collabs are hot, and Facebook wants to do a little matchmaking of its own. FB is testing a new ad format that features multiple advertisers in one unit, bundling dynamic ad campaigns from two different companies in a side-by-side version of Facebook’s Collection ads. Interesting…
Facebook also introduced a new retention optimization feature and four new app retention metrics for app advertisers. Essentially, this new feature is designed to boost retention among new users. It allows advertisers to optimize returns two days and seven days after an app has been downloaded.
In more Facebook news, the social network is shifting focus from feed to Stories and wants advertisers to follow suit. This means that FB realllly wants to close the gap between users’ appetite for Stories (and messaging, Marketplace, and Watch) and advertisers’ ability to access those platforms. The company is also developing a tool to convert horizontal news feed ads into vertical Stories ads.
Oh, and SoundCloud is now integrated with Instagram Stories.
Buckle up. Twitter appears to be playing around with a redesign focused on encouraging a more conversational environment. Some features being tester are: an indicator of who is online and redesigned threads with color-coded replies — all with the goal of adding context to ongoing conversations.
Adobe does stuff
Our 26th Adobe Remix project is finally here! We invited visual designer Vasjen Katro to use AI technology powered by Adobe Sensei as one of the many tools he used to experiment with different artistic styles. Drawing inspirations from sci-fi movies and Van Gogh paintings, Vasjen utilized neural style transfer technology along with Creative Cloud tools to reimagine the Adobe logo. It’s pretty rad, so check it out.
ICYMI, we released a new 60-second Make It Now tutorial just for Halloween this week. The tutorial demonstrates how to take a portrait and make it scary with a distinct mummy effect in Photoshop Mix. Spooky.
Other brands do stuff
Adidas Originals experimented with media a bit to build a campaign in Instagram Stories that announced a new line of P.O.D. sneakers. The brand teamed up with rapper Curtis Roach to create an IG Stories music video that unveiled the artist’s new track, “Spectacular,” while he danced around wearing the sneakers. The video, available for only 24 hours, is an example of “disappearing cinema” technique.
National Geographic is using VR and social platforms to appeal to Gen Z, and it appears to be working. The brand (which notoriously has an older demographic) is creating virtual and augmented reality experiences that bring its content to life via in-person events (including a newly opened VR theater in Washington, D.C.) and on platforms including Snapchat, Wattpad and IGTV. Nat Geo has become Instagram’s most-followed brand at 92.8 million followers, and its Snapchat Discover subscriptions increased by 160% to reach 3 million in the last 12 months.
Interesting stuff
We all know at this point that influencer marketing is important (and isn’t going anywhere). Brands are taking it seriously, but ROI is still a bit tricky to prove. Celebrity endorsements don’t necessarily have the traction we think — especially when fake followers are factored in. My fave quote from this opinion piece: “Too many brands are using subjective assessment of influencers and pitching them based on their follower count. This approach is crude because influencers are more than just their follower count and the obsession with it is one of the reasons we have fraud in the industry.” And we’ve all heard about micro-influencers. But do they work?
Fun stuff
Pretty sure anyone that uses Slack can relate to this costume and accompanying sound effect.
Watching this guy play piano with his cats will get rid of all your worries.