TRENDING NORTH: JULY ‘22
A monthly look at the marketing and advertising industry from NORTH’s point of view.
Here is a list of ways you can help Ukraine.
Ways to Help the Fight for Abortion Rights
Madelyn Brennecke and Yanet Garcia
It seems each time we go to publish our monthly newsletter, there has been a new social disaster we feel compelled to address. This month was no different. With the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade, our social feeds and news sources have been flooded with outrage, stories of how this already impacting women and people with a uterus, as well as facts to educate people and lawmakers of ways to actually reduce abortions and unwanted pregnancies without putting lives and health at risk.
Here are “Six ways you can join the fight for abortion rights”. To this list, I would like to add, treat yourself and others with love.
Un-Polishing Your Brand
Madelyn Brennecke, Sr. Performance Marketing Manager
It’s interesting to see how social platforms have influenced and changed our social behaviors, literally rewiring our brains and changing the ways we interact with one another. With the rise of Facebook, our society became obsessed with documenting and sharing the minutiae of our lives. Then Instagram and Tumbler changed the focus to the aesthetic, and our lives shifted to building brands and identities. Now, with the popularity of TikTok, user behavior has shifted to such a degree that brands and other social platforms are scrambling to keep up.
Users are seeking and responding to authentic, native-feeling, short-form content. Andrew Hutchinson notes in Social Media Today, “TikTok has changed the way that people engage with video content overall, so it’s not just that TikTok is popular in itself, it means that all apps need to align with this usage shift, or risk being left behind, because the more that people consume short-form content, the more their attention spans are being inherently re-programmed to respond to this format.”
For years, Instagram has been trying to promote Reels in an effort to compete with TikTok. And recently, Instagram published a set of tips to help brands and creators maximize their short form videos. In my opinion, the most important recommendation is to be authentic. In my user experience, Instagram has been taken over by brands and bloggers, while TikTok is primarily user generated content. Majority of TikTok content is unpolished and entertaining without an agenda, which can be hard for brands to nail. But it is this style that users are responding to, and it makes polished brands easy to spot. I recommend all brands start using TikTok and consuming content to truly understand the native feel and also track and incorporate TikTok trends, whether that is trending songs, sounds, or stitched videos. Ultimately, I believe this style needs to be replicated to Instagram Reels if Reels wants to truly take off.
Perceptions of Climate Change Have Shifted Globally
Madelyn Brennecke, Sr. Performance Marketing Manager
Meta, in a partnership with Yale University, has published a 123-page report on public perceptions of Climate Change. This report polled over 100K users across 192 countries and provides insight into how users feel about climate change and global efforts being made to mitigate it. The report shows that the majority of people in nearly all countries are worried about climate change, especially those in Central and South America. Countries in tropical zones are already dealing with significant impacts from climate change and reported the highest rates of worry. Across the globe, users think that climate change should be a high priority for their government.
Many climate change skeptics don’t believe that climate change is caused by human activity, but this report shows that those views are starting to shift as more people accept humans’ role in climate change. Furthermore, skeptics have long argued that climate change policies will harm the economy. However, this report shows that most people don’t think that actions against climate change will have a negative effect on the economy.
Andrew Hutchinson from Social Media Today draws an interesting connection in shifting climate change perspectives with the increased efforts of social platforms to combat misinformation. These shifting viewpoints come after “all social platforms have been taking steps to address climate misinformation, via fact-checks, informational prompts and reach restrictions on posts related to climate topics.”
Podcast Trends by SXM Media
Stephen Lawrence, Media Planner
As part of the 2022 IAB Upfronts, SXM Media released their podcast trends report, giving a deep dive into the ways the podcast space has shifted over the last year and the ways that audio continues to drive success for major podcast players, including SXM Media (who owns Stitcher and Pandora). In their report, SXM Media discusses a few key takeaways from their research — one of the biggest call-outs being the transition from old users to new users. In the past, the podcast audience was older males who listened to over 7 hours of podcast in a week. However, SXM is seeing a transition in their audience towards a younger, more diverse group of individuals, who are more recently getting into listening to podcasts (at around 4 hours a week). This fascinating transition makes a lot of sense, with shows like The Read and Why Won’t You Date Me?, two popular SXM Media shows that feature Black hosts.
In addition, SXM Media calls out the differences between the original podcast listener and this “new” audience. They claim that the older podcast listener is more likely to stick to a few key shows, while a newer user is much more interested in bouncing from one show to the next (36% more likely to say they hop from one podcast to another than the original listeners). This newer user also doesn’t need host-read placements like the original user does. These new listeners have always been in the podcast space with host-read and producer-read placements (versus the older audience, who still remembers when podcasts didn’t have ads!). SXM Media claims that new users are “19% more likely than original listeners to say that non-host-read ads are a good fit with the podcasts they listen to”.
So what does that mean for podcasts for advertisers? Well, first off, podcasts are not going anywhere. Podcasts continue to be a major player in the advertising space, and need to continue to take a front seat when planning media dollars. In addition, reports like this give peace of mind for buyers and advertisers alike — as the diversity of shows continues to rise and the need for less custom placements dropping, the podcast space will allow for more flexibility for advertisers and give users a chance to hear relevant ads in their favorite shows.
Facebook to Leave the Podcast Space
Stephen Lawrence, Media Planner
While some media partners (see SXM Media above) are reaping the benefits of the new audio and podcast space, one of the biggest media players is now surprisingly leaving the podcast space — Facebook. At the beginning of May, Facebook announced that they would no longer be hosting podcasts within their platform after only a year of the feature. With the market being saturated with podcast players, such as Spotify and Amazon, it seems tough to keep up with the ever changing needs for users. With this change, Facebook is going to reprioritize its focus and look back to the snackable video content they’ve been amplifying to drive engagement.
Fighting Misinformation on TikTok
Yanet Garcia, Media Intern
TikTok has been on the rise since the beginning of the pandemic. It has all sorts of content, ranging from entertaining cat videos, to DIY’s and how-to’s, to educational tips given by “professionals”. While many actual professionals use this platform to educate their audiences, many unqualified people are taking to the TikTok platform to spread myths regarding health and medical issues playing off users’ fears. This rise in misinformation has led many legitimate doctors and health coaches to take to the app to help debunk the lies being spread. Unfortunately for these “debunkers”––as the media now calls them––it is extremely difficult to keep up with the amount of misinformation there is. Especially since some of the myths being shared actually have some factual evidence. The professional “debunkers” have shared on several occasions their concerns about being outnumbered by the amount of false information that goes around the TikTok platform.
