L’Oreal Goes Longterm with Influencer Strategy, a Potential Takeover for Twitter, and other Social Media Updates from Last Week.
Social Trends
1. L’Oreal Goes Long-Term with Beauty Influencers
L’Oreal London is beefing up their influencer strategy with a new “Beauty Squad,” a team of five UK content creators with a combined reach of 5.5 million followers. L’Oreal London’s influencer lineup reflects the brand’s objective to promote a more diverse and inclusive spectrum of beauty that reflects their core message of “We Are All Worth It.” The partnersip also hearkens a move away from the ‘one and done’ strategy of using a brand partner for one activation and then moving on.
In an interview, Adrien Koskas, UK general manager for L’Oréal, told Marketing Week that it was a natural move for the brand, which has been working with the five influencers featured in the launch video for some time, but wanted to make the partnership a more official and permanent part of their promotions strategy.
“Consumers are really changing the way they interact with brands and are very engaged on social media. Often consumers are looking for this type of content online and we wanted to be the brand providing that to them.”
Additionally, Koskas stressed that “There’s no exclusivity request from us on any point. They have full freedom in terms of editorial and what they can produce or say. They are a voice for the brand to think differently about our products.”
The activation was launched in conjunction with the the company’s new app, ‘MakeUp Genius,” which allows users to smile, pucker-up, and wink into the camera while Snapchat-like filters virtually apply the various shades and newest products onto the user’s face. In what L’Oreal is calling ‘The World’s First Virtual Makeup App, the promotional tool hints at what could be down the pike for many more cosmetics, personal care, and jewelry brands that are looking to make their mobile offerings more interactive and immersive.
— Via CosmeticsBusiness.com and WARC
2. NBC News Start-Up “Breaking News App” Showcases the Increasingly Blurred Line Between Social Media, PR, and Journalism
Have you downloaded or used the new Breaking News App? It’s an app that aims to give users simply that — the most newsworthy, time-sensitive information and the biggest emerging stories of the day.
With a recent update, the app alllows users to “tip off” Breaking News app editors (who work round the clock monitoring the news as well as user activity on the app) with real-time updates and news-worthy information of their own. (Think updates like ; “explosion at 38th & Girard,” “Major accident on I-35 Southbound,” or “Missing child.”) The new update and tipping feature has won Breaking News an Online Journalism Award for innovation, and we can see why. If a user’s tip help Breaking News Editors with publishing a story, the user receives a personal push notification on their phone.
Breaking News Editors monitor these tips in real time, and sometimes, these social-media generated tips, if urgent and big enough; result in big breaking news stories of their own. If picked up by Breaking News, the story also appears on partner sites MSN News and NBCNews.com, and as the app’s daily content is monitored by many of the world’s largest news organizations, these user-generated tips can influence coverage that eventually ends up around the globe. — Via the Breaking News App Blog on Medium.
3. This is what it was like to watch the NFL on Twitter , So How Will the Debates Be?
“Some good thoughts in here. My own take: I watched it on both my iPhone (in transit) and in my living room (via the new Twitter app on Apple TV). It was interesting. (Which is always a decidedly uninteresting thing to say.) But the oddest thing about it was just how “normal” it felt.
Of course, on the Apple TV version, when you swiped to the left, you got a feed of tweets alongside the video. It was sort of fun, but got old very quickly — mainly because while they were curated to remove hate speech and the like, they weren’t very tailored. Imagine if they were football experts — or your buddies, also watching from somewhere in the world… That could actually be fun. Baby steps.” — Via @mgsiegler’s “Cold Takes Blog”
4. Have We Reached the Era of a Potential Twitter Takeover?
Wall Street certainly seems to think so. Shares of the social networking site rose sharply (by about 71% to be specific) Thursday afternoon after reports began aggressively circulating that the five-year-old company was currently seeking bids from companies such as Salesforce.com and Google for a potential purchase and merger. However, at time of stock closing, the price was holding firm at $26 per share, markedly less than the opening price when 140-character messaging seemed to be a thing of the future.
Twitter has struggled over the past two years after a series of leadership changes to figure out it’s core product offering. In what can best be described as lackluster interest from brands in regards to it’s advertising and paid media prowess, the company has struggled with stagnant user growth as Snapchat, WhatsApp, and Facebook Messenger continue to keep a competitive pace with attracting new, especially younger, users.
Members of the C-Suite from both Google and Salesforce have declined to comment further on the rumors, but the cat certainly seems to be out of the bag. Why would Salesforce be interested in acquiring Twitter? It seems an unlikely pairing at first, but after bidding heavily for LinkedIn earlier this year and losing (sorely) to Microsoft, the e-CRM software company is looking for an addition to it’s portfolio that could bolster it’s reputation as a truly all-inclusive customer service tool. — Via the New York Times.
Home & Style Trends
- Pantone Gets Clever with Video Content on Social
Competitive Highlights
- Online Home Decor Retailer Wayfair Gets with the Programmatic Ad Program
The use of programmatic ads and Wayfair’s in-house marketing muscle allow the company deliver coordinated, consistent campaigns.“Our goal is to gain creative control, customization and transparency on how a campaign is performing,” Matt Herman, Associate Director/Marketing at Wayfair Inc. said. “So we want to be extremely sophisticated about how we’re targeting customers and where we’re serving them.” Wayfair, Number 33 on the Internet Retailer 2015 Top 500 Guide, spends the remainder of its display budget on premium ad space bought directly from publishers at a set cost per impression, such as home page placements on major sites like MSN.com or The Huffington Post. — Via WARC.
2. Ceasarstone USA Launches New Line of Granite-Inspired Quartz Surfaces, and Beefs Up Instagram Content
Ceasarstone’s new Granite collection offer six designs with the look of granite and the ease of care of contemporary quartz. “We are thrilled to unveil our new granite-inspired line of colors. After hearing what our customers were looking for in a new color palette, our team developed these new colors and we hope they will complement a wide variety of designs,” said Dan Clifford, President of Caesarstone USA, in a recent press release dated September 9th. “These new options now give consumers the look of granite, with the benefits and ease of quartz.” (Via Ceasarstone USA )
Additionally, the luxury quartz surfaces company has begun beefing up it’s Instagram content with a variety of weekly spotlights and features. The brand has begun highlighting reputable Ceasarstone Dealers via weekly re-grams with links to the dealer’s locate via a shortened bit.ly link in their profile, as seen below. They have also begun highlighting annual partnerships with leading designers via social videos shared on the platform, and continue to highlight hip tastemakers and brand partners via regular lifestyle content.
3. With UGC Campaign “#MyShutterfly” on both Twitter and Instagram, Photo-based Gift Retailer Turns Its Lens onto the Beauty of the Everyday.
