Snapchat Dips into AR Ads, WeWork Acquires Meetup, Facebook’s Advertising Principles and Takehunter is fantastic.

Marketing Trends, 11/28/17

“If marketers understand each of these dimensions, then they can design a product that’s precisely targeted to the job. In other words, the job, not the customer, is the fundamental unit of analysis for a marketer who hopes to develop products that customers will buy.”
~Clayton Christensen

News

Snap Goes For Revenue Growth

In order for Snap to (hopefully) kickstart earnings so their stock can start trending the other direction, they’re reworking the UI so more advertisers can get on board by creating new ad units . These two new revenue tactics include:

• Promoted Stories: series of 3 to 10 photos or videos created by a brand, not a person but shows up just like any other story
• AR Trial Ads: yes, augmented reality that’s a bit more functional than fun. For example, place a BMW in a photo, change its color, and all the other things you can do with the video lenses. Swipe to view website.

Remember back in May when Snapchat shared that App Annie found “35 percent of Snapchat’s daily users in the U.S. aren’t reachable on Facebook that same day, and 46 percent can’t be found on Instagram”. I wonder if that number is still the same with the success of Instagram’s copycat stories, but the point remains that Snap and IG are solving different needs for consumers. And that creates a massive opportunity for marketers.

If you are marketing to 18–22 year olds, how do you do it? Yes, there are millions on FB and Instagram. And there are millions on Snapchat.

I think many adults don’t understand what Snapchat users do on a day-to-day basis or why they use the app. Snapchat doesn’t replace Facebook. It replaces SMS messaging for young people and has additional features that make it fun.

WeWork is Buying Meetup

Wired reported today that the 20 billion dollar co-working startup WeWork is acquiring Meetup. This is a perfect match as WeWork is a company built around developing in-person communities. Now WeWork can build experiences both inside and outside their owned physical spaces.

Sonos Sound System Christmas

How do you advertise the coming wave of smart speakers so they stand out from a newly formed competitive crowd? If you’re Sonos then Step 1, choose video as the medium. Step 2, recruit millennials with moves. Step 3, film them dancing through holiday-themed sets. And finally, Step 4 is to submit to AdAge for award season.

Quick Hits

• Facebook released Our Advertising Principles after a series of news-worthy incidents. Must read for all marketers and everyone who uses Facebook or Instagram ads.
• Al Jazeera’s social success on Facebook is transitioning to a new medium: YouTube.
• Did you notice a 6-second picture-in-picture ad that popped up during the World Series? Seems the ad was pretty effective and happened again during the NFL Thanksgiving Day broadcast. Expect more of this in the future. (via AdAge’s version of daily news)

Lessons Learned

• Emotion is the ultimate, end-game user experience. The media has been using fear and outrage to sell papers, radio and TV spots, and now social influence for hundreds of years.
• In the MarTech-Slide-of-the-Year news, this chart has found its way into so many sales decks and Andy Raskin details the reason.

Original Content, Series and Shows

The Ringer produced another amazing short, Takehunter. A creative spin on the Netflix series Mindhunter and the often overused industry term, ‘Hot Take’, this is genius-level creative work from the Ringer’s team. Chris Ryan, (Maester) Jason Concepcion and Micah Peters are excellent while Tyler Parker is a tour de force. I really hope this becomes a series. After the smash hit podcast, Binge Mode, The Ringer is creating some of the best content in media right now.

Univision is making original shows. Guess where they’re going to publish? Not univision, not HBO (of course), not Amazon nor Netflix. They’re going straight to YouTube.

Spotlights

Gary Vee interviews the legendary Seth Godin in his 37-minute vlog. It came out about a year and a half ago but has less than 200,000 views, which is truly unfortunate because we’ve got two powerhouses of content marketing.

Book

The seminal work from Clayton Christensen on why disruption occurs. In fact, he may have coined the concept with this book, likely to be read for generations: The Innovator’s Dilemma. He studied the lifecycle of fruit flies, applied it to the floppy disk business and extrapolated a framework that now seems to be common knowledge in the world of startups.

Marketing Q&A

Q: What are some good tools for writing better article headlines?

A: CoSchedule has a fantastic tool that helps you create and analyze effective headlines. MailChimp also has a tool built into the platform and has good information here.

Opportunities

Placed, a subsidiary of Snapchat, is looking for a Marketing Director. Check it out here.

Marketing Trends is written and curated by Ian Faison, Chief Content Officer of The Mission. The Mission creates original content, shows, and series for brands and distributes them to our audience of millions. To learn more, connect with us here. Or you can connect with me @ianfaison or email ian [at] themission [dot] co.