An Ignoble Experiment: How March Madness influencer strategies are shaping up

Created for ignoble.experiment@arconati.us | Web Version

March 11, 2022

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The Big Story

How March Madness influencer strategies are shaping up

This year's March Madness is the first during which brands will be able to use college players within their influencer marketing, and research from Influential shows tournament fans are particularly interested in snacks, sneakers and fast food. Erika Wheless takes a look at strategies being adopted by brands such as Outback Steakhouse, and talks to influencer marketing experts who offer tips for brands.

Full Story: Ad Age (tiered subscription model) (3/11)

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Connecting & Collaborating

American Eagle bets on digital efforts to drive growth

American Eagle is building upon augmented reality and gaming efforts that generated $5 million in sales last year with experimental digital marketing, including a metaverse club, immersive Snapchat Snapcode experiences in retail stores and a Twitch partnership. The efforts are designed to boost sales further and fortify the brand perception as "innovative and cutting edge" among its target audience of Generation Z consumers, says American Eagle Chief Marketing Officer Craig Brommers.

Full Story: Digiday (tiered subscription model) (3/9)

How to maximize social commerce with chatbots

(Pixabay)

Brands can capture a larger share of social commerce spending, which is projected to reach $99 billion by 2025, by using conversational APIs to answer FAQs and advanced natural language processing that incorporates a brand persona and delivers personalized offers, writes Sinch for Marketing President Matt Ramerman. The result is "a deeply curated customer experience that combines the intimacy of the in-store shopping experience with the convenience and immediacy of social media," Ramerman writes.

Full Story: Total Retail (3/7)

How Walgreens cultivated a group of master storytellers

Rego Marquiis, Walgreens' head of creative, discusses The LOOP group of in-house storytellers charged with heightening brand perception and consumer connections in-store and online. Walgreens' YouTube docuseries "The Vaccine, In Our Words" yielded a 600% increase in page views and dwell time and provided repeatable data points for future efforts.

Full Story: ClickZ (3/10)

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Marketer Moments

Acura uses metaverse, NFTs to unveil 2023 Integra

(Acura)

Acura is unveiling its 2023 Integra model on March 22 within a metaverse showroom titled "Acura of Decentraland" where consumers can virtually explore the vehicle, play games and buy branded clothing designed by artist Andreas Wannerstedt. The campaign includes limited-edition nonfungible tokens also designed by Wannerstedt, which will be awarded to the first 500 customers to reserve the vehicle, and spots running across TV and social media.

Full Story: Marketing Dive (3/10)

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Platform News

Pinterest readies new shopping service, ad option

(Pixabay)

Pinterest said during its advertiser summit that it is testing in the US a Your Shop personal shopping concierge, which delivers brand and product information based on users' platform activity and preferences, and is slated for rollout later this year. Pinterest also is testing Idea Ads, which enables brands to team with creators in a paid content partnership, and will offer more insights in its Pinterest Trends tool for US, UK and Canadian businesses.

Full Story: MediaPost Communications (free registration) (3/10), Social Media Today (3/10), Adweek (3/10), Engadget (3/10)

Reddit offers deeper post insights with Creator Stats

Reddit is reprising its Creator Stats tool for desktop users following tests that enabled post originators and moderators to glean insights after a post gains 10 views. Metrics, such as total post views and upvote rates, are viewable for 45 days, and Reddit plans to offer the dashboard via its app in the future.

Full Story: Social Media Today (3/10), Adweek (3/10)

Instagram's Creator Lab offers tips, best practices
Social Media Today (3/10)

How Twitter plans to add 100M users by end of 2023
The Verge (3/10)

Measurement Matters

Report: Privacy adherence costs escalate for brands

Brands spent $398,320 per 1 million identities to fulfill data subject requests in 2021, more than double the rate from 2020, according to a study conducted by privacy platform DataGrail. Data subject requests nearly doubled to 266 million, per 1 million requests, with 63% asking the brand not to sell their information, while 31% asked to be removed.

Full Story: MediaPost Communications (free registration) (3/10)

Social Shareable

Sassy the cat lives up to her name

(brittgardner83/TikTok)

A TikTok video that captures a cat named Sassy in the act of stealing food has attracted 5.6 million views and more than 863,000 likes. The clip shows Sassy with the front half of her body wedged into a plastic food container as she gobbles dried cat food, before her name is called and she begins to frantically wriggle her behind in an effort to reverse out.

Full Story: Newsweek (tiered subscription model) (3/10)

Flashback

Flashback to ... March 2016

If you asked today’s social media and digital marketers for the “go-to” social platform, they’d likely say TikTok. But, six years ago, Snapchat was “conquering the social Web.” A story from Bloomberg reported that 41% of consumers under 35 years of age used Snapchat on a daily basis.

Other SmartBrief headlines from March 4, 2016:

Instagram becomes more than just a hub for trendspotting
Survey: Live-streaming becoming a staple in marketing mix
Ruby Tuesday goes social to win back young families

Note: Some links in SmartBrief archives are time-sensitive. These URLs may have changed or sources may have changed their access.

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Investing the time and effort in understanding web3 and metaverse now, when the stakes are low, is a worthwhile investment that will pay dividends for decades to come.

Brendan Gahan, chief social officer and partner at Mekanism, as quoted by Digiday