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- Instagram announces major backflip after backlash over influencer activity
- Inside the rise of Alix Earle, TikTok’s beauty breakout star
- How viral TikTok soda brand Olipop built its influencer marketing strategy
- Why Kia turned to TikTok to drive authentic brand engagement
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Great Reads
YouTube will start sharing ad money with Shorts creators on February 1st - The Verge
YouTube has announced that creators can start making ad revenue on Shorts starting February 1st, following a promise from September that the monetization option was on its way. The change is coming as part of a broader update to YouTube’s Partner Program, which will require everyone who’s currently part of it to sign new agreement terms, whether or not they’re looking to make money from Shorts.
Creators have been able to make some money from the format that rolled out in 2021 for a while via things like Super Chats and shopping integrations, as well as a creator fund that the company had set up, but that model wasn’t all that much better that TikTok’s monetization scheme. What TikTok doesn’t do, though, is directly share ad revenue with creators — something that YouTube has been doing for years for traditional videos and that it’s now bringing to Shorts.
Creators won’t necessarily have to opt in to shorts monetization if they don’t want to. YouTube says it’s introducing a modular system for the partner program’s terms — everyone in the program will have to sign a base agreement that dictates things like what you can post on the site and how payment works. That goes for creators who are already YouTube Partners; the company says they’ll have until July 10th, 2023, to accept the new terms, or else their ability to monetize with the platform will be turned off, and they’ll have to reapply to the program.
How a food influencer's chicken salad recipe helped WeightWatchers create its most popular TikTok video
WW International, the company formerly known as Weight Watchers, is in the “process of reinventing how we come to life and culture,” said Melanie Cohn Rabino, WW’s head of North America brand marketing and strategy. To do so, the brand has partnered with food influencer Nish Godfrey (@onlynishaa_), who has over 209,000 followers on TikTok.
In a video she posted to the platform in August, Godfrey shared a salad she made at 81stSt. Deli in Cleveland featuring chicken, pickles, banana peppers, bell peppers, tomatoes and onions. WW shared the video, which received more than 300,000 likes, and flew Godfrey to the company test kitchen in New York to make the salad. The company asked Godfrey to chronicle her journey to New York on social media and added her chicken salad to its app and provided a code to consumers for $10 off.
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Campaign Insights
Why Kia turned to TikTok to drive authentic brand engagement
To promote its new car release, Kia Motors turned to TikTok with the novel concept of tapping several of the platform’s popular creators to share livestreams of their road trips.
The idea was first hatched when TikTok approached Kia with the concept of a road trip-style campaign using its platform. When the right opportunity presented itself with the launch of the new Seltos, Kia took it.
Kia Motors digital marketing manager, Nikolas Souliotis, explained the brand loved the idea of breaking the norms of platform-brand relationships in a way he claimed had never been done before in Australia.
“A three-way partnership between Kia, TikTok and Creators Agency allowed us to step out of the edit suite and explore new ways of storytelling and content co-creation,” Souliotis told CMO.
With plenty of data under its belt, Kia has found TikTok a valuable platform for media and performance as well as a creative outlet and long-term brand-building channel. The automotive brand also knew TikTok could be a strategic platform to connect with a younger, diverse demographic – a core audience for the Seltos campaign – and build brand affinity so that when they move into different life stages, the brand has already established a relationship.
How viral TikTok soda brand Olipop built its influencer marketing strategy
Prebiotic soda brand Olipop has quickly reached virality on TikTok, to the point that its TikTok presence has become deeply interwoven with Olipop’s brand identity. Olipop launched in 2017, designed to offer a healthier alternative to traditional sugary sodas by swapping excessive sugar for fiber and prebiotics, but still serving classic soda flavors like root beer and cola. Today, the brand sells its sodas via its website, as well as through wholesale partnerships with a range of grocery retailers—including Target, Whole Foods, Kroger and Walmart—but Olipop’s business initially centered solely around its brick-and-mortar stores, located exclusively in California.
The COVID pandemic forced the soda brand to shift gears from those California stores and instead invest in e-commerce, he said. And with that change came the need to rework Olipop’s marketing strategy, leading the brand to turn from in-store events and promotions to social media, influencer partnerships, and ultimately, TikTok—which is currently the only platform in Olipop’s social media budget, he said.
“We’ve turned off all of our ad spend across every other social platform, so we’re just running ads on TikTok, forming creator partnerships, and making content for our organic page,” Vigilante said. “[TikTok] is literally our entire strategy right now. And the last few months have been our best ever as a business after shutting off all of those other platforms.”
Sephora is dropping the beauty lines of TikTok stars Addison Rae and Hyram Yarbro
It looks like the beauty products of two popular influencers — Addison Rae and Hyram Yarbro — might no longer be available in the malls of America.
Insider has confirmed from a well-connected industry source that Sephora will be pulling Addison Rae's Item Beauty and Hyram Yarbro's Selfless by Hyram from its shelves. While Item products are still available to purchase on the beauty giant's site, products from Selfless are nowhere to be found.
" Due to changes in direction and retail adjustments Selfless by Hyram products have been winding down at Sephora," Yarbro said in a statement to Insider. He added that the company plans to expand into new retailers, but his representative declined to disclose further specifics.
Music influencer Joe Porter helps The Home Depot recreate its iconic jingle using DIY items
TikTok users have known for years that The Home Depot’s repetitive jingle is a “certified banger.”
Taking advantage of the theme song’s popularity, the retailer’s social media and influencer marketing teams set out to recreate the iconic beat using only products from The Home Depot.
The organizations reached out to percussionist, teacher and composer Joe Porter to make the dream a reality, posting the result to TikTok and Instagram. Porter has more than 430,000 followers on TikTok and 3.7 million subscribers on YouTube.
In the video, Porter and others use pipes, a garbage can, buckets, a plunger and other DIY items as instruments.
“What started as a ‘crazy’ idea in a brainstorm turned into our most viewed and engaged-with post on both Instagram and TikTok,” Morgan Oberg, a senior social media specialist at The Home Depot, posted on LinkedIn.
The video, published on December 28, has amassed 2.3 million views on TikTok and 2.4 million views on Instagram.
Mike Cushing, a senior manager at The Home Depot who oversees organic social media, told PRWeek that there has been massive engagement with The Home Depot beat ever since it went viral on TikTok in 2019. At that time, the retailer distributed the song to social platforms to provide an official source for people to use.
“We knew we wanted to make the The Home Depot beat — and the great content attached to it — a pillar of our social content strategy,” Cushing said.
How TikTok influencers are helping companies recruit new workers
On TikTok, Emily Durham is a content creator with over 200,000 followers. She also works as a senior recruiter for Intuit. Durham’s following on the social platform and her success show how influencers and content creators on TikTok can strengthen a company’s recruiting efforts.
“Having a social presence has been a game changer for me from a professional perspective,” Durham said. “Probably half of the candidates that I reach out to have responded with, ‘Oh my god, I follow you on TikTok,’ especially with early career talent or when I’m recruiting for other HR roles at Intuit.”
Durham said while she doesn’t post Intuit-specific content, the company’s trust and open-mindedness about her TikTok presence allows her content to be mutually beneficial for her and Intuit. Her TikTok presence gives potential candidates familiarity and recognition that often leads them to apply and be interested in roles at Intuit.
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Interesting People
Viral YouTuber’s ‘Meet Kevin’ ETF Lands $11M in Assets in Just Over a Month
Popular YouTuber and financial advisor Kevin Paffrath's flagship exchange-traded fund, The Meet Kevin Pricing Power ETF (PP), saw assets grow more than twentyfold just over a month after the fund launched. The actively managed fund began trading on the NYSE Arca with $500,000 in assets on November 29th and has since topped $11.15 million, says the fund’s website. The fund invests in U.S.-listed equity securities of “innovative companies,” or firms that are able to increase prices and margins, while maintaining demand and prioritizing growth, according to the fund’s prospectus.
Paffrath attributed most, if not all, the fund’s success to an announcement posted on his “Meet Kevin” channel on YouTube, where the financial advisor has almost 2 million subscribers. " Our marketing expenses are basically zero for the ETF because of the channel’s popularity, which is perfect," Paffrath told ETF.com, adding that he expects most of PP’s investors to be viewers of his content online. However, despite Paffrath’s recent success as a high-profile “influencer,” social media stars selling investment products are sometimes viewed as a risk to investors. “Influencer/celebrity-endorsed products are typically a bad idea for investors,” Morningstar’s Director of Passive Strategies Research Bryan Armour told ETF.com in an email.
‘Sky is the limit’ for Misfits Boxing after DAZN rights deal, says KSI
DAZN has signed an exclusive five-year rights deal with Misfits Boxing, which will see the sports streaming service exclusively air fights from the KSI-backed boxing promotion.
The agreement with Misfits, founded by social media star JJ ‘KSI’ Olatunji, means DAZN will broadcast at least six MF & DAZN: X Series events a year, featuring famous names from entertainment, sport and lifestyle, including two pay-per-view (PPV) fight nights across more than 230 territories.
The partnership kicks off on 14th January with a card headlined by KSI and fellow YouTuber Faze Temperrr. The event will be available around the world for DAZN subscribers and as a PPV in Australia, Canada, France, the Netherlands, Mexico, New Zealand, Sweden, the UK, Ireland and the US.
Events on 25th February, 22nd April, 13th May, as well as another in June, have also been announced.
“With DAZN, it just shows that they believe in our vision and believe in the future of Misfits,” KSI told SportsPro.
“Obviously, we’re going to get haters or people complaining that this isn’t real boxing. But this isn’t traditional boxing. This is completely different. This is its own lane.
Inside the rise of Alix Earle, TikTok’s beauty breakout star
The " Get Ready With Me" (GRWM) concept on social media, where creators share their makeup routine with viewers, has been around since the early days of YouTube. However, University of Miami senior marketing major Alix Earle has recently reinvented the format on TikTok by using makeup and skincare as visual distractions while sharing stories about her often alcohol-fueled adventures or asking viewers engaging questions. Her following has grown rapidly, with 3.4 million followers on TikTok and 1.3 million on Instagram.
Even though stories, not beauty, are Earle's real focus, fans of the social media star flock to replicate her predictable yet captivating routine. Creator Diana Melstrad went as far as assembling a product-by-product breakdown of the makeup Earle regularly films herself using. The video has received over 80,000 likes. Celebrity makeup artist Danii also recreated Earle's entire go-to routine on TikTok, which received 13,000 likes in less than a day and has been viewed 295,000 times. Earle's appeal runs deeper than just her looks, as she is relatable, approachable and open about her struggles with cystic acne, and she is also known for giving away clothes to people who can't afford them, and volunteering her time to read books to children. " If you want to be a viral account on TikTok, you've got to be imperfect, open, honest, authentic," said creative TikTok strategist Keith Blackmer.
YouTuber Logan Paul’s CryptoZoo NFT project is a total mess
Logan Paul, a popular YouTuber with a large following on social media, is facing accusations that his CryptoZoo NFT project is a scam. Some investors lost up to half a million dollars, according to independent YouTube reporter Coffeezilla. The development of CryptoZoo has been stalled due to alleged nonpayment of coders. Paul had promoted the project on his YouTube channel and podcast, and had generated hype around it by promising fans that they could buy an NFT of an egg, which hatches into an animal that is assigned one of five levels of rarity. These animals can be bred to produce more eggs that hatch hybrid animals, which also have specific rarity levels. Paul promised fans that they could play games with their animals, which would eventually “enter the metaverse,” according to CryptoZoo’s product roadmap. However, most of the goals on the product roadmap have not been achieved and the project turned out to be a scam.
According to an independent reporter Coffeezilla, who released a three-part video series at the end of December, Paul had employed multiple con men to work on the project. ""I know what you’re thinking. What type of idiot would work with an unsavory individual like Zach Kelling?” Paul said in his response video. He blames this hire on Eddie Ibanez, the former lead developer of CryptoZoo. “I guess that’s what I get for trusting the team that I relied on to vet and manage Eddie’s hiring process, who has turned out to be a professional con man.
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Industry News
Snapchat invests in AR shopping solutions
Snap Inc., the company behind the Snapchat app, claims to have no fewer than 363 million daily users worldwide, with over 6 billion filters (called “lenses” by Snap) applied daily, and 250 million people swapping filters online every day. The US company said that it can rely on over 300,000 content developers, who have designed and produced a total of 3 million different filters. The latest Avatar filters, created for the second instalment of James Cameron’s sci-fi film saga, and the “crying lenses”, which transform faces and make them cry in videos, are the source of endless digital fun.
Snap now wants to exploit its AR know-how more intensely, by developing a much broader and more marketable range of solutions.
The company set up an AR studio in Paris last year, and is now busy showcasing the extent of its potential. Last autumn, Snap staged a cultural initiative in collaboration with the Centre Pompidou in Paris. Applying AR filters to the museum’s façade, the app encouraged its users, most of them young (94% of 15 to 24-year-olds in France are Snapchat users, according to a survey by Médiametry carried out in spring 2022), to connect with the museum in an original way.
Instagram announces major backflip after backlash over influencer activity
Instagram has announced it will put its Create button back in the centre of its main navigation bar and remove the Shop tab.
Instagram head Adam Mosseri said in a Reel on Monday the move would “simplify” the app and refocus its priorities to “bring people together over what they love”.
The new order of the navigation bar will be Home, Search, Create, Reels and Profile. The proposed changes will take effect in February.
A spokesperson for Meta, which owns Instagram, did not respond to a request for comment.
While the dedicated Shop tab will disappear, Mosseri said in his Reel that “you’ll still be able to shop on Feed, in Stories, in Reels and in ads”.
Instagram also stated on its help page that it would “continue to invest in shopping experiences that provide the most value for people and businesses across feed, stories, reels, ads and more”.
Meta to stop letting advertisers target teens by gender
Meta Platforms Inc., the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, said advertisers will no longer be able to use a teenager’s gender to target them with promoted messages on its sites.
The updated settings are scheduled to go into effect in February, according to a company blog post, and will mean advertisers can market to teens based only on age and location. Meta previously stopped advertisers from targeting teenagers based on their Facebook or Instagram activity, such as the Pages they like.
“We recognize that teens aren’t necessarily as equipped as adults to make decisions about how their online data is used for advertising, particularly when it comes to showing them products available to purchase,” Meta said Tuesday in its blog post. “For that reason, we’re further restricting the options advertisers have to reach teens, as well as the information we use to show ads to teens.”
At CES 2023, agencies outline progress and potential around the metaverse, podcasting and sustainability
Marketers and agencies at CES’ C Space on Friday delved into the evolution of podcasting and audio, honing in on how these platforms fit into the future of advertising and technology. In a conversation with SiriusXM executives, Sarah Stringer, evp and head of U.S. media partnerships at Dentsu, spoke about how the agency has participated in helping podcasting grow into a multibillion industry in recent years.
Like many agencies, Dentsu has experimented with different ad formats and content creators to help clients find novel activations and executions in the medium. Stringer said Dentsu has been researching the attention economy for five years, and found that sound has been among the major important drivers for recall for people. In other words, audio recognition of something like tunes and jingles is strong.
“A jingle or something of audio recognition that would really give you that moment — we’re really seeing that kind of coming back to the fore,” Stringer said. “For me, I think that this renaissance in audio that has really been driven by podcasting is the fact that people feel so passionately about the things that they follow. It’s allowing for better cut through.”
FanZone: New Income Streams For College And Professional Athletes
FanZone is a social app that helps athletes monetize their name, image, and likeness (NIL) through a subscription model for paid exclusive content for fans. The app has various engagement features, such as messaging, video chats, live streams and custom experiences, which allow athletes to monetize their NIL at the college or professional level.
FanZone was founded by former college tennis player Weston Brach, who saw an opportunity in the newly allowed monetization of NIL for college athletes. Marketing for the app has been primarily organic, with outreach to existing social media, Zoom calls, email, and coverage in publications. The app provides a monthly recurring revenue for athletes and allows for upselling and monetization through engagement features. Fans pay a subscription fee to access the athlete's content, and athletes can set the subscription price.
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Great Paywalled Content
12 AI tools that could transform the creator economy and influencer marketing - Business Insidder
Since the artificial-intelligence chat bot ChatGPT became available to the general public, the internet has been abuzz with excitement and debate about its potential — from how it may replace Google to how it may cause issues of plagiarism in academia.
ChatGPT, which can generate detailed text answers to prompts and questions, is an example of generative AI. Generative AI identifies a type of artificial intelligence that can repurpose existing content from data sets to independently come up with something new and creative.
Creators are one category of professionals who could benefit from generative AI tools, and many have been trying their hand at using ChatGPT to help with their own content-creation efforts.
Tech YouTuber Marques Brownlee, known for his channel MKBHD, asked ChatGPT to write part of the script for a video he titled "The Truth About AI Getting 'Creative'" — and it was pretty similar to something he'd write himself.
And on social platforms, creators have been discussing how ChatGPT and other similar AI text tools could streamline the content-writing process by providing a first draft based on a prompt.
Besides ChatGPT, there are many other AI startups cropping up — and some of them could make a tangible impact on the way creators work.
"Constantly having to come up with new content can be a struggle and a very serious source of burnout for creators," said Lia Haberman, adjunct marketing professor at UCLA Extension, adding that AI could help.
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