Mediaboss Marketing

The social media landscape is in a dire state. Our feeds have gone from looking like boutique fairs to crowded neighbourhood strata malls, and influencers resemble coupon books more than creatives. As The New York Times tech writer Tiffany Hsu puts it, were in a a junk-ad epidemic because online, ads are sometimes most successful when they are eye-catchingly terrible.

As a content creator and social media consultant for companies, I witness the deterioration of both these camps daily. Beyond having over 140,000 followers across TikTok and Instagram, I have a company, Myriad Media, which consults clients on how to better their social media game. My day job is to help brands navigate this slippery slope of cringe and, well, it has not been easy.

The issue, I reckon, is that the over-commercialisation of social media is being fuelled by companies overly obsessed with measuring Return on Investments (ROI). It is evident in their ads, which are often excessively flashy, salesy, loud, and, often have knock-on effects on how they work with influencers. As a result of pressure from their clients, many content creators are starting to lean into clickbait to push fast sales rather than selling through compelling narratives that make them attractive advertisers to begin with.

The fundamental issue at play is how social media marketing teams work. They are increasingly coerced by their companies to report relentless increases in sales and profits. As a result, they are losing sight of the big picture that storytelling and brand building are at the heart of successful long-term marketing campaigns.

Lets look back to the days when advertising primarily took place on billboards, TV, and radio. There was no way to track how many individuals who saw an ad on the train or during the breaks of their favourite sitcom were being converted into buyers or clients. As a result, creative agencies had to ensure their ads were so compelling that as many viewers as possible would become customers.

Today, the landscape has changed. With the advent of social media analytics, companies mistakenly believe they now have, at the palms of their hands, a shortcut to accessible (and cost-effective) advertising. We are seeing captivating ads being replaced by the magnitude of methods that give marketers the highest click-through conversions on posts. These methods big discounts, catchy promotions, and hard-selling will deteriorate a brands image without storytelling and compelling narrative-based advertising.

After all, in the words of marketing strategist Seth Godin, people do not buy goods and services. They buy relations, stories and magic.

The issue isnt so much that click-throughs arent effective metrics of success. The issue is that they usually do less for a brands longevity and image than many think. Hard selling, for example, may bring in some sales. But what has it done for the brands image? What story of the company have viewers left with? Do they know anything about the brands values, history, how far it has come or its beginnings?

There are so many more opportunities to give clients an idea of what a brand is truly about through ads that include forms of storytelling. And while these ads arent pushy about making sales, they bring them in regardless just at different timelines. When you make storytelling content, both for yourself and with content creators, you are slowly, brick by brick, building a persona for the company. Eventually, this will reach the people who share the companys values and, most importantly, need the product or service you sell, thereby increasing the chances of them becoming loyal customers.

For instance, my most effective campaigns as an influencer came from videos that were so authentic that you could almost not even realise it was an ad. One of these a campaign spanning multiple videos on both my profiles and the clients account doubled the companys monthly sales in a few months.

Starbucks changed me Im a city gurl now

This is not the same campaign as the one mentioned above, but this TikTok ad I made for Starbucks did very well, likely because it mixed narrative and humour, and featured a strong character (the Italian abroad).

This is where the art of sandwiching comes in, where you layer the product, service, or promotion between folds of compelling narrative. The story draws the viewer in and eventually converts into a customer. While the immediate gain in sales may be lower than a straight-forward promotional video, when done correctly, video after video, photo after photo, this method can grow your brand awareness so vast that the sales will inevitably follow through.

If this style of marketing is neglected, marketers will struggle to constantly stay afloat in the loud and ever-changing social media landscape. They will be continuously stuck constructing quick promotions and sales to be advertised and boosted online, then rinse and repeat when the last one loses relevance.

While I was looking to promote a new experience and deal available at this restaurant, I did it here by subtly bringing it up in a vlog.

Over the past few years, we have seen social media change drastically. Apps like TikTok and features like Instagrams Reels and Shorts have gone from not existing to taking up colossal amounts of attention online. Still, despite these and countless more changes, KPIs in marketing teams have mainly (and strangely) remained the same.

The biggest mindset shift marketers need is to fundamentally remove the notion that social media marketing literally means making advertisements in the traditional sense online. There are so many more ways to raise the status and awareness of a brand now without having to turn to commercials.

Embedding product or business mentions in storytelling is one way, but there are countless others as well. Marketing professional Coco Mocoe, host of the Ahead Of The Curve With Coco Mocoe podcast, explains that sometimes, the most innovative advertising campaigns are about indirectly creating a feeling in a consumer that your brand is the best, without spelling it out to them.

If I were trying to promote a makeup line, I would pay an influencer to use a subpar brand, she explains. (I would get the influencer to say): Im (using) a dupe right now of this brand because I couldnt get my hands on this brand, Im going see if its the same.

That elevates your brand immediately, she continues. If there is something perceived of lower quality than what you offer, it establishes that you are higher than that thing, a fellow marketer on her podcast chimed in.

Today, tech giants continue to gatekeep organic reach in hopes that brands spend precious ad dollars. Save your money, brands, because content creators like me have better chances at attaining that precious paid reach because consumers value interpersonal social authenticity.

But it doesnt mean companies should work with a creator simply because thats what everyone else is doing. Brand messaging is a critical consideration when partnering with influencers. Companies should identify influencers whose values and content align with their own and who can organically infuse their service or product in their content lineup.

An example of excellent influencer marketing by Malaysian content creator, Jenn Chia. Her campaigns often start with a story that hooks viewers in before going into the product she is advertising.

Still, if fast-turning sales KPIs are the goal (which is completely valid in the grand scheme of marketing efforts), then working with dedicated online sellers is an avenue they can explore. But companies that value sophistication and storytelling should always invest in working with influencers who turn to narrative content over hard selling, firm in their belief that the creator they work with is a direct reflection and representation of their brand.

Do you see yourself as a strong and sophisticated brand? Then, forking out a certain amount to work with creators with loyal followings and clever narratives should be budgeted in. If youre only making coupon code ads that users skip with a flick of a finger, ask yourself: Is this all your brand is worth?

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Dear companies, your social media marketing is tedious and it's cheapening your brand - The Peak Singapore

New research shows the extent to which Labours hopes of achieving power depends on overcoming recent divisions between school-leavers and graduates.

In a paper published today by the Social Market Foundation (a cross-party think tank), leading political scientist Professor Rob Ford presents new analysis of Britains education divide and what it means for the coming general election. It shows that education is now one of the strongest predictors of vote choice and political values.

The divide is relatively recent, Prof Ford shows, having opened up since the 2016 Brexit referendum. In 2014, graduates and school-leavers were as likely to vote for Labour or Conservatives. However, Labour now does much better with university graduates and the Conservatives base has shifted towards those with GCSE qualifications or less.

This poses electoral challenges for all major parties. For the Conservatives to retain power, they can scarcely afford to lose seats in the red wall where school leavers are dominant but declining in numbers, whilst also having to stem losses in blue wall seats where graduates who now shun the party are the largest group. By contrast, for Labour to secure a Commons majority, they must gain at least 120 seats and will have to expand their coalition to include more school leavers, who are overrepresented in the constituencies Labour has lost to the Conservatives since 2015 and needs to win back.

With the political agenda currently dominated by economic issues like the cost-of-living that dont divide people as strongly on educational lines, politicians may have an easier job bringing both sides together. However, there are still big issues on the agenda which divide voters deeply by education, including immigration and the environment. More broadly, university graduates express much more liberal values while school leavers tend to hold authoritarian views value orientations which inform a wide variety of political beliefs.

School leavers are declining rapidly as a share of the electorate everywhere, with particularly steep declines in many competitive red wall seats. Graduate shares are growing fastest in seats in and around London, and a growing swathe of blue wall seats in the London commuter belt now have graduate majorities.

Other key findings include:

Rob Ford, Professor at The University of Manchester and Senior Fellow at UK in a Changing Europe, said:

The education divide is here to stay, with implications for all the political parties. Our new report underlines how education has become a central dividing line in politics, second only to age as a predictor of voters choices. All parties face new challenges from an electoral landscape being reshaped by demographic change, and neither Labour nor the Conservatives can hope to win the next general election without bridging the deep divide between graduates and school leavers, two groups with distinct identities and values who have been at loggerheads ever since the EU referendum.

Professor Anand Menon, Director of UK in a Changing Europe, said:

Our politics are changing. Recent electoral volatility can be put down to a number of factors. One of these is the emergence of new fault lines such as the education divide identified so clearly in this excellent report. This has significant electoral implications going forward, as Professor Ford clearly argues. It also has implications for perceptions of, and approaches to, higher education.

Dr Aveek Bhattacharya, Director of the Social Market Foundation, said:

As this research shows, the education divide has emerged rapidly to become one of the most significant electoral phenomena of recent times. That is of vital importance to political strategists seeking to win elections. But the bigger challenge is for the politicians that have to bring graduates and school-leavers together, help them to treat one another with respect and unite them in shared national project. The education divide must be healed, not just exploited.

Notes

Figure 1: Shares (%) of England and Wales residents by qualification level (2001-2021 censuses)

Figure 2: The education divide in Conservative support, 2014-2023

Source: British Election Study internet panel 2014-2023

Figure 3: The education divide in Labour support 2014-2023

Source: British Election Study internet panel 2014-2023

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Labour must straddle the education divide to achieve victory - The Social Market Foundation

1. Main points

Ahead of the 28th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28), in the period between 15 and 26 of November, we asked adults in Great Britain about climate change and how it had impacted their lifestyle.

When asked about the important issues facing the UK today, adults continued to report the cost of living (89%), the NHS (87%) and the economy (74%) as the top three issues.

The fourth most important issue remainedclimate change and the environment, which was reported by around 6 in 10 (61%) adults; this was a decline from 66% of adults choosing the same issue last year ahead of COP27 (in the period 26 October to 6 November 2022).

Other important issues reported in the current period included crime (60%), housing (59%), immigration (54%) and international conflict (50%).

We asked adults the extent to which they had made changes to their lifestyle to tackle climate change; around 1 in 12 adults (8%) reported they had made a lot of changes, around two in three (64%) had made some changes, and around 3 in 10 (28%) had made no changes.

Among those who had made a lot of or some changes to their lifestyle to tackle climate change, the most reported concerns that motivated them to do so were the effect on future generations (69%), loss of natural habitats or wildlife (66%), and the direct effects of climate change such as extreme weather events or rising sea levels on others (52%) or themselves (32%).

Among adults who had not made changes to their lifestyle, the most reported reasons for this were thinking the changes they make will have no effect on climate change (41%), thinking large polluters should change before individuals (34%) and finding it too expensive to make changes (30%).

Compared with last year's estimates (in the period 20 to 31 July 2022), among adults who had not made changes to their lifestyle, there was an increase in the proportion of those who thought the changes they make will have no effect on climate change (41%, compared with 32% in 2022), thought the effects of climate change are exaggerated (11%, compared with 4%), and said they do not believe in climate change (7%, compared with 3%); these differences in sentiment may be influenced by an extreme heatwave in July 2022.

This release contains data and indicators from the Office for National Statistics' (ONS's) Opinions and Lifestyle Survey (OPN).

From the 16 June 2023 release onwards, we have made changes that reduce the scope of the release and accompanying datasets. This is based on a routine review of the relevance and usefulness of this release.

Breakdowns by age and sex are no longer provided for fortnightly estimates in the latest Public opinions and social trends, Great Britain datasets. All previous versions of the dataset remain available from this page. Estimates from the OPN by these and other personal characteristics will continue to be provided on a regular basis in other ONS releases. For example, OPN estimates relating to the impact of the cost of living among different sub-groups of the population are provided within the regular Impact of increased cost of living on adults across Great Britain series.

Confidence intervals are provided for all estimates in the datasets. Where changes in results from previous weeks are presented in this release, or comparisons between estimates are made, associated confidence intervals should be used to assess the statistical significance of the differences.

In the latest period (15 to 26 December 2023), we sampled 4,989 households. This sample was randomly selected from people who had previously completed the Labour Market Survey (LMS) or OPN. The responding sample for the latest period contained 2,424 individuals, representing a 48.6% response rate.

Survey weights were applied to make estimates representative of the population (based on ONS population estimates). Because of sampling changes in July 2023, some groups in our unweighted sample may be over-represented. Although our weighting strategy aims to account for this, in some instances, we may see some differences in population totals presented in the data tables from wave to wave. Further information on the survey design and quality can be found in our Opinions and Lifestyle Survey Quality and Methodology Information (QMI).

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Public opinions and social trends, Great Britain: 15 to 26 November ... - Office for National Statistics

Destination marketing experts believe artificial intelligence will have a significant impact on the sector, according to a new report.

Sojern's State of Destination Marketing 2024, released Monday, revealed that 49% of destination marketing organizations (DMO) are expecting a significant impact from AI.

In content creation and personalization, 37% believed it will have a high impact, while 44% said some impact. In campaign creation and optimization, 29% said it will have a high impact versus 47% that said some impact.

Meanwhile, in data analysis and interpretation, 38% said they see a high impact while 43% said some impact.

The report covers further trends in DMO marketing with marketers saying 20-40% of budgets are devoted to creating content with the remaining 60-80% going towards paid marketing to promote that content.

Search and social media marketing dominate paid media, and nearly all DMOs, 96%, said they view social media advertising to be of high or average importance, and 95% said the same for search. Programmatic came next at 86% followed by influencer marketing at 74%.

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Despite the recognition of the importance of social media marketing, TikTok is seen as one of the top three social marketing channels by only 29% of DMOs.

Further insight from the report includes that more than half of respondents, 54%, view data as the most valuable resource for marketing planning, and 38% said the same of data in campaign reporting.

When it came to the challenges of using data in marketing, respondents flagged the lack of data integration across channels as a top concern followed by the high cost of acquiring data and limited access to quality data.

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Destinations weigh up impact of AI - PhocusWire

Sociable is the latest commentary on important social media developments and trends from industry expert Andrew Hutchinson of Social Media Today.

If you follow broader news in the tech sector at all, you have no doubt seen reports about the chaos at OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT and Dall-E, among other AI projects. The company is seemingly now imploding before our eyes, marking what may be the fastest, and most unusual fall from grace that weve ever witnessed.

And while the dust is yet to fully settle, it does seem like a significant shift in AI development is coming, which relates to several social media platforms directly, and could influence their trajectory on this front going forward.

First off, theres the Microsoft angle, which has become a key player in the OpenAI debacle.

Over the weekend, once the OpenAI board decided to fire CEO Sam Altman, Microsoft immediately readied to take him on, and it still seems poised to reposition Altman as the CEO of its own, new AI arm, if the OpenAI board is unable to retain him.

The uncertainty over where Altman will wind up is the current stalling point. Many OpenAI staff have vowed to walk if Altman is not reinstated, while OpenAIs board is still seemingly undecided on the best path forward. Altman has been in talks to potentially return, under certain conditions, but its unclear whether the OpenAI team will agree to such.

Negotiations, as they say, are ongoing.

Microsoft, meanwhile, has invested billions into OpenAI, in order to become a key player in the rapidly evolving AI space. Along with this, Microsoft has also now built generative AI elements, based on OpenAIs GPT system, into virtually all of its tools and platforms, including LinkedIn.

At the same time, Microsoft has reportedly committed $50 billion to AI infrastructure over the next five years, in order to boost its capacity, again largely on the back of its partnership with OpenAI.

Essentially, OpenAI is already Microsofts AI arm, and its deeply invested in securing its future operations on this front, either by facilitating a re-establishment of OpenAIs board and executive, or by taking on as many OpenAIemployees as it can, if things end up falling apart.

In a social media context, theres not a heap more thats immediately on the cards, as LinkedIn has already crammed AI elements into almost every aspect of its platform as it is. But Microsoft will no doubt be looking for new angles and tools as time goes on, which is where these negotiations are relevant.

Will the changes at OpenAI derail Microsofts broader AI plans? That seems unlikely.

If anything, a full ouster of Altman will likely expedite Microsofts own AI development, by handing it a number of key staff, though it could change the development trajectory of AI tools more broadly, in terms of safety versus development. Which has reportedly been at the core of the conflict within OpenAI, with board members and staff in disagreement around fundamental approaches on these grounds.

We dont have all the details on this as yet, but essentially, Microsoft looks well-placed to move forward with its AI plans, regardless of the final outcome.

Another AI player is Meta, which is developing its own generative AI models, and has even partnered with Microsoft on some projects.

Meta could also stand to benefit here, if OpenAI does indeed fall apart, which is still possible, based on the number of staff pledging allegiance to Altman, and vowing to quit OpenAI unless hes reinstated.

Those employees will be in high demand for other AI projects, and Meta could snap them up, while it may also see Microsoft increase its reliance on its partnership with Meta for future AI development, if it ends up seeking more stability, depending on whats left of the OpenAI team.

X, via its xAI project, has also opened the door to any OpenAI staff that may want to come on board to help it develop its AI tools. It now has its own chatbot, in Grok, and internal knowledge of OpenAIs systems would be of great benefit to its evolving projects.

xAI still remains a smaller player, in comparison to Meta, Google, and Microsoft (via OpenAI). But Elon Musk is keen to be a leader, and hes also super keen to destroy OpenAI if he can, given his past relationship with the company.

Salesforce has also put the call out to OpenAI staff looking for a new project, while others will be putting out feelers to see what they can get.

Essentially, a full breakdown of OpenAI would shake-up the AI development landscape, and ultimately benefit the remaining players, while OpenAI itself fades out.

The alternative is that OpenAI can come to an agreement with its former leaders, and establish a new way forward, but negotiations remain ongoing, and its hard to know exactly where things will end up at this stage.

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Sociable: Will chaos at OpenAI benefit social media's AI projects? - Marketing Dive