MWW Presents: MediaQuake

Happy Pride Month! This is certainly a great time of year to see so many brands showcasing their continued support for the broader LGBTQ+ community. This year’s Pride month activations have felt especially authentic and uniquely impactful. Some of our favorite brand activations include:

• Guitar Center’s month-long Sounds of Pride content series spotlighting LGBTQ artists, on Guitar Center’s Riffs blog and social media channels, celebrating the unique musical contributions and legacy of the LGBTQ community.
• YouTube’s #YouTubePrideChallenge will give a $1 donation to the Trevor Project for each Short made with the corresponding hashtag.
• NYX Cosmetics in partnership with The Sandbox will debut a collection of inclusive NFT avatars featuring a diverse range of skin tones and gender and cultural expression, created with Web3 group People of Crypto Lab to improve diversity in the metaverse.

QUICK HITS: PLATFORMS

• Twitter is starting to roll out its ‘Notes’ feature, a new way to write long-form content on the platform. Users will see a new ‘Write’ tab, which is where they can write and access all of their Notes. These users will also have a new ‘Notes’ tab in their profile that holds their published work to make it easy for their followers to find their long-form content. We think this will become an interesting feature for thought leadership, especially at the exec-level.
• Meta announced a range of new Reels updates. 1) Reels are now allowed to go up to 90 seconds, 2) brands and creators can import their own audio, and 3) Reel templates were released to help creators save time and energy in production, important for small businesses and emerging creators.
• TikTok added new insights elements to its evolving Creative Center platform, which provides deeper insight into trending songs, hashtags, regional performance stats, key influencers, and more. This tool provides digital marketers with more granular data around TikTok and can be useful for marketers searching for TikTok influencers or copywriters writing commentary on their band or influencer’s content.

QUICK HITS: PODCASTS

• A new joint study between Cumulus Media and Signal Hill found 60% of weekly podcast listeners saying they prefer podcasts with video.
• Spotify introduced call-to-action (CTA) cards to bring interactivity to podcast ads. For background, call-to-action cards (CTA cards) are clickable, interactive companion display units that are triggered when your audio ad is played.
• Notable Brand Activation: American Girl, owned by Mattel, launched the American Girl Podcast Network or ‘AG’ to produce a variety of family-friendly podcasts rooted in the brand’s character product line.

QUICK HITS: METAVERSE

• According to Wunderman Thompson Intelligence, nearly 74% of consumers heard of the metaverse as of March, but only 15% of respondents felt they could explain what the metaverse is to other people.
• United Talent Agency released a metaverse study in partnership with VOX Media which found that 80% of consumers say they’re open to brands being involved in the metaverse. More specifically, the study found that 53% of consumers want brands to help them have experiences that they couldn’t have in the physical world.
• A new study from EY found that 97% of executives believe the gaming industry is central to the development of the metaverse, and 48% said the metaverse will change gaming company business models and drive revenue while also giving brands new opportunities to build relationships with their customers.
• In a recent op-ed in Adweek, Clayton Durant, MikeWorldWide’s Senior Manager of Emerging Media explores the metaverse with the idea that due to the limited nature of interconnectivity between different metaverse platforms, brands are being forced to pick and choose their metaverse carefully.

Want to learn more? Connect at mhueter@mww.com