Marketing News Roundup: March 15, 2021
Welcome to another weekly roundup across tech, social platform and marketing campaign news! On the tech front, NewNew emerges, aiming to allow influencers to monetize their every move, a look at the top-selling art NFT of all time, and more. For social platforms, Facebook goes after TikTok with new short form video formats and monetization opportunities for creators. On the marketing front, Burger King gets grilled for its International Women’s Day campaign, to which a female-founded U.S. agency has a brilliant response. There’s also a shocking $600 million lawsuit between Dolce & Gabbana has filed against a social media influencer. Sound interesting? Let’s jump in!
Burger King Gets Grilled for ‘Women Belong in the Kitchen’ Tweet Supporting Female Chefs
Women belong in the kitchen. This was the phrase at the center of Burger King’s International Women’s Day campaign which resulted in a proper social media grilling of the fast-food chain. Launched in the New York Times with a print ad, the phrase, “Women belong in the kitchen,” was followed with text announcing the launch of the company’s H.E.R. (Helping Equalize Restaurants) Scholarship. The scholarship offers financial assistance to women who work at Burger King and aspire to an academic degree in culinary arts.
While the print ad gives context to the controversial headline, some of Burger King’s local market Twitter accounts, like @BurgerKingUK, tweeted the headline without context, sparking an uproar online. Although Burger King tried to quickly fan the flames by responding to fans and creating a thread out of the controversial tweet, it wasn’t enough and the tweet was eventually deleted and an apology tweet was posted.
Why this matters: A lot of breaking through in social media has become about being controversial, snarky or sensational. Burger King knew that it was taking a risk by using language saying that “Women belong in the kitchen,” and decided the risk was worth it. However, many would challenge if the risk was worth it. The print ad, when paired with context, seemed to fare better than the tweet without context. This is a big lesson to brands that the devil is in the details. Especially when running global campaigns. Allowing tweets with such language to go out without context was a huge mistake by Burger King and they ultimately paid the price.
My hot take? I don’t like the strategy of using misogynistic language to spark controversy and eyeballs. I think Burger King could have gotten its message out in a better way. I would love to hear your thoughts on the campaign in a comment below.
Agency sells Burger King merch that flips the script on chain’s flawed International Women’s Day campaign
In response to Burger King’s controversial International Women’s Day campaign, Hunt, Gather, a women majority-owned agency with 95 percent female staff based in Austin, Texas, decided to rework the campaign with a “Burger Queen” line of merchandise. The article details how the agency had to do this in very short order, but was passionate about bringing messages of female empowerment to the forefront. The proceeds from the campaign go to the Girls Empowerment Network, which runs camps and sells kits to inspire girls that they can become anything they want to be.
Check out some of the items – I think they are really well-done!
Dolce & Gabbana files €600M lawsuit in Italian court against American fashion bloggers who exposed racist messages from founder mocking Chinese culture saying ‘we celebrate dogs we cannot eat’
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9333829/Dolce-Gabbana-seeks-600M-damages-2-US-bloggers.html
Post 1 from Diet Prada: https://www.instagram.com/p/CMATJ4lH5k-/
Post 2 from Diet Prada: https://www.instagram.com/p/CMIpCq9nEy0/
In 2018, fashion watchdog bloggers and influencers, Diet Prada, exposed racist messages from Dolce & Gabbana founder, Stefano Gabbana’s Instagram account. This came after three promotional videos from the brand’s Weibo account were deleted featuring a Chinese woman using chopsticks to eat pizza and other Italian food were deemed offensive. Both of these incidents resulted in widespread criticism of the brand and its founders, subsequently cancelling the company’s Shanghai fashion show.
While Dolce & Gabbana immediately issued a video apology on Weibo, what we didn’t see is that the company also filed a €600 million civil suit against Diet Prada in 2019. This only became public as a result of posts on the Diet Prada Instagram.
Why this matters: Diet Prada is known for being an outspoken fashion watchdog group and their decision to come out about the lawsuit is no surprise. Diet Prada claims that Dolce & Gabbana was quick to apologize, but then quietly shifted the blame and financial burden onto their company. In response, Diet Prada is not only using their platform to raise awareness for this, but also to ask for funding help to afford the lawsuit. While media outlets are often the target of lawsuits, what’s interesting about this is that Diet Prada is a hybrid of media outlet, watchdog group and influencer. Diet Prada is fighting the suit on the grounds of freedom of speech, but if they were found liable, it would put them out of business and set a precedence that companies can go after similar influencers and watchdog groups in the same way.
File this one under: One to watch.
Triller Network Acquires Verzuz
https://www.billboard.com/index.php/articles/business/9536996/triller-acquires-verzuz
If you haven’t heard of Verzuz yet – you should! Verzuz is a popular livestreaming music platform created by Swizz Beatz and Timbaland. It soared in popularity during the pandemic by bringing back “battles” between well-known artists, like Brandy vs Monica, Ludacris vs. Nelly, Snoop Dogg vs. DMX, and more, which were hosted on Instagram live. Check out all of the Instagram Live battles here – some you can still watch.
Why it matters: Verzuz has been acquired by Triller Network, parent company of the Triller app. Creators Swizz Beatz and Timbaland will join the Triller management team, but what’s really interesting is that they’re directing a portion of their equity stake to the 46 creatives who’ve appeared on Verzuz. By “creatives,” we mean all of the artists who have participated in Verzuz battles to date.
Will it work: Yes – I love the concept of Verzuz. Sure, it rose in popularity because more people were home during COVID-19, but I don’t see Verzuz’s success as reliant on the pandemic. Verzuz disrupted with a clever new spin on battles and by bringing some a compelling mix of artists to the table. We’ve already seen many of the artists see spikes in sales for music they created a long time ago – showing the potential of Verzuz to give artists career longevity. I’m really excited to see where it goes!
Beeple NFT Sells For $69.3 Million, Becoming Most-Expensive Ever
NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, seemingly rose out of nowhere to insane popularity. Case and point – digital artist Beeple has set both NFT and art world records with a $69.3 million sale during a Christie’s auction called, “Everydays: The First 5,000 Days.” The piece showcases 5,000 pieces of digital art that Beeple made each day over those number of days. Also interesting? The bidding started 2 weeks ago at only $100 and in the final 30 minutes exploded from $15m to $69.3 million. Wow.
Why this matters: While it’s easy to brush this off as a one-off or a fad, consider the following – Beeple’s sale has set an art world record as the top three grossing piece from a living artist sold at auction. The other two? A David Hockney piece went for $90.3 million in 2018, while Jeff Koons sold a stainless-steel Rabbit sculpture in 2019 for $91.1 million.
Also interesting? The final minutes of the Beeple auction on Thursday drew several million visitors to Christies.com from 11 countries, showcasing the interest in this record-breaking artwork and sale.
What else you should know: As NFTs are so new and ever-evolving, here are some other good articles to help you learn….
- BBC: What are NFTs and why are some worth millions? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-56371912
- Vox: NFTs, the digital bits of anything that sell for millions of dollars, explained https://www.vox.com/the-goods/22313936/non-fungible-tokens-crypto-explained
- New York Times: What Are NFTs, Anyway? One Just Sold for $69 Million. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/11/arts/design/what-is-an-nft.html
- Coindesk: NFTs: How To Create, Buy and Sell Them https://www.coindesk.com/how-to-create-buy-sell-nfts
For Creators, Everything Is for Sale
https://www.indy100.com/tech/digital-creators-small-business-poll-fans-b1816545 and https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/10/style/creators-selling-selves.html (NY Times is original article, but might be paywalled)
What if every decision you made daily could be monetized? This is the inspiration behind the app NewNew, which allows social media influencers to create polls about daily decisions in their lives. Fans can steer the decisions by paying to cast their vote.
Why it matters: From brand deals, to affiliate marketing, and income from the social platforms themselves, it’s no surprise that digital creators form the fastest-growing type of small business. Digital creators are incredibly savvy, always looking for new ways to monetize their online presence. By controlling the poll choices, creators are in the driver’s seat of selecting what kind of things they would like to do. There’s also an argument to be made that the real-time polling also serves as a great focus group to see what kind of content their fanbase is interested in seeing from them next.
However, this type of app is understandably sparking criticism because it feels straight out of an episode of the Netflix series, Black Mirror. Because fans need to pay to vote, there’s an argument to be made that people might not want to pay for basic everyday decisions, but only big or more sensational decisions, testing the boundaries of creators in a negative way.
Will it work? I’m 50/50 on this one. I believe creators will jump in to test if it’s a viable new stream of income, but success rests on how engaged their fan bases are and how interesting the poll choices are. Additionally, if this does become successful, it will be quite easy for the likes of Instagram, TikTok, etc. to replicate quickly.
Facebook Adds New Monetization Options for Creators, Including Ads in Short Video Clips
Facebook has announced a range of new monetization options for creators, with a focus on short video clips. Creators will now be able to earn money from videos as short as one minute long, “with a minimally interruptive ad running at 30 seconds”.
“For videos three minutes or longer, an ad can be shown 45 seconds in. Previously only three-minute or longer videos could monetize with in-stream ads, with an ad shown no earlier than 1 minute.”
Facebook is also testing ways for creators to monetize their Facebook stories with ads that look like stickers.
In order to qualify for monetization, creators now need:
- 600,000 total minutes viewed from any combination of video uploads – on-demand, Live and previously Live – in the last 60 days.
- 5 or more active video uploads or previously Live videos. Videos must be published, not deleted, and compliant with our Content Monetization Policies.
Why it matters: It’s a great time to be a digital creator, with more monetization opportunities than ever before from social media platforms. We’re ushering in an era where social platforms either need to show viral reach or monetization to capture more content from top digital creators. Facebook is notably threatened by TikTok, which is working to expand its creators program, so it’s not surprising to see new monetization programs being rolled out. This announcement does not include Instagram though, which seems like a big miss if the social giant really wants to get a foothold ahead of TikTok.
Will it work? I believe it will, but also don’t trust Facebook the way I do a platform like YouTube, which has been running its monetization program for a long time. Facebook tends to introduce new features, only to dump them or change them at its will, creating a lack of consistency for creators. However, with that said, creators with a big audience on Facebook will definitely jump on this and evaluate how their earnings match up to other creator programs out there.
Jessica Gioglio is the co-author of The Laws of Brand Storytelling and The Power of Visual Storytelling. Professionally, Jessica has led innovative marketing and public relations programs for Dunkin’ Donuts, TripAdvisor, Sprinklr, and more. Today, Jessica is the founder of With Savvy Media & Marketing, a strategic branding, storytelling, and content strategy consultancy.