Facebook F8 key takeaways

The month kicked off with Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook’s annual F8 conference. There was a lot of innovative product announcements, as well as service updates and news. Here’s a brief round up of five key takeaways, in case you missed it:

1. Clear your history

A welcome update, Facebook is now giving users complete control over their personal data by allowing them to delete all of the information that Facebook has collected from them. Whether this is a result of the questions about privacy Zuckerberg faced from Congress, a bid to be more transparent in a GDPR world, or a just a timely update, this will be music to the ears of the privacy conscious. Although deleting your data could be to the detriment of the personalised experience you get on the platform, giving people the choice of what to do with their data is one way the company is trying to regain users trust.

2. Facebook Dating

If Tinder, Bumble, Match.com or eHarmony weren’t enough for you to choose from, don’t fret, Facebook is here to save the day with its new Facebook dating app. Set to rival all major players in the dating app space, the service will match non-friends, to establish long meaningful relationships, using the data that Facebook already has on the users (which is a lot).

3. Story sharing between apps

It was also announced that both Facebook and Instagram will be allowing its users to share content from other apps directly to their Stories. The move starts with Spotify, Soundcloud and GoPro – with other apps to come – in an effort to make Stories more interesting, immersive and seemless, this announcement is likely to have some users of Snapchat contemplating a move to the dark side.

4. Video chat for Instagram

The social media platform is adding to it’s widely used DM (direct messaging) feature by adding a video chat compontent for its users. Allowing multiple people to have conversations, with an individual or group of friends, this seems like an overdue addition to the popular social media platform, especially since they introduced live video back in 2016. Nonetheless, this will likely be a heavily adopted piece of functionality given the sleak design and feel of the feature.

5. Oculus TV

The future is now. Facebook is keen to get users watching their favourite shows in its new Oculus Go headset. Starting with Facebook Watch shows first (Netflix will surely soon follow), this is an interesting attempt by the social media company to try and get consumers buying into VR as well as demonstrating the intrinsic value of Oculus beyond VR roller coasters and the like.

The Royal wedding

Where were you on the afternoon of Saturday 19th May 2018? Chances are you were watching the Royal wedding of Harry and Meghan Markle, as they exchanged their vows in front of the 13.1 million UK TV viewers that tuned in to catch a glimpse of the event.

In the spirit of the occasion, and to capitalise on all of the fanfare, some of the world’s best known brands decided to offer up some creative content. Events as grand as this one are a great way to make the most of discussion on social, adding an element of humanity and relatability to your brand – here are a few of the best ones:

KFCs commemorative Royal Wedding buckets:

A #RoyalWedding recipe from Tesco:

IKEA’s ‘HARRY’ is still single and available:

Deadpool returns – coming to a social media feed near you

Back in 2016, the team responsible for advertising the original Deadpool film did a stellar job of using social media to entertain potential moviegoers, using content that broke the fourth wall and led to lots of coverage.

Fast forward to 2018 and everyone’s favourite R-rated superhero is back with the second installment of the film franchise. The Deadpool marketing team are again harnessing the power of social media to engage fans, enlisting the help of celebrity friends to get the anti-hero in front of as many eyes as possible.

Celine Dion and David Beckham got in on the act, promoting the film.

These humorous celebrity endoresments and social chatter helped Deadpool 2 break the record for highest grossing R-rated movie opening weekend ever.

Jordan’s new look ‘Wings’ campaign

Michael Jordan is widely regarded as the best basketball player of all-time and during the ’80s and ’90s he revolutionised the sport in terms of commercial success and marketability.

His ‘Wings’ pose and poster are the most recognisable images associated with the superstar and although it’s been replicated, none have been endorsed by the GOAT himself until now. Enter four-time WNBA champion, and Minnesota Lynx guard, Maya Moore and the new wings campaign.

The campaign was created by Weiden+Kennedy New York (the brand famed with coming up with ‘Just Do It’) and features a 60 second film with clips and highlights from Moore’s decorated career. Included within the video is the fitting soundtrack of Nina Simone’s ‘Feeling Good’ and Michael Jordan reciting the same words that accompany the original poster.

The campaign was launched on the Jordan Brand’s social channels and on the Nike+ Snkrs app, with the addition of out-of-home features in New York, Los Angeles and also Maya Moore’s home stadium, the Target Center in Minnesota.

The UN and JWT raise awareness of child brides with ‘Humanity Test’

The United Nations Women National Committee and J. Walter Thompson teamed up to create ‘The Humanity Test’, designed “to judge participants humanity and to raise awareness of the 39,000 girls forced into child marriage every day.”

Cleverly using the reCAPTCHA test, which is typically used to distinguish real people and spam bots, users are prompted to identify the brides in the pictures that are displayed before revealing the child brides that they likely missed out, with a look at their disturbing stories.

The test is part of the UN Women NC UK’s #drawaline campaign, which was launched last November. Nearly 9,000 people globally have taken the test with 72% failing to correctly identify all of the brides in the images displayed.

Boiler Room launches 4:3

Global music broadcasting and events brand Boiler Room is launching a brand new video streaming platform called 4:3.

The new platform is another step into the digital content space, with the brand already heavily prominent on YouTube and Instagram. The move will see the the brand publish both created and curated content, with emphasis on the core musical identity of the brand, as well as crossing over to art, film and fashion as well.

Reminiscent of Vice or Noisey, the platform’s launch will feature both a mixture of short films produced by guest curators as well as the first piece of original content for the platform.

Using its huge social following to attract users, I’m sure the brand will benefit significantly from having an owned platform to demonstrate both created and curated content.

Check out the promo video:

Vitamin Shoppe launches 800 instagram accounts

American nutritional supplement retailer The Vitamin Shoppe is planning to launch 800 instagram accounts for each of its US stores to help localize their marketing efforts. Since the decision was made for this mass rollout, back in January, the brand is halfway to reaching its target.

The aim of the individual store accounts is to encourage employees of the stores to promote their product knowledge and expertise. There will be a mixture of posts from staff and brand prodivided images and videos to support broader campaigns.

Policing so many accounts is difficult (as shown by J.D. Wetherspoon) but the sector is well suited to the influencer-rich world of Instagram.

Budweiser gets geared up for the FIFA World Cup

In around two weeks time over 3.2 billion people will tune in to watch the FIFA World Cup and I for one am not the only person elated by this impending reality. American alcoholic beverage brand Budweiser are hoping to capitalise on the mass exposure the sporting event offers through their campaign entitled “Light up the FIFA World Cup”.

Long time partner and official beer sponsor of the World Cup, Budweiser launched the campaign in more than 50 countries, making it the brand’s biggest ever global marketing campaign.

The imaginative ad shows drones delivering beer to various football fans all over the globe – taking off from the Budweiser brewery in St Louis Missouri (US) to places like Lagos and London.

BT launches its countless aeroplanes campaign

UK telecommunications company BT has launched a brand new multi-channel marketing campaign, ‘Moments’.

The campaign and supporting ad are a metaphor for the company’s ability to help connect its millions of customers. With the message that “every moment of every day we help you be there”, and the use of ‘It Must Be Love’ by Madness, BT is piling on the sentiment across cinema, TV and OOH. The video has garnered some decent social engagement so far with 28,000 views, across both Facebook and Twitter.

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