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Monday’s Marketing Minute: Tik Tok Stories on the Way, Faze Clan/McDonalds Partnership, Amazon Replaces Google For Shoppers

Happy Monday, y’all! Hope everyone is ready to have an amazing week! Here’s a few marketing stories that caught my eye:

 

You knew this was coming. Tik Tok is getting ready to roll out its version of Stories. What interesting about the timing is this comes as Twitter just sunsetted its version of Stories, Twitter Fleets, last week.

As I wrote about last week with tips for how businesses can better use Instagram, I think Stories and its clones on other social sites are worth investigating for brands because it gives their content a new way to stand out. And getting noticed is half the battle (knowing is the other half, obviously).

 

I find this fascinating, but for US online shoppers, products searches are done with Amazon over search engines by a roughly threefold clip. Amazon has done a lot of smart things in its years as a company, but perhaps the smartest thing was incorporating customer reviews into the site. Customer reviews are such an integral part of the research we do before buying online. Amazon’s move to combine reviews on the same page where you can make the purchase was brilliant. It’s all about understanding your customer and the experience they want, delivering that experience and leveraging it into purchases.

 

Have I mentioned that esports is exploding from a business and marketing standpoint? Yes I have. The latest proof is in a content creation deal that McDonalds has struck with Faze Clan, one of the top teams in esports. I will continue to bang this drum until everyone hears it, but some of the best influencer marketing happening right now is happening in the esports space. The content creators have an ability to create and cultivate community that we just don’t see from other influencers on other online platforms.

 

Finally, here’s a bonus sports-related pick. This one shows that great content was being created long before the internet.  Check out the copy writing on this mini-profile of HOF QB Ken Stabler from the late 70s.  I love the caption and it ties perfectly with the image. You can almost see Stabler with a gun and holster just inches from his right hand, ready to draw!

 

 

So that’s it for this week, I hope you have a wonderful and productive week. I know a lot of you will be getting in those summer vacations this month, so if you do travel, have a great time and be safe!

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Monday’s Marketing Minute: Clubhouse’s Growth Slows, YouTube Pushing Users Back to TVs, the Power of Fandoms

Happy Monday! I hope you are ready for an amazingly productive week! Here’s some business and marketing stories that have caught my eye since last Monday:

 

So from February to April, Clubhouse saw its number of downloads fall by roughly 90%. To help combat this, Clubhouse is pushing for growth in Brazil and India, two countries where Android devices dominate over their iOS counterparts. With the introduction of Greenroom from Spotify, I think it signals that social audio is already shifting toward more targeted or niche groups, and I believe that will help accelerate Clubhouse’s decline. Clubhouse needed to own the social audio space before competitive offerings came out that offered a more niche appeal, and that hasn’t happened. I still think Clubhouse will be competitive in the social audio space for another 6-12 months at least, but it likely won’t end up being the dominant player in the space that we thought it could become.

 

I always find it fascinating how our content consumption patterns change over time and as we become more adept at using tools. For instance, YouTube now claims that roughly 40% of its viewership happens on TVs. What can we deduce from this?  That likely suggests that more YouTube users are viewing longer-form videos. Maybe it means they are viewing more movies on the platform, or maybe it is a sign that YouTube Gaming is continuing to gain in popularity, as most streams from gamers last several hours.

 

I love this deck on The New Fandom Formula by Zoe. It’s a great primer into the power of fans and online communities. Online communities are going to continue to become a major story in the coming months and years, as several stories are converging around the power of fans and customers connecting online. I’ve already talked about what’s happening in esports, but there’s much more on the way. And I love how Zoe’s deck has locked content, and if you want access to the full deck, you have to purchase it. I can speak from experience, creating a high-quality deck like this takes many hours. Content creators deserve to paid for creating high quality work like this, and I think the money asked helps communicate the value of the content. The free version has a ton of useful information so definitely check it out.

 

 

So that’s what I wanted to talk about this week! Now, let me warn you that there is a huge breaking news story happening on July 1st. It will have massive ramifications for the marketing and branding worlds, and I’m honestly shocked that more of my peers aren’t addressing what’s coming. Check back here on Weds for the rundown on what’s coming and why it’s relevant.

Till then, have a wonderful week, see you on Weds!

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Monday’s Marketing Minute: eSports Has Gone Mainstream

Happy Monday, y’all! So I wanted to talk about one story only this Monday, but it’s a biggie.

For the past few years, eSports has been a growing phenomenon, fueled by the massive popularity of streaming site Twitch. I’ve written constantly about Twitch in particular, and how the streamers AKA ‘content creators’ are doing some amazing marketing and building impressive online communities.

For years, Twitch held almost a deathgrip on the streaming industry. It was the one and only powerhouse, in fact it seemed as if people had more loyalty toward the Twitch platform than the streamers themselves. This was quite apparent in 2019 when Microsoft’s would-be Twitch competiror Mixer signed away two of Twitch’s biggest streamers, Ninja and Shroud, to an exclusive deal.

It was a watershed moment for the streaming industry, and for the first time, Twitch would be tested for dominance in the streaming space.

How did it go? Less than a year later, Mixer folded and Ninja and Shroud both returned to Twitch.

So Twitch’s place at the top of the streaming space was cemented. Or was it?

When covid lockdowns took place early last year, it suddenly meant that a lot of us were spending a lot more time at home. One of the big winners was the streaming community. Growth hit another level, there was so much hunger for streamed video game content that sites such as YouTube and even Facebook began to benefit.

Then last June, DrDisrespect, one of the most popular streamers on Twitch, was suddenly banned. And still to this day, no one really knows why. Doc eventually settled on moving to YouTube, and in August had his first stream on Youtube.

Doc’s first stream on YouTube peaked at half a million concurrent viewers, shattering the amount of viewers he ever saw on a single Twitch stream.  Suddenly, YouTube Gaming wasn’t an afterthought, and the site’s foray into streaming continues to grow rapidly. Doc’s banning from Twitch may have indirectly catapulted streaming to a whole new level.

 

eSports Goes Mainstream

Last Thursday, this happened:

I’ve written about NickMercs here before, but he is rapidly growing in popularity and could soon become the most popular streamer in the world. His being featured on the cover of the new Sports Illustrated is testament to his growing popularity, but also the insane growth of the streaming community as a whole.

eSports and streaming is about to become VERY VERY big. There’s several reasons for this.

First, as eSports gets mainstream exposure, businesses are going to realize these streamers are the ideal influencers that they want to connect with.  They have huge audiences but, they also have, due to the chat and interactive functionality of streaming sites, the ability to better connect with their audiences. Streamers with millions of followers still have the ability to single out and even chat with individual followers live in a way that they really can’t do on other social media platforms. It’s a massive advantage from a community-building aspect. When companies figure this out, billions are gonna flow toward sponsorship deals.  Yes, I said BILLIONS.

Second, athletes are beginning to jump into streaming, which will only accelerate mainstream coverage and adoption. The above SI cover features 6 members of the eSports organization FaZe Clan. Two of them are Bronny James, the son of LeBron James, and another is Kyler Murray, former Heisman Trophy winner and current starting QB for the Arizona Cardinals. Soon we will begin to see more celebrities adopting eSports as well, and that will only lead to more eyeballs, and more growth.

Finally, eSports isn’t really political like other major sports have become. eSports simply focuses on the games and the community of fans and streamers that love them. In recent years, major sports leagues like the NBA, NFL and MLB have increasingly taken political stances, and audiences have repeatedly said they don’t want politics mixed with their sports. This means more people will be checking out eSports, especially the highly desirable 18-34 age demographic.

 

So I wanted to do a full post on eSports today. If you work in marketing, please do yourself a favor and invest some time with a few popular streamers and see how they market themselves, and how they build their community of fans.  Some of my favorites include NickMercs, DrDisrespect, CourageJD and TimTheTatMan. You can learn so much about marketing and especially connecting with millennials by watching their streams.

Streaming and eSports will have a big year in 2021. Let’s come back to this in 2022 and see if I was right!