The Scoop: 8.16.22

Competition is getting fierce 🔥 again, and we’re here for it 🤭 – from the uptick in new social platforms (read below) to Walmart “pondering” streaming deals, to Hulu getting all political with accepting ads about issues such as abortion and gun control, to the surprising drop in daily users for another top gaming company that is losing more than 50 million daily active users. Although there’s room for everyone, we’re closely tracking how these ups, downs and new mediums will help drive our campaigns.

The Virtual Experience Continues to Grow, Even After COVID-19

During the height of the pandemic in 2020 and 2021, almost the entirety of social life was conducted online. Despite the world being almost completely open again, 2022 has seen many of its biggest and most important moments the same way we saw them during the past two years – through a virtual medium. Two of the biggest music festivals in the U.S., Lollapalooza and Coachella, both livestreamed their entire sets this year to a viewership of millions. Celebrities including Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift and others opted to do an Instagram Live rather than meet and greet with fans, with these live talks garnering hundreds of thousands of people. Additionally, the 2022 midterm election campaigns for some of the most critical seats in Congress are being conducted solely online through memes and different trends. It would be interesting to delve into why this change of in-person to virtual has stuck with us almost immediately and the pros and cons of it all.

Sources: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Time, Everything Experiential

Alert Alert, We Have Another New Platform – But Forget About Ads

Earlier this month, former employees of Facebook and Tinder announced the launch of a new social media platform called Niche. Niche is being marketed as one of its kind, as the platform vows to restrict any and all advertisements from companies or brands. Niche’s CEO, Christopher Gulczynski, says he thinks “the trend in social networking right now is to get smaller, to get more intimate around that relational status of everyone in the group.”­Niche believes that today’s social media platforms are bombarded with sponsored content and an overall oversaturation of things that don’t pertain to the user. With this as its belief, Niche promises to forgo advertisements and, instead, cater the platform specifically for each individual user. Niche’s version of “Facebook Groups” will be essential to the platform, as users can find specific interests or “niches” that they enjoy/partake in and connect with others who share those interests. There, users will be able to buy and sell both physical and digital assets relating to the niche, which can be exchanged for real currency through the platform. By maintaining a consumer-based platform, Niche expects to earn the money it is forgoing in advertising through these sales and purchases on its platform, as well as through the conversion of Niche tokens to real-world currency.

Sources: Business Wire, Fast Company, Dot.LA

Brands Want to BeReal, Too

One of Gen Z’s biggest complaints about social media is its lack of authenticity, and app creators are clamoring to offer this demographic something that is just that. So far, BeReal, a French startup, is winning. A recurring top app in the app store, BeReal aims to bring low-stakes photo sharing back by sending users a notification at a random time each day to take a picture of what they are doing at that moment. Users have a two-minute window to capture an image. BeReal garnered more than 7.67 million downloads in 2022, so it’s no surprise brands want to see what it’s all about. But will seeing Chipotle, Elf Cosmetics, PacSun and other corporations scare off users who thought they had found a respite from all the other over-produced, salesy social media? (BeReal doesn’t yet have ads.) To avoid becoming the “How do you do, fellow kids” meme, brands will have to find a way to blend in or offer users something that will welcome them on the app. When Chipotle joined, the company posted a promo and received an “incredible response,” but the app engagement is nothing compared to the social darling TikTok. That didn't deter e.l.f. from also joining and running a promo or PacSun from sharing behind the scenes at a photoshoot. After all, you can’t put all your proverbial eggs in one basket (the basket being a potentially fleeting social media trend 😉).

Sources: Fortune, Morning Brew, PacSun, Women’s Wear Daily

The Giant Is Falling

Based on the above news, it’s not surprising to see top media outlets including The New Yorker predicting the fall of social media giants, such as Facebook, as more social platforms become popular. But can the beast really be taken down? We’ve seen Snapchat, Dispo, Clubhouse and even BEME (who remembers BEME and Casey Neistat!). So far, it appears only TikTok has gotten it right, calling itself an “entertainment platform” and building an incredible algorithm that Facebook only wishes it had thought of – but may copy 😉. But we can’t complain. As brand marketers, we know the more platforms/mediums we have, the better to reach our niche (see what we did there) audiences.

Sources: The New Yorker, Forbes, The Street, The American Genius

And in Other News…

CEO cries and “shares” his story on Linkedin.

Oops they did it again: 17 Celebrities, including Jimmy Fallon and Gwyneth Paltrow, Just Got Warning Letters About Shilling NFTs.

Contributing Writers and Editors: Nick Cardillo, Ricki Kahn, Jacob Laros, Lauren Fernández Meihls, Amanda Oberstein, Jennie Szink, Nia Roberts and Bre Thomlison

Real Chemistry’s The Scoop is brought to you by an editorial collective, featuring industry updates and insights from subject matter experts across social media, digital and influencer activation teams.

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