The Red Stag Media marketing digest for August 2023 has finally arrived. As promised I will be providing you with an update on how Threads has been performing and will share with you some fresh data collection stats plus much more!
Threads burst onto the scene last month and we promised we would keep an eye on its progress and provide you with an update. So here it is!
So, first things first, has the hype bubble burst? Heralded as a new and improved alternative to the post-apocalyptic wasteland formerly known as ‘Twitter’, Threads saw a huge spike in registrations following its launch, helped significantly by the ability for users to login using their existing Meta details. In less than a week, Threads had amassed over 100 million users and the platform looked set to make true on its ‘New Twitter’ promise.
However, it seems as though the novelty is starting to wear off. According to Sensor Tower, just a month after the apps launch, engagement is down by 82% with only 8 million users accessing the app each day.
Meta are promising to bring out a series of new features in an attempt to lure users back to the platform. One of which is a ‘Chronological Feed’ option which will allow users to sort their feeds by newest first. This is quite an appealing update whilst other apps leave us at the mercy of their algorithm.
More updates are on the horizon, but will they be appealing enough to reel users back in? If you are considering using Threads for your Agribusiness or where quick to set up an account on launch, I wouldn’t put too much time into it at this stage. If you are simply taking five minutes to copy posts over from other platforms that’s fine, but until user engagement picks up, I wouldn’t consider it a serious option for you marketing mix.
Unless you’ve been living in a cave for the past month, or enjoying an extended holiday, you will have noticed the latest change to come out of ‘Twitter’, and it’s a big one too. Elon Musk has now officially rebranded the bird app to ‘X’, removing the iconic bird logo and taking over (much to the annoyance of its previous owner) the handle ‘@x’ as the official account for the platform.
The change is another step towards Elon’s ambition to eventually turn X into a ‘one app for everything’ platform much like the Chinese super-app ‘WeChat’ that allows you to message, call, watch, browse the internet and shop amongst other things. The new branding also brings the platform in line with many other Elon owned projects such as SpaceX.
All in all, the rebrand isn’t going to have a huge impact on your agribusiness other than the fact you’ll be posting X’s instead of Tweets. The platform is also reporting an approximate drop in ad revenue by around 50%, however, it looks like they’re taking action to combat this…
X Corp is slashing ad prices to woo brands back to the X platform. The company, which makes most of its revenue from advertising has struggled to bring in new advertisers and retain existing accounts as many brands have been wary about Musk’s approach to management and content moderation.
To combat the ad slump, the platform is offering incentives on certain ad formats in the US and UK and is even threatening to strip brands of their verified status unless they reach certain spending thresholds. Brands will need to spend $1,000 on ads in 30 days or $6,000 in 180 days to retain their golden check marks.
X remains volatile and somewhat of a wild west when it comes to advertising. However, paired with the huge user loss experienced by Threads over the last month there could be a spike in engagement on the X platform as users begin to realise the grass wasn’t greener after all. I would let the dust settle over the coming months before reassessing whether X is a viable ad platform for your business.
One of the latest updates for GA4 could help to bring greater insight into your customer-base and how effective your campaigns are at reaching them.
Accepting a third-party segment in Ad Manager, you can target line items to it, run forecasts and create reports. GA4 audiences can also be used as they are as a way of better targeting your campaigns to specific groups.
This is a big step in helping you to understand your customers so that you can make data-driven decisions to not just target the right people but also give them content you know they will engage with.
How to set it up:
A recent report released by Airship entitled “The Mobile Consumer 2023” surveyed over 11,000 consumers across ten different countries identified what information consumers are willing to share.
It’s no secret that email personalisation can be extremely effective when it comes to engaging with your customer-base. However, to personalise your emails, you first need to collect the relevant data. So what information are consumers most willing to share?
Top 3:
Bottom 3:
August is officially National Rum Month and to honour this Pepsi has launched a campaign to challenge to status quo around the ordering of the most famous rum-based drink.
“For far too long, people have gotten the bar call wrong when ordering the world’s most popular rum cocktail – quite often people order ‘rum and Coke’ out of conformity rather than taste preference, as our data shows that people actually prefer the taste of rum and Pepsi,” said Todd Kaplan, chief marketing officer of Pepsi. “We have known for years that the sweet and delicious taste profile of Pepsi pairs perfectly with the taste of rum.”
Pepsi has worked with several different rum brands from Captain Morgan to Bacardi to create imagery which highlighted the Pepsi logo fitting in perfectly with the branding of the respective rums.
So why is this campaign particularly clever?
That marks the end of our marketing digest for August 2023. As always, if you would like to discuss any of these points in more detail, you can email me at antony@redstagmedia.co.uk
