Hello!
I'm trying something different today. So far, I've been sending these on a more-or-less (mostly less) 30-day cycle to recap what's been going on in brand social each month. But since I'm on sabbatical and got some free time, I'd like to try shorter, more regular posts. Let me know if you hate it.
Personal life bit
First up, some VERY EXCITING career news:
(I can't say much right now, but watch this space!!)
And also, I went to a clown workshop last week. It was great fun, and I'd recommend it to anyone. I'm currently trying out my skills over on TikTok to LITTLE SUCCESS.
I want to talk about one thing today: Barbie.
Life in plastic, it's fantastic.
I'll admit it: I'm probably not the target audience for the Barbie movie. I wasn't even an Action Man guy, mainly playing with a set of hand-me-down He-Man and Thundercats figures.
But the marketing for the Barbie movie has been an absolute masterclass in social media. And I want to draw attention to a few key elements.
First up, check out the posters:
I call these posters, but what are they really? A poster is something that is meant to be... posted on a wall. But these are on social media. Yes, they may also be being posted in real life somewhere, but the form we're experiencing them in is 'posts' - not posters.
Semantics? Yes, but it highlights an important blurring between old and new media. Billboards and posters are historically one of the big heavy hitters of marketing, but increasingly they're becoming optimised for a not-in-real-life audience.
Many companies have wised up to the fact you don't even NEED to put the posters up in real life. Brands like SURREAL do ace posts with simple mock-ups of what an advert could look like.
The benefit is that you get exposure to a highly-engaged audience (your followers and your followers' followers when they share it) for a super low cost. Or you can spend tens of thousands on those prime media placements and hope that random passers-by look up from their phones (and good luck with any attribution, by the way).
So whether or not the Barbie ads co-exist in reality is unimportant. They're flashy and shareable. And that's just the original posters themselves; the real magic comes from what they allowed the internet to do with it.
Imagination, life is your creation.
No matter what, the Barbie posters were getting memed. They were, likely intentionally, created as a meme format: each swapping out a subject (character) and a caption. This alone is just begging for people to make their own versions.
But this is hard work, and not everyone has the skills or tools to photoshop their version of the poster. Good thing then that the Barbie movie marketers thought ahead and created a website for people to do just that:
This is the clever bit. We all know that user-generated content is the most powerful force on the planet. Let your audience create their own content, and you've literally got your market doing its own marketing for you.
And the more you can do to remove the barriers to creating that content, the more people will make. So tools and things like that (see also: AR Filters for Instagram Stories, Snapchat) are such smart tactics.
Come on, Barbie, let's go party.
So to recap:
When designing 'poster' content, think social-first. Even be social-first in some cases.
Look for opportunities for your content to become a format in itself. Can you make yourself memeable?
Supercharge your marketing with User-Generated Content, and empower your audience with tools and resources to make it.
That's it!
I hope you enjoyed this shorter, more focussed Social Roast. Please give me feedback; I'll either keep doing it or never do it again.
In the meantime, I'd like to end with a question I initially posed on LinkedIn about out-of-home vs social marketing.
Answers, please!