#5Things: This Week in Social

5Things 10-12-23

Joey Scarillo: Welcome to the #5Things: This Week in Social.

This is the Webby award-winning podcast that looks at five stories from social data analytics, content and tech to give you something to talk about this week with your coworkers, your clients or your kids. If you are a marketer, an advertiser or creator or anyone who makes a living using social platforms, then you are listening to the right podcast.

Today on the show, back for her second time around. It's Abby Ness. Hello, Abby.

Abby Ness: Hey, Joey. How's it going? I'm excited to be back.

Joey Scarillo: Pretty good. All right. Here's a question for you, Abby. What is your favorite fall activity?

Abby Ness: Ooh, well, I feel like I got to go with the classic. I'm a big apple orchard, pumpkin patch, hayride, haunted house, the whole thing.
We used to have a haunted house right next door where I grew up.

Joey Scarillo: And returning to the pod, it is Caine Fair. Hello, Caine. Joey, how are you? Doing well, doing well. Caine, question for you. I know you're on the west coast and you don't really see all four seasons the way we do on the east coast. So what is a quintessential fall activity for you?

Caine Fair: I'd say I unfortunately do not see all the seasons. That's something that I've always been jealous of. Around this time of year, it's like getting mid, late October. Obviously, Halloween starts kicking into gear, so that's when you know summer's over. And then, even though there's no snow on the ground, I'd say the holidays are still pretty well spirited over here.

You know, we got the Friendsgivings, and we got all the Halloween and trick or treaters, and then Christmas rolls around, so. I think it's just kind of a blue sky fall experience. We get rain every once in a while, so it's not that warm all the time, but yes, I'd say that the Halloween, Thanksgiving, Friendsgiving experiences are still probably my favorite and I'm very active.

Joey Scarillo: Amazing. All right, well, I'm Joey Scarillo and I am and always will be a big fan of the hot apple cider around this time of the year. Just sort of hits the spot. All right, and now here are the five things that will also hit the spot. First up, Abby dives into a New York Times article that asks if brand humor is still funny on social.

Second, Caine explains how Instagram is considering new options for audience groups on stories.

Third, Abby tells us about how surprisingly teenagers are embracing LinkedIn.

Fourth, Caine tells us about how Facebook Reels We'll have new options just in time for the holiday push. And our fifth and final thing, Abby asks the question.
Where is audio going as Amazon turns off? All right, let's get into it. Abby, kick us off with the New York Times article talking about brands being funny on social. This is an interesting one. I want to know your thoughts.

Abby Ness: Awesome. Well, I think we all kind of remember the days of brands being on Twitter, scrolling through our feeds and seeing brands like Wendy's engage with users almost.

Completely out of context, if you will, someone asked, how is beef never frozen? And they simply responded, refrigerators. So, you know, we laughed, we joked, we thought it was maybe genius at the time, perhaps. So genius that other brands began to kind of join in on the fun. And if you get a bird named Duo getting into cheeky situations, the fun kind of expands.

But you know, I guess the question is being asked now, are we having too much fun? Is it even really funny anymore? Or is it just kind of over the top? Some say, yeah, it's over the top. It's not funny. The accessibility that brands to their user base is astronomical, which for CRM purposes, that's great. But there has to be some sort of line, at least according to some naysayers who goes far to assert that brands have kind of turned some fun, lighthearted tweets and interactions into kind of the expectation for all of social media.

And it's getting kind of old, maybe even worse than old. Perhaps it's getting very cringe, cringey, if you will, especially for brands whose presence in social media is kind of Light and fun and free, but the reputation doesn't always, you know, add up. They give the example of Wendy's in this article and specific to, you know, they kind of have this like lighthearted sort of fun persona on Twitter, but they're not fun in real life.

If you will, there, there's all these pay inequity issues and sustainable sourcing. And for an audience, especially Gen Z, who's, you know, fundamental belief is equity equality. Brands might find themselves dealing with unreliable brand voice. But on the other hand, I might challenge this for two reasons.

Comedy and relatability work. We know that humans really strive to fit in. They strive to be kind of in the know. And brands who lean heavily on this idea are exactly that. They're fitting in. They're being a part of, you know, the cultural content. They're existing on these platforms. And they're really doing their best to kind of say like, we get it.

You know, we're people too. We understand what's going on. Also, what, what else are they supposed to do? I think specifically in this article, they talk about the fact that kind of prior to this sort of fun, lighthearted style of content, brands were just being really gimmicky and salesy. Sure, we're not going to do comedy anymore, but then where do we go after? Entertainment really works, and so what's next?

Joey Scarillo: Yeah, what is next? You know, I kind of want to go backwards a little bit here for a second, Caine. You've been in the game for a while when it comes to social, so I'm curious how You've seen the differences over the years in how you advise a brand on having a social voice.

Like, did you see that evolution of introducing comedy and now this maybe departure from it?

Caine Fair: Yeah, absolutely. It really depends on the type of brand you're working with, right? So I think, like to Abby's example, Wendy's, you often see this coming through. And sometimes over the top in the underdogs within the industry.

So you'll rarely see someone like Nike or Apple or anyone that is like the true established premier brand that's in that world do any sort of comedy or kind of informal brand voice. It's always through the third or fourth, in my opinion, market leader. In order to try to spark something amongst their community to have them switch over.

And sometimes that's humor, sometimes that's an activation that's interesting. So it's, it's a game that we have played for many years. I think till now, over the past, we'll just say, you know, decade, it started as a kind of an, oh crap moment. Like we can actually leverage this platform, not as a marketing tool for advertising, but as one that we can create.

Or innovate how we are seen as a persona and early days, it was tiptoed into because. The, you know, the brand team maybe didn't understand the impact, the power of it, but as brands started to toy with it and see success, you know, I think it all started really around like the Super Bowl where people were like trying to be weird and quirky and interesting and different to stand out.

Those successes kind of continued on and maybe they were around tent pole activities where they started having that brand voice, but then you start to see 365 days a year, these brands are. Being witty and tongue in cheek comedy with, with their voice and not even talking about their actual product. And I think it's gotten to a point where that's expected for a lot of these brands, whether that be through brand voice or just capitalizing on cultural moments to stay relevant, but has it gone too far?

Uh, I would say, I would say that a lot of the time it's forced. I don't know if it's gone too far, but it's forced at times. I think brands are trying to like make themselves relevant in that way. When in reality, their products sells itself oftentimes, and they don't need to go above and beyond and over the top and trying to be a viral sensation as a brand.

So it's a game that we dance consistently on the social side, but I do think, you know, early days, it was not something that was prioritized and nowadays is something that. is needed in a way for every brand to have at least a position on.

Joey Scarillo: Abby, do you think that these brands should move away from comedy?

Do you think challenger brands like Caine mentioned should stay in that space or evolve their tone of voice on social?

Abby Ness: I'm personally a big fan of the content. And so for me, I think when a brand is able to relate to me and understand, you know, my humor, my point of view. I personally enjoy it. And again, I raise the question, you know, what comes next?

If it's not that, how do we still maintain that sense of relatability? If it's not through humor, not through entertainment, I guess for me, I'm still a fan, but I do agree that there are some, some pieces of content or some brands that they just take it too far. And it's like, I can't stand it. My back is cringing.

Joey Scarillo: Yeah, what do you think about that,

Caine Fair: Caine? Yeah, there's definitely moments of some cringe, cringe worthy tweets that go out. But I think one thing I would note is there's a difference between a brand trying to be culturally relevant to its audience. And I think where a lot of the interesting personality comes out is when a brand is talking to another brand.

As their personality. So if you have Wendy's talking to Burger King, cause both of them have great voices in social, and then you get to see their true creativity and it's not ill will at all. And I think that starts to spark some really interesting persona and brand voice within their kind of world.

Yeah, I think that's just a thought that it isn't necessarily always driven as a direct-to-consumer experience. Sometimes it's brand to brand or business to business, which is really interesting.

Joey Scarillo: So it'll be important for brands to remember that they just need to do what's best for them. All right, let's move into our second thing.
Instagram considers new options for audience groups on stories. Caine, tell us about it. Yes, they are.

Caine Fair: So Instagram is testing curated group lists for your stories. In an Instagram broadcast, I think it was last week or late last week, the head of Instagram, Adam Mussoorie, said that the platform is testing the ability to share stories to multiple follower lists.

Currently on your platform or on Instagram. You're limited to posting to either all of your followers on your stories or just your close friends list. But now this update will actually allow a user to post the story for a curated group of people to see. This allows you obviously to share stories to smaller groups and gives you a bit more control as to who is seeing your stories.

As someone like myself who actually uses the close friends and stories pretty often, I'm excited about this, really being able to create this customized experience or additional list of people for my story viewing. While this tool might be helpful for, you know, sharing photos with large groups, you know, you could consider it like everyone is in the same city, everyone goes to the same college, even smaller groups like...

I have two brothers, maybe it's just one that's called siblings. It really starts to heighten the experience of stories versus just kind of a one size fits all. Yeah, you could say like, if you only have two people in your story, why don't you just text it to your friends or text it to your siblings? Of course, but not everything needs to be an Instagram story.

But in my opinion, it's fun to have that option. You could have it be your roommates, you could have it be your family. And I just think that it's opening up a new world for creators and communities to start sharing content in a way that that That functionality has always been there, it's just more of something that's gotten a bit of a repolish.

Joey Scarillo: Abby, does this feel familiar, maybe a little similar to Snapchat?

Abby Ness: Possibly. The idea is quite similar, but I think that it's more specific to your, your kind of your friend group. And I think that from what I understand, it seems like this is kind of going to blow out and potentially brands could utilize this as well.

And I think that's something that brands have actually had an issue with on Snapchat is really finding the the best way to kind of connect with users there. And so potentially there's an opportunity for, you know, creating those sort of close knit communities. on Instagram, and I'm not sure if they'll be able to, you know, do ads within the stories themselves, but it might be an interesting way to create that brand value for close knit communities.

Joey Scarillo: The brand aspect of it is definitely interesting, um, and certainly one that, you know, hopefully brands will take advantage of. Abbey, this next one I am really excited about as somebody who has talked often about how much I like LinkedIn, uh, finally. The teenagers are embracing it. Is LinkedIn cool again? Tell us about it.

Abby Ness: Yeah, so you might believe LinkedIn is either the best or the worst thing that's ever happened to the professional community, depends on which side of the bench you sit on, but you know, most likely you're seeing it as that necessary evil to finding your next gig or maybe a place for so called corporate influencers to boast about their latest and greatest.

But what you might not expect is that some of those peering post impressions are younger than you may think. And no, we're not talking about the DreamWorks hit movie Boss Baby, but rather teens as young as 14 are taking to the platform, posting achievements, engaging with mentors. Keeping up to date on the way AI is shaping the future, and even finding early stage opportunities to start their career.

There's some students that are finding internships through the New York Times, and really just having the ability to kind of grow their network. You know, it might seem unusual, but it actually makes a lot of sense. Especially since the platform gives them kind of these three key tools, really that opportunity to build their network, the ability to connect with peers and mentors who might be in their city or not in their community.

And it's a really negative free environment. It's very positive. And so I think that that's something. Gen Z especially is kind of looking for, and they're really able to set themselves up for success. It's not surprising that Gen Z's the first to take the lead. I mean, I think generational commentators have identified them as driven, positive, willing to make their own rules, and they've also really grown up with the reality of social media.

Some have even seen social media as this negative beast, if you will, and I think that there's this opportunity to kind of Find that sort of positive space to really shine. I think

Joey Scarillo: this is really interesting. I mean, it sounds like all the things that Gen Z likes about LinkedIn are the same things that I personally like about LinkedIn.

So again, like I said, I'm here for it. But what I want to know, do you think this is a widespread thing that Gen Z enjoys LinkedIn? Or do you think this is more of like a niche group, specific people are jumping on LinkedIn a little

Caine Fair: early? I think that it's probably not. As I mean, we know it's not as popular as TikTok or any of the meta platforms for this generation, but what you're probably starting to see and there, I think that's twofold.

This generation is slowly understanding that two things. One is it's another social platform and I think that generation is just eager to flip through something at every single moment of the day. It's another way to fuel their downtime. And I think it's an interesting platform to scroll the newsfeed of and, and see what's happening.

The other side of it is I think that LinkedIn is not the LinkedIn of the past. If you think about it, these individuals, although they may be teenagers, they're probably looking at LinkedIn for. Potential colleges to go to. They're looking at LinkedIn for cool brands that they'd like to connect with during their, their time at college or as interns.

They're looking at mentors potentially and seeing people that are just a bit older than them that are doing success or having success in their industry. So I'm sure there is some professional and business driven desires for the platform itself. I don't think that every single person in the generation is, you know, immediately trying to stay on top of business trends and looking at the newest insights, but I do think that over time, the platform will probably expand into this world a bit more.

And make it relevant, even if it's someone who's in high school still, or potentially a bit younger. But yeah, I don't think it's one of the main platforms that they're trying to fill their cup of social needs. One thing I will say though is, there's gotta be something in LinkedIn that's coming up, and I don't know if this is true or not.

It helps people with college searches, or helps people with applications, or helps people with identifying direction where you're most likely directionless at that age. And... Whether that be based off interest, or whether that be based off people like you, or location, or what have you, I could see LinkedIn playing in that field and opening up their horizon a bit more, versus just being that 25 plus year old professional platform.

Joey Scarillo: Yeah, that's interesting. And I did a quick little survey of asking my cousin who has a teenage child, and a teacher friend of mine who teaches at a high school, and none of them Have ever heard their kids talking about LinkedIn. So that's why I wondered if it was maybe more of a niche thing. But it is also good to remember, and a quick PSA for everybody out there, that LinkedIn's minimum age is 16.

So if you are under that age, you should not be on LinkedIn according to their terms of service. Okay, let's move on to our fourth thing, Caine. Let's chat about meta. Who says that Facebook Reels will have new options just in time for the holidays.

Caine Fair: Right, just in time for the holidays, as we were talking about fall.
You know, it's funny, these platforms are thinking about holidays year round, but they just announced these things right before, so it just hooks everyone in to start using their new, latest, greatest functionality. So yes, Meta announced a new ad option. For Facebook Reels just ahead of the holiday season this year with the shopping season wrap coming up, you know, we got Black Friday, of course, Christmas, there's been some updates to the Reel ads in order to help brands tap into the fastest growing content surface that Meta provides.

Meta is adding collections ads for Facebook feeds, which are already available on Instagram. They've been testing this option on Instagram and actually on Facebook since around the holiday season last year, but now it's making collection ads available to more brands within the Facebook Reels display option, but not all marketers will actually be able to access this yet.

So if you're looking for it, you may not be the lucky one, but Meta is looking to make the ad unit more widely available. Coming up in the next coming weeks. Super similar if you're familiar with how TikTok has this option, but Meta is largely kind of moving in line to the successes of TikTok in my opinion and other short form video ad options to show product and really drive quick one touch sales.

Expanding on this format, Meta is also testing multi-destinational Reels carousel ad units. Which means a brand can actually drive a viewer to multiple product pages based off of the images or videos shown in that display. Which is really interesting to think about. And then Meta is also adding a new swipe left.
Functionality for Facebook and Instagram reels, which makes it even easier. It's not even a click anymore. It's just a swipe for viewers to actually access or switch across to the products available in that ad. So we work with brands all the time. The goal is to make it as seamless, lowest barrier of entry as possible to get to that end destination, if it's a product, you know, purchase that product.
So there's a lot of valuable experiences or considerations with these updates. I think with Reels being so popular and being placed so readily in one of Meta's fastest growing content elements, it's indeed... Worth looking at for your brands. Reels promotions are a great way to express a product. So really look at how this format could benefit you and your, your brand for this holiday push.

Oh, and one other thing that I thought was interesting was I looked at the data for 2023 up to this point for Meta, Facebook, and Instagram, and people are this year spending more time on the platform versus last year, but they're posting less. So what this means is they're actually going to the platforms more often to.
Just be lurkers or purchasers versus posters. So the time spent is increasingly being consumed by this never ending stream of Reels and content really tailored to our users interests or my own interests. And this is a really interesting, significant behavioral shift that we haven't really seen so far.

So if you're trying to move in line with it as a brand, I think Reels is a really important one as that's probably their most prized ad unit. And they've just made it even easier for your users to actually convert. And purchase and experience the products that you're trying to promote. That is

Scarillo: So it'll be interesting data. I'd actually like to dig more into that maybe on another episode. Abby, I'm curious to hear from you on this with this new unit that they're pushing out. Do you think this feels like a big opportunity for brands creatively or? More of an easy sales push or somewhere in the middle?

Abby Ness: Oh, I think that it's definitely somewhere in the middle.
I know for me, I'm already tied into buying everything and anything I see on Instagram. And if you put some thought into making it creatively interesting and entertaining, then you're pushing me even farther into buying it. So I think that it's definitely a lucrative opportunity and also a place for brands to continue to kind of stretch their sort of creative arm, especially on

Joey Scarillo: Instagram.
Amazing. All right, let's jump into our fifth and final thing here. The question, where is audio going as Amazon turns off Amp? Abby, give us the info here.

Abby Ness: Yeah, so for the potentially smaller percentage of people who are either a user or have heard of Amp from Amazon, it's officially shutting down. Amp was kind of a service offered by Amazon where users could DJ music from major music labels, you know, kind of cool, but apparently it's not quite.
Interesting enough, the product was launched in March 2022 amidst the sort of audio boom, if you will, when players like, you know, Clubhouse were entering the chat. But as we've seen over really the last year, audio is potentially trickier and maybe not even as interesting as you may have expected. We're very aware that we're talking about this on an audio platform.

There's always podcasts, right? Like this one you potentially might be listening to right now. But even those have kind of been facing their own host of challenges. There's been, you know, staff layoffs and cutbacks have been sort of persistent. And this is really leaving the question of, you know, what does that mean for, for audio?

Should brands be considering or is it kind of, you know, is it, or should we shift focus into paid ads and. Innovative content, or what does that look like from an audio perspective? And part of me says, no, I mean, if we're looking at signals, these shifts seem like we're trending in a direction that potentially audio is no longer like the cool new thing.

But part of me thinks that, you know, maybe there's something that we're missing. Almost as though we haven't quite sort of cracked the code. But you know, maybe we're close. Maybe it's just a waiting game. We'll see.

Joey Scarillo: So this might not surprise you. But I actually did play around with AMP for a while, was a big fan, deejayed a couple sets, nothing really crazy.

But it was fun. It was, it was really fun to listen to, really fun to be on. It felt like you were part of a community, even though there weren't a ton of people on it yet. But interestingly, on our March 14th, 2022 episode of this show, that was episode 104, if you want to go back and listen, we talked about AMP's launch.
We playfully called it a clubhouse clone. We positively compared it to older services from Spotify and discussed how brands could even get involved. So, like I said, I played around with the app for about two months. I really enjoyed it. Caine, I'm just curious, in your opinion, is the major driver to the popularity of live audio apps tanking almost as fast as they were created two years ago?
Is that surprising to you? Or what do you think sort of drove that rise and fall of this audio wave that we saw in social?

Caine Fair: Here's, here's my thought on it. And I'll take it as, I'll bring it back to audio, but I'm going to use a video example. When we do live events on, we'll call it Facebook, or any platform, when you go live, the majority of people that are watching that video are not watching it live.
They are watching it after the fact. It goes live, it ends, it's saved, and it's living for however long on their platform. The majority of viewers, especially our brands that we do this for, are watching it post live posting. So when you think about audio, unless you kind of have someone you're like super excited to hear about or hear from, or you just have time to pass the right time to go and join one of these kind of communities of audio, I don't think that it'll ever be...

As prioritized as something like video or even non live virtual experiences. The podcast world is blowing up in a great way, but that's because you can listen to it on your record, when you're on a run, when you're on your drive, when you're on your commute, whatever it is. The live audio experience, I don't think has enough of a hook as an experience for someone, for the majority of individuals to prioritize it.

So I'm not too shocked by this. I love it. I mean, like you said, Joe, you twit around with it a couple of times and you were able to have a great experience. I personally did not. Toy around with it too much, but I do enjoy listening to live tracks or live sets, whatever it may be, but it's not something I prioritize.
So, as a user and as kind of the general population, I could see why this wasn't something that stuck as much as maybe a visual experience or one that was recorded and then shared out afterward.

Joey Scarillo: So recorded audio for the win. Long live podcasts. Alright friends, that does it for us today. Be sure to follow us, share us, review us, like us, or write to us with your questions, comments, concerns, points of interest, or complaints.

Or just send us a thing you want us to discuss next time. You can do all of that by emailing us at podcasts@Grey.com.

Connect with us on Spotify by sharing your thoughts on the show. Just look for the Q& A field.

The topics discussed on this show are written and researched by the Social and & Connections team at Grey New York. With a big thanks this week to our panel, Abby Ness and Caine Fair.

This podcast is produced by me, Joey Scarillo, and Samantha Geller, with postproduction by Amanda Fuentes, Guy Rosmarin, and Ned Martin at Gramercy Park Studios. Marketing and communications support from Adrian Hopkins, Christina Hyde, and Jada Hinds.

Listen to the entirety of season four of Grey Matter: A Podcast about Ideas, another podcast from us here at Grey. On Grey Matter, we speak to founders, artists, and Innovators about the moment an idea was born! You can find Grey Matter: A Podcast About Ideas wherever you find this podcast!

And that's it for us. Thank you, listener. And please, as always, Be Social.

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