Five things worth sharing from the last week or so, brought to you by a different member of the Browser Media team every Friday.
This week’s My Five is by Vic.
1. Will Meta be better? Probably not.
Mark Zuckerburg, the man with the face of a haunted ham and the personality of a wet sock, announced this week that Facebook employees will now be known as ‘Metamates’. Ewww.
In a lame attempt to gloss over/distract from the past mistakes the business has made (which rebranding didn’t achieve – shocker), Meta has also published a new set of company values that feature the usual corporate spiel of buzzwords and bullshit you’d expect.
2. TikTok touts new brand safety centre
Content moderation on social media platforms is all about protecting its users, or so they’d like you to believe. Wrong. It’s all about the Benjamins, baby.
To generate that sweet, delicious revenue, influencers and businesses have been assured by TikTok that they are taking measures to ensure that their content is being shown in a ‘community that keeps your brand safe’ with the launch of a new ‘Brand Safety Centre’.
To be fair to TikTok, they are taking this whole content moderation thing pretty seriously, hiring more staff from big tech companies to combat the problems with harmful content on its platform. And that can only be a good thing for users.
3. Fumbled in the end zone?
Coinbase, a crypto FinTech company, spent $16,000,000 on an ad featuring a QR code during the Superbowl on Sunday – only for their website to crash due to the massive influx of traffic.
Coinbase spending $16,000,000 on a Superbowl ad to direct people to their website and $0 to make sure that website doesn’t crash 10 seconds after the ad starts is so very internet.
— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) February 14, 2022
On the surface, this looks like a fail, but actually, despite the website having a meltdown, it was well worth them taking a punt.
According to an article by Vice:
“…the company revealed it saw “20M+ hits on our landing page in one minute” which “led to us temporarily throttling our systems.” Chief executive Brian Armstrong took to Twitter to gloat about the ad: ranked #1 by AdWeek and peaking at #2 in the Apple App Store, just ahead of apps for the Pepsi Super Bowl Halftime Show and the NFL.”
4. Whether love is in the air or not, brands can still cash in
Valentine’s Day, to me, is a completely meaningless event. I’ve never understood why people spend so much money on flowers or meals out, when if you wait a day, you can go and do both of those things at half the price. But then I am a cheapskate, and a firm believer that you should be nice to your significant other all the time, not just one day of the year.
However, I seem to be in the minority, as according to finder.com, UK consumers were estimated to spend £1.37 billion this Valentine’s Day, averaging £23 per person.
But brands are not only capitalising on Valentine’s Day. ‘Anti-Valentine’s Day’, and ‘self-love Valentine’s Day’ both have decent search volume, so it makes sense to include products and messaging that appeal to the more miserable and cynical among us, too.
More data on Valentine’s day spending and trends can be found here.
5. Slugging yourself up with Vaseline
No, slugging is not a euphemism for a rude thing. But it does involve lubing yourself up with Vaseline – on your face.
Vaseline went viral, with social media mentions of Vaseline up 327% year on year after TikTok and Instagram influencers shared beauty tips on how to use the petroleum-based gloop for ‘slugging’, which is basically where you smear a thick layer all over your boat race before you go to sleep. The result? You wreck your bedding, but wake up with a lovely smooth face (but don’t do it if you have acne prone or oily skin, or you’ll be more prone to breakouts).
In a beauty industry saturated with expensive skincare treatments, it’s refreshing that an affordable option is available that actually appears to work.
