ICYMI: Have 10-Minute Reels Missed Their Moment?
Plus Selena's beach blanket meme backstory explained
[via Laguna Beach Textile Company Instagram]
It’s Labor Day weekend and the official platform updates are brief. I hope this is a sign everyone is OOTO for some serious R&R— especially the Threads team that worked through the July 4th holiday!
Congrats to For All Things Digital’s Adebukola Ajao for winning last week’s book giveaway!
I bought so many books on the list, what would a marketing book club look like? Do you have ideas or suggestions? Let me know!
⏰ 1-SECOND SUMMARY
Instagram is testing 10 minute Reels
Linktree unveils it’s first collab theme
TikTok wins the scrolling wars but ad spend still goes to Instagram
YouTube is celebrating GRWM creators
The Selena beach blanket backstory has emerged and y’all need to check in with legal
💻 ROADMAP
📲 Meta Updates
Instagram confirmed it’s testing three and 10 minute Reels, presumably to compete with TikTok and Shorts. Funnily enough, creators used to have this option with IGTV when you could actually upload a 60-minute video. But that disappeared when Reels took over absolutely everything. Now, it seems long-form Instagram videos are being re-invented.
Ten minute Reels might be good news for creators with a lot to say and advertisers looking for inventory but will users embrace the format now that their attention spans have been conditioned to 15 seconds of watch time?!
Instagram announced it’s testing the ability for public accounts to share Comments from any public Feed post or Reels to their Stories. The idea is to help creators highlight important or interesting comments from other creators or followers.
Keyword search is coming to Threads, starting in Australia and New Zealand with plans to expand to other English-speaking countries soon.
📲 TikTok Updates
TikTok’s Effect House is rolling out more widely to effects creators. To join, download Effect House 3.0 and join TikTok’s official Effect House community on Discord.
📲 YouTube Updates
YouTube is giving creators who violate its guidelines a chance to wipe the slate clean by taking a class. Creators who receive a Community Guidelines warning have the option of taking an educational training course to lift the warning from their channel — provided they complete the course and don’t violate the same policy for 90 days.
📲 Twitter / X Updates
Paid users on Twitter / X can now hide the Likes tab on their profile, preventing people from seeing the posts they’ve liked. I’m sure there are non toxic reasons for wanting that extra layer of privacy, I just can’t think of any at the moment.
📲 Lintree Update
Linktree released its first ever custom theme in collaboration with singer-songwriter Olivia Rodrigo to celebrate the release of her upcoming album, Guts. This is one of those ideas that make so much sense, you almost wonder why it took so long to be introduced — Rodrigo’s theme is likely not the last collab we’ve seen from Linktree.
👆🏻 CLICK THRU
💀 Social Media Is Dead — and Group Chats Killed It
The fatigue average people feel when it comes to posting on Instagram has pushed more users toward private posting and closed groups, wrote Insider’s Sydney Bradley and Amanda Perelli. Features like Close Friends and the rise of group chats give people a safer place to share memes, gossip with friends, and even meet new people.
This is a great examination of people’s attention shifting from social Feeds to more intimate online spaces — whether that's Stories, DMs or group chats or entirely new apps. The move is probably healthier for all of us but these private conversations will pose a real challenge to marketers.
I was grateful to be included in the Insider piece and also wrote about this myself recently — The real FYP is what you send in group chats. I’ve also seen other marketers prioritize for shareable content: “Our barometer has always been ‘is it good enough for the gc [group chat]?’” Micah Kulish, the 100 Thieves head of social, tweeted at me this week.
The answer for brands chasing eyeballs will probably be a mix of evolving solutions:
A focus on shareable content and developing tech solutions to track that content
Increased reliance on influencers and their communities as an entry point to private conversations
New ad solutions that we may not even be aware of yet. It’s like stuffed crust pizza, where else can more advertising be squeezed in?
Unconventional brand participation in private spaces with Social Media Managers taking an even greater role in organic posting. Remember when all the brands joined Animal Crossing?!
I asked about the challenge on LinkedIn and Haven’s Kitchen senior brand manager Madison Kennedy responded, pointing out that digital-only doesn’t cut it anymore — brand experiences need to be immersive or physical. “Folks want something they can hold onto, keep, and remember,” wrote Madison.
If you’re looking for inspiration, here are some of the IRL experiences that got on our radars this summer:
Rhode x Krispy Kreme Times Square activation
R.E.M. Beauty ice cream pop-up shop in New York
World of Barbie dream house in Santa Monica
Zines like The Publish Press putting out a physical newspaper to celebrate VidCon.
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📸 How the brand behind Selena Gomez’s viral blanket seized the meme-nt
The Selena Gomez wrapped in a beach blanket meme and its backstory about the small business seeing blanket sales explode is so sweet but… you can’t use a celebrity likeness to sell your product (especially as part of paid ads!) without obtaining permission.
Go ahead and enjoy this Marketing Brew piece on how the company is capitalizing on the meme but please talk to legal before considering using any celebrity images in association with your brand! In the meantime, you can read entertainment lawyer Robert Freund’s advice about publicity rights.
▶️ YouTube Launches Themed Logo Redesign to Celebrate GRWM Creators
There have been more than 6 billion views of GRWM (get ready with me) videos on YouTube this year. And while the format might now be equally popular across TikTok and Instagram, Google’s video platform wants to remind everyone they were their first with GRWM videos popping up back in the 2010s. “We were just starting an entire era without even knowing it,” said creator Bailey Sarian in a collab video with YouTube on the GRWM trend.
📊 TikTok has surged past Instagram in time spent on the platform, but lags in ad dollars
Here are some of the key takeaways in this Business Insider piece based on an Insider Intelligence report breaking down time spent by US adults on social media:
Time spent on social media — across the board — is on the rise
Instagram and Facebook beat TikTok when it comes to US ad spending because Meta is the gold standard for social-media ad buys
YouTube still crushes IG and TT on watch time per day
📣 QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“The things that are tied to a positive experience [with brand deals] are things that are typical to the traditional workforce, like communication (i.e. communicating deadlines and expectations), creative freedom, and autonomy. And being paid on time. That’s a big deal.”
-Lindsey Lee Lugrin, creator-turned-founder of payment transparency platform FYPM speaking to The Leap as part of this Q&A: FYPM Pushes for More Influencer Pay Transparency With Expansion Plans
🎙️ LISTEN
We’re all influencers at work but BuzzFeed’s original creator network is a model of what companies should avoid! Jessica Phillips and I talked about corporate-backed personal branding and so much more on The Social Standard’s podcast.
📖 WORTH READING
How Influencers Dodged the Destruction in Creator Startups - The Information (paywall)
YouTube’s ‘canceled’ stars are making comebacks with TikTok, podcasts and livestreams -NBCNews
Here’s Everything We Know About the New Creators Guild -Passionfruit
Fossil Fuel Companies Are Paying Influencers to Do Their PR -Novara Media
Why does everyone on TikTok talk like that? -Dazed
YouTube channel Yoga With Adriene began stitching together videos from its back catalog and livestreaming them 24/7 -The Publish Press
MrBeast won the Streamys Creator of the Year award but was too busy creating to attend -Twitter
How Amazon’s payout structure for influencers puts a spotlight on creators’ low pay -Digiday
✨ ICYMI Tip ✨ Did you know if you hold the left side or the top right side of any TikTok video, it plays at twice the speed? Thanks for the tip Mallory!
I see no upside in uploading 10 min Reels.