Side Chat 12/1/22

Zillow Wrapped hits different.

Dec 01, 2022

Hi,

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving. But let’s be real, on Instagram one “holiday” reins supreme…Black Friday.

This week on the internet…

Get in loser, we’re going shopping. Actually, we are just on our phones.

Ah, the most wonderful time of the year. All of the sudden you start to wonder, do I need that nugget ice maker? But that pizza oven’s 30 percent off? And what about that hair care I keep being told will change my life?

Last week, Instagram and TikTok were flooded with a ton of holiday shopping content and gift guides. Influencers wanted us to click their links, and we wanted to swipe up.

As the Washington Post reported in an interesting article from November, influencer marketing has fundamentally changed the way Americans are doing their holiday shopping. They wrote:

“Research shows 60 percent of Gen Z (born from 1997 to 2012) and 56 percent of millennials (1981 to 1996) will do at least some holiday shopping on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and similar apps, according to the consulting firm Deloitte. That’s a significant leap from the 49 and 46 percent, respectively, recorded in 2021. Even Gen X and boomers have warmed up to the trend, the study found.

What’s more, social media is a key starting point: 6 in 10 shoppers say they get ‘inspiration and ideas’ from the sites, according to a global survey by the IBM Institute for Business Value, in association with the National Retail Federation.

‘Social media provides exposure to so many more products that we would never have access to,’ said Logan Stenseng, 24, of Iola, Kan., a small town about 100 miles southwest of Kansas City. He uses Pinterest for gift ideas but also hunts for bargains on Facebook Marketplace. ‘You also see what’s trendy in other places, and things that are very useful or practical that are helping other people that you can’t find in stores here.’”

This article isn’t incredibly shocking or surprising to anyone whose been on the internet the past decade or so, but it’s worth pointing out. In a very short amount of time, influencers have fundamentally changed how the biggest shopping season of the year goes down. Like, do people even wait in line outside of Walmart anymore?

I did a little survey on my Instagram, asking which Instagram-famous products were worth the hype, and which were a skip. I compiled the answers into two Reels, which you can see here and here. Tl;dr, the Our Place Always Pan is CONTROVERSIAL.

Is the music industry over TikTok?

Billboard had an interesting piece this week about how music industry executives are FED UP with their songs not getting their own TikTok dance. Well, kind of.

They wrote:

“TikTok is known for compulsively addictive short-form video, and for the past three years, much of the music industry has been hooked. By now, the platform is widely viewed as the most potent driver of streaming activity; marketing strategies often center on trying to harness the app’s users to touch off hits.

Lately, however, there’s been a noticeable shift in the way the music business talks about TikTok. One major-label executive with experience running campaigns on the platform recently mused to colleagues that he thought it was ‘dead’ for breaking new songs. Another calls it ‘not workable.’ ‘Does TikTok break hits now?’ asks an A&R executive. ‘There’s a bunch of stuff going off there that’s not even a hit. We’re running on the inertia of what it was.’

‘TikTok is eating itself,’ declares Max Bernstein, who founded the marketing agency Muuser. ‘It still drives consumption if you get it right, but it’s much harder to maneuver now. Trends are siloed when they used to be community-wide, and influencer media is becoming prohibitively expensive.’”

Later in the piece though, another executive said these claims were overblown, so who knows. But what seems apparent is that the music industry is frustrated with the fact that TikTok has become the way that many people not discover new music. And I get it. I am still waiting for someone to write the definitive piece on how TikTok has changed the music industry, and not for the better, Many hits nowadays seem primed for a few seconds of fame on the app, and sometimes what becomes a trend seems almost random. I wrote this tweet over the summer that kind of sums it up.

Stephanie McNeal @stephemcneal

Record execs when they see the hottest songs on TikTok are Chrissy Wake Up and a random Drake song from 2016

Spotify Wrapped is that girl

litquidity @litcapital

No one: Private equity associates who exclusively fly Delta Comfort+:

It’s the most wonderful time of the year. Not Christmas, when every single person you know shares their Spotify Wrapped on social media.

Seriously, is there anyone not sharing it? Is Spotify Wrapped the most brilliant piece of marketing ever? And will we ever escape knowing what every single person listened to this year?

Personally, I’m just here for the memes. And there are some good ones.