Q2 2024 has been another action-packed quarter with ongoing technology updates (surprise!) with social media platforms – Instagram changed its algorithm to focus more on smaller creators and Google held their annual marketing live event which gives an update on their martech and adtech tools just to name a few. However, there are three major marketing events that we would like to provide our insights to, they are: The Chick-fil-A PR incident, Netflix to compete in the advertising market, and professional development for agencies.
Chick-fil-A Fumbles The Bag, A PR Nightmare?
In April, one of the biggest stories on social media involved TikTok creator Miri The Siren, a former Chick-fil-A employee who created content about her workplace.
Miri shared food hacks, personal experiences, and honest reviews of different products, which gained significant attention and led to a PR issue for Chick-fil-A. The company paused Miri’s content and declined the opportunity to partner with her. As a result, other brands like Shake Shack and El Pollo Loco offered her ad partnership deals, amplifying the PR storm for Chick-fil-A. Many criticized Chick-fil-A for missing the opportunity to collaborate with Miri and build on the momentum she created.
This situation highlights a common brand dilemma: should a business control its brand tightly, or allow the public to drive its narrative?
Chick-fil-A, like other food establishments, has employee conduct policies to prevent content creation on the job, likely due to food and health safety concerns or potential risks to the brand image. However, by shutting down Miri’s content, they opened the door for competitors to capitalize on the momentum.
Would Chick-fil-A have been better off letting Miri continue to promote their brand freely, or did they make the right decision by cutting her off?
Chick-fil-A took a conservative PR approach, prioritizing control over their brand image. While this strategy might align with their values, it resulted in missed opportunities to leverage the buzz created by Miri and allowed competitors to gain attention. It’s challenging to determine if Chick-fil-A emerged on top, but their stance reflects a cautious approach to digital marketing and engagement with younger generations on social media. With where the industry and market is headed, brands should be cautious and adaptive for change.
Netflix to Fully Enter the Ad Space
Exciting developments in the advertising world (if you’re not Google or Amazon), Netflix is building its own ad server. This follows their 2022 announcement of a partnership with Microsoft to kickstart advertising on the platform. Netflix’s commitment to expanding its ad department is evident, with their monthly ad-supported plan growing from 5 million global subscribers in 2023 to over 40 million in 2024. The new ad platform, scheduled to debut by the end of 2025, aims to enhance the advertising experience for both advertisers and consumers.
From a business and advertiser perspective, this is welcoming news as there is a focus on ad delivery experience by Netflix and this is another distribution stream to consider when planning a marketing strategy to capture more market share. Ad experiences are important for everyone, for the brand/advertiser it is to ensure the message is being delivered properly and in the way they want it to. For the end consumer, the ad tells a story and immerses them in the experience.
At KEEN Creative, we are proud to offer PPC and Media buying services including Microsoft and Netflix Ads. If you are interested, please contact us today for a free consultation and proposal for your business.
Professional Development For Agencies And Any Business
One of the amazing things that happened this quarter at KEEN was our third annual hackathon event. Our edition of hackathon, is a two-day, 12-hour-per-day internal event that challenges our team to explore something new they wouldn’t otherwise have time to during their regular schedule. Each team member challenged themselves to explore a new tech or process. Some projects the team worked on include a better inventory management system, consolidating different platform usage into one, and new design techniques using animation. We have some visual content below that showcases some of these project examples
Inventory management system planning
In the past, the system was set up with lots of data, often overwhelming any new user that picks up the task. A couple of our team members took the initiative to modify and improve our current inventory management system. They explored making the interface more simple for anyone to go in to move orders along.
AI Proposal With Scary Clown Login
A few of our team members explored streamlining current processes, including how we can create proposals with more efficiency. Our Web Director, Kris, actually made a proposal tool from scratch using AI learning models like Chat GPT. Designed for smaller businesses and startups, the proposal tool creates a user-friendly interface that allows simple proposals to be built by providing a mere summary of what the proposal is about.
Design: Object Lighting Animation
Our design team remained in their domain and explored some new techniques with animations. In this brief model, our designer is playing with the lighting of the logo and how it moves with vector changes.
Design: Logo Animation
Our designers also experimented with different animation styles on our KEEN logo.
Hackathon is our unique commitment to our team members’ growth and their professional development. To our HR and Operation friends, this may be an idea for your next PD initiative!
Looking Forward To Q3 2024
We look forward to evaluating the marketing landscape in Q3. Stay tuned to our socials (@keencreative) and be sure to bookmark our website to easily access our next round up of marketing trends and changes of Q3 in October.