Why Facebook’s new brand recovery commercial is not good, but great

Last night, I was watching an NBA game -- Warriors vs. Pelicans, played in the heart of Silicon Valley -- and a commercial came on.

It told me to become friends again.

It was Facebook, in a one-minute advertisement, trying to win back my heart after a rough last couple of weeks. The world’s most popular social media network had been under widespread scrutiny after it was discovered in March that they had surrendered profile data from as many as 87 million Facebook user accounts to a political consulting firm, Cambridge Analytica.

This evidence was deeply disturbing to many Facebook users, myself included, as it exposed the company’s willingness to give out seemingly private, personal information to powerful companies outside of the network.

As a result of this, Facebook has spent the last month trying to make amends. Its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, testified before congress concerning the damning evidence against his company and what they knew about what was happening, and he has announced changes within the network’s structure that will attempt to combat this harvesting of personal user data.

Zuckerberg promised that Facebook “will never be unprepared again” for attempts to undermine the democratic process, including elections, according to the New York Times.

Despite the fact that Facebook has reportedly continued to make more money in the past year, even with the recent privacy scandal, Zuckerberg knew that this was a bad look. Along with security changes, like the newly added “Clear History” function, Facebook took on a marketing initiative to try to salvage its brand’s reputation in this time of crisis.

They release a commercial, the one that I saw last night.

Over the past couple of weeks, I hadn’t exactly broken things off with Facebook. We were still talking, but not like before. I’d lost some trust, as one might expect. So I wasn’t exactly coming from a point of hatred over the most recent scandal, but I still raised an eyebrow when I realized who was running the ad.

That being said, it left me stunned. In fact, it made me love Facebook more than I had in a long time.

Watch the video. The point of the campaign is to bring us back to why we got on Facebook in the first place -- for the friends. The advertisement makes you reminisce as it reintroduces common themes in each person’s life that they have likely shared on Facebook, or at least gone through while being a user.

It takes you back to your successes, your downfalls, your break-ups and your make-ups. It pulls at the heart strings and lets nostalgia do its magic. But ultimately, it reminds us of why we love Facebook: our friends.

Midway through, it considers the recent obstacles that the network has fought; ‘fake news,’ spam, and now the harvesting of personal information. It doesn’t stray from conflict, but it runs toward it by telling its own side of the story. It makes you sympathize with Facebook for all that it’s gone through, and in doing so it allows you to get behind its most current efforts to keep fighting these battles.

And ultimately, it leaves the viewer with the mindset that ‘everything is going to be all right.’ There was an innocence and purity to it that I imagine is often hard to achieve for a multi-billion dollar business with a bigger-than-life scandal on its hands.

I felt as if Facebook and I were on good terms again, like that one-minute ad had been our way of hashing things out. Now we were cool.

The fact that Facebook could do all of this in one minute is astounding, yes. This was definitely a successful rebranding campaign in my eyes. They killed it.

But more than anything, it made me realize how clearly Facebook’s marketing team understands their approach and purpose. They know exactly what their users want, and they know exactly how to make them feel to get back on their side (in a one-minute time frame). Yes, it’s a well-made advertisement, but it becomes brilliant when you consider the level to which Facebook had to understand its audience in order to pull this off.

While Facebook may have gone through some break-ups recently, their future is bright. When it comes to their brand’s perception, they know exactly what to say to get you back.

Sports Illustrated is changing its social media game -- but does it have to?

In the sports media industry, everyone seems to have their own lane. For ESPN, it’s entertainment. For The Ringer, it’s creative content. And for Sports Illustrated, which has been known as America’s most well-respected, integral sports magazine since its inception in 1954, it has been quality, well thought-out journalism. It is famous for longform stories that were rich in detail, reflecting a willingness to invest in meaningful work.

But things are changing for SI, and these changes are now shown through their approach to social media as well.

Like most news organizations, the magazine has made a large number of cuts over the past 5-10 years. There are now fewer reporters than ever, as less money is going towards longform writing and more is going towards video and entertainment-based content.

For fans of old-school journalism, this change is sad but predictable. The magazine struggled to adapt to a rapidly changing industry and has had to change their approach to business in ways that they feel will make it sustainable.

While most could see that the industry -- and therefore, the product -- was changing, what most SI diehards didn’t quite see coming was the brand overhaul that the magazine would pursue. The website and app are now increasingly video-heavy, with short video links and the newly formed “SI TV” function featured prominently.

Stories about pop culture and clickbait news populate a sizeable portion of the front page, a far cry from the journalism that the company prided itself on since its start. However, usually the company’s longform reporting is still featured front and center.

This branding change has carried over to social media as well, but with a different feel. The magazine now posts clickbait stories about the Kardashians alongside longform features on its Facebook and Twitter pages. They market their posts as clickbait, shamelessly selling pop culture stories at the same rate as 10,000-word pieces.

I feel like I am not alone when I see a problem here. While I understand that the nature of the company’s financial situation has led them to go a different way with their website content, I don’t understand why they are lowering the value of their best work on social media. It’s their approach that bothers me (and, I feel, many others), given the relevance of social media in today’s media consumption world.

It seems that even if they might need to produce different types of content, they should still promote their best work in a brighter light. The easy (and cost-free) way to do this is through social media, and it would convey to readers that they still understand and appreciate the type of work that got them to this point.

So, if I were SI, how would I do it? I’d keep posting some of the clickbait (because it is on the front page of the website, after all), but I’d keep it 75/25 in favor of the more well-reported and original stories.

The financial nature of the industry might have forced SI to cut writers, but it doesn’t have to force them to bury their best work.

ICYMI: The art of reposting on Twitter in the media industry

The media industry, especially the journalists themselves, aren’t typically seen as advertisers.

However, they need to sell their work in order to keep their job. Their work needs to be read/listened to/viewed to earn revenue, which means that getting people to do so is essential for business. Journalists are constantly riding the line between wanting to sell their work but also not wanting to come off as pushy or aggressive, which would ultimately hurt business.

It is the classic conflict of push vs. pull advertising and the question of how much should a brand push their content to try to engage with its consumers.

Social media has added another layer to this decision-making process for journalists, as many news organizations now rely on online consumerism, making social media a crucial avenue of content sharing for the industry.

One network where this presents a particularly complicated challenge is Twitter. Unlike Facebook or Instagram, where the algorithm will push certain types of content to the top of one’s feed, Twitter is still true to its roots as a ‘timeline.’ The most current posts will be at the top.

While Twitter has pushed “In case you missed it” content near the top as well, and will also alert users if one of their most engaged followers tweeted and it received a notable amount of likes or retweets, the network is still largely chronological.

Because of this, many posts go unseen. They get lost in the ether of content that many users have if they follow over 400 or 500 people. This presents a problem for journalists, who need their content to be seen.

How do journalists fix this problem? They try to find ways to sell each story/podcast/video more than once. That way, if one person didn’t catch it on their timelines the first time, they might see it again on the second posting. However, journalists have to balance this reposting with the knowledge that some of their followers might have already seen this content, which could make it annoying to see it too many more times after that.

This is a tight rope that all journalists must walk. Here’s what I’ve found, in following hundreds of professional journalists and also experimenting with content marketing myself, as to what the most effective methods of reposting on Twitter are:

1. ICYMI (In case you missed it)

The best journalists will repost their content 10-12 hours later, prefacing the second post with the acronym, “ICYMI.” This lets their followers know that this is not the initial posting and that they might want to click on it to see what they missed. It is also an opportunity to rephrase the ‘sell tweet’ with new anecdotes or points of interest, in order to entice consumers who may have passed up on it the first time they saw it.

2. Adding to a thread

By tweeting out follow-up notes on a post’s thread after the initial posting, the initial tweet can gain interest and potentially drive people to click. It also allows the journalist to expand on their work and engage with followers in discussion.

3. Retweeting your own work the next day

While this might sound a bit out of touch, this is not seen as egotistical or flagrantly self-promotional. Twitter now allows users to retweet their own work, so journalists will often do so about a day after their original post was made in order to promote the content one final time.

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In light of these methods of reposting, it’s also equally important to build up work before it’s posted for the first time. By promoting work in anticipation of its release, more people will be interested in consuming it once it’s out.

And the most important thing for journalists is that in between all of this promotional tweeting must be down-to-earth, personal engagement. By interacting with others and being engaging, and in doing so appearing human and conversational, your followers will grow closer to you. This is essential. It can’t all be promotional work.

A game-changing idea in the media industry: Subscriber meetups

In my last blog post, I wrote about the apparent ‘brand evangelism’ that had arisen amongst subscribers to The Athletic, an online sports media startup. The website has expanded rapidly in its first eight months of existence, and its following has grown in a similarly exuberant fashion.

The Athletic has created a culture amongst its followers where they are quick to talk about why they subscribe to sports media’s newest national goliath. The Athletic’s followers are loud and proud, as the brand smartly markets quality over quantity and encourages others to ‘join their team.’

In another step towards building a personal, evangelical following, The Athletic has begun to start a new trend among their many city bases: subscriber meetups.

One of The Athletic Cleveland’s writers, NBA reporter Jason Lloyd, tweeted on Monday afternoon that the Cleveland website was close to announcing its first subscriber meetup. The idea is that subscribers could meet up at a local restaurant or bar and get to talk with the website’s writers over dinner or a drink. It will be casual and lively, a chance for the public to get to know the people behind the print.

Of all the smart things that The Athletic has done to gain a following in such a short time since its conception, this might be the smartest. This is simply brilliant.

What better way to strengthen your brand’s relationship with its following than by literally encouraging them to meet the writers in person? While I am sure that some news organizations have done this before in different ways, this was the first time I’d seen it and it struck me as something that illuminated a key ingredient missing often in the media world: reader-writer conversation.

I noted in my last post that The Athletic’s writers do an exceptional job of replying to each and every comment on their stories and they also reach out to their subscribers on social media, simply asking them what kind of content they wish to see. This is another form of direct customer service that The Athletic is implementing, in order to increase trust and build a personal relationship with those who pay $4 per month to consume their product.

By meeting such prestigious writers in person, subscribers can not only give them feedback, but they can also get to understand them better on a personal level. It will make the writers seem human, make them seem relatable, which will help them become more likeable.

An organization that already went above and beyond for its customers took another huge step on Monday, announcing that their relationship with subscribers would now be on a face-to-face, up-close-in-personal level. In an industry where everyone is fighting for subscribers and struggling to keep readership, The Athletic is gaining ground rapidly with this kind of brand-building.

‘The Athletic’ is building its readership through an evangelical following

In the media industry, competition today is fiercer than ever. As news organizations struggle to find ways to create revenue from online readership, the key is gaining a loyal following. How can my newspaper/website cultivate a following that I can engage with and profit off of? In simpler terms, How do I get more fans?

This is difficult because many news organizations are typically at least 100 years old and are operating on long-held policies and standards, which can sometimes limit their flexibility in the online branding transition. However, one national online sports media startup is not tethered to history by inflexible guidelines, allowing them to create somewhat of a cult following over their first eight months.

The Athletic, a national sports website which has taken off recently, has gained a following that appears to be unique from many other national news sources. They are subscription-based, as only those who pay $48 per year (or $4 per month) can read their work. But the work is sold as in-depth and meaningful, taking the time to do rich and fulfilling reporting as opposed to writing about LaVar Ball every day.

They frame their product as one that is superior than the rest and they are consistent in their message: quality over quantity, just at a small cost. And clearly, at least so far, their marketing message is working. They are constantly expanding, going from sites in a few cities to now covering nearly every city and professional sports team (in the NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL and MLS), as well as covering college football and basketball. They are hiring writers seemingly every week and are consistently being written about as a bright spot, an entity that is growing in an industry that seems to be shrinking.

Yes, The Athletic follows through with their message. I subscribe because their content is truly remarkable, they now boast some of America’s best sportswriters, and I love how there are no ads on their page (which is also a part of their brand). But why has The Athletic been able to not only pull people in, but also create a sort of “brand evangelism,” as Keith Quesenberry terms it in chapter 12 of his book, Social Media Strategy, amongst its followers?

How has America’s newest national sports magnate created a cult-like following? The answer lies in its branding.

While The Athletic promotes the advantages I discussed above (paying for quality, no ads, great writers, etc.), they are also consistently making their subscribers feel good about their decision to pay. On their Facebook page, they are regularly posting sponsored content about other news organizations writing about them and their success.

Their writers are encouraged to thank their readers on social media, and they will often interact with them both on networks (as discussed with C. Trent Rosecrans in my last post) and in the comment section of their stories as well. Writers at The Athletic are encouraged to make their readers not only feel welcome, but also appreciated. They make you feel like you are a part of something special and that you are in on the best product out there.

This is also reiterated in the brand’s tone and word choice with social media posts, as they will often refer back to the advantages of subscribing when referencing reporting that a writer has done.

All of this positive noise has created an extremely evangelical following behind the website. While The Athletic takes criticism sometimes for allegedly sucking talent from local newspapers, their followers are quick to fight back for them. The brand’s subscribers are its biggest advocates (myself included), as they have transformed their brand into a ‘team.’

Although this following may reject a small minority of potential subscribers, I believe that the atmosphere has actually helped the network gain more and more readers. The ‘team’ is building itself internally, through pointed branding and an evangelical following. As the following goes, the network goes. And right now, it’s doing pretty damn well.

How reporters can use social media crowdsourcing to elevate their brand

One of social media’s biggest advantages is that it can form direct connections. Brands can directly communicate in real time with consumers on the other end, and while the conversation isn’t face-to-face, it’s still almost always from one person to another.

This means that social media presents brands with an extraordinary feedback opportunity, as Keith Quesenberry notes in chapter 11 of his book, Social Media Strategy. In the chapter, Quesenberry discusses how brands can use social media as a way to “crowdsource,” or to ask consumers for feedback.

This method of social media crowdsourcing represents the platform at its most democratic; everyone can have a say if they want to and all opinions can be heard directly.

Last week, one reporter crowdsourced his following and it appeared not only smart, but necessary.

C. Trent Rosecrans, a Cincinnati Reds beat writer for The Athletic, simply asked his Twitter followers what they would like to see more of in his coverage. “So, @TheAthleticCIN subscribers, would you be interested in a newsletter every (weekday) morning just on the Reds? Could be like the BAR, but in your mailbox. Or maybe weekly? I don't know... just spitballing.”

He got 66 replies and all kinds of suggestions. By doing this, Rosecrans could gain insight from his following (as The Athletic is a website-only news organization and a sizeable chunk of its writers’ audiences exist online, and therefore on social media) as to what type of content they would like to see and how he could improve his work.

But this was about much more than just improving content. In asking his followers what they thought and creating dialogue between his brand and his consumers, Rosecrans likely gained great respect from the people who read his work. He liked all tweets that provided constructive advice, a sign that he cared, as if to say, ‘Thank you.’ He responded to many tweets, not only expressing his gratitude, but also having a conversation about anything and everything to do with content improvement.

This dialogue likely made Rosecrans’ followers feel closer to him, as is the purpose of social media crowdsourcing. His personal brand was elevated, along with The Athletic’s brand, because of this initiative. And after seeing this, it became apparent to me that all writers with a sizeable platform in the media industry should be doing the same thing.

Why not take a second to reach out to your customers? Why not strengthen that relationship, especially considering how fragile the industry currently is? And why not make yourself better and understand how your consumers think, at the very least?

While many other reporters have probably done what C. Trent Rosecrans’ did last week, this was the first time I had seen it play out to such a magnitude. Now, Rosecrans can better serve his base and has a more transparent, likeable image in the process.

All because of a simple tweet. 'How am I doing?'

Knowing your niche: Why ‘The Daily’ is a work of podcast art

I listen to about 10 different podcasts on a consistent, weekly basis. They are almost all produced by news organizations, everything from NPR’s This American Life to The Ringer’s Bill Simmons Podcast.

What I think separates the good podcasts from the great ones is their ability to reach their audience; how good are the hosts and producers at knowing their corner and playing to it?

While many podcasts do this well, one stands out as an example of how to master this concept. It is the New York Times’ ‘The Daily’ podcast, hosted by the ever-charismatic Michael Barbaro.

This podcast runs daily and is just 20 minutes long. It dives into one or two key news stories of the day and also discusses a few of the day’s top headlines during the closing minutes of the show. It essentially serves as the newspaper’s front page, except in podcast form.

What makes this a ‘work of art’ is that it does a few things to target its audience in an extremely effective manner. The podcast is meant to be something that listeners can consume on their way to work or during their morning commute, as exemplified by its strict (and unusually short) time limit. By accomplishing this, the podcast does not inconvenience its consumers. In fact, it is tailored precisely for their schedule.

The podcast is also meant for a wide range of consumers, those who might know a lot about the story being covered and those who might know nothing coming into that podcast. The host and Times journalists treat each story as if it were a front page newspaper story, bringing elements of formality and expertise into it. The listeners not only feel smarter about a worldly issue after listening, but they also understands all sides of it (thus, the journalistic aspect of the podcast).

Then, by recapping some of the world’s other main headlines at the end of the show, the podcast nonchalantly runs down the sidebars of the rest of the ‘front page,’ giving brief descriptions of each story. After listening, consumers feel educated on the main topics of the day. It is a fulfilling feeling, like reading the newspaper but without actually doing it.

While the ‘good’ podcasts have a certain objective based on their audience and needs, ‘The Daily’ seems to get it exactly right every time. They know that not everyone has the time to sit down and read the Times every day. Therefore, this gives their consumers a quick alternative, while also driving attention to their brand and product (both online and print).

Although it is not discussed in chapter 10 of Keith Quesenberry’s book Social Media Strategy, where he talks about podcasts, this medium is rising rapidly in popularity -- especially in the news industry. Now, nearly every journalist at major (and even small-market) news organizations is encouraged to create or be involved in a podcast, as research has shown that people also enjoy listening to the news (likely because it is more convenient).

As many news organizations struggle to find their footing -- and simultaneously, find their niche -- in the podcast scene, the New York Times is already lapping the competition. In 2017, ‘The Daily’ was the most downloaded new show on Apple Podcasts, according to Forbes.

The Times knows their corner and they play to it well. It’s simple, it’s effective, and ‘The Daily’ isn’t going anywhere.