PR Disasters & Tik Tok Trauma
5 in 5 - Brave & Heart HeartBeat #127 ❤️
This week we’re looking at a social media and marketing crossover, namely how are Adidas going to deal with the hot potato that Kanye West has become, the possibility of a future with a search engine without ad influence, Tik Tok trauma, McDonalds on eBay and much more.
Don’t worry though, we do also have some good science news to bring you amongst all that chaos.
Let’s get into it.
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#1 - Kanye West vs Adidas
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, and truly, for that, we envy you, you will have seen the recent controversy the artist formerly known as Kanye West has been causing across the internet.
From seriously disturbing antisemitic tweets to his “White Lives Matter” shirt and his completely off the rails TV interview with a member of Trump’s political club, he’s doing the most, and the worst, right now.
Lets zoom into that from a marketing perspective and ask, “Where does that leave Adidas?”
While they have kept silent for years while he made headlines for controversy after controversy (yeah, he’s not really new to this) even staying quiet when he publicly disparaged their CEO and accused them of stealing his work, they’ve recently changed tactics.
They announced after the White Lives Matter thing that they were “reviewing” their business deal with Kanye, and since then the pressure has only ramped up, after videos got out of him showing pornographic material to Adidas business partners and his hate speech on twitter continued.
Adidas now have to decide if maintaining this partnership is worth the constant PR nightmare, and it may not be as simple a decision as you would think, considering the partnership accounts for a whopping 10% of their annual revenue.
While he is often excused for his behaviour due to the erratic nature of creative geniuses in the popular psyche, his recent behaviour seems to be tipping the scale in the other direction. Does it come down to profits vs. brand image and integrity?
By not saying anything, Adidas can be seen as implicitly supporting his actions, and turning away sets a dangerous precedent – in general and for the brand themselves.
#2 - Ex-Google Exec Creates Better Google
Or at least, better according to him in the sense that it is focused on being a search engine, rather than an advertisement engine.
It’s called Neeva, and launched in the UK, Germany and France yesterday, with 600,000 users already in the US where it launched last year.
The search use is free, but Neeva offers paid subscription features such as VPN and password manager for about £5 a month.
Creator Sridhar Ramaswamy, who worked at Google for 16 years and ran its ad business, says he felt that traditional search engines had become more about advertising – he should know, I guess. He also noted that as Google is dominant in the marketplace they have no real incentive to innovate. Fair enough.
BBC news put Neeva to the test to see exactly what they meant by a search engine without ad interference. In a comparison with Google on a search for BMW, Neeva brought up official pages and information while Google gave the user a lot of purchase options, from new to used. They were clearly pushing the user much more in the direction of buying a car, rather than giving them information.
Pretty interesting right? Will this be the one to knock Google off the top spot? Unlike Bing and others they do have a unique selling point that differentiates them from Google, so maybe, if we can be bothered.
#3 - Tik Tok Begging Earns Money… For Tik Tok
This one is disturbing, like Black Mirror level disturbing.
A new kind of live streaming is flooding Tik Tok. Syrian families in camps are filming themselves begging for sometimes hours at a time, and apparently although these streams can earn up to $1000 an hour – most of that money goes to Tik Tok.
The money is given through “gifts” (ranging from low priced digital roses to lions that cost $500) which can be sent by people watching the stream, and then withdrawn from the app as cash. A test undertaken by journalists shows that Tik Tok take a percentage of around 70%.
While the percentage earned by Tik Tok is not necessarily unethical in itself - we assume the percentage taken by Tik Tok on any money given on live streams was already set up before this worrying trend, and Tik Tok is obviously not set up as a charity app - what seems more damning is that the families are being given the phones, accounts and equipment for the streams by “middlemen” linked with Tik Tok.
These middlemen apparently work for agencies affiliated with Tik Tok in China and the middle east, who give the families access to accounts as part of Tik Tok’s global strategy to recruit more live streamers and get people to spend more time on the app.
Unfortunately this episode of Black Mirror, as so often is the case at the moment, can’t be turned off.
#4 - Dance For Your Energy
While not yet a fully actionable solution to pay your own energy bills this winter, a nightclub in Glasglow has installed a system that will allow them to create renewable energy from the body heat of people on the dancefloor.
Dancers' body heat is piped via a special carrier fluid to huge bore holes that can be charged like a thermal battery. The energy then travels back to the heat pumps. The owners say this will enable them to completely disconnect their gas boilers, reducing carbon emissions by about 70 tonnes of CO2 a year, and following their goal achieve net-zero emissions by 2025.
At £600,000 to install the system costs about 10x more than the installation of a classic system would have done, but apparently the savings on energy bills will make the investment recoverable in around five years’ time.
We love when there’s some cool science news in the mix along with social media nightmares and marketing mishaps.
#5 - Car Gaming Goes Mainstream
We already knew that Tesla had gaming systems in their cars, but they’re also pretty much a law unto themselves. The announcement of a gaming system in the newest BMW model brings car gaming mainstream – and we can’t help but wonder, why?
The other day BMW announced a partnership with AirConsole gaming company, which offers over 180 games pledging to “make every waiting situation in the vehicle an entertaining experience”.
Okay, cool, but you do know we already have our phones right? Sure, the centre console is a bigger screen and 180 games is a lot – but were we really crying out for this?
Unless it’s a way for BMW to try and claw back the top spot for luxury car name, as Tesla seem to have overtaken them in that respect, and they figured the only way to do it was to inch in on the tech aspect?
Brave & Heart over and out.
Bonus
McDonalds Launch Adult Happy Meals
It sounds pretty amazing, with a box of either ten nuggets or a big mac with fries and a mascot toy made in collaboration with fashion and lifestyle brand Cactus Plant Flea Market.
While it is pretty cool for customers, its apparently causing havoc in drive throughs in the US, with people buying up the stocks, perhaps to sell on ebay as a full set of all four toys is currently on sale for $270.
If that’s the case, think of all the wasted nuggets!
Want to know how to put in place a Kanye West proof marketing strategy, or re-imagine your digital systems with the prowess of an ex-Google exec making a new Google?