March '22 Drop

Our TL;DR monthly trendspotting and reporting on the sticky stuff for your biz, your brand, and your cultural fluency. Check back monthly for the next 5 best things.

E-commerce everywhere

Twitter and Pinterest hop on the e-commerce bandwagon

Twitter introduces “Twitter Shops” which allows brands to select a collection of 50 products.
This is a pretty significant improvement to their current ecom platform “Shop Module” where accounts can only display 5 products.
Purchases won’t be transacted in Twitter. Once a user is ready to buy, they will be redirected to the company’s website.
Pinterest expands its shopping experience with in-app checkout so your moodboard will actually be shoppable.
Pinterest is also serving up personalized shopping pages to its users through a feature called “Your Shop”.

Sources: AdAge, Social Media Today

Brand Opp:

Whether you choose your top selling products or you want to push new product, get your storefront set up and open for business. What products are people talking about on Twitter specifically. Make this specific to the platform. Apparently this feature is free to use and Twitter is not currently monetizing this new product while in testing.

Your content, your music

TikTok opens its creation tools to allow for music uploads

TikTok is launching “SoundOn” — a distribution platform to amplify more artists music by allowing them to upload song directly to the app (plus the big guns like Spotify and Apple).
With so much attention on the cut artists get from existing platforms for their own music, TikTok is one step ahead by paying 100% of royalties to music creators.
TikTok has achieved massive influence in today’s music industry in sending songs that find popularity on the app to the top of the Billboard charts.
You guessed it. SoundOn is not just a hosting platform, it will also offer promotional tools and support

Source: Tech Crunch

Brand Opp:

If an artist or their music resonates with your brand, use their songs to tell your story and support these up and coming artists. If you have any music associated with your brand (a jingle or a sounds from your app), open it up for TikTok to play around with.

Nostalgia strikes gold with NFTs

From music players to sports trading cards, nostalgia has entered the NFT arena.

Y2K has been cha cha sliding it’s way back into our hearts for some time now.
It’s latest scheme: LimeWire and trading cards as NFTs.
It’s been over a decade since LimeWire shut down, and they’re back as an NFT marketplace (and legal).
Artists will be able to sell exclusive music and art directly to collectors and engage with their most loyal community of fans.
No matter how confusing NFTs may be, we love to see trading cards back on the scene.
This bump in activity has been led and revived by “Topps”, an 80-year-old trading card company that is dabbling in trading cards as NFTs.

Sources: FutureParty, Forbes

Brand Opp:

As much as we stand for Marie Kondo, sometimes you’ve gotta hoard some things. Whether that’s the first prototype of your product, an email that changed your life, or your brand fans sending you crazy things, this is your sign to keep it and to share it. Your consumers want to see where you’ve come from and be a part of your future.

Long form video boom

Some call it a comeback, some don’t want it to come back

TikTok is either trying to stretch our attention spans above 8 seconds or seeing if they can knock out YouTube as a competitor.
Over the last few years, TikTok has increased their video lengths from 15 second, to 60 seconds, to 3 minutes, and now they’re up to 10 minutes.
But why? Apparently it’s to “unleash even more creative opportunities for our creators around the world.”
What do the creators think? Like everything else, it’s a mixed bag.
Some long-form content creators are excited about the chance to finally have space on TikTok for their content.
Others think that if TikTok is going to increase video length, they should also enhance other features (ie. clickable links within videos, desktop editing access, monetization metrics, etc.).

Sources: Vox, BuzzFeed News

Brand Opp:

It’s about trial and error, baby. There’s no harm is testing out some long form pieces of content. Maybe you can bring your influencers to the table to hear their ideas of how to activate. Is there a brand story you’ve always wanted to tell but didn’t have the time? Is there a product your community can’t get enough of?

Songs getting social

Chart toppers are born through virality and social meme’ing

Anything can be a meme these days and the music industry is definitely not a stranger to this expression, as songs / artists / albums have been an inspiration behind many of the memes that have taken off.
From Drake’s “Hotline Bling” music video to one of Gunna’s newest songs “pushin P”, the internet has a way to take hold of something and make it into things you never would’ve thought.
Not only does the internet enhance what’s already out there, but it’s also a jumping off point for many artists.
TikTok is part of the engine that’s accelerating new content, songs, styles, and trends, and it’s also allowed for the past to have a second wave.
Sometimes it’s luck, but other times there’s a lot of strategy that goes into promoting new work with memes.

Source: Complex

Brand Opp:

Artists are walking brands and this is how their fans are communicating and forming community. An album drop = a product drop. Meet your customer where they are and arm them with social currency they can share with their communities. Ttap into meme culture with your next product drop to break through the noise.

The Wax reported by:
Yasmeena Faycurry & Kate Sanner
2022 Platform Listeners

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