🥄Digital Brand Bites - 💛February roundup!💛

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💥 Hi there, we meet again

Welcome to Digital Brand Bites. A monthly snack-sized deconstruction of social media content from big brands.

⭐ My aim is to give you a unique and insightful perspective on the strategies and tactics behind the social media posts of the world's top brands.

This month, we're deconstructing brands from UN Women, Zoopla, Clancy's Auto Body Shop, Lotus Cars, National Park Service to Emirates and Ryanair.

😏 Here are the best bites of February.

📱 And for those on the go, be sure to follow the Instagram page for bite-sized snippets of brand brilliance.

⭐BONUS CONTENT⭐

This month I've delved into why Clancy's Auto Body Shop was such a huge success on TikTok, and what other brands can learn from the big dancing cat, weird music and taking an 'amateur' approach.

🌊 Let's dive in!

🛠Tool of the month:

⚡

A.I. has been all the craze lately. Here's an incredibly powerful AI tool for writing emails - a blazingly fast and simple-looking email writer and sender tool.

You should try this - superhuman.com

Read over a brew:

☕

Instagram's video trimming tool for Stories
Music for Carousels?
LinkedIn's new tool for job seekers
Links for businesses on TikTok
Facebook working on close friends feature
Instagram launches 'Channels' feature
TikTok implements age verification for teens
See how employees are engaging with LinkedIn posts
Twitter updates violent speech elements
Another update for Twitter Community Notes

🥴 What do you Meme?!

👩‍🔬The UN Women's use of the 'Where's Wally' concept to bring attention to the underrepresentation of women in the industry is both creative and thought-provoking.

👀 It was a great way to celebrate International Day of Women and Girls in Science. This kind of content has a high potential to generate engagement and spark meaningful conversations through a playful format.

Forward

♀️Here's Zoopla jumping on Alan Sugar's tweet. These traffic lights were installed in Trafalgar Square for Pride back in 2016. It appears that Sugar has only noticed them recently.

♀️ Over on the Zoopla account, users aren't impressed by the tweet, calling it 'virtue signaling.' Some have even said they'll stop using the brands service because of it.

Forward

🍕Domino's Pizza has been cooking up something special with the help of Chat GPT.

🧑‍💻 They've used this AI technology to analyse thousands of flavour combinations and have come up with some new, mouth-watering pizzas!

Forward

🐔 Here's Popeyes tagging lots of brands in its February #mardigras tweet. Which brand *haven't* they tagged?! It's killing two birds with one stone; 1) a fun way to drum up engagement with other brands 2) recognising the day/hashtag in a quick and fun format.

🐔 The secret sauce to this brand's success is honing in on its playful social media personality and not being afraid of trying new reactive things.

Forward

🐔VFC - This vegan brand has a bold, cheeky, and downright hilarious approach to its content.

😂 This example shows how they don't give a 'cluck' when it comes to their copy; they're being extra risqué with their choice of words and comparison.

Forward

🐻 There's an element of surprise and delight with this government National Park Service account. It reels you in with its funny caption intros, and then delivers important safety tips, teaches you about animals, and ultimately helps it's users to appreciate parks and public lands even more.

✨We all know that communicating serious messages can be a tough task, especially with all that red tape in this sector, but this brand shows us that it doesn't have to be all doom and gloom. With the perfect blend of wit and humor, they've found a way to make important information engaging and memorable.

Forward

🐱The latest TikTok from Emirates has taken inspiration from the latest viral TikTok from Clancy's Auto Body Shop ⭐See bonus content below!

😐While some boomers may scratch their heads at this content, it's clear that the virality factor of this theme has helped it reach a wider audience than just your Gen Z's.

🙌 Aside from mimicking Clancy's, Emirates is showing that luxury doesn't have to be stuffy and boring. It can be fun, quirky, REACTIVE and still offer the same high-end experience.

Forward

🔥No surprise to see Ryanair jumping on the Pete Davidson news (of his latest girlfriend).

🧐They've altered the Marilyn Monroe viral image and playfully inserted themselves into the meme, insinuating that because of their low prices, they'd also be desirable to Pete 🤣.

Forward

🍔 Here's Burger King's recent approach to food shortages. While they've been adapting with a playful approach, it seems that not all users are impressed.

💬 Sentiment can be summed up by this users comment: "I hope you reduce the price. Probably 50p per item would be fair, since that’s what you seem to charge for extras. Take it off the menu, or shut the doors if you can’t supply the product. Everyone else seems to be managing. Some bare faced cheek to come out with, “if we haven’t got the ingredients, we’ll just throw together what we’ve got and charge you the same. Freshly made your way?! Hardly. "

🏎️ Lotus Cars - a luxury brand with a witty, humourous and random presence on TikTok.

🤣Its feed is full of unhinged TikToks, using trending sounds and pieced-together videos featuring weird and often random memes.

✨ It's another example of a luxury brand ''reading the room' and using TikTok the way it should be used - fun, creative, authentic and off the cuff content.

Maxwell the Cat

🚗 Clancy's Auto Body Shop, a Fort Lauderdale small business, has blown up on TikTok, all thanks to its dancing cat meme.

The brand's first TikTok had the caption: “Guys I lied on my resume and got a job doing the social media of this body shop, please blow this up so I don’t get fired."

It's used a humourous and intentionally amateur approach in the TikTok, with the chefs kiss being a cameo appearance by internet celebrity Maxwell the Cat.

The numbers since being posted (20th Feb)
✨4.3M likes
✨14.9K comments
✨121.3K saves
✨190.4K forwards

🥡Here's some key takeaways:

📍 Central character: the character being a 'Gen Z' social media manager giving audiences the impression that they've gone rogue with the brand's social media account. Rebellious, unhinged and spontaneous - a tale as old as time in the world of social media personas. It works here.

📍 Meme culture: the brand has leaned into the unpolished, humourous and 'reactive' nature of the platform. Content that doesn't appear to have gone through a million people signing it off works well on TikTok, and the brand has successfully tapped into this.

📍 Cross-platform & niche: The content excited users so much, that they flooded Google with positive reviews. The content has also prompted the creation of the "Clancy's Cult" community on TikTok - where users now feel part of the shared interest and niche group.

🧠 Thought of the month:

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📅 Next edition is in March.

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