Clear Digital Digest: Facebook, NFL, Snapchat, Vice and Run DMC

Facebook are in rights talks with the NFL

Starting with a look at what the future may bring for Facebook, this forthright article talked about how “Facebook is eating the world”, highlighting how news publishers are continuing to lose control over distribution to the increasingly powerful social media companies (the hypothesis of which was also my 5th thought in my “6 for 2016” predictions from December).  

​As well as increasingly showcasing traditional media stories and of course using its wealth of user generated content, Wired this week looked at the fact that Facebook are in talks with the NFL about buying the rights to stream American football games live.  With sport increasingly important for traditional TV broadcasters as its live nature fuels “appointment to view” watching - and rights becoming more and more expensive – this development could have huge significance for the future of TV, and it’s a fair assumption that the likes of the Premier League will be watching this closely.

Of course, Facebook is one of the old grandees of social media now, and the newly coming force – at least one much discussed – is Snapchat.  However, Snapchat’s unique interface and younger user base can make it difficult to get to grips with for a newcomer, so Bloomberg’s look at “how Snapchat built a business” is an excellent review of the Snapchat phenomenon, including the increasingly visible mainstream rise of DJ Khaled, the “King of Snapchat, according to Emmanuel Seuge, senior vice president for content at Coca-Cola, one of Snapchat’s major advertisers.  Snapchat is now at the stage where it needs to start monetising and it is looking to bring in $300-350m in revenue this year (up from $50m in 2015), as it bulks up its advertising solution.  As a sense check on scale, $350m is still half of supposedly troubled Twitter’s revenue from just Q4 2015 of $710m, with Twitter’s overall 2015 revenue standing at $2.1bn.

Looking back at TV again, Vice Media this week announced a partnership with Sky to show its new channel Viceland upon its launch later this year, a meeting of traditional and newer content providers that would seem to make sense for both, with great distribution to 10m homes for Vice, while helping to capture and entertain a younger audience for Sky.  Viceland launched originally in the US on 29th February with a slightly different model to most pay TV channels, with less standard advertising per hour but a greater emphasis on “a custom, native advertising approach”; which they plan to replicate in the UK, so it will be interesting to see how this pans out upon launch.

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With hindsight, not the greatest Maria Sharapova/Nike endorsement advert

Perhaps the biggest marketing story this week was the shock news about Maria Sharapova announcing on Monday that she had failed a drugs test, with most sponsors being quick off the mark to suspend their lucrative deals with Sharapova (albeit not all, with her racket sponsor Head hanging on in there, a move described as “highly cynical and irresponsible” by David Millar).  Nike were especially quick to move, perhaps due to recent experience with many faded sporting idols, such as Lance Armstrong, Oscar Pistorius and Manny Pacquaio. 

​A happier sports brand tie up actually celebrated its 30th anniversary this week, namely the release of Run DMC’s magnificent “Raising Hell” album, which included the ground breaking “My Adidas” track, still probably the main reason I’ve always been an Adidas not a Nike man.  According to The Quietus in their excellent retrospective, this led to a $1.6m deal with Adidas for Run DMC, not a bad endorsement if it’s still being talked about glowingly 30 years later.

​And finally – as explained by Adweek, this parody but real website from Canadian agency Zulu Alpha Kilo is well worth a look.