Week of August 14, 2016

Twitter Promoted Stickers

Source: http://adage.com/article/digital/pepsi-buys-promoted-sticker-campaign-twit-ter/305442/

Twitter announced the launch of Promoted Stickers with Pepsi starring in the first ever sticker campaign.

The stickers are emoji-like icons that brands can sponsor. Users can insert ontop of their photos, similar to a Snapchat or Instagram filter.

Pepsi was the perfect first candidate for this new feature with the launch of its recent “Say It With Pepsi” campaign that is centered around emojis.

Source: http://adage.com/article/digital/pepsi-buys-promoted-sticker-cam-paign-twitter/305442/

A lot of the sticker options on Twitter reflect the emojis that appear on the Pepsi bottles.

Ontop of the stickers, Twitter integrated a search feature. Upon clicking a sticker a photo, Twitter brings up a stream of all photos using the same sticker, thus working similar to that of a Twitter hashtag.

Source: http://adage.com/article/digital/pepsi-buys-promoted-sticker-campaign-twit-ter/305442/

Overall, Pepsi’s motivation for a partnership to test Twitter’s new featureseems like a natural fit with the look and feel of their new campaign.

It is currently unknown what it would take for another brand to follow in Pepsi’s footsteps.

Source: http://adage.com/article/digital/pepsi-buys-promoted-sticker-cam-paign-twitter/305442/

The release of Twitter’s Promoted Stickers comes shortly after the the re-launch of the Twitter brand, which does not seem like a coincidence.

Twitter’s desire to find their place in the social media world is becoming more apparent with the audience they are trying to reshape with the new feature, offering a new engagement contrary to their foundation as a text-based application.

What this means for brands:

What this means for marketers:

Brands can get excited about Twitter’s new feature, but should be wary of the Twitter audience and how they are going to react to a different way to engage on the platform. If proven successful in Pepsi’s campaign, it can be a very valuable asset as an alternative audience to Snapchat’s sponsored geofilters to share brand content.

Twitter is getting itself back in the game. We should be paying attention to this new visual outlet for a different audience usually defined by Twitter. If successful, it can be a new outlet to trend nationally with images instead of words and hashtags.