In the Loop: November Marketing Round-Up

We seriously can’t believe it’s the end of November already… hasn’t this year flown?! But that means it’s time for our penultimate marketing round-up of 2019, so grab a seat whilst we talk you through some of our favourite marketing news stories from this month.

Google Chrome may start warning users of slow pages before they click

Google Chrome announced a ground-breaking plan to introduce badging to show the speed a web page usually loads at before a user clicks through. The hope is that the badging will ‘reward’ (whatever they mean by that!) fast sites and encourage publishers to improve their site speed.

It’s not entirely clear how the badging system will work yet, but we’re already wondering what warning users will do to abandonment rates – will it encourage people to leave pages, or not visit in the first place?

We’re all for fast websites so can’t see it being a bad thing, just watch out if you’ve been meaning to sort your website’s technical SEO for a while… Maybe bump it up the to-do list?

Facebook revealed their new logo

Facebook (the parent company) updated their branding this month with a new logo to represent all the companies it owns.

They said the rebranding decision was made to make it clearer that they’re not just about Facebook, they own the other popular apps WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram too.

Here’s the new logo – we quite like it…

Christmas ads started appearing

We all know the festive period is upon us when Christmas adverts start appearing on TV!

The John Lewis Christmas advert is always eagerly anticipated, and this year we got to see it on the 14^th November. It features Edgar, the excitable dragon who can’t control the flames that come from his mouth. He seems to dampen the Christmas spirit of everyone in the village with his little accidents, until his best friend Ava gives him a thoughtful Christmas gift. If you haven’t already seen it – have you been living under a rock?! – you can watch it below.

This year they teamed up with their sister company, Waitrose for the advert. It’s not the first time they’ve done this, partners released a series of Christmas adverts together last year too.

But according to MarketingWeek, this year’s most effective Christmas advert was actually Aldi’s, featuring their festive brand mascot Kevin the Carrot and the evil villain, Russel Sprout (we’re absolutely loving the character names!).

Kantar conducted the research MarketingWeek are referring to by measuring each ad against eight key measures. Aldi was the top scoring in six of them, performing especially well in terms of emotional impact and enjoyment.

But if you just look at whether people enjoyed the ad and whether it made them feel emotional, we think John Lewis and Waitrose are the clear winners! Where they apparently fell down against the measures was in terms of whether people will remember the brands behind the ad, and whether it would drive short-term sales. Both arguably extremely important factors when it comes to advertising!

Expansion of like-hiding on Instagram

We knew it was coming, but we didn’t know when! This month, Instagram finally began to start hiding likes for some of us users in the UK.

Now, it’s spreading and we’ve had some insight into just how it works because Ellen has been bundled into the test!

Where the number of likes used to be displayed underneath a picture, it now displays a known account that’s liked it “and others”, rather than a number. When you click on “others”, you can still see a list of accounts that have liked the photo, but the total number is only visible to the person who posted the photo.

Whilst the change is still viewed to be quite controversial, we’re looking forward to seeing whether it will revolutionise the way we interact with Insta, and how brands will respond to the change.

Get creative with your own marketing

We’re always up for a chat about how you can make the most out of your marketing! Send us a quick email to hello@vidacreative.co.uk or give us a call on 0191 691 129.