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P1C Friday Finds Round-Up: 13th – 20th August 2021

Happy Friday to all our weekly readers (a.k.a. Ricky’s son-in-law, hi Matthew!), and welcome to another bumper Friday Finds round-up!

P1C News

Following another unreal weekend at CarFest South, and at the near end of another four-day week, team P1C has been firing on all cylinders this past fortnight. In fact, we’ve been so busy, we missed a week of our iconic Friday Finds blog!

*cries*

We hope you can forgive us…

Social Media News

There has been so much going on in the social media world over the past fortnight, we have decided to pop it all into handy bullet points…

This week, Facebook provided an overview of its new verification pathway, clarifying who can qualify for the infamous ‘blue tick’ and exactly how they can access it. The Facebook verification team also threw in a slightly shady definition of verification, clarifying that a verification badge is neither an endorsement from Facebook, neither a symbol of the page’s importance. Ouch! Read more: https://bit.ly/2Vf5a1S

Twitter is considering a range of new options including the automatic archiving of old tweets, the option to remove individual accounts as followers (without blocking them), and the ability to hide tweets that you have previously liked. We’re particularly interested in the auto-archiving feature. Will this mean fewer celebrities being pulled up on offensive tweets they posted 12 years ago? Who knows! Read more: https://bit.ly/3yGIfKo

LinkedIn is canning their stories feature in favour of a “reimagined video experience” across the whole platform. LinkedIn stories will be removed for all users at the end of September. So, it turns out Twitter isn’t the only social platform to make a U-turn on a copycat move this year… #RIPFleets https://bit.ly/3hiifzp

TikTok is following the likes of Facebook and Instagram in creating a ‘Quick Promote’ option for high-performing videos. The latest update for business’ on TikTok will see advertisers able to quickly promote an organic video post, just like the ‘Boost’ option on other platforms. https://bit.ly/38AeCjm

Reddit has added an option for on-platform advertisers to place ads in the comments section of a post. When you consider the importance of comments on the platform (a Reddit user can’t actually post themselves without interacting with other posters first), allowing brands to place their ads at the centre of this action is a pretty big deal. Read more here: https://bit.ly/2WIvAdb

That’s all from social media for this week – phew!
(If you prefer your social updates in bullet points like this, please let us know!)

Design News

To combat the increase in demand for bicycle parking at UK train stations, Network Rail has partnered with the London Festival of Architecture (LFA) in search of a solution. The two organisations have launched a competition to find a “creative and innovative solution” for a temporary bike storage unit. The pop-up unit would be used at stations across the UK during periods of peak demand but should be easy for station staff to remove and store when not required. The winner will receive £12,000 to develop a feasible, fully costed design (including a £4,000 design fee).

Find out more and enter here: https://bit.ly/38HKGSg

Branding Move Of The Week

WhatsApp’s latest marketing move see’s the messaging app hone in on its ‘View Once’ functionality. In an attempt to reassure users that their privacy is safe in WhatsApp’s hands, the latest installment in the brand’s ‘Message Privately’ campaign highlights a feature added earlier this year, through which users can share a message, photo or video to be viewed only once by the recipient (Snapchat, anyone?).

Hardly surprising, given the rising popularity of alternative messaging apps such as Signal and Telegram, alongside the controversy around Facebook’s ownership of the previously independent app.

Find out more: https://bit.ly/2WV0XkB

Ads Of The Week

We couldn’t exactly go through this week’s round-up without mentioning the Paralympics, could we?! These two campaigns are by far our favourites from this year’s paralympic promotions.

First up, the Paralympic Committee’s #WeThe15 campaign has taken centre stage (and quite rightly) at this year’s Paralympics. The number ‘15’ represents the 15% of people across the world estimated to have some form of disability and is illustrated through the campaign logo (a pie chart with 15% cut out). The message? People with disabilities don’t need pity, they don’t need your prayers, and they aren’t desperate for a “cure”. They’re normal people, living normal lives, and they deserve to be treated as such. But they are also powerful, determined, hard-working human beings that deserve your respect.

Watch the full campaign video here: https://bit.ly/3yJ4SxI

Meanwhile, Channel 4’s print and OOH campaign plays on the lesson we are all taught as children. “It’s rude not to stare” neatly ties up the message that it is potentially even ruder to ignore the Paralympics (in the way that so many of us have done in the past and many still do) than it is to stare at someone with a disability in the street. Alongside the primary headline, other ads include jokes about the speed and excitement of the Paralympics, pitting paralympic events against their Olympic counterparts.

Find out more about the campaign here: https://bit.ly/3tagb13