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KIMP’s Picks 16th February: Weekly Highlights In Design, Marketing, AI, & More

Did the week fly by in a blur of deadlines and distractions? Wondering what the social media chatter was all about? Worry not for we have the perfect end-of-the-week catch-up to cheer you up. 

Whether you are a marketer looking to keep up with trends or a creative looking for inspiration or an entrepreneur curious about what’s happening in the worlds of marketing, AI, Design, and more, we have something for everyone. 

The KIMP’s Picks 16th February Edition brings you the trending news and insightful discussions that happened on social media this past week. 

So, are you ready to travel back in time and find out what everyone’s talking about? Let’s go.

In the Marketing Realm 

Google unveils “Trend Change Detection”

Google recently announced some changes coming to Google Analytics. These include the launch of “trend change detection”, a new feature designed to detect and alert you about subtle but significant shifts in data direction. 

This sounds a lot like the anomaly detection feature. However, unlike anomaly detection, which flags sudden spikes or dips, trend change detection mainly focuses on longer-term changes and minor changes that otherwise go unnoticed. 

You’ll be able to spot these changes on Insight Cards across various sections of Google Analytics. This will help monitor trends and hop on to the right ones for your brand. 

Quick YouTube stats from the Super Bowl season 

Super Bowl is a busy marketing season with brands fighting for their TV spot and some going big with their social media campaigns to join the conversation. YouTube is one of the most popular places where fans can find the best Super Bowl ads of the year. YouTube recently posted a few quick facts based on this year’s campaigns and how brands leveraged YouTube for the big game weekend. 

Reportedly, on Game Day, there were about 90 million views of Super Bowl ads on YouTube. And among them, the top spot was claimed by Booking.com’s Super Bowl ad. The YouTuber Advertisers post here summarizes a few such quick facts to ponder over. 

Netflix leverages a creative marketing strategy 

Ambient marketing taps into the most unexpected surfaces for advertising, like airport security trays for example. And Netflix has a reputation for leveraging this effectively every now and then. In fact, they know perfectly well how to create a buzz around their upcoming shows and movies. That’s exactly why Netflix has grown to become one of the leading online streaming services. 

On the “Because Of Marketing” LinkedIn page, you’ll find a lot of marketing inspiration, discussions regarding trending campaigns, creative ads, and more. They spotlighted Netflix’s recent ambient marketing campaign in the below post. This one was to promote their latest show, Griselda. For this, Netflix advertised on airport security trays to take their ads to consumers in a non-intrusive way! 

Influencer marketing trends to look out for 

Popular online social media community Pretty Little Marketer regularly discusses marketing trends, insightful discussions, and more. They recently shared a post that discusses some of the most anticipated influencer marketing trends for 2024. Given that influencer marketing is becoming a strategy that brands cannot ignore in the coming years, understanding these anticipated trends is a good place to start. 

Based on the observations recorded by Pretty Little Marketer, brands might soon be prioritizing long-term influencer partnerships rather than one-off assignments. And there might also be a shift toward nano-influencers and the prioritization of value creation in the collaboration rather than the mere promotional aspect of it. 

Tackling paid media marketing in 2024 

Search Engine Journal brings all the latest search-related news and marketing discussions. They shared the below post that provides useful insights on tackling paid media marketing in 2024. The post goes on to talk about the current status of paid media marketing and what to expect in the coming months. 

The post also details about 7 useful tips for marketers to adapt their marketing strategies to the anticipated changes so as to make the most of paid media advertising. It talks about revisiting Google Tags, considering the update that Google recently made to Consent Mode for tags. It also discusses the relevance of influencer marketing, the significance of video content, the need to optimize content for better user experience, and leveraging AI tools in the process. 

So, it’s a great read for anyone working on their ad budgets for the coming months! 

In the Content Marketing Realm 

Comparing the effectiveness of evergreen vs trending content 

Semrush is a renowned online marketing tool. They also discuss search and marketing-related trends and resourceful content on social media. In a recent post, they compared the effectiveness of evergreen vs. trending content. Given that brands are always disputing on choosing between seasonal and evergreen content, this post and the whole discussion in it are pretty useful. 

It emphasizes the benefits of both and then shows how when it comes to bringing steady organic traffic, evergreen content has an edge over trending content. So, the key to better content marketing is to create a good mix of evergreen and seasonal content and to publish them at the right time. 

Tapping into the perks of AI in content marketing 

Brands around the world are integrating AI into their processes in one way or another. Content marketing is one of the segments that can benefit a great deal from AI. The below post from the popular content marketing community, Content Marketing Insititute discusses these benefits that AI brings to content marketing. 

One of the main benefits that the post discusses is how several AI tools can be used as resourceful research assistants to help understand topics and to access valuable and relevant data effortlessly. The post also talks about the creativity that AI tools bring into the brainstorming process and SEO efforts. So, if you are still contemplating the need for AI in your content marketing workflow, then this post will help you make a clear decision. 

In the Design Realm 

Font ideas for design 

Fonts are fundamental elements in graphic design both for print designs and digital designs. So, designers and marketers are always on the lookout for font ideas to ensure that their designs are in line with the latest trends and also aligned with their brand personalities. If you can relate to that then here’s a font idea for you. This one is from Google from the wide assortment of Google Fonts library. 

This post spotlights a popular Google Font called Rethink Sans. with diverse weights to choose from, this font family is known for its clean and minimalistic design. It is also modern and easily readable. Additionally, it is a versatile option for both print and digital designs. 

Tackling 3D design with Adobe tools 

3D designs make your ideas pop and find various applications in marketing. There are many tools available for creatives to work on their 3D designs for their campaigns. In the below post, Adobe talks about making the most of Adobe Illustrator to create 3D designs. It talks about using a variety of features to adjust the textures and lighting so as to add more depth to a design and create a three-dimensional effect. 

To achieve this, Adobe Illustrator has a host of features like Inflate, Twist, Taper, and more that let you adjust the nuances of the design. The video gives a quick preview of a few such tools you can use to convert a simple 2D design to an attention-grabbing 3D design. 

Adobe and TikTok join forces to supercharge content ideation

Adobe is stepping up your content ideation process by collaborating with TikTok. In a first-of-its-kind move, they have integrated TikTok’s AI-powered “Creative Assistant” right into their platform.

This addon is all set to allow users to come up with content ideas as well as create content for their TikTok page. For a quick refresher, Creative Assistant is TikTok’s AI-powered tool designed to help creators identify hashtags and trends, and even create scripts for their TikTok videos. The integration also allows users to publish posts directly to TikTok or even schedule them directly from Adobe Express. 

Creating blur effects on Canva 

Designers use blur effects in various places and purposes. This could be to shift focus away from some less significant details in the design and throw the spotlight on key details. This could be the product being promoted or the subject that captures the core emotion in the design. 

Sometimes this could also mean blurring out the background so as to ensure that the design looks clean and uncluttered. Finally, sometimes blur effects also come in handy to conceal imperfections and make the design look more refined. If you use Canva for your designs and if you wish to capitalize on these benefits of the blur effect then you will like the below video. Canva shared this video to give a glimpse of their blur tool and how you can adjust the size of the blur brush and intensity to optimize the result. 

KFC’s campaign celebrates simplicity in advertising 

Some of the most iconic designs in print ads and digital have often been simple and memorable. The KFC campaign that Ad Age Creativity shared on their page is a good example of keeping things simple but relatable. 

This one celebrates the crumbs their Extra Crispy fried chicken comes with. The video, print, and outdoor ads all align with the theme. The element in focus in all of these designs is the crumbs and the mess they create – something that any crispy fried chicken lover would be able to relate to. 

By keeping the design simple the brand establishes a sensory appeal which is very important for food ads. So, if you are looking for design inspiration for your upcoming ads, then this campaign is a good one to begin with. 

In the AI Realm 

ChatGPT will soon be able to remember your conversations 

ChatGPT has a lot of strengths but memory hasn’t been one of them. But OpenAI recently announced that they are testing a memory feature. This feature allows ChatGPT to remember information across conversations, offering a more personalized and efficient experience for users. 

Moreover, according to OpenAI, users will be able to enable or disable memory at will and manage stored information effortlessly. There might also be a temporary chat option, more like an incognito mode on a browser, to start chatting without data getting stored in ChatGPT’s memory. Additionally, GPT creators will also have the freedom to add memories to their GPTs. Currently, the memory feature is being launched in a phased-out manner and might soon be available broadly.

Stability AI launches the next big breakthrough in text-to-image models – Stable Cascade 

For more flexible and efficient text-to-image processes, Stability AI recently announced a research preview of Stable Cascade. Differing from the other Stable Diffusion models, this one is built to work on a hierarchical compression of images so as to improve the quality without increasing the file size drastically. 

Reportedly, this model was found to be better than several other models like SDXL when it comes to prompt alignment as well as the overall aesthetics of the generated images. In other words, the understanding of the prompts is said to be better and the designs are more refined as well. 

Moreover, Stable Cascade will also be able to create more image variations easily and work on image-to-image generation as well. 

Midjourney invites creators to Alpha test their website 

One of the quirks of Midjourney is that you can currently access the image generation model only through Discord. On the other hand, most other generative AI design tools have web versions and mobile versions for their models. To address this, Midjourney has been working on the website version. 

Based on their recent announcement, creators who have generated more than 1000 images on Midjourney can now Alpha test the website. In other words, they can directly generate images without having to navigate to the Discord channel for it. The team also mentioned that there is a mobile version coming soon. 

NVIDIA’s “Chat with RTX” is a chatbot for PCs

NVIDIA has been pretty active on the AI front enhancing the experience for gamers and game developers. Recently, they introduced Chat With RTX, an AI chatbot meant to run locally on your PCs. The chatbot is designed to accept text files, YouTube videos and other addons in your prompts.  Given that this one runs locally, it is a conversational bot that helps users with relevant answers without having to connect to the internet. 

Slack AI brings intelligent assistance to the workplace 

Slack has become an indispensable asset to various organizations. And recently, they announced Slack AI with AI-powered features to help improve workplace efficiency. 

From searching for answers to providing insights from accessible channels and summaries of conversations there is a host of initial features announced. With this users will be able to control their data and quickly catch up on updates and crucial conversations. They can also gather information from various channels they are part of. 

Google announces the next-gen AI model with the Gemini 1.5 upgrade

Google recently announced the Gemini 1.5 upgrade. One of the biggest updates is the increased context window with the model now having access to 1 million tokens now. That allows the model to process larger volumes of data and come up with more relevant and comprehensive responses to queries.

Additionally, this upgrade also comes with improvements to the logical reasoning capabilities of Gemini with an overall improvement in the comprehension of multimodal prompts. At the moment Google is limiting access to Gemini 1.5 Pro to a select few developers and enterprise users.

OpenAI’s next big game-changer is here: Sora

OpenAI sure has carved a niche for itself in the generative AI segment. And now they are taking big steps into the text-to-video realm with their groundbreaking model, Sora. The text-to-video market is currently still in its early stages of development and so Sora has a good scope. But yes, the fact that Google Lumiere and Stable Video Diffusion were all recently announced means that Sora is up against tough competition.

As of now, OpenAI has announced that Sora can create videos up to 1-minute long and can also efficiently understand complicated prompts. Creators are already going crazy over it. We can’t wait to see how the competition builds and the generative AI video landscape evolves.

Social Media Feature Updates and Algorithm Changes

DM updates for creators 

Whether it is communicating with brands they are partnering with or answering the queries of their followers, Creators on Instagram find various applications for DMs. Recently, Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram shared a quick video discussing some critical updates coming to DMs, particularly changes that are useful to creators. 

He talks about applying the “People You Follow” filter in DMs to quickly access important messages that need an immediate response. Additionally, he also talks about the Hidden Words setting, Kindness Reminders, and message requests. 

X adds more emphasis on long-form content with Articles 

Twitter was once a space for microblogging and over the years it has evolved drastically. Particularly after being rebranded as X, the platform witnessed plenty more changes. A recent one is the shifting focus on long-form content and the increase in character limit for posts for Premium users. 

As an additional update on that front, X has finally introduced the Articles section for the web version of the platform. X New Daily, a place to find all the latest X-related news shared the below post discussing this announcement along with snapshots of the Articles tab that now appears on the web version. 

Threads will soon have a Trending Topics feature 

Staying up to date with trends is one of the reasons why several people head over to social media. That’s why several social media platforms have their way of showcasing news topics. And now Threads is the next one to possibly join the league. Reportedly, Meta is working on introducing a feature that will allow users to instantly glimpse at the trending topics of the day. This is similar to the Trending post discovery on X and given that Threads has always been seen as an X contender, features like this one make perfect sense. 

Engadget spoke about this upcoming update in the below post. From the snapshots shared, it is clear that this feature will be handy for users who are looking to get instant updates on what others are discussing on the platform. 

Pinterest is growing at a steady pace 

Popular social media news site Social Media Today shared a post that talks about the recent progress that Pinterest has made and some updates coming to the platform. While Pinterest not be the first platform you think of when talking about social media, it is still one of the most reliable places to find great ideas. 

According to the below post, Pinterest has been steadily adding more monthly active users. Amidst this, they have also announced their partnership with Google Ads. Which means that Pinterest might soon be displaying ads from Google on their platform. This might change the Pinterest advertising scenario as well as the Google Ads scenario drastically. 

To Be Continued…

That’s all we have for the KIMP’s Picks 16th February edition. We hope that our list of posts on marketing insights, AI news, and other social media favorite topics gave you a quick recap of the week that was. We’ll be back next week to discuss all the exciting updates and the hidden gems that pop up on social media this coming week. Until then, adios! 

Posted On

16 Feb, 2024

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