Month: August 2024

Influencer marketing is playing a bigger role in politics and elections as more events and organizations open doors to content creators. This is becoming especially clear as the 2024 presidential election approaches in the U.S.

This month, as the White House and the Democratic National Convention both invite influencers to join their events (the Republican National Convention did the same last month), influencer agencies cite a growing appetite for political and nonprofit organizations to beef up their digital and influencer marketing strategies.

On Aug. 14, the White House organized a Creator Economy Conference in which creator network Good Influence helped recruit participants — and it’s a part of the administration’s effort to expand its digital presence by having creator involvement, said Josh Cook, Good Influence’s president. The company focuses on news and progressive issues, working with some 300 creators who generate more than 150 million views a day, and partnering with organizations including the Environmental Defense Fund and United We Dream.

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As it celebrates its 25th year — and a marquee deal with the Esports World Cup — ESL has announced a brand refresh intended to bring the esports company closer to its roots.

Formerly known as Electronic Sports League, ESL was founded in Germany in 2000. Since merging with the esports platform FACEIT after both companies were purchased in 2022 by Savvy Games Group, a subsidiary of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, the company has signed deals to run competitive gaming leagues for prominent publishers such as Activision Blizzard and Riot Games. It is a leading figure in the transformation of the esports industry from its previous publisher-run model to a system of leagues operated by third-party vendors.

ESL’s brand refresh, announced yesterday at Intel Extreme Masters Cologne 2024 (an ESL-run “Counter-Strike” tournament), is the company’s first rebrand since 2019, when it adopted a green and yellow color palette. This latest brand refresh, which uses the tagline “Live Legendary,” maintains these colors but includes a new font inspired by traditional stone carvings, as well as classical marble statue imagery based on three-dimensional scans of actual audience members taken at ESL events over the past six months.

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GARM may be gone, but its legacy is in flux.

Specifically, the staying power of the Global Media Sustainability Framework (GMSF) that GARM unveiled earlier this summer. 

After more than a year in development, the standards for measuring ad carbon emissions were unveiled by GARM and Ad Net Zero at Cannes. These standards were more of a preliminary draft than a finished product, but both organizations committed to refining and finalizing them. With GARM’s dissolution last week following Elon Musk’s lawsuit, Ad Net Zero has now taken full charge of advancing these standards. 

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With the news back in March that GroupM was planning to double its planned ad spend on women’s sports, the news was welcomed by pretty much anyone involved in women’s sports. Right around that time, the Caitlin Clark/Angel Reese rivalry during March Madness set the world on notice that women’s college basketball is just as entertaining — if not more so — than the men’s game. And then it translated to the WNBA as both college stars drew new attention to that league.

None of this is or was news to Andrea Brimmer, CMO of financial app Ally, who’s been supporting women’s sports for years with her brand’s marketing dollars. Brimmer has been encouraged to see the spotlight women’s sports have enjoyed in the Paris Summer Olympics — from the gymnasts to the U.S. National Women’s Team in soccer, to even the lesser known sports including water polo and table tennis —  but she also believes there’s still room to grow. 

To say the least. Brimmer cited a recent article in Front Office Sports that found only 33 out of the Fortune 500 companies invest in women’s sports leagues. And none do so exclusively. In contrast, she also pointed out that if the U.S. women’s Olympics athletes were their own country, they would have ranked third among all countries in medals won. 

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From sponsoring the Olympics and major film festivals to buying ads that run on TVs and in taxis, AI providers have spent the past year looking for ways to break through the noise. But what does the volume of conversation look like for the masses on social media?

To get a sense of how often tech brands have mentioned AI on various social platforms, Digiday asked Sprinklr, a customer experience management platform, to analyze paid and organic content posted in 2024. To narrow the focus, Sprinklr searched for companies’ social media posts for mentions of more than a dozen AI-related terms and hashtags: “AI,” “Artificial Intelligence,” “Generative AI,” “Gen AI,” “AI Generated,” “GPT Powered,” “GPT-Powered,” #ai, #artificialintelligence, #generativeai, #genai, #aigenerated or #gptpowered.

From flagship AI products and companies to words related to AI’s promises, the volume of conversations provided at least some sense of how tech firms are describing their offerings across branded social accounts. It also shows which AI players are being talked about the most — both by the companies themselves and social media users that mention them.

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Britain’s new prime minister Keir Starmer’s Labour government is looking to potentially revise and strengthen the region’s Online Safety Act in response to incendiary comments X-owner Elon Musk posted
to his social media platform in the midst of nationwide anti-immigration protests.

Meta has announced that over the next year, advertisers will see new campaign measurement, attribution and integration options.

Yelp, which relies heavily on ratings, comments and recommendations for businesses, has become an outspoken advocate in favor of the FTC’s decision to outlaw fake endorsements.

The bankrupt crypto lender’s legal action brings into relief the backroom maneuvering that barely shielded Tether from widespread market turmoil.

Studies suggest that regulations could be tightened to head off AI misbehavior.