Liberty’s Views on the Weekly News: 3rd March 2017

Not had a chance this week to read all the latest stories from the digital marketing world? No problem – we’ve got you covered.

We’ve compiled a round-up of some of the biggest developments from the digital sphere this week and added our two cents too. Check out our thoughts on the latest news below.

Dolce & Gabbana Go Social

It’s Milan Fashion Week 2017 and Dolce & Gabbana is hitting the newsstands and blogs all over the world for its latest models. Why? Well, its fashion house hired 117 people to model it’s A/W collection many of which weren’t ‘typical’ models, but customers and social media influencers instead.

Using #dgmillennials, Dolce & Gabbana had a campaign style show that featured stars such as Pixie Lott, rock star’s children like Anais Gallagher and English aristocrat Lady Kitty Spencer. There was also a performance from Austin Mahone, of YouTube fame.

What are we saying?

Rachel, Digital Retail Strategist, said:

“This is an incredibly clever piece of PR. As well as tapping into the narrative of using ‘real’ people as models, which is something the industry has been crying out for for a long time and is incredibly shareable in its own right, they are also taking advantage of influencer marketing.

“This is a really nice ego boost for the social media stars, which is almost guaranteed to result in coverage for D&G, whilst at the same time allowing them to reach audiences that perhaps they haven’t tapped in to before.

“It’s getting increasingly harder to stand out from the crowd at fashion week, but Dolce & Gabbana have nailed it here.”

Twitter Lost $400m Last Year, So What’s the Recovery Strategy?

Twitter reported a $440m loss of profits in 2016, so its social experts have spent the last few months strategizing and figuring out what their next steps are to hopefully bring the network’s fortunes round.

Live video could possibly be the solution. Twitter is rumoured to be extending its reach to gain new users and strengthen its collaboration with brands, as seen by the success of Facebook Live. Could this be a money maker for Twitter? Would you use this feature?

What are we saying?

Kristina, Digital PR and Social Media Specialist, said:

“Well, it’s not surprising really since most of the social media platforms are moving towards live broadcasting and are favouring it over other types of content. For example, Facebook Live gains considerable more engagement than any other content on their network.

“Lots of social networks have been drawing inspiration from one another recently, and Twitter finding a way to offer an integrated experience to its users could be greatly beneficial.”

Love Trumps Hate on Facebook

Facebook revealed its most popular reaction emoji this week. Can you guess what it is? The love heart came up tops, of course, accounting for more than half of all reactions.

The emojis representing ‘like’, ‘love’, ‘haha’, ‘sad’ and ‘angry’ were first released a year ago in response to demand for a ‘dislike button’, and have since been used more than 300 billion times. The countries that used these the most were Mexico, Suriname and Chile, and Christmas Day 2016 saw the most emoji reactions used of any other day to date.

What are we saying?

Steph, Creative Content Executive, said:

“Originally I was all for the dislike button. After all, if someone posts about how their cat has died you don’t really want to say you ‘like’ that, but you do want to show your support.

“So, when the reactions came in as an alternative I thought it was a great option. But let’s face it, how often do instances like this happen? Although it’s good to have, I’m not surprised that the ‘love’ emoji is dominating. I just simply click ‘like’ 99.9% of the time.”

What Do You Think?

If you’ve got your own thoughts on the latest developments, then why not leave a comment below or tweet us @_libertydigital?

Read more:
A Fantastic February: What We’ve Been Up to Over the Last Month
Should Social Influencers Be More Responsible?

(emoji image: Alias noa under CC BY-SA 4.0)