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By

TEAM LEWIS

Published on

January 30, 2025

Tags

social media, trends

Table of Contents

    Welcome to TEAM LEWIS Soundbites – a content series designed to help make sense of moments that matter around the world. It's a challenge to keep up with every platform update, celebrity scandal and brand mishap that hits the news – so we’ve got you covered. Keep reading for bite-sized insights from this week’s top headlines.


    Meta sets its sights on TikTok content creators

    While social media users across the U.S. prepared to mourn the loss of the widely beloved TikTok, competitor platforms eagerly anticipated the app’s downfall with excitement and strategy. TikTok has captured the hearts – or should I say attention – of 170 million users but the U.S. government’s ban threatened this social community and the livelihood of creators. Competitor platforms like Substack, Instagram and Triller created strategies to seize these scrollers. Instagram, in particular, has been going above and beyond by offering creators a cash bonus of $10,000 – $50,000 to post their videos on its platform first. Despite TikTok’s miraculous come-back, Instagram continues to push hard with this bonus program, and smaller iterations of it, to encourage the migration of users to its apps.

    The threat of the TikTok ban has sent shockwaves through the influencer community, highlighting the risks of an all-eggs-in-one-basket approach. Similarly, brands who have invested heavily in promotions on the app have been forced to reevaluate their marketing tactics and budget allocations. Diversifying across platforms has never been more crucial, and we can expect to see more creators and brands repurposing content and investing in campaigns across multiple platforms. This situation serves as a stark reminder for businesses to closely monitor their competitors and be ready to seize opportunities for market share growth as they arise. Additionally, it underscores the importance of adaptability in digital marketing, as the social media landscape can shift rapidly. By staying proactive and flexible, brands and influencers can better navigate uncertainties and continue to thrive.

    Brynna Barton, Senior Campaign Executive

    The Super Bowl ad formula

    Look, 2015 Joe would have been pretty excited about this. That innocent and naïve me would have OMG-ed to this When Harry Met Sally (a personal favorite) reunion. Flash forward 10 years and here we are, looking with dread at whatever the million-dollar ad spenders have in store for us. The actual ad, for Hellman’s, disappoints exactly how we would expect. What happened in this last decade?

    While a decent amount of blame can be thrown at things like social media, the political environment or just The Internet, it’s also clear that the Super Bowl ad spectacle has become profoundly lazy. These ads have followed the formula, for the most part, for over 30 years. It is:

    (Hard to get or expensive celebrity + 20 year old pop culture reference relevant to key demo)(forced product reference)surprise cameo at the end

     or

    SB = (B-celeb + 20yr_ref)(product)$ 🔥

    Formulas exist to create a set outcome. Creativity exists to create a surprise outcome. From the stakes of money spent to the uncertainty of the digital paid media landscape, clients and agencies alike find more comfort in the set outcome. Will anyone be brave enough to surprise us?

    (Side note: my favorite part of the Hellman’s use of the $ 🔥  part of the formula is because the Sydney Sweeny cameo screams “Our clients have concerns about us being relevant to anyone on TikTok so… here you go.”)

    (Side note 2: When Harry Bet Sally would have been more creative.)

    Joe Furmanek, Creative Director

    Growing grassroots AI resistance

    AI backlash is bubbling up on many fronts. As this great Ars Technica article explains, website owners are fed up with all the AI crawlers bombarding their sites.

    Why? Partly because all the traffic created can be a nuisance. But people are also fed up with AI companies sucking up any content they please – ‘no scraping’ rule be damned.

    Some developers are fighting back, creating ‘tarpits’ – software that traps or tricks these AI scrapers.

    As excited as I am about season 29 of “The Bachelor,” the real drama is playing out in the world of artificial intelligence – on a global geopolitical scale (e.g., DeepSeek) and at the grassroots level (such as tarpitting), as more people resist AI’s insatiable appetite for data or intrusion into their lives. Uncertainty around data ownership and control will only escalate, as will large – and small – scale attempts to poison AI data, with unpredictable consequences. It’s a hot mess that will only get hotter and messier.

    As marketers, we can’t simply grab the popcorn and watch it all unfold – we’re in the thick of it. We have an opportunity to lead the industry forward in a responsible way by learning, experimenting, and having a flexible, global perspective while maintaining real-time situational awareness of issues and impacts of AI at every level.

    Scott Blevins, Vice President

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