Behind Biden’s social media, and a word on data: Tuesday’s daily brief

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Good morning, marketers, and don’t you love it when things come together?

In this case, a story about candidate Biden’s remarkable social media success which we published days before the election, and a story we published yesterday which goes under the hood of the team which made that happen (see below).

Sarah Galvez has her own success story, from cold-calling the Hillary Clinton digital team to make suggestions about their social strategy, to serving high profile private sector clients, to a leading role with the Biden Presidential campaign. 

There’s some really good lessons for all social marketers about how to break down platforms into their component parts, and how to think about success metrics.

Kim Davis
Editorial Director

Breaking down President Biden’s data-driven social media strategy  

The social media campaign under the Biden for President banner wasn’t based on flair and instinct: it was tightly driven by social analytics. To explain how that worked in practice, we turned to Sarah Galvez, Director of Social Media and Audience Development at Biden for President.

Among the initiatives she took were bringing on board social media managers from outside politics; breaking down social platforms into their component parts (Instagram Stories, for example, demands a different approach than Instagram); and rejecting heavyweight social media management suites for software which did what the team needed — Measure Studio for comprehensive but rapid performance analytics, and the project management tool Monday.com for scheduling.

Perhaps the team’s most eye-catching achievement was figuring out how to showcase Biden on platforms like Twitch without being perceived as inauthentic. The solution? Combine Biden’s authentic affection for railways with video shot from his campaign train and a soundtrack of lo-fi hip hop. Another niche community captured.

Read more here.

Who is winning the streaming wars?

More viewers are flocking to OTT. Analysts project that subscriptions to video streaming services will continue to climb — from nearly 210 million this year up to 222 million by 2024. But why are consumers migrating to streaming? And more importantly, what are their preferences when tuned in? Who’s winning the streaming wars?

From recent research by Acxiom with help by their consumer segmentation system Personicx:

• The more children in a household, the more likely the household subscribes to Disney+ or other services;
• Apple TV+ subscriptions to high-income Millennials doubled between May and November of last year (despite modest increases overall);
• 80% of Gen Z subscribes to Netflix; and 75% of Millennials.

Why we care. Streaming video isn’t a monolith, nor is it a zero-sum game. During the pandemic, busy parents added to their subscriptions. But this is only one facet of a larger trend, post-lockdown. And although Netflix isn’t a marketing channel, not being ad-supported, marketers should take note that consumers aren’t necessarily trading one service for another. Netflix has not been undercut by newcomers to the space. Note: there is not currently an online link to the overall data.

Quote of the day

“Still totally baffled that most companies garner all this rich personal data, to understand their customers a little better, to then target them with advertising more effectively and perhaps shape the ads themselves. And almost zero companies use it as an input to make something better, that people will prefer, and that requires less ‘selling.’” Tom Goodwin, co-founder, ALL WE HAVE IS NOW.