Week: June 29th – July 3rd 

by Interbrand

Several weeks ago, when the gravity of the situation became clear, Interbrand started regular reporting on how brands were dealing with the COVID-19 crisis. What’s now becoming clear is that the current climate is one of near perpetual disruption. So the brand consulting firm made the decision to keep on telling the stories of inspiring brand leadership and strategy amid the latest crises in an anxious world. Interbrand’s goal remains the same: to provide an up-to-the-minute source of information, inspiration and insight on brand moves as they happen.

Social media & Online

Chinese technology giant Tencent is rolling out a live-streaming service similar to Amazon’s Twitch in the U.S., making a rare foray into American social media. China’s largest company has been quietly testing a mobile-focused streaming network via an affiliate in the U.S. since at least March. Initially called Madcat and now branded Trovo Live, the new service closely resembles Twitch in its appearance and functionality.

Beyond Tencent’s own portfolio of popular games like Fortnite and PUBG Mobile, Trovo also spotlights marquee titles like Grand Theft Auto and Destiny 2. This week, it detailed plans on its website to entice and reward creators with a $30 million partnership program starting in July. Tencent dominates gaming and social media in its domestic market and may be one of the few companies with the resources to challenge Twitch. But the WeChat operator has met with mixed results in its efforts to build online users abroad and Trovo has gone largely unnoticed outside the gaming community.

Its best-attended live streams have only a few dozen viewers at a time, though its Discord chat channel numbers more than 5,000 members. It has attracted some experienced creators from Twitch, YouTube and Microsoft’s soon-to-be-defunct Mixer platform. Tencent has been actively expanding its online streaming assets in recent months, having spent $263 million in April to buy control of China’s Twitch equivalent Huya and this week acquiring content and technology from struggling Southeast Asian outfit iFlix.

Like Twitch, Trovo sports a carousel showcase of live channels, sidebars for chat with other viewers and channel recommendations highlighting the most popular active creators. It also has paid subscriptions and rewards that let viewers support favored streamers. Another similarity is the tiered partnership program designed to encourage gamers to join and evangelize the service.

In the midst of lockdown-sparked hobbies, Google has launched a new social network, Keen, as “a home for long-term interests”. The firm acknowledges that “technology struggles with understanding what we want to spend our time on.” Built to “expand what activities you’re into, helping you curate, collaborate and expand every interest,” Keen can save and add links, text, images and web searches, and everything you add gets you more to explore, as it leverages the Google Search index, combined with user feedback, to provide personalized recommendations that improve over time.

“Keen isn’t intended to be a place to spend endless hours browsing. Instead, it’s a home for your interests: a place to grow them, share them with loved ones and find things that will help in making this precious life count,” said co-founder CJ Adams. “You say what you want to spend more time on, and then curate content from the web and people you trust to help make that happen.

You make a “keen,” which can be about any topic, whether it’s baking delicious bread at home, getting into birding or researching typography. Keen lets you curate the content you love, share your collection with others and find new content based on what you have saved. For every keen you create, we use Google Search and the latest in machine learning to remain on the lookout for helpful content related to your interests. The more you save to a keen and organize it, the better the recommendations become. You can also follow keens that others have created, discovering thousands of hand-curated lists from the community and getting alerts when new things are added.”

Sports & Entertainment

As movie theaters begin to reopen in the U.S., NBCUniversal’s ticketing and video-on-demand company Fandango has launched a theater reopening program on its website and mobile app, with resources and information on which theaters have reopened and their health and safety policies. The guide offers details from more than 100 theater chains, along with a special search filter to find theaters by location.

“At Fandango, our mission has always been super-serving fans with their entertainment needs, and we cannot wait to help fans get back to the big screen safely and at the right time,” said Fandango president Paul Yanover. “It’s a complicated rollout, with various states, cities and counties opening their venues in different phases. We hope Fandango will serve as a helpful one-stop resource for fans to find all the information and services they need for a comfortable return to their local theaters.” The program has also curated information including occupancy limits and social distance seating maps, mask and personal protective equipment policies, increased cleaning measures and special concession services.

Musician-centred website Bandcamp has been a standout success during the pandemic, thanks to its support for creators who use it to sell music and merchandise. “The growth of the company has been almost comically steady. For 11 years it’s a line like this,” said founder Ethan Diamond, holding his hand out at a gentle incline.

“This year will be the first year where there’s a noticeable change in the growth rate, and that is because of the pandemic and the awareness that has been raised around the need for fans to directly support artists.” When Covid-19 hit, Bandcamp announced it would waive its usual 15% fee for one day in order to support artists affected by the shutdown of live music.

On 20 March, fans bought 800,000 records in 24 hours, totalling $4.3m of music and merchandise – 15 times more than a typical Friday. Bandcamp announced three more fee-waiver days. On 1 May, fans splurged $7.1m; millions more were spent on 5 June, with another waiver day coming up on 3 July. “I had no idea what to expect, but the whole thing was inspiring,” Diamond says. “A lot of the independent labels waived their fees as well. Sometimes, besides just passing the money on to their artists, they gave to food banks and other organizations. Those independent labels aren’t big, mega-funded corporations; they’re small businesses, and that was amazing to see.”

YouTube’s average daily views of videos related to sourdough leaped more than 400% between March 15 and the end of May compared with the two-and-a-half-month period that preceded it, said the Google-owned video company. Average daily views of videos with “workout at home” in the title increased more than 200% after March 15 compared with their average for the rest of the year.

YouTube didn’t update its total number of monthly unique visitors, which, last year, it said exceeds 2 billion a month. But the company said that more than 100 million people watch YouTube and YouTube TV on their TV screen each month in the US and that the amount of time watching them on TV screens rose 80% in the US compared with the previous year.

A month after immersive online game Fortnite premiered a trailer for Christopher Nolan’s upcoming film, Tenet, the director is heading back to the game with a full-length feature. Players will be treated to an in-game movie night featuring one of three Christopher Nolan movies; Batman Begins, Inception, and The Prestige, depending on which region they play Fortnite in.

The event, which will be called Movie Nite, will take place at Fortnite’s new Party Royale island on the big screen. This will be the first time that Fortnite has moved from trailers to showing full movies, however, with developer Epic’s many partnerships, from DC and Warner Bros to Marvel and Disney, Movie Nites could become a regular attraction in Fortnite, especially with real-world theaters still struggling to reopen amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Media

Google has announced a new initiative which could be a crucial first step towards more co-operation between currently struggling traditional media operations and tech platforms. In a blogpost, Brad Bender, Google’s VP in charge of news, said the firm was creating a new licensing program to support the industry. He said it would help publishers monetize content and would start in Australia, Brazil and Germany before being rolled out globally.

One of the most striking elements is that Google will pay to give readers using its Google News or Google Discover (the personalised feed seen by Android mobile users) free access to some paywalled articles. Mr Bender said this will help participating sites to expand their readership while still getting paid for the content. The publisher of Australian titles including InQueensland and InDaily will be one of the first to take part. Managing director Paul Hamra said: “With local news under stress, finding new channels and new audiences for our premium content, in safe and curated environments, is a high priority.”

Image library Getty Images has shared some recent keyword trends, starting from mid-March when the virus took off in the U.S. The data in this specific study compares April 2020 to April 2019 searches, showing that consumers are looking for imagery to reflect their current situation. Images for “social distancing” are over 72,000 searches, searches for “virtual event” amount to over 12,000, and “working from home” and “exercise at home” tally over 3,000 searches. Two of the newest and most significant terms, according to Getty Images, were “social distancing” and “virtual party.”

Travel & Hospitality

Online review and booking site Tripadvisor has added filters to let travelers search destinations based on safety and sanitization. The filters allow business owners (who advertise on the platform) the ability to add their own safety measures and sanitization procedures, like whether mask policies are enforced, and ask travelers to validate their own personal experience at the establishment. The option is now available in every market Tripadvisor operates in.

“If we want to get the world traveling again, the safety needs of consumers must be appreciated and recognized as the biggest hurdle to closing the confidence gap created by this pandemic,” said Lindsay Nelson, Tripadvisor’s chief experience and brand officer. The introduction of the new tools, called Travel Safe, comes after Tripadvisor released its own findings from a months-long study examining traveler sentiment during the pandemic, which found that a vast majority (92%) said cleanliness will remain very important when selecting accommodations after Covid-19. Additionally, 79% said it was important to publicly display compliance with government safety standards.

Less than a year after announcing the sale of its food delivery service Caviar, payments company Square has announced a new option for restaurants and retail stores using its payments hardware to have their products delivered to customers’ homes. “In this challenging new business environment, it’s more important than ever that sellers have access to the tools they need to sell online quickly, efficiently, and affordably,” Square said.

“On-Demand Delivery is just the latest feature we’ve built to help sellers take their business online.” Square announced the sale of Caviar to DoorDash for $410 million last August. The move highlights the elevated attractiveness of delivery models as brick-and-mortar stores remain closed. Instacart, for example, said that demand in March was the highest in the company’s history, and that customer order volume is up more than 500% year over year.

By reintroducing the $5 Footlong sandwich promotion, Subway is hoping to turn back the clock to a time in the chain’s history remembered for its sales growth. The limited-time offering, which began this week, is accompanied by a new ad campaign and a jingle familiar to longtime fans, though updated to appeal to a younger audience The $5 Footlong’s roots was first launched nationally in 2008 at the beginning of the financial crisis.

The bargain was so appealing to cost-conscious consumers that in the following year, it generated billions in sales. By 2010, the $5 Footlong was a $4 billion brand. During the course of its 10-year run, the likes of Olympic gold medal winner Michael Phelps, a fan of the meatball and jalapeno sub, would serve as the promotion’s spokesmen.

Retail & CPG

The coronavirus pandemic has accelerated a move to ecommerce across all industries, and secondhand clothing is no exception, according to a report released by ThredUp. Online resale is expected to grow by 23% this year, the report said, and the category is predicted to overtake the traditional thrift and donation segment by 2024. As the world’s largest online resale website, ThredUp was seeing impressive growth prior to the pandemic, especially among Gen Z and millennial consumers concerned with the sustainability of their purchases.

An April survey conducted by Global Data for ThredUp’s resale report showed that consumers were just as concerned with the climate as they were prior to the pandemic. Consumers are showing a “resilience” with respect to their focus on sustainability, said Marino. “They’re keeping that in mind even when times are tough.”

ThredUp also found that brands with a strong commitment to sustainability practices are growing fastest on its site, demonstrating consumers’ loyalty to those values even when buying those brands – like Patagonia, The North Face, Everlane and Reformation – secondhand. Retailers have also begun to notice the appeal of resale for its consumers, according to the report. Several retail stores, from Banana Republic and Athleta to Walmart and Macy’s, have partnered with ThredUp to promote resale either through their own website, or through store credits in return for donations.

Automotive & Manufacturing

Major automobile parts supplier Marelli is launching a new product in Japan, “NEKO no TE” (No Touch), which is designed to act as a ‘remote hand’ which can be used in many situations when going out, such as straps, elevator buttons, door knobs, and ATM touch panel operations. The ABS plastic gadget features a cute design with a cat motif and will be on sale in Japan from the beginning of July. “We have developed the product to respond to the feeling “I want to keep my hands away” when I go out, with the aim of supporting a new lifestyle to prevent infection,” said the company.

Covid-19 is set to transform car design by making consumers demand vehicles that are greener and better for their health, according to the chief engineer at Jaguar Land Rover. The pandemic has completely changed the way people think about their safety and the wider environment and this will revolutionize the way cars look and feel, JLR executive director of engineering Nick Rogers said.

“I think Covid will transform car design. The pandemic has made people more aware of the natural environment and wanting to protect it – and also more aware of the physical car environment, which they want to be healthy. There will be a big push where space will become the new premium,” he said. “The design of cars is going to be more obsessed about the space inside the car than anything else – making sure it’s got the right materials, making sure there’s no pollutants, making sure there’s no plasticizers, making sure they don’t use animals or animal waste.

On the back of Covid-19 people will care more about the planet than ever before. People are so much more aware of the environment now – the simple things, like the birds coming out, nobody wants that to go back. Our number one objective will be maximizing interior space and minimizing exterior space. Maximizing visibility, maximizing occupant positions, all of those things are going to become important – and they’re going to affect the way cars look because a good car is built from the inside out,” he said. Mr Rogers is convinced that the car industry is at a Covid-19 induced turning point. “It’s a terrible thing that’s happened. However, this could be the inflection point of change and I think it’s overdue.”

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