Issue 6 - Made.com's Legacy, Tear Jerker Ads and the Twitter End?

Monday has come round fast and we’re almost at the mid November point. Thanks to everyone who is reading and subscribing - drop me a comment if you have any suggestions or something you’d like covering. 6 weeks in now and still finding my feet with it.

• Date - 14th November?
• To - {First name}
• Subject - Twitter, Made.com & Tear jerker ads

What’s going on in the marketing world??

Elon Musk, that’s what. Things are going from bad to worse at Twitter following Elon Musk’s takeover and they are now at the brink of bankruptcy, losing more and more advertisers and users in favour of Mastodon.?

Elon bought Twitter at the end of October for $44 billion, since then:

• Huge scale layoffs have been made. Contractors have since been cut too?
• Claims content moderation is one of the big problems, though many of the moderation teams have now been made redundant
• Bans an accounts that are not clearly named ‘parody’ after many changes their users names to Elon Musk and mocked him

• Paying $8 a month to get a blue tick was announced in an attempt to increase much needed revenue but means anyone and everyone can now get ‘Twitter Blue’. The Blue Tick programme was suspended after imposter accounts were being created

• Many accounts are claiming that they’ve lost followers who haven’t actually unfollowed them

He’s claiming all is going well and Twitter usage is still increasing…

500,000 users have since signed up to Mastodon and people are leaving Twitter in droves. What’s next for Twitter?! They’re going to need to instil a lot of confidence to both its users and advertisers to start to get the revenue needed. It seems lots of people are unsure on what to do, whether to ride out the Twitter storm or find other social networks instead.

Marketing tip of the week?

If you have 3.4 million going spare then buy a very well known domain and you’ve got yourself a marketing gold dust… this week tip and win on the week goes to Next who have recently acquired made.com?

Last week Next bought Made.com brand names, domain names and intellectual property for just ￡3.4million. It was floated in the summer for ￡775 million. I can’t comment from a business / profit opportunity perspective but solely from a marketing perspective, this seems like a bargain. Why? The power of the made.com domain and social profiles.?

Let's take a look at Next vs Made.com social and SEO key stats. For a well established brand with stores nationwide and an online store that was only launched in 2010, I think this shows the potential of made.com and the surprise to many that it couldn't make a profit.

Purchasing expired, powerful domains and redirecting them into your site could be a great way to give your own site a boost.

Marketing win of the week

I couldn’t write this without including two Christmas ads which have made an impression in the last week.

Aldi... I’ve laughed and rewatched this far too many times.

But what’s really winning the internet is the John Lewis advert. A heartwarming, very real with a good message at its core.

Another marketing win of the week could have been Brewdog’s recent anti world cup campaign. It’s caused lots of controversy on LinkedIn this week.?

A strong, much needed message (years ago), however Brewdog is still going to be showing the World Cup games, has ties with Qatar and has had lots in the press about its own culture and treatment of staff. Brewdog will be donating to human rights charities, all whilst making money off the back of the world cup. It feels nothing more than a publicity stunt.

• Do consumers outside of the industry care? Not sure
• Has it created a talking point? Absolutely?
• Is it a good marketing campaign? Maybe