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KIMP’s Picks 7th February: Weekly Highlights In Design, Marketing, AI, & More

Social media is quite hard to keep up with. Blink and you miss a bunch of updates. Imagine having to catch up on them after a busy week! Overwhelming, we know! That’s why we created KIMP’s Picks. 

KIMP’s Picks is your shortcut to catching up on all the social media buzz from the week. Whether it is about AI news or social media algorithm updates or even marketing inspiration, we have them all right here. 

So, are you ready for the KIMP’s Picks 7th February Edition? Then let’s get the ball rolling. 

In the Marketing Realm 

YouTube and the football culture 

One of the best ways to connect with your customers is by leveraging fandom. Talking about topics they love is the most effective way to grab their attention and improve engagement. Football is definitely one of the most popular topics to discuss. And YouTube is one of the most impactful platforms for these conversations. Here’s a post from YouTube highlighting this. 

YouTube offers fans and brands an interactive, always-on platform for engagement. From game analysis and creator-driven content to viral Super Bowl moments, the platform provides a unique space where sports enthusiasts can connect beyond traditional broadcasts.

Moreover, Super Bowl ads and teasers on YouTube have already amassed over 1 billion views. And brands like Doritos and UberEats leverage interactive and long-form content to maximize engagement.

Google’s supercharging Demand Gen campaigns with new tools 

Google is rolling out enhanced Demand Gen features designed to help brands improve performance on YouTube and Google’s visual platforms. 

The updates include expanded channel controls, enabling brands to target ads across YouTube, Gmail, and Discover, with a new option for YouTube Shorts starting in March. Google Display inventory will also be integrated, reaching over 3 million sites and apps worldwide.

Additionally, retailers will benefit from product feeds in Demand Gen. These offer seamless online-to-offline shopping experiences with real-time local product availability.

Unlocking the power of marketing analytics 

Creating a strong marketing strategy isn’t enough. Continuous monitoring of the strategies and adjustments based on analytics will help create a robust process. 

Adobe talks about marketing analytics in this post. 

Marketing analytics helps businesses transform data into actionable insights. This then helps them make informed decisions. By analyzing customer behavior and campaign performance, organizations can optimize strategies and enhance user experiences for measurable growth.

For industries like manufacturing, tech, and financial services, marketing analytics simplifies complexity, improves resource allocation, and delivers tangible results.

The post goes on to discuss the key components of marketing analytics and some commonly known techniques. 

The importance of retail media 

MarTech, a leading source of marketing news and insights shared an interesting discussion on the importance of retail media in marketing. 

According to the post, marketers are confident in retail media. Over 90% find it the most important channel for their campaigns, according to a recent Skai report. 

Marketers’ trust in retail media persists despite challenges like integration with other channels and concerns about ROI. While one-quarter of marketers struggle with integration, 56% now report proficiency in measuring incrementality, a significant improvement from the previous year.

All of these indicate that retail media is still a crucial channel to consider in your marketing strategy. 

Essential GA4 metrics 

Google Analytics 4 provides advertisers with plenty of data. It’s all about how you use the data to optimize your advertising strategy. 

Confused about what metrics to track? Semrush tells you via this post here. 

The post delves into 12 such metrics and why they matter. From users, sessions, average engagement time, bounce rate, and more, the post gives an overview of what each metric means and how to make the most of them. 

In the Content Marketing Realm 

Pinterest celebrates Black History Month 

Pinterest is honoring Black fashion’s past, present, and future with Tailored, a Black History Month campaign. For this campaign, Pinterest has partnered with Blackboard, their Black employee resource group. 

The initiative highlights the legacy of Black style while inviting users to explore and express their own fashion identities on the platform. A centerpiece of the campaign is a 60-second spot featuring stylist Ronald Burton III and creator JoeKenneth Museau. The video is a celebration of the transformative power of Black fashion. 

Pinterest will also spotlight Black creators and brands, making it easier for users to discover and shop from influential Black-owned businesses.

For brands and marketers, Tailored underscores the importance of cultural storytelling. It’s also a testament to how content marketing can foster deeper engagement by tapping into authentic narratives. Content centered on authenticity inspires customers and drives sales as well. 

Super Bowl season is here 

Topical content has its way of increasing reach and engagement. Accordingly, the Super Bowl season is here and content built around this event seems to be on the rise on social media. 

Here’s a post from X highlighting a few facts that reiterate the popularity of this event on X in particular. 

The post presents some quick data like the fact that there were 10.5 billion impressions for Super Bowl LVIII last year and over 19.2 million posts. 

This not only demonstrates the popularity of this event but also highlights the need for brands to create something intuitive, engaging, and out of the box to cut through the noise and connect with their audience. 

In the Design Realm

Freepik introduces lip sync in AI videos 

Over the past few months, Freepik introduced several useful AI features to help creators not just find stock assets from the site but also quickly generate designs. 

From image generation to video generation and image editing, the platform supports diverse creative tasks. Recently, they announced support for MiniMax live illustrations to create animated illustrations on the platform. 

To enhance the videos generated on Freepik, they have now announced the lip sync option for AI videos. 

Whether using text-to-audio, uploading a file, or recording your own voice, you can make your AI avatars speak with natural motion. Have you tried this feature yet? 

Design that aligns with the context 

Creating visually stunning designs is good and creating designs that deliver the message clearly is better. You know what’s even better than this? Creating visually stunning and clear designs that also align with trends or with seasonal relevance. 

In the post here, the Print magazine celebrates one such design project that is in tune with the Chinese New Year and the Year of the Snake theme. 

Design Army’s latest campaign for Morphe, The Forbidden Collection, embraces the spirit of the Year of the Snake. Accordingly, the design features a bold, seductive narrative of temptation and transformation. 

Inspired by a reimagined Garden of Eden, the campaign blends striking photography, surreal AI-generated imagery, and captivating animation to create a mesmerizing visual experience.

Designs like these highlight how being mindful of trends and seasonal relevance can add a touch of magic to your designs. 

Brand identity inspiration

It’s Nice That is one page to go to when you need some quick creativity inspiration. They recently shared a post analyzing a brand identity design project. 

In this design project, Belgian designer Davy Denduyver brings a sense of warmth and imperfection to Mina, a new Barcelona-based restaurant and wine bar. This consists of a branding system built on over 100 hand-drawn charcoal illustrations. 

The rough, textured visuals mirror the eatery’s inviting and unpretentious atmosphere, reinforcing a communal dining experience where guests can truly relax. 

What makes this brand identity worth exploring at this time is the fact that it does not just align with the brand’s core personality but also feels raw and authentic. At times when “perfect-looking” and “staged” images generated by AI seem to dominate the scene, crude and unique styles like this one definitely set your brand apart. No wonder, hand-drawn illustrations are predicted to be some of the major graphic design trends in 2025. 

In the AI Realm 

Meta expands AI transparency in ads 

AI is everywhere and brands big and small now use AI in one way or another to create their ads. That’s an undeniable truth. However, there’s a gap when it comes to transparency. Therefore, Meta is expanding AI transparency in ads. 

As you know several social media platforms like Meta offer in-app AI suites for advertisers to tweak their ads before posting them. Adding to this, Meta is enhancing transparency in its advertising products by introducing clearer labels for ads created or significantly edited using its in-house generative AI tools. 

This initiative, which began rolling out last year, ensures that users can see AI labels either behind the three-dot menu or next to the “Sponsored” tag, especially when AI-generated photorealistic humans are included.

Meta reportedly has more in store for 2025! 

Google announces crucial Gemini updates 

Google is reportedly expanding the Gemini 2.0 models with a host of updates. 

  • Gemini 2.0 Flash is being updated – now more widely available in Google AI Studio & Vertex AI.
  • Gemini 2.0 Pro Experimental – reportedly Google’s best model yet for coding and complex reasoning, (with a 2 million-token context window for processing large amounts of information).
  • Gemini 2.0 Flash-Lite  – a new, faster, and more cost-efficient model with 1 million-token context and multimodal capabilities, available in public preview via Google AI Studio & Vertex AI.

With all these updates it’s evident that Google is adapting their Gemini models to cater to the needs of diverse types of users and applications. 

OpenAI announces Deep Research to enhance ChatGPT 

OpenAI has launched Deep Research, a new capability in ChatGPT. This AI feature can act as an agent that autonomously conducts multi-step web research, analyzing and synthesizing information from hundreds of sources. 

Powered by a version of OpenAI’s upcoming o3 model optimized for browsing and data analysis, Deep Research is designed for users in fields like finance, science, and policy who require in-depth, reliable insights. 

It generates fully documented reports with citations, making it useful for both professional research and complex consumer decisions. 

Initially available to Pro users, this marks a step toward more advanced AI-driven knowledge synthesis and autonomous task execution.

OpenAI is changing the Search game 

Gone are the days when Search was synonymous with Google Search. Tools like Perplexity and web search features on platforms like ChatGPT shook up the Search game. 

Building on this, OpenAI has now announced that its web search interface will be available to all users and it can be accessed even without creating an account. In addition to providing you with answers based on searching the web, this version now can also handle simple tasks like generating content. This definitely changes the way people use the tool. 

You will soon be able to personalize Grok responses

Have you used the memory function on ChatGPT and Gemini? If you have, then you know how feeding in important details can drastically change the responses to your queries and personalize them. Reportedly, Grok will also soon let you do this. 

X Daily News shared a post previewing this feature. You’ll be able to add a few details about yourself and a few tips on how you want Grok to respond to your queries. 

However, there’s no official information about when this feature will be available to users. 

Anthropic addresses the issue of AI jailbreaks 

Anthropic has unveiled Constitutional Classifiers, a system designed to prevent AI jailbreak attempts that trick models into generating restricted content. 

Built from the same Constitutional AI framework that shaped its Claude model, the system filters harmful prompts and responses using predefined natural language rules. 

After hours of bug bounty testing, the classifiers have proven highly resistant, reportedly blocking 95% of jailbreaking attempts. While not foolproof, Anthropic is confident enough to open public testing until February 10, allowing users to try breaking the system’s defenses.

OpenAI expands the availability of o3 mini 

While OpenAI does support a variety of features for free users, most of their advanced features are available only to the paid users on the platform. However, DeepSeek created ripples in the AI segment. With AI models like DeepSeek allowing free access to several advanced features, other major players are now rethinking their strategies. 

Accordingly, OpenAI recently made the o3 mini models available to free users. This reasoning model is known for its fast responses and reasoning abilities. Free users can easily switch to the o3 mini model if they require the response to be given after sufficient reasoning. 

OpenAI Canvas sharing 

Canvas is OpenAI’s innovative interface that lets users write and code with ease. Supporting real-time interaction, this feature makes collaborating with ChatGPT much more enjoyable. Now OpenAI is expanding this feature with the option that lets users share their Canvas with others. 

If you are using ChatGPT for your workflows, this can be a handy update that lets you invite other users to view the progress and make changes as well. 

Social Media Feature Updates and Algorithm Changes

Threads now lets you share custom Feeds 

Threads now allows users to share their custom public feeds. This makes it easier to connect over shared interests and discover relevant profiles and discussions. A new Feeds tab on profiles lets users explore public feeds and pin their favorites for quick access.

Creating and sharing a public feed is simple—users can toggle their feed to “Public” in the app settings and share it via post, link, or direct message. This update builds on Threads’ introduction of custom feeds last year, enhancing discovery and engagement as part of its ongoing efforts to improve user experience.

What to expect from Edits 

A couple of weeks ago, Instagram announced their new video-editing app, Edits, to compete with TikTok’s CapCut. Now they shared a preview of what to expect from Edits. 

From arranging clips to animating static images, adding captions, and more, the post here summarizes a few interesting features for creators. This looks promising indeed. 

Communities updates on X 

Community-focused features on social media platforms can be a boon to both creators and brands. They help them connect more deeply with their audience and retain their followers creating an engaging community. 

Accordingly, X has now integrated Communities across X. With the new updates, Community posts will be visible to non-members as well. Additionally, they can also respond to these posts.

Moreover, posts in the Communities will still be available even if the Communities are deleted. 

A Final Word…

That’s all we have for this week’s KIMP’s Picks. We hope our curated list of posts gave you a snapshot of the week that was. If you would like more such recaps, stay tuned and we’ll be back next Friday with another interesting social media recap. See you then! 

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Posted On

07 Feb, 2025

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