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KIMP’s Picks 27th September: Weekly Highlights In Design, Marketing, AI, & More

Ready to wind down the week with a social media recap? We’ve curated a digest of the hottest topics, trends, and insights that dominated the online sphere. From marketing insights to AI advancements and social media algo changes, discover what creators and brands were buzzing about. Ready for a quick round-up? Then let’s dive right into the KIMP’s Picks 27th September Edition. 

In the Marketing Realm 

Burger King’s innovative marketing move 

Burger King is known to be creative when it comes to marketing. Recently, Burger King took a unique approach to underscore the significance of democratic voting in the upcoming Austrian elections. For one day, the fast-food chain reduced its menu to just one item: the iconic Whopper. 

Hidden cameras were placed to capture the reactions of customers who were annoyed at not having a choice. Their bold move served as a powerful reminder of the importance of exercising one’s right to vote and gave customers a glimpse of what happens when they do not exercise their right to vote. 

Ads of the World, a leading online resource filled with advertising inspiration discussed this campaign recently. 

The need for multi-format creatives 

A recent post from Google highlights the need for multi-format creatives to succeed with Google Ads. Based on the data shared by Google, combining video and image assets in Demand Gen campaigns can significantly boost conversions. Reportedly, advertisers who utilized both formats experienced a remarkable 20% increase in conversions compared to those who relied solely on video.

So, are you exploring engaging formats like videos and images in your Google Ads? If not, now is a good time to start. 

Customer reviews are marketing gold 

A recent post from the Content Marketing Institute discusses a marketing asset that several marketers do not seem to leverage to its full potential – customer reviews! 

The post delves into the importance of customer reviews in marketing and how they offer a treasure trove of insights for marketers to analyze and continuously refine their strategies. 

If you are wondering how to tap into the power of customer testimonials and how to seamlessly integrate them into your campaigns, then this post is for you. 

In the Content Marketing Realm 

Keyword strategy mistakes you cannot afford to make 

Search Engine Journal, a leading authority in search-related updates and SEO insights shared an insightful discussion on keyword strategies and the common mistakes that marketers tend to make. 

From not understanding the intent of the search to skipping competitor research, and missing out on organized research, the post delves into numerous blunders that can hamper a brand’s SEO performance. The post also delves into some quick tips and tricks to avoid these mistakes and rank better. 

The best URL shorteners you can use 

When using cross-channel promotional strategies, like when you use your social media channel to drive traffic to your website or blog, embedding links in your content becomes a necessity. But how you do it matters. Traditional links tend to be long and therefore adding them to your posts can be a problem, especially with the character limits on most social media platforms. 

Link shorteners are a great way to tackle this challenge. The post here from the popular social media management platform, Hootsuite discusses some of the basics of link shorteners. It also has a list of some of the most popular link shorteners for brands to use. 

So, if you aren’t using tools to shorten your links already, this post gives you plenty of options to experiment with. 

In the Design Realm 

PayPal’s new brand look 

Looking for some rebranding inspiration or just some inspiration for your brand identity? Then the recent rebranding project of PayPal is one to explore. The popular Art & Design Magazine Creative Boom shared a post discussing the fresh new look of PayPal. 

The striking new identity for PayPal was designed by Pentagram. The updated design aims to reflect PayPal’s core mission of making financial transactions simple, seamless, and secure for everyone.

For this, the brand uses a bespoke typeface called PayPal Pro, designed to be bold and accessible. Moreover, the iconic double “P” monogram has been sharpened and modernized.

Additionally, the new identity system is designed to be flexible and adaptable across various platforms and mediums, ensuring a consistent experience for users.

A one-of-a-kind packaging design project 

With brand identity design inspiration sorted, we now have another post that gives some serious goals for packaging design. This post from The Brand Identity discusses a beauty packaging design that breaks all the stereotypical views about packaging for beauty products. 

This design created for 4 RE® cosmetics is a testament to the brand’s commitment to blending ancient wisdom with modern innovation. The packaging not only reflects the product’s unique formulation but also challenges traditional notions of beauty product aesthetics.

Taking cues from metamodernism, the design was created to oscillate subtly between contrasting ideas: the natural world and the industrial age. The outer packaging, made of mycelium, symbolizes nature’s rawness, while the inner metal cylinder and yellow refill evoke a sense of technology and human progress.

Now Adobe Express is a powerful add-on to your HubSpot toolkit 

Adobe recently shared a post discussing the integration of Adobe Express within HubSpot. This integration provides marketers with a powerful new asset for content creation. Additionally, it also allows HubSpot users to easily create and edit eye-catching visuals directly within the platform, streamlining their workflow and enhancing their productivity.

Canva Salesforce integration 

Salesforce has grown to be a powerful tool for customer-facing teams. Canva recently announced the integration of the platform with Salesforce. This means that customer-facing teams can conveniently and quickly create assets directly from the existing Docs. From creating presentations to other formats that help present data-rich content effectively, this integration brings a host of benefits. 

In the AI Realm 

Spotify’s AI playlists are here 

Spotify has been using AI to enhance customer experience and refine their interface. Recently they announced the introduction of the AI playlist feature for Premium users in the US, Canada, Ireland, and New Zealand.

With this new feature, users can create personalized playlists based on their unique preferences. As an innovative tool, it combines Spotify’s personalization technology with generative AI to provide users with a fun and easy way to curate their ideal musical mix.

To access this, all you have to do is describe your mood and other details like preferred genres and the platform comes up with playlists curated for you which can then be tweaked to your liking. 

Tap into the power of Gemini within Google Workspaces 

Google recently announced that millions of Google Workspace users will now be able to access the power of Gemini. Previously available as a standalone app, Gemini is now included in Workspace Business, Enterprise, and Frontline plans, providing users with a secure and compliant way to leverage AI for improved productivity and work quality.

Google also shared several facts exemplifying the power of Gemini in work. Reportedly, 75% of daily users report improved work quality with Gemini. Moreover, this integration also comes with built-in data protection to ensure secure and compliant use. 

Google’s Gemini models get a boost 

In a recent post, Google announced the updated versions of Gemini models. The revised versions offer significant improvements in performance, cost-effectiveness, and accessibility as well. The Gemini-1.5-Pro-002 and Gemini-1.5-Flash-002 models are now faster, more accurate, and more affordable to use.

One of the most notable changes is a significant reduction in pricing for Gemini 1.5 Pro. This makes it more cost-effective for developers to build applications using this powerful model. Additionally, Google has increased the rate limits for both 1.5 Pro and 1.5 Flash, allowing developers to process more requests per minute.

Amazon announces Project Amelia 

Amazon’s AI assistant for shoppers, Rufus was recently launched and has been made available to users in various parts of the world. In other news, they recently also announced their AI assistant for sellers, Project Amelia. 

This is a powerful generative AI assistant designed to streamline the selling process for businesses on its platform. This AI-powered tool offers personalized insights, advice, and support, helping sellers navigate the complexities of online selling more efficiently.

According to Amazon, this AI assistant leverages Amazon Bedrock, a scalable platform for building and deploying generative AI applications. By combining broad world knowledge with deep expertise in Amazon selling, Project Amelia provides sellers with relevant and tailored responses to their questions.  

Video Generator to make Amazon Ads better 

Amazon is enhancing advertising on the platform with the Video Generator upgrade. This is a new AI-powered tool from Amazon and it is designed to eliminate a major hurdle for businesses – creating high-quality video ads. The tool achieves this by offering a fast and cost-effective solution.

It leverages Amazon’s unique insights to tailor the videos to each product’s distinct selling proposition and features, essentially crafting a compelling product story. Eventually, this allows businesses of all sizes to create captivating video ads within minutes and at no additional cost.

Stable AI Assistant now gets upscaling capabilities 

Stability AI has been expanding the features available on the Stable AI Assistant. A recent addition is the image upscaling capability. Fast Upscaler is their powerful new tool that can quickly and easily enhance image resolution. Using advanced AI technology, Fast Upscaler can increase image resolution by 4x in just one second, delivering high-quality results without extensive processing.

This lets you reuse poor-quality images by upscaling them to avoid pixelated designs. 

James Cameron joins Stability AI’s Board of Directors 

Last week Runway announced a collaboration with Lionsgate hinting that the penetration of AI in the entertainment industry is happening faster than expected. In other news, legendary filmmaker James Cameron has joined Stability AI’s Board of Directors, marking a significant step forward for the company’s mission to revolutionize visual media through artificial intelligence.

This unexpected collaboration is yet another indication that visual media and the entertainment industry as we know it, are changing. 

OpenAI announced Advanced Voice Mode for ChatGPT 

OpenAI has introduced an advanced voice feature for ChatGPT Plus and Team subscribers. This mode allows more natural and engaging audio conversations. 

Additionally, this feature also brings to the voice option in ChatGPT better pronunciation and intonation for various languages. It also allows users to tailor the style and characteristics of the voice to suit their preferences. 

Moreover, there have also been refinements to ensure fluid and more natural conversations. With the addition of advanced voice, ChatGPT continues to push the boundaries of AI-powered chatbots, offering users a more immersive and natural conversational experience.

Meta makes progress with Llama 3.2

Meta, has unveiled Llama 3.2, which is a significant update to its open-source large language model (LLM) platform. This new version offers several advancements that make it more accessible and versatile for developers and businesses.

One of the most notable features of Llama 3.2 is the introduction of lightweight models. These smaller models, available in 1B and 3B parameter sizes, deliver impressive performance for tasks like summarization and instruction following, making them ideal for on-device applications on smartphones and other devices with limited computing power.

Meta announces their most advanced AR glasses 

Meta has unveiled Orion which according to them is their most advanced pair of AR glasses yet. They aim to bridge the gap between physical and virtual realms providing users with a seamless blend of real-world and digital experiences. 

According to Meta, Orion offers the largest field of view in any AR glasses form factor thus ensuring immersive experiences. Moreover, these AR glasses ensure that users are not cut off from the real world while interacting with digital content. 

Combined with the power of Meta AI, these glasses can help deliver personalized experiences like finding recipes and even hands-free communication like video calls. 

Meta AI is getting several new updates 

Meta’s AI assistant Meta AI has become a crucial part of their ecosystem. And now they have unveiled more new updates to Meta AI. 

One of them is the introduction of voices in Meta AI allowing users to converse with the assistant and get back voice responses. To keep up with the competition in the multimodal space, Meta is working on introducing multiple voices for users to customize including some celebrity voices. 

The other major update is the ability to process and analyze images as well as edit them as required. Translations, creation of captions for social media posts and a host of other features have been introduced as well. 

Social Media Feature Updates and Algorithm Changes

TikTok introduces Search Ads 

Search ads have an allure because they are all about presenting your products as the solution right when users are searching for something they need. TikTok’s recent announcement is that advertisers will now be able to tap into the perks of Search Ads within the platform. 

Given that social media advertising is crucial to businesses looking to dominate the online space, the introduction of effective ad formats like this one is a great move. 

As of now, TikTok is only introducing the option to U.S. advertisers. This ad format also feels relevant because TikTok is also known to be growing to become a popular search engine, especially among young social media users. From finding ideas to brands and products, there are many ways in which youngsters use TikTok. Therefore search ads make it easier for them to find what they are looking for and for brands, this means better visibility. 

Meta AI updates on Instagram 

Given the changes coming to Meta AI across all of the Meta apps, Instagram shared a post summarizing a few changes to look out for. 

The first feature highlighted here is the option to send images to Meta AI and describe the edits you would like to get the image retouched instantly. 

Secondly, when sharing images from your Feed on your Story Meta AI will now help you come up with a matching background to go with it. Automatic dubbing and lip-syncing features on Reels and the option to create custom themes for group chats are the other main updates coming to Instagram. 

Snapchat’s My AI now powered by Gemini

Snapchat’s AI assistant My AI is now getting an upgrade with their collaboration with Google Cloud. As a part of this collab, My AI will now be powered by Gemini.

What does this mean for My AI? Better generative AI capabilities which also come in the form of processing text, image, and other formats in prompts. 

Translation, responding to queries and other features will also now be available in My AI. 

Let’s Wrap Things Up 

With this whirlwind of updates we would like to conclude the KIMP’s Picks 27th September Edition. We hope these posts excited you as much as it excited us. With so much buzzing on the social media space if you think that keeping up with the changes is overwhelming, fear not. We got you covered. Stay tuned and we’ll be back with another weekly recap post to keep you in the loop. Until then, stay inspired. 

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Posted On

27 Sep, 2024

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