OMD FWD w/c 21st August
Hello and welcome to this week’s OMD FWD! We weren’t so lucky to witness the solar eclipse earlier this week. But, hopefully, some of you were able to follow it with Snapchat’s new ‘Actionmoji’. In any case, we’ve curated the latest tech news for you to munch on, from Heinz making it possible to try Instagram food posts to Amazon’s new offline daily essentials programme that might pose a threat to bricks-and-mortar convenience stores.
In the attempt of becoming the WeChat of the West, Whatsapp is adding a peer to peer payment function to their app. While Reddit introduces auto-play silent video ads to encourage video consumption and advertising on the platform. Microsoft’s AI reaches human level accuracy in speech recognition. Also, Formula One enters the virtual realm launching its first eSport championship.
Moreover, as we approach the August bank holiday weekend, a study predicts that searches for Christmas-related items will start on Friday!
HEADLINES
- WhatsApp to add peer to peer payments function to the app
- From order to delivery in 120 seconds? Amazon soft rolls out its ‘Instant Pickup’ programme
- Home to 48m users globally, Reddit launches its own video player to increase user retention (and presumably, advertisers)
INSIGHTS
- An interesting report on the UK growth of the beauty market and how ‘Make Up’ searches are up 300%
- It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas; how Seasonal Shopping starts this Friday!
- How Formula One attempts to tap into a new, younger audience
COOL
- Eat what you like? How Heinz made social posts edible
- What is an ‘Actionmoji’? How the Solar Eclipse showcases the potential of SnapMaps
- How Nike made the outdated marketing scavenger hunt young again
DEEP READS
- Facebook for the face? What Facebook’s patents tell us about their glasses product
- How Amazon have slowly built a vast collection of secret brands
- Microsoft’s speech recognition software is statistically on a par with ours
If you see anything FWD worthy in the week ahead, please share using #OMDFWD