Twitter solves the “mystery” of why Millennials aren’t buying diamonds, Disney-mojis are coming, Thrillist’s sponsored content goes viral, links we’re passing and more. Don’t miss the youth news and insights you’ll be talking about all weekend…
1. Why Millennials Aren’t Buying Diamonds? Ask Twitter
Millennials are regularly accused of killing industries, and most recently, they’ve been noted as a threat to the diamond industry. This week, The Economist tweeted their story on the subject with the caption, “Why aren’t millennials buying diamonds?” Don’t miss Twitter’s brutally honest answers. Twitter users responded with messages about their “crippling student debt,” the state of the economy, and diamonds being “worthless rocks made under exploitative conditions.” One user simply said, “Cuz we broke bitch,” while another posted a Spongebob meme with the message “I have $3.”
2. Get Ready For Disney-mojis
Celebrity mogul Kim Kardashian’s custom emoji app Kimoji is the greatest example of the booming custom emoji business, and we spoke to the company behind animated Kimojis to find out the secret of their success. Don’t miss the next custom keyboard to hit the scene: Disney Emoji. Disney is releasing hundreds of emojis featuring characters and references from films like The Little Mermaid and Toy Story—but users won’t simply be able to download them all at once. They’ll be available through the new game Emoji Blitz, which will let users play to unlock new emojis on their board.
3. Thrilist’s Viral Cider Video is an Ad
As the reach of traditional marketing continues to weaken, and young consumers spend more and more time behind non-TV screens, the world of sponsored content is heating up fast. Don’t miss the latest example of sponsored video success: Thrillist’s video for hard cider brand Smith and Forge has racked up over 67 million views since being posted this Tuesday. The video, one of a six-part series on Thrillist’s site, is a candid camera prank of a weightlifter disguised as a grandpa shocking body builders at Muscle Beach. After Thrillist posted the video to Facebook, the views began to grow, and other publishers began to re-post. Thrillist says the video follows their best-practices: “Being engaging in the very first few seconds and including captions.”
4. Cocktail Videos Are The New Recipe Videos
We asked 400 13-33-year-olds foodies to tell us the food trends they’ve been most interested in lately, and recipe videos made the top 10 list. Don’t miss the next iteration of the trend: the cocktail recipe video. Digiday says that cocktails are becoming the new food videos as the recipe video space become crowded, and it “turns out that cocktails, like food, are well suited to the 30-second, sound-off, instructional videos Facebook is pushing in users’ news feeds.” Drink up.
5. Links We’re Passing
Snapchat Lenses are one of the big reasons that 56% of 13-17-year-olds are using the app daily. But don’t miss that one of those filters might be a bit too real for teens. The Snapchat lens that adds nerdy glasses and braces to users’ selfies isn’t too far off from how they actually look.
