What’s special about the platform that netted Jennifer Lopez, Netflix, Amazon, Spotify, and Shakira as early adopters, and where does it fit in your brand’s strategy? You’ve probably got a lot of questions about Threads, and we’ve got answers.

How has Threads grown so quickly, and does it have staying power?

Much of Threads’ success is thanks to its close integration with Instagram; users simply carry over their existing usernames onto the new app, where a ready-made account awaits them. This seamless transition from one network to the next eliminates some of the complicated barriers of entry that are present on other microblogging platforms. Bluesky and Mastodon, for example, require users to sign up to one of many servers, and while each server is interoperable, following users on a different one can be difficult for a novice to wrap their head around. Threads has no such hurdles, simply requiring an Instagram handle to start.

What do I need to know about privacy?

Threads currently faces scrutiny due to privacy concerns, as mandatory iOS disclosures reveal the app collects highly sensitive user information, including health and financial data, in addition to all the typical things to expect. This may turn some users off, but more notably, it puts the app’s future in the EU into question.

EU data protection regulations require explicit consent for processing sensitive information like health data. Adding to that, Meta has listed Threads as a “gatekeeper” under the Digital Markets Act, a law that prohibits gatekeepers from combining users’ personal data across different platforms. Threads currently isn’t available in the EU as Meta determines how data sharing with Instagram will comply with local regulations. 

The good news: Threads is transparent about the data it collects and requires explicit consent to gather it, which is a step in the right direction for companies who prioritize transparency and user choice.

Are there limitations for users? What about for advertisers?

After signing up for Threads, users quickly took notice of missing features found on similar platforms. There is no “discovery” page, hashtags, trending topics or search function, limiting discovery on the platform. This means brands will do best by focusing on organic strategies that drive brand love by being fun and entertaining, rather than just selling. It’s also worth noting that Threads lacks an API, meaning community managers will need to manually manage and administer content on the channel.  

Still, we can expect that Threads will eventually become an additional option in Meta’s ad manager, following a similar strategy used with WhatsApp and emerging Instagram features, like extending the reach of content on the Explore page.

How do I build a strategy around Threads or decide if it’s right for my brand?

Before migrating to any platform, consider if it aligns with your needs and values. Think about your goals as a brand and the type of community you want to engage with. I always recommend that brands secure their official handles on any platform, but actively participating on those channels requires a clear understanding of their functionality and their data-sharing practices. That said, diversifying your presence across many platforms is a smart move, and Threads offers yet another place to cultivate community.

An interesting strategic consideration about Threads is how the platform brings the decentralization trend into the mainstream. Meta has plans to soon make Threads interoperable with Mastodon through W3C’s open social networking protocol, ActivityPub. This strategic move aligns with Meta’s recognition that the future of social networks will be decentralized—even if that means relinquishing some control—while also making it easier for brands to join and find their friends on such networks.

I’m in—so how do I show up?

Before you get started on Threads, understand that this is a platform that is focused on healthy conversation. Many brands have had success on Twitter by talking smack and starting tongue-in-cheek Twitter beefs, but that’s not the kind of climate that Meta is trying to cultivate on Threads. Focus on fun and positivity—and while the platform may be mostly text-focused, consider incorporating eye-catching photos, videos, and graphics that complement your message to stand out from the crowd.

Feeling the pressure of your first Threads post? Here are three ideas to get you started:

• Step onto the scene. Ask your followers to give you the scoop on what’s been going down while you were away.
• Unveil your essence. Share more about yourself or your brand—and inspire others to do the same.
• Make a gentle nudge. Share a mesmerizing tale relevant to your specialized domain.

Then what? “Once you’ve made some posts, begin to identify top-performing content types, topics, and formats on Threads,” advises my colleague Paula Velandia, Head of Data, US. “Tailor your content to maximize engagement and drive desired outcomes."

Unfortunately, there are currently no built-in insights or analytics features on Threads, so you’ll need to manually track content’s performance. “Test and learn, and try to understand the platform's algorithm to adapt your content strategy effectively. Monitor brand health and sentiment: Without social listening software on Threads, rely on vigilant community managers,” adds Velandia.

In short: have fun with it! It’s been incredible to see how Threads has spun up so quickly—and at a pivotal point in the realm of social media. Only time will tell how the platform continues to evolve amidst a growing list of microblogging competitors, and how brands will experiment with folding them into their strategies.

Among our foundational environmental, social and governance goals, we aim to become a climate-neutral, environmentally conscious business—and a catalyst for change in our industry, leading by example and helping brands become more sustainable themselves. So while programs like carbon offsets are steps in the right direction, the key to meeting sustainable goals is to design operations that limit carbon emissions to begin with, and our live remote production workstream fits the bill.

Sustainable workstreams shouldn’t be a tradeoff.

Sometimes the road to being green can feel like making a series of concessions, but working sustainably often means working smarter. When reliance on digital grew throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, we adapted by designing a remote broadcasting workflow that limited the number of people needed on location. This production pipeline, with Amazon Web Services (AWS) as its backbone, did more than help us deliver incredible, live digital experiences to people everywhere—like immersing audiences in a VR Post Malone performance that transforms the experience of listening to an album. It also significantly reduced our carbon footprint.

Our live remote production connects teams to broadcasting software, eliminating the need for gas-guzzling broadcasting trucks on location. It also cuts out the need for specialized talent to travel to shoot an event: we’ve reduced our number of on-site broadcast talent by 83%. Adding to those benefits, our primary workload is based out of the AWS Northern Virginia region, which was powered by over 95% renewable in 2021.

Who wouldn’t want to trade lugging around energy-intensive equipment prone to breaking down—be careful not to trip on a wire and shut down the whole show!—for the cloud? This pipeline recently earned us the coveted Sustainability in Leadership award at NAB Show, the leading conference dedicated to the evolution of broadcast.

The benefits extend to talent as well. Gone are the long, grueling hours spent on set. The ability to collaborate remotely broadens our talent pool, ensuring the best person is cast for each job, even if they’re working across the country—or in a different one. Our experiential team has also developed a suite of tools like LiveXP that furthers the connection between audiences and the action beyond the screen.

One key benefit of live remote production is risk mitigation. First, the greatly diminished environmental impact reduces the social risk of a brand missing their pledged environmental, social and governance (ESG) commitments. Second, cloud-based tools are also more reliable. Traditional broadcast production teams have only a finite set of equipment that may break down. In the cloud, we can plan for redundancies and quickly spin up a new virtual machine should something happen to an existing one. You can learn more about what live remote production looks like on Amazon’s blog. 

Let sustainability be the byproduct of innovation.

Sustainability and innovation go hand in hand, and our low carbon, live remote production uniquely enables compelling virtual and hybrid experiences—filling a crucial whitespace in broadcasting as the culture shifts to more immersive and creator-led channels.

“Broadcasting is culture. It’s the vehicle by which culture spreads,” says Smithingham. Increasingly, culture is happening within immersive, interactive spaces like gaming, social feeds and metaverse worlds—behaviors that are challenging broadcasting to adapt. “A core undercurrent across all of this is if something is not interactive to younger generations, it feels broken and it feels disconnected.”

Look at award shows for example. Exclusive and invite-only, viewers must watch the fun from a mediated distance, chattering in backchannels like social media. We flipped the script by partnering with Logitech For Creators to host the first music award show in the metaverse—The Song Breaker Awards—which invited everyone to not only attend but actually become part of the show in Roblox.

What about hybrid experiences? When it comes to sharing an esports experience with audiences around the world, you’d be forgiven for using traditional sports broadcast as a blueprint. But with sports facing a decline in young viewership, it’s clear the formula is worth shaking up. In celebration of Valorant’s first anniversary, we translated the game’s rich lore into a recognizable IRL environment, then pit attendees against livestream viewers in a challenging bout. Viewers could frustrate on-site players by sharing hashtags in the chat that triggered traps—setting a new precedent for gamified broadcast experiences.

Both experiences were designed to connect with consumers in ways that weren’t possible before. If an experience calls for disruptive ways of working, why not use that as a forcing function to move a part of the operations to a low-carbon approach?

Live remote production balances efficiency and sustainability.

By leveraging live remote production, our experiential team can deliver interactive experiences that drive culture and ROI with incredible efficiency, reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the process. The best part? Those benefits contribute directly to brands’ ESG goals and industry mandates. This is a win-win as we connect with consumers in innovative ways, contribute to carbon reduction goals, and reduce risk along the way.

As consumers increasingly demand sustainability from the brands they engage with, offering environmentally friendly solutions becomes an urgent need. And because sustainability challenges us to accomplish our goals in new or different ways, it can unlock innovative ways of reaching audiences. So, whether it’s a matter of saving the planet or simply saving consumers from boredom in fresh ways, we’re down for the challenge.

To stay ahead of the curve in customer engagement, brands must move beyond delivering AI-generated content (AIGC) to delivering AI-powered consumer experiences (AICX). While AIGC levels up content by creating content at scale, AICX levels up the customer experience by creating personalized interactions. Applying AI to CX is not just about chatbots for customer service, it's about adopting a customer-centric approach across all functions, from product development to marketing, and across all touchpoints, from digital to retail, all enabled by AI. AI has the ability to create intimate and hyper-personalized one-to-one interactions across all touchpoints of the consumer decision journey, and will be a key factor in how brands are perceived, valued and ultimately loved by consumers. Here’s how, in three ways.

AICX levels up storytelling.

Applying AI to consumer experience means moving from advertising a brand world, to participating and engaging in a brand world. The most discerning audiences in the world are demanding nothing less than a seamless and immersive brand experience: 73% point to brand experience as an important factor in their purchasing decisions, right behind price and product quality. Here are the ways brands are already leveling up engagement via immersive brand experiences powered by AI, and developed by Media.Monks:

• Building smart and immersive flagship stores. Chinese EV brand JIDU launched the world's smartest showroom in Beijing, powered by Baidu AI technology. This immersive space offers a unique brand experience with life-size avatars and captures valuable user data.  
• Embedding consumers directly into any story. Intel’s AI-powered technology connects young people in China to their remarkable heritage by scanning and mapping their faces in real time onto historical figures in a series of animated films that were projected on the city walls of Xi’an.

AICX levels up personalization.

The benefits of personalized customer experiences—one-on-one interaction between a customer and a brand—helps to massively uplift sales and loyalty. Research suggests that personalized and tailored CX drives over 66% of customer loyalty—more than price and brand combined. Meanwhile, 78% of consumers are more likely to make repeat purchases and recommend companies that personalize their interactions. 

• Creating hyper-personalized celebrity content at scale. In collaboration with Spotify, we created an interactive listening experience with a deep fake version of The Weeknd giving users a personalized greeting using data from their Spotify accounts. We created an AI to synthesize the artist’s voice allowing for an interactive listening experience between the fan and the artist himself. Over 600K fans visited in the first few hours—and The Weeknd knew every one of them.
• Personifying an AI personal shopper. What if your customers could have a conversation with an AI personal shopper that could recommend style tips and products, creating cross-selling and repeat purchase opportunities for higher customer lifetime value? For a long time, brands have tried to do this with chatbots to handle questions or complaints in a customer service capacity further down the funnel, but now conversational UI creates a smoother experience and will be used earlier in the funnel for ecommerce exploration. 

AICX levels up co-creation.

Involving consumers in product development very early on in R&D is proven to drive product success, advocacy and conversion. Companies that involve customers in the product development process see numerous benefits, including a higher customer advocacy, than those that don't. The proof is there, but brands find it very difficult to execute on immersive co-creation because it typically involves different departments and different organizational structures. That’s where AI comes in. Here are some AI-powered co-creation applications that we’re helping brands experiment with today.

• Generating consumer insights. At the Estee Lauder R&D Experience Center in Shanghai, the beauty brand engages consumers and key opinion leaders in product testing, validation and co-creation sessions for new products. Touch tables and magic mirrors powered with AI technology enhance workshops and ideation sessions and support the generation of consumer insights from participants in the room.
• Co-creating new products with customers in real time. What if a fashion lifestyle brand could run live design sessions with their community, their best creative directors and celebrities in a livestream that could generate the must-have sneaker, handbag or you-name-it based on their input…in real time? Not only would it speed products to market, but community co-creation and input would virtually guarantee success.

Get ahead by embracing AICX now.

The evolution of AI technology—from analyzing and processing data, to creating more content faster and at scale, to facilitating personalized storytelling through experiences that deepen the collaboration and intimacy between brands and its customers—is extremely exciting…and disruptive. There are new developments in the technology and its application for brand engagement literally every day, and brands that are able to harness AI’s power will be able to build stronger, more meaningful relationships with their customers and drive business growth like never before. Again, this will mean looking beyond AI’s power to merely build efficiency; in an environment of content overload, delivering AICX is how brands can truly deliver value.

Picture the scene: a creative brief lands on your desk that requires the slow-motion drip of coffee, a chocolate vortex, or the perfect drop of foundation on glowy skin. Cue a producer’s concerned frown, because the type of filmmaking that can capture these specific motions in astounding detail—known as tabletop—requires specialized knowledge. It’s a very particular nook within advertising and marketing, and that’s why there are only so many people who (can) do it. 

Case in point: our Film.Monks team in Amsterdam, which is one of our global film hubs, is one of the few (say, handful) players to offer tabletop services in Europe. On top of that, we have our own robotics in-house, which we need to test ideas and do the actual shoots. This also means we’re in the fortunate position to be able to lower the threshold of entering this field, which is typically hard to get into. That’s why we’ve been welcoming up-and-coming talent into our studio to let them have a taste of tabletop.

Making a tough field to break into more accessible. 

First, let’s back it up a bit and take a look at what tabletop is exactly. This term typically refers to the shooting of objects—think of food and drinks, beauty products or other liquids—in great detail. When you are this close up to a product, storytelling becomes focused around colors, shapes and textures. In practice, it’s all about getting the objects to behave in whatever way you want them to, so that their movements tell the story or create character. Naturally, there are some nice pieces of equipment to help you do the job. 

As a tabletop creative and director—which allows me to be a stunt coordinator, a mess maker, a prop eater or even an explosion specialist every now and then—you have to think deeply about the dynamics and qualities of products, in more detail than you would even think is possible. For example, let’s say we’re creating a commercial for a coffee brand that aims to spotlight the different strengths of its new line of coffee beans. This means we not only have to think about how to communicate the brand voice and product range, but we also need to consider what consumers want to be told, what would catch their attention, and what appeals to their taste. So, what we would do here is bring in color and shape signifiers, like a rounded, soft yellow for the mildest bean and a bold, sharp purple for the strongest flavor, to visualize these slight differences. 

Working creatively within such a narrow scope may be frustration-inducing for some, but highly satisfying for others, and apparently I am the latter type of person. I discovered this when I was given the unique opportunity to explore the world of tabletop—I started as a tabletop director’s Personal Assistant, working as his producer of sorts. After spending many long days assisting on set with no real idea what was happening, writing treatments and even acting in an ad, I finally thought: hang on, I reckon I can do this! Getting such an extensive chance to discover this profession doesn’t come by often, and that’s exactly why we’ve decided that we actively want to make the field more accessible for promising talent.

Carving out a niche for up-and-coming talent and ourselves.  

Let’s zoom in on the how. For a while now, we’ve been involving juniors—including both early career employees and temporary interns—in our tabletop work wherever and whenever we can. Our aim is not only to share knowledge and experience and enable our up-and-coming talent to learn by doing, but also to pass on our passion for the profession in all its messy glory.

From ideation to execution, we make sure to include our rising stars in every step of the tabletop journey, while always taking into consideration where their specific strengths and interests lie. Whereas special effects (SFX) interns might like to know how to get products to move in different ways, junior creatives would need to learn how to flesh out ideas so that the camera team understands what they want. By bringing up-and-coming talent from different disciplines together in one studio team, we allow them to learn a range of new skills within and outside their specific field of interest. For example, how to write and develop short-form storytelling, how to operate cameras, how to train your eyeballs to see in high-speed vision, or how to engineer explosions of chocolate nuts (and many other special effects). And guess what? My fellow experienced Film.Monks and I learn a lot from them, too. 

The secret to discovering talent? Let them show you what they’ve got. 

One of our most successful shared learning experiences so far has been our ongoing Emotional Eats series. This internal initiative, which we started at our tabletop studio in Amsterdam, revolves around producing fun and quirky short-form content that presents the feelings behind your food. Since there is no client pressure, we thought it would be a great way to get our juniors involved.

So, on a bi-weekly basis, we organize a test-and-learn day with the aim to scope out new rigs and develop new technologies. We consider it an opportunity to not only improve our creative development and craft, but also hone the creative conceptualization and directing skills of our entire studio team, including juniors, through regular “experiment and play” time. It’s important to highlight that, while we aim to provide creative and technical guidance, we make sure we give our juniors free reign and full autonomy to do what they want. 

Thus far, the Emotional Eats series has allowed us to educate our up-and-coming talent on the engineering behind this beautiful profession and show them how far you can push emotional storytelling in tabletop through light, movement and sound design. In turn, our juniors have taken this time and used this space to experiment, ask questions and take note, coming up with many groundbreaking ideas along the way. It’s not about simply getting interns to help us out—instead, it’s about building a culture of learning and experimentation, while helping them take the next step in their professional journey.

Ultimately, our main goal is to give those who are still at the dawn of their careers, but show great promise, a chance to explore new avenues in the advertising industry and take a peek into our tabletop processes and projects. More than just a way for us to put the feelers out and see if people would want to join our tabletop team by letting them experience the work, initiatives like our Emotional Eats series are a means to raising our talent internally by allowing them to expand their palate and grow both vertically and horizontally—safe to say, it’s a win-win for everyone involved.

And now that just got a whole lot easier. Salesforce has just launched Salesforce Web3, with two products: NFT Management and Web3 Connect. NFT Management makes it easy to mint, manage and distribute NFTs through any channel. Web3 Connect helps brands enrich customer profiles with digital wallet and NFT transaction data, effectively joining Web3 data with their existing CRM data ecosystem. Media.Monks will support Salesforce Web3 as an official launch partner, furthering our shared effort to guide industry-leading brands along their Web3 journeys. Here’s how to start your own.

Step into Web3, backed by a trusted technology partner.

Salesforce Web3 helps brands enter the Web3 space through a familiar interface. By easily creating digital collections with NFT Management, brands can reach new customers in Web3 channels while enriching customer relationships—meaning it’s never been easier for heritage brands to extend into Web3 as a new, connected touchpoint to sell, service and market to audiences.

Salesforce Web3 also builds legitimacy by overcoming some of the perceived challenges of Web3, like privacy and security concerns. For example, the platform keeps your data secure with configurable privacy controls and built-in fraud detection. This way, brands and their customers can invest confidently in Web3.

Additionally, brands can leverage Web3 Connect to bridge Web2 and Web3 identities, joining Salesforce's existing data attributes within its Customer 360 ecosystem together with Web3 wallet data. This is key, because Web3 offers a new first-party data set, which brands will increasingly rely on to deliver personalized, omnichannel engagement at scale: wallet and NFT transaction data unlock real-time insights into audiences and channels that help future-proof a brand in a time of new privacy regulations and cookie deprecation.

Build insights and longevity through incredible Web3 experiences.

One of the most important things to understand about Web3 is that it’s more than just NFTs and PFPs: it’s an evolution in the ways people engage with one another and with brands. This calls for a re-evaluation of how brands relate to digital audiences today, as well as a need for new skills to collaborate with them authentically. Our digital experts combine deep cultural understanding of Web3 with longstanding CRM expertise to guide brands and show them the way to authenticity in the space.

Based on their experiences with notable early adopters in Web3, our team has shared insights in two foundational thought leadership pieces, published in collaboration with Salesforce. Web3 and the Future of Customer Engagement invites readers to follow the near-future customer journey augmented by a range of Web3 use cases and touchpoints. A follow-up piece, Web3 and the Future of Luxury, goes deep inside an industry that has enthusiastically embraced Web3, showing how a new class of digital entrepreneurs and craftspeople empowered by technology are already transforming brands and business.

It's clear that a successful step into Web3 means more than just dropping an NFT collection and calling it a day. Ranging from discovery, strategy, activation and optimization, we’ve helped brands maximize the impact of Web3 activations across their business—for example by enhancing customer loyalty programs, building immersive experiences in virtual worlds, nurturing emerging communities in channels like Discord, or even launching IRL experiences that bridge the virtual and the real. 

The byproduct of building brand love across these touchpoints is a stronger understanding of consumers, as Web3 offers numerous triggers to develop first-party data, from the contents of one’s wallet to the kinds of communities that people choose to invest time, activity or money in. Our experience of future-proofing brands’ data strategies in preparation for the privacy era helps connect the dots between activation and insights that can fuel the business long-term.

Start your Web3 journey now.

From digital experiences that reach new audiences to building up first-party data sets, Web3 is ripe for brands to build longevity and future-proof their business. As a space that is inherently driven by emerging consumer behaviors, meeting new expectations within Web3 relies on understanding how customer relationships and attitudes toward ownership and participation continue to evolve. Brands who can rise to the occasion are ideally suited to the new era—and as a trusted Salesforce Web3 launch partner, we can help get them there. Reach out below to get started on your Web3 journey.

In this Social Bite, we explore what live commerce can be and how it can help you not only activate your audience in the moment, but also build a relationship into the future. Discover the different forms of live commerce and the roles that brands and their ambassadors take to inspire their audiences.

Historically, live commerce has been most popular in China, where the format makes up 10% of the overall ecommerce market. Accelerated in part by the pandemic, live commerce has continued to gain traction in the Asia-Pacific region. Now, brands elsewhere around the world are taking note—and so are social and retail platforms, both of whom are experimenting with new features and revenue streams to bring live commerce to life. Serving the need for new ways to engage their customers in social, shoppable and entertaining experiences that blend brand love and conversion, live commerce combines spectacle, presence and interchange to build excitement among highly engaged audiences.