That’s entertainment

One of my favourite quotes is from Bill Gates, published in the revised version of his book “The Road Ahead”: “We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten. Don’t let yourself be lulled into inaction.” It’s well used — but often misses the last line about being lulled into inaction.

Including action in the quote is crucial — otherwise, it’s just one of those sayings that look good on a slide. Gates was talking about something specific when he wrote these lines: the internet. Reflecting on the original edition of his book (published just a year earlier), he said he’d “underestimated the growth and salience” of the internet — like many others.

For those working in comms, it’s often less about being lulled into inaction — mainly because we’re generally quick to jump on a new trend and think, “how could I get my clients excited about this?” In the past six years, the list of things I’ve personally got excited about is pretty long — AR, VR, cryptocurrency, autonomous cars, smart cities. Some of these “two-year trends” have impacted our worlds, particularly the advent of AR-powered lenses. Most, however, have been overestimated.

Where we are often lulled into inaction in comms is with the longer-term, “ten-year trends”. Trends that don’t feel like trends because they creep up without us noticing. But these longer-term, more habitual changes are much closer to the definition of ‘trend’: “a general development or change in a situation or in the way that people are behaving”.

The changing nature of social media is one of those behaviour-led trends. Plenty of two-year social trends get people excited, and justify grandiose but inaccurate statements like “social media is changing all the time”. Think full-screen Canvas ads, Twitter Spaces and IGTV, to name a few that popped into my head without any Googling. These new updates, mainly aimed at keeping advertisers happy, precipitate a lot of froth and excitement (“What’s your IGTV strategy?”) but rarely catch on in any meaningful way.

In my eyes, those two-year trends we overestimate and get terrifically excited about are nothing more than a distraction. The subtler but more significant long-term changes we see on social media are more deserving of our attention. One of those that most affect brands and businesses is social’s move away from social graph-powered newsfeeds (i.e. feeds based on people you follow) towards algorithmically generated streams (think Instagram’s Discover or TikTok’s For You pages).

To understand this trend, let’s take a step back in time. Before 2016, the newsfeed ruled all. That’s where everything lived, and your feed was 90% composed of posts from those you follow. Algorithms decided the order you saw posts in, but there was still an element of user control based on curating your following list.

Instagram’s introduction of Stories reduced users’ reliance on their feeds, and feed posts gradually became more curated for many people. Only the most significant moments or arty shots deserved a place on your feed. Everything else lived in Stories, which were more fun and less likely to be warped by a poorly informed algorithm.

At the same time, two political events which need not be named exponentially exacerbated existing societal and political divisions and began the slow process of turning many people’s Facebook and Twitter feeds into warzones of ratio-ing, pwning and directionless ire. For many users, the choice was stark, particularly on Twitter. Either retreat into the dark forest of the internet or aim to compete in the big Twitter game and run the risk/chase the opportunity of becoming Twitter’s main character for the day. Most people chose the former — 97% of tweets now come from 25% of users.

Those of us retreating from “traditional” social news feeds increasingly took refuge in our private WhatsApp chats and our aforementioned disappearing Stories. Spaces that are unburdened by likes and comments. As Stories usage grew, our enjoyment of full-screen vertical images and video increased. It turns out we were primed and ready for TikTok to take over our worlds. Of course, we didn’t anticipate quite how many TikToks we’d consume, but then we didn’t anticipate a global pandemic and a series of national lockdowns.

But the algorithmically defined, never-ending stream of our FYPs became a welcome distraction and a more compelling source of entertainment than our sparse, polluted newsfeeds. It slotted in nearly alongside our Stories and WhatsApp chats, providing a rich source of posts to share on both those platforms.

Then, of course, with one of the golden rules of social media being ‘every platform must offer the same functionality as each other’, Meta introduced Reels for Instagram. Existentially threatened by the rise of TikTok, Mark Zuckerberg reached for the Stories playbook and attempted to put the brakes on TikTok by copying them wholesale. Then, as we saw with Instagram Stories, commentators scorn Reels’ lack of originality and paucity of posts (most proudly bore the TikTok watermark). But the same result happened — Instagram users, who either loved TikTok or were a bit scared of it in the same way they didn’t understand Snapchat, started devouring Reels in their millions.

Now we’re at a point where Reels make up 20% of users’ time on Instagram. Both Mark Zuckerberg and Adam Mosseri publicly talk about moving IG to a video-first platform, delivering the videos you see via an algorithmic feed (as opposed to a social graph based on who you follow). Instagram switching to pure entertainment dovetails with the state Twitter is in — namely, it’s all about the daily drama. The latest outrage, the latest perceived transgression, the latest main character to dominate feeds and drive discussion. We’re also at a point where TikTok is no longer the fringe preserve of teenagers but where TikTok trends are mainstream enough to set much of the agenda for the other platforms.

This point marks the realisation of this long-term (potentially) ten-year trend for social media — the moment where most social media platforms are first and foremost entertainment channels. They’re no longer water coolers of discussion, places to connect with friends, or a simple way to edit and share photos. They’re platforms we go to consume videos, catch up on the latest drama and keep ourselves entertained.

And the fact that social media platforms are now entertainment-first has significant repercussions for brands (if we leave LinkedIn aside). Most businesses don’t think about entertainment first — they’re thinking about raising awareness of initiatives, driving sales or sign-ups, building advocacy or prompting engagement. If my experience of analysing client social channels is anything to go by, they’re also thinking about cross-platform, square crop feed posts that tell a story like social posts have for the past ten years or so. Unless they’re highly advanced or focused on a much younger demographic, they’re unlikely to be thinking entertainment-first and storyboarding posts for a full-screen vertical smartphone.

To keep up with user behaviour and inform campaign planning, more brands and businesses must treat social media platforms as entertainment hubs first and foremost. That doesn’t mean hiring a celebrity/influencer and going all-in creating a new Stories-based TV show. Awareness of the entertainment trend can help inform existing strategies and approaches, making it easier to optimise future activity.

To entertain is, according to Cambridge English Dictionary, “to keep a group of people interested or enjoying themselves”. In 2022 and beyond, brands and businesses must work harder to keep their audiences interested. Straight news and announcements will have their place, clearly, but to generate cut-through and stand any chance of changing hearts and minds, there needs to be something more going on.

How can you build more of an emotional connection into your campaigns and comms?

Where’s the humour or levity?

Where are the strong opinions that offer an alternative view on a topic?

Who are the people behind your business you can showcase and demonstrate personality?

Being interesting has always been important, but it’s now essential. Putting some spend behind a boring post might generate the reach you need, but it will struggle to have an impact. The best paid social posts never look like ads; they look like social posts that have been amplified with paid. If your paid posts stick out look informercial-esque sore thumbs in a sea of entertainment, your audiences will continue to swipe right past, paying zero attention.

Maybe this isn’t a long-term trend that has seen behaviour shift over the past eight or nine years. Perhaps entertainment has always been what social media is about — but it certainly feels more central and essential to all of the big social platforms, bar LinkedIn. Yes, Twitter was entertaining in the early days, but it was also a great place to build connections, expand your network and get the inside track of what was going on. Instagram was a hub for artistic, creative and photographic inspiration and a great place to keep up with where in the world your friends were. The options for brands and businesses on all platforms were more varied; now, unless you’re using paid social, you’re reaching no one. And now, unless you’re keeping people interested or making them enjoy themselves, you run the risk of slipping into the sea of sameness, of being the social media equivalent of magnolia — great for your living room walls, rubbish as a campaigning attitude.