by Tod Maffin (LinkedIn • social media)

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Today's News

BRANDING • To Plural or Not to Plural?

GOOGLE ADS • Auto-Create More Winning Images

LIVE COMMERCE • “Amazon Live” Goes to C-TV

THREADS • DMs Coming. (To Instagram’s Inbox)

SEARCH • Google’s Self-Fulfilling Prophecies

OUTDOOR • Smell-o-Vision Comes to Billboards

BRANDING • To Plural or Not to Plural?

So you’re launching a brand — a laundry detergent — and you can’t decide on the company name. Should it be “Stainbuster” or “Stainbusters”?

One letter could make all the difference, and some new research in the Journal of Consumer Psychology says there is a right answer.

The study looked at more than 12,000 brand names and found that plural names like “Stainbusters” tend to garner more positive attitudes among consumers compared to non-plural names.

Names in plural form were preferred by 13% more people than the singular version. For example, consumers were more inclined towards “Urban Elves” over “Urban Elf” for a delivery app.

Plus, big brands with plural names like Snickers and Staples enjoyed a 12% better brand perception on average than those with singular names like American Express.

So why does this happen?

The plural form suggests a larger, unified group which psychologically appears more substantial and inviting. This effect is particularly strong with names that relate to groups or teams, like the Los Angeles Lakers or The Smiths, enhancing the brand's appeal as part of a bigger, cohesive collection.

But the study also found that this plural advantage diminishes for premium brands focused on high quality, where the naming convention has less impact.

The findings were predominantly based on English names, with similar experiments in other languages not showing the same effect.

So, if you're aiming for a broad market appeal, consider adding an “s” to make your brand name plural. But for high-end markets, the choice between singular and plural may not significantly sway consumer preferences.

The paper is called “More the merrier: Effects of plural brand names on perceived entitativity and brand attitude” and it was published earlier this year in the Journal of Consumer Psychology.

GOOGLE ADS • Auto-Create More Winning Images

Another day, another batch of AI stuff dropped into an ad manager.

Today, Google added more generative image tools into its Demand Gen campaign interface. Demand Gen, formerly known as Discovery campaigns, are primarily top-funnel placements across platforms like YouTube, Discover, and Gmail.

The new tech in question is its ability to create images from text prompts. We’ve seen this in other campaign types, so it’s nice to see it come over to Demand Gen.

More interestingly, I thought, was that you can also use it to generate similar images to successful ones you’ve previously used.

But be sure to mix it up. Google says advertisers using both video and image ads in their Demand Gen campaigns achieve a 6% higher conversion rate per dollar than those using only images.

Specifically, the company advises using a mix of at least three images and videos in different formats—vertical, square, and landscape.

These tools are available today, globally in English, with additional languages expected later this year.

LIVE COMMERCE • “Amazon Live” Goes to C-TV

God help them, they’re trying. Platforms desperate to get a slice of the huge success seen in Asia of livestream commerce keep bashing their head against the wall hoping that some day, some how, they too can crack the code.

Many platforms have tried — TikTok and Instagram being the most notable — and in both cases, those platforms have downscaled the priority of those efforts, after adoption was low in the western markets.

But that won’t stop Amazon, which says it plans to launch “Amazon Live” — a free, ad-supported shopping channel on Prime Video and Freevee. Amazon Live has existed before, but was really only a web and mobile thing. Given the large consumer adoption of connected TV (C-TV), Amazon wanted to put something there as well.

Amazon Live has been around for about five years now. It’ll be interesting to see if there’s any uptake now that it’s on big screens.

Last year, live shopping accounted for less than three per cent of total U.S. online retail sales.

THREADS • DMs Coming. (To Instagram’s Inbox)

Meta’s Twitter competitor, Threads, will soon add DMs to their offering — one of the most requested features among early adopters.

But you won’t see a dedicated Inbox in your app, because Threads was built on Instagram’s codebase, which means DMs will go to your Instagram inbox instead.

Tests in the wild show a Message button on profiles, which when tapped, open a little message window that says “Send on Instagram.”

Honestly, this is probably a good thing for brands. Many of us use third-party tools like Sprout Social or Agorapulse or Hootsuite to monitor incoming messages. With this setup, there’s no need to connect anything additional as long as you have your brand’s Instagram account set up. Same with Meta’s own in-house business platform.

Andrew Hutchinson from Social Media Today thinks this might be temporary.

SEARCH • Google’s Self-Fulfilling Prophecies

One of the funniest things I read last week was a printer review article from the Verge.

Yes, I know, it sounds boring. It sounds like search engine spam. And it was. Deliberately so.

The Verge published a tongue-in-cheek piece which mostly mocked the fact that to be successful in Google, all you need to do is claim to test and review products, put lots of shopping links in them, then pretend to update the article every couple of weeks. (Some sites literally only update the published date, but some people believe that’s enough to trick Google into thinking it’s recent and therefore relevant.)

Anyway, his article did recommend a printer: Brother. Like, find the cheapest Brother laser printer you can find, buy it, and shut up. The Editor in Chief, who wrote the piece, said that’s been the best printer for years now.

But then, the piece continues:

And indeed underneath was your typical GenAI output of pros and cons in bullet points.

But here’s the thing — it worked. When you Google “best printer for 2024,” in the first few organic results is this piece.

This happened last week — Google search engineer John Mueller was asked on social media why, if cheap AI garbage isn’t prioritized by Google, is this piece doing so well?

His answer: “People seem to enjoy it.”

@IsraelGaudette People seem to really enjoy it.

— John 🧀 … 🧀 (@JohnMu)
Apr 13, 2024

Yes, it turns out the popularity of the piece (and, in turn, the number of social shares perhaps) is what’s driving this to the top.

The Verge says so far, through the affiliate link in the piece, they’ve sold more than 2,000 printers.

The article is definitely worth a read. You’ll find it on the Verge’s site — the title is “Best printer 2024, best printer for home use, office use, printing labels, printer for school, homework printer you are a printer we are all printers”

OUTDOOR • Smell-o-Vision Comes to Billboards

There are lots of industries which chase the latest flashy technology to fight irrelevance. But I’ve always thought movie theatres had the best tech. They’ve tried everything.

But their most interesting offer is the one which never did get off the ground: So-called Smell-o-Vision.

Sure, it was tried in a couple of tester theatres and in showrooms of theatre technology providers, but it’s not like it’s really a thing.

Which is why I was surprised to see McDonalds giving Smell-o-Vision a try using outdoor billboards.

The billboards themselves, in McDonalds’ signature red or yellow colours, are completely empty. No pictures, no words.

But tucked away at the back of the billboard is a compartment where workers put freshly cooked french fries, and hope the smell brings consumers in. The billboards are in two Dutch cities right now and both are within 650 feet of a nearby McDonalds outlet (that’s about two football fields in length).

This is, of course, probably more as much about advertising agency award show nominations than actually trying to sell product, but still, kinda fun.