Trapeze Media

More trans representation (and joy!) in the industry, please 🫡 🏳️⚧️ One of our faves in the advertising space, Sonnie (Comms Co-Director at Outvertising) doing their thang (moderating a panel about platforming trans voices) at the Meta offices in London 🔥 ft. Rachel Bowen and Sarina Da Costa Gomez (T&Pm), and Sally Perry (Karo Healthcare). Some of our main take-aways: 👉 There’s money to be had in dem der hills — it’s not ‘go woke, go broke’. 👉 If you’re backing a community as a brand, you need to ride-or-die for them. For every one person who will complain about you making a statement in support of LGBTQIA+ groups, there’s 1.8 people who will be disappointed if you back out. 👉 ⁠Asad Shaykh closed the event with an inpsiring, hilarious, and emotional talk — titled ‘The Tiger and the Jackal’ — on how fear is the real enemy. 👉 ⁠The panel Sonnie moderated discussed the latest TV ad from skincare brand E45 (which features real stories and experiences from the trans community) and the huge lengths they went to to work with the people they were representing, so they got the message right. 👉 More representation of trans-masc people is needed across the board 👉 But also, overall LGBTQ+ representation is still FAR too low, and abuse and negative press is still WAY too high.

WHAT’S HAPPENING IN DIGITAL MARKETING? Five things to know: 1. Bluesky — a text-based social media platform that’s VERY similar to Twitter — has seen its biggest influx of users to date, as millions of Twitter users abandon the increasingly hostile, spam-ridden website 2. Meta have announced that they have plans to introduce ads to their Threads app in 2025 3. Instagram admitted to lowering the quality of less-popular videos — Instagram boss Adam Mosseri said: “We bias to higher quality for creators who drive more views” 4. TikTok’s new ‘STEM’ (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) feed will show you educational content 5. Netflix just made it easier to share clips from shows to social media Our newsletter subscribers regularly receive our full round-ups of industry headlines direct to their inboxes — sign up here: https://lnkd.in/eCyWHedh

This week, Bluesky Social hit 20 million users. And the social platform — hailed by many as ‘the next Twitter’, in spite of it still having only a fraction of Threads’ user base — keeps growing faster every day. The sudden rise in popularity has been dubbed the ‘X-odus’, as droves of users flock from Elon Musk’s ‘X’ (formerly Twitter), which has become an increasingly broken and hostile website. Time will tell what Bluesky becomes, but for now, here are ten things to know: 1. Bluesky, like Twitter (‘X’) and Threads, is a text-based social network — to use a distinctly 2007 phrase, it’s a ‘micro-blogging’ site 2. You can share short text-based posts (semi-jokingly called ‘skeets’ — a portmanteau of ‘sky’ and ‘tweet’) with images and videos attached, repost (‘reskeet’) other user’s posts, follow and reply to people, etc. 3. Like ‘early Twitter’, Bluesky is very open, and can be built upon with third-party tools, e.g. data analytics dashboards 4. There are ‘starter packs’ and ‘blocklists’ which any user can create, so others can find new people to follow (or block!) 5. You can also create custom keyword-driven feeds, and follow other people’s custom feeds 6. The majority of Bluesky users so far are people yearning for a platform that’s built around self-curation and customisation, rather than invisible algorithms 7. The mass exodus from Twitter (‘X’) is largely tied to U.S. politics. Since Elon Musk took over and became a very vocal supporter of the Republican party’s re-election, ‘X’ has become an increasingly hostile space for anyone not aligned with Musk’s views 8. There are also functional issues, though: two big changes Musk introduced were, 1. algorithmic boosts for paid ‘X’ subscribers, and 2. payouts for high-engagement users. This prompted the creation of AI-powered engagement-farming bots that now flood everyone’s feeds 9. Similar to ‘early Twitter’, brands which primarily offer information and real-time updates e.g. encyclopaedias, airlines, sports teams, et al have quickly found an audience 10. Other brands can find their place, but, as with TikTok, content strategies will need to built from the ground up and adapted to the culture and tonality of Bluesky

Shoutout to Adam Forman from CaptiveWiFi and Olivia Reid from Market Halls, who came to the run-through of my talk for The Business Show on November 14th! Very excited. Only one week to go 🥳 More info: https://lnkd.in/d5WF4CP

One week ‘til Kitty speaks at The Business Show! Sharing ways to make your marketing smarter. 11:45am. November 14th. ExCel London. More info at: https://lnkd.in/d5WF4CP

Design, development, and SEO for online bookshop Read & Co. 📚 We increased keyword presence by over 300% (improved SEO), rendered every word as live text (better accessibility and mobile design), and boosted internal links by 200% (quicker navigation). Easier to update. Easier to use. Easier to shop. See how we did it 👉 https://lnkd.in/euv8zVkK

In good company! You can hear aaaaalllll these industry leaders (yours truly included) at The Business Show on November 13th and 14th. I’ll be taking up the prime-time spot of 11:45am on Day 2, in Seminar Theatre 7, presenting ‘Intelligent Marketing That Will Keep Your Investors Happy’. See you there! ✌️ ft. Ben Askins, James Watt, Carolina Godinho-Moxon, Levi Roots, and Simon Squibb.

Sometimes, you’ve just got to film in the rain, or things just aren’t gonna get done... Ever had your Instagram or Facebook ads rejected by Meta? It can be incredibly frustrating and confusing. We’ve written a guide on why it happens (and how you can avoid it happening again): https://lnkd.in/ekv3qKJE

Read & Co., a half-century-old UK-based bookseller and publisher, needed a modern way to sell literary classics. We built a beautiful, speedy, accessible website around their impressive catalogue of books, and created a streamlined, scalable back-end that’s compatible with specialist publishing industry data streams 📚 See the case study: https://lnkd.in/euv8zVkK

Just a few more weeks ‘til Kitty speaks at The Business Show in November! Rubbing shoulders and taking to the stage with thousands of the industry’s best, including the iconic Levi Roots (@Reggae Reggae Sauce) and Rachel Elnaugh (Red Letter Days) — both of Dragon’s Den renown! — and Carolina Godinho-Moxon, Head of Online at The Estée Lauder Companies Inc.!