Hi SMT Lovers, are you going to watch this year’s Super Bowl on Sunday? I know what it takes… in some cases, an all-nighter 🥱 But everyone’s eyes will be on the NFL Championship game between Eagles and Chiefs, with Rihanna playing the halftime show. Even if not for the game or Riri, it’s fun to watch the advertisements that big brands have prepared for the show. No spoilers, but we list the best ones below 🤫

Here’s what you gonna learn about today:

💥 What’s buzzin’ in marketing? Super Bowl ad trends, as promised, because this year’s edition is unique, and GM’s ads just nailed it. New e-commerce player on the field. TikTok experimenting with organic content boosting. Twitter going long.

🎶 Linkin Park and Rihanna into the web3

👮🏽 Interpol will fight crime in the metaverse

⚖️ Kraken settles with SEC

🚀 Revolut introduces staking outside of the US

…and a few more 😎 Enjoy the read!

💥 What’s buzzin’ in marketing?

Super Bowl 2023. Fully aware of the fact that you might not be a huge fan of the NFL. We neither. But we like the marketing side of this event. Big brands prepare special advertisements to catch the attention and attract a massive audience on TV prime time. This year is no different. Well, in a way, it is unique. Firstly, Rihanna will give a concert during the halftime break. It’s her first appearance at Super Bowl (declined invitations to support Kaepernick’s protest) and her first gig since the 2018 Grammy Awards. Secondly, for the first time in 33 years, Anheuser-Bush released its exclusivity rights as the sole beer sponsor, which opened up a chance for other beer brands to advertise. Thirdly, the 57th Super Bowl has beaten its predecessors in terms of ad prices. This year, a 30-second spot may cost you over $7 million. Lastly, the “creme de la creme” - commercials. We loved GM’s partnership with Netflix on two commercials - one with a Squid Game character, one with a zombie - embracing electric vehicles in a fun way. Reportedly, Netflix will put an electric car in every series or movie it directly produces. Finally, the buzz around the M&M’s brand led us to a Super Bowl ad announcing rebranding to “Ma&Ya’s”, a play on Maya Rudolph’s name. It’s not about the commercial itself but the way M&M’s made noise in the USA. It’s genius!
Temu - a new e-commerce player entering the game. Haven’t heard of it yet? You will soon because the Chinese parent company, Pinduoduo, is known for its huge paid acquisition campaigns. Temu is a discovery-based e-commerce for mostly affordable items giving users an endless scroll of things they might want to buy. You know how TikTok shows users content based on their interests? Temu does the same – only with interesting and inspiring products. It launched in the USA only in August 2022 and reached 16,5 million downloads, which is more than eBay did throughout the whole year. We are thrilled to observe if in-app discovery buying shakes up online shopping in the USA!
Twitter. Announced that longer tweets are available to US Twitter Blue subscribers. Longer tweets can have up to 4 000 characters, which is 3 720 characters more than non-paid Twitter accounts. They are capped at 280 characters with a “Show more” button. The question is if such longer tweets will boost higher engagement rates in the form of increased numbers of likes, retweets, replies, or shares. Probably yes, because Musk cares about reach and engagement metrics as much as he cares about revenue. Lately, he fired a top engineer because he didn’t like the narrative on his decreasing reach.
TikTok. Introduced new Promote features to help creators boost their organic content:
1. New “More profile views” goal for campaigns aiming to bring users back to the advertiser’s profile with a “View TikTok profile” call-to-action button.
2. New “More messages” goal driving more direct interactions through TikTok inbox. The CTA button is “Send message”.
3. Promote for Others. If your brand cooperates with some creators, you can boost their posts with the cross-profile feature.
4. Location targeting. If your business relies on brick-and-mortar or would like to show ads only in specific places, you can use this geo-targeting feature.

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🎶 Linkin Park and Rihanna into the web3

Today, Linkin Park will release an official music video to an unreleased song recorded during the sessions for “Meteora”. The piece is called “Lost”, and the music video was directed by Emily “pplpleasr” Yang and Maciej Kuciara, co-founders of a web3 platform Shibuya. Mike Shinoda, Linkin Park’s vocalist and famous American music producer has released various projects in the NFT space and has invested in web3 startups such as Audius.

Music producer Deputy, who co-produced Rihanna's hit 2015 single "B**** Better Have My Money," has granted a share of his streaming royalties to collectors through a web3 startup, anotherblock. Users who bought one of the 300 royalty-linked NFTs would receive "a portion of 0.0033 % of the streaming royalties" for the song. The collection sold out in minutes.

👮🏽 Interpol will fight crime in the metaverse

Interpol has built its own VR (Virtual Reality) platform and wants to keep up with the technological change by chasing crime in the metaverse. Last year, the organization launched a virtual replica of its headquarters in Lyon, calling it “the first-ever metaverse specifically designed for law enforcement worldwide”. Now, it aims to fight felonies and delinquencies already committed on various digital platforms, with particular regard to VR games.

⚖️ Kraken settles with SEC

Kraken paid a $30 million fine to settle SEC charges over offering unregistered securities. Moreover, the crypto exchange agreed to “immediately” end its crypto staking-as-a-service platform for U.S. customers. Some experts consider this a “regulatory aftermath of the FTX meltdown”. Kraken will automatically unstake any assets staked by U.S. clients except for Ether which will not be unstaked until the Ethereum Network's Shanghai upgrade is completed. According to the SEC, Kraken’s crypto-staking setup gave its customers using “staking-as-a-service” providers too little protection.

🚀 Revolut introduces staking outside of the US

In its push to make inroads in the crypto industry, Revolut launches crypto staking for customers in the UK & select EEA markets. The list of tokens eligible for staking includes ETH, DOT, ADA, and XTz. Staking is the process in which users can deposit PoS-based tokens to a blockchain in order to help secure the network and get rewarded. The reward, called APY (annual percentage yield), varies from Polkadot (DOT), offering the highest yield of up to 11.65%, to Cardano (ADA), offering the lowest at 2.79%.

👾 OUR PICKS ON ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

👾 Microsoft revealed its AI-powered search engine Bing, and new AI features for Edge (link)

👾 Google introduced “Bard”, an experimental conversational AI service to a closed test group (link)

As you can see, the competition between Google and Microsoft is live. In the meanwhile…

👾 OpenAI launched a paid subscription ChatGPT Plus for $20/month.

👾 Some Reddit nerds learned how to jailbreak ChatGPT with a prompt called DAN (Do Anything Now). The answers were surprising!

🔥 HOT BITS & BITES

Paris Hilton to launch a dating show in the metaverse through The Sandbox.
Tether enjoyed a $700m profit in Q3 while leaving the commercial paper market.
ChatGPT crypto domain sold for $10,000.
Binance Charity to support Turkey earthquake victims with BNB worth $5 million.
Youtube launched a new cost-per-hour Masthead format.

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🏖 FUN FACTS & MEME SECTION

💡 You would think artists would be paid big for a Super Bowl gig. Let us surprise you - they don’t get paid by the NFL at all. What they get instead are exposure and fame. After the 2020 halftime show, Shakira’s Spotify streams went up by 230%, and Jennifer Lopez’ went up by 335%. So the artists don’t play entirely “for free”!

🥇 Meme of The Week

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🔥 Google shows Bard (and teeth)