Generation unplugged: Will the social media ban backfire on brands?

About the episode

Have you noticed White Fox Boutique billboards and bus wraps popping up everywhere lately?  The teen fashion favourite is making a very calculated move, and the new social media ban has everything to do with it.

With Australia’s new under-16 social media ban, millions of younger teens are locked out of their favourite platforms. Savvy brands are pivoting fast, turning from algorithms to real-world engagement.

UNSW Business School’s Associate Professor Carmen Leong says this ban is forcing a total reset of the marketing ecosystem. The race is officially on to find entirely new ways to meet the next generation where they are. Find out what the ban means for the future of the creator economy, and what your business can do to stay ahead.

Interested in brand disruption? Listen to our episode with James Cridland, editor of PodNews. He explains why podcasting was the ultimate disruptor in the marketing world.

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Edited transcript

Dr Juliet Bourke  00:04
Australia recently made history, and not everyone's happy about it. The world's first total social media ban for under sixteens put TikTok, Instagram, Reddit, and Twitch off limits for millions of young Aussies. For brands and influencers who spent years building audiences on these platforms. It's not just a policy change; it's a major disruption to their entire business. So, what do you do when your most valuable future audience goes dark overnight? Some brands are already working it out.

A/Prof. Carmen Leong  00:42
The workaround method brands are looking at right now requires you to adjust your omnichannel strategies, of course. It's about putting things in front of people every opportunity that you have.

Dr Juliet Bourke  00:57
Earlier this year, the Golden Arches were taken over with neon purple sauce, demon branding, and mystery collectibles stuffed into kids' meals. McDonald's had launched a full-blown collab with the Netflix hit K-pop Demon Hunters. I'm Dr Juliet Bourke, Adjunct Professor at the School of Management and Governance, and this is The Business of, a podcast by the UNSW Business School. Associate Professor Carmen Leong from UNSW Business School says it will take some time for brands to adjust, so we're watching this reset play out in real time. Carmen, big brands like McDonald's can afford to pivot to physical spaces, but what happens to the businesses built entirely on social media? Just how important is the influencer economy?

A/Prof. Carmen Leong  01:58
I think it's super important, especially I would say, since eight or 10 years ago, where we started to see these things growing up, just so much authenticity, and people are able to relate to what influencers are talking about, they're recommending a product or a service, it's much more real compared to advertisers or the brand coming straight at you and say, hey, I have got a great product for you. So, it's almost like a friend recommending something for you. So, in that sense, I think it's really something we have already seen becoming part of our lives, not just teenagers', but adults' as well. You could see how much the band is having an impact on influencers who already have a massive presence and follower base on social media, because this is a business for them, and at the same time, I guess for business it is also having a big impact, because now business will have to explore different ways of how do they reach out to and how do they sustain that engagement that have been building over the years? So, what do they do now?

Dr Juliet Bourke  03:08
And so, what are they doing? How are these brands, these influences adapting to this new environment? Are they doing different campaign tactics, for example?

A/Prof. Carmen Leong  03:21
So, I think if we look at it from a brand perspective, obviously, brands, as we can imagine, they're already maintaining a portfolio of marketing strategies, right? No doubt they have invested quite a bit in social media influencers over the years, so I think at the moment it is time to really think about that portfolio. Some of the brands, for example, the White Fox Boutique, a fashion retailer, and Frank Green, they are going from all the way from digital world, coming back to the physical world, to having more events, more fans, activities offline, so you know, really having some of this engagement happening in person, that's something that you can see in terms of the swift movement of brands from influences back into the real interactions with human beings in the physical world, and there's, of course, other strategies that I would think could apply here as well, like if you think about brands that's wanting to maintain the engagement with whether it's this through their kid funds or with their younger audience, you can think about this marketing or brand reach through an ecosystem like physicals could be one way, and if we still want to engage the audience online in the digital world, social media is just one part of it, right? So, think about things like some of the brands own their own apps, so how do you leverage those communities that you have built? To build through your own app, can you move your social media followers to those apps, and even think about working with channels or apps that are adjacent to your brand? If you are in gaming, for instance, instead of going through influencers, YouTubers, or Facebook accounts, can we actually work with relevant brands? Give you an example: for instance, if you're in education, right, rather than working through differences, can we think about having more advertisements on education channels on YouTube? That's the sort of ecosystem I'm talking about.

Dr Juliet Bourke  05:47
So, if people are moving from social media to apps, aren't they just using a new form of social media?

A/Prof. Carmen Leong  05:53
So, what I understand from the social media ban is that under-16s are not allowed to have their own accounts on the 10 social media platforms, but if you think about YouTube, they can still watch videos even if they're not signed in, right? They could still have access to YouTube kids, that's no brainer, because it's sort of curated, it's safer channels for them to access, but even without sign in, kids could still watch YouTube videos, but if you think about TikTok or Facebook, it, of course, it requires an account and sign in for you to be able to interact with other people on those social media channels, so it's kind of different when we say brands can now instead of interacting directly and expecting direct interactions with your under 16 audience on YouTube, Facebook, whatever social media channels, and expecting them to like, comment, subscribe. We are now asking, you know, this group of people to have an account for what I said, the other apps that are owned by the brands, because those restrictions don't apply to those apps, right? And you would imagine that in those apps is operating very differently compared to the social media channel, but it's much more open to all individuals, and that's where cyberbullying and harmful content could come in very, very easily comparatively.

Dr Juliet Bourke  07:31
It's not new to businesses that markets, channels to market, and products change as a result. So, how does a business adapt to this new environment to be positioned for the next wave?

A/Prof. Carmen Leong  07:48
When it comes to time like this, business really have to take a step back and think about, okay, you have your 10 channels in front of you, one of them, hopefully one of the 10, is being social media, and now that this one channel is being shut down, how do we leverage the other nine channels, so to speak, and one of them being very realistically the physical channels, and you know, there's just so much things that multinational brands are doing at the moment, being able to reach the same group of people that were inaccessible, seemingly inaccessible to them now. Things like what McDonald's has done in terms of co-branding with the big K-pop and, you know, Korean trend at the moment. Looking at the Demon Hunters, Saja boys, and kids, they're drawn to this brand they already know through other channels, and McDonald's is doing it so smartly, tying it into their Happy Meals. And even think about this: this blind box that McDonald's has been doing for a while, but also, really, it's been amplified so much by Pop Mart in the last, I don't know, one and a half years. There's this trend of, I guess, consumption that's very different from how we consume things when we grow up, it's just so much in the kids nowadays, so when they see it happening in the other brands and the other products, and immediately they can relate themselves to it, and you just see this workaround method that brands are looking at at the moment, just social media, yes, it is one of them, yes, it is becoming inaccessible, but you have to also think about it's not, it's kind of like, oh, it's not lost kind of thing, so yes, you, you're not able to interact, and even coming back to the one of the 10 channels, you're still able to post passive content.

Dr Juliet Bourke  10:00
Yeah, I think that is a really good point, that any smart business is going to be omni-channel, and so that you are diversifying your risks across those channels, and social media goes down, so you amplify one of the other channels that's there, but yeah, you can still do passive content as well.

A/Prof. Carmen Leong  10:16
Yeah, so you're not giving up, you shouldn't be giving up entirely, but of course you had to readjust your strategies in the omnichannel strategies, thinking about, you know, if this, if this is not where I should be investing, how could I innovate in other strategies, so you know, thinking about how do we involve parents to get ahead of the say kids' strategies, think about co-branding with what's trendy in kids, K-pop, for instance, in your physical marketing campaigns, and the bill boss getting things that's really eye-catching in front of the kids, and when we talk about omnichannel, this, of course, it's about putting things in front of people every opportunity that you have.

Dr Juliet Bourke  11:00
So this ban, this social media ban, covers 10 of the world's biggest platforms. What kind of brands and industries would feel the impact first?

A/Prof. Carmen Leong  11:10
I think one of those brands and products, if you like to think about it in terms of the categories, would be those that are really consumer products. We've talked about retailers, we talked about beauties and fashions, where you are seeing a lot of purchasing as influenced by what we call the influencers, so I think when it comes to products like fashion, beauty, and even I think products like gaming, where a lot of teenagers are into, because there's a lot of interactions that's involved in this kind of product. You're not just consuming the product, you're not just playing the games, but you're interacting with your friends and other fellow gamers in the product, so that interactive elements are what the key is, I would say, in the influencer economy, or you know what we say in social media, even more broadly.

Dr Juliet Bourke  12:06
I'm just wondering if you can give some other examples of how brands are transitioning from the digital world to the physical world to adapt to the social media ban.

A/Prof. Carmen Leong  12:17
Yeah, sure. I think one great example is what MCoBeauty is doing, really transitioning from digital to the physical world. I think one great thing I've done is increased my physical presence, of course. Now, as you can see them in chain supermarkets, Woolworths, your everyday pharmacies, Chemist Warehouse, for instance, having that presence in your everyday life helps brands really put themselves out there to reach and, of course, appeal to this target audience of teenagers. When we talk about appealing to the teenagers, one of the elements that you want is to be able to catch their attentions immediately, and one of the most effective ways of doing it is to make it really visually engage and appeal to them, so talking about the design, how colourful it can be, perhaps using a language, the memes that they use when they're chatting with their friends, so that's something that that's really, I guess, would be very effective, and something that would become more common as we will see in the next few years, months, and of course, if you think about the strategy of the company itself, it has to be aligned with their strategy, and Amcor Beauty has one of the elements is the being affordable brands in beauty products and having their presence now in Woolworths really aligns with their target audience and the product line of being affordable and of course it's also again then being very integrated with the target audience of teenagers, right, so you can see how these multiple elements are actually coming together when brands are rethinking about their marketing strategies.

Dr Juliet Bourke  14:06
So I guess there's one way that you can think about situations like this, a social media ban, which is it's a crisis, but a crisis is always an opportunity, and have you seen people starting to take up that opportunity, perhaps to brand themselves as this responsible brand?

A/Prof. Carmen Leong  14:24
Yeah, I definitely think that, you know, when it comes to interesting times and regulatory enforcement like this, a crisis could be turned into an opportunity. So, one example that I've seen during my research, and this is in China, where similar things that the government has enforced, not in terms of, you know, as big as widespread as in Australian, but they're banning the social media altogether, but in China they're limiting the time of children spending on gaming platforms, so that was really a huge hit on. Some of the big companies, like WeChat, because they started as a gaming company, so companies like this, they have taken it so quickly to the strategy and say, hey, let's now think about how can we work with parents, we want to be seen as not just companies that comply with what government is doing, but also an organisation that could work with parents and see how we can protect children now.

Dr Juliet Bourke  15:30
I guess there are two ways you could approach the social media ban: one is to find kind of ever-diminishing markets, go offshore, do it in an inappropriate way online, or you could completely reinvent your strategy, like you're talking about with China?

A/Prof. Carmen Leong  15:46
If you're thinking about my own experience as a parent, right, and if you think about scenarios where my children are consuming social media content, and of course, he's only seven years old, and a lot of time we are watching those YouTube videos together in the living room, so this is kind of like the way kids are growing up. So, if brands can think about these consumption scenarios, I'm sure there's a lot they could brainstorm about how to involve parents or families in consumption behaviours and patterns.

Dr Juliet Bourke  16:27
No, I totally get that. It makes me think back to when my kids were young, and we would watch SpongeBob SquarePants together, you know, like there are these things where you can involve the parents at the same time, targeting. I mean, that's always been the case, right? Humour that attracts both kids and parents. Just looking ahead, what do you think? What do you speculate as the next frontier now that we've seen this social media ban? What's the next way of engaging young people in the future?

A/Prof. Carmen Leong  17:01
I would think there are a few things that would happen. One is, as brands are trying to go around the band, they would, of course, go to a lot of the physical events and interactions, so getting this offline interactions, you will still be able to maintain that engagement, but very much it will be moving from the digital to the physical world, and at the same time I would think that could be another extreme, really speculating here, so with brands not being able to have those engagements online, some of this engagement might shift into the closed space, and what I mean is they're looking at those platforms and social media, not necessarily social media channels, but online platforms that are not subject to the scrutiny of the social media ban, as simple as WhatsApp group, so perhaps some of these interactions will move into this close group, I would say, and this is already something that I've seen happening again in my research in China, where there's no such thing as social media ban, because, of course, Australia is the first one who did this, but this in China is hyper competitive because you have multiple platforms doing the same thing, so it's almost like I have a TikTok account and the other person would have an Instagram, and the two platforms are essentially competing with each other. So, what some of the influencers has done in the past, and even at the moment, is they wanted to channel this audience, their audience from these big platforms into their private group, and we talked about groups like WeChat in China, and of course I think the same thing, WhatsApp group could be something that you know some of the influencers or brand may go for with this brand.

Dr Juliet Bourke  19:08
That's Associate Professor Carmen Leong from UNSW School of Information Systems and Technology Management. If you want to hear more about brand disruption, listen to our episode with James Cridland. He's the editor of Podnews, and explains why podcasting is the ultimate disruptor in the marketing world.

James Cridland  19:28
I think there was a lot of antagonism at the beginning, but there again, there were a lot of people who had been, for whatever reason, frozen out of the broadcast world and wanted a space to get their voice heard.

Dr Juliet Bourke  19:41
You'll find the link in the episode description. The Business Of is brought to you by the University of New South Wales Business School, produced with Deadset Studios.

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