All anyone could talk about when Yahoo acquired Tumblr over a year ago was whether or not the micro-blogging platform could remain “cool.” Yesterday, AdWeek reported that it has, in fact, maintained it’s social status; thanks in part to Yahoo’s assistance in garnering advertisers like Gatorade, BMW, and Degree, among others.
A piece of that success can be attributed to Yahoo’s understanding of the platform. From the AdWeek piece:
With Instagram and Pinterest seemingly making the graphics-driven social space incredibly competitive nowadays, [Tumblr’s global head of brand partnerships, Lee Brown] contends that Tumblr doesn’t share much of a digital kinship with those platforms. “I would liken us more to the creator networks like YouTube,” he said. “Our network is not based on who you know, it’s based on what you love. … We want it to be all things whether text, animated GIFs, etc.”
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Another piece, as reported in the New York Times this week, is Tumblr’s attention to television. Since the hiring of media director Sima Sistani, Tumblr has been busy forging partnerships with popular social television shows. They’ve worked with “MasterChef” by posting recipes, MTV’s VMA’s with the “giffie awards,” premiering AMC’s “Halt and Catch Fire,” among others.
As noted in the Times article, Tumblr is less immediate than Twitter or Facebook and it is more about “what you do,” rather than “who you know.” For this reason, it provides television marketersa place to engage on a deeper level with fans. Apart from posting fan art or entire episodes to the Tumblr community, shows, like MTV’s “Faking It” even incorporate the platform as an extension of the plotline.
While speculation abounds regarding Tumblr’s financial sustainability, Yahoo’s strategy of allowing the site to grow as authentically as possible — with a leg-up from Madison Avenue — works in the realm of social television. Once they figure out how to best use it.