Executive Briefing

Will Reels, Instagram’s TikTok, work?

Also: ‘Plan B’ for Edgewell after its Harry’s deal collapsed. And Apple has a new head of marketing.

Instagram Reels
Courtesy Instagram

Instagram announced and launched Reels, its clone of the massively popular Tiktok mobile video service, yesterday. As it describes, it’s “a new way to create and discover short, entertaining videos on Instagram.”

The idea is that Instagram is providing new creative and editing tools, including music and visual effects, to match what users can do with TikTok. And it’s trying to offer its users a similar opportunity to go viral and/or become famous from their videos, by providing exposure for Reels in its personalized Explore section.

Will it work? Can Facebook shamelessly copy its way to a new hit platform for “creators”? It’s worth a shot, but I’ll give this one a low-to-medium-confidence maybe.

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Dan Frommer

Hi, I’m Dan Frommer and this is The New Consumer, a publication about how and why people spend their time and money.

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