Netflix, Pfizer, and February Facebook publishers: Daily spotlights for the week of March 14th

Welcome to the NewsWhip Daily spotlight round-up for the week of March 14th. This week, brands took center stage with Netflix, BMW, Pfizer, and Starbucks making headlines.

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Mar 14th: How BMW, Chevrolet, and Tesla ace public engagement on social media

We’re used to auto brands captivating us through our TV screens, showcasing just how adventurous, practical, or seductive a car can make us feel, but in this digital age they’re learning that connecting with consumers is going to take more than just a flashy commercial.

We looked at the different ways brands are utilizing social media, from the well-known luxury maker BMW, American favorite Chevrolet, and electric vehicle pioneer Tesla.

Most recently BMW partnered with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Salma Hayek on a campaign to promote its new electric vehicle.The brand’s Instagram video of Schwarzenegger and Hayek earned more than 268k engagements, and the two actors saw a massive amount of engagements on their own Instagram posts about the ad.

Mar 15th: Pfizer CEO says fourth Covid dose “necessary”

Over the weekend, news broke that Pfizer had said that a fourth dose of the Covid vaccine would be necessary to combat Covid-19.

Media interest and public interest diverged somewhat, with a big spike in media interest right around the announcement but public interest not peaking until the next day.

So far, there have been almost 1,000 articles written, with nearly 300,000 engagements to those articles. The most engaged piece so far has come from Axios, with CNN and Business Insider also having influential coverage. 

Mar 16th: Starbucks moving to reusable cups

Yesterday, Starbucks announced that they would be phasing out their paper cups and moving toward reusable ones as part of the company’s sustainability push. 

Since then, it has been covered 261 times and those stories have received 23k engagements.

This means that while the media has paid a fair amount of attention to the move, it hasn’t seen huge amounts of public engagement — at least not yet. 

The biggest story so far is from the Daily Wire, whose article has just over five thousand engagements.

Mar 17th: Netflix to test password-sharing fee

Yesterday, news broke that Netflix was planning to test a fee for users that share their password with people outside of their household. 

This has caused a significant stir in both the media and the public, with hundreds of articles and more than 100k engagements.

The top article so far has come from The Shade Room, with 12k engagements, while IGN has seen success across social with its coverage.

Mar 18th: The top publishers of February 2022 on Facebook

While The Daily Wire maintained its place at the top of the Facebook rankings in February 2022, The Daily Mail significantly closed the gap on the conservative publisher. 

Here are some of the key takeaways for this month:

• The Daily Wire took the top spot once more, but saw a slight dip in engagement compared to January
• The Daily Wire also had the top article, with a story on Elon Musk and Ukraine
• No article had more than a million engagements, and only two had more than 500k

If you’d like to read the full article, along with all of our analysis, you can do that here.

That’s all for this week, but don’t forget you can subscribe to the NewsWhip Daily to receive the top predicted stories of the morning and every spotlight delivered straight to your inbox.