Thursday, 31 October 2019

ADVERTISING AND BREAKING THE FORTH WALL


The quest? A single big idea that works across every media. An idea that can draw the consumer out and compel them to spend some time with the brand, and maybe even some money. The problem? Millennials apparently hate traditional advertising. This is apparently documented by multiple studies. But, as the largest living adult generation in the US now with $200 B in annual spending, Millennials can’t be ignored.

The Solution? One tactic increasingly being employed is a brand explicitly acknowledging that they are advertising to you — essentially making fun of themselves in a tongue-in-cheek fashion. This feels akin to breaking the fourth wall, the same technique you’ll see in a movie or play when the character speaks directly to the camera, acknowledging that it is a movie or play. 

One of the more subtle goals of advertising is to make the brand topical and most importantly a part of pop culture. Social currency and social relevance are integral to advertising today. Another thing that often distinguishes a great ad today is a sly, self-awareness that lets the consumer in on the pitch. This, in the parlance of performance arts, is known as breaking the fourth wall. The fourth wall is a performance convention in which an invisible, imagined wall separates actors from the audience. While the audience can see through this "wall", the convention assumes, the actors act as if they cannot. This can be done through either directly referencing the audience, the play as a play, or the characters' fictionality.

“Breaking the fourth wall” is defined by a character in a story who essentially tells the audience that they know they are a character in a story, hence breaking the imaginary “wall” that separates performance from real life.

It's a technique best known for its use in films such as Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Fight Club, and American Psycho, breaking the fourth wall goes all the way back to the days of William Shakespeare and ancient Greek theatre. Although it was originally criticized and looked down upon, TV shows like 30 Rock and Netflix’s House of Cards have been using it more and more frequently.

Breaking the fourth wall works because it’s unexpected. Consumers expect brands to be nameless blobs spewing pithy taglines at them, and instead, these brands are acknowledging truths they know about their consumers and thus, trying to feel more relatable. There is no avoiding the fact that they have to advertise anyways, but they have to try to grab attention in a different way. Their business metrics will dictate whether it works or not.

Some examples include:

Tuesday, 15 October 2019

THE MARRIAGE OF DATA AND CREATIVITY

Certainly, creativity captures an audience’s attention. But, to retain digital eyeballs, advertising also needs to be both contextually relevant and targeted. As such, there is understandably a lot of hype around the relationship between data and creativity today.

Marketers are recognising the power of data and creativity working together and that, within the right framework, data can always improve the creative process and campaign’s success. The trick is marrying digital and creative into one seamless marketing campaign.

Marketers applying data insights to their digital marketing campaigns’ creative sides might be surprised by the opportunities data creates. Using analytics to identify specific groups of customers can help marketing teams ensure that messaging and branding are tailored to each audience. Data insights allow demographics to be broken down further than simply “college students” or “middle-aged parents.” Instead, marketers can target “highly educated Californians aged 20-30,” developing content that resonates with that audience.

The impact of data on campaigns shows that analytics and creative are no longer separate marketing categories; creative campaigns need to be based on data insights, and data has to be presented to consumers in a creative way to be useful. Data as the linchpin to creating more emotional content.

Take the NIVEA Protection ad (below) as an example. A print ad in a magazine supplied a tear-out bracelet with a built-in locator that parents can use to keep track of where their children are on the beach. Using advanced mobile and geo-tracking technology, the bracelet enables parents to set a maximum distance their child can go, and sends a smartphone alert if this distance is exceeded.


In this example, NIVEA uses a highly creative approach to engage parent’s emotions – fear, protectiveness and desire for a worry-free holiday – to establish themselves as a brand that keeps children safe.

The 'Melanoma Likes Me' campaign for MELANOMA PATIENTS AUSTRALIA, leverages real-time social data to identify when users are out in the sun, raise awareness of the risks of sun exposure and educate the audience on how to identify melanoma.

Using a real-time response tool that utilises API endpoints to identify popular hashtags related to having fun in the sun – such as #beachside, #sunkissed and #tanlines – the campaign instantly responds with social messages from @_melanoma.

In this example, MELANOMA PATIENTS AUSTRALIA reached its target audience (via their channel of choice) at the very moment they are at most risk from sun damage, and opens up an immediate channel of engagement.

The bottom line? Greater collaboration is needed between creatives and data analysts. While this is already beginning to happen with the examples above, the unison of data and creativity needs to become the rule rather than the exception.

Monday, 14 October 2019

WEATHER TRIGGERED MARKETING CAMPAIGNS

Why Is Weather Data the Hottest New Commodity for Marketers?   
Primarily because the weather has a significant impact on our emotions, which directly translates into retail sales.The weather is a universal driver of consumer purchase behaviour, mood and receptiveness to marketing messages. Moreover, it has direct relevance to at least 30% of the products and services we consume and, behind the state of the economy, has the largest influence on consumer behaviour. 
 
Bottom line? The weather has a tremendous effect on what actions consumers take; where they go, how they travel, what food they eat, what clothes they wear, what products and services they buy, and even how they feel at any given time.
 
Just ask yourself what you had for lunch today? A salad or a hot soup? How did you travel to work this morning? Walk, bike, Uber, or cab? What clothes did you wear when you left the house? And what was your mood like? It’s clear that many of our everyday decisions are subtly shaped by the elements.
 
The impact of weather on consumer demand is so ubiquitous and the range of weather dependent verticals so vast, that many businesses may not even realize the true extent to which their sales are driven by weather.

WEATHER TRIGGERED MARKETING CAMPAIGNS 
Weather-marketing, commonly known as ‘weather-based marketing’ or ‘weather triggered marketing’, is a powerful form of marketing automation which utilizes real-time weather data to trigger ads and personalize marketing messages based on your audience’s local weather. In other words, you can serve ads for raincoats when it’s rainy, windbreakers when it’s windy, thermals when it’s snowy and breathable vests when it’s hot.  

Using Programmatic Advertising, you can easily refresh ad creative to match the viewer’s local weather, inject dynamic information into the ad itself, and even modify campaign spend levels and regional bidding decisions based on local weather conditions.  

Advertisers today can easily apply weather-based automation to their search, display, social and shopping campaigns. An ordinary AdWords, Facebook or Instagram campaign can be made weather responsive – triggering your ads or social media posts to activate before, during or after localized weather events.

INCREASED RELEVANCY
Imagine a snow-clearing business targeting ads to audiences who are located in areas where there has recently been a heavy dump of snow. The more snow that comes down, the more the Adwords bids could be increased. Or, imagine an insurance company demonstrating the merits of hail or crop protection insurance when there is hail coming down. Or Corona advertising kicking in anytime the temperature exceeds 80 degrees. The opportunities to drive relevancy using weather are obvious. 
 
You would be wrong to think that only low-ticket impulse buys are weather-driven. High-value purchases such as cars and houses are also influenced by the weather. Brand awareness campaigns perform just as well with weather triggered advertising as direct response. Jeep’s weather-responsive ad unit performed an amazing 600 per cent above the standard click-through rate of a mobile 320 x 50 banner ad.

SHOPPERS RESPOND TO THE WEATHER
The benefits of running weather adaptive campaigns are manifold – many brands have doubled or even tripled their conversions, clicks and engagement rates – whilst simultaneously lowering their cost per acquisition. For the 30% of businesses whose sales are directly impacted by the weather, being able to activate ads before, during or after specific weather events is an essential strategy for maximizing their key performance metrics across social.

Looking for more examples of weather-triggered marketing? Here are a few examples of weather-triggered campaigns that have produced considerable performance uplift.
 
-       - STELLA Cidre reported 65.6% increase in YOY sales during the period they ran their weather-responsive DOOH campaign. 
- MOLSON COORS increased CTR by 89% via their weather-triggered ad campaign on social media.
-       - NEUTROGENA Beach Defence Sunscreen used in-app ads which were activated by sun and UV levels, increasing purchase intent by 43% and product awareness from zero to 63%.
-       - Fashion retailer LA REDOUTE saw 34% traffic uplift and 17% sales increase generated by a weather-triggered DOOH signage campaign.
-       - BRAVISSIMO’s weather-triggered PPC ad campaign increased PPC-driven sales revenue for their swimwear range by nearly 600% during the 3- month campaign. The conversion rate of browsers to buyers increased by 103%.
-       - BURTON menswear used weather-activated dynamic website promotions to generate11.6% uplift in conversions.
-       - PURE360 reported 500% increase in email open rates for campaigns relating to domestic holidays during good weather. Click through rate rose from 12% to 27%.
-      -  PANTENE’s weather targeted display ads produced a 28% sales increase as well as 600,000+ social impressions.
-     - LIPTON's ran a weather-sensitive campaign across Facebook mobile. They reached 6.9 million people, and achieved a spectacular 12.8% video view rate - which equated to just £0.06 cost per view.

For the 30% of businesses whose sales are directly impacted by the weather, being able to activate ads before, during or after specific weather events is an essential strategy for maximizing their key performance metrics across social.  
 
Have questions? We’re here to help.

Wednesday, 9 October 2019

MEDIA 2025 | THE CONNECTED SOCIETY


Today, the term "media" can mean different things to different people. Ultimately, however, media is mass communication regarded collectively. Media today can be the message, the medium, or the messenger; and to complicate things, the lines between them are becoming very blurry. 



Social Media is participatory and connected. One might argue that once all media is participatory and connected that the term 'social' is redundant. Media is simply media. The future of social media, therefore, is a discussion on the future of media itself. To that end, social will just be folded into the broader marketing discipline.



Social Media today is focused on driving real-time engagement, (unedited and unfiltered) live streaming video, Virtual Reality (VR), Artificial Intelligence (AI), Augmented Reality (AR), Internet of Things (IoT), social commerce, mobile wallets, metadata, search/visibility, data-driven decisions, content marketing and mobile devices. 



Moving into 2019, more and more users are using messenger apps (e.g. Facebook Messenger, Slack, and WhatsApp) but there's still a lot of growing happening for social networks. Social platforms, social customs, and communication standards are all in a constant process of evolution.



Transparency is the new black, and there is a clear shift from talking at the world to making the world talk. To wit, most branded content in the next years will come from consumers, and user-generated content will far exceed branded content. The next wave of media apps will help filter the clutter. 



Ultimately, everything that can be connected to the Internet will be (i.e. homes, humans/ wearable tech, TVs, cars, jet engines, locomotives, lights, appliances, etc.) Everything from cars to coffee cups will be connected to the Internet by 2025.

That said, people will care increasingly more about culture than products. 



MOVING AHEAD

The future of media is inextricably linked to technology. The promise of technology was always to improve the way people live and to make our lives simpler and easier. Around the world, people are utilising technology to create new communities, engage across boundaries, make the world more inclusive, and change the way we interact. This transformation is happening everywhere and in every culture, country, and industry. 



Integrated mobile devices like Google Glass and the Apple Watch are already taking major steps to eliminate the gap between "technology" and "life." What is clear is that we have quickly evolved from the age of industrialisation to the connected society. 



The connected society transforms everything. Information and communications technology (ICT) and big data are also fuelling the rise of a new economy in which new market actors – commercial, "indiepreneurial," and crowd-sourced – are empowered with new models of production and exchange, as well as automated, frictionless and highly personalised consumption. 



In this new economy, consumers become curators rather than receivers, products give way to services, and consumers adopt more and more complex roles as citizens, users, co-creators, specialists, and actors. Collaboration, crowdfunding, crafting and sharing are just some of the hallmarks of the modern, involved consumer. 



The connected society encourages a rise of meritocracy and the formation of a creative elite. Within this order, merit is increasingly defined by a new set of emerging values, such as knowledge, transparency, fairness, quality of experience, authenticity, sociality, healthiness, and simplicity. The ability to make informed choices, to a very large extent, will drive the consumers of the connected society. 



Fast-forward to the future, and we should see global media usage continue on its upward trajectory. By 2020, eMarketer projects that 2.44 billion of the world's population will be on connected networks. Media usage will be ubiquitous, seamless, and integrated into our daily lives in a multitude of ways. 



The ways we both input and observe media will also shift. Holographic displays will be shifting into the mainstream and keyboards on desktops, laptops, tablets and smartphones will become increasingly irrelevant, as interactions on what was once called social media will largely be voice-controlled. 



Driven by continued advancements in technology and rapid rollouts of commercial products, the future will be shaped by an information ecosystem that's increasingly more intuitive, anticipatory, transparent and personalised. Some very fundamental human activities like learning, thinking, working, and being "present" with others will be transformed by these changes. 



Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies such as machine learning and natural language processing will also play an integral role in shaping the future. Over time, the computer itself - whatever its form factor - will be an intelligent assistant helping you through your day. Your phone, for example, will proactively bring up the right documents, schedule and map your meetings, let people know if you are late, suggest responses to messages, handle your payments and expenses. Technology won't just serve as tools for you, but they'll even serve as your stand-in in some cases.



Even today, Google scans your texts; understands the context and supplies readymade human-like responses for you ("Cute dog!" and "That's good!"). Not just when you were sent words, but even when you were sent pictures. Just imagine how much more dynamic and robust these technologies will become.



As a result, Social Media will become far more specialised and personalised to the actual needs and interests of each audience member. By 2025, social media sites will have adapted their platform for each user so that it would appear by today's standards that people live in their own universe. 



Social Media platforms will compete to maintain their share of the audience. Users of social media will gradually only expose themselves to news that affects them. Future platforms will be even more equipped to predict exactly what users will need to keep them engaged. 



Social media platforms will connect advertisers with potential customers by using multiple regression analysis and correlation analysis. When a consumer behaves differently than the formula predicted, the formula will automatically adjust. The connected society will know when you are tired, hungry, thirsty, stressed, or even low on Vitamin C. 



In the connected society envisioned in 2025 people will increasingly seek out a sense of belonging and social media platforms will provide "fireplaces" for people to gather around and topics for interaction, conversation and relationship building. Products, services and brands will be instilled with meaning more through the crowd than through branding and marketing efforts. 



Products and services infused with a social component of some kind can more easily move from product/service status to an experience. For the 2025 consumer, the experience will always be more original than the actual product or service.



This means that consumers will be looking for original experiences delivered by humans and which are embedded in a social context, rather than searching for specific products and services. Subsequently, value will be grafted onto products and services by how a network of users – or a network of peers – decides to use them.



Human beings are inherently social animals, and we are ultimately at the centre of our own universes. On average, people spend 60 percent of conversations talking about themselves—and this figure jumps to 80 per cent when communicating via social media platforms.



As a result, our social media platforms will increasingly place us at the centre of our unique, personalised ecosystem. In 2025, parents won't be complaining about their children spending too much time texting. Rather, they'll be complaining that their son or daughter seldom steps out of their own self-made virtual-world.



Social Media in 2025 will be a ubiquitous enabler, producer and facilitator that shift the consumer from receiver to curator. This is a natural evolution to a sharing economy and change in values, preferring services and access to function, rather than ownership. This means that businesses will have to engage and collaborate with users in different roles (rather than merely as passive consumers.)



Social Media will continue to create and connect new communities, engage across boundaries, make the world more inclusive and fundamentally change the way we live. As William Gibson espoused, (Neuromancer, 1984) this brave new world will be "a consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation."


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Monday, 7 October 2019

THE CONSUMER-CENTRIC BRAND EXPERIENCE


Everyone understands that the experience needs to be consumer-centric’ today. Experience is any sensory, mental or emotional interaction with a brand. It means the product, service, content and ads. Creating and distributing these experiences efficiently are the key to building an emotional relationship with consumers.

Probably the simplest, most useful way to think about brands is as mental associative networks, a psychological construct that goes back to Aristotle. Each encounter with a brand potentially adds to and changes a complex associative network in our brains, linking the brand to other images, experiences, and feelings.

For any brand experience to become part of the right associative network, the brand must be easily and uniquely identified - so distinctive assets such as logos, characters, colours, slogans, or tunes are of central importance in making brand experiences effective.
It helps if the associations are ones we find mostly pleasant or attractive rather than repellent. But probably even more important is the number, range, and intensity of the associations, because this will increase the probability that the brand will come to mind in a wide range of contexts. This, at any rate, is my understanding of the theory of ‘mental availability’. What does such a theory imply for marketers?

Firstly, that scale is important; the more effective impressions you deliver to more people, the better. Big brands are bigger because more people buy them. Powerful communications of any sort will have little impact unless, through whatever means, they reach a mass audience. And because brands compete for mental availability, this must be proportional to what others are doing; also maintained through time, because otherwise the associations created tend to decay, or be supplanted.

Secondly, all impressions must be fluently linked to the brand - consistency in the use of distinctive assets or ‘fluent devices’ is essential.

Thirdly, apart from consistency in the use of distinctive assets, it is more important for brand impressions to be interesting, appealing, or in some way stimulating, than to be constrained by adherence to a narrow script. Brands could learn from entertainers who flourish by continually surprising their audiences with something new and unexpected, sometimes even controversially (think David Bowie, Madonna, Mylie Cyrus).

All this can be done through paid-for advertising, which has the disadvantage of high cost, but still offers high control and guaranteed scale. It can be done through the delivery of the service itself, whether personal or digitised (Amazon’s success is partly due to the ease and reliability of its user interface, and increasingly to the ubiquity of its name and logo in our lives).

But service is often more fallible in its delivery and a bad experience of service more damaging than a boring advert. It can be done through packaging, and through product design, as Apple has shown. And it can be done by anyone who knows how to create news, even if this involves being controversial – a core skill, like it or not, of Donald Trump.


None of this is really new. It’s how brands and celebrities have grown and prospered since the time of Phineas T. Barnum. Only the range of available media continually increases, and the complexity of the synergy between them. But even a century ago there was plenty of scope for creating ‘brand experiences’ across multiple channels, as William Hesketh Lever demonstrated:

In the 1890s he published the Sunlight Year book, an annual reference work and guide to life which was given away free to schools and to users who saved enough Sunlight cartons – something we should now grandly call ‘content’. In 1887 Lever Bros. announced that it would give £2000 to the ‘religious and benevolent institution’ that most customers voted for (votes on the back of a Sunlight box only) – what we should now call ‘Cause Related Marketing’.

When the RNLI won, he presented them with a lifeboat called ‘Sunlight Number One’, and then commissioned engravings of it in a choppy sea, the name plate highly prominent, which he sent to the Illustrated London News. [from The Anatomy of Humbug]

This year’s Cannes Gold Lion for ‘brand experience and activation’ went to Microsoft’s Xbox for designing a console that could be used by the disabled. The ‘Changing the game’ campaign apparently achieved ‘$35m of earned media’ and Xbox’s ‘social voice increased by 246%’. All good publicity for the brand:  but after all, the most significant marketing element of the campaign was a chunk of good old, paid-for, two minute mass TV advertising, aired during Superbowl (estimated cost: $21m) - not so different, perhaps, from Mr Lever publicising his lifeboat.  

Is ‘brand experience’ a helpful concept to explain what’s been done here? Or is it in danger of becoming a fashionable buzzword at the intersection of technological innovation, ‘brand purpose’, and that perennial blob of vagueness, ‘creativity’?

But perhaps brand experience can still offer us a useful new perspective,-especially for twenty-first century brands which, it’s often said, somehow play by different rules – or at least use different techniques. To explore this thought, I reflected further on a brand already mentioned – Amazon.

My own ‘brand experience’ of Amazon comes in many, various forms. Let me adopt the format of Jeremy’s imaginary brand: I buy a new printer, and my favourite brand of shaving soap, through Amazon: the experience is simple and seamless and the products arrive next day. But the experience is also annoying –pop-ups push me to subscribe to Amazon Prime, or to donate to charity. The website is functional but not attractive, not even completely user-friendly, though it is familiar.

Amazon boxes arrive at my home, branded with the smile logo; later, I take them to the dump for recycling. I notice that the people who deliver them often seem harassed and under pressure. I read about how such people are exploited by today’s ‘gig economy’. I read about how Amazon are still planning to deliver by drone, and think this a terrible idea. I hear a lot about how Amazon don’t pay enough taxes. Some of my friends refuse to use Amazon on principle, but I still do because it’s so easy and reliable. When they send the wrong thing, it can be quickly sorted out on the phone – usually a refund with no questions asked....

This could go on for some time – Amazon is ubiquitous and a part of my daily life. No one else’s experience will be identical to mine, though I imagine many will be similar. Yet the experiences are very mixed. Practical, functional benefits are mixed with much that makes me uneasy.

Oddly, I haven’t even mentioned how Amazon ‘personalises’ my experience by recommending things. Perhaps because it’s now so normal I take it for granted; perhaps because the recommendations are seldom very interesting, and sometimes bizarre. Yet it’s all part of the brand experience.

Amazon, as a brand, is enormously successful to the extent that it almost constitutes a monopoly – not in the sense of an illegal cartel, but simply that its scale and efficiency mean it has no serious rivals (outside China). But even if such rivals exist, I as a consumer never think about them.

So Amazon’s dominance can once again be reduced, ultimately, to two factors: mental and physical availability. I think automatically of Amazon; I can instantly and easily buy through it. And nothing else comes close. A hundred years ago, in the United States, something similar could have been said of the Sears Roebuck Catalogue.

Jeff Bezos never assumed that his platform would dominate the market; he knew he had to work at it. Interviewed in 1997, he said, “there's nothing about our model that can't be copied over time. But you know, McDonald's got copied. And it still built a huge, multibillion-dollar company. A lot of it comes down to the brand name. Brand names are more important on-line than they are in the physical world.”

This is refreshingly old school. Bezos didn’t talk about brand values, or brand purpose, or indeed brand experience. He talked about the brand name, the trademark, the ownable thing that distinguishes Amazon from anyone else trying to offer something similar. Because frankly, any business aiming to compete with Amazon would almost certainly have values, purpose, and a set of experiences that would be pretty similar to Amazon’s.

Then he says: Brand names are more important online. OK, this was 1997 and Google was still a research project at Stanford, but he was right then and he’s right today: the most important search engine is still the one in your head, even though most digitally oriented marketers seem to think targeting and getting clicks are all that matters. 

For me, the most telling chart in the 2018 AA Case study that won Gold in the IPA Effectiveness Awards showed how Google searches for ‘AA’ collapsed over a very few years, as the brand put all its money into short term activation. All their measures of marketing efficiency looked brilliant, but almost too late they realised their mental availability was vanishing, and they were haemorrhaging customers. Fortunately, they were able to recover by reverting to heavy TV advertising with a strong emotional appeal and a distinctive asset – a singing baby. It’s an old trick but it still works!

Yes, brands need to be aware of their many ‘touch points’ but they must also accept that they can’t control them all. That need not matter, as long as they focus on the ones that they can. Amazon flourishes despite bad PR; the AA averted disaster by following classic principles of brand advertising. But if ‘brand experience’ becomes a fashionable buzzword that distracts marketers from such fundamental truths, it risks doing more harm than good.


Thursday, 3 October 2019

WHAT MAKES A GREAT AD?


What makes a great ad? Ensuring the creative idea drives the attention, tells the brand story, communicates the main benefit and sticks in the consumer’s mind is a start. Here are some important questions to ask:
  1. Does it demand your ATTENTION?  Does this take a creative risk to earn the attention of consumers within the cluttered media world?  Is there something creatively different from what consumers expect, does it entertain, take advantage of the media, and is it shareable for consumers to influence others?
  2.  Does it create a strong BRAND LINK?  Does this ad connect your brand closer to the climax of the ad’s story? Is the execution through the eyes of your consumer? Does it resonate with vulnerable consumer insights, make your brand central to the story, and then solve the problem?
  3.  Does the ad communicate the PRIMARY PRODUCT BENEFIT? Does the ad focus on the one benefit that moves consumers? Does it creatively amplify the benefit, tell the story behind your brand purpose, use extreme demonstrations or powerful visuals? Note:  Focus on the benefit, not a feature. Whenever you focus on a feature, you leave it up to the consumer to determine the functional or emotional benefit. In a cluttered media world, lazy consumers move on before figuring it out.  
  4. Is there something within the ad that is STICKY (and memorable) enough to move consumers? Does it engage emotionally and will it build a deeper love with those who already love you? Do you love what the ad has the potential to do? Does the ad match the brief? Will you be proud of this ad as your legacy?
  5.  Does the ad deliver the brand idea? Does it leverage your creative assets? Does the ad fit with the tone of the brand? Does it use functional or emotional benefits to distinguish the brand and own a competitive space that is motivating to consumers?
  6. Does the ad match up to the objective of the brief?  Will it drive the desired consumer response? Will it have an expected market impact and brand performance?
    Does the ad build a bond with the consumer? Does the ad speak directly to the consumer target? Does it leverage consumer insights to connect? Will it deepen our bond with our consumers? Can the ad help build memories and rituals? 

    CREATIVE ADVERTISING CHECKLIST