Posts Tagged ‘Marketing’

Is video really the future of marketing?

Video consumption around world is growing at a stellar rate, but despite the huge volume of video out there, we are becoming increasingly selective about what we watch.

This week all you need to know is how humour can help marketers make the most out of video, Nintendo’s plans to monetise on fan-made YouTube content, Disney’s 3D printing experiment and more.

Humour wins on social media, study finds - NMK

According to Social Media Examiner, video was the number one content investment tool of 2012, with a 12 per cent rise over the year.

This is very much inline with the findings of the latest Experian Hitwise report stating that UK online video consumption is now exceeding one billion visits a month. [client]

Added to this, nearly half (46 per cent) of consumers say they would be more likely to seek out information about a product or service after seeing it in an online video.

What’s important for marketers is to know that people are likely to engage with video more deeply than simple text articles so that they can maximise the effectiveness of their campaigns.

But who said that business can’t be fun?

Another study conducted by Usurv showed that 51 per cent of the people interviewed said they had shared, commented on or liked a video because it was “humorous” and a third (30 per cent) because they “knew others would want to see it”.

Marketers need to think not only about engaging effectively with their audience, but also about what motivates their audience to further spread the message and, according to the aforementioned studies, amusing content may be just what they need.

Disney lets fans 3D print themselves as Star Wars stormtroopers – PSFK

To promote its Star Wars Weekends event, Disney is offering a ten-minute experience, named D-Tech Me, in which fans get the chance to put their face on a 3D printed Stormtrooper figurine.

D-Tech Me uses a single-shot 3D face scanner created by Disney Research labs and materialises the figurine with a high-resolution 3D printer.

Despite the high expectations, 3D printing is yet to revolutionise the manufacturing industry, as the purpose of the two is still too different.

The manufacturing industry relies on mass-production and, although personalisation is available in some cases, standardisation is the key to reduce costs and generate higher income.

On the other hand, the value of 3D printing lies, at least for now, in the uniqueness and customisability of the product “printed”.

But manufacturing is not the only arena for 3D printing. D-Tech Me seems to be a great example of how 3D printing can be used as an effective and affordable marketing tool, as well as to produce something that is unique and extremely valuable for the consumer.

Apple and Google app downloads reveal rate of smartphone growth – The Guardian

Over 50 billion apps have now been downloaded from Apple’s App Store, and Google is not far behind, with 48bn downloads from its Google Play store so far.

These figures show not only how apps have proliferated dramatically in the past couple of years, but they’re proof of the astonishing rate of smartphone growth.

Apps and smartphone are strictly interconnected, and now that almost one billion people own a smartphone, they’ve begun to change how we think about computing, from something complex and expensive to something simple and affordable.

So what does all this mean for brands?

Richard Dodd, of the British Retail Consortium, believes that this is a precise illustration of how rapidly the ways in which customers are choosing to shop and the things that they are shopping for are changing.

But all that glitters isn’t gold. The huge number of apps available has meant getting noticed has become increasingly difficult and so has become making money.

Moreover, Apple’s insistence on taking 30% of any sales made through the App Store has meant that even developers of top selling apps see a third of their profit going directly into Apple’s pockets.

The app-world is a tough environment but it’s vital for brands to be in it in order to pay attention to technological and behavioural changes and adjust their strategies accordingly.

Are you reaching your customers on their smartphones? Let us know how.

Nintendo Demanding Copyright Royalties For All YouTube Videos Using Its Game Content - HotHardware

Nintendo has decided to monetise on fan-made YouTube videos featuring content from its games.

Any time someone uploads a walkthrough or “let’s play” video, Nintendo will be able to collect royalties on it.

Moreover, adverts promoting Nintendo’s products will appear at the beginning, next to or at the end of the clips, Nintendo revealed to GameFront.

This will be accomplished by using YouTube’s Content Match ID system, which allows publishers, television networks or record labels to identify if content being used in a video is something from their products.

Is this the right move for Nintendo?

Initially Nintendo, unlike other entertainment companies, gained the sympathy of online communities by chosing not to block people using their intellectual property on YouTube or anywhere else online. But its recent decision to monetise on the positive relationship with its fans may easily backfire.

Several YouTubers, including Zack Scott who has gained a huge following (over 81 million views) for his Let’s Play videos, have already chosen, as  a sign of protest, no longer to feature Nintendo games on their channels.

How should Nintendo, and other companies, try to monetise on videos of their products? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Google Glass: Don’t Be A Glasshole - Mashable

Having the latest gadget on the market is cool, but there is a thin line between looking cool and trying to hard.

Google glass promises to be the coolest piece of tech of 2014 so here are some guidelines to help you make sure too much coolness won’t backlash on you and make you look like a glasshole.

If you’ve recently watched a humorous video, share it in the comments below and let us know what made you engage with it. The best video, and comment, will be posted on our Facebook page and Twitter and shared with our community.

Till next week… Gabs (@gabrielegenola)

Facebook’s new soon-to-be-rolled-out news feed was unveiled yesterday and it looked more than a little familiar. In fact, users of Google Plus might have been forgiven for thinking their network had turned blue, given the closeness in look and feel of the social network’s redesign.

Of course, Facebook weren’t mentioning the G-word, but making the design cleaner and fresher is no bad thing. Facebook’s news feed hasn’t had much love since Timelines was launched and the new redesign certainly is a lot smoother on the eye.

The redesign is also mobile-led, leading to a more coherent look and feel across all devices. Again this makes perfect sense given the rise of mobile traffic for Facebook and means that anybody who is still putting web and mobile into different silos needs to change their thinking, and quickly.

But cosmetic changes are all well and good. For brands the key question is how does this affect my Facebook page? And the answer to this is there’s good news and too-early-to-say news.

The good news: getting visual

The good news comes in the form of images and videos. These will be more prominent in the user’s news feed. If you’re posting a lot of visual content, there’s a great opportunity to make it even more engaging and really tell stories with photos. It also gives a huge boost to video content.

Facebook also acknowledge that people regularly use other social networks and apps outside of the site and have looked to incorporate them more into the news feed.

The Facebook-owned Instagram is a big winner in this (unsurprisingly), with users’ pictures pulled through into the photo feed. Facebook also used Pinterest as an example – pins shared to Facebook now look and feel more like they would on Pinterest.

This is all encouraging for brands who have strongly visual campaigns, and especially those who have a strong strategy across multiple social media channels.

The too-early-to-say news: multiple news feeds

Mashable probably summed up the changes to the newsfeed best when they described the new newsfeed as “Facebook gets simpler, more complicated.”

Facebook have attempted to declutter the feed with the new design – and early impressions are this has worked. However, in doing so, they’ve created a host of different feeds in the right-hand menu that means you can drill down a little further.

As well as the main news feed, there’s a Most Recent feed (self-explanatory) and an All Friends feed, which shows you everything your friends are sharing. There’s also a photo-specific feed, which is just made up of pictures shared by friends and pages. It also includes the afore-mentioned Instagram.

There’s also a separate music feed featuring posts about music being listened to – great if you’re a fan of sharing your Spotify activity – along with a games tab, which you can file away all your Candy Crush Saga updates.

Finally, there’s also a Following feed, which is solely for updates from Facebook pages and users you’ve subscribed to. This is the key part for brands.

Mark Zuckerberg said his aim was to “give everyone the best personalised newspaper we can”.

Theoretically, it means users can click on the Following feed and never miss an update from pages they’ve liked. Practically, it depends on users wanting to click on this feed. Is this something the average Facebook user will want to do?

There’s also options to further customise your content – which includes the option to filter your feed to see just updates from friends.

Before you start panicking that your page is being filed away in a feed that potentially won’t be clicked on, Facebook haven’t immediately indicated that posts from pages won’t appear on news feeds.

Indeed, it appears the current thinking is to allow users to set their own filters. The big question here is how many users will take up that option. Will users actively remove branded content from their feeds or will they passively continue to consume?

Adios EdgeRank?

One really interesting development about the news feed is how little the EdgeRank algorithm, which determines which updates get featured in your feed, was mentioned in this Facebook redesign.

Potentially this downgrading of EdgeRank could see updates being delivered to more fans. But it also could mean that your updates will drop off the main news feed a lot quicker as the feed gets more chronological.

The implication is here clear. Pages need to be a lot smarter about the timings of their posts. If you’re not using Facebook insights carefully and testing what times get the best reaction from your audience, you could be punting a post into the ether. It also means global pages have to think more carefully about their audience.

Secondly, it suggests the best way to get traction on the news feed is to create content that people want to share and can share quickly and easily. It will no longer be enough to post any old image – you’ll have to think harder about your content strategy (although it’s still unlikely to stop some pages posting non-relevant images just to get shares).

Ultimately, given Facebook’s current prominence of sponsored stories on mobile devices, and the smaller window for getting a fan’s attention, you’ll still have to invest in advertising if you want to reach and grow your Facebook audience, especially if you want to circumnavigate those who’ve actively deselected brand updates from their news feed.

You didn’t think the social behemoth was going to give you all this for free, did you?

You may not have heard it, or it may not have clicked yet, but the “Wavin’ Flag (The Celebration Mix)” by K’nann is a huge plug for Coke and because it is charting, everyday the BBC is giving free air time to Coke’s jingle. Coke are one of the official World Cup sponsors, so their branding is already everywhere and this song is just part of their massive product promotion. In doing so, Coke gets the product placement award for the day and the BBC gets the sucker award.

The advertising is pretty obvious. Right at the beginning of the song, K’naan sings the coke jingle.

If you’re not convinced, have a listen to the very last musical section of this Christmas Coke advertisement.

The song was originally put out by the artist on his album Troubadour, before being added to a charity album for the Haiti Earthquake, but because of the overtones of national pride, it fitted pretty perfectly as an anthem for the World Cup this year. The original mix didn’t have the jingle at the beginning and the lyrics were apparently somewhat darker. However, with some slight amends and constant airplay on TV through Coke commercials, it has become the theme to this years World Cup and a singles hit (as I write this it is currently number 3 in the UK singles chart)

What confuses me is, why is the BBC playing the Coke version? Surely there can be edits that leave out the Coca-Cola jingle? I personally don’t have a problem with Coke using a clever marketing ploy, I’m more concerned that the BBC has either been duped, lazy or has an ironically disturbing lack of popular culture knowledge.

Cross posted with my personal blog.

This is the follow up post to the advocacy ads blog I posted yesterday.

The vast majority of these ads are from the USA and generally from Republicans. Like them or loathe them, they do campaigning very well, especially during the Karl Rove era.

First up however is one of Obama’s ads. He never created “great” ads, but a good deal of his involved just him, speaking directly into camera to the audience. This has the benefit of giving a personal message and engaging directly with the viewer. In this ad, he also personalises the story of his mother’s death and the extra pain of her death due to the insurance system in the US. He then brings that story back to the personal lives of everyday Americans which is vital for a successful visual engagement strategy.

If only he was still showing this ad in the last 6 months.

This Carly Fiorina ad is bizarre. Nick named the Demon Sheep ad, it has become the object of ridicule but also fascination. It is weird and out there and I guess that is its charm. I don’t think it will work, it’s too long, appeals to a fairly small part of the population (the Tea Party) and most importantly, it doesn’t actually target the candidate that is leading the race. This is an attack ad for a spot of the Republican California Senator ticket. Fiorina attacks Tom Campbell, who is a leading member of Governor Arnie’s Cabinet. They are both losing ground to Republican Chuck De Vore, a State Assemblyman who is know for his ultra conservative stance. No wonder she was rated as one of the US’s top 20 worst ever CEOs.

George Bush Senior’s attack ad on Michael Dukakis is one of the most infamous ever. Drew Westen describes it as “one of the low points in American electoral history.” Willie Horton was a felon of the worst order and whatever happened for him to be released was clearly a mistake. The ad however has become part of history. Using emotive, almost subliminal written messaging such as Rape, Kidnap, Stab, stuck in the heads of the public. Fear is everywhere in this ad, the frightening statements, the scary mugshot, the fact that you could be the person stabbed, kidnapped and raped under a Dukakis Government. It is enough to frighten anyone. In fact, this ad wasn’t even an “official” Bush Campaign ad. It was made by the Americans for Bush arm of the National Security Political Action Committee (NSPAC).

Willie by the way wasn’t his real name, he went by William, but that’s not as scary either.

Hilary Clinton’s 3am ad made a big difference during the 2008 primaries and was one of the reasons why she stayed in the race so long. Questioning Obama’s ability and experience, she came up with a pretty powerful and effective ad. It preyed on the fears of parents and grandparents alike. It gave her a good boost in the polls, but let’s face it, the rest is history

Gough Whitlam was the Australian Labor Prime Minster from 72-75 after 23 years of Liberal-Country Government, mostly under Sir Robert Menzies. This ad may seem a tad naff now, but at the time, the ad and the slogan “It’s Time” was hugely influential. Delightfully simple, the slogan simply pointed at the last quarter of a century under a Conservative Government, similar to the Change slogan used by the Obama campaign. No one over in the UK would realise, but the singers are all Australian celebrities and politicians. Australian’s might notice a young Jack Thompson, Jackie Weaver, Graham Kennedy and Bert Newton singing away. Whitlam however only lasted 3 years before he was controversially sacked by the Governor General Sir William Kerr. Whitlam, on the stairs of Parliament House then made the statement “God Save the Queen, because nothing will save the Governor General.” Thus started the first big push for an Australian Republic.

[flash http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jykIqQxEOw]

Ronald Reagan put this ad out for his re-election campaign in 1984 and it is brilliantly simple. Patriotic, conservative and a vision back to the halcyon days of America. He doesn’t even appear or speak in it, but at the same time he seems both Presidential and grandfatherly.

Just like his father, Bush Junior wasn’t officially behind this ad, but it was paid for by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. There were plenty of memorable negative ads that hit Kerry hard, but this was particularly effective. Kerry made a big deal out of his Vietnam veteran status saying in a time of war, it was important to have a Commander and Chief who had proper military experience. Kerry won two Purple Hearts and one Silver Star for his heroism, but there were controversial circumstances surrounding this award and this came to the fore in the 2004 Presidential campaign. Kerry also immediately came back to the US post the war and began protesting against it. His initial campaign strategy was to portray him as a war hero, but not long after, these swift boat vets came out and hit Kerry hard. Again, the rest is history

Cross posted with my personal blog

In response to the Robin Hood Tax ad, which is one of the best campaigning ads I have seen for a while, I thought I would post some historically very effective political and advocacy ads. I’m also currently reading The Political Brain, by Drew Westen that looks at the role of emotions in political campaigning. It has been an eye-opening read, so this also gave me some inspiration for this post.

This list is by no means definitive and if anyone wants to send links to some campaigning ads, that would be great, I’d love to watch them.

This post will focus on a few advocacy ads, starting with the Robin Hood Tax ad that has been the focus of the media of late. It is a very simple ad, two voices, one face but plenty of emotion. Bill Nighy plays a leading banker who ends up squirming in response to the questioning about why a Tobin Tax shouldn’t be created. Squirming bankers is something that reverberates with a good portion of the public at the moment. This campaign plays to the slightly divergent emotions of good will and revenge brilliantly.

This next ad scares the heck out of me, although I’m not sure how effective it is. Shock ads, as I have written before, have the tendency to decline in effectiveness over time simply because of people being desensitized. I’m not sure anyone would be able to put themselves in this guys shoes, unless they have been in the same situation.

This shock ad from PlaneStupid, the organisation that focuses on climate change issues caused by the global aviation industry, is different from the previous one however. Shocking - yes. Disturbing - definitely. Effective - most certainly. Polar bears dropping from the sky crushing cars and smashing into buildings may seem like an odd choice, but it is actually very clever. The stance is that every person on a trans-Atlantic flight creates 400kg of carbon. Most people can’t conceptualize what that means however. A polar bear, which is also an icon of climate change devastation, is imaginable. Therefore this appeals to our sense of wanting to save these animals, horror at their gruesome deaths but it also puts our carbon footprint into a physical and understandable context. It was filmed in Canada, but it could be any city, again personalising the imagery.

The final ad is one that has screened on UK screens recently and was the subject of a number of complaints, but is far more subtle that the polar bear ad. Act on CO2 is a non-departmental government body that is the public face of the Government’s climate change policy. This ad simply shows a father telling a bed-time story to his child, but it is a story of the effects of climate change and includes drowning pets and other disturbing results of unabated climate change. But this ad is clever in the fact that it appeals on a personal level to adults and children. This ad scares children, hence the complaints, but it also contextualizes climate change for them ensuring they understand the potential of doing nothing. It also will frighten adults on a parental level - how can I let my child live in a world like this, what can I do to prevent it?

As I said, this isn’t a complete list, but it just a tester. I’d love your thoughts and if you want to send me other campaigns, feel free. I’ll post the political ad blog in the next couple of days.

Cross posted with my personal blog

I was interested to read an article that appeared yesterday in the New York Times discussing Gap’s new marketing push. According the NYT, in recent years Gap has been struggling to attract shoppers, even before the recession, with unappealing merchandise being cited as the major issue.

Gap’s solution to this decline in interest has been a major refocus onto the company’s core product – jeans. They have developed a multi-layered ‘Born to fit’ campaign, which includes a Facebook page, video clips, an online fashion show and an iPhone application all aimed at drawing attention to the newly named Premium Jeans line. Also in the works are ads that will appear in movie theatres, magazines and outdoors. TV ads, on the other hand,  are only a possibility.

I find this decision a little surprising. When sales fell TV ads were one of the first things to go. Personally speaking however I absolutely loved the Gap adverts from the 90’s such as the mellow yellow advert. Great tune, good looking/famous people in gap clothes = ads that get noticed and remembered. Is this formula too simple now? Do we really have to always be going bigger, better and more complex in a bid to grab people’s attention? If the current surge in nostalgic adverts are anything to go by then the answer would be no…