Have you heard of Hootsuite Academy? I recently discovered the software company’s array of educational offerings—including both free and paid social media courses. Hootsuite Academy offers social media training for teams and individuals. The training regimens appear to be a smart brand extension and a deep dive into brand utility (that flawlessly connects back to […]
The most notorious ad agency in America today is also the most effective content marketer in the land. This is not something to be happy about (unless you favor more noise and distortion, over clarity and honesty). Here’s a passage from Ackerman McQueen’s homepage: WE HAVE FOUND OURSELVES AT ODDS WITH MANY IN OUR INDUSTRY. […]
When a giant technology company releases an innovative new product, the creative community must experiment with it to see what the technology can do, and how it might be used to entertain or inform customers. McCann Lima, for one, has Google’s Cardboard figured out. The agency created a breakthrough sampling program and virtual-reality experience for […]
Folkoperan, an opera house in Stockholm, is currently presenting God Disguised (Förklädd gud), a lyrical suite composed in 1940 by Swedish composer Lars-Erik Larsson to lyrics by Hjalmar Gullberg. The production features EU citizens who helped promote the show by holding signs about their performance and offering free tickets to passers-by. This is what happened: […]
Häagen-Dazs UK and Grey London are showcasing the pleasures of championship tennis, accompanied by an ice cream bar. According to Adfreak, the agency hired fashion photographer Adam Katz Sinding, known for his streetside style portraits, to capture courtside fans for the ice cream brand’s Instagram. The idea celebrates the ice cream marketer’s new five-year sponsorship […]
Skipping is for school children and web surfers. Be that as it may, you’re not going to skip this pre-roll advertising from GEICO. I don’t know about you, but I’m disrupted. Nice work, The Martin Agency.
Stuart Elliott, the long-standing advertising critic at The New York Times, typed up his final column for the paper last week. Still getting pitched at 1:48 pm ET on my final day at #TheNewYorkTimes. In holiday spirit, won’t unleash a “Stuartism” on hapless PR person — Stuart Elliott (@stuartenyt) December 19, 2014 In his final […]
Just when we wrap our collective heads around the concept of real-time marketing, along comes on-demand marketing to steal some of real-time’s thunder.
According to Peter Dahlström and David Edelman of McKinsey, “the coming era of ‘on-demand’ marketing” will revolve around four key areas:
Now: Consumers will want to interact anywhere at any time.
Can I?: They will want to do truly new things as disparate kinds of information (from financial accounts to data on physical activity) are deployed more effectively in ways that create value for them.
For me: They will expect all data stored about them to be targeted precisely to their needs or used to personalize what they experience.
Simple: They will expect all interactions to be easy.
The authors go on to provide some interesting examples. For instance, Commonwealth Bank of Australia’s smartphone app, which reinvents the house-hunting experience by delivering public records (list price, taxes, and other data) at the point of interest.
The authors also make it clear that very few marketers are prepared to meet the demands of info-loaded consumers. I think we can also safely say that very few agencies are prepared to activate real-time or on-demand campaigns. To do so requires not only the ability to recognize the change, but to adapt to it, which isn’t easy given how many of the changes are structural in nature (hence, the rise of content strategists, community managers, user experience designers and so on — positions that did not exist five years ago).
Is it possible that we’re underestimating the impact of digital culture on how things actually work today? In a sentence, if something does not work or is inelegantly designed, “the crowd” may take it upon themselves to remix/fix it, or demand that you do.
So, it’s not “Can I?” It’s “I can.”
The challenge of real-time and on-demand marketing is significant. A brand is a living thing, and digital media is always on. A customer may say “I can!” at 10:00 p.m. on a Saturday night, and launch into a rant on the brand’s Facebook page about how a product or service experience failed to deliver.
A small business typically lacks the resources for 24-7 customer service in social channels, but a big brand is another story. A big brand may in fact operate like an institution from another century, but that hardly matters to the tween seeking input NOW. Thus, big brands like Coca-Cola or Ford need to be present at all times. Open, available and helpful. It’s a tall order, but I don’t think brands can run from it much longer.
If you’re a Major League Baseball fan, step up to the plate — the league, and every team in it, is serving up all-you-can-download buffets of content for the social stream.
Of course, sports fans are not typical customers. They’re avid, loyal and deeply immersed in every little detail of their team, its players, coaches and front office staff.
Concepts like an active and vocal community can be a bit shaky for brands, because brands have customers first, and if they are exceptional, fans second. Sports teams and sports brands are in another category, and it is a category particularly well suited to social media marketing, supported by real time content production.
Copywriters and art directors used to hole up in a room for days, sometimes weeks, working out their concepts for an ad campaign. No doubt, some continue to do so. However, that’s not how Social Ads are made. Social Ads — the ads we see in Nike Golf’s social stream, for instance — are pulled together from the resources available. In other words, no photo shoot is being scheduled to fulfill the creative’s team concept for these kind of quickie comms. The makers use what’s at hand to fashion a stream of timely, hopefully on-point, messages.
@mlb has their content game dialed| even the teams Twitter handles are perfect @tigers @twins @angels @royals
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
