The Thrity Rooms To Hide In Addition. John and Tug talk with Master Jedi Luke Sullivan about his new book Thirty Rooms To Hide In, creativity and getting out of advertising. It’s a great Sunday afternoon chat with almost no…
The Thrity Rooms To Hide In Addition.
John and Tug talk with Master Jedi Luke Sullivan about his new book Thirty Rooms To Hide In, creativity and getting out of advertising. It’s a great Sunday afternoon chat with almost no cursing and only minorly bothersome mouth sounds.
And stay tuned. ‘Coming in August 2011: The American Copywriter Reboot.
Here’s something a bit different. This contributed article is written by Valerie Woo, Executive Creative Director of The Woo. It’s her take on the delicate balance between being both an advertiser whose constantly on the job and a dedicated mother and where the lines get drawn when it comes to technological connectivity.
As a parent, it’s our joy to love our kids. But it’s our job to prepare them for the world they will soon inherit. Today, that means raising a tech-savvy, socially-balanced individual equipped with a black belt in multitasking. Simple, right? Our kids have lived a “connected” life virtually since birth (baby’s first Facebook status, anyone?), but a growing tide of us are yanking the tech blanky away and untethering kids from their devices.
Fearing the “bad parent” label when my two daughters (ages 7 and 9) invariably are seen, eyes glued to their cell phones, snap chatting their brains out, I joined the legion of you saying, “No more! Put it away!” Typically by the fourth time I ask and my voice has gone from neutral to shriek, they’ll put down the phones and tablets for a few moments of family time. However, lately, I’ve gotten this gem in response: “Mommy, why do WE have to put away our phone? You’re always on yours too!”
I think we have all been there. Somewhere between guilt and annoyance, we fight the urge to just say, “Do as I say, not as I do!” But, that would be ignoring what the parenting books would call a “teachable moment.” When our children hold a mirror up and we’re able to see the unvarnished error of our oft hypocritical ways when demanding they unplug whilst we (albeit sometimes begrudgingly) succumb and immediately respond to every email, text, and call from the office.
Well, we do have options to consider. We can hold firm and unleash countermeasures to thwart our children’s guilt bombs… or we can collectively acknowledge the simple truth that we’re all plugged in and there’s little chance of ever going back.
The integration of technology in business has indeed made the world feel much smaller. Globalization touches more than government and multinationals. As the executive creative director of my agency, I’m involved in dozens of projects at any given time and working with demanding global clients who expect our attention around the clock.
The moment I sit down for family dinner or to watch my kid’s soccer game, a situation arises that calls my attention to work. I’ve tried to put black out times on my own technology use, but the anxiety of possibly missing something important can be all-consuming. Which begs the question: how mentally present am I for my kids during these tech black-outs when I’m stressing about what I might be missing by not looking? Whether its necessity or just ambition, I freely admit the light from my cell phone’s screen has become a comforting beacon; much like it is for my kids.
On the flip side, I know my kids are being taught to have a strong work ethic, to be incredibly driven, and to do their absolute best when others are depending on them. I worked my butt off to start my own business, and I want my kids to approach their careers with the same tenacity.
Rather than wallow in guilt for having to constantly multitask between being a mom, a wife, and a boss, I am going to embrace our “new normal.” Times have changed. Gone are the days of leaving work at 6 PM and leaving the job behind. Until the next counter-culture revolution, with what little energy we have left at the end of day, let’s not waste it arguing over cell phones at the dinner table. Perhaps we’re actually doing our kids a favor by teaching them how a “new” work force operates so it’s not a complete shock once they join in on the “fun.”
I’m keeping my fingers crossed that my girls will grow up to be motivated to succeed based on what they have learned from me. I imagine you all do as well. From here, I guess we all just have to hope our kids don’t require years of therapy because mom looked down at the iPhone and missed the game-winning kick!
When it comes to online marketing, email is one of the most powerful tools you have. Social media might be the latest sexy medium, but when it comes to generating leads, nurturing customer relationships and providing long-term growth, email is still incredibly effective. It’s easy to use, priced right and it works. Here’s proof:
According to HubSpot’s Jonathan Pavoini, “Even with all of the new marketing technologies and tactics available to us, it’s still the simplest– email marketing–that remains most effective. Research from Experian states that $1 invested in email marketing initiatives still yields a roughly $44.25 return for marketers.”
With the prospect of high returns, lots of marketers are still using email–but there’s a problem: as a consumer, I felt like I was getting too many emails five years ago and that number seems to have exploded since.
And the worst part? This volume increase is inversely proportional to consumers’ busy lives, so they (and I) have less tolerance for these seemingly nonstop emails. To fight back, we increasingly unsubscribe from as many email lists as possible or will have multiple email addresses, with one of those acting as a clearinghouse for items we don’t want to bother with. Where do you think you’re ending up?
I’ll get back to this in a second, but first let’s review the basics:
CAN-SPAM regulations and creating your list
First, you need to understand the CAN-SPAM regulations. CAN-SPAM is an acronym for “Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography And Marketing Act of 2003? (there’s definitely a less convoluted way of wording that, but Congress obviously liked the acronym). These are the basic principles:
How you create and manage your list matters, too. If people don’t want your newsletter, sending it without their consent will not endear you to them. Ever get email you didn’t sign up for? Ever marked that email as junk? Yeah–that’s what will happen to you if you send emails to people who haven’t signed up for your mailing list. And it doesn’t take many of these “abuse” complaints to put your domain on an ISP’s list and get you blocked as a spammer. Once that happens, getting off an ISP’s list is much, much harder than getting on it.
Service providers
When it comes to service providers for email marketing, you need to really think about the options. Here are ten of the bigger providers; the first five are for larger brands and the others are probably more suitable for small and medium-sized businesses.
Cheetah Mail
Epsilon
SilverPop
Exact-Targe
Responsys
AWeber
Constant Contact
icontact
Mail Chimp
Vertical Response
Ease of use is certainly important, as is available options for campaign creation, but the most important functionalities–hands down–are the campaign reporting capabilities. Knowing who is forwarding your emails to colleagues (always a good sign) and who is clicking your links is key to sub-targeting future campaigns and closing that conversion loop.
And it’s also good to know how many people are opening your emails and NOT clicking. Many marketers are seeing over 50% of their emails opened via mobile, and this is both a good and bad thing. There are fewer options available on your readers’ phones for filtering email (although this is surely likely to catch up soon), which means they see all of their emails, whether they want to or not. They may just be clicking yours to mark it unread, who knows? This further decreases readers’ tolerance for emails they do not want.
So if you’re seeing lots of “opens” but not many taking the next step and clicking your links, you need to step back and re-examine your efforts before the unsubscribes start raining down on you– and they will! This is why a provider offering robust campaign analysis is essential.
Now onto the newsletters:
Your campaign
As with any kind of marketing, you’ll get the best results from your efforts if you target your audience and have a clear understanding of what you want from the campaign. Are you generating leads? Building or maintaining relationships? Whatever your goal, it needs to be defined. And then there are these considerations:
Frequency
This is so very important. You can learn a lot from looking in your own inbox. What emails do you ignore? For you, how often is too often? Does it depend on who the sender is? As a general rule, don’t send anything out that you wouldn’t care to receive.
Watch carefully, and think. Too few emails and you’ll be forgotten about, too many and people will start to hate you. Some senders can put out multiple emails per week, whereas others have audiences who are seeking only one email per month. Know your audience, and be consistent. Tracking your emails and analyzing the results can help you figure out what time, which day, and how often you should be sending your newsletters.
Design
A clean, attractive design is very important. Here are some great email newsletter templates that are bound to kick-start your creativity. Even if you don’t end up using them, they’re worth looking at for inspiration alone. Like this one:
While you’re thinking about the design, make sure you don’t overdo branding. Think about it: the recipient already knows it’s from you. It says so in the “sender” field. Sure, you want to put your logo on the newsletter, but you don’t need to go crazy. You do, however, need to plan it out ahead of time and keep it consistent. You’ll want to include some social sharing widgets, too.
Format
This isn’t something you have to worry about too much, but you still need to be aware. Some email clients — whether that’s software or websites — have trouble reading certain email formats. Most service providers automatically offer the email in plain text or browser-view so that anyone who can’t read the HTML version can just click the link. That way, nobody has to miss out. Most email marketers use HTML, so this isn’t something you should lose sleep over.
Most providers also automatically format your newsletter for mobile, but you should absolutely make sure it comes through cleanly as the lion’s share of your readers will be viewing your newsletter on their phones.
Content
Your content needs to be interesting and get straight to the point, and you should only send a newsletter when you have something of value to say. The first paragraph of the body should cover exactly what the newsletter is about. Anything that comes beneath that should build on what’s already been said. If you want the recipients to read your newsletter, you must grab their attention early and keep them moving along with you. Keep your copy short and punchy, and be relevant (that’s where targeted lists come into play). Don’t worry about keywords landing you in the junk folder; words like “free” and “win” were a problem at one point, but nowadays, it’s all about your sender reputation to ISPs.
Subject line
Your subject line must be brief–under 39 characters, or shorter, if possible. A lot of people are going to read your emails from their smartphones, and smartphones tend to cut the subject line short at 39 characters. Your subject line also needs to be catchy and click-worthy. Don’t forget about CAN-SPAM, though–it also has to be honest.
Analyze results
When you’ve analyzed your results, you can sub-target your list depending on clicks. If certain recipients click on Widget A links, create a Widget A list, and then create specific email campaigns that you send only to those people. Same for Widget B, and so on. This is a step many people miss.
Also, be sure to link to Google Analytics for additional tracking insight. This generally involves creating a new custom metric in the Analytics interface, and putting a line of code in your email so it can be tracked. Check out this post for step-by-step instructions. It’s not that difficult, I promise.
Growing your list
So, everything’s looking good. You know how to avoid spam filters, you’re sub-targeting your lists, and you know how to analyze your results. But how do you get more people to see these fantastic campaigns you’re setting up?
Well, creating branded content that’s valuable to your audience (and offered for free) seems to be the most popular way these days. You’ve probably seen it before–a free giveaway, trial offer or PDF guide offered if you provide your email address–and it is very effective. Just make sure you require a verified email address in exchange for your fabulous item or content (meaning you email the content to those who sign-up, it isn’t offered from your website as an immediate download). Why? Well, I know I’ve entered fake phone numbers on pages, why wouldn’t someone list a fake email address? If you’re going to create an asset, treat it as such.
If you don’t want to offer content for whatever reason, you can still use your website to grow your list. Your website is at the heart of all your online operations (or it should be), and you need to make the most of all its visitors. The sign-up form should be as simple as possible. The fewer fields, the better. Name and email address is a popular combination, and allows you to personalize your communications. However, email address alone is quicker for users to type out, and doesn’t raise the “why do they want my name?” alarm that some people (usually less-experienced net users) seem to get online. And there’s heightened sensitivity around privacy these days, so asking for less identifying information is definitely better.
Videos are good at generating leads, too. Webinars, a series of instructional videos–whatever works for you. Again, you’d do best to offer valuable info up front, with the promise of more once users register with an email address. You don’t want to give everything away for free, but you do want people to believe you have something worth their time. (And then really have something worth their time!) Promoting events to opt-in customers works too, but tends to be overused.
And you can also generate email leads through Facebook. There’s a good guide here, but these are the basics:
Run contests where your fans have to submit their email addresses to enter.
You can use Twitter to generate leads, too. The lead generation cards launched in 2013 are now open to all users of Twitter Ads, including medium and small business. With one click, anyone who sees your promoted lead-generation Tweet can sign up to your newsletter. When they click, their info is taken from their Twitter profile, and you’ll get their name and email address. If you can afford it, it can be incredibly beneficial.
Incentivizing referrals can work, as well. If you offer a discount to anyone who gets a friend to sign up–and offer a discount to the friend, too–you can grow your list quite successfully. The only trouble with this is relevance. It might require some pretty extensive sub-targeting, unless you offer an incentive that will appeal to everyone. The discount or promotion has to be something you can afford to do on a big scale, though. Not following through will get you nothing beyond a bad reputation, and any new additions to the list will quickly leave it again if you go back on your promise of free stuff.
Work with partners who have lists of consumers who might be interested in your products and services. How does this work in practice? If I run popular finance information website and have a large newsletter and you are launching a new finance offer, I could promote your finance trial offer to my newsletter list.
And finally– and this is very, very important– do not buy a list. It might seem like the easy option, but the risk just isn’t worth it. Here’s why:
If you need more dissuading, here’s a detailed list of all the reasons why buying a list is a really, bad idea. The odds that a bought list will convert into sales are almost nonexistent, and aren’t conversions the whole point of this? If you’re only in it for the ego and want thousands of useless readers (“recipients” would be more accurate, as these people probably won’t even look at your newsletter) then by all means, go ahead!
The main thing to remember: just because someone opted in to an email list does not mean they want unlimited promotional emails.
The future of email marketing
My expectations for personalization have grown, as have yours, no doubt. “Dear Matt” just does not cut it any more. You need to know my name, but also what messages and promotions I am interested in and when I am likely to want them– or risk being labeled “junk.”
Re-targeting (aka “re-marketing”) both onsite and cross-site with CRM enables marketers to more precisely predict user interests and behaviors and communicate with the right messages at the right times. Combine that with your campaigns and you have a winning strategy!
But even without retargeting, email is still the most effective form of customer acquisition and activation, in my experience.
Have you successfully (or unsuccessfully) marketed via email? Anything I’ve missed? Leave your comments below.
This contributed article, written by Adknowledge GM Matt Hoggatt, was originally published on the Adknowledge blog.
When it’s time to build your brand, promote your product, or rollout the next big thing, you’ll need to engage in a media buying strategy. Whether you carefully plan a formal launch or dash off a back-of-the-envelope proposal and forge ahead immediately, everything will hinge on optimizing price and placement.
But how will you know if you’re getting the best value for your dollar and reaching the largest number of potential customers? How can you avoid making a major media buying mistake? Here’s a list that can help: A rundown of the top five media buying mistakes – and how to avoid them:
1.Lacking a clearly defined strategy: Too many media buyers fall into the trap of launching a campaign without specific, measurable objectives. Before you make your media purchases, analyze the data and identify whom you want to reach by demographic group and lifestyle pattern. Plan your media outreach carefully, and make sure you have clear goals.
2. Not reserving money for testing in the budget: It’s advisable to be budget-conscious when planning a media buy, but unless you set money aside for testing, you’re being penny-wise and pound-foolish. Keep in mind that up to 90% of commercials fail. If you conduct testing, you can focus on the approaches that succeed and adapt your strategy to generate positive results.
3. Putting all of your eggs in one basket: When planning a campaign, it’s important to diversify your media spending so that you cast a broader net. Spread your media spending out, avoid loading up in one area, and then monitor response pockets so you can refine your approach and target the most productive regions.
4.Cutting ad spending without in-depth analytics: As the ad campaign progresses, you’ll likely take a look at your spending and identify areas to make cuts. Don’t make the mistake of only viewing the most recent activity and basing your decision on that alone. Media responses aren’t fixed and predictable – they’re volatile, which means you’ll need in-depth analytics to see the big picture.
5. Inadvertently stopping momentum: To accurately evaluate campaign effectiveness, you’ll need to measure frequency. Too many media campaigns that are just starting to gain momentum are cut short by media buyers who fail to fully analyze frequency, and thus miss the signals that a campaign is gaining steam. Make sure your analytics solution measures frequency.
Launching a media campaign is exciting – and a great opportunity to deliver brand impressions and build product or service awareness. But before you get started, it’s important to think through every phase and plan ahead to ensure that you get the maximum value for your ad spending.
By starting off with clearly defined goals, diversifying your media spend, testing for effectiveness, analyzing thoroughly before making cuts, and measuring patterns, you can improve your odds significantly. To make sure you’ve achieved optimal price and placement, avoid the top five media buying mistakes, and you’ll be well on your way to a successful campaign.
This contributed article was written by Rick Wyerman, SVP of Product Services at I.Predictus.
Movie critics are a tough bunch. They rarely, if ever, are impressed with “movie magic” such as computer-generated imagery and gee-whiz special effects. In their minds, if the script is weak, no amount of technical prowess will save the film.
So it is in the marketing world. Otherwise savvy executives are easily caught up in the “marketing magic” of social networks, online analytics, mobile services and the like. But without a strong plan for your brand in place, all the social campaigns, multi-dimensional database modeling, and mobile apps in the world won’t accomplish your marketing goals.
To build an effective marketing effort, you have to clearly establish your objectives and make sure each initiative successfully underpins the corporate goals. Here are some key questions you need to ask yourself about every program you undertake:
Is your marketing department operationally efficient? Too often marketing departments continue to operate in a model and structure that no longer serves the greater purpose of the organization. As your company grows and expands in new areas, so, too, should your marketing department. In many cases, this means a complete restructuring and an introduction of new skills sets where applicable.
Is your plan aligned to the business? It’s remarkable how often marketers initiate a campaign that doesn’t achieve their company’s broader business goals. The ultimate goal of marketing is to make money–yet all too often, marketing departments allocate a large fraction of their resources to business units that contribute only marginally to revenue. You need to have a direct correlation with expenditure and expected marketing return on investment (MROI). Your marketing dollars should be allocated and align directly to the expected revenue achieved.
Are your marketing messages clear? Does your brand position match your audience’s perceptions? Many companies settle for complex, off-target statements about who they are and what they do. Remember, customers rarely put as much thought into your brand as you do. Core messaging needs to be succinct and memorable. This is one arena where social media has upfront value, as a way to listen to your audience and learn what people think. You can ask questions and even test ideas to see which messages resonate best.
Do you have the right marketing mix? The digital era has added greatly to the array of marketing tools and media available. Now more than ever, it’s important that you choose the right tools for a particular program, and in the right proportions. Moreover, you should insist on quantifiable MROI for each marketing channel in which you invest. With a solid process and direct accountability among your team, MROI is achievable.
Will your plan actually generate revenue? Marketing tactics can produce incredible amounts of awareness and demand, but you need to make sure your leads turn into sales. Make sure your sales team has a well-defined program in place for lead processing, scoring and follow-up. Just as important, make sure the organization has bought into the plan, with personal responsibility established for follow-up.
Once these questions have been answered and your marketing plan is in place, you can move confidently to your execution phase. Sales promotions, social media, site analytics, measured media, analytics, blogs, newsletters, email campaigns and so on will all have their place. Accountability will be established and resource utilization will be maximized. Best of all, you’ll feel confident that you’ve put substance and meaning behind your “marketing magic”; and just like the best of Hollywood, you’ll significantly increase the chances that you have a marketplace winner on your hands.
This article was written by, Laurie McGrath, Chief Marketing Officer of Amerinet.
Media Buying has grown tremendously in the past few years. As the ecosystem continues to expand, systems are becoming even more complex and difficult to understand for both agencies and advertisers.
In the not so distant past, media purchasing would take place between buyer and publisher until, ad networks came on scene which opened floodgates to mass inventory buying. Once marketers learned they could purchased bulk inventory through aggregators – real-time ad exchanges entered the arena, acting much like the financial markets, trading remnant impressions that publishers couldn’t sell directly through in house sales teams.
This has ultimately led to automated or programmatic media buying – the large scale automation of inventory purchasing using real-time systems, machine based transactions and algorithmic intelligence.
So why exactly, is programmatic so effective?
Context
On any device or any channel, programmatic buying connects advertisers to the right audiences – right now. Targeting capabilities have seen sizable improvements in the digital realm and with the introduction of the pixel – agencies and advertisers are now able to gather concrete data points about the consumer viewing a web page.
From geographic location, to browser and device information, we can now set targeting criteria at the microscopic level. With programmatic, marketers now have the ability to deliver campaigns to hyper targeted audience segments with greater efficiency and ease, at scale.
Technology
The fundamental current driving this growth is technology. By leveraging data, analytics, and engagement, we can now paint a clearer consumer picture than ever before. The quantum leaps gained in targeting, optimization, and user modeling, programmatic enables brands to more optimally manage their paid media investments.
Transparency
We are given true visibility into selected inventory: exchange, site, and placement data sets for any given campaign. Top brands can dive head first into any programmatic initiative with the confidence of knowing brand safety remains intact.
Quality
Premium vs. remnant? Above vs. below the fold? Viewed vs. served? Publishers that initially balked at the prospect of offering their inventory through RTB, with the often misguided belief that their margins would be cut in half, are now setting up private exchanges to sell their unsold inventory directly.
As publishers increase their amount of qualitative ad space through programmatic means, the line between remnant and premium inventory is fading. And with recent initiatives, we now have the ability to bid only on inventory that is viewable to the consumer, layering on the value add. With programmatic, advertisers have granular access to every conceivable metric needed to generate highest value.
The technological advancements, control, and cost efficiency gained through programmatic buying will play a key role in shaping Digital Advertising’s future. Whether for branding or direct response, leveraging the power of data to inform buying decisions will increase exponentially. Advertisers now have the ability to reach and engage target audiences at every point in the funnel, on every device, with online and offline media purchased through this new ecosystem.
This contributed article was written by Nicholas Galante of DirectAgents.
Up for some crystal balling? We reached out to several industry creative and strategy types to share with us what they see on the horizon for 2014. What will we see? Some predictable stuff like the continued growth of mobile and experiential. And some no so predictable…such as the proliferation of Emoji Economics. No, seriously.
Read on to see what’s coming your way in 2014.
Less is More
Brands with the confidence in their assets and how consumers navigate their assets will break through. The need for less and less marketing fluff on pack will ensure more real estate on pack for what really matters to consumers. Looking for the brand I love and the variant I want. Playing out the old adage, “Now that I have found you, like you, want you–what do you have to offer me? What varieties and depth can you offer me?” How many brands can strip away to the core assets and still be identified at shelf? Allowing the brand to visually breath at point of purchase while the remainder of the category stands and screams at the consumer.
– Fred Richards – Global Creative Director at Brand Union
Art and Copy
2014 and the maturity of content marketing will necessitate the resurgence of the foundational skills that built this industry.
Same old tools deployed in new, more effective ways. As image-centric content gains traction, a premium on the ability to quickly create small bits of visual storytelling will be at an all-time high. This is what the best print ads have always done. Look no further than the early stages of OREO’s famed “Daily Twist” work to see what role print played in arguably the most revered real-time social marketing campaign to date.
Additionally, the good old-fashioned craft of writing will once again return to its rightful heroic place. Marketing experts like to point out that “it’s all about storytelling”, which I agree with, but you can’t just say that and expect it to happen. You actually need storytellers to tell those stories. In my opinion, the best storytellers are the ones that cut their teeth on long copy ads romanticizing products with emotion and relevancy. Leveraging those skills will advance content marketing efforts tenfold.
Content marketing, when done well, marries the parts of advertising that creatives love with the parts of advertising that consumers want.
Great creatives and savvy clients understand this, which bodes well for 2014.
– Jordan Atlas, SVP/Executive Creative Director at Ignited.
Infinite Media
We have spent the last decade putting the world on the Internet and now we will put the Internet on the world. This will put a greater focus on experiential; not as a category of marketing but as a way to see asset creation and communication. The role that mobile will play is not as another screen but as a remote control for your world. It’s the trigger that turns TV into a digital billboard, a print ad into a 3-D hologram, a street corner into a live-gaming platform. Now the silhouette and form of a logo can activate a brand experience on any package or sign. We are entering a time when media channels are limited only by our imagination, a time when color, shape and sound themselves are the channels we use to distribute our experiences.
– Jason Marks, Executive Creative Director at Partners+Napier, a Project: WorldWide agency.
Emoji Mania
At Sparks & Honey we have identified 96 “Elements of Culture” for 2014 that fall into five categories: Media & Language; Humanity; Aesthetics; Sci & Tech and Ideology. We refresh and remap our Elements of Culture every 90 days. One trend we track is EMOJI ECONOMICS.
In 2014 we are going to see emojis (little text characters to add context and emotion to missives) go mainstream and beyond teens and Millennials. With privacy top of mind, encrypted typography and glyphs are trending as people try to obfuscate their communications. “Emoji speak” appeals to privacy seekers, as well as catering to our puzzle mania.
But, importantly, what do emojis say about our culture? In an increasingly image-based culture, semiotics will need to evolve to include new forms of language such as emojis. A job of the future is “emoji semiotics.” In addition, can Emoji Power Rankings be used to keep a pulse on the mood-state of the nation? Yes. The number one emoji – for the 75th consecutive week – is Smiling Poop (see image). This emoji perfectly sums up the American psyche now going into Black Friday and 2014: generally happy despite the world being in the crapper.
This is due to mass shootings, natural disasters, ineffective government and uncertain healthcare and retirement, amongst other things. Americans are hunkering down to 2008 levels. Gallup Poll’s consumer confidence index has plummeted over the course of this year. And the Vice Index predicts that spending on “vices” (liquor, gambling, prostitution) are falling and will be at 2007 levels as we enter the new year. It’s going to be a sober 2014, but Americans will cope. They always do.
– Sarah DaVanzo, Chief Cultural Strategy Officer at Sparks & Honey
I don’t know. Commercializing a wedding? Even if it is handled as beautifully and as generously as Honda did for Mairead and Kevin’s wedding? The brand brought cars, the couple’s first date band, an Irish dance troupe (family is from Ireland)), $2,000 from Macy’s, family messages from Ireland…and actual family from Ireland.
It was a grand gesture to a couple of brand aficionados. But isn’t a wedding a sacred affair to be shared with family and friends? Not broadcast on YouTube to the ultimate benefit of Honda who in a sense, “used” Mairead and Kevin for their own publicity purposes?
Oh sure, no doubt there was some genuine human emotion from those involved at Honda but, again, what’s the end goal? If it was simply to be generous to Mairead and Keviv, then why film the whole thing, send out a press release and post a video on YouTube?
The work, from RPA, is part of the brand’s Start Something Special campaign which asked Honda fans to share the special relationships the have with their Hondas. To be clear, Mairead and Kevin invited Honda and were told the stunt might be part of a marketing campaign. They just didn’t know how much Honda would be a part of their special day.
So we guess there can’t really be all that much to complain about if Honda was, for all intents and purposes, invited to the wedding. But we can’t get past the notion that there’s really nothing left in life that hasn’t been commercialized.
Now that may sound crazy coming from someone who’s actually a fan of native advertising (mostly because regular advertising sucks and is annoying), but the rise of social media has given way to a marketing world in which there is no longer a separation between commercial life and private life.
On the flip side, branded social media is controlled by, one would hope, caring human beings who have genuinely heartfelt concerns for fellow members of the human race. So while we may hate marketers for intruding on our lives, we really shouldn’t because brands are run by, again one would hope, genuine, caring human beings who just want to do good.
Perhaps it’s a bit like Lieutenant General Hal Moore who (played by Mel Gibson in the movie “We Were Soldiers”) said, “Hate war, but love the American warrior.” In the war-like world of marketing, that might be translated to “Hate marketing, but love the marketing warrior.”
Social media has given brands the ability to be more human, more caring, more involved in the personal aspects of people’s lives. Done right, this can be a very good thing. Done poorly, as we’ve seen far too many times before, it can be far worse than old school marketing.
Here, again one would hope, Honda just wanted to do something nice. But, unlike the American soldier who performs out of a sense of duty (yes, they get paid) for country and isn’t looking for fame, fortune and profit, Honda is looking for fame, fortune and profit. And they’re doing so by injecting themselves (yes, they were invited) into the private lives of Mairead and Kevin.
You don’t require a TV to see a commercial these days. Thanks to the Internet, commercials can now be e-mailed, shared on Facebook and tweeted about – all potentially resulting in millions of additional views.
To receive more views and a lasting impression, companies are competing in this advertising arms race. Two tactics have risen to the top.
Comedic Commercials
Funny commercials are no longer limited to the four hours of the Super Bowl – more companies are creating hilarious ads, with hope that these clips will go viral.
It’s not complicated. The “It’s Not Complicated” campaign from AT&T began almost a year ago and people anxiously wait for the newest commercial. Four kids surround Beck Bennett and discuss why faster is better, or unrelated topics like the biggest number they can think of (infinities times infinity – in case you didn’t know).
The AT&T YouTube channel has 18 of these commercials, many with more than 1 million views. The ads themselves are not complicated – they’re funny and make it obvious that faster and more coverage is better.
Jump program. T-Mobile reminds us that “two years is too long to wait” for a new cell phone. Their campaign with SNL’s Bill Hader premiered this past summer with the introduction of the “Jump” program.
Hader goes through the many struggles of having an old phone, such as soaking up the water by placing it in a container of rice or having it sat on (and the screen cracked) at the bus stop. Each situation that Hader endures is something we’ve all been through (admit it – you’ve dropped your phone in the toilet), making the ad not only funny, but relatable. It leaves a lasting impression.
Halloween and football season. Verizon has joined the comedic competition with both its wireless and FiOS services. A timely Halloween commercial shows a Star Wars characters-dressed family using their Verizon service to find the biggest candy bars and to figure out which houses to avoid (i.e. the dentists’ house with floss instead of treats). Their #fiosfootballgirl commercial targets NFL fans, telling the story of a left out sister who uses technology to learn about football and eventually joins Terry Bradshaw as a commentator.
Verizon’s videos have not gone viral like AT&T’s, but perhaps a continued campaign could help the cell phone and Internet service provider.
Dodge Durango, starring Ron Burgundy. Dodge Durango has recently recruited the one and only Ron Burgundy (Will Ferrell in Anchorman) to star in about 70 commercials. Anchorman 2 hits theaters in December, so the timing and collaboration is brilliant.
The manly movie and manly truck combination have already gone viral – in five days, there were more than 3.5 million views. For this campaign, timeliness, comedy and a celebrity all play a key role in the videos’ success.
Bashing the Competition
While some companies are choosing this comedic tactic, others find success using commercials to bash their competitors.
Less talking, more doing. Microsoft, who hasn’t had the greatest success selling tablets, has an advertising campaign comparing its tablets to Apple iPads and uses Siri to mock the brand. Although iPads typically receive much better reviews than the Windows 8 tablets, Microsoft makes it pretty convincing that their products are better and more affordable.
One ad shows the Acer Iconia W3, which you can use to play Halo and get on Microsoft Office. Siri, on the other hand, can only read on the iPad Mini (except we all know you can do a lot more than read on the iPad Mini) and the iPad is $100 more than the Windows tablet.
On the “less talking, more doing” original commercial, Siri offers to play “Chopsticks” on a piano app while the Microsoft tablet is doing more important tasks, like using PowerPoint – again, for a fraction of the price.
The next big thing is already here. Similarly, Samsung attempted to bash Apple’s iPhone with its “the next big thing is already here” commercials. The campaign gained popularity when the iPhone 5 was coming out – making a joke out of the fact that people stand in line for days for these Apple improvements, like 4G (which the Samsung Galaxy S3 already had). On a later commercial, at a graduation party, the attendees compare all the perks of the S4 to the iPhone 5.
Which Method is Better?
It’s hard to say which method or which campaign is most successful – it’s like comparing apples to oranges. Both tactics have had great success, however, ultimately bringing in more brands to compete in this advertising arms race.
This guest article was written by Sam Melton.
You know you’ve made a staggeringly good film when the commercial director sitting in the audience sits slack jawed for almost the entirety of the thing.
That’s Gravity, Alfonso Cuaron’s 91-minute space blockbuster that everyone in the ad business needs to see, like, right now.
Like any good director, I’ve experienced hundreds of films in cinema, but as I sat in the 3D IMAX theatre, I struggled for a way to accurately and fully describe Gravity. “Spectacle” didn’t quite cover the exceptional narrative tension. “Experience” just sounded understated.
In the end, I landed on “3D Cinematic Symphony.”
A powerful symphony is the meshing of so many elements to create something that can be both explosive and moving. Gravity is that, starting with the director’s “instruments” – sound and visual. The visuals are really something special, and that’s saying a lot in a world where we’ve experienced everything from The Matrix’s “bullet time” to Avatar’s forests. I always find it immensely satisfying when I find a film that can overwhelm me visually. For the creatives like me, there is a visual playground that reminds you to consider the whole frame as you put the story in the foreground and background.
Then there’s the sound design. Gravity feels like a love letter to directors who think “what if we played with silence for awhile.” The sound isn’t an add on, it’s the catalyst for the film itself, creating a pace unlike anything I’ve seen since 2001: A Space Odyssey. The drop outs juxtaposed against big explosions gave me a half dozen new ideas for commercial pitches in the coming weeks.
Now, I’m a director who loves to work in cinema, so I need to talk about how impressive the 3D is here. Like the sound and visual effects, 3D is used to add to an entire experience. It’s used effectively to convey a sense of motion and terror as shrapnel whooshes toward Sandra Bullock. The 3D is subtle, it’s right, and ultimately it makes seeing the film in 3D a much more satisfying time than if I’d simply seen it in 2D.
Gravity is also one of those films that shouldn’t just be seen on the big screen, it begs to be seen on the BIGGEST screen. Like the best cinema spots, it needs to be in a captive, immersive, bright environment with 3D and massive surround sound. This is the best excuse for visual storytelling (and 3D advertising) since Avatar and the box office is showing it. Gravity is a film that is tailor made for the big screen, saturating the frame with stunning imagery. I found my eyes darting everywhere in the frame to drink it all in and was glad I had a notebook with me to scribble down idea after idea for new projects.
Still not sold? Check out the second trailer – it’s here – for a taste of what this 3D cinematic symphony’s all about. This is about as close to the actual experience of being in space that I will likely ever get. As a case for 3D cinema advertising, this is as close as movie goers are likely to get to a brand – without buying it!
Go. Go now. And make sure ALL your clients see it. Pitching visual storytelling as an immersive experience – with big picture, big sound and 3D – just got a lot easier.
This contributed article was written by James Stewart, a director and founder of Geneva Film Co. who is repped by TateUSA. His new award winning film FOXED! is playing the film festivals this fall. When not creating commercials in 2D and 3D, he can be found watching movies the way they were meant to be seen – in cinema. Follow him on Twitter @jamesstewart3D
Email filtering is a hot topic right now. And it’s not hard to understand why. We spend more time reading and sending emails than we do at almost anything else. How much time? The average person spends a mindboggling 28% of work time reading and responding to emails. No wonder we always feel like we can’t get enough done.
The latest big headline comes from The New York Times, which recently ran an article about retailers who are freaking out about Gmail’s new folder for promotional emails. The new feature automatically filters most branded emails into a separate folder but also places a “Promotions” tab atop the main in-box so that the quarantined emails are only a click away.
According to The Times, some companies, including Gap and Groupon, have been “begging” customers to move their promotional emails back into their primary in-boxes. And it’s easy to understand why many marketers are so concerned. As The Times piece also notes, email marketing is still a central part of most online campaigns. In fact, a July 2013 study by Forrester Research and Shop.org found that some 80 percent of marketers will spend more on e-mail this year than they did in 2012.
The good news for retailers: there’s no reason to panic — at least not about Gmail. The new Gmail features have only pushed down the rate at which consumers open e-commerce e-mails by a measly one percent.
And from what I’ve seen at our company, Sanebox, a sophisticated filtering system can sometimes benefit marketers. After all, marketers are already fighting for attention through a sea of noise. When non-urgent emails, such as promotions from brands, are placed into a separate folder, marketers can reach the audiences they’re targeting when they’re in the mindset to review promotions.
At Sanebox, we try to go a bit beyond Google’s basic filtering and provide a digest of all unimportant emails. It can be a bit like flipping through a catalog – something you want to do periodically, but not every five minutes. On the other hand, marketers need to continue being relevant, especially since some companies allow customers to unsubscribe from anything with one click (OtherInbox’s Unsubscriber, Unroll.me, and our on BlackHole feature).
So, no, now is not the time for retailers to panic. But as more and more consumers look for solutions to the problem of email overload, that time may soon come.
This guest article was written by Dmitri Leonov, VP of Growth at email management firm Sanebox.
The term “big data” has become quite prevalent in the marketing world lately. In a previous Central Desktop article, I examined the notion of big data and how it pertains to how brands and agencies work today. We started with a simple definition of big data.
In our marketing world, big data describes the plethora of information we have accumulated through the monitoring of consumers as they browse, socialize, search and purchase online. Every time a person visits a website, a cookie is dropped within their browser. Every time a person responds to a call-to-action from a landing page, data from the form they filled out is captured.
That’s just a small example of big data’s makeup. Dan Zarrella, HubSpot’s social media scientist, told me a little bit more about the kinds of data that are important to marketers and agencies – and how marketers and agencies should be using that data.
You’ve heard the old adage “any publicity is good publicity,” right? When marketers are on the receiving end of “any publicity,” that usually means bad publicity. And it’s usually not intentional. Oh, sure, there are marketers like GoDaddy and others who play the “banned ad” PR card by claiming a network banned their commercial from the Super Bowl when, in fact, the brand never had any intentions of running the submitted version. But for the most part, marketers avoid bad publicity like the plague.
Unless that marketer is Kenneth Cole. You’ve probably read some of Kenneth Cole’s tweets. Most famously, he weighed in on the Egypt uprising in 2011 when he tweeted, “Millions are in uproar in #Cairo. Rumor is they heard our new spring collection is now available at http://bit.ly/KCairo -KC”
More recently, Cole, who runs his own Twitter account separate from that of the Kenneth Cole brand, weighed in on the Syrian crisis.
While many have chastised Cole for his tweets, this is why we think his controversial tweets are smart marketing (this article continues on the Central Desktop blog where it was originally published).
Yesterday, Facebook’s market value topped $100 billion. Zuck must be smitten his baby is now worth close to last year’s original IPO valuation. Market confidence, which Monday included a stock price increase of 1.9% to $41.34 with a daily high of $41.94 (the highest since the IPO), is said to be bolstered by belief Facebook just might deliver on its mobile advertising promise. The upswing is certainly positive news for the social network which hit a stock price low of $17.73 in September.
But can Zuckerberg, whose baby now realizes 41% of its quarterly advertising revenue from smartphone and tablet-centric promotions, really make a go of it when recent Pew research find teens have a “waning enthusiasm for Facebook”? The report states dislike for the incessant over-sharing that is part and parcel of the service. But, more importantly, teens are miffed all their parents and their parents friends are now on Facebook.
What could be more horrific to a teen than mom and dad commenting on a recent post with well-intentioned love, affection and pride that in teen-speak can only translate to extreme “did you see what Sally’s mom posted?” embarrassment? No matter how well-intentioned, parents embarrass their kids. It’s just a fact of life. And while many parents insist upon friending their children, there’s not one out there under the age of, say, 20, who actually wants that online friendship.
So while mobile ad revenue may be boosting Facebook’s health, it’s no secret kids wants their own, parent-free playground. For example, Twitter has seen a 16% increase in teen usage from 2011 to 2012. Not that Twitter is parent-free but it’s easier to avoid them.
Summarizing its recent BI Intelligence report on teen’s mobile-first usage, the publication wrote, ” we may be witnessing is the unraveling of a unitary, centralized social media landscape, dominated by Facebook, into a set of multipolar nodes. Facebook warded off the Instagram threat by buying the company, but it won’t always be possible for the company to neutralize threats with acquisitions.”
It’s no secret services like Snapchat and the recently Yahoo!-acquired Tumblr have been heavily fueled by teen usage. In fact, a recent Survata survey found more 13-18-year-old teens (61%) use Tumblr than Facebook (55%).
Perhaps, lending the best insight into this apparent shift by teens away from Facebook, 13-year-old Ruby Karp wrote in a Mashable article, I’m 13 and None of My Friends Use Facebook, “Part of the reason Facebook is losing my generation’s attention is the fact that there are other networks now. When I was 10, I wasn’t old enough to have a Facebook. But a magical thing called Instagram had just come out … and our parents had no idea there was an age limit. Rapidly, all my friends got Instagrams. Teens are followers. That’s just what we are. If all my friends are getting this cool new thing called Snapchat, I want it, too! We want what’s trending, and if Facebook isn’t ‘trending,’ teens won’t care.”
Commenting further on the embarrassment factor of teens and their parents using the same social network, Karp writes, “Let’s say I get invited to a party, and there’s underage drinking. I’m not drinking, but someone pulls out a camera. Even if I’m not carrying a red Solo cup, I could be photographed behind a girl doing shots. Later that week, the dumb-dumb decides to post photos from that ‘amazing’ party. If my mom saw I was at a party with drinking, even if I wasn’t participating, I’d be dead. This isn’t Facebook’s fault, but it happens there.”
She’s right. While every parent certainly wants to know what their teens are doing when they are out and about, Facebook fosters an almost creepy form of supervision. It’s like having your parents supervise your Junior High prom. While parents want to be able to supervise their children at all times, children will attempt to avoid it like the plague.
We’re certainly not here to debate the merits of proper parentage but it’s clear children will do whatever it takes — and this has become increasingly easier in an age of endless digital choice — to avoid their parents whenever that can.
What does this mean for Zuck who, let’s be honest, was just a kid, himself, a few years ago? It means his baby is going to become a rest home for the over 40 crowd.
Of course, it should be said there’s nothing wrong with the over 40 crowd, especially when it comes to their disposable income one assumes every smart marketer desires. But, alas, most marketers are just dumb. They love a shiny new object and in lemming-like fashion they’re going to chase that flash because, let’s be honest again, that 30-year-old marketing director who recently edged out that supremely more qualified but far too grey and uncool 50-year-old, would much rather create a hip, cool, edgy marketing program fronted by a hip, cool, edgy and very youthful celebrity that appeals to teens than some washed-up celebrity has-been that, if the marketer did their homework, would realize actually does have a rock-solid connection with the over 40 crowd who, as we all know, has money to spend.
While it’s teens who are shifting away from Facebook, it’s the marketers who will pull the money that fuels the network.
And that’s why Facebook will fail. It won’t happen overnight. It may not happen in the next decade. But it will happen. Which, of course, is sad and frustrating. Because we’ll all have to start the stupid cycle over again. Teens find cool, new toy. Parents discover it a few years later. Teens leave. Cool, new toy goes out to pasture.
As HubSpot hosts its INBOUND conference this week, inbound marketing is taking center stage. Though as big and as popular as this conference — and its focus, inbound marketing — has become, there still seems to be a debate over whether or not the term inbound marketing is the same as another term used to describe a similar process, content marketing.
Writing on the Covario blog, Russ Mann argues content marketing is the more encompassing term of the two. He suggests inbound marketing is limited to earned (we would argue owned) media strategies that are designed to drive traffic and conversions to a marketer’s website whereas content marketing places its emphasis on content creation, spreading that content far and wide without necessarily focusing on traffic and leads.
While there are certainly similarities between content marketing and inbound marketing, it would appear — even as Mann’s description eludes — that content marketing is part of the greater practice of inbound marketing.
Inbound marketing, just like content marketing, starts with content creation. But inbound marketing is a term that describes an entire process that begins with content creation, integrates call-to-action offers that coincide with that content, lead generation from those call-to-action offers, nurturing which segments leads and delivers targeted content (which include additional targeted call-to-action offers), social media efforts that are directly tied to captured lead data and post-sale marketing efforts.
Even that rather lengthy description does not do justice to the complete process of inbound marketing. Content marketing is great and integral to a complete inbound marketing program but in my view it’s just one small part of the larger process.
So while Mann argues content marketing “has both more deliberate and broader connotations,” I’d argue that definition is short-sighted, antithetical and actually something closer to a description of inbound marketing.
And while I firmly believe inbound marketing is the proper term that should be used to describe a process which uses content to educate, create brand awareness and generate leads, it’s no secret that the term content marketing is more widely adopted. Which, in a sense, is sad.
This industry is full of buzzword bingo and more often than not that buzzword bingo is the cause of great misunderstanding and misuse of terminology.
Mann argues the term inbound marketing is primarily used by HubSpot and SEOMoz. That may be true. But it’s also a term that encompasses entire subsets of marketing practices from content creation to email marketing to landing page creation to SEO to social media to lead generation to lead nurturing to marketing automation to traffic and lead source analytics to complete integration with sales processes.
While HubSpot and other companies offer most, if not all, of the above, that doesn’t mean the term inbound marketing has to be limited to their offerings. After all, any marketer could cobble together their own inbound marketing solution using the tools of their choice. So it’s not about the tools. It’s about the process. A process that involves many steps, all of which are designed to generate leads and sales. And a process whose every step can be tracked, adjusted and improved on the fly.
Conceivably, one could argue inbound marketing is a vendor-created buzzword and the term content marketing simply arose from within the industry. While that may be true, I think you can see that inbound marketing encompasses a far broader collection of marketing processes than does content marketing. So feel free to do all the content marketing you want but if that’s all you’re doing, you are not completing a process that results in something every marketer wants: actual sales that benefit the bottom line.
Just over a month ago, the world’s advertising industry descended upon Cannes, France, for its annual Festival of Creativity. At this event, agencies the world over are awarded for their creativity and, in a few small cases, for work that actually increased sales.
Cannes of course, is but one of many advertising awards festivals that occur over the course of the year. But it’s the biggest, the brightest and the most coveted of all. Certainly much of the entered and winning work is worthy of praise. And certainly the individuals behind the work deserve to have the spotlight shown on them in the presence of their colleagues, coworkers and friends. But…do awards matter?
By matter, I mean a few things. Do awards generate business for the agency? Do they further the career of the individual creative? Do they positively affect the brand for which the agency won the award? Are they a metric a brand can use to determine the capability of an agency? For an article I wrote for Central Desktop, I turned to a few in the industry to help answer these questions.
For a man who has the ability to predict presidential elections, Nate Silver’s recent comment about the sales staff at The New York Times was shortsighted and displayed a surprising lack of understanding of the tectonic shifts that are occurring in publishing and advertising. It’s as if he hasn’t realized that the disintermediation of the ad sales process through trading desks, RTB and other forms of ad tech has had a decimating effect on CPMs and, hence, the ability of a publisher and its sales force to generate healthy revenue.
Couple that with the war now going on between journalists and sales staff over the notion of native advertising and the inability or refusal of IT staff come out of their caves, partner with journalists and sales staff to develop solutions the sales people can take to market and you have a recipe for continued stagnation.
Silver, who rose to fame when the New York Times gave his FiveThirtyEight blog an audience, recently left the paper for a gig at ESPN had this to say on a recent B.S. Report podcast.
“I feel like this will get me in trouble, maybe. But I feel like with all the traffic the Times has right now it should be turning a much larger profit than it does right now. Right? They get so many eyeballs and so much high quality traffic — the demographics are really good, people with a lot of disposable income — that it should be a goldmine for advertisers. If you’re having trouble I don’t think you should blame the environmental conditions so much as maybe your sales staff isn’t that good.”
Ten of fifteen years ago, blaming the sales staff for declining revenues may have been more appropriate when the online advertising landscape consisted mainly of banners and CPMs hadn’t been raped by programatic buying, devalued by content farms, commoditized by DSP-controlled real-time bidding or altered (up and down) by native advertising.
It’s clear the online advertising space is a disastrous tailspin but to blame one entity for its apparent demise isn’t really taking a broad view of the landscape.
By now, you’ve seen that Crocs ad from London production company Compulsory which celebrates teen sex. By now, you’ve also noted the ad is fake and was not endorsed by the brand. Much like JCPenney which distanced itself from a fake ad (which won a Bronze Lion!) that also centered on teen sex, Crocs called the ad offensive and said, “We’re very concerned by it, because it does not reflect our company values as a global lifestyle brand.”
While that statement may be true, had we been running the show at Crocs last week, we would have handled the situation quite differently. While it’s never advisable for a brand to lie, playing along with a publicity bubble for a while doesn’t do much harm and c an have great benefit.
Crocs, an almost-dead brand that has been struggling hopelessly for years to regain any sense of cool it might once have had, should certainly, as it did, state they did not create the ad. But rather than take the pious position it did regarding the ad and the fact it doesn’t reflect the company’s values, the brand should have embraced the work and employed a bit of perspective.
Rather than lash out like a preacher in the pulpit on a Sunday, the brand might have reacted with a bit of tongue and cheek saying, perhaps, “While we don’t condone casual sex, we certainly do condone donning stylish footwear while engaging in social activities like Parcheesi or group Candy Crush.”
It would have been so simple to go along for the ride at least for a short time. At minimum, allow the ad to play out as it did in the media for a bit before taking the wind out of the sails. Yes, it’s a fine line to walk. Brands do have to live up to what they stand for but brands can, and should, also embrace a windfall because they don’t come along very often. Certainly not for a failing brand like Crocs.
The fact the ad was one of the worst ever created is another story entirely.
We agree with AdWeek’s David Gianatasio 100% percent on this one. Which, of course, isn’t like us agreeing with Bob Garfield back in the day because, of course, we rarely did. We used to pick stupid little fights with the man over his ad reviews because, well, that’s what Adrants was all about; poking holes in the media and advertising establishments.
My how times have changed. Back in the day, Adrants was a single voice of over-sized balls and horse-hung swinging man meat. Today, well, everyone’s in on the game of snark. So much so that it really doesn’t mean anything anymore. Just take a look at Business Insider headlines or BuzzFeed or headlines from just about any other publication which now scream extremisms to announce the fact an ant has crossed the street. Anything for a pageview.
It’s sad, really. But it’s all about content, people. Content. The more, the merrier it would seem. How to Cross Your Legs While Wearing a Miniskirt. How to Hide An Erection in Public. How to Brush Your Teeth With Your Finger.
Did you know content farm DemandMedia pays about $15 dollars to have one of these idiotic stories written. And $3.50 to edit it. That’s how devalued content has become in some areas.
But, thankfully, some brands, like HubSpot, recognize the value of good (emphasis, good) content and will pay for it. And pay well. In fact, they are, again, beefing up their editorial staff and hiring an Associate Editor. HubSpot has mastered the art of content marketing and they have done it in a way that doesn’t even feel like marketing. Every piece of content they create is educational, useful, valuable and designed to help marketers do their jobs better. Just read their blog for a few days and you’ll understand.
Anyway, we digress. Back to AdWeek’s David Gianatasio. He loved a recent ad touting public access cable in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory. And we can see why. The ad succeeds in a manner akin to the aforementioned headlines announcing an ant’s street crossing. And we mean that in a good way. With musical bombast and dramatic slow motion, the ad makes even the most dreary town council meeting seem like a blockbuster movie.
With close to of 80,000 views on YouTube, more than three times the population of the town itself, the ad certainly helps prove the point even the most mundane things in live can be brought to life with a great headline.
Guess we’ll have to up our game a bit. Though saying that feels more like we’ll be stooping to a new low. Stay tuned.
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.
