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Hey, remember the good old days before smartphones? That golden age where you actually had to use a landline to contact friends, use paper maps and log on to a whirring desktop computer to access the Internet? Well, guess what, many of today’s young influencers and consumers of the future don’t.
In fact, even if your earliest memories of a mobile phone are a chunky Motorola, you could probably take a tip or two from the younger generation to inform your content marketing efforts. Why? Because they are the connected generation, brought up on social media and smartphone use. They will see your snake game and raise you a Pokemon or three and this is all from the age of 11.
Of course, your target audience might not fall into the teenage or early twenty-something bracket. But in a world where Eric Lassard, a boy of 12, has (amongst other ventures) launched an app, social platform and is publishing his second book, ‘From Dublin to Silicon Valley’, perhaps your business might pick up a tip or two straight out of the mouths of babes. For connecting with millennials and those that come after is the future of your business…
Despite changing demographics and consumer behaviors, the holiday season remains one of the more influential times of year to launch a campaign and seal it into holiday memory for years to come. To do that, though, your brand needs to come up with something seriously innovative, engaging, and interesting -- something that'll resonate with your customers. This usually means lights, emotions, and celebrating family and friends. Of course, there’s no harm is looking to the past to see which other brands and campaigns have made their way to the holiday retail hall of fame. Here, we look back on 150 years of inspirational ads and campaigns that many consumers say the holidays just wouldn’t be the same without....
Comedy is one of the most effective way to advertise anything, but some brands and companies take absurd to the next level in a trend you may not realize you’ve seen called “oddvertising.” “Oddvertising is sometimes funny and sometimes it’s just plain odd,” according to Mike Johnston. Advertising appeared as the first dot com bubble was burning and was birthed by marketers really pushing the envelope in advertising. many of the odd pioneers were startups or smaller brands trying to stand out with off-the-wall concepts like firing gerbils into their logos. THE RISE OF AN ART FORM But what they made went beyond unusual into a new realm that was later coined as “oddvertising.” Things got even weirder as they had some success reaching young audiences with money to spend. Some were all business and some were just fascinated with finding out how far they could get....
A number of commentators have weighed in over the last few weeks with their opinions on why ratings for the NFL on TV have fallen by double-digit percentages this season.
A few weeks ago, a 15% dropoff was reported. More recently, the decline was reported as 11% so far this fall. Whatever it is, or whatever it turns out to be by the time the season ends, the National Football League and its TV partners are not accustomed to double-digit audience declines.
Football was supposed to be the great constant of TV. Viewers of scripted prime-time shows going elsewhere lately? Don’t worry, they’ll come back for football. They always do. Or maybe not.
So what’s the problem? The commentators have pointed to a variety of factors – all of them valid and likely contributing, by degrees, to this viewership shortfall....
Out-of-home has been a great venue for anti-Trump advertising this year, from the Nuisance Committee's clever billboards to Wieden + Kennedy's baloney-fixated food truck. Now, we can add an unpaid guerrilla campaign to that list, as some strikingly weird Donald-bashing posters suddenly popped up Wednesday on bus shelters in New York City.
There are five executions in all. Each poster is based on a fictional story—Dr. Strangelove, Dumb & Dumber, Humpty Dumpty, Thelma & Louise and The Shining.
Check out the ads below—in situ, as well as the original artwork.
Riddle me this: Why do people buy quarter-inch drill bits? While there are a million possible answers to this question, Leo McGinneva offers perhaps the most interesting explanation. "They don’t want quarter-inch bits. They want quarter-inch holes," he explains. This notion suggests that as consumers, we aren't after all the bells and whistles as much as the solutions they provide. In other words, we don't want to know what brands are selling, we want to know what's in it for us....
The study -- which is part of an ongoing series of research commissioned by the Council for Research Excellence to understand the nature of watching TV in the current viewing environment -- was conducted by Nielsen Consumer Neuro, which utilizes a variety of biometric measurement techniques to understand people’s conscious and unconscious interaction with media. The findings of the study, dubbed “The Mind of the Viewer,” were described as preliminary, especially the part testing response to people-meter prompts, but it suggested that the kinds of media distractions impacting the way people consume media may also be impacting the way the industry measures how people consume media. “We live in the age of distraction,” Carl Marci, chief neuroscientist at Nielsen, remarked, adding: “People make interesting choices with technology.” When it comes to interacting with people meters -- the technology that is the basis for producing national TV’s advertising currency, Nielsen national TV ratings -- 25% of Nielsen people-meter panelists participating in the study did not respond to their prompts because they were looking at a second screen when the meter prompted them with a light....
Some of my takeaways?
LinkedIn, for example, provided an excellent return on B2B ads, while Google still reigned supreme for B2C. StumbleUpon’s conversion rate for paid products was woefully low.
The top three paid ad spots on Google’s SERPs, for example, get 41% of the clicks. Even the best SEO techniques will only expose you to 59% of the viewing audience, and Google’s knowledge graph and infoboxes are quickly cutting into that as well.
Marketing professionals across the board agree that pay-per-click advertising works. The hard part is getting set up with a solid PPC plan to serve as your foundation.
We need to know how much to spend, when to spend it, where to spend it, and how to spend it correctly.
Those are tough calls to make, especially if you’re a paid advertising newbie. The paid platforms can be complicated and confusing. What do you do with all these options, data, and metrics?
If you want the best pizza, you're not going to order Domino's. But if you want your pizza delivered in the most innovative way, well, Domino's may have that market cornered.
The chain took four years to modify a car to become the perfect delivery vehicle. And now it is testing drone delivery in New Zealand. And by all accounts, the first drone test went well, with the pizza landing gently and without major damage—save for a little cheese stuck to the top of the box. (Domino's did something similar in the U.K. way back in 2013, but that was when commercial drone delivery was years away from approval. We're much closer now.)
Check out a video of the successful test below, which is, aptly enough, itself quite cheesy. But the brand is serious about the method. According to Reuters, it's is looking to conduct tests in Australia, Belgium, France, The Netherlands, Japan and Germany....
The way to think about where voice and content creation intersect is to consider audience: the audience you have, and the audience you want. From the blog and video topics chosen, to the content’s production style, every aspect of a brand’s content creation needs to be geared towards its audience. Some brands already know their voice. You, as a blogger, may already know yours. Even when your client provides keywords and example content, you still should visit their social media pages and website blog to get a feel for the content. Often, however, you’ll work with a client without a clear voice, and that’s where this article will focus. Whether you’re branding your own blog or helping a new client develop a clear voice before you begin any content creation, you need to know the audience you’re writing for....
There has been an explosion in purpose-driven brand communication the last few years. As Matthew Gardner at Droga5 put it, “Because of the challenge for people’s attention, purpose is the only thing that will get brands to break through. This is not a trend but more of an imperative and should be top of mind for every company. ”When every brand team jumps on the purpose bandwagon, however, the resulting communication can feel pretty shallow. There’s a risk of brands completely overstating why they exist. Particularly when their actual motivation is to capture consumer attention, brand purpose can come across as “ad-deep.” It starts to feel like just one more tick-box on a creative brief....
Having a movie marketing background and a Ph.D. under management consulting god Peter Drucker, Sealey had in mind to manage ads more like mini-films, and decided to see the guy who was by then considered the most powerful man in Hollywood: Ovitz. Sealey and other Coke execs were summoned from Atlanta to the exalted I.M. Pei-designed L.A. building with the master collection of modern art, and Ovitz presented to them. One guy in the room remembered that “[Ovitz] knew innately …what these people wanted to hear.” Coke’s advertising would be created through the lens of the CAA’s vast resources in every discipline. Ovitz hired Shelly Hochron to head the in-house team. (She had worked with Sealey at Columbia, and got a salary of $2 million major bucks back then.) She in turn hired Len Fink, who had been a creative director at Chiat/Day. (Ovitz said Fink received a “good salary as well.”)...
Digital advertising, once touted as the savior of newspaper publishing, is proving to be yet another drag for many companies’ bottom lines. The New York Times Co. announced that its digital ad revenues slipped again in the second quarter of the year, marking two consecutive quarters of year-over-year declines. NYTCO reported that total digital ad revenues sank 6.8% to $45 million in the second quarter, which president and CEO Mark Thompson attributed to a drop in traditional Web display advertising, canceling out growth in newer digital ad categories including mobile and video. The digital decline compounded print losses, down 14.1%, for a total ad revenue decline of 11.7%, to $131.2 million. The ad declines were partially offset by continued growth in circulation revenues, due mainly to the success of NYTCO’s digital subscription strategy, with total circ revenues up 3% to $219.5 million....
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Nothing says "family" like pretending to love the terrible gifts your relatives have gotten you for the holidays.
That, at least, is the basic premise of a new 30-second Christmas ad from Heineken starring Benicio del Toro, and emphasizing that Heineken is, technically speaking, a family-owned business.
Part of Publicis Worldwide's new "There's more behind the star" campaign, it's the latest in a series of spots, launched earlier this year, featuring the A-list actor as a spokesman for the brewer, whose logo is, like him, a star....
If you're a marketer of any kind, this phrase is probably lurking somewhere in the back of your mind when you start a new project: "How do we make this brand really stand out?" The constant battle to differentiate a brand in a crowded playing field is challenging, and it's pushing some marketers to the extreme.We've rounded up 14 creative campaigns and promotions that rely on unconventional mediums to spread brand messaging to consumers. Check them out for some unique inspiration for your next big campaign....
This type of advertising is a little tricky to explain. Some of it’s funny. Some of it’s just strange. But you know it when you see it. And when it’s off the mark, it looks pretty bad. Here are a handful of winners from the past. Emerald Nuts, “Robert Goulet” Edeka, “Supergeil” Sprite, “Sublymonal” Some of the hallmarks of oddvertising can be seen in the following commercials. They often have a deadpan tone. Everyone is treating the alternative reality they live in as normal. Other important points are that the subject must be relevant to the brand and be appropriate for the target demographic. No Baby Boomer has ever jumped off the couch and yelled, “Grab my car keys! I need a bag of Skittles!” after seeing their commercial, “Sheep Boy.” However, Boomers are not the target audience. There are other broad generalities that can be made about oddvertising. Let’s break down a classic commercial from Old Spice, “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like,” featuring Isaiah Mustafa....
Ironically, Netflix, the viewing source that gave binge-watching its name, probably has less instances of binge-viewing than any top-10 cable network with stacked programming. I would think viewers spend more time every month watching “Modern Family” on USA, “Full House” on Nick at Nite, “Criminal Minds” on ION, and “South Park” on Comedy Central than they do watching any single series on Netflix (although Netflix in total probably has more instances of binge-viewing than all of them combined).
So what does this mean for advertisers?
It’s not just that people are continuing to watch these shows. Their audiences are extremely loyal, and often not that easy to reach elsewhere. For example, “Big Bang” on TBS reached only about 30% of all adults 25-54 last season, but was still the most-viewed scripted series on television among that demo. ION’s “Criminal Minds” only reached about 15% of all adults 25-54 during the same period, yet was the fourth most watched scripted series on television. That represents an extraordinary amount of repeated viewing to a single show among a small group of extremely loyal and attentive viewers....
Our industry faces a well-known duopoly, with Facebook and Google commanding an ever-increasing share of digital ad spend, both in the U.S. and globally. I recently dug into the data and forecasts available, to better quantify (for my own benefit and hopefully yours!) just how much Facebook and Google are eating digital.
Global ad spend, across all channels (digital, TV, print, radio, outdoor, etc.) is growing annually on average by 5.6 percent from 2015 to 2020, and will reach $674 Billion from $513 Billion in 2015.
The U.S. market will represent 35 percent of the global ad market, reaching $234 Billion by 2020 with a slightly slower growth rate compared to the global average, at 5.0 percent from 2015 to 2020. This is expected as rapidly developing markets in the East and a growing middle class represent new markets on which advertisers can focus.
45% Of U.S. Ad Spend Will Be Digital
33 percent of ad spend in the U.S. was digital last year and that is expected to reach 45 percent by 2020. In real numbers, that’s a $60-billion market growing to $105-billion, with a Compounded Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 11.9 percent.
The growth of digital is more than 2 times higher than the growth of the overall ad market, which represents a tremendous opportunity for digital businesses. More people are accessing content online and more advertisers are spending their budgets online. Will the rising tide lift all ships?...
The Interactive Advertising Bureau and Edison Research today are releasing new stats on how consumers listen to podcasts and respond to audio-based advertisements. The new report gives marketers a peek at sentiment about podcast advertising from a poll of roughly 1,000 listeners. More brands and media companies than ever are investing in podcasts, but they're not getting the same types of metrics about audio advertising that other types of digital ads provide—like clickthrough or view rates. While advertisers can see how many people download a podcast, they don't know how long people spend listening or whether they skip over the ads. Per the report, 65 percent of listeners said podcast ads increase purchase intent while another 45 percent said that they're likely to visit an advertiser's website after hearing an audio promo. Another 42 percent of listeners said they would consider a new product or service after hearing a plug for a brand, while 37 percent use podcast ads to help research brands. When it comes to how consumers listen to audio programs, 70 percent said that being able to listen to them on-demand is "very important," and 58 percent said they like being able to listen to exclusive content they can't get elsewhere....
The Interactive Advertising Bureau estimates malicious advertising ”malvertising” costs the U.S. digital marketing, advertising, and media industry $8.2 billion annually. A few years ago malvertising was merely scamming the system: fake ads, fake traffic, fake analytics. Ad tech is a hacker's heaven, an unregulated labyrinth of circumlocution systems for bidding, placing and tracking ads. "All the code is awful and you aren't allowed to change it anyway," says Salon developer Aram Zucker-Scharff. "Usually ad servers claim they run some sort of checks, but considering just how many malicious or badly formed ads get through, it is pretty apparent they don't do much." The hacker's goal is to bill, aka bilk, advertisers for ads no human ever saw. Their fraud takes several forms: Ad stacking piles multiple ads on top of each other. Ad stuffing shrinks ads to invisible 1-pixel squares. Click farms send fraud users to real sites. Clickjacking sends real users to fraud sites....
Tourism campaigns for Caribbean destinations often have a similar aesthetic—sandy beaches, honeymooning couples, frosty drinks by the pool. But the Belize Tourism Board and its agency, Olson, had enough of that. For its latest ad campaigns, the BTB focused on local experiences unique to Belize and making flying to the country easier. Three years ago, Olson started working with the BTB, launching "Discover How to Be," a campaign that showcased the country's culture and experiences you can have there. Olson and the BTB also worked with Southwest Airlines and WestJet Airlines to open up more routes and direct flights to Belize from the U.S. and Canada. The strategy worked—the campaign was responsible for increasing travel to Belize and boosting the country's GDP by 2.24 percent, according to the Central Bank of Belize.
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"We set rules from the beginning—no honeymooners, no frozen drinks, nobody getting a massage by the pool," said Kevin McKeon, chief creative officer at Olson. "We want to go for someone who's a little more ambitious about what they're looking for in a vacation. The takeaway is you're going to meet some fascinating people and come back with a story you didn't expect to have."
Its latest campaign, "A Curious Place," which launched this week, continues that theme. Videos feature a cacao farmer, a meat pie seller and "Coconut Leo," a Belizean who climbs trees upside down and cuts down coconuts.
The humans sprinkled throughout the Ikea catalog traditionally have been pure background material, a supporting cast to the furniture and other brand goods for sale. But no longer!
In this spot from DDB Brussels, they speak out, during the photo shoot for the new catalog, about their hopes and dreams, display their impressive thespian chops, and most of all, are thrilled to be poised on the cusp of what will surely be worldwide fame on the A-list level.
That end line nicely puts a bow on the whole video, which is in keeping with a lot of Ikea catalog marketing lately—jokey, self-aware and culturally smart, as seen most notably in the BookBook spot from BBH Singapore two years ago.
"The Ikea catalog is one of the most read books in the world. So it makes sense for the models to consider this their breakthrough moment. Their door opener to stardom," DDB says. "We listen in as they dream out loud of becoming household names in TV, modeling, acting and mentally preparing themselves for a life in the spotlight."...
Comic short films about the absurdity of the ad business have a proud history going back to Tim Hamilton's brilliant Truth in Advertising. Here's the latest one—director Tim Mason's No Other Way to Say It, about an amusingly bleak voiceover recording session for an ice-cream commercial. As the creative team tries to get the voiceover artist to nail the right tone for a single line, over and over—and the latter gets more and more distracted—the truth in advertising here becomes painfully clear: The project is mired in idiocy and inertia...
If you've lived or worked in a downtown as it came back from the brink of blight, you know that one bold business idea can be the tipping point. Whether it's a brewery based in an abandoned warehouse or a gourmet coffee shop that reclaimed an old fire station, these entrepreneurs can often offer a proof of concept and end up reversing decades of decline. Heineken captures this frequent reality in a new spot called "The Canvas," part of the international brewer's years-long push that promotes urban pride, creativity and revitalization.In the new spot (likely from Publicis, though we've reached out for agency and production credits), we see a trio of guys getting tossed out of a beer shop at closing time, only to find the rest of the neighborhood vacated....
Sometimes, it takes an entire village … to answer the telephone.
To wit: Tschlin, a bucolic community nestled in the majestic mountains of eastern Switzerland's Graubünden region, is famed for being so peaceful, so quiet, that when the phone rings in the village square, the whole population of 166 can hear it.
So, what could be better than a tourism campaign designed to shatter the alpine serenity by making that phone ring constantly, right?
Last month, Jung von Matt/Limmat staged a six-day promotion in Tschlin, inviting folks from far away to call the village-square telephone. Each time a resident failed to pick up, the caller would win a Graubünden vacation or other prizes....
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very useful tips for marketer