Tag: OMD
The 2019 DMEXCO expo and conference coincides with the pivotal journey of our clients taking more ownership of their ad tech and data echo system. One of our main objectives in DMEXCO will be to explore cutting edge solutions that will amplify our proprietary agency platforms and ultimately help our clients to accelerate their digital goals.
We predict that the big players will come out in full force to showcase their big data solutions in a post-GDPR and data privacy era. We’ve seen the big tech players (Facebook, Google and Apple) enforce heavy restrictions on cookies, 3rd party data, and individual user logs. We have also started to see a gradual reintroduction of solutions that previously benefited from these now restricted components, such as multi-touch attribution; re-emerge as GDPR friendly cleanroom solutions, such as Google Ads Data Hub and Amazon Marketing Cloud. We expect company delegates on the expo floor, as well as conference speakers, to give clarity on how they will adapt their support for a cookie-less world. We also predict that platform integration will be a big talking point, especially with data management platforms (DMP) and demand-side platforms (DSP) answering to how they will overcome the big players extending their walled gardens, resulting in making addressable data match rates more difficult to achieve.
Stay tuned to hear more from OMD EMEA throughout DMEXCO and look out for our post-event recap next week.
Twitter Linkedin Instagram
Hello and welcome to your weekly FWD.
With France crowned the winners of the FIFA World Cup after a nail biting tournament, we turn our attention from the pitch back to business. For Omnicom this means the launch of Omni – our marketing and insights platform. “Until now, the idea of mass personalisation was more of an aspiration than a reality – Omni changes that. This is precision marketing at scale and in action. And the new platform can be leveraged by all Omnicom clients across multiple disciplines.”
AI is also hot on everyone’s lips, as new research reveals that personal touch trumps AI in the workplace. Apparently, the majority of us would rather talk to a real person over a machine when it comes to workplace issues. If you’re looking to win a complex first-person multiplayer video game however – AI might be your ticket – and with children as young as one interacting with voice activation, it’s easy to see why we’re so taken with this tech.
HEADLINES
- One for all of us: Omnicom Media Group launches marketing and insights platform ‘Omni’
- Pinterest adds a chat tool for collaborative planning boards
- Experts say ICO’s fine to Facebook signals seriousness of its GDPR enforcement
INSIGHTS
COOL
DEEP READS
As always, please share anything you find interesting using #OMDFWD
Hello and welcome to your weekly FWD.
World Cup fever is still gripping the globe! Check out these brilliant marketing tactics and the campaigns that have scored on social media. Also remember to follow our OMD World Cup Social Tracker to stay afoot of all the action, trends and conversations!
Are you screaming at the television during a penalty shoot-out or celebrating a goal with a selfie? Well, Facebook is listening and watching! The tech giant has patented television listening technology and ‘emotion detecting’ selfie filters.
HEADLINES
INSIGHTS
COOL
DEEP READS
As always, please share anything you find interesting using #OMDFWD
Over the years at OMD EMEA, we have seen technology evolve drastically. Working with some of the largest brands in the world we have been fortunate to be at the forefront of technology, driving our clients through the ever-changing landscape. From the first ever out-of-home programmatic execution in Europe with Google’s real-time digital community noticeboard, to more recently the world’s first programmatically powered cinema. In the below post we take a look at our latest award-winning campaigns with technology and innovation at the heart.
Google showcase their community spirit with the first ever OOH programmatic campaign in Europe
For Google to launch their first OOH programmatic campaign, location was crucial. They selected Old Street, a world-leading technology hub, where they could easily influence their young progressive core audience. The roundabout was taken over by a large digital billboard, displaying real-time data feeds, with content for the local community to interact with via the Google app. Within six months of being live, four out of five people spontaneously recalled the activity, which led to an amazing 93% of people agreeing that they felt positively towards the Google brand!
OMD has also worked with the world’s leading technology giant to recently launch Android Pay’s first ever large-scale brand campaign, in a bid to drive Christmas sales. Working closely with the TFL network for ‘Taps’ and countless payments, they are using clever geo-targeting, audience behavioural data and capturing every moment to deliver the most relevant creative purchase.
Immersive theatre successfully launches pricey tech
Gaming has really taken off in the last few years as virtual reality has quite literally become more of a reality. When HTC first launched their VIVE VR system, the product was too pricey and therefore didn’t appeal to their targeted millennial audience. OMD’s specialist service unit Fuse, experts in partnerships and experiences, collaborated with Noma Labs and HTC to make the product more accessible by creating a fully immersive theatre production, ‘Virtually Dead’. The event was a massive success, selling out in both London and Paris within two weeks, the event exceeded trial KPIs by 91%.
Smurfs capture the hearts of their new digital followers
Having worked creatively with HTC’s technology to launch their product to the masses, we are now working with partners to create technology that is only just scratching the surface!
For the release of Sony Pictures’ Smurfs film, OMD partnered with Oath (AOL) and Unit9 to build an AR experience of the HoloLens, to excite their core target audience, previously only attracting adult fans of the franchise.
The experience itself was a gamified version of the movie in which users, led by Papa Smurf were encouraged to explore the world and unlock hidden content. It was tested countless times to ensure it ‘delighted’ children, exciting them with something they’d never experienced before and allowing them to immerse themselves in one of their favourite films.
Smurfs, “The Lost Village” was one of the biggest releases for Sony Pictures this year. We had incredible PR pick-up generating over 40m media impressions and behind the scenes content resulting in 20.8m impressions and 15.9 million video views.
Intel show off their creativity with a performance of a lifetime
Also within the world of entertainment, we worked with Intel, collaborating with Lady Gaga at the Grammys to produce an unforgettable, tech inspired experience dedicated to music legend David Bowie. This showcased Intel’s innovative technology through artist performance and fan experience. The end product surfaced as a visually stimulating performance by Gaga who controlled the stage effects in real time, thanks to Intel-powered facial scanning and video projecting technology.
Intel also managed to pull off a spectacular performance during the Super Bowl LI halftime show, where again, Lady Gaga was performing. They released a swarm of 300 Shooting Stars to form an American flag in the sky. Watch the behind the scenes video here!
Chatbots promote futuristic TV Series
One of the most significant technologies to recently surface and become more of a reality is Artificial Intelligence. As we now have the data and technology in place, there is a huge opportunity for brands to be innovative over the next few years. OMD was recently recognised for the second year in succession at the Cannes Lions festival, for their work with Channel 4. To launch the second series of Humans last year they created a Facebook Messenger chatbot to answer viewers’ questions, built on the computer conversation service PullString. The series is all about synthetic humans, so the technology was very fitting. Series 2 went on to become Channel 4’s best returning original drama for five years- check out full details of the campaign here.
With a significant leap in technology over the last few years, we are at a time where innovation can accelerate rapidly for most brands. At OMD, we are always striving to take our clients into unknown territory to push the boundaries of what’s possible. As some technologies are only just surfacing, it’s a great time for brands to capitalise and really make an impact!
With programmatic, emerging tech and artificial intelligence increasingly prominent in brand marketing strategies, we look forward to working with our clients to uncover the next big thing in 2018.
For more information about OMD or any of the campaigns mentioned, please contact us at [email protected]
In a rather classy venue, ironically nestled under a railway bridge close to London’s Borough market, during Social Media Week (Sept 11-15), I went along to discover how major brands, publishers and agencies are working to reinvent storytelling and how they plan to deal with ever-changing modern consumption habits.
A diverse panel helped jumpstart discussions. Luisa Mauro from LADbible-owned site, Pretty 52, sat alongside Charles Ubaghs from Global, and OMD UK’s XMP digital manager Charles McNeill, armed with a media perspective and case studies from arguably the greatest storyteller of all, Walt Disney himself.
I went to quite a few talks this year at SMW (to the dislike of my liver but the benefit of my brain) and above all else retained two clear points. which were echoed by nearly all of those presenting; that of personalized experiences and ensuring your audiences was the right ones. Unsurprisingly, these two points formed the backbone of the talk and some of the guiding principles that kept coming up during the week.
Don’t talk to the masses – get up close and personal.
Millennials and Gen-Zers came up in conversation – as these buzzword age groups always seem to – and highlighted the need to address the boom in mobile consumption and the many mediums that younger audiences use. The new screen is the mobile screen and it’s key for brands to stop employing old TVC habits of marketing and embrace mobile-ready content campaigns. It’s by using new social media and tech platforms in creative and out of the box ways to deliver content, says Ubaghs, that will help keep storytelling at the heart of digital content and maintain that coveted essence of authenticity that brands seem to all want.
We’ve been hearing this from Facebook too: best practice recommendations suggest that the effectiveness and resonance of content is largely dependent on whether the content is optimized for social media or not. Largely, brands that are still opening up to being more present on social media need to ensure that they don’t simply slap a traditional, long format TVC on their social channels and instead re-edit and re-cut content to suit the social platform they are deploying their content on.
McNeill also says that it’s essential that content is digested by the right audiences, and that different KPIs are associated with each group – this seems to be particularly valuable to the Walt Disney Company. At the heart of his talk was the importance of custom campaigns for each audience, thereby allowing the story to flow as naturally as possible.
Storytelling is an integral part of the work that we at OMD Create, a specialist social and content arm, undertake for The Walt Disney Company. Leading on social analytics across 26 markets with more than 17-million combined fans, we have huge volumes of content we report on and help develop in conjunction with Disney. Moreover, we operate within the vast Kid’s Entertainment space which this year to date has generated more than 15-billion views alone. What we find across multiple content themes is that telling a story is as every bit relevant to an unboxing video as it is to a song compilation; this is how we captivate our audiences and ensure they always come back for more.
Talk with your audience, not to them.
As marketers, we sometimes get too focused on driving results and forget about the consumers we’re trying to impact. a human audience that’s not focused on CPC metric but about how a brand makes them feel and what a brand can do for them. McNeill adds that we need to ensure we know what content has already been served to our custom audiences – have they previously re-engaged with our stories and if so, to what extent does this dampen their opinion of us? We strive at OMD Create to do exactly this, by keeping our partners such as Facebook close to us when working on the optimization of campaigns to keep our metrics close, and our audiences closer.
What all panelists did solidly agree on was on the primary way of measuring how successful their storytelling has been. Their golden metric as described by the moderator was shares. Why? In the eyes of the panelists, people sharing content was synonymous to putting their name on it, to regarding it as something worthy of their own friends and audience and something that has generated enough interest to spark conversation.
So what about the future? It’s a space that marketers can win in if agencies are able to help their clients tell stories while using insights to help guide content. Also if they are able to ensure that this content is customized to suit the audiences they are trying to reach while at the same time embracing ever-changing technology. The only limitations lie within ourselves, whether we dare experiment with the tools and process we have in place.
We’re not always going to win, but we won’t lose by keeping on our toes.
For more information regarding OMD EMEA or anything you’ve read here please contact us at [email protected]
In a rather classy venue, ironically nestled under a railway bridge close to London’s Borough market, during Social Media Week (Sept 11-15), I went along to discover how major brands, publishers and agencies are working to reinvent storytelling and how they plan to deal with ever-changing modern consumption habits.
A diverse panel helped jumpstart discussions. Luisa Mauro from LADbible-owned site, Pretty 52, sat alongside Charles Ubaghs from Global, and OMD UK’s XMP digital manager Charles McNeill, armed with a media perspective and case studies from arguably the greatest storyteller of all, Walt Disney himself.
I went to quite a few talks this year at SMW (to the dislike of my liver but the benefit of my brain) and above all else retained two clear points. which were echoed by nearly all of those presenting; that of personalized experiences and ensuring your audiences was the right ones. Unsurprisingly, these two points formed the backbone of the talk and some of the guiding principles that kept coming up during the week.
Don’t talk to the masses – get up close and personal.
Millennials and Gen-Zers came up in conversation – as these buzzword age groups always seem to – and highlighted the need to address the boom in mobile consumption and the many mediums that younger audiences use. The new screen is the mobile screen and it’s key for brands to stop employing old TVC habits of marketing and embrace mobile-ready content campaigns. It’s by using new social media and tech platforms in creative and out of the box ways to deliver content, says Ubaghs, that will help keep storytelling at the heart of digital content and maintain that coveted essence of authenticity that brands seem to all want.
We’ve been hearing this from Facebook too: best practice recommendations suggest that the effectiveness and resonance of content is largely dependent on whether the content is optimized for social media or not. Largely, brands that are still opening up to being more present on social media need to ensure that they don’t simply slap a traditional, long format TVC on their social channels and instead re-edit and re-cut content to suit the social platform they are deploying their content on.
McNeill also says that it’s essential that content is digested by the right audiences, and that different KPIs are associated with each group – this seems to be particularly valuable to the Walt Disney Company. At the heart of his talk was the importance of custom campaigns for each audience, thereby allowing the story to flow as naturally as possible.
Storytelling is an integral part of the work that we at OMD Create, a specialist social and content arm, undertake for The Walt Disney Company. Leading on social analytics across 26 markets with more than 17-million combined fans, we have huge volumes of content we report on and help develop in conjunction with Disney. Moreover, we operate within the vast Kid’s Entertainment space which this year to date has generated more than 15-billion views alone. What we find across multiple content themes is that telling a story is as every bit relevant to an unboxing video as it is to a song compilation; this is how we captivate our audiences and ensure they always come back for more.
Talk with your audience, not to them.
As marketers, we sometimes get too focused on driving results and forget about the consumers we’re trying to impact. a human audience that’s not focused on CPC metric but about how a brand makes them feel and what a brand can do for them. McNeill adds that we need to ensure we know what content has already been served to our custom audiences – have they previously re-engaged with our stories and if so, to what extent does this dampen their opinion of us? We strive at OMD Create to do exactly this, by keeping our partners such as Facebook close to us when working on the optimization of campaigns to keep our metrics close, and our audiences closer.
What all panelists did solidly agree on was on the primary way of measuring how successful their storytelling has been. Their golden metric as described by the moderator was shares. Why? In the eyes of the panelists, people sharing content was synonymous to putting their name on it, to regarding it as something worthy of their own friends and audience and something that has generated enough interest to spark conversation.
So what about the future? It’s a space that marketers can win in if agencies are able to help their clients tell stories while using insights to help guide content. Also if they are able to ensure that this content is customized to suit the audiences they are trying to reach while at the same time embracing ever-changing technology. The only limitations lie within ourselves, whether we dare experiment with the tools and process we have in place.
We’re not always going to win, but we won’t lose by keeping on our toes.
For more information regarding OMD EMEA or anything you’ve read here please contact us at [email protected]
As dmexco 2017 comes to a close, and the dust somewhat settles after the largest conference to date (over 1,100 companies, and 55,000 people were in attendance), we take a look back on some of the more pertinent points being discussed throughout the event.
Location, Location, Location
One immediate point of interest lies in the old adage of “location, location, location”. Thankfully for those of us there from OMD EMEA, traversing our way through the hundreds of stands was made easier by Omnicom Media Group being situated at the very centre of Hall 6, within which were the world’s largest digital companies from all aspects of the ad supply chain – from Facebook to Google, Adobe to Salesforce.
Beyond the location of OMG’s stand, it was also interesting to note the lack of focus on location as an important consumer data point throughout the talks given within the Speaking Halls – despite many of the digital partners focusing on this important area in our one-to-ones. Where real-time marketing and consumer centricity rely on a thorough understanding of real-world human action and interaction throughout the marketing funnel, our vendor partners are being challenged to help address its place within our transformation strategies, along with the accuracy of the data collected and their privacy compliance.
This then brings us on to the critical area of GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) compliance for the year ahead. Many of the companies in attendance will be impacted by the upcoming EU legislation and yet few seemed to be addressing it upfront. Clearly, GDPR isn’t a sexy topic to be flashing across the façade of your $60,000 stand, and the fact that GDPR may in fact devalue the product of some of these companies by reducing the availability of the data within it could be enough to silence many. Within the OMG stand, Graham Swallow (Director, Consulting at Annalect EMEA) was overheard discussing the implications of GDPR with his guests and we would certainly encourage our clients who weren’t in attendance with us to reach out to Annalect to discuss this further.
Effective consumer communication
When looking at location from a viewpoint of being in the right place at the right time, many companies in attendance believed they had an Artificial Intelligence solution to aid in effective consumer communication. As Suresh Vittal Kotha (VP of Platform and Products at Adobe) discussed in his talk titled “AI – The Hidden Super Power Driving the Experience Business” no matter what business you’re in or product you’re selling, your consumers care about their experiences with you. These experiences must appeal to each individual, and as a business these experiences can only be personalised if the business transforms themselves to be adaptive and responsive. Elizabeth Buchanan – OMD’s Worldwide President of Global Transformation – put this succinctly in her catch up during her ‘DMEXCO:TALK’ session by saying that the top skill required of all transformation leaders of tomorrow will be that of ‘listening’. That listening skill enables brands and businesses to develop that adaptive and responsive mind set by taking a step back and listening to the consumer, listening to the data and listening to the insights.
Artificial Intelligence has the ability to empower marketers in real-time, if and when they have transformed themselves to become adaptive and responsive. Within Adobe, Suresh discussed four core competencies of an experience business, which enables marketers to “master the millisecond when the experience happens”:
Context – Where mass data, analysed at scale can provide actionable insights on consumers
Design for Speed and Scale – The utilisation of AI to develop effective dynamic messaging, powered by Context
Cross-device Interaction – Where AI allows marketers to test hypotheses within their attribution models
Consumer Centricity – Putting the customer first. AI can act as a catalyst to break down the silos within organisations by unifying data – delivering an internal streamlined mindset with a focus on digital transformation.
Clearly, with over 1,000 companies in attendance, and over 200 talks, debates and speeches throughout the event, there’s too much information to distill into one short blog post. However, we would highly recommend watching through some of the talks on the dmexco website. And of course, check out or video round-up of the event, where we speak to some of OMD EMEA’s key partners – such as Facebook, Oath and Integral Ad Science, where they discuss what the digital transformation means for them and their companies.
For more information about OMD or anything we uncovered at dmexco please contact emea.omd.com
It’s not a rare sight to see me power-walking through rain in London – like a real Londoner, no less – no umbrella. In fact, it’s a regular thing for most Londoners: eyes forward, head down, rain coat cinched for the daily post-work beeline trip home. Yet, for social media marketers this past rainy Monday it was an ironic chance to pop out of the office and over to co-working space Rainmaking Loft to get to know some influencer marketing masters.
Social Media Week London, 2017
Social Media Week (Sept 11-15) kicked off with a slew of events to help inspire new campaigns and bring the world’s greatest marketing minds together. The panel talk hosted influencer marketing platform company Takumi – a company that’s motto quite literally tells its star-studded roster of micro influencers to post whatever they want.
Top influencer marketing experts including moderator and creative consultant Ian Sanders, MEC Wavemaker senior planner Tom Cornish, OMD UK’s social director Katie Hunter, Shake Shack social media manager Georgia Beaven, Pernod Ricard senior social manager Sunni Peterson and lifestyle influencer Ornella Kolle (@orneiineii).
The focus of the talk was about transparency between influencers and their audiences and trust building between influencers and the brand they work for. Brands and agencies are often at odds with how to craft this relationship that give influencers complete control over their content or micro-manage the results. It’s a fine, bespoke balance between strategizing the approach and managing the results while letting great content happen in an organic way.
“The key is to treat each campaign on a one time basis. Each one is different. Each one will be different for your brand and it’s important to remember that when looking at your engagement,” says Hunter.
A new method of influencer management.
It’s a more relaxed approach than many marketers are used to let alone ready for. The fight between gut instinct (appeal) and user data is ongoing. As marketers learn that likes, views and shares are sometimes best encouraged by authentic content, the relationship between brands and the influencers they commission continue to change. It’s all about that magic buzzword: authenticity. And really what that means is a new method of influencer management. It’s certainly not without the structure we come to know and rely on (a detailed brief, clear timelines and budgets). It’s more about brands letting go of the creative micro-managing and learning to trust the creatives they’re tapping into.
It reminds me of some of the influencer work that my team at OMD Create, OMD EMEA’s internal creative hub, has worked on with DKNY combining the storytelling and insights to produce social media content on Instagram that’s rooted in cultural trends while at the same time proactive and reactive to consumer interest.
As brands continue to try to be closer to the people they market to, experts encourage them to open their minds to a more human approach to marketing. And while success measuring is important, Katie Hunter suggests that a bespoke approach is key to making sure brands are approaching their campaigns in an intuitive, clever way. Sure, working with influencers can be pricey for brands but there’s also a way to amplify those authentic, influencer voices without having to crack out a big budget.
“The idea of round tables, and one-to-one relationships help you bring in micro-influencers in a cost effective and approachable way,” says Hunter. “You can be clever while at the same time tap into the right audience.”
Clever marketing is all about using the right influencers.
Examples of bad marketing were underlined by celebrity #ad posts by Naomi Campbell and Scott Disick for their wildly viral sponsored posts that went wrong. It’s a warning call for marketers and a reminder that big names don’t equal big ROI. And as a result, micro-influencers is becoming a big buzzword and perhaps the answer to an over saturated influencer marketing pool. The need for brands to work harder and have a more authentic reach and feel to help attract the consumers they are looking for is bigger than ever before.
It was great to get a first-hand influencer perspective as well. Ornella Kolle shared that she tries to make sure that her content makes sense for her, for the brand and especially for her future followers. They appreciate respect for their authentic vision without being told to have overly branded product flatlays: content that’s still artistic and speaks to what the brand wants to give its customers “while still being subtle and beautiful without over the top packaging,” says Kolle.
And isn’t that the basis of artful storytelling?
Here are 5 tips for excellent influencer marketing to take away:
1) Look at customer (discover your brand’s cultural tribes)
2) Employ an always on strategy
3) Look at your amplification plan
4) Trust the influencer and their creativity
5) Understand your audience and appreciate the community your influencer is helping you tap into
It’s not a rare sight to see me power-walking through rain in London – like a real Londoner, no less – no umbrella. In fact, it’s a regular thing for most Londoners: eyes forward, head down, rain coat cinched for the daily post-work beeline trip home. Yet, for social media marketers this past rainy Monday it was an ironic chance to pop out of the office and over to co-working space Rainmaking Loft to get to know some influencer marketing masters.
Social Media Week London, 2017
Social Media Week (Sept 11-15) kicked off with a slew of events to help inspire new campaigns and bring the world’s greatest marketing minds together. The panel talk hosted influencer marketing platform company Takumi – a company that’s motto quite literally tells its star-studded roster of micro influencers to post whatever they want.
Top influencer marketing experts including moderator and creative consultant Ian Sanders, MEC Wavemaker senior planner Tom Cornish, OMD UK’s social director Katie Hunter, Shake Shack social media manager Georgia Beaven, Pernod Ricard senior social manager Sunni Peterson and lifestyle influencer Ornella Kolle (@orneiineii).
The focus of the talk was about transparency between influencers and their audiences and trust building between influencers and the brand they work for. Brands and agencies are often at odds with how to craft this relationship that give influencers complete control over their content or micro-manage the results. It’s a fine, bespoke balance between strategizing the approach and managing the results while letting great content happen in an organic way.
“The key is to treat each campaign on a one time basis. Each one is different. Each one will be different for your brand and it’s important to remember that when looking at your engagement,” says Hunter.
A new method of influencer management.
It’s a more relaxed approach than many marketers are used to let alone ready for. The fight between gut instinct (appeal) and user data is ongoing. As marketers learn that likes, views and shares are sometimes best encouraged by authentic content, the relationship between brands and the influencers they commission continue to change. It’s all about that magic buzzword: authenticity. And really what that means is a new method of influencer management. It’s certainly not without the structure we come to know and rely on (a detailed brief, clear timelines and budgets). It’s more about brands letting go of the creative micro-managing and learning to trust the creatives they’re tapping into.
It reminds me of some of the influencer work that my team at OMD Create, OMD EMEA’s internal creative hub, has worked on with DKNY combining the storytelling and insights to produce social media content on Instagram that’s rooted in cultural trends while at the same time proactive and reactive to consumer interest.
As brands continue to try to be closer to the people they market to, experts encourage them to open their minds to a more human approach to marketing. And while success measuring is important, Katie Hunter suggests that a bespoke approach is key to making sure brands are approaching their campaigns in an intuitive, clever way. Sure, working with influencers can be pricey for brands but there’s also a way to amplify those authentic, influencer voices without having to crack out a big budget.
“The idea of round tables, and one-to-one relationships help you bring in micro-influencers in a cost effective and approachable way,” says Hunter. “You can be clever while at the same time tap into the right audience.”
Clever marketing is all about using the right influencers.
Examples of bad marketing were underlined by celebrity #ad posts by Naomi Campbell and Scott Disick for their wildly viral sponsored posts that went wrong. It’s a warning call for marketers and a reminder that big names don’t equal big ROI. And as a result, micro-influencers is becoming a big buzzword and perhaps the answer to an over saturated influencer marketing pool. The need for brands to work harder and have a more authentic reach and feel to help attract the consumers they are looking for is bigger than ever before.
It was great to get a first-hand influencer perspective as well. Ornella Kolle shared that she tries to make sure that her content makes sense for her, for the brand and especially for her future followers. They appreciate respect for their authentic vision without being told to have overly branded product flatlays: content that’s still artistic and speaks to what the brand wants to give its customers “while still being subtle and beautiful without over the top packaging,” says Kolle.
And isn’t that the basis of artful storytelling?
Here are 5 tips for excellent influencer marketing to take away:
1) Look at customer (discover your brand’s cultural tribes)
2) Employ an always on strategy
3) Look at your amplification plan
4) Trust the influencer and their creativity
5) Understand your audience and appreciate the community your influencer is helping you tap into
How we buy things is becoming more polarised: on one hand, you have demand for shopping to be as easy, as effortless, as frictionless as possible. On the other hand, customers desire an experience that is as memorable and as enjoyable as possible. This is nothing new – we’ve always been delighted by buying things one day and the next, want to get in and out of a store as fast as possible. But technology is both shaping, and sharpening, this dichotomy and as progressive communications planners, we have to adapt.
We need to make buying as easy as possible.
Byron Sharp, Author of “How Brands Grow” and Professor of Marketing Science at the University of South Australia, thinks so – in fact, he boils the entire job of marketing down to just that. This might be due to the fact that our brains are hardwired to take the easy route, as Nobel-winning behavioural economist Daniel Kahneman describes: “Humans are to thinking, as cats are to swimming,” he says, “We can do it when we have to, but we’d much prefer not to”.
Amazon knows the cost of friction. They’ve calculated that a page load delay of just one second would cost $1.6 billion in sales a year. This learning has been taken to the very heart of the business. From a Dash button on your washing machine, through voice purchasing on Echo to Amazon Go, to their bricks’n’mortar store concept with no checkouts and no queues – every investment made helps customers buy quicker and easier. If you listen to commentators such as Scott Galloway, Founder, L2; Clinical Professor of Marketing, NYU Stern, this could be a big threat for your brand – why will consumers want to think about choosing your brand when Alexa can do it for them?
Ease can also speak volumes about a brand.
Look at Domino’s, who geared its entire turnaround on making it as easy as possible to order a pizza. In the past, you had to find the number, dial, wait, order, order louder, and cross your fingers in hopes they got the right address. You can now order on every platform imaginable – from text, to voice, to Echo, to a connected car. Even with an emoji! You don’t even need to click – simply open the app and you can now automatically order your favourite pizza.
Of course, examples like these are absolutely changing what consumers expect from brands. Uber, an OMD client, calculated that when the service launches in a city, expectations on how long travellers are prepared to wait for a cab drops by a third.
So brands can’t sit still. They have to ask themselves: how can I make this as easy as possible to buy? Where is the friction in the purchase? How can technology help remove it?
But ease is just one side of the retail coin. In a world of one-hour drone deliveries, sometimes people still want to go shopping.
John Lewis, a long-standing Manning Gottlieb OMD client and Britain’s best-loved retailer, knows this. We plan according to four shopper “missions” and the easiest to observe in-store is “entertain and inspire me”. In this mind-set we seek to surprise and delight customers throughout the purchase journey, adding unique touches and creating memorable moments.
Communications provide a key aperture to enhance this experience…Meet Monty. A few years ago he starred in John Lewis’ Christmas ad, telling the story of a young boy who dreams about his toy penguin coming to life. We were inspired to make this happen for real in John Lewis stores. We created “Monty’s Magical Toy Machine”, which took a 3-D scan of a child’s most loved toy and brought it to life digitally, allowing the delighted child to dance and play with it.
But retail experiences don’t just live at point of purchase – take Lego for example. Knowing that sharing the wacky and wonderful things you create is half the fun, it created Lego Life, a social network designed specifically for kids under 13, allowing them to delight in sharing their real-world Lego creations in a safe environment online.
So, make it as easy as possible to buy, but don’t forget consumers love of unique experiences. When are customers looking to be entertained? How can you create magical moments of surprise and delight in the purchase process? Balancing ease and experience may just be the key to success.
Originally published on Omnicom Media Group’s Media Pulse