Tag: storytelling
Hello and welcome to your weekly FWD. Last week over 70,000 people including OMDers descended on Austin, Texas for SXSW. Celebrating the convergence of the interactive, film and music industries, fostering creative and professional growth; we bring you extensive coverage from the front-lines. On the OMD EMEA blog you can find downloads from OMD’s Chrissie Hanson and Mark Murray Jones, including daily recaps discussing everything from voiceprints and storytelling to neuroscience and AI. OMD USA’s Doug Rozen and Dario Raciti also took to the stage to discuss the future of entertainment brands and unlocking the potential of VR.
If that wasn’t enough to whet your SXSW appetite, here is a round-up of some of the coolest experiential events at SXSW and more on the blockchain revolution that swept through Austin.
HEADLINES
- On April 3rd Spotify will begin trading on the New York Stock Exchange, as it tests native voice search and its self-serve ad platform in the UK
- YouTube is going to add information from Wikipedia to videos and adds Search based targeting to its Google Preferred offering
- This Summer Facebook is launching a dedicated News section for Watch
INSIGHTS
COOL
- PGA Tour launched a new augmented reality app for golf fans
- Knorr is using your Instagram posts to deliver personalised recipes with its “Eat Your Feed” tool
- Watch JFK’s final speech brought to life through the power of AI
DEEP READS
- How Facebook’s Augmented Reality offering improved
- The BBC takes a fresh look at its Instagram approach, posting less frequently and more relevantly to increase its numbers
- How Amazon transformed from a 20% drop in shares in 2014, to becoming 4th most valuable company in 2018
As always, please share anything you find interesting using #OMDFWD!
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]
With Article 50 about to be called any minute now everyone in the UK is understandably uncertain about what the commercial future holds. But one thing that seems to be certain is that the luxury sector is experiencing quite a bonanza year so far as a consequence of the falling pound.
Just before Christmas, London’s Oxford Street was crowded with overseas visitors who appeared to be buying up the town as inbound tourism, principally from USA, China & Japan continued to surge. Tourist spending in UK stores increased considerably over the festive season clocking in at over £24 billion in visitor spending!
The falling pound
Let’s face the facts – luxury handbags, fashion apparel, eyewear and watches are all now cheaper here in the UK with their relative affordability making this market the top destination in the world for luxury shopping. OMD’s research further shows that roughly 65% of luxury products are currently selling for less in Britain than in the US, China, Japan and France, making it easier for inbound shoppers to offset the cost of their airfare against these bumper savings!
Seducing the Chinese traveller
Despite growing talk of China moving to a more national consumption economy, Chinese male millionaires still prefer Burberry & Chanel to top Chinese brands and love the shopping experience at Harrods, which has been acclaimed as the Best London Luxury Shopping Destination for the fourth consecutive year. The fact that they have hired over 100 Chinese interpreters to offer excellent and often personalised customer service to visitors is obviously a strategy that seems to be paying off! As high-paying customers who are used to the browsing and purchasing standards of WeChat & AliPay, the Chinese luxury shopper expects the very best service, including a choice of payment options, online chat assistance pre & post purchase and delivery within 1-2 days if not immediately.
An estimated 133 million Chinese outbound travellers will spend a forecasted $322 billion in 2017 and the UK wants to ensure it gets its fair share. The secret of success here appears to be getting in earlier on the shopping consideration journey and fully leveraging the research phase via social media and messaging apps to ensure you create the right list of ‘must have’ brands to buy before you set off travelling.
Duty-free has become a luxury shopper ‘destination’ in its own right
The global duty-free market is expected to grow to $64 billion by 2020, driven by a combination of low-cost tourism and increased demand for high-end brands, particularly from Asia-Pacific. With increasing numbers of High Net Worth individuals passing through airport terminals, luxury houses have realised the importance of producing items specifically for the duty-free market only which cannot be found on the High Street. Spending 50% of my life dashing through airports myself, I can understand first-hand the importance of squeezing in that luxury purchase as a critical moment of self-gifting to reward a few days of hard slog. Why not? We are worth it!
London Heathrow’s head of e-business and CRM, Simon Chatfield, recently said that when travellers describe what’s important to them at airports, retail is one of the highest priorities after punctuality and safety. Heathrow is also increasingly leveraging its own data sources from car park bookings to terminal Wi-Fi connections to help them hone their strategy around the profile and specific needs of the millions of different people who pass through their doors every day.
In 2014 Heathrow started their personal shopping service and over one million passengers have actually used the service to date. They also have approximately 25 personal stylists who speak over 14 languages to try and boost that special pre-flight luxury purchase. The recently installed social networking mirror at Terminal 5, inspiring friends to be part of the purchase decision, will undoubtedly also help protect Heathrow’s reputation for being the World’s Best Airport for Shopping.
A fresh approach
Global economic shifts and technological disruption are clearly redefining the rules of luxury marketing. It has never been more challenging to design a path to success and link the power of brand storytelling to the commercial importance of ‘getting that sale’. The power of video is now undeniable and some of OMD’s recent work with Tubular Labs has highlighted the fact that there is a growing consumer desire to get ‘behind the scenes’ of the once rarefied world of luxury – increasing its overall accessibility but without destroying the allure of scarcity.
We are playing a huge part in challenging our global luxury clients to ‘change the marketing model’ to better align with a new breed of influencers and brand evangelists. The Instagram generation are clearly luxury ‘owners in waiting’ and are dictating exactly how they want to search, browse and buy. Satisfying their needs will undoubtedly secure a bumper sales year for luxury in the UK and beyond.
Originally published by Luxury Daily.
With Article 50 about to be called any minute now everyone in the UK is understandably uncertain about what the commercial future holds. But one thing that seems to be certain is that the luxury sector is experiencing quite a bonanza year so far as a consequence of the falling pound.
Just before Christmas, London’s Oxford Street was crowded with overseas visitors who appeared to be buying up the town as inbound tourism, principally from USA, China & Japan continued to surge. Tourist spending in UK stores increased considerably over the festive season clocking in at over £24 billion in visitor spending!
The falling pound
Let’s face the facts – luxury handbags, fashion apparel, eyewear and watches are all now cheaper here in the UK with their relative affordability making this market the top destination in the world for luxury shopping. OMD’s research further shows that roughly 65% of luxury products are currently selling for less in Britain than in the US, China, Japan and France, making it easier for inbound shoppers to offset the cost of their airfare against these bumper savings!
Seducing the Chinese traveller
Despite growing talk of China moving to a more national consumption economy, Chinese male millionaires still prefer Burberry & Chanel to top Chinese brands and love the shopping experience at Harrods, which has been acclaimed as the Best London Luxury Shopping Destination for the fourth consecutive year. The fact that they have hired over 100 Chinese interpreters to offer excellent and often personalised customer service to visitors is obviously a strategy that seems to be paying off! As high-paying customers who are used to the browsing and purchasing standards of WeChat & AliPay, the Chinese luxury shopper expects the very best service, including a choice of payment options, online chat assistance pre & post purchase and delivery within 1-2 days if not immediately.
An estimated 133 million Chinese outbound travellers will spend a forecasted $322 billion in 2017 and the UK wants to ensure it gets its fair share. The secret of success here appears to be getting in earlier on the shopping consideration journey and fully leveraging the research phase via social media and messaging apps to ensure you create the right list of ‘must have’ brands to buy before you set off travelling.
Duty-free has become a luxury shopper ‘destination’ in its own right
The global duty-free market is expected to grow to $64 billion by 2020, driven by a combination of low-cost tourism and increased demand for high-end brands, particularly from Asia-Pacific. With increasing numbers of High Net Worth individuals passing through airport terminals, luxury houses have realised the importance of producing items specifically for the duty-free market only which cannot be found on the High Street. Spending 50% of my life dashing through airports myself, I can understand first-hand the importance of squeezing in that luxury purchase as a critical moment of self-gifting to reward a few days of hard slog. Why not? We are worth it!
London Heathrow’s head of e-business and CRM, Simon Chatfield, recently said that when travellers describe what’s important to them at airports, retail is one of the highest priorities after punctuality and safety. Heathrow is also increasingly leveraging its own data sources from car park bookings to terminal Wi-Fi connections to help them hone their strategy around the profile and specific needs of the millions of different people who pass through their doors every day.
In 2014 Heathrow started their personal shopping service and over one million passengers have actually used the service to date. They also have approximately 25 personal stylists who speak over 14 languages to try and boost that special pre-flight luxury purchase. The recently installed social networking mirror at Terminal 5, inspiring friends to be part of the purchase decision, will undoubtedly also help protect Heathrow’s reputation for being the World’s Best Airport for Shopping.
A fresh approach
Global economic shifts and technological disruption are clearly redefining the rules of luxury marketing. It has never been more challenging to design a path to success and link the power of brand storytelling to the commercial importance of ‘getting that sale’. The power of video is now undeniable and some of OMD’s recent work with Tubular Labs has highlighted the fact that there is a growing consumer desire to get ‘behind the scenes’ of the once rarefied world of luxury – increasing its overall accessibility but without destroying the allure of scarcity.
We are playing a huge part in challenging our global luxury clients to ‘change the marketing model’ to better align with a new breed of influencers and brand evangelists. The Instagram generation are clearly luxury ‘owners in waiting’ and are dictating exactly how they want to search, browse and buy. Satisfying their needs will undoubtedly secure a bumper sales year for luxury in the UK and beyond.
Originally published by Luxury Daily.
Walking through Eureka Park at CES is like stepping through the collective mind of invention. The Park specialises in startups, providing them with a unique platform to launch a new product, service, or idea. It offers an exhilarating glimpse into the future, and as a visitor you know you may be witnessing the birth of what could be one of the most important innovations of the future. But the skill is in sensing and sorting the brilliant from the baffling, no mean feat when new products and ideas are at their most awkward, confusing, yet hopeful stage of development.
As the OMD Ignition Factory (OMD USA’s Innovation unit) guided us on our curated tour through the halls filled with holograms, robots, hearables (yes, that’s right, the latest word coined to describe smart headphones), and the connected home, I wondered how I could distill the most pertinent and meaningful points for our clients. What was the story that I was going to share with them so as to create useful insights and implications for their businesses? And then it dawned on me; storytelling through the senses. Eureka!
SIGHT: See it, Scan it, Stream it
One of the exhibitors that stopped us in our tracks was bellus3D, the high-resolution 3D face scanner. In just 20 seconds, your mobile phone can create a 3D image of your face which you can then share virtually with the world. The application for gaming is obvious; you can have the real you as your avatar. But you can also extend this capability into broader digital storytelling by giving people the opportunity to place themselves within content and be part of a brand’s narrative. Now that’s an interesting direction for the personalization of content strategy.
For the beauty industry, there’s the opportunity to use your 3D image within virtual make-up applications. Moreover, with the high-resolution imaging that shows every pore and wrinkle, therapists will now be able to offer virtual skincare guidance. Oh, and did I mention that you can even 3D print your own face? It sounds odd, doesn’t it? But imagine walking into an optician’s and being able to put your next pair of sunglasses on your face, look at yourself head on rather than through a mirror. That’s a practical innovation in my books.
Switching our attention to how we create and view content, hubbl offers hardware based, real-time VR streaming over broadband internet via your phone. At $1,000 a pop for a headset, you can deliver 4K-enabled personal broadcasts with ease and simplicity. That’s a phenomenal democratisation of content production because all you need is power and good infrastructure. Imagine how it could be used for meetings and smaller productions, giving a different perspective to live shows. It would offer a greater level of reality and intimacy, adding richness and authenticity to a brand’s story.
SOUND: Hear it clearer and sharper than ever before
Harnessing the power of sound is a theme that’s getting louder as we hurtle towards a voice-activated world and brands grapple with their sound strategy. After all, you can tell Alexa to turn down the volume on your smart earbuds or turn on the dishwasher because your hands are full feeding your toddler. Beyond the practical uses of voice activation, there’s also the romance of sound. The impact that music and human voices have upon our desires and emotions is something all of us know and feel.
Waveion loudspeaker claim to have solved the problem of sound distortion. These floor mounted speakers contain technology that removes the need for a membrane and by delivering a pulsating air shaft, the sound is distributed evenly and uniformly, which is key for audiophiles. There are devices like AIVIA, the voice activated, Google assisted, personal home speaker that allow you to stream content to a single media hub. When you consider the investments that people make into their home entertainment systems and the heightened expectation around sound quality, brands should give real consideration to their sonic architecture and determine the voices, music, and sonic triggers that comprise their brand identity.
TOUCH: Feel the connections
An over-arching CES theme this year is that of connection; how to connect everything in a way that delivers utility and comfort, rather than merely novelty. One of the most interesting, entertaining, and dominating entrants were the robots. There’s Buddy, the cute companion robot who can recognise facial expressions and be controlled by your mobile phone so you can check in on your children when you’re at work, stay connected to your elderly parents, or turn off your lights when you’re on a business trip. There’s UBtech’s Lynx, the humanoid robot which can teach your kids football (or soccer), or guide you through a yoga session whilst playing you soothing music throughout, thanks to the integration with Amazon’s Alexa Voice Service. The infusion of emotional attributes to tech has made it far more palatable and with price points as low as US$749, you know this is going to be popular.
Smart wearables and, more specifically, sporting garments received a lot of attention for it’s now the garment itself that is the computer. From Sensoria which has worked with Microsoft to create smart golf gloves with sensors that correct your swing consistency, to D-AIR, the wearable airbag system for motorcyclists, we’re seeing data being used to make athletes perform better but also feel safer.
As the Internet of Things continues to connect more devices to each other and churn out more data, how you make people feel at the most fundamental human level remains of critical importance. Storytelling has always been our way of making sense of the world and that need for sense and meaning is essential as we navigate our way through Eureka Park. Remember this and the inventions and innovations across the halls of CES become a joy to explore as you consider how to inject freshness and experimentation into your brand stories and strategies in 2017.
At a convention powered by the latest in technological innovation, it was the art of storytelling that captivated the marketing community at OMD Oasis. Claudia Cahill, OMD Content Collective’s President, led a panel comprised of the industry’s leaders in storytelling: Steve Peace (SVP International Media, Sony Pictures), Brad Jakeman (President, PepsiCo’s Global Beverage Group), Dawn Ostroff (President, Condé Nast Entertainment), Mike McCue (CEO Flipboard) and Bryn Mooser (Co-Founder & CEO RYOT).
Each panelist offered a distinct and fascinating perspective on the challenges and contradictions inherent in storytelling in a world that demands both short, snackable content as well as complex, immersive stories that fuel our deepest passions.
Whilst all agreed that brand storytelling has become a much more complex challenge because of both consumer expectation and the proliferation of platforms and channels, the solutions varied. Steve explained that at Sony Pictures, “a narrative structure has been created in which the first 3 seconds are comprised of 5 to 10 shots; a visual mnemonic of the very best shots in our film that pulls you into watching the entire trailer’’. And it’s a narrative structure that is powered by reams of data.
At PepsiCo, Brad built a Content Center because “it was the only way to create the type of content needed to keep pace with the need for innovation’’. He explained that technology provides enormous opportunity for the expression of ideas but the content is critical. “The holy grail is how deeply someone has engaged with the content and it’s not about reach’’.
Dawn shared how she started the Next Gen Studio at Condé Nast to create a storytelling capability on every single platform and admitted that making content for a younger, Millennial audience is challenging because “GenZ have grown up on a diet of content snacks’’ and that there remains a gap in longer form content that is made specifically for them. Mike reminded the audience of the importance of having clear and meaningful objectives and that “really high-quality stories should be the goal’’, not short snackable content; “any story, short or long, has the power to move the world forward’’.
Disrupting the content creation process
The opportunity to break the rules and to disrupt the content creation process was debated and Bryn explained that the mobile phone has been the vehicle for the democratization of filmmaking. It made it possible for anyone out there to shoot a film and tell a great story. Moreover, with Facebook and YouTube 360, the way you look at video has fundamentally changed; you’re now able to step inside the story, to experience what the person holding the camera sees and feels, bringing people right up close to events around the world. And that closeness is what fuels peoples’ voices and passions.
The discussion shifted into learnings for the audience and there were five key takeaways:
- Global vs. Local: Ensure stories are relevant across different geographies
At PepsiCo, a content slate is developed for brands and countries in advance so that the right content is crafted. Interestingly, 90% of their content is now developed globally and shared across territories.
- Immersive Storytelling isn’t achieved solely by technologies and tactics like VR and AR
Narrative structure can be incredibly immersive. Consider content strategy over longer timeframes to build out worlds and/or characters, and give people a peek into that.
- Be nimble and open to change.
The technology still has to catch up with the vision of storytellers so be prepared to try new things.
- Focus
With so many choices for how and where to tell your story, it’s critical to simplify the complexity and focus on the goal of your story.
- Be Passionate.
Storytelling gives meaning to the world so embrace the emotion, chaos, and challenge of it.
To find out more about the OMD Oasis programming at CES 2017, please visit CES.OMD.COM