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A How-to Guide for Local Marketing

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By Scott Clark
Local marketing aims to build a strong presence in the local market, increase brand visibility, attract local customers and drive traffic to physical stores.

The Gist

  • Geo-targeting essential. Social media offers geo-targeting for precise local advertising, increasing community engagement.
  • SEO optimization. “Near me” searches are frequent, making a Google Business Profile and mobile-first strategy critical.
  • Traditional Tactics. Traditional methods like radio and event presence alongside digital strategies amplify local marketing reach.

Local marketing refers to the strategies and activities that are used by businesses to target and engage with customers in a specific area or local community. It focuses on promoting products or services to customers within a particular region or area. Local marketing aims to build a strong presence in the local market, increase brand visibility, attract local customers and drive traffic to physical stores. This article will examine tactics, strategies and tips for brands interested in local marketing.

What Are Some of the Types of Local Marketing?

Many types of marketing practices are included under the umbrella of local marketing. One example is a brand that sells gift products that tourists often buy when they visit destinations such as the beach, the mountains or specific locations, such as the Grand Canyon or Niagara Falls. In each case, businesses that sell such products simply reach out to companies near each locale to see if they would like to carry the brand’s tourist products in their stores. Additionally, they participate in Facebook Groups for each tourist destination.

Another example of local marketing is when businesses adjust the products or services they sell based on the tastes, habits, culture and beliefs of the people living in the area of the service. Such a business would also adjust the marketing or advertising copy to reflect the social norms of the people in the area. One can see examples of this in international brands that sell their goods or services across the globe to people with very different tastes, habits and beliefs.

Yet another example of local marketing is the use of geolocation apps that send customers a text message or alert when they are physically near a brand’s location, such as driving by in their car, walking past a store or restaurant, or strolling through a large store that has other businesses within its premises. One example would be a fast food restaurant in a Super Walmart. When a customer that has downloaded the restaurant’s app to their mobile device is in Walmart, the app sends an alert to the customer’s phone, letting them know that they are offering a two-for-one deal on Quarter Pounders, for instance.

Finally, many businesses operate exclusively as local brands. Buckeye Donuts, which is located in Columbus, Ohio, is not trying to market its goods to people in other states. Its marketing and advertising campaigns are mainly based on word-of-mouth, local advertising, radio, local periodicals and participation in community events.

How Are Brands Using Local Marketing?

Many brands today are using local marketing in their communities and around the world. One unique instance of local marketing involves a collaboration between Mattel and Airbnb. Initially launched in October 2019, Airbnb announced that the Barbie Malibu Dreamhouse, located in Malibu, California, would be available for rent by one lucky guest, who could bring along three guests of their own, for the low price of $60 per night. It was designed to raise awareness of The Barbie Dream Gap Project GoFundMe initiative, which aims to help level the playing field for young women so they can follow their dreams.

We recently looked at another excellent example of a brand’s use of local marketing in an article on cultural intelligence. McDonald’s demonstrated the importance of adapting to different cultures in its marketing practices, product offerings and even its pricing. In India, where religious prohibitions prevent adherents from eating beef, McDonald’s introduced vegetarian options and replaced beef patties with mutton, chicken or fish.

mcdonalds

In Thailand, where the minimum wage is much lower than in other parts of the world, McDonald’s lowered the cost of its Big Mac to approximately US $2.20 (contrasted to Switzerland, where Big Macs sold for around US $6.20). In order to adapt to local culture in China, McDonald’s offered rice as a french fry alternative.

Additionally, McDonald’s uses different media personalities and influencers to promote its brand based on the cultural tastes of the locale. Its ability to adapt and change its products, marketing practices, pricing and advertising strategies to suit different geographical and sociological differences is a good indication of why it has become a hugely successful global brand.

Often, local marketing is not about reaching customers in their locale, but rather, bringing them to the brand through community building. The US Sports Network, Bally Sports, was interested in finding a better strategy to understand and engage its local fan base through the use of third-party data, but very quickly this became extremely costly. Instead, Bally turned to its online customer community, FanZone. This inclusive online community became the place where Bally’s diverse fans could get together with other fans, share their thoughts and experience a feeling of belonging.

Sports fans cheering their favorite team, representing the power of local marketing.

Using its FanZone community, Bally Sports enhanced and improved its ability to connect with regional fans in new and unique ways. It obtained on-demand feedback from customers, enabling them to gain a deeper understanding of its audience’s preferences and doubling its fan community through targeted live on-air promotion efforts.

Use Social Media for Local Marketing

Most brands today have a social media presence, but for local marketing, social media is a necessity rather than an option. The benefits of social media for local marketing include:

  • Geo-Targeting: Many social media platforms, like Facebook and Instagram, offer geo-targeting features for advertising. This enables businesses to target users in a particular location or radius specifically.
  • Local Engagement: Social media enables local businesses to engage directly with their community. Businesses can foster a sense of community and build local loyalty by sharing local news, participating in local events or spotlighting community members.
  • Cost-Effectiveness: Social media can be cost-effective compared to traditional advertising channels like TV or print. Businesses can start with a small budget and scale up based on results.
  • Real-Time Feedback: Local businesses can receive immediate feedback from their community. This can be invaluable for understanding the needs and preferences of local customers.
  • Word-of-Mouth Amplification: Satisfied customers can easily share their experiences and recommendations, resulting in word-of-mouth marketing.
  • Versatility: Social media provides a platform for various content types, from videos to images to stories, enabling businesses to be creative and diverse in their messaging.

Aside from advertising on social media and regularly contributing appropriate content, many brands use the community aspects of social media to engage with and attract customers. Ashley Mason, marketing consultant and founder of Dash of Social, a social media management consultancy, told CMSWire that she built the client base for her business through the use of Facebook groups.

“For me, as a Massachusetts resident, I started joining several Boston-based Facebook groups revolving around entrepreneurship, business, etc. in 2016,” said Mason. “Because many members in these groups were often business owners looking to hire social media managers or marketers for their companies, I was able to use these communities to my advantage to establish thought leadership, build trust, gather leads, and grow my business.”

Mason attributes much of her revenue to Facebook groups and wrote about her success on Instagram. “Approximately $630,000 of my total business revenue came from Facebook groups, either by working with people who were in the same Facebook groups as me, or getting referred to other businesses by people I met in those Facebook groups.”

Optimize SEO for “Near Me” Local Searches

Consumers today often search for local businesses by using the phrase “near me.” In fact, a 2022 Statista survey revealed that 82% of US consumers who used their smartphone to shop had used near me searches.

Local businesses trying to increase their online presence and show up more often in near me searches should create a Google Business Profile. It’s free, and once a business has been verified, it will appear in near me search results. The name, address and phone number displayed on a brand’s Google Business Profile should match what is displayed on the brand’s website and any promotional material.

google business profile

 

A 2023 BroadbandSearch report indicated that 54.4% of web traffic was conducted on mobile devices (compared to 0.7% in 2009). Additionally, a recent Hubspot report revealed that local searches are what lead 50% of mobile users to visit stores within 24 hours. Brands today should create their website with a mobile-first strategy, optimizing for mobile devices as a priority, rather than optimizing for desktop displays.

Amy Jennette, senior director of brand marketing at the popular web host GoDaddy, told CMSWire that ensuring your website is mobile-friendly is a key part of the equation. “Consumers want information on the go, so double check that your site has mobile-friendly text, menus, forms, and buttons that make it simple for your audience to browse site information on the go.”

Jennette said that businesses should localize their website to make the content relevant to their target community. “For example, if I was the owner of an electric bicycle shop in my hometown of Seattle, I may rephrase the terms on my website’s homepage to say, ‘bringing our community the greenest bikes for a greener Seattle’ rather than simply putting ‘electric bike shop.’ And this moves beyond just your website —localizing your marketing should be applied across your digital and print ads, social media pages, and other public marketing materials,” said Jennette, who added that these simple tweaks could make a major difference for your audience as they research online local businesses that best fit their needs.

Leverage Traditional and Non-Traditional Advertising

Local marketing often relies on more traditional methods of obtaining the eyes and ears of customers and leads, such as TV and radio advertising, having a visible presence at local events, word-of-mouth, billboards and collaborations with other local businesses. “Whenever possible, join in on local industry-specific events, fairs and festivals, and neighborhood gatherings to boost your brand awareness, show off your locality, and further press the importance of supporting small, local businesses,” said Jennette. “In no time you’ll be the local authority in your industry, and you’ll have the local marketing tools in your toolbelt to thank for it.”

Other brands are using local marketing strategies that include digital displays located in areas where potential customers will see them. Geoff Crain, senior director of sales and marketing at Kingstar Media, a digital marketing and video production agency, told CMSWire that his business uses digital out-of-home (DOOH) advertising for local marketing due to its ability to target local audiences precisely, deliver contextually relevant content and allow real-time updates. “By strategically placing digital displays in specific locations, we have the ability to reach specific and local communities effectively,” said Crain.

“DOOH also allows for dynamic and tailored messaging, incorporating local references and promotions to establish a deeper connection with the local community.” Crain explained that the real-time capabilities of DOOH enable businesses to adapt campaigns quickly, providing timely and accurate information to their desired local audience, enhancing engagement, and driving positive business outcomes in specific local markets.

Traditional marketing and advertising mediums can still be effective strategies for local businesses. Although many may not recognize radio’s reach today, a recent Statista report indicated that radio is one of the most powerful mediums in the United States, with a weekly reach of around 82.5% among adults, and 78% of those under 18. “Radio is another form of media we utilize for local marketing due to its ability to reach a wide and diverse audience within a specific geographical area,” said Crain. “With radio, we can effectively target local audiences, delivering our advertising messages directly to potential customers in their communities.”

Mobility is another benefit of radio advertising. “Radio also offers the advantage of being a mobile medium, reaching consumers in their cars, homes, or workplaces, allowing our clients to stay memorable and top-of-mind throughout the day,” said Crain. “Radio also allows for the creation of engaging and memorable audio content, leveraging the power of storytelling, music, and personalities to connect with the local audience on an emotional level, making it an impactful and cost-effective medium for local marketing.”

Final Thoughts on Local Marketing

Local marketing provides brands with the unique opportunity to intimately connect with their surrounding community, addressing its distinct tastes, cultures and preferences. By using a blend of traditional and digital strategies, from SEO and mobile optimization and social media engagement to radio advertising and participation in community events, businesses can effectively bolster their local presence.

Feature Image Credit: TensorSpark on Adobe Stock Photo

By Scott Clark

Scott Clark is a seasoned journalist based in Columbus, Ohio, who has made a name for himself covering the ever-evolving landscape of customer experience, marketing and technology. He has over 20 years of experience covering Information Technology and 27 years as a web developer. His coverage ranges across customer experience, AI, social media marketing, voice of customer, diversity & inclusion and more. Scott is a strong advocate for customer experience and corporate responsibility, bringing together statistics, facts, and insights from leading thought leaders to provide informative and thought-provoking articles. Connect with Scott Clark:

Sourced from CMSWIRE

local marketing, social media, marketing, social media marketing, digital marketing, advertising
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These 40-year-old ideas could help the $73 billion advertising industry survive the rise of AI

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By Jeff Beer

Four lessons that show the enduring value of David Ogilvy’s advertising wisdom. Why the industry should re-embrace the legend’s insights to guide it through an uncertain future.

Strolling around the south of France a few weeks ago—populated with execs from the best, brightest, and richest brands, ad agencies, media companies, and social and tech platforms gathered here for the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity—you could almost hear the constant chant of “AI, AI, AI, AI . . . .” It was the backbeat to the song of the summer being blasted by everyone up and down the Croissette.

Advertising has long been known for its susceptibility to obsessing over the hot new thing. QR codes! NFTs! Celebrity creative directors! User-generated content! And now: artificial intelligence! If there is a craze in culture and communication, you can bet that a brand and its ad agency are exploring a way to exploit it.

Forty years ago, when legendary ad man David Ogilvy published his seminal book Ogilvy on Advertising, none of those (mostly fleeting) trends existed. Actually, an overwhelming percentage of today’s industry was barely out of kindergarten in 1983. According to a recent survey by Marketing Week, about three quarters of ad people today are under the age of 45. Ogilvy is one of the founders of modern advertising, building his agency Ogilvy & Mather into a global behemoth over the late 20th century. But now, like so much of the industry, it’s been swallowed up by a holding company and exists as a nameplate sub-brand within a somewhat undifferentiated sea of them.

Ogilvy on Advertising wasn’t Ogilvy’s first attempt at trying to lay down the precepts by which he believed his industry should operate. In 1963, at perhaps the height of his powers, Ogilvy published Confessions of An Advertising Man, which was part memoir, part advertising instruction. To some, Ogilvy on Advertising was a titan seeking to reassert his foundational values amid changing times. The Agency Review wrote in 2012 that, “By 1983, the creative revolution had steamrolled across America, making celebrities of George Lois, Mary Wells, Bill Bernbach, and dozens of others. Ogilvy’s long-form copy, iconic imagery, and reasoned presentations were, in many ways, relics of another age. Ogilvy on Advertising was, then, the master’s attempt to reposition his agency in this brave new world.”

Now, in 2023, the advertising industry itself is the one constantly forced to navigate an ever-evolving set of communication tools and how people use them. It is nearing the end of its second decade seeking to reposition the entire $73 billion business in this brave new world where on a good day an AI-centric tech giant can see its market cap rise by at least the value of the entire ad world. Adland is not what it was in 1983, and certainly not 1963, shunted out of the centre of the universe by the tech companies which thoroughly disrupted them. In the 1980s, there were a myriad of movies and TV shows featuring larger-than-life ad creatives. It’s a segment of pop culture that has not been resuscitated by nostalgia.

Looking at the annual juxtaposition of the past year’s best work with the current obsession, though, I can’t help but see glimmers of how some of Ogilvy’s core principles remain in play. These ideas can still serve as guideposts for how to best utilize any given trend or new technology.

These bits of wisdom cannot and should not be forgotten. So I’ve picked out four of my favourite Ogilvy-isms from Ogilvy on Advertising, and found some of the best work from the past year that embodies them. It’s far from a comprehensive list, but together they illustrate that even an industry relentlessly pursuing a path to relevance in an uncertain future can find valuable lessons in the past.

“If you’re trying to persuade people to do something, or buy something, it seems to me you should use their language, the language they use every day, the language in which they think. We try to write in the vernacular.”

When we talk about language, we can also be talking about cultural language. Sure, another one of Ogilvy’s famous lines says that the customer is not a moron, she is your wife. That still holds true. But as media has become more fragmented, brands’ ability to tap into the cultural language of their audience is tougher than ever.

This is why I’ve always been a fan of when brands are able to put a smile on your face in unexpected ways, through an expected behaviour. It’s Geico’s unskippable pre-roll ad in 2015, and Tubi’s Super Bowl interruption this year.

It’s also this Cannes-winning work from Argentina’s most popular food delivery app Pedidos. Created by agency Gut Buenos Aires, it sent unexpected delivery notifications to six million initially-confused customers. Until they found out it wasn’t a mistake, but the brand sending them a live tracker of the World Cup trophy coming home. It spoke the cultural language of a significant moment, using the product itself.

“When people read your copy, they are alone. Pretend you are writing each of them a letter on behalf of your client. One human being to another, second person singular.”

This one made me think of Dove’s 2022 short film Toxic Influence, an extension of its long-running Campaign for Real Beauty. Last year, the brand focused on the shared humanity between moms and daughters, crafting a story told through real individuals. Created by, yes, Ogilvy’s namesake agency, the film deepfakes each mom, offering up just awful health and beauty advice that their daughters would find from beauty influencers. The real moms were understandably freaked out, and it tapped directly into some of the deepest concerns many parents have around the potential hazardous effects of social media on their children.

Earlier his year, the brand continued pulling that thread with a Cannes Lions-winning piece of work called #TurnYourBack, aimed at TikTok’s “Bold Glamour” filter and the unrealistic beauty standards it encourages. Dove continues its work here of adding its brand voice to back up the concerns of parents and social platform users on these issues.

“Make the product the hero. There are no dull products, only dull writers.”

One of the best examples of this from the past year was the surprise Super Bowl winner from The Farmer’s Dog. (Full disclosure: One of the ad’s creators, Teressa Iezzi, is a former Fast Company editor and colleague.)

The healthy dog food brand wanted to get across the idea that better food could mean a longer life for your furry best friend. This could obviously be done in any number of straight-forward, unexciting ways, but instead the brand told the life story of a dog from both the owner and pup’s perspective in a way that had people weeping into their Super Bowl party nachos.

“Advertising people who ignore research are as dangerous as generals who ignore decodes of enemy signals . . . . Big ideas come from the unconscious. This is true in art, in science, and in advertising. But your unconscious has to be well informed, or your idea will be irrelevant. Stuff your conscious mind with information, then unhook your rational thought process.”

Okay, this is clearly a combination of two different quotes, but they tie together in that creative work for creative’s sake is rarely, if ever, going to work as advertising. Whereas a creative idea rooted in a researched insight can be where the magic happens.

Case in point, McDonald’s Cactus Plant Flea Market happy meal for adults that launched last fall. Tariq Hassan, the brand’s chief marketing and customer experience officer, told me that entire project, created with Wieden+Kennedy, came from a customer tweet about how you never know when it’s your—or your child’s—last Happy Meal. That led to more research into how its customers and fans felt about nostalgia, and where the brand fits into their lives.

Armed with lessons from its already massively popular Famous Orders work, with celebrities like Travis Scott and BTS, McDonald’s had seen the power of using its place in culture to sell core menu items. The collaboration with Cactus Plant Flea Market was a blockbuster success, with 50% of the fast-food chain’s supply of collectable toys sold in just four days. CEO Chris Kempczinski said in an October 2022 earnings call that it drove increased sales across the company’s U.S. locations.

That partnership also elevated McDonald’s to the top trending hashtag on TikTok and, more important, led to a weekly record for the chain’s U.S. digital transactions. In addition, it helped McDonald’s continue its momentum, helping the chain achieve nine straight quarters of same-store sales growth, with U.S. comparable sales growing more than 10% for all of 2022.

Mr. Ogilvy would no doubt approve.

Feature Image Credit: Getty Images

By Jeff Beer

Sourced from Fast Company

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How marketing and advertising can save small businesses

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By Mark Zweig

Most, if not all, local small businesses in Northwest Arkansas that are struggling or have failed can be attributed to their lack of marketing and advertising efforts, which becomes evident once you delve into the complete truth about them.

I know of a business owner in Northwest Arkansas who says he will shut it down any day due to a lack of business, yet who still will not make even a single free Facebook or Instagram post. He also doesn’t do any internet, radio, billboard or television advertising, nor does he use hangtags for doors, send out direct mail, do email blasts, use SEO or sponsor a Little League baseball team. There is just no marketing whatsoever.

I don’t think this situation is that unusual for many small businesses. Why is this the case? There are several reasons, including:

  1. The owners of these small businesses think they can’t afford it. They see marketing and advertising as an overhead expense, like rent or insurance, and if they can avoid spending anything there, it is money they can put in their pockets and take home to their families.
  2. They don’t believe marketing and advertising work. My experience is that if you spend “X” on marketing and advertising, you will get a certain number of sales or dollar amount of sales from it. So spend X, and get X times 10 or X times 20. What will that kind of volume increase do in terms of business viability and profitability? Think about your own business. But for this relationship to work, it takes consistent activity and spending. I have often heard, “We tried advertising, and it didn’t work.” You can’t do it once or twice and expect that to produce results. It may not.
  3. These small business owners are hung up on the idea that “word-of-mouth is the best advertising,” so they do nothing. They forget that to get word-of-mouth, customers have to buy from the business or use it in the first place. Without marketing and advertising, you will never get the word-of-mouth flywheel going.
  4. They don’t know how to market. Most small business owners are good at something — they are good cooks, carpenters, sewing, or getting people to exercise correctly. That’s why they went into business in the first place. But what they don’t know anything about is marketing and advertising. So instead of going outside their business to find help, they give up. There are so many marketing companies and advertising sources that can help a small business, not to mention marketing students who would love the chance to work with a real business here in NWA, that there is no excuse for not being able to get help.

Let me conclude by saying that I am not someone who’s just done a lot of reading about this stuff and is now opining about it. In my businesses, I always invested in marketing. That’s how two of my companies got on the Inc. 500/5000 list — one of them three times. And today, the new and existing businesses I am involved with heavily invest in marketing and advertising and have a revenue growth curve that reflects that.

Contrary to what your CPA/tax advisor may tell you, a small business can be worth far more than what you can extract annually. The value of the business is directly related to the revenue growth rate, not to mention that a growing business tends to be more profitable than a stable (i.e., stagnant) business.

So now is the time for small business owners to stop handwringing and start investing in a consistent marketing and advertising program. Do it now before it’s too late.

By Mark Zweig

([email protected]) Mark Zweig is the founder of two Fayetteville-based Inc. 500/5000 companies. He is also entrepreneur-in-residence in the Sam M. Walton College of Business at the University of Arkansas and author of the award-winning book, “Confessions of an Entrepreneur.” The opinions expressed are those of the author.

Sourced from TB&P

 

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How the generative A.I. boom could forever change online advertising

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By Jonathan Vanian

  • New technology that converts text prompts into headlines, conversational paragraphs and images is in the early days of making its way into online ads.

  • Along with OpenAI’s ChatGPT, all the major online ad platforms are testing generative artificial intelligence tools.

  • “This is going to have a seismic impact on digital advertising,” said Cristina Lawrence, executive vice president of consumer and content experience at Razorfish.

 

Shortly after ChatGPT hit the market last year and instantly captured headlines for its ability to appear human in answering user queries, digital marketing veteran Shane Rasnak began experimenting.

As someone who had built a career in creating online ad campaigns for clients, Rasnak saw how generative artificial intelligence could transform his industry. Whether it was coming up with headlines for Facebook

ads or short blurbs of ad copy, Rasnak said, jobs that would have taken him 30 minutes to an hour are now 15-minute projects.

And that’s just the beginning.

Rasnak is also playing with generative AI tools such as Midjourney, which turns text-based prompts into images, as he tries to dream up compelling visuals to accompany Facebook ads. The software is particularly handy for someone without a graphic design background, Rasnak said, and can help alongside popular graphic-editing tools from Canva and Adobe’s  Photoshop.

While it’s all still brand new, Rasnak said generative AI is “like the advent of social media” in terms of its impact on the digital ad industry. Facebook and Twitter made it possible for advertisers to target consumers based on their likes, friends and interests, and generative AI now gives them the ability to create tailored messaging and visuals in building and polishing campaigns.

“In terms of how we market our work, the output, the quality and the volume that they’re able to put out, and how personalized you can get as a result of that, that just completely changes everything,” Rasnak said.

Rasnak is far from alone on the hype train.

Meta, Alphabet and Amazon, the leaders in online advertising, are all betting generative AI will eventually be core to their businesses. They’ve each recently debuted products or announced plans to develop various tools to help companies more easily create messages, images and even videos for their respective platforms.

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Their products are mostly still in trial phases and, in some cases, have been criticized for being rushed to market, but ad experts told CNBC that, taken as a whole, generative AI represents the next logical step in targeted online advertising.

“This is going to have a seismic impact on digital advertising,” said Cristina Lawrence, executive vice president of consumer and content experience at Razorfish, a digital marketing agency that’s part of the ad giant Publicis Groupe

In May, Meta announced its AI Sandbox testing suite for companies to more easily use generative AI software to create background images and experiment with different advertising copy. The company also introduced updates to its Meta Advantage service, which uses machine learning to improve the efficiency of ads running on its various social apps.

Meta has been pitching the Advantage suite as a way for companies to get better performance from their campaigns after Apple’s 2021 iOS privacy update limited their ability to track users across the internet.

‘Personalization at scale’

As these new offerings improve over time, a bicycle company, for example, could theoretically target Facebook users in Utah by showing AI-generated graphics of people cycling through desert canyons, while users in San Francisco could be shown cyclists cruising over the Golden Gate Bridge, ad experts predict. The text of the ad could be tailored based on the person’s age and interests.

“You can be using it for that sort of personalization at scale,” Lawrence said.

Meta’s Advantage service has been gaining traction with retailers using it for automated shopping ads, according to data shared with CNBC by online marketing firm Varos.

In May 2023, roughly 2,100 companies spent $47 million, or about 27.5% of their combined total monthly Meta advertising budgets on Advantage+, the Varos data showed. A month earlier, those companies directed 26.6% of their budget, or $44.9 million, to Advantage+.

Last August, when Meta formally debuted its Advantage+ automated shopping ads, companies put less than 1% of their Meta ad spend into the offering.

Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaks at Georgetown University in Washington, Oct. 17, 2019.

Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaks at Georgetown University in Washington, Oct. 17, 2019. Andrew Caballero-Reynolds | AFP | Getty Images

Varos CEO Yarden Shaked said the increase shows Facebook is having some success in persuading advertisers to rely on its automated ad technology. However, Shaked said he’s “not sold on the creative piece yet,” regarding Meta’s nascent foray into providing generative AI tools for advertisers.

Similarly, Rasnak said Midjourney’s tool isn’t “quite there yet” when it comes to producing realistic imagery that could be incorporated into an online ad, but is effective at generating “cartoony designs” that resonate with some smaller clients.

Jay Pattisall, an analyst at Forrester, said several major hurdles prevent generative AI from having a major immediate impact on the online ad industry.

One is brand safety. Companies are uncomfortable outsourcing campaigns to generative AI, which can generate visuals and phrases that reflect certain biases or are otherwise offensive and can be inaccurate.

Earlier this year, Bloomberg News found that AI-created imagery from the popular Stable Diffusion tool produced visuals that reflected a number of stereotypes, generating images of people with darker skin tones when fed prompts such as “fast-food worker” or “social worker” and associating lighter skin tones with high-paying jobs.

There are also potential legal issues when it comes to using generative AI powered by models trained on data that’s “scraped from the internet,” Pattisall said. Reddit, Twitter and Stack Overflow have said they will charge AI companies for use of the mounds of data on their platforms.

Scott McKelvey, a longtime marketing writer and consultant, cited other limitations surrounding the quality of the output. Based on his limited experience with ChatGPT, the AI chatbot created by OpenAI, McKelvey said the technology fails to produce the kind of long-form content that companies could find useful as promotional copy.

“It can provide fairly generic content, pulling from information that’s already out there,” McKelvey said. “But there’s no distinctive voice or point of view, and while some tools claim to be able to learn your brand voice based on your prompts and your inputs, I haven’t seen that yet.”

An OpenAI spokesperson declined to comment.

A spokesperson for Meta said in an email that the company has done extensive research to try to mitigate bias in its AI systems. Additionally, the company said it has brand-safety tools intended to give advertisers more control over where their ads appear online and it will remove any AI-generated content that’s in violation of its rules.

“We are actively monitoring any new trends in AI-generated content,” the email said. “If the substance of the content, regardless of its creation mechanism, violates our Community Standards or Ads Standards, we remove the content. We are in the process of reviewing our public-facing policies to ensure that this standard is clear.”

The Meta spokesperson added that as new chatbots and other automated tools come to market, “the industry will need to find ways to meet novel challenges for responsible deployment of AI in production” and “Meta intends to remain at the forefront of that work.”

Stacy Reed, an online advertising and Facebook ads consultant, is currently incorporating generative AI into her daily work. She’s using the software to come up with variations of Facebook advertising headlines and short copy, and said it’s been helpful in a world where it’s more difficult to track users online.

Reed described generative AI as a good “starting point,” but said companies and marketers still need to hone their own brand messaging strategy and not rely on generic content. Generative AI doesn’t “think” like a human strategist when producing content and often relies on a series of prompts to refine the text, she explained.

Thus, companies shouldn’t simply rely on the technology to do the big picture thinking of knowing what themes resonate with different audiences or how to execute major campaigns across multiple platforms.

“I’m dealing with large brands that are struggling, because they’ve been so disconnected from the average customer that they’re no longer speaking their language,” Reed said.

For now, major ad agencies and big companies are using generative AI mostly for pilot projects while waiting for the technology to develop, industry experts said.

Earlier this year, Mint Mobile aired an ad featuring actor and co-owner Ryan Reynolds reading a script that he said was generated from ChatGPT. He asked the program to write the ad in his voice and use a joke, a curse word and to let the audience know that the promotion is still going.

After reading the AI-created text, Reynolds said, “That is mildly terrifying, but compelling.”

Feature Image Credit: Sebastien Bozon | AFP | Getty Images

By Jonathan Vanian

@jonathanvanian

Sourced from CNBC

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Advertising watchdog bans Hyundai and Toyota electric car ads

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Campaigns made misleading claims about charging times and rapid-charging points in UK and Ireland, ASA says

The UK advertising watchdog has banned campaigns by Toyota and Hyundai for exaggerating the speed at which electric cars can be charged and misleading consumers about the availability of rapid-charging points across the UK and Ireland.

The Japanese car firm Toyota ran a marketing campaign on its website for its bZ4X model with the text “making electric easy”. The site claimed the vehicle could be charged to 80% in about 30 minutes using a 150kW fast-charging system.

Toyota said drivers could “easily find rapid-charging points in a number of public locations”, especially in areas where “drivers were most likely to need them”, such as main travel points on motorways and large arterial roads.

Hyundai ran a similar campaign – using its own website, a digital billboard in London’s Piccadilly Square and a YouTube film featuring footballers from the Premier League club Chelsea, which the South Korean car manufacturer sponsors – promoting its Ioniq 5 model electric car.

The campaign claimed the vehicle could be charged from 10% to 80% in 18 minutes using a 350kW charger.

An image from Hyundai’s brochure which prompted a ruling from the Advertising Standards Authority.
An image from Hyundai’s brochure which prompted a ruling from the Advertising Standards Authority. Photograph: ASA/PA

The Advertising Standards Authority received complaints challenging whether the charging times, which both companies admitted were achieved in perfect factory conditions, were achievable in the real world.

The claims about the availability of rapid-charging points across the UK, which would affect the likelihood of consumers achieving the claimed charging time, were also challenged.

Toyota said that at the time it ran the ad campaign, Zap Map, which shows where charging points are located, did not show the precise locations of rapid 150kW chargers but showed that overall there were 419 charging points at 134 locations across the UK. However, there were just seven in Scotland, two in Wales and none in Northern Ireland.

Similarly, the Charge myHyundai website showed that there were 37 ultra-fast 350kW charging locations in Great Britain, six in the Republic of Ireland, “limited numbers” in Wales and Scotland, and none in Northern Ireland.

The bZ4X electric car pictured beside a beach
The bZ4X electric car from Toyota. Photograph: Nathan Leach-Proffer/AP

The companies said their claims were not misleading as it was unlikely that drivers would need rapid-charging points on shorter journeys, meaning they could use the more widely available slower charge points, with many people using points fitted at home.

However, the ASA said the manufacturers had given the impression it was “relatively straightforward” to access rapid-charging points across the UK.

The watchdog also found that numerous factors affected charging times in the real world, including the age and condition of a battery, the ambient temperature, and the battery temperature, all of which were controlled by the manufacturers in the tests used to make the claims.

“If any of those conditions were less than optimal, then charging times would likely take longer,” the ASA said.

The car manufacturers said it was essential that they be allowed to promote EV potential charge times to consumers to address obstacles to consumer take-up, such as range and charge anxiety, and a lack of awareness of the rollout of charging infrastructure.

However, the ASA banned the ad campaigns, the first ban it has instigated against electric car advertising claims, and told Toyota and Hyundai not to mislead consumers about battery charging times in future.

“We concluded that because the ads omitted material information about the factors that could significantly affect the advertised charging time and the limitations in relation to availability … the claims had not been substantiated and were misleading,” the ASA ruled.

Feature Image Credit: Willy Kurniawan/Reuters

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It’s Time for Advertising to Try Harder, Again

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By Vida Cornelius

A blueprint for making cultural progress in 2023

We are 63 years past what advertising historian and author Lawrence Dobrow’s book referred to as “The Golden Age of Advertising.” An era where creativity abounded amidst the backdrop of dramatic economic and societal changes, human rights activism, and a burgeoning interest in alternative lifestyles. What was once the product-as-hero creative style of the 1950s was evolved by creative minds welding the emotive power, persuasion, irony and cynicism of changing times. Bill Bernbach famously penned the word “Lemon” in a single-word headline to describe the Volkswagen Beetle, starting a creative revolution.

Advertising’s creative minds gave birth to the spokesperson, the mascot and the brand personality. These fictitious characters entered our homes, their shiny, smiling faces stared back at us every time we opened our pantry. They took up space in our consciousness, to forever conjure feelings of nostalgia. Even if a mascot had overt racial or sexist overtones, we turned a blind eye to the offense. And it would take decades for the bitter history behind those characters to be challenged. Because in 1960, unlike in 2023, we just wanted to eat those pancakes in the box.

Advertising creativity evolved again in the 1970s and ’80s with the support of consumer insights. It went beyond staking a claim on demographics to owning and manipulating our psychographics. Insights became the fertile ground to plant creative seeds. Pepsi claimed to be for the young and fun, and created the “Pepsi Generation.” This was a defining moment in how a brand and its advertising messages could shift a societal construct—redefining what it meant to be young vs. old, celebrated vs. obsolete, and in the know vs. out of touch. For brands, it made the proposition of owning a mindset, and building brand perception based on that mindset, more coveted than selling the product itself.

Fast forward to today, amid cultural conversations driving societal re-examinations of representation and equity, what is our creative responsibility now?

As history has shown us, advertising retains its power to make indelible imprints on society and on self-perception. When this power is used irresponsibly, the impact is irreparable for a brand. Trust is lost, credibility is annihilated, and regaining a position of relevance is an arduous, upward, often unsuccessful climb. But advertising creativity, when held in conscious, empathetic hands, has the unique ability to not only reflect society but to course-correct its ills and potentially shapeshift them into a more enlightened, inclusive standard. The 1990s mantra of “Just Do It” encouraged us to run more than the corporate “rat race,” but shifted to running as a source of joy.

Our responsibility now is to use culture to guide us toward unearthing the unseen moments of innovation and inclusion that exist. We must look beyond the familiar, to make way for stories that are complex, varied and truly representative of the whole of humanity. Apple’s “The Greatest” sheds an empowered light on accessibility by dialing down the limitation of disabilities to celebrate the exponential possibilities. We are better brand stewards if we do the work to understand consumer voices of all walks of life and at all times of life, not just when there is a “bandwagon cultural moment.” The last three years have forced us to reflect on how we see the world around us and participate in cultural conversations we were never invited into before. As creators, our job is not to be opportunistic but to always see where an opportunity for understanding is needed and make a path for it. To bring divergent points of view, histories and experiences together, and to create thoughtfully shared realities.

As creatives, we must push our craft and guide our clients to try harder:

  • Try harder, at being conscious and inclusive by delivering purposeful, representative storytelling.
  • Try harder, at knowing how to hold UP the mirror versus trying to BE the mirror of customers.
  • Try harder, at making an impact by showing up with a purpose to serve society first, not themselves.

Make “action” the strategy. When a brand is committed to being creatively conscious by design, only then can they lean into the spaces and sometimes uncomfortable places where their actions and voices can authentically be heard, be useful, and empathize with the consumers they aspire to serve.

Committing to building conscious creative is how we move forward and how we make advertising truly try harder, again.

By Vida Cornelius

Vida Cornelius is VP creative at New York Times Advertising.

Sourced from Muse by Clio

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The world’s biggest media buyer GroupM is telling advertisers that Twitter is a ‘high risk’ media buy

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By Seb Joseph and Krystal Scanlon

The public boycott of advertising on Twitter is starting to look a lot like a long goodbye.

GroupM, the world’s largest media buying agency, is telling clients that Twitter is now a “high risk” media buy following a barrage of controversies, U-turns and confusion that capped off Elon Musk’s second week as the owner of the social network.

The advice was shared in a document, seen by Digiday, that warns marketers of the risks of advertising on the volatile social network. It reads: “Based on the news yesterday [Nov. 10] of additional senior management resignations from key posts, high profile examples of blue check abuse on corporate accounts, and the potential inability for Twitter to comply with their federal consent decree, GroupM’s Twitter Risk Assessment is increased to a High-Risk rating for all tactics.”

If this stance is to change, Twitter has to resolve several issues, per the document. They are as follows:

    • Return to baseline NSFW levels
    • Re-population of IT security, privacy, trust & safety senior staff
    • Establishment of internal checks & balances
    • Full transparency on future development plans of community guidelines/content moderation/ anything affecting user security or brand safety
  • Demonstrated commitment to effective content moderation, enforcing current Twitter Rules, e.g., account impersonation, violative content removal timing, intolerance of hate speech & misinformation, etc.

It’s a reminder of where the real power lies in this standoff between Twitter and advertisers. Hint: advertising on Twitter has always been a nice to have, not a must have for the advertisers that spend on it. That may be one of the few things that hasn’t changed since Musk took over.

That’s not to say that advertisers are apathetic on Twitter’s fate. They’re concerned, of course — the social network still serves as a major cog in the global news cycle, after all — but they’re not rattled. Not even as Twitter’s senior ranks unravel.

The unraveling accelerated after Musk held an hour-long pow wow on the platform last week (Nov 10). It was done to reassure advertisers that Twitter’s future was fine. A series of sudden resignations and subsequent reversals of them revealed they were anything but. Not least because it involved some of the same people who have wanted the market to believe in Musk. Robin Wheeler, Twitter’s de facto head of ad sales, for starters. A little over a day after she was talking up Musk’s plans on Twitter Spaces, she resigned, and then decided to stay, per Bloomberg.

The symbolism isn’t lost on marketers.

“Corporance governance is shifting all the time,” said one senior marketer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to Digiday. “I can afford to wait and see how this all shakes out. This isn’t like Facebook or YouTube where we might structure media plans around those platforms. On the contrary, our organization is trying to call in any fungible spending right now. Thank you Mr. Musk.”

It gets worse. The other executive on that call with Musk and Wheeler — Twitter’s head of trust and safety Yoel Roth — also resigned. Unlike Wheeler, Roth doesn’t seem to have reversed that decision. Neither has Twitter’s chief information security officer and chief privacy officer, who have also resigned. Oh, and don’t forget all this is happening as the Federal Trade Commission watches on with “deep concern.”

So not only does Twitter pose a brand safety risk to advertisers, it could also be a cybersecurity risk too.

Either one would blow a hole in the ads business of any platform in the current climate — let alone one that most marketers aren’t too concerned about.

“Yes, Twitter is part of the cultural moment, but it doesn’t have a good direct response product so spending there is quite nebulous — or just not good,” said a media director at one of the advertisers that has stopped advertising on the social network. “It’s never been a critical part of the media strategies or plans that I oversee.”

Nothing Musk has said to advertisers either on stage, on calls or even his tweets has been able to change that sobering fact. In fact, the more the controversial billionaire talks about Twitter and advertising on it, the more confused advertisers seem to get.

The way Musk sees it, Twitter is like a town square where “freedom of speech is not freedom of reach”. In other words, people can say all sorts of things — some of it even unsavory — it just doesn’t necessarily have to get amplified to the masses.

The problem is who gets to decide what gets amplified? Whatever the answer is, chances are it’s going to be inextricably linked to pernicious relativism. It’s hard to see otherwise after Musk said he viewed the “truth is a nebulous concept”. Controversy is never far from views like this, and that’s the last thing marketers want to be near right now.

“Elon saying ‘truth is a nebulous concept’ at the start of the session is highly concerning,” said Ruben Schreurs, group chief product officer at media management firm Ebiquity. “This is Kellyanne Conway making a case for ‘alternative facts’ all over again. Truth is truth, simple as that. There’s nothing nebulous about it.”

Schreurs frustration echoes a lot of what the 15 ad executives Digiday has spoken to since Musk took have said. They bemoan a pitch to advertisers that’s light on core principles and permanently in a state of flux, or as amenable behind closed doors as it is combative in the spotlight. In short, marketers aren’t too bothered by what Musk says on Twitter Spaces, at conferences or behind closed doors. They only care about what he does.

“Speaking more specifically about our client set that potentially applies to an even broader group of advertisers, Twitter is not integral enough to their advertising mix to demand this much of their attention and time,” said Adam Telian, vp of media services at marketing agency New Engen.

Needless to say, those pulled ad dollars don’t look like they’re going to be coming back this side of 2023. Then again, they never really were. Advertisers had essentially cut short their spending for this year on Twitter. Nothing Musk has done so far has been able to convince them otherwise.

His new verification scheme? The indecision over it has allowed for fake and parody accounts to proliferate in its slipstream. What about Musk’s plan for Twitter to take another crack at video, or become a payments company or even re-architect the backend of its ad tech in order to power better targeting? Easier said than done at the company in the throes of an employee exodus. It’s the same with his threats. Remember, Musk’s vow to “thermonuclear name and shame” the advertisers that had pulled ad dollars? Still waiting.

Color marketers confused.

“At a base level, Twitter’s reason for being is currently very unclear, as evidenced by his “we’re going to be everything” comments, making it a highly suspect platform to spend money on,” said Evan Levy, president at ad agency Fitzco. “We know TikTok’s reason for being. We know the NFL’s reason for being. Understanding the platforms or properties we’re investing media dollars into should be table stakes. Twitter? To be determined – and so should brands’ investment there.”

It’s a precarious position for any business built on ad dollars — even more so one that’s intrinsically entwined to Musk. His antics are having a direct impact on the business on multiple fronts. Not that he would know. Rather, Musk believes, as stated in meetings with advertisers, that his actions should be divorced from his business — even as ad dollars continue to pour out of it as a direct result of what he’s doing. Regardless of how he opts to try and prop up his flagging asset, the clock is ticking. The entrepreneur has already warned that his company won’t be able to come through the economic downturn if it can’t replace the ad dollars the business has lost since his arrival with additional income. Bankruptcy is not out of the question, he has said. Advertisers are a lot of things, charitable isn’t one of them.

Featrue Image Credit: Ivy Liu 

By Seb Joseph and Krystal Scanlon

Sourced from DIGIDAY

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With Social Media Changing, Has Advertising Reached Peak ‘Purpose’?

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Why shifting dynamics could mean a pivot back to brand and product

It’s hard to overstate just how dominant purpose-driven advertising has become at award shows. Eight of the 11 Grand Clio winners this year were purpose-based campaigns—and they were even more triumphant in the south of France. But all trends eventually run their course, and 2022 might turn out to be the high-water mark for the purpose trend. Why? Because the social media era as we know it is coming to an end.

It’s true. The major social media channels are following Tiktok’s lead and switching their algorithms to a “recommendation” model. That will fundamentally change the way social works. So what does that have to do with purpose-driven campaigns? Social media has been a primary driver of the purpose trend.

I often see this theory that purpose-driven work became so prevalent because advertising agencies and brands are “woke” and are “virtue signalling” to attract a young, progressive audience. That’s only half right: The demographics brands crave are more progressive and more engaged on social channels. And it’s on those social channels that they’re discussing social issues.

Up to now, the engine that drove social media conversation has been news and cultural events—the stuff brands build their social calendars around. But moving forward, users will see fewer posts from their friends and friends’ friends, and more from strangers the channel’s engine thinks they’ll like. And that content will almost certainly be less “wired” to the Calendar.

Here’s the rub. The Calendar is what makes it possible for agencies to plan ahead and make investments. They all focus their most ambitious campaigns around basically the same set of cultural moments in the year. And those moments inform the brief.

The Calendar explains why a financial services company ran its biggest campaign ever on International Women’s Day.

It’s how a cat food brand winds up running a campaign about coral reefs for World Ocean’s Day.

It’s why a beer company made noise on Global Recycling Day.

It’s why my former fast-food client had us make a splash on World Peace Day.

And, full disclosure, it’s why my team teased a special edition OLED on #MaytheFourth.

Now it’s pretty clear that before social media, none of these brands would’ve asked agencies to produce campaigns for these points in time—let alone make major investments in them and make them the centrepiece of their annual creative efforts. It’s the Calendar that enabled the plans to secure those budgets, and it’s the social conversation on those days that promised the eyeballs and engagement.

So what happens next?

I’m not suggesting the idea of brand purpose or purpose-driven initiatives will come to an end. But if you look at all the headwinds—the algorithm changes to Facebook and Instagram, the uncertainty around Twitter, and the growing backlash to purpose work that misses the mark—all of that points to fewer large-scale purpose campaigns.

I happen to think a lot of what has been called “purpose-driven” work is terrific—and much of it has been successful in raising awareness about important social issues, as well as commercially. But if social media channels begin to behave more like traditional media, that might mean less of those campaigns, more portability of ads across channels, and maybe, just maybe, a step back towards brand and product.

By John Long

John Long has held creative leadership positions at Ogilvy, The Economist Group and Huge. He is currently executive creative director at LG’s in-house agency, HS Ad.

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The Golden Rule of Marketing Isn’t About Consumers

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By David Baldwin

Back in the 1970s, people encountered 500 to 1,600 ads daily. If that number seems mind-blowing to you, set your mind fire extinguishers to full geyser because today the average person comes across somewhere between 4,000 to 10,000 ads in a single day.

It makes sense, right? In the ‘70s you had fewer, mostly analog media choices compared to today where you have all the traditional outlets plus tons of social media feeds, podcasts, satellite radio, banners, product placement, and all the digital hoohah serving you ads at an ever-escalating rate. We are swimming in advertising not to mention being tracked and cookied to death. (Cookie-less world, sure.)

In fact, I’d argue that social media has outkicked its coverage with advertising. Because we’re on the receiving end of such a nonstop barrage from these platforms that they don’t really exist – in any recognizable way – for the reasons they started in the first place. Remember when Facebook was about connecting with friends and Instagram was about sharing photos? Until we say, “Enough!” there will never be enough for the feeds.

So, the question is: What and how are we being fed?

First, let’s clarify, I’m an advertising guy. I’ve been doing this for going on (almost) four decades. I love advertising. When it’s good, it’s great and when it’s bad, it’s annoying – a very simple equation. But in my mind, that’s the game. Try to do the good stuff that people like and you can change everything.

It doesn’t take a raft of research to realize that most advertising these days now comes from the direct marketing wisdom of the ages: ROI-driven, tried and true rules. Never mind that the history of direct marketing is littered with campaigns that bucked the system and engaged its consumers with wonderful content and won big results. But sadly, that work has never been the norm, and it certainly isn’t these days.

And maybe I just committed what might be the problem: The word “consumer” and the idea that we’re “consumers.”

How did we – human beings with thoughts and feelings, wives, husbands, children, families, relationships – ever allow ourselves to be relegated and chained to the idea of consumption?

Are you a consumer? Really? Is that why you exist, to consume? Look at your little children, are they consumers? Are you a locust descending on a field to consume all in your path? I hope not.

And you might say it’s just a word but my orientation as a copywriter is that words are everything and how we label things bends perceptions. And man, have we bent our perceptions to think of ourselves as “consumers.”

Seriously, count how many times you hear the word “consumer” during your day. I counted once and it was something like 63 times in one day. It’s on the news, in economic forecasts, and in the papers. You can find it all over the pages of the Wall Street Journal and on just about any news site you can name. It’s everywhere.

The word is ubiquitous, and we don’t even question it. Maybe the situation was summed up beautifully by Howard Gossage who said, “I don’t know who discovered water, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t a fish.” We’ve lost perspective and don’t see it anymore; we just accept the notion that we’re here to be consumers.

So, what’s the alternative? What if we start using different words to think of our customers?

What if we think of them as collaborators, co-conspirators, co-creators, or some better descriptor? Let’s treat them like human beings – your friends, family, brothers, sisters, moms, neighbours – not demographic statistics. David Ogilvy famously said, “The consumer is not a moron, she’s your wife.” We know this in our bones, let’s act like it.

What kind of value are you creating in people’s lives with your brand and your marketing? Start there.

Maybe, on a fundamental level, we replace consumption with collaboration. This is a facet of the diamond put forward by Michael Porter known as “Shared Value” – the idea that business is in a better position to make the world better than non-profits, NGOs, and even churches because what business does is solve a problem and then scale the solution. If business gets on the track of making things better, it’ll happen much faster than any other way. This doesn’t negate other organizations doing good, far from it. It just might offer a quicker route to making a difference by using market forces.

But a good first step might be to stop thinking of people as a number to achieve an objective. I call it the Golden Rule of Marketing:

“Market unto others the way you’d like to be marketed to.”

We have a responsibility to engage, to inform, to create quality experiences – not run into the room, drop a grenade and scream at people, exhorting them to call or click on us, dammit! It’s exhausting and unrelenting.

There has never been a better time to create work that has a point of view, a message, and leaves the viewer/reader with a positive experience or better informed. We have an opportunity to make people feel good about what we make, what they buy, and why they buy it.

Rather than consume or buy, just maybe they’ll buy into what you’re making and selling. And isn’t that better for everyone?

Feature Image Credit: Jingxi Lau

By David Baldwin

David is an author, film producer, entrepreneur, and one of the most awarded copywriters and creative directors in the ad business today. The founder of Baldwin&, co-founder of the Ponysaurus Brewing Co, co-founder of Take Your Seat, and author of the Amazon bestseller The Belief Economy, David is also the former Chairman of the One Club, and his work has been recognized by Cannes, One Show, D&AD, Clios, Effies, and more. His film work (Art & Copy, The Loving Story) has won two Emmys and a Peabody Award.

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Elton John’s ‘Your Song’ Anchors Ikea’s Sweet Story About Home

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By David Gianatasio

“I don’t have much money, but, boy, if I did. I’d buy a big house where we both could live.”

Rising artist AHI performs a passionate cover of Elton John’s “Your Song,” wringing fresh nuances from each familiar line as Ikea Canada launches a revamped brand platform themed “Bring Home to Life.”

This husky, expansive version drives the short film below. It tells the tale of an immigrant family’s arrival in Toronto, opening with a young father’s first glimpse inside their new apartment.

He’s greeted by an odd tableau: In otherwise empty rooms—with no furniture, carpets or even pictures on the walls—about a dozen people wait, frozen in space and time. The action mainly transpires in the father’s imagination as he contemplates a joyous future in this place, surrounded by family and new friends, with items from Ikea completing the scene.

Ikea | Bring Home to Life

Directed OPC’s Gary Freedman, a minute-long edit of the dreamy, cinematic narrative launched during last night’s Emmy Awards.

“We’ve been working on a new Ikea brand platform for more than a year, and this spot is the anchor of that new platform,” says Michelle Spivak, creative director at Rethink, which crafted the campaign. “We looked to tell a story that demonstrated how Ikea helped bring a home to life in a heartwarming way. We loved the idea of that moment when you walk into a new home for the first time, and all you can see is potential.”

The work feels like an extension of recent brand efforts focused on reimagining what home can be. These include introducing a cheeky Ikea collection to ease the transition of returning to the office, and transforming actual Toronto-area houses into showroom displays. “Bring Home to Life” expands on such notions. The push explores many vibrant physical, emotional and social aspects of home, with the retailer’s products and services adding special significance.

In the launch film, “you see the bare space and think of the people who will fill the room,” Spivak says. “The people who will sit at the table. The friends who will gather on the sofa. Ultimately, a house can be filled with a number of items, but it’s the moments and memories we create around those pieces that give them significance. We took that thought and added a bit of magic by having everything frozen until Ikea is added to the home. As our main character arrives to his empty apartment, he’s met with the vision of the housewarming celebration he’ll throw the day his wife and young daughter finally join him.”

That’s a lofty, poetic conceit, well-realized and visually striking, if a tad difficult to fully grasp without repeat viewings. Still, the heartfelt remake of “Your Song” and those intriguing images should enchant ears and eyes, even if the storyline feels elusive at first.

The team shot footage over four days in Parkdale, one of Toronto’s most diverse neighborhoods. “The bodega is real. The bike shop is real. It’s a very authentic place for a newcomer to start their life in Canada,” Spivak says. “The interiors were matched to the exterior of the building but were actually captured in a custom-built set.”

And yes, those actors had to hold their positions, like statues, often for several achy minutes per take.

“As part of the casting, we asked people to freeze in place,” Spivak recalls. “We needed people who could translate emotion without words, but also without moving. That’s when it became apparent how difficult being frozen—while looking natural at the same time—would be. We did as much in camera as possible, with some of our talent propped up on apple boxes and stools we removed in post.”

As for the song choice, “we cast a wide net across genres, but always knowing we wanted the performance to be intimate and personal,” says Johanna Andrén, head of marketing at Ikea Canada. “The lyrics needed to punctuate the story. The voice needed to feel authentic. Our music director found this amazing singer, AHI, a local, Juno-nominated artist with a voice we loved—emotive and warm. He had a young family of his own, and you could feel his tribute to them in his performance.”

“Your Song” mentions home fleetingly, but the vibe’s just right. And you really can’t go wrong with Elton John. Kudos for passing over more obvious choices, like “Our House,” a very very very fine track, to be sure, but too on the nose.

Ultimately, “while there is Ikea furniture in almost every scene in the spot, the aim was to inspire a feeling bigger than the collection of products,” Andrén says. “There is real magic in how every individual home comes to life in its own unique way, and we want to celebrate that idea with this platform for years to come.”

Along with TV, online video and social, the campaign will include traditional billboards and 3-D OOH activations.

CREDITS

Client: IKEA
Agency: Rethink
CCO: Aaron Starkman
CSO: Sean McDonald
ECD: Mike Dubrick
Creative Director: Michelle Spavin
ACD: Brendan Scullion, Max Bingham
Art Director: Max Bingham
Writer: Brendan Scullion
Strategy Director: Jay Fleming
Director of Broadcast Production: Shelby Spigelman/Nadya MacNeil
Broadcast Producer: Mark Pan
Senior Print Producer: Agnes Gilchrist
Print Producer: Jenna Fullerton

TV Production Company: OPC Production
Director: Gary Freedman
Line Producer: Max Brook

Post Production House: Nimiopere
Editor: Graham Chisholm
Executive Producer (Nimiopere): Julie Axell

VFX House: The Vanity
VFX Supervisor: Naveen Srivastava
Colourist: Andrew Axworth
Senior Producer (The Vanity): Katie Methot

Photography Production Company: Fuze Reps
Photographer: Chris Robinson
Director of photography: Zach Koski
Executive Producer (Fuze Reps) : Nicole Gomez
Associate Producer: Alexa Dimitruk

Audio House: Vapor Music
Executive Producer (Audio House): Kailee Nowosad
Creative Director (Audio House): Ted Rosnick
Engineer: Ryan Chalmers

Account Services:
Group Account Director: Kiara Wilson
Account Director: Sheldon Abreu
Account Director: Catherine Blouin-Mainville
Account Supervisor: Melissa Luk
Account Manager: Gabrielle Bergeron

Client:
Head of Marketing, IKEA Canada: Johanna Andrén
Director of Brand Marketing, IKEA Canada: Claudia Mayne
Country Marketing Campaign Leader: Jordan Sequeira
Marketing Communications Specialist: Carolyn Thrasher
Marketing Specialist: Noah Keefe

Additional Credits:

Media Agency: Carat Canada
Vice President: Karen Hrstic
Account Director: Tracey Cronin
Media Supervisor: Christine Ma

CRM: Wunderman Thompson
Account Director: Maryam Asad
Account Executive: Hannes Danielsson

 

By David Gianatasio

Sourced from Muse by Clio

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