Over the past year, a lot of brands have started to do a much better job when it comes to representation in their marketing. Whether it is in diversifying the speaker lineup at conferences or ensuring the visual imagery portrayed in ads and photography looks more like the people who are attending the conferences and or consuming the content, there is a noteworthy positive change.
For instance, a few months ago, I talked to the chief marketing officer of one brand whose team had even gone so far as to put clear metrics in place as to what representation should look like, by matching it to the latest population demographics of various groups from an ethnicity standpoint, and noting that negative stereotypes should be avoided.
Even though there is plenty of progress happening on the representation-in-marketing front, there are some common mistakes being made that prevent the brands creating them from getting the results they seek.
1. Including the token diverse person
When you’re looking through a conference lineup, and you see the same usual speakers and then one person who is part of an underrepresented group, it feels like the brand did it to check their “diversity and inclusion” box. As a consumer, it feels kind of insulting.
Same goes when you’re looking at the makeup of a brand’s internal team, and they’ve got one person who looks different from all the rest.
If you really want to signal to your customers that they belong with you, particularly your diverse and niche consumers, don’t make representation feel like an afterthought or something you have to do.
Instead, focus on diversifying your network and circle of influence so you’ve got plenty of diverse talent to feature for events and to work with on your team.
2. Thinking that photography is enough
I recently conducted a representation-in-marketing research study with more than 1,000 consumers. One thing that came through loud and clear was that consumers want more than just representative photography from a brand.
Your customers want features, storylines, and more in-depth content from people who look like them and have backgrounds similar to theirs.
That may mean featuring more diverse experts in your educational content, spotlighting the stories of your customers from a number of different backgrounds in your ads and social media content, or showcasing testimonials from your diverse and niche consumers on your sales pages.
Photos can be bought, but real stories and expertise from real people cannot.
If you want to make diverse and niche consumers feel like they belong with you, go deeper than the photos. David’s Bridal does a great job of this. They feature a lot of user-generated content on their social channels that features a broad variety of customers. And on their website, they feature the wedding stories of an impressive cross-section of their diverse customers.
3. Not building a truly inclusive brand
Increasingly, consumers are looking beyond just a brand’s marketing in terms of the products, services, and experiences they deliver to determine whether or not they are truly representative.
They are turning their attention to the internal teams and board of directors to see if they are representative as well. If representation only matters in your marketing, and not in your team building, then consumers get the signal that diversity, inclusion, and belonging aren’t as important to you as you would have them believe.
The fix is to build an inclusive brand from the inside out. Your customers, particularly diverse, niche, and marginalized consumers, want to spend their money with a brand that aligns with their values. They prefer to steer clear of the brands that are only being representative in their marketing just to get diverse and niche consumers to spend money with them, and those they don’t feel truly value or care about those who are a part of their community.
Representation matters. More and more, this is becoming accepted. But not all representation is created equal. Avoid the mistakes above to ensure your representation efforts are seen as authentic and by the customers you want to serve.
Facebook and Instagram have been incredibly effective marketing channels for quite some time. Now, brands can also leverage the Stories feature on both platforms to create deeper connections with users. Stories often offer more interactive options than regular social posts, and companies can use this to their advantage by creating unique content that captures the attention of consumers as they scroll through their feed.
As with any social media marketing, coming up with a solid strategy is the key to seeing the strongest returns on investments in this particular area. When it comes to utilizing the Stories feature on either platform, brands have a wide spectrum of effective approaches to choose from. Here, 10 members of Forbes Agency Council explore some of the most innovative ways companies can leverage the content they share via Stories to better connect with consumers.
1. Maintain The ‘Human Touch’ To Make Stories More Approachable
The key to making the most of Stories is maintaining the “human touch.” With so many interactive features, such as polls, questions, custom stickers, etc., Stories can be more approachable and fun than an average post. You can also get away with toning down your brand voice and introducing a more laid-back vibe, while still delivering eye-catching and informational content. – Russ Williams, Archer Malmo
2. Use The Shopping Feature And Post Time-Sensitive Promotions
Instagram now allows brands to use a shopping feature on their Stories. It will let the audience see the product details and price, and if they press it, it will take them to the page on the website where they can purchase the product. Stories disappear after 24 hours, so brands can post time-sensitive content, such as promotions that their audience can’t miss. – Jonas Muthoni, Deviate Agency
3. Create Stories That Enhance Your Online Customer Relationships
If you think of Stories as an extension of the relationship you have with your customers on Facebook and Instagram, note the things that attract the most engagement on your pages. Use this information to create Stories that serve as “teaser” content to increase the fun factor or to show one aspect of your brand in a playful way. Or, cross-pollinate Clubhouse activity with your Instagram stories. Authenticity is key. – Megan Devine, d.trio marketing group
4. Use Paid Advertising To Extend The Reach Of Your Stories
One great way for a brand to leverage Facebook and Instagram Stories is to create and post vertical-friendly content as their Stories, then promote those Stories to larger audiences using paid advertising. In doing so, the brand’s Stories are not only available for longer than 24 hours, but can also then be shown to new, relevant demographics. – Jonathan Durante, Expandify Marketing Inc
5. Use Interactive Features To Gain Audience Insights
Stories are an effective way for brands to connect with their audiences in real time. Instagram and Facebook Stories have features that allow brands to gain insights directly from their followers. Try using tools such as polls, question stickers and quizzes to gain an understanding of your audience and immediate feedback on their preferences and insights. – Jason Wulfsohn, AUDIENCEX
6. Expand On Other Social Posts To Extend The Life Of Creatives
A Facebook or Instagram story can be used to expand on other social posts from the brand to extend the life of a single creative. If the original post is about an article, a story can highlight multiple text excerpts from the article with imagery to add more description. A story can also show a sequence that led up to the final image of the highlighted post and provide context and background. – Jessica Hawthorne-Castro, Hawthorne LLC
7. Let Influencers Collaborate On Or Take Over Your Stories
Stories are like a conveyor belt of content. What starts out as innocent scrolling through a friend’s content quickly turns into a steady flow of Instagram Stories and advertisements that can be viewed with just a swipe up. Influencer collaboration and takeovers are a great way to use Stories, along with polls and questions that encourage interaction. – Joe Gagliese, VIRAL NATION
8. Tell Unique Stories Through Carousel Ads
Using carousel ads in the Stories format on Facebook or Instagram is a great way to tell a unique story through three back-to-back images or videos. Businesses can use these to share three parts of a story or follow an “attention, benefit, action” format to increase performance. Story ads work amazingly because they appear in vertical format and take up the entire mobile phone screen, ensuring that the ad is seen. – Brian Meert, AdvertiseMint
9. Chop A Larger Piece Of Content Into Smaller Pieces
Take a larger piece of content and chop it into smaller pieces. For example, a recorded Facebook or Instagram Live stream could be chopped down into a Reel on Instagram, Stories on both platforms and even a regular News Feed post. As far as specific content for Stories, posting inspirational quotes, customer testimonials, quizzes, polls and other peoples’ relevant content can all work to create a solid narrative. – Christopher Tompkins, The Go! Agency
10. Give Viewers A Behind-The-Scenes Look At Your Culture
Facebook and Instagram Stories offer a great way to show a behind-the-scenes look into what’s happening at the company. This will give viewers a look into your company culture and give them a sense of belonging and transparency. You can take it one step further and start your own company show on Stories with live streams. – Stefan Katanic, Veza Digital
Ecommerce was already a fast-growing industry at the beginning of 2020. Now it’s experiencing an unprecedented boom as billions of shoppers seek to replace their physical shopping carts with virtual ones.
What’s more, customer loyalty has been uprooted and is now up for grabs. A study by McKinsey & Company found that consumer behaviours have changed drastically across the globe with extremely high numbers of consumers having tried new shopping behaviours, including purchasing products from new brands, in the past few months.
These changes are creating new opportunities but also increased competition.
As a result, companies have been investing in new tech, from AR-generated apps being used to allow customers to ‘try on’ make-up and clothes virtually to gamified shopping promotions.
But, in the rush to adopt the latest trends and attract new customers, many companies are feeling more out of touch with their audience than ever.
We spoke with three ecommerce experts to find out what companies are getting wrong and how they can better connect with their audiences using technology. As part of Techleap.nl’s most recent batch of Rise Programme participants, these fast-growing scaleups represent the best of the best in Dutch innovation. Here’s what they had to say:
Go where your customers are
When choosing a spot for a brick-and-mortar store, everyone knows the most important consideration is location, location, location. You want to set up your store where your customers like to hang out and shop regularly. According to Jorrit Steinz, CEO of ChannelEngine, your ecommerce strategy should be no different.
And just where is your audience shopping online? According to a study by Digital Commerce 360, sales on marketplace sites accounted for 62% of global web sales in 2020, with the top online marketplaces in the world selling $2.67 trillion in products.
“While consumers were first searching on a search engine, now they’re searching on marketplaces. Even if they’re searching on Google, they will still find marketplaces so it’s essential for brands to be where consumers are searching,” Steinz said.
Even if consumers do start with a Google search, individual retailers still have to compete with marketplaces for top spots in search results.
Most new webshops completely rely on Google driving traffic. Then you see the marketplaces competing for the same set of keywords. On top of that, Google itself is competing with Google Shopping. So it’s getting harder and harder to optimize for your own webshop. There’s a whole ecosystem of brands that are only selling on marketplaces, social media, and not even on their own webstore.
ChannelEngine is a software as a service platform that connects brands, retailers, and wholesalers to online marketplaces. Instead of having to manage an Amazon account, eBay listings, and a Zalando portal, companies can manage multiple marketplaces across the globe from this one platform. This means stock levels and orders can be synchronized, product updates can be made automatically, and price levels can be controlled in one place.
For brands looking to break into new markets, rather than spending time on translating websites, researching keywords, and creating specialized campaigns, the transition can be as simple as selecting the marketplace with the best reach in that country.
As Steinz pointed out, it’s not just about traditional marketplaces. Social media channels are also now transitioning towards becoming virtual shopping malls.
A lot of click channels, like Instagram, Google, and comparison sites, are all turning into transactional channels, which is basically a marketplace. So that means there’s going to be more and more entry points for potential customers.
Instead of navigating to an online shop, consumers will now have their credit cards linked to their Instagram accounts, allowing them to simply click on an ad and buy directly in the app.
“That’s going to be a massive shift for any ecommerce retailer and, if they’re not prepared, it’s going to cost them some potential revenue,” Steinz predicted.
You get the best customer insights by simply listening
“We’re always talking about digital data sources now online. The tendency is to think that ecommerce is something and then traditional retail is something else. This is absolutely not true,” said Riccardo Osti, CEO of Wonderflow.
BazaarVoice found that 56% of online shoppers and 45% of brick and mortar buyers read reviews online before purchasing a product. This has created a multiplier effect for some product categories, meaning that each dollar a company makes online is equal to between four and six dollars they make offline.
“Whatever happens online has an impact on the real world. When I buy something offline, I first read reviews online. Then I go to the shop already knowing which products I want to see and buy,” Osti said.
The more companies realize this and begin to combine online and offline data to inform their strategy as a whole, the better.
I think a very big mistake is that most companies don’t try to connect with their audience. Historically many brands, especially ones that have a very technical product offering, focus a lot on their product and not on their customers. But times have changed.
Customers are more than willing to share their opinion and connect with brands in the form of online reviews, NPS scores, and customer center feedback. This means there’s already a plethora of customer data at companies’ fingertips. The problem is, many simply don’t know how to translate this data into usable information.
Wonderflow is a Voice of the Customer (VoC) analytics solution that allows companies to glean insights from different customer feedback sources. Their platform leverages natural language processing to aggregate and analyze all of this feedback (both public and private) in one place.
The next, and more difficult step, is to translate this information into actionable advice and that’s where Wonderflow’s strength lies. Their predictive technology is able to take current consumer insights, and use them to create actionable predictions for the future. Osti explained:
At Wonderflow we’re now trying to predict what your future appreciation score or new star rating of a specific product is going to be in one month or in one year.
We start by analyzing what customers say about the product and we identify where there’s space for improvement. So, for example, if the star rating is 3.8 out of five, we can tell you ‘if you want to get a 4.5-star rating in the future, you need to improve features x and y.’
The second step we’re working on is the prescriptive part. This allows us to tell you which action you should take to make that improvement happen. For example, ‘run an engineering workshop to identify what the problem is with this specific component of the product.’
Perhaps one of the most exciting things about this new technology is that, by providing narrative text-based prescriptions, absolutely anybody in your company will be able to glean insights from them, not just data analysts.
“This is the big change that we will see in the industry for the next few years, moving from the old fashioned, unreadable business intelligence platforms that we’ve seen for decades, to intuitive charts and narratives,” Osti told TNW.
Embrace niche audiences
Thomas Slabbers, CEO of SocialDatabase, believes that the biggest mistake companies make when it comes to connecting with their audiences is not spending enough time defining who those audiences are.
At SocialDatabase, we believe in the following formula: RESULT = CONTENT X DATA. Brands spend a lot of time creating the right content, but when it comes to creating the right audience, they often fall short. With just native targeting options available and limited access to data, brands struggle with reaching the right audience. We believe that enriched public data should be the starting point of every campaign.
SocialDatabase created a unique solution for this.
By amplifying publicly available Twitter data, we’ve created SUPERAUDIENCES. SUPERAUDIENCES allow brands to selectively target more relevant audiences through a deeper analysis of public data. These are custom audiences designed to match campaign goals, increasing receptivity and media effectiveness, without using third-party data.
But do we really want to narrow our audience? Isn’t casting a wider net better?
“First of all, the majority of social media users feel the communication coming from brands is irrelevant or unimportant to them. A more narrow audience would make ads more interesting and relevant. Secondly, reducing the waste in a target audience simply saves a lot of budget that would have been spent on the wrong audience. Finally, a more focused audience enables brands to make more impact in a shorter amount of time,” Slabbers explained.
SUPERAUDIENCES are particularly relevant for use cases where quality is more important than scale, whether you’re looking for a niche, B2B, or relevant consumer audience.
As a Formula 1 partner, Heineken used SUPERAUDIENCES to distinguish hardcore F1 fans from casual fans during the Grand Prix of Australia, China, and Spain. Meanwhile, Nutricia, a company that specializes in therapeutic food and clinical nutrition, is using SUPERAUDIENCES to specifically reach healthcare professionals.
There you have it, location, listening, and spending more time in defining your audience will help you build a stronger connection with them. Although brick and mortar stores are starting to open up again in some countries, the continued rise and preference for ecommerce is not something that’s going away. But, as Osti explained, combining your retail and ecommerce strategies is the best way to get ahead of the game.
The messages app is starting to become the most sought-after piece of digital real estate among brands and retailers.
Marketers at e-commerce start-ups say they’re increasingly using text messages to promote new sales or product launches. That’s because they are finding it more difficult to get customers to pay attention to emails, as some customers have now signed up for email updates from dozens of brands after a decade-plus of online shopping. Additionally, the upcoming iOS14 update threatens marketers’ ability to use targeted ads on sites like Facebook. As part of the iOS14 update, iPhone users now must opt in for apps to track their browsing histories. If customers don’t, marketers will no longer be able to use their browsing history on past sites, like e-commerce sites, to serve them targeted ads.
Put together, companies are coming for people’s most intimate form of communication, amidst a slew of digital marketing changes. Because people still use it to primarily communicate with friends and family, text messaging is one of the last methods of digital communication that hasn’t been completely overrun by brands. But since it’s still not primarily used as a marketing channel, marketers are still trying to figure out just how many texts from a brand customers will tolerate. Bombard customers with too many text messages, and companies risk alienating with them altogether.
“In many ways, I think SMS is the final frontier of marketing and brand communications,” said Kinfield CEO Nichole Powell, whose start-up sells skincare essentials for the outdoors like bug repellent and moisturizer. “As a consumer, I can see why — I gave up on my personal inbox years ago, and now even social media oftentimes feels quite saturated. There are brands that I’ve followed on Instagram for years, but I couldn’t tell you the last time I saw one of their posts.”
Investor and marketing strategist Nik Sharma said that part of what is fuelling the SMS boom is brands in search of more ways to “somehow keep [customers] engaged and get them on the path to purchasing something.” According to marketing platform Omnisend, the number of SMS messages sent by the more than 50,000 companies that use Omnisend’s software increased by 378% between 2019 and 2020, while email campaigns were up 108%.
The new SMS playbook
In speaking with marketers at e-commerce start-ups, they say they try to only text customers sparingly — often only a couple times a month. But they’re still trying to figure out what kind of texts — and how many of them — someone will tolerate from a brand. In one of the most criticized brand texts from last year, Fashion Nova, sent SMS messages to customers encouraging them to spend their stimulus checks on Fashion Nova products.
One of the most common ways that marketers are using the channel is texting customers alerting them to sales, as they’re betting that people won’t mind getting a text from a brand if it’s alerting them to a good deal. Brendan Hastings, director of engineering at DTC underwear brand Thinx, previously told Modern Retail that the company used SMS to promote its August sale. He said that Thinx has found that SMS messages receive open rates close to 100%, where email open rates are 15-30%.
Powell said Kinfield hasn’t yet used SMS to promote any sales — her company has primarily used it to poll customers about what type of packaging they’d like to see for future products — but hasn’t ruled it out in the future. “We’d prefer to take the time to get to know our audience and see first-hand what kind of things they like to use SMS [for],” she said.
Eli Weiss, director of CX and Retention at direct-to-consumer brand Olipop, said that his company has found success with using text messages to alert customers to new flavours. On Instagram, Olipop will encourage customers to sign up for its SMS list in order to get first dibs when the new flavour drops.
In December, when Olipop released a limited-time blackberry vanilla flavor, the company received $15,000 worth of sales in 15 minutes from people on its SMS list. Olipop’s email list still drove slightly more sales — but the company has ten times more email subscribers than it does SMS subscribers.
Weiss said that he doesn’t see SMS entirely replacing email — that rather, Olipop will only use it to “communicate with our most engaged group of people.” Weiss said that he plans to stick to sending Olipop customers one or two texts a month. Going forward, Olipop is considering using SMS to sell company merchandise, or to send customers more personalized messages from different members of Olipop’s customer service team.
“SMS is like any fun new marketing thing where right away it can kind of get abused…some brands are now sending three messages a week,” Weiss said. “I think the future is exclusivity and intentionality.”
As we see significant investment by brands in digital events and experiences, amid a period of seismic change for the meetings and events industry, a new affiliation of event marketing companies is launched. Two years in the making, the Experiential Marketing Measurement Coalition (EMMC) will dedicate itself to promoting better measurement practices across the industry.
“There were two factors impacting this public launch of the EMMC,” says founder and chairman Dax Callner (pictured), strategy director at UK-headquartered Smyle. “With the industry pause comes a moment to rethink everything: how can we return to live events with new ways of working to make them better for everyone involved? And also, what we are experiencing with virtual events is the flood of data that comes from digital. That’s requiring some event people to get a lot more data-savvy.”
In addition to Smyle, agencies involved in the EMMC include Freeman, GPJ, GES, InVision, ImpactXM, RedPeg Marketing and DRP (visithttps://www.eventmeasurement.org/members for a complete list of participating companies).
The EMMC will be welcoming individual members and corporate brands. It says benefits to membership include access to global benchmark data against key shared metrics, a certification process in conjunction with the UK Centre for Events Management at Leeds Beckett University and a public platform to promote better measurement of experiential marketing efforts.
The EMMC says its association of normally competing companies has coalesced because members believe that better measurement practices will enable the experiential marketing industry to come back stronger and smarter than ever before.
Since his election to the Presidency, the added-value the Trump brand engenders has ‘ping-ponged’ according to his political postures.
Editor’s Note: Brand Keys has been tracking consumer sentiment and brand loyalty for the past 25 years and has compiled one of the most robust longitudinal views of brand performance ever assembled. One of the beauties of this kind of research is that its utility transcends branding and loyalty and can be applied (very nicely) to things like politics. To wit, today’s news:
Trump Brand Loses Added-Value in 75% of Categories Tracked
Consumers – particularly republicans – see Trump as “Entertainer-In-Chief”
21% of Americans would tune in to ‘Trump TV’
For 30 years Donald Trump was one of the most powerful consumer brands that Brand Keys, the global leader in brand loyalty and emotional engagement research, tracked. Since his election to the Presidency, the added-value the Trump name engenders has ‘ping-ponged’ according to his political postures.
The Trump Brand Took A Sharp Right And. . .
Since Trump made a sharp right turn away from consumer marketing to politics, consumers’ tribal and political bonds have made their effects felt. “The Trump brand lost efficacy in a number of consumer categories it once dominated,” noted Robert Passikoff, Brand Keys founder and president. “It’s difficult for one brand, even one as strong as Trump’s, to operate successfully in the consumer and political arenas simultaneously.”
The Trump “Human Brand” – Lift And Drop
Mr. Trump was designated a “Human Brand” in 1991 by Brand Keys, which coined the nomenclature to describe people that were the living embodiments of particular value sets, who were able to successfully and profitably transfer those values to products and services. If a Human Brand could do that, it increased a product’s perceived value and desirability. Percentages reported by Brand Keys indicate the value-add (or reduction) produced by, in this case, adding the Trump name to a product category or sector.
Four Categories Survive Trump Politics and MAGA Hats Don’t Count
Ultimately, labels and retailers abandoned the Trump brand, and categories – clothing, suits, ties, watches, and jewellery traditionally tracked – vanished. “MAGA hats and tee-shirts were self-classified by respondents as ‘political statements’ rather than traditional clothing,” noted Passikoff.
Four categories in which the Trump brand still exhibits Human Brand-efficacy includes TV/Entertainment, Golf & Country Clubs, Hotels, and Real Estate. In the current tracking wave, the Trump brand decreased its value-add in three of the four categories. Only TV/Entertainment was up.
Political Branding Effects
The most recent national Brand Keys survey, conducted October 19-27, 2020, included 1,812 self-identified Republicans, Democrats, and Independents drawn from the nine U.S. Census regions. It examined the four categories where the Trump brand still resonates. The only category where attaching the Trump name showed any lift was TV/Entertainment – but only among Republicans.
Tuning Into Trump
Four years ago, when a win for Hillary Clinton was assumed, the expected move for then- candidate Donald Trump was a Trump TV channel. His surprise victory changed that trajectory, but with President Trump soon to exit the White House speculation about launching a Trump cable network has reemerged.
Twenty-one percent (21%) of the total sample indicated a top-two box likelihood (definitely/probably) of watching some form of Trump TV, with political affiliation clearly and unexpectedly influencing likelihood-to-view:
Democrats: 7%
Independents: 15%
Republicans: 41%
“Trump’s efficacy as the ‘Entertainer-in-Chief’ has already been demonstrated. Cable news network ratings have hit record levels since he became a candidate,” noted Passikoff. “And remember Trump was already a TV star as the host of ‘The Apprentice.’”
Launching a cable network is problematic as consumers continue to shift away from pay TV subscriptions. “It would be more viable for Trump to acquire an existing channel that caters to his conservative followers or to sign on as a program host at an established network,” said Passikoff. “Trump’s tweets reveal he already believes he is personally responsible for Fox News’ dominance in the ratings, although it has been the most-watched cable news source since 2002.”
“A Trump TV show might help to revive faded categories,” observed Passikoff, “This current survey is exclusively an American respondent group but there’s a whole world out there.”
Emotional design can seep into every level, be it a logo or the offline and online packaging, of any brand. As human beings, we respond to humour, love, pain and a plethora of emotions.
Good design has two layers: aesthetics and functionality. However, great design happens to have an additional facet to it, empathy. The emotional element of designing is rarely thought about, be it on the part of marketeers or designers. Creating catchy looking collateral and content for brands thrives on a single, detestable word – VIRAL. Unfortunately, this ugly V word is often mistaken to be a tool that builds rooted connections with its users when it’s actually far from it.
With expanding channels that allow brands to connect with their user base, brand owners and marketeers currently face a challenge they had never envisioned. In order to ensure brand visibility and find a place in the target audience’s mind, they need to constantly create and push out fresh content aggressively in order to stay relevant. Be it videos or posters, brochures, infographics, reels or G.I.F’s, nothing seems ever enough! The brand owners straddle a thin line where on one hand, they need to have a social media presence that reflects what their brand stands. On the other hand, however, they don’t want to create brand saturation either. From the brand owner’s perspective, the question of how much brand content is enough brand content, is a tough nut to crack. As for the user, most of brand content often feels like stale leftovers. Having been recycled and reheated many a times, for the user, most of these brand content simply seems like a rehash of the latest viral trend – oh no, not this again!
User Experience designer, Aaron Walter, in his book ‘Designing for Emotion’, talks about how emotional experiences imprint on our long-term memories. Designs have the capability of creating experiences where the user feels like their interaction with the brand is grounded in shared human interest as opposed to the mechanical feeling of interacting with machines. Don Norman, the author of ‘Emotional Design,’ breaks down his approach to creative design into three stages: building the appearance of a design, perfecting the way it works and lastly amplifying the long-term impact. It is in these core basics where most brands fail. Brand owners, marketeers and design agencies these days are so busy creating as much content as quickly as possible that they forget how unsustainable this whole vicious cycle gets. If anything, we need to evaluate and evolve the manner in which we measure the impact of digital branding, stepping away from number of views and clicks. Being able to create designs that allow users to be introspective, become aware of unhealthy social patterns, uplift moods or create a call for action for social causes, are the kind of meaningful experiences that helps a product or a services crossover from being a brand to becoming a part and parcel of the community.
Emotional design can seep into every level, be it a logo or the offline and online packaging, of any brand. As human beings, we respond to humor, love, pain and a plethora of emotions. Hence, a design can reach its fullest potential by being, not merely functional but also emotionally stimulating. The #likeagirl campaign by Always won an Emmy, a Cannes Grand Prix award, and the Grand Clio award not because it wowed the panel with its CPC value. 2017’s App of the Year Calm, is a product that cracked emotional design to the T. Designing with emotion reinstates the awareness in the user that the brand is genuinely invested in their growth as opposed to treating them as mere numerical targets. By daring to go beyond numbers and projections, these well-designed campaigns have added substance to their brand identity.
Simply put, as a brand, you have to look at the concept of success in long term perspective. By rising above immediate buzz, it becomes critically important that each element of your brand, be it your website, an advertisement or an entire ad campaign is a building block to your brand’s identity as well as longevity. To build meaningful relationships and interactive communities through a brand, what one needs is not design that is VIRAL, but design that is actually HUMAN.
TikTok tops our annual list of the top performing brands of the year
The 10 brands that comprise Ad Age’s 2020 Marketers of the Year list didn’t just survive the pandemic, they thrived.
The list is topped by TikTok, which emerged as a major pop culture force and must-stop for an increasing number of brands, including several on our list. That includes cosmetics upstart e.l.f., which had the foresight to jump on the platform back in late 2019 with its 15-second “Eyes Lips Face” song, and has since amassed 10 billion views for its TikTok content. Other new economy brands making the list include meditation app Calm, whose Election Day marketing set a new standard for timely product placement. Online marketplace Etsy smartly tapped into trends like DIY and customizable goods, including, yes, masks.
But breakthrough marketing in 2020 was not confined to plucky start-ups. Stalwarts like State Farm, which is nearly 100-years-old,also cracked the list, thanks to a reinvention strategy that included putting a new spin on its iconic “Like a good neighbour” tagline. McDonald’s, No. 2 on our list, found ways to reach new audiences, including with its wildly successful Travis Scott collaboration.
The list—chosen by a team of Ad Age reporters and editors based on factors that include business results driven by breakthrough advertising and smart strategic thinking–is full of brand marketing lessons, including from an unlikely source: Conservative anti-Trump PAC The Lincoln Project, whose go-for-broke attitude shows that fearlessness is a key ingredient for great creative. “We’re not unemotional about this stuff,” TLP cofounder Rick Wilson told us. “We’re passionate about this stuff.”
“Reaching shoppers on external platforms is critical because it’s your way to introduce them to your brand on their turf, rather than your turf,” said Kevin Dugan, VP of agency services at performance marketing agency DMi Partners. “As someone is browsing Facebook, Instagram, Amazon, they are actively engaged with the content and if you meet them with the correct messaging and tone, it’s a powerful way to bring your products into their world.”
Unlike other segments, retail has been given designated advertising spaces within these platforms – think the Instagram “shop now” function or Google Shopping – and this ensures fertile ground for marketing initiatives. But while these platforms aren’t new or unknown to brands, effective strategies for social media, Google and e-commerce marketplaces each require tailored approaches.
For one, competition on these platforms is tough and can come at a high price; smaller businesses that need the exposure may be the same ones that are unable to afford to market their product extensively. Moreover, the saturated space means that effective advertisements need to stand out and resonate with the right audience, in order to generate real benefit for the brand.
“The way that these platforms have evolved over the last couple of years, there’s a lot more levers to pull around targeting that didn’t exist before,” said Mike Farrell, senior director of integrated digital strategy at marketing platform Sidecar. “A thoughtful targeting strategy would allow retailers to take that limited budget that they might have and really focus it in on the highest value customers that they’re going after.”
Platforms like Sidecar are specifically focused on creating marketing for these external platforms due to their specific requirements and data-rich nature. These function as a double-edged sword: With the right support, a company can tailor its marketing to each audience and reap rewards; without the ability to leverage data and optimize strategy accordingly, brands are likely to find their messages lost amongst the competition.
Then there’s the diversity of campaigns needed within each platform. DMi Partners’ Dugan warns against brands just setting a few generic social ads live and expecting traffic to roll in. Instead, he argued the importance of identifying different consumer groups based on their experience-level with the brand.
“We are always advocating for subtle differences in messaging depending on the audience we’re reaching on these channels,” said Dugan. “We suggest at least having top of funnel social ads, for your behavioural and interest targeting; bottom of funnel ads, for your retargeting audiences; and winback ads, for your custom audience of past customers.”
From a content perspective, marketing should consider the platform it’s on. Social media sites are well-suited to discovery and brand storytelling, although Dugan highlights the opportunity of Facebook Shops for a more direct-conversion experience. Google Shopping and Amazon are the most purchase-driven; clear product imagery and information performs well for shoppers who are ready to buy.
Farrell recommends that brands use their marketing to spotlight their best performing styles but in colourways that perhaps aren’t as popular; this evokes familiarity and novelty simultaneously. As a result, brands might be able to reduce the common diminishing of sales that occurs once the preferred shades sell out and also optimize inventory, which is a challenging area for many companies right now.
COVID-19 has forced many brands to deliver years-long transformation programmes in the space of a few weeks.
It’s been well-documented how quickly many brands have had to accelerate certain aspects of their digital transformation plans as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.
But according to the Covid-19 Digital Engagement Report, the speed at which some companies have had to push forward their digital agendas has been extraordinary.
Surveying 2,000+ customer experience, marketing, operations and IT professionals, Twilio found that brands had had to accelerate their customer communications transformation strategies by an average of 6.1 years.
27% of respondents said COVID-19 had fast tracked their transformation plans by between 5-9 years. Astonishingly, 19% said it had pushed things forward by between 10-14 years.
Twilio’s study revealed a number of other surprising statistics, no less that COVID-19 had led to numerous barriers to digital transformation being broken down.
The top barrier was ‘getting executive approval’, which 37% of respondents said had been broken down as a result of coronavirus; this was followed by a ‘lack of clear strategy’ at 37% and a ‘reluctance to replace legacy software, at 35%.
Insufficient budget had also been a key factor for 34%, prior to the coronavirus crisis.
As well as breaking down barriers, COVID-19 has also propelled brands’ omnichannel communications strategies. 54% of brands have increased their focus on omnichannel communications, with 53% adding new communication channels since the start of global lockdowns in March, and 52% ‘speeding up their digital communications strategies’.
“Over the last few months, we’ve seen years-long digital transformation roadmaps compressed into days and weeks in order to adapt to the new normal as a result of COVID-19,” said Glenn Weinstein, chief customer officer at Twilio, responding to the findings.
“This has affected everything from the ways in which businesses talk to their customers, to how their workplaces function. We’re seeing how digital technologies are being used to completely reimagine the business landscape. Communications technology is at the heart of this transition to a flexible remote working model for employees, and a seamless, digital customer experience for businesses at large.”
Behaviour changes
According to Contact Babel research in June, 51% of contact centres have reported an increase in email use, with 47% reporting increases in webchats and 37% report an increase in social media use.
Zendesk research also highlights that customer support tickets have seen a huge surge in usage on messaging channels such as WhatsApp, which has increased 148% since late February.
Despite the huge jump in consumers wanting to communicate with brands, they still expect a human response, further complicating brands’ communication strategies.
Sitel’s recent survey and report, COVID-19: The CX Impact, revealed that 87% of consumers want to connect with a human to resolve critical issues, despite having a preference for resolving problems with self-service.
21% of consumers indicated they were happy to start using voice assistants such as Amazon Alexa as way of engaging with brands, yet a huge proportion of the research’s survey also acknowledged they valued emotional intelligence and empathy in a customer service interaction, something they were unable to obtain from automated assistants and bots.
“The last three months have challenged consumers and brands like never before, and we are all faced with understanding a new reality: How do we shift from adapting to the crisis to driving a success strategy in this future world?” said Martin Wilkinson-Brown, global CMO at Sitel Group.
“In this quickly changing world, customer experience is truly one of the only ways for brands to stay competitive within their industries and now more than ever it’s critical to meet consumers where they want to interact with brands.
“Combining human-led technologies with searchable knowledge bases and even branded online communities to handle common issues and typical contact drivers will reduce inbound call volumes and traffic to other live channels. This will actually drive costs down while improving CX for all customers, regardless of their channel of choice.”
