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ActionIQ: ‘Marketing Clouds Thrive On Noise In The CDP Space’

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This is the fifth in AdExchanger’s “Meet the CDPs” series. Read previous interviews with mParticle, Acquia-owned AgilOne, Amperity and Segment.

COVID-19 threw a wrench into best-laid marketing plans. But marketers are learning to adapt, said Tasso Argyros, CEO and co-founder of customer data platform ActionIQ.

“All of our clients have been forced to rethink their entire marketing and customer experience strategy,” Argyros said. “And they all need new data, analytics and orchestration capabilities to enable these strategies.”

Still, it’s a bit like  building railroad tracks while the train is coming. Clients are trying to acclimate while determining which changes to their business could be permanent.

Despite the question marks, brands can use this unanticipated disruption “as an opportunity to position themselves to come out of this stronger,” said Argyros, who founded ActionIQ in 2014 after selling his previous company, Aster Data, to Teradata.

ActionIQ’s clients include Gap Inc., Saks Fifth Avenue, Michael Kors, Pandora, Verizon and The New York Times. The company raised a $32 million Series C in January, and more than $80 million total. Around half of ActionIQ’s roughly 100 employees are focused either on engineering or R&D.

Argyros spoke with AdExchanger.

AdExchanger: What does it mean to be a CDP in the age of coronavirus?

TASSO ARGYROS: Companies are now trying to execute new campaigns and use cases with limited budgets and resources. For example, if you are a multichannel retailer, you need to migrate your store-only shoppers to ecom, or else you could lose that cohort for good.

I expect coronavirus to accelerate a lot of the business transformation initiatives that were leading people to work with CDPs in the first place.

Did you start out as a CDP from Day One?

It’s a tricky question, because you have to rewrite history a bit in order to answer it. The vision was always to do something really interesting and cool around customer data, and we were doing it before the term existed. But if you were to ask me about how we differentiate, I’d say the main way is in how we’re able to invest data with more scale and complexity than other vendors out there.

Can you elaborate on that?

You don’t have to transform your data or build customer or profile attributes beforehand. You just load in whatever data you want and we build profiles on the fly. Other CDPs have tables with key customer attributes, but we hold every customer interaction. It sounds like an esoteric point, but it makes a huge difference, because it allows you to be agile. Business teams can be completely self-sufficient and iterate in a matter of days rather than a matter of months.

How long does it take to onboard a new customer?

We promise to have the system up and running in three months and that the customer will see strong ROI in six months. We try to come in with strategic solutions and services to help identify low-hanging fruit, use cases and channels that could be incremental. When we push those out, it provides early value and derisks the deployment in a short period of time.

Who is your typical customer?

We focus on the enterprise level, including both B2B and B2C. Our typical customer has revenues of around $1 billion and up. We mostly sell to the CMO, although IT is often closely involved.

What data sources do you most commonly connect?

It’s mainly very large-scale data lakes, such as Google BigQuery and Amazon Redshift, and data warehouses, such as Teradata and Oracle. We can plug into any internal data source and pull in massive amounts of data which allows us to deploy quickly without having to rely on consulting or IT resources. We’re also connected to ad systems – Segment, for example, or a tag manager such as Tealium, are sources of clickstream data for us – and to ESP sources of email response data.

Will the marketing clouds deliver on their promise of providing CDPs?

The marketing clouds announcing CDP capabilities last year was the best marketing we could not afford to have done ourselves. But the marketing clouds are mostly trying to sell legacy software and present it as a CDP. Sometimes they try to sell email software as a CDP or their DMP as a CDP.

Once you’re in an RFP scenario, though, it’s easy to tell the difference. They don’t really have a product. The question then becomes, when will they have one? They say they’re building it, but when was the last time either Adobe or Salesforce built a successful product in house? Everything has been done through acquisition.

But marketers are still attracted to the marketing clouds, because they’re used to working with them.

The marketing clouds thrive on noise in the CDP space. It’s strategic for them to create more confusion, and they have the marketing dollars to do it. One of the values we offer is that we don’t force customers to be locked into any one specific marketing cloud vendor. We give them the channel freedom to plug and play the solutions they choose to work with.

Does the eventual loss of third-party cookies impact the CDP space?

The role of the DMP will be reduced to the point where we can implement almost all of the functionality of a DMP without much additional cost. The consolidation of the DMP inside of a CDP is an opportunity to simplify the marketing stack and save customers some budget.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

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How To Pivot Your 2021 Marketing Strategy For A Post-COVID World

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By Rodney Laws.

It’s hard to imagine a post-COVID world right now. No one can be sure when we’ll get back to normal and what normal will look like. Trying to plan for the future feels fruitless, and yet it will feel like everything is happening at once, so you need to be prepared.

For business owners and marketing departments, this presents the challenge of how to approach advertising in a post-COVID world. Have the fundamentals changed, and what is a safe promotional route to go down? Here’s how you can pivot your strategy ready for a new world.

Be content cautious

As the reality of coronavirus and lockdown measures started to set in, a new type of marketing content cropped up on our televisions and social media feeds.

Suddenly sentimental, coronavirus-themed content was in every other ad you saw. This uplifting content generally focused on people’s sacrifices throughout the crisis, how we’re all in this together, and what businesses are doing for you in your time of need. For many, this content provides assurance and shows companies understand what people need most.

The question for marketers once this crisis is over, or at least starting to wind down, is how do you move on from this content, and will coronavirus-tinged content still be appropriate? As people assess the full impact of the virus is it right to use their situation to push them towards purchases, if it ever was?

To pivot your content direction post-COVID you need to be aware of the genuine concerns people will have in regards to making coronavirus your focus. You need to balance the fine line of being aware of the current circumstances without appearing to take advantage of them.

Creating media that captures the public mood and shows appreciation for their feelings can really grab attention and cut through the mass of competition of social media channels. People don’t mind being advertised to if they think the brand genuinely has their best interests at heart. That involves offering something back, even if it’s just a message of support.

You should also look to create content that is genuinely informative. Try and educate people within your specialism on the common coronavirus issues. Slipping in a bit of promotional while doing so is fine, as you’re providing a service. People will want to set up good social distancing measures at work, so suggest creative ways to do so. It may not directly result in conversions, but it’ll build up goodwill with your brand.

The most successful post-COVID content will likely look a lot like the best campaigns we’ve seen throughout the campaign. Let shareable content filmed through Zoom calls inspire you and make sure not to misjudge people’s emotions.

Consider your finances

It’s safe to say most people are expecting things to get a little bit tighter financially after coronavirus.

As if the toil of the virus alone isn’t bad enough, it has also led to significant economic turmoil across the world. With many businesses operating on a much stricter budget — if any budget at all — the money is unlikely to be there for extravagant marketing campaigns. Just like you can’t act like your audience has money to burn, you need to operate securely yourself.

It’s important your marketing starts slowly and tries to avoid as many costly mistakes as possible. Ideally, you can look to follow the example set by small businesses. You don’t need to start from scratch, but approaching your marketing expenses in the way a startup or entrepreneur would will help you make low-investment risks when it comes to pivoting your strategy. These businesses rarely operate with a high-risk, high-reward mentality, which can be a great guide through this tricky period.

Your first campaign after the coronavirus pandemic doesn’t need to be an all-time-great homerun in advertising, but it can’t be something you bet the immediate future of the company on. Businesses are going to be judged not just by how they responded to the outbreak, but how they continue to respond throughout the recovery.

Think small scale with your marketing. Extravagant short films about the bravery of people throughout the crisis may be great, uplifting content, but they can be costly to produce. Whereas taking a more subtle, low-key approach within the budget constraints of a smaller business can help you show support, while accomplishing the long-term promotion and converting goals of your marketing.

Focus on localization

All future marketing strategies in a post-COVID world need to take into consideration the rate at which recovery is happening not just across the world, but in individual countries.

Universal advertising will be irrelevant in the days immediately after the virus. Different messages will mean different things to unique audience. You cannot make content that looks to celebrate defeating the virus available to a region that is still suffering significantly. It is insensitive and will tarnish the respectability and perceived competency of your brand.

Either try and keep your content more general or be hyper-specific in your location. If you want to run an after-COVID paid social campaign, for example, make sure you’re only targeting areas where recovery has been successful and you’re ready to pause it should the worst happen.

While celebrating national success may sound like a great opportunity to balance showing appreciation with brand exposure, this can, especially online, backfire pretty dramatically if you’re not hyper-specific in your execution.

Stick with online services

Despite it feeling like we’re all scratching at the walls looking for an escape from lockdown, it won’t be as simple as everyone rushing back into normal life once it’s lifted.

Not only will there be significant social distancing measures in place, but people’s attitudes and outlook will have changed. People have not just considered what they value, but there will be a residual fear of the virus.

Online services, be it video chat allowing you to talk to your family or an ecommerce store that can keep you stock up throughout lockdown, have shown their worth throughout this pandemic. With people reluctant to dive into normality once again, there will still be a need for these businesses.

All of this is to say you shouldn’t abandon any online services you’ve developed just yet. It’ll be wise to continue promoting these products and services even after coronavirus. Forced exposure to them has only increased interest from the average consumer and business.

Take Zoom as an example. People may be sick of video chats by the time this is all over, but businesses will still find practical uses in it as we return to normality, now aware of a tool that allows them to better connect with business partners abroad and open people up to new types of remote working options.

Likewise, many businesses may stick with remote working for the foreseeable future. This allows you to tweak your marketing, rather than fully pivot it, to just reflect the usefulness of your products and services, rather than play into the whole lockdown and remote working narrative. You don’t need to fully re-think your strategy straight away.

Consider scheduling changes

With efforts to return to normality likely to be slow, you need to consider how you’re going to schedule your content and try and capture attention online.

Before COVID, you were able to research when people were most likely online to try and capture their attention in the most effective way. Numerous studies had been conducted across all the major social platforms, showing when someone was most likely be susceptible to a Facebook video, Twitter Poll or Instagram influencer story.

A lot of these results were determined by pre-COVID schedules. People would commute to and from work roughly at the same time. They’d relax on the couch and browse social media for a bit most evenings. They may be more likely to buy something at a weekend when they have time to sit down and consider the item. That’s all out the window now, and may not be back for a while.

Likewise, people are also going to be spending more time catching up with loved ones if they do choose to go out. There are arguments to suggest that coronavirus could be the end of abject consumerism, and that marketers will have to be more creative in their efforts to draw people away from personal connections and back to social platforms to witness content and advertising.

To acclimatize to the new reality of your customer base you need to either conduct new audience research or find new avenues to reach your base in. A post-COVID strategy will be reflective of new lifestyles, slowly easing itself back into traditional timings. Consider experimenting with new approaches in your advertising, such as Google paid campaigns that can catch search audiences looking for something specific, rather than casting a wide net across social media.

Marketing in a post-COVID world will be challenging, there’s no doubt about that. It won’t be an impossible task though. It will require more audience research and tactile reading of public mood than ever before. Be prepared to backtrack at points and be cautious when taking risks.

Feature Image Credit: Unsplash

By Rodney Laws

Rodney Laws has more than a decade of experience providing marketing advice to online entrepreneurs and businesses. He’s set up and marketed his own businesses and consulted on crafting campaigns for established companies. See what Rodney can do to help you or your business by heading over to EcommercePlatforms.io and visiting @EcomPlatformsio for even more news and views on marketing as an ecommerce brand.

 

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SEO Expert Guide for Successful Marketing

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By Abhishek Kumar.

What do you desire when you set up a website or blog? It would mostly be to sell a product or idea or provide solutions to the pain points of those you visit your site. The digital space has come up with numerous techniques and tools that can help you to attract the audience whose needs match your offerings. One of the most popular techniques that businesses operating online use is search engine optimization (SEO). There are various nuances to SEO and its power to attract traffic to your site, but the one will look at in this article is search intent.

What is search intent?

This is where the entire online transaction process begins. Search intent, also known as keyword intent, is the reason that drives a person to enter their need/query in search engines to know more. The need/query maybe for some information, or a desire to buy something. When you enter the query/search keyword in the search engine, it fetches a list of top-ranked site options for the seeker to cruise through. The intent initiates the search that eventually is present in the first few search engine results pages (SERP).

How does this work?

In order to increase the traffic on your site to drive your sales revenue, you must ensure that you are among the top search results. If you base your content or optimize your website with the search intent at the center, you may succeed in getting into the SERPs. Performing comprehensive research to find the pain points of your target audience that you can solve with your offerings is critical. Once you know what your target audience wants, you can arrive at numerous keywords that they can use to search for a solution. Optimizing your site with such keywords will help you be in the first few pages of the SERPs.

How to optimize your site with search intent in mind?

As optimizing your site based on search intent is a great place to start your SEO journey, it is helpful to follow the steps listed below

1) Find strong keywords which express search intent:

One of the best ways to do this is to check and record the top-ranking pages. Thereafter, see if you can strongly confirm the search intent for your niche. Once you have a list of these keywords, track their search history for a span of at least 3 to 6 months. There are tools you can find that can help you do the trend tracking. Tracking is critical in this process since Google ranking keeps changing as the search intent changes with time. If the ranking history has stabilized or is subject to very marginal changes, you can resolve that the search intent keywords are strong and usable.

What if the ranking history is subject to immense fluctuation? In that case, you are to deduce that Google results have still not zeroed-in on what your audience’s intent is. As the search intent is unclear, it would not be wise to base your SEO optimization on the underlying keywords.

Finding strong keywords that stem from your audience’s search intent will give you a shot at immense success during optimization.

2) Content streamlining for effective targeting:

There 4 aspects to content you need to look at and work on in SEO optimizing through search intent.

  • Style: The ranking history and top-ranking pages are the reference point for you to help decide on a content style. If the top pages carry results that are predominantly in the form of videos, it is the right strategy for you to create and upload videos. If you find more static pictures, focus on uploads high-quality pictures to drive traffic. In other words, follow the trend to reach the first SERP.
  • Type: This refers to the place where you plug-in your call to action (CTA) and product information, testimonials, etc. It is effective if your content type is a landing page to which all your email and social media marketing redirect to. It can also be a blog post or product/category page.
  • Format: These are important to improve traffic and increase the dwell time of the visitors. This is especially important in the case of blog posts. Using certain blog types such as ‘how-to’, listicles, common mistakes, #1 posts, among others act as magnets that attract prospects.
  • Proposition: When you search for a keyword (use the ones you have found during search intent determination), you will find numerous proposition dimensions in the SERP. Take into consideration all the varied angles and develop a proposition that is unique and magnetic.

3) Use SERP to gain insights:

When you look for a keyword, Google will list out ‘people also search for’, ‘related sites’, and the like. Paying attention to these can help you strategize better. Various keyword research tools available on the web can help you gain such insights.

By following these 3 steps after successfully determining viable keywords based on search intent, will help you savor success. With these steps, you find yourself a place in the SERP and thereby attract large traffic thereby generating pursuable leads.

By Abhishek Kumar

Experienced Founder with a demonstrated history of working in the internet industry. Skilled in Search Engine Optimization (SEO), SEO Content Writing, Mobile Marketing, Search Engine Marketing (SEM), and Content Marketing. Strong business development professional with a Bachelor of Technology – BTech focused in Computer Engineering from Lovely Professional University.

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How to Make a Great Marketing Campaign

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Sourced from appPicker

Every successful marketer would want to create a marketing campaign that would bring about the company’s desired results. Alas, every marketing campaign, no matter how well formulated is never devoid of challenges. Add in the fact that budgetary constraints is also another factor that complicates the entire process. The good news is that it is indeed possible to be able to do more even on a meagre budget. You just have to determine the best approach that will help make your marketing campaign entirely successful. Below are some tips that have been proven helpful in making a marketing campaign work to your company’s favour.

Invest on a perfect platform.

No matter how good you think your marketing campaign is but if you are not using the right platform for it chances are high that your efforts will only be in vain. If you truly want to make your campaigns reap the expected results, invest in the best marketing platform that has been known to work wonders in turning everything into a successful campaign. Never let your precious time be wasted on manually sending emails to your targeted audience. Let the power of automation send those emails to the right people, at the right time.

Be more specific.

If you think you can do it on a granular approach, then the better your marketing campaign would be. This way, you will be able to target your most specific audience and then design all your marketing efforts in a way that pleases every persona in your target market. Make sure that your created content, planned events and promotions will most likely engage every persona that fits your company’s target audience. Do not forget to harness the benefits of data capture as well so it would be easier for you to remarket later as you need to come up with future marketing campaigns.

Never settle for mediocre content.

Instead, always opt for an evergreen content that is classified high-value to your target audience. Although this may sometimes depend on the budget that has been earmarked for a specific marketing campaign but in most cases a greater amount of budget is usually set aside for content distribution rather than for content creation. However, if you want your marketing campaign to have increased organic growth then invest more into the creation of high-quality content.

Test and analyse.

Testing your promotional activities can be quite costly and time-consuming. However, if it is part of your first-ever marketing campaign you will realize that it will be more cost-effective if you consider testing your promotions to focus groups before declaring an official launch. This is when you have to make use of feedback and surveys. Afterwards, study the results and carefully analyse the efficiency of your campaign. If you need to hire an expert to help you analyse the results, then do so.

The best marketing campaign allows your brand to be known to its target market. Otherwise, your start-up business will only remain the best kept-secret in town – literally. Luckily, you have many ways to prevent such a thing from happening. Follow the tips mentioned in this article and be prepared to get blown away by the results.

Sourced from appPicker

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What Marketing Executives Wished They’d Known When They First Started Their Careers

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By Kimberly A. Whitler

I was recently asked some thought-provoking, career related questions by somebody entering the workforce. It made me pause. While I could provide one point of view, I thought it might be helpful to ask a number of executive leaders the same set of questions. Below is Part One in a series designed to provide insight and advice to aspiring C-level growth engineers (i.e., marketers).

What do you wish you knew when you first started your career?

Katie Borger, Vice President of Marketing of Boston Pizza Restaurants

Being “right” isn’t enough. Everyone has to believe you … whether it’s your guests, your stakeholders, your internal team, etc. No matter how good your idea or your point is, building advocacy, trust and ultimately respect will be the smarter play.

Brooke Budke, Vice President of Marketing of TITLE Boxing Club

The more you grow yourself, the more you will grow in the company. Many young professionals are led to believe it’s the company’s job to grow and develop its employees. I believe it’s your job to become obsessed with your own personal development.

Kathy Collins, Chief Marketing Officer of Massage Envy

Everything will be okay if you work hard, respect the people around you and love what you do. Work for companies with a strong culture and a clear vision. Above everything else, be a good person and things will work out.

Amy Halford, Global Chief Marketing Officer of Self Esteem Brands

I loved school. I loved learning and testing my learning. I really liked getting an A. One-hundred percent was always my target. That kind of thinking spilled into my early career, and I would apply the lens, “if I’m not 100 percent, then I’m not ready for X,” or, “if my experience and skills don’t match 100 percent, then I’m not a fit.” I could have been braver.

Eric Keshin, President and Chief Marketing Officer of Great Harvest Bread Company

Marketing is as much a “science” as an “art.” Relying strictly on opinions to persuade others can be a dead end. Relying on data / results and applying judgment to that is the better way to go.

Rebecca Miller, Chief Marketing Officer of Smoothie King

When I first started working, I had my entire career path and timeline all mapped out, but I wish I had been more open to change and trying new things from the start. You never know what doors will open by being receptive to new opportunities.

Christine Pescatore, Director of Marketing of Venture X

I wish I knew that you can plan your career to a certain extent, but experiences, external forces and your personal life can drive you to opportunities you would never have expected. My role now at Venture X, a coworking space franchise, didn’t exist when I started my career!

Derek Panfil, former Chief Merchandising and Marketing Officer of Pet Supplies Plus

When I started my career, I thought my career progression would be linear, and that is far from the case. It has had ups, downs, successes, and failures. What I would tell all those just beginning their career: be prepared to handle the ups and downs that you will encounter on your journey, and those that succeed do not let setbacks deter their overall passion to do great things.

Bill Zinke, Senior Vice President of Marketing of BELFOR Franchise Group

You can’t fast track experience. Every success, failure, good or bad decision has made me a better marketer and leader. I wish I’d known how important company culture is. Job-seekers typically focus on a job’s responsibilities and growth potential, but forget about finding a company with a positive, people-centric environment.

Mandy Nowels, Vice President of Marketing & Ecommerce of The Spice and Tea Exchange

Probably how important it is to understand how to motivate and communicate with people. No matter how good you are at your trade, the biggest opportunities for advancement lie in being able to manage more people. Quite often, your growth is determined by how effective and efficient your team is. You can fine tune your craft with yourself and your team every day, but companies want to promote people who motivate others towards the company’s goals and mission.

Join the Discussion: @KimWhitler

Note: The titles, positions, and company affiliations may have changed since the insight was generated.

Feature Image Credit: Wish came true, GETTY

By Kimberly A. Whitler

As a former General Manager and CMO, who worked for nearly 20 years before getting a PhD and working as an Assistant Professor at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business, I conduct research that focuses on helping the C-suite (and aspiring C-level marketers) better understand, develop, and lead marketing excellence.

Sourced from Forbes

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How to use business emails as an additional marketing channel

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An email has long been the most efficient way to communicate in business. This channel has numerous advantages comparing to chats, phone calls, or live meetings. An ability to exchange any kind of content is arguably the most valuable aspect here, which is what makes email a productive marketing channel.

However, many business people don’t know how to implement marketing messages into their email communication effectively. With up to 25 emails sent every day, how do you make them all promote your product or service?

Problems with using email signature marketing channel

Email signatures have long been used for achieving greater results with email marketing campaigns. However, according to Newoldstamp’s business email marketing report, 41% of email signature users install them for branding and increasing business visibility only.

Why is it so? Well, an email signature is usually considered a nice addition to business correspondence. You can create a professional one, adding your company website and logo, as well as social media pages. But does it really amplify marketing efforts?

Marketing vs. Branding

Surely, branding is an essential part of marketing. But it doesn’t end there, not with email signatures. In addition to simply having your company information dangling at the bottom of every email, you can use email signatures to promote content or bring value to the recipients.

This implies updating signatures more than once in a while, which seems to be a problem for 35% of users (according to the same report). People simply don’t know why they should update their signatures more often.

What makes email signature marketing difficult?

Among the biggest difficulties that people face when setting up email signature marketing are generating leads, tracking the performance, and setting marketing KPIs. Which means they don’t consider email signatures a converting channel.

Learn to use the most of your email signature marketing

So, how can you make your business email signatures perform as a part of the marketing strategy? Actually, it’s not that hard. The first thing you need to do is realize that this small addition to emails is a complete marketing tool.

The obvious aspect of setting up an email signature is branding. Your logo, company colours, website link, and social media icons are essential. Once you have that added to your signature, as well as your employees’, you can proceed.

Set up email signature banner campaigns

Many email signature marketing tools allow users to choose a special promo banner or upload one. But what makes this whole banner routine really worth the time is scheduling and changing them according to specific variables.

For example, you can have a default banner that will always be in your team’s email signatures. And when you have a new feature or a nice blog post that you want to promote, you can set a banner dedicated to this matter. In this way, you get an advertising element right in your emails.

Create different signatures for different departments

Email signature management does not necessarily end on setting up identical signatures for everyone. Separate your marketing, sales, HR departments and create unique signatures for each member of the specific group.

Obviously, sales and HR have different things to promote. For instance, any sales manager should have a call schedule button in their email signature while HRs could link new vacancies to the banner in the email footer.

Email signature marketing and business correspondence

Now that we’ve mentioned all the benefits of email signature marketing, you might be wondering how to use it effectively in your daily communication.

The most important takeaway is that you should update your email signature regularly. There’s always going to be some content that you will need to promote. As email signature marketing takes little to no time and resources, use it to its most.

Change your email signature banner to keep it up-to-date. Every single email sent may result in a conversion. So, help your recipients by guiding them to the content you need them to see.

In addition to all that, you can try A/B testing different variations of signatures. Sometimes a CTA button will be enough and other cases might require a distinct email signature banner. Try to find out what fits your style of communication.

Conclusion

Email signature marketing is a powerful yet underrated channel. As the Newoldstamp business email marketing report suggests, too many people don’t use its full potential. Hopefully, this small guide will help you realize how beneficial an email signature can be and how to utilize them efficiently.

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3 Ways Covid-19 Has Pushed Brands to Reevaluate Social Strategies

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Marketing on platforms has a renewed focus on communities and tone

For years, social media teams for brands all over the world advocated for resources to be more than just a distribution channel for marketing assets. They presented data, they touted growth numbers, and they elevated the best of their community content to executives to show just how powerful these channels were.

How do I know this? I was one of them. And I work with these types of organizations every day still as a consultant.

Up until a few months ago, the teams looking after these social channels were managing brands. Distributing brand messaging from a larger campaign, maintaining a presence on social to check a box or operating on a shoestring budget to build their social-first strategy inch by inch. Then Covid-19 hit; their brands started pulling advertising spend from out of home, TV, radio and all of the other traditional avenues a brand would allocate money to. Agencies were put on notice, and we collectively entered an entirely new space as marketers.

With everyone sheltered in place, where would attention turn? In that moment, every brand’s social media strategy went from nice to have to a necessity.

Acknowledge reality

In the first two weeks of the pandemic, channels went dark. Those that posted (some of which was likely scheduled posts) felt the wrath of Twitter, but most brands took a step back and assessed the chaos that had engulfed our world. Then brands, in the trusty hands of their social media organizations, started to emerge. They acknowledged the crisis, offered to help, pointed their communities toward government messaging and reiterated the messages we were seeing everywhere: shelter in place, social distance, wash your hands, stay safe.

Building a creative muscle that will rely less on the creation of content but instead on curation of content will serve every marketing team, not just the social team.

In that moment brands reflected the reality their communities of followers faced without hyper produced imagery, influencers, fictional storylines—just reality. We didn’t need the fluff; we needed acknowledgment. And brands did their best to support us in this new reality.

With every executive now increasing their focus on one of their only active channels (social), another big shift emerged from the chaos: comment sections and replies needed to be addressed and were exposed as underutilized or underfunded. With everyone in an organization now focused on these posts, brands increased their presence in finally treating these connections as conversations, ranging from how they can help or be of service to content creation. 

Curation versus creation 

The evolution of content hasn’t happened slowly during the pandemic. It felt like it happened overnight, and honestly, it’s still evolving.

Just take a look at your favorite brands. For many, you can visibly see where the shutdown started. One day they were posting beautiful product imagery, then—boom!—it’s all information on how to wash your hands, how they’re here for you during shelter in place, how they’re creating PPE.

Then something interesting happened. As creative agencies and brands wrestled with not being able to go into a studio and produce the beautiful imagery we were accustomed to, many brands looked inward. We don’t know how long we’ll socially distance or when we can even go back into the office. Building a creative muscle that will rely less on the creation of content but instead on curation of content will serve every marketing team, not just the social team.

The pandemic has prioritized the need for community content and also the executive attention necessary to make sure this continues on through the global recovery and beyond in the brand’s plans for marketing. 

Shattering the social ceiling

As social media teams within each brand have adjusted to this new normal they face heightened visibility from the organization, an increased pressure to post, scrutiny normally saved for a TV campaign (for a single post), more executive communication to show what’s working and what’s not. While this is all an adjustment, it’s also an opportunity to up-level the internal awareness and showcase the discipline of what it takes to run a social media team.

These teams will come out of the pandemic highly experienced and with a newfound respect from peers within a marketing organization and across the leadership ranks. They kept the brand going, they engaged the people that the brand serves, and they evolved the brand.

As we continue our journey sheltered in place and wait for the pandemic to give us a glimpse of a light at the end of the tunnel, I encourage everyone to continue to learn, evolve and share insights with your teams and those across our industry.

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UK ad spend hits lowest ebb since 2009 crash, but recovery is set for 2021

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By Rebecca Stewart

Over the past three months, UK marketing budgets have declined at their fastest rate since the 2008/9 global financial crisis. However, marketers’ spending is poised to start recovering from the shockwaves of the pandemic by 2021.

According to the quarterly Bellwether report from the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA) – which draws data from a panel of around 300 UK marketing professionals from the UK’s top 1000 firms – the spread of Covid-19 has caused sweeping cuts to all forms of marketing activity from UK firms.

The IPA found that a net balance of -6.1% of UK companies had slashed their budgets since the start of the year. The sum was calculated by tallying the percentage of respondents showing an improved revision to their marketing budgets minus those that indicated a fall. 25% of respondents recorded a budget cut, compared to 18.9% signalling growth.

The figure marks a notable swing from the final quarter of 2019 when the net balance stood at +4.0%, buoyed by a degree of political certainty presented by Boris Johnson’s decisive election victory. The figures also come at a time when big global brands including Coca-Cola, Budweiser and Airbnb are freezing or reallocating advertising spend.

When it comes to which areas have been impacted most, market research budgets were identified as the worst hit by Covid-19 cutbacks, with a net balance of -21.0% of companies reporting a downturn.

This was closely followed by events at -15.9%. Elsewhere, PR was the next worst off at -14.3%.

Though not a single strand of the marketing mix has seen growth since January, for British businesses, direct marketing and sales promotions were among those to observe the slowest reductions, with net balances of -6.6% and -7.2% respectively.

There have been repeated warnings from the likes of Warc that Covid-19 could bring about a global ad recession. The accompanying suggestion is that marketers should invest in brand-building campaigns if they wish to emerge from the crisis in a strong position, a strategy that’s been adopted by the likes of clothing retailer Next. However, the IPA noted that the key brand-building category (which includes online video, TV, cinema and radio) had recorded its strongest downward revision since 2009 at -9.9%.

‘A sobering snapshot’

For the IPA’s director general Paul Bainsfair, the numbers offer a “sobering snapshot” of the initial impact the global pandemic has had on advertisers’ budgets.

He observed how fieldwork for the Q1 Bellwether Report closed just a few days after UK government enacted the official lockdown, adding: “These are undoubtedly the toughest overall trading times that any business and indeed any marketer will have ever experienced, but while we suspect the fuller, sharper extent of this global pandemic to be captured in Q2 data, the hope from this report is that we will see a more upbeat end to the year.”

Given the extreme degree of uncertainty surrounding the UK at present, the IPA Bellwether Report ad spend forecasts could be subject to “substantial revision” in the future as the impact of coronavirus on the UK economy becomes clearer in line with the release of official data statistics, which at present are lacking.

The IPA Bellwether Report has used IHS Markit’s latest forecasts for GDP, consumer spending and business investment which assume an extended lockdown to May but then a gradual reopening of parts of the economy.

IHS Markit estimates that GDP will contract by -4.3% in 2020 as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, under which scenario the historical relationship with ad spend implies a -13.7% decline in expenditure. However, as the current situation is clearly unprecedented, there is an unusually high degree of uncertainty pinned to these forecasts, with risks tilted to the downside.

Consequently, 2021 may also pose a difficult year for marketers as the recovery spills over and Brexit negotiations creep back in. The IPA Bellwether Report forecasts that ad spend will rise modestly in 2021 (by +1.0%), before seeing more robust growth in 2022 onwards when the economy is more stable.

To achieve this return to growth will require UK marketers to make “bold decisions,” asserted Bainsfair, who acknowledged that when recession looms it is “understandable” if businesses try and shore up short-term profits by tightening the purse strings.

“However, as our evidence from past downturns shows, unless companies are saving cash simply to survive, or because they can no longer supply advertised services, cutting ad budgets – relative to competitor spend – is a high-risk strategy,” he went on.

“Such a move exposes firms to losing market share, forgoing sales and delaying the recovery of profits in the long term. Those brands that hold their nerve will gain extra share of voice which will achieve competitive gains.”

‘Survival mode’

The Bellwether data also showed a sharp deterioration in both company-specific and industry-wide financial prospects during the first quarter. This will come as a blow to agency giants, who in line with diminishing client budgets have had to introduce a series of cost-cutting measures to safeguard their own businesses.

Sentiment around own-company prospects moved into negative territory, reversing the marginal improvement seen at the end of last year which followed the partial decline of political uncertainty after the general election.

A net balance of -26.0% of firms felt less optimistic towards their company-specific financial prospects, down sharply from +1.0% in the previous quarter to the lowest since the global financial crisis in 2009. Almost half (46%) of panel members were pessimistic, compared to approximately 20% who said they still foresee growth.

Fran Cowan, vice-president of marketing, International Advertising Association (IAA) the report, though far from optimistic, offers an opportunity to apply learnings from previous times of crisis.

“Companies that maintain some marketing efforts will most likely reap the rewards and rebound quicker,” she said, agreeing with Bainsfair. “However, it’s important to do this in a controlled way. Now is the time to carefully consider where marketing budget is best spent, to look after employees, partners and suppliers as well as protect brand images.”

She continued: “Luckily in the UK, we have an industry that pulls together during these times. We’ve already seen some great collaborative thinking and initiatives that support the notion of ‘advertising for good’.”

Joe Hayes, Economist at IHS Markit and author of the report said firms are still very much in survival mode, reallocating funds to service liabilities and keep the business alive.

“This is critical to ensure that they can keep staff on the payroll, which will give their businesses the best chance to recover when the time comes. It will also support the economy on a broader scale if people remain employed and are earning, as they will be in the position to go out and spend when the lockdown is over.

“Positively, it seems that a number of firms expect a quick economic recovery and are planning to boost marketing budgets later in the year.”

Feature Image Credit: The IPA found that a net balance of -6.1% of UK companies had slashed their budgets since the start of the year

By Rebecca Stewart

Sourced from The Drum

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Coca-Cola slams brakes on ad spend: ‘There is limited effectiveness to brand marketing’

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By Katie Deighton

The Coca-Cola Company is looking to cushion the Covid-19-led decline of its bars and restaurants business by reducing marketing costs globally, and, in some markets, coming “off-air” entirely in Q2 2020.

The company reported global volumes were down by 25% in the first quarter of 2020. This was driven primarily by a substantial decline in its away-from-home business, which comprises trade orders from bars, restaurants, movie theaters, sports stadiums and on-the-go retail such as convenience stores.

James Quincey, Coca-Cola’s chairman and chief executive, noted this was partially offset in the US by a rise in drive-thru and carryout orders, as well as e-commerce and grocery stockpiling in some developed markets.

However, with lockdown halting out-of-home events and minimizing grocery trips for the foreseeable future, the company now predicts its second quarter to be “the most severely impacted” of the financial year.

Coca-Cola has thus cut brand marketing – partially to reduce costs and partially because it is skeptical of return on marketing investment at this time.

“We’re being … mindful about the right level of brand marketing and new product launches given the consumer mindset across market,” Quincey told investors yesterday (21 April). “We’ve developed and determined that in this initial phase there is limited effectiveness to broad-based brand marketing.

“With this in mind, we’ve reduced our direct consumer communication we’ll pause sizable marketing campaigns through the early stages of the crisis and reengage when the timing is right. These plans will vary from market to market with our earliest reengagement focusing on the recovery in China.”

He added: “Staying close to our consumers in a relevant way is a key guiding principle, and staying disciplined to demand an appropriate ROI is a close second.”

John Murphy, the company’s chief financial officer, confirmed that in its quest to “really stay close to the consumer in a relevant way”, Coca-Cola had made the decision come “off-air” in “many markets”.

He explained the brand is implementing this Q2 shutdown in order to give its various markets more flexibility with marketing strategies and budgets later in the year, dependent on when and how each country reopens for business and events.

“We have had a number of communications announcing that we will take a pause for now while we focus our efforts on our communities and on other priorities and that we’ll be back later in the year,” he said, alluding to the “millions of dollars of planned marketing spend” that Coca-Cola says it has donated to pay for the personal protective equipment (PPE) and beverages for healthcare workers.

Despite the company’s skepticism over brand marketing during coronavirus, it is making a concerted effort to enhance its presence on the shelf. The company has “redeployed” its ground sales reps and trained them in merchandising.

Coca-Cola hopes this will result in “increased share of displays of stock on the floor”, aided by a “ruthless” prioritization of core products and key brands to “help customers simplify their supply chains.

“We’re also taking this opportunity to reshape our innovation pipeline to eliminate a longer tail of smaller projects and allocate resources to fewer, larger, more scalable and more relevant solutions for this environment,” added Quincey.

The company’s decision to halt brand marketing is in stark contrast to the strategy of Procter & Gamble, one of the world’s largest advertisers. The CPG business is planning to increase spending on advertising during the coronavirus lockdown period in order to “maintain mental … availability to the greatest extent possible”.

Feature Image Credit: Coke’s Super Bowl 2020 spot was a celebrity-heavy affair

By Katie Deighton

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Secret Cinema pivots to Zoom experiences

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By Jennifer Faull

Secret Cinema’s plans for 2020 involved a much-anticipated show for Dirty Dancing, breaking the American market and bringing its first slate of Disney films to life following a mega tie-up with the movie giant. But amid Covid-19, the year ahead looks very different.

“It’s like winter has arrived, there’s a slowing down for three months, six months… I’m not sure,” says chief executive Max Alexander, who was facing a different kind of pressure just a few months ago when he revealed his ambitious plans to expand the experiential company.

After receiving private equity backing from Active Partners’ $131m fund and attracting industry heavyweights like Alexander, IMG veteran Alex Ward and The Mill and Copa90 exec Damien Macaulay, it inked tie-ups with Netflix and Disney to act as a pseudo ‘experiential creative agency’ to plan events around their most popular titles.

A stroke of luck meant that it had wrapped up its successful showing of Stranger Things just weeks before the coronavirus outbreak in London. Meanwhile, as the situation improves in China, Alexander is hopeful that the Casino Royale show in Shanghai will re-open. The plan to bring Dirty Dancing to life this summer has not been cancelled, though he is anticipating that dates will change.

“But in America the brakes were pulled hard,” he continues. “We were so ready to go and now it’s hard to get people to return calls about property we can’t possibly visit in LA and Las Vegas.”

The partnerships with Netflix and Disney are still holding strong, but events are likely to take place deep into next year, even if circumstances on both sides of the Atlantic improve.

Perhaps surprisingly for an experimental company that can’t put on any experiences, Secret Cinema has not been forced to make redundancies to its team of over 40. And that’s largely thanks to a quick pivot to bring “congregational storytelling” into the digital world.

Last week, it held its first Zoom party. 80s themed, hosted by actor Jackson and two DJs, it sold over 1,000 tickets at £5 a pop to raise money for the Trussell Trust, a nationwide poverty charity and food bank network.

“It was wonderful. We had 600 browsers open at any one-time. People were playing games, we had a dance-off and we encouraged people to dress up. It was amazing.”

Since then, it’s forged a deal with ice-cream giant Häagen-Dazs for an eight-week run of virtual screening experiences. Dubbed ‘Secret Sofa’, it will take place at 7.30pm every Friday and feature bespoke content, character narratives and interactive elements inspired by the evening’s film.

The first screening will be for Wes Anderson opus The Grand Budapest Hotel. Much like its live-action experience, Secret Cinema will issue those that have signed up with an email containing instructions on what kind of costume to wear, the sing-a-long and music playlists to rehearse, dance routines and prop making advice.

Recipients of the newsletter will also be given a code that allows them to order the chosen Häagen-Dazs flavour of the week online via a collaboration with Amazon Prime Now.

Finally, a Secret Sofa Facebook group will host audience discussions about the film and encourage people to share their pictures from the night.

“What we’re trying to do is, firstly, not to overstate our own importance in people’s lives,” says Alexander. “What we’re doing is kind of silly right? It’s not serious, but it is important to add some kind of structure and appointment to people’s lives; come, dress up and have a dance. We’ll get better at it, embellish it and add more as we get up and running. But right now, it’s put a hat on, grab an ice-cream and watch a movie.”

Though born from necessity amid the coronavirus chaos, Alexander has every intention of keeping the format when life inevitably returns to normal. Having a digital extension of the brand was always on its agenda, it just hadn’t figured out exactly how to execute it.

“It’s the kind of thing we’ve wanted to do this over the past few years and have never had the time to get our act together because we’re always on the treadmill of the next show. But we have a loyal base and we’ve wanted to offer more than just a couple of shows a year,” he says.

“We’ll keep going after. Why wouldn’t we? If this does appeal to people, it’s not a huge overhead for us to deliver and for people to consume.”

Feature Image Credit: Secret Cinema

By Jennifer Faull

Sourced from The Drum

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