Category Archives: campaigns

advertising, campaigns, challenges, creative, insight

On The Edge Of Glory

2022 has been a bit of a personal creative renaissance.

After a couple of years that were decent, but not exactly breakthrough, I felt like I was finally leading the kind of work I’d always aspired to. Work that landed strong business results, caught fire on social media, was discussed by the industry and managed to bag us a bunch of awards too.

This didn’t happen by chance. Looking back, I can pinpoint the moments in time where I was introduced to new ideas that helped shape our thinking. And led to work we’re immensely proud of: #SearchForChange, #YukBukaSuara, #IndiaKiUdaan, #KeepTraditionsAlive (Eid, Diwali, Raksha Bandhan), and more.

Discovering, absorbing and acting on the ideas I’ve learned from Les Binet, Peter Field, Orlando Wood, Byron Sharp and Jonah Berger has turned me into a student of creativity and marketing effectiveness.

And if there’s one thing I’m dead certain of, it is that marketing stands at the precipice of a creative renaissance: we can either choose to step back and continue down a path of average-ness, or step off the cliff into the bold, glorious unknown.

LinkedIn is full of people summarising what they’ve learned from this new group of marketing thinkers. So I thought I’d give it a shot, and share how I’ve synthesised their work into a method that has worked for me. Any errors in understanding their work are mine alone, and I welcome your critiques and builds.

Here’s my buck; now where’s my bang?

Messrs. Wood, Binet, Field and Sharp have shown, with evidence, that long-term campaign effectiveness has declined as Extra Share Of Voice (Share Of Voice minus Share Of Market) has declined. While award-winning campaigns continue to be more effective than the also-rans, the effectiveness of these campaigns too are on the decline, suggesting a fundamental shift – in the wrong direction – in advertising principles altogether.

Made you look?

The root cause of this decline is what the group calls The Triple Jeopardy of Attention.

As budgets have moved from brand to performance, with a focus on short-term effects at a large scale, the mental availability of brands (salience) has declined.

It doesn’t help that marketers still mistakenly believe that one impression on platform A has the same value on Platform B, whereas different platforms generate different kinds of attention. For example, Linear TV is becoming less and less relevant while Social continues to rise, with users turning to influencers and friends for trusted, credible recommendations and content. An impression on Social thus might have more value than one on linear TV.

Finally, ads themselves have changed in the performance marketing era, to narrow-focus, chopped narratives. While they’re designed to quickly land the brand message with people who aren’t paying attention, they aren’t designed to drive any attention in the first place: making this a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Relationship Status: It’s Complicated

The times, they are a-changin’.

The world is in polycrisis, heaving from one issue to another.

Two years of the pandemic have forever transformed society and the way we consider living our lives, fuelling meaningful conversations about gender and racial equity.

Economic recovery has been short-lived, with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine dealing a blow to the global economy.

Misinformation is proliferating, and the new media cycle about AI has sparked more questions than answers.

And then, of course, the threat of drastic climate change looms large.

In this age, multiple studies suggest that brands that demonstrate a strong understanding of lived realities, focus on inclusion and representation and address real problems are likely to win.

I’ve drawn some conclusions based on what I see with the work we do.

A simple, contextual and insightful text tweet promoting a feature is likely to get way more attention, and spark more engagement and conversations about the feature than a 30-second ad film about the same feature.

Ad films rooted deeply in lived realities and local culture are more likely to drive earned media and become part of the conversation than traditional slice-of-life storytelling-driven ads; the latter seem to need a higher paid media spend to drive business impact.

All of which just goes to show that traditional advertising is more likely to be ignored; unless a consumer simply can’t escape seeing it.

For FFF’s Sake!

Binet and Field’s seminal work, The Long And Short Of It, proves two points in particular.

One: Emotional campaigns are more effective across almost all business metrics – and are able to get more attention than rational campaigns.

Two: Fame-driving campaigns in particular (defined as those that build word-of-mouth advocacy for the brand, get talked about, create authority for the brand, and give the sense that the brand is doing the most running in the category) outperform all other kinds of emotional campaigns on all business metrics.

Simply put, campaigns that are built to get attention do better than those that aren’t.

Binet, Field and Wood found the following common threads between those attention-grabbing campaigns.

Firstly, they drive Fame, or salience, building long-term memory structures to bring the brand to mind.
Secondly, they generate Feeling, an emotional connection that orientates our attention and puts things in long-term memory to make one choice more obvious than others.
And thirdly, they have high Fluency, and are highly distinctive from other campaigns.

Instinctively, the FFF framework feels right: the more shareworthy, insightful and distinctive the work, the better the results.

Take your first STEPPS

Late in 2021, I rediscovered a framework to help me put FFF into action. Courtesy Jonah Berger, and the Viral Sprint he hosts for Section, Scott Galloway’s online education outfit.

Prof. Berger shows that brands which have scaled rapidly have done so by focusing not just on sales results, but brand results. The tl;dr is: campaigns that are designed to drive Adoption+Advocacy drive greater business impact than campaigns designed to just drive Adoption.

It’s called STEPPS, and is designed to inject talkworthiness/memorability/attention-grabbingness (my submission for the Oxford Dictionary’s Word Of The Year) into your campaigns. Turning what could be a potentially average campaign into something that drives both Adoption and Advocacy.

The acid test

The first campaigns we implemented these frameworks on were for our 2022 International Women’s Day campaigns, in both India and Indonesia. The resulting work, and the impact it drove, changed my thinking forever. Both campaigns generated way higher volumes of social conversation and press coverage than we’d anticipated, while landing strong business results. The India campaign has become Google India’s most-awarded campaign in recent years.

We fast-followed with the India@75 campaign, #IndiaKiUdaan. And ended up being talked about more than even the government’s own efforts to celebrate the moment!

Since then, STEPPS and FFF have become the muses of my personal creative renaissance. And helped me redefine and reinvent how I want to approach my work for the next several years.

#TIL Forever

The journey isn’t over yet. There’s more to read and learn from Binet, Field, Wood, Sharp, Berger and others. I’ve yet to dive deep into Mark Ritson’s work – I keep seeing pieces of it on LinkedIn that excite and energise me.

In the meanwhile, if you’re looking for further reading, here are my sources:

  • The Long And Short Of It, by Les Binet and Peter Field
  • Lemon – How The Advertising Dream Turned Sour, by Orlando Wood
  • Contagious, by Jonah Berger

I’ll leave you with one last thought:

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

Rita Mae Brown

It’s time to jump off that cliff.

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advertising, campaigns, communication, conversations, digital, how to, measurement, social media

Marketers, Rethink What Your #SocialMedia Should Be Doing

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Sound familiar?

For the longest time, marketers have had the wrong expectations from social media.

I’ve spent years, both on the agency side and the client side, hearing about the need to “educate”, “drive engagement”, “sell”, “build awareness”, “drive traffic” and other such goals. All devised with the intention of “moving the needle”.

To be fair, I’ve been part of the problem, pitching these expectations to clients. And at this point, I’m willing to go out a limb and suggest that I’ve been mistaken.

When marketers write an integrated communications brief, we do it with an end goal in mind:

  • Increase usage by x points over the course of the year
  • Sell y units by the end of the quarter
  • Convince z people to sign up for the programme
  • And so on.

The error we make is the assumption that (organic) social media can have an outsized impact on these ROI/revenue-driven goals the way that paid media does.

Why is this assumption an error?

As of 30 June 2016, India’s Internet-going audience was estimated at about 462M users. This is roughly 37% of India’s population.

Here are the reach figures for the top 3 social networks in India.

  1. Facebook: 161M (Source: Facebook Ads Manager)
  2. LinkedIn: 35M (Source: Statista.com)
  3. Twitter: 23.2M (Source: Statista.com)
  4. Instagram: 16M (Source: Napoleoncat.com)

It’s fair to assume that everyone with a LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram profile is also on Facebook. So, the size of India’s social media population is 161M. This works out to 35% of India’s Internet population and 13% of India’s overall population.

We also know that, courtesy algorithms, current Facebook organic reach for pages with over 50,000 followers is at a mere 1%. Or even less for pages with high fan following. This article dated June 2016 pegs it at 2% and declining fast, towards zero. Facebook will also cut organic reach for posts that they deem too promotional.

So, here’s best case scenario for a brand with 18M fans on Facebook, assuming no further decline in reach:

The absolute maximum reach a single Facebook post can get is 1% of 18M = 0.18M = 0.000144% of India’s population. Assume that a brand creates 5 organic posts a day, each of which reaches a different audience (which we know is not true), you get to about 0.9M people a day. Or a mere 0.00072% of India’s population.

With figures like this, there is absolutely no way organic social media content can move the needle on ROI/revenue goals at scale for large brands.

So what should the end goal of social media be?

Let’s remind ourselves that social media is not a place people visit to shop. They’re here to kill time. To be distracted. To be entertained. To see what’s going on in the world at large. To share stuff that helps them build the image they want for themselves.

It’s true. People share things that help them appear interesting, knowledgeable, opinionated, concerned, trendy, cool, fashionable, successful, happy, and so on. Things that they subconsciously believe will raise their esteem in the eyes of their networks. Every analysis I’ve ever read points out different things that people share, and different reasons. The common thread uniting them all: the not-so-latent need for everyone to be seen in a very positive light by their peers.

This is where we marketers have a chance. Because, among all the other things people post to boost their image, are the products and services they use; the useful products and services they want to tell their networks about; and the brands they feel suit the image they want to create for themselves.

If we can create content that builds both brands – ours, and the user’s – we have found a recipe for social sharing, a recipe for starting positive conversations about our brand.

A recipe for brand love and advocacy.

Which, of course, has a knock-on effect on sales and revenue.

And that, grasshopper, is what we should orient our social media towards.

 

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campaigns, challenges, industry, influencer marketing, social media

Making Influencer Marketing Credible Again

Is influencer marketing as influential as it used to be?

This post is probably going to rake up some controversy, but I’m going to write it anyway.

Over the last year or so, I’ve been watching social media closely. I’ve been hearing whispers from agency folk and brand managers. And everything points to one irrefutable fact.

Influencer marketing just isn’t as credible as it used to be.

I’ll go out on a limb, one step further.

Influencer marketing just isn’t credible any more.

And here’s why.

One. Brands aren’t being discerning enough. Anyone with enough followers or readership qualifies to be an influencer. No matter how tenuous the connection between the influencer and the brand promise.

Two. Influencers aren’t being discerning enough. Most influencers today seem to be happy to work with any brand that is willing to work with them (read: pay them well). Rather than the brands they really love. The faked enthusiasm shows in every overexcited tweet, in every hard-selling blog post.

Three, following on from my previous statement. People today are becoming more and more aware that people who randomly start promoting a brand are being paid to do so.

Having been one of the earliest exponents – and practitioners – of social influence marketing in India, I can’t help but wonder – whatever happened to the influencer marketing we used to know and love?

For those who came in late, here’s how it’s supposed to work.

  1. Brand identifies potential influencers. These are usually people who are perceived experts in a particular field (related to the brand’s sphere of operation), or die-hard brand fans.
  2. Brand contacts influencer. Influencer agrees that the brand is a great fit for them.
  3. Brand and influencer work together to co-create content.
  4. It’s a win for both, the brand and the influencer. In the truest form of influencer marketing, there is no money exchanged. The brand gains credibility. The influencer gains readership/following/indirect revenue through their association with the brand and wider exposure. And/or merchandise and/or products and/or an exclusive experience.

So here are a few thoughts on how to make it better again. Very simply, going back to the basics.

Brand Managers, be picky about the influencers you work with. Frankly, there’s a limited pool. And every social media agency has pretty much the same list. Look for a few really good and relevant influencers, rather than a wide pool of irrelevant (to your category) influencers. Or work even harder, and discover someone who could become an influencer through your campaign. Your campaign will look and feel more authentic. And you’ll save a few bucks too.

Brand Managers, avoid your instinct to hard-sell. The more sell-y the content you co-create, the more people will avoid it. Don’t be lazy. Find a way to subtly weave your brand promise into your influencer’s natural content. It’s a brand-building exercise, not a sales one.

Influencers, stay true to yourselves. If music is your passion (and the reason people follow you), you have no business working on a food brand. And if you love rock music, don’t pick up a campaign related to Bollywood pop. If you’re an iPhone fan, don’t work with an Android OEM. If you’re a jeans-and-tees person, avoid the business/formal clothing brands.

Influencers, don’t do every campaign you get. I’ve seen people tweet for OLX one day and Quikr the next. The agreement you sign with a client may not be exclusive. But being loyal to the brands you actually respect or use will win you more credibility with your audience. It’ll also keep your client loyal to you. Money is always tempting. But eventually, you’ll end up diluting your brand equity. And your follower count.

Influencers, be transparent about your engagement with the brand. There’s no need to pretend that you wrote a post out of sheer love. Talk about how you’re engaging with the brand. It’s also ok to tell the world that they paid for your trip, or paid you to write the post, and leave it to your followers to judge for bias. It’ll just help you build further credibility.

As usual, I’d love to know what you think. Do leave your thoughts and opinions in the comments.

Footnote: I want to touch upon the issue of brands paying an influencer. I personally believe that paying an influencer to engage is antithetical to the concept of influencer marketing. It’s no different from hiring a celeb to endorse your brand. I do also believe that influencers work hard to create content and build a deeply engaged following, and deserve to be rewarded for the work they do. It’s a grey area; so in the end, you should just do what seems ethical to you.

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campaigns, digital, how to, technology, trend

Remarketing: From Stalking To Smart

If you haven’t been through the experience of searching for a product or service and then being served ads all over the web for the same product or service, then this is probably your first day online. Welcome to the Internet. There’s a lot more than porn here.

Jokes apart. The way marketers currently use cookie- or sign-in-based ad remarketing makes most users feel like they’re being shadowed. Like their every move is being tracked. Like Big Brother is watching.

For those who came in late, remarketing is the act of targeting users who have already visited your website, or clicked on an ad, or searched for a particular product or category, or interacted with you on social media, or downloaded your app.

It initially began as a really smart idea. Someone who’s interacted with you or your business’ category is more likely to be persuaded if you are able to identify them and serve them an ad based on their earlier interaction with you. It sounded like a beautiful blend of digital marketing and CRM.

And then all hell broke loose.

Here’s the greatest prank I ever heard of.

Remarketing Prank

This is exactly how remarketers work. If the user’s shown interest in spoons, let’s give him spoons. Big spoons, little spoons, silver spoons, gold spoons, plastic spoons, dessert spoons, soup spoons…

Here are some reasons why this kind of remarketing doesn’t work.

  1. It’s as close to online stalking as you can legally get.
  2. The user might have actually already bought the spoons, in which case the ad impression was wasted.
  3. The user may have had only a fleeting interest in the product or category.

So how do you make remarketing more effective?

By making it useful to your users.

Here’s one way to do that.

Suppose you let your user pick what they’re interested in. You store that information – either through a signed-in profile or a cookie or both – on that user’s browser. And then target them with ads focused on those interest categories.

At any point of time, the user can update their interest categories, making sure they’re always being served fresh, relevant ads. They can also – in the interest of privacy – choose to opt-out of this programme.

In a sense, you’re getting your users to optimise your advertising for you. And increasing your relevance to them; and, hopefully, brand equity.

Thoughts?

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