figaro digital magazine

I S S U E N 0 . 5M A R C H 2013

FOR DIGITAL PEOPLE IN BRANDS AND AGENCIES

The indispensable guide to digital agencies, suppliers and technology providersPROFILES, CASE STUDIES, INTERVIEWS, INSIGHT AND MORE

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I S S U E N 0 . 1 8J U LY 2013

THE MAGAZINE FOR DIGITAL PEOPLE IN BRANDS AND AGENCIES

Getting Closer to Consumers • Facebook Graph Search • Social Business COMMENT, ESSAYS, CASE STUDIES, INTERVIEWS

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FIGARODIGITAL.CO.UK

Already available for many users, Facebook’s Graph Search is set to have major implications for the ways brands and users interact with the social network.

Marc Blinder at Adobe tells us about the opportunities and the risks

R E W R I T I N G FAC E BO OK S E A R C H

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Marc Blinder, director of Social Media Strategy eMea at adoBe

essays

The last 12 months have seen a rush of developments in the ever-busy world of Facebook: the launch of the Home app for android, the arrival of the

Customer audiences tool and the roll-out of Lookalike audiences.

Dominating these changes however, is Facebook’s new Graph search, the long-awaited semantic search facility which enables users to look for things their friends have engaged or interacted with, and to see the interests and inclinations of people outside their own personal networks.

In beta since January and live from 8 July this year, the business potential of Graph search, as well as the broader implications for the ways in which we engage with the world’s largest online community, are significant, says Marc Blinder, Director of social Media strategy eMea at adobe.

Spreading The neTas Blinder told delegates at the Figaro Digital social Media seminar earlier this year, while the old Facebook search found friends, Graph search takes in photos, games, places that people have been to and other content which they’ve ‘Liked’ or recommended.

“For Facebook,” says Blinder, “it’s about going after the huge amount of revenue which Google is making all the time out of search. When Mark Zuckerberg announced this, he said Facebook already gets over a billion searches every day without really trying. This is their attempt to take an old search product and create something new and exciting.” What changes, then, does Graph search bring to the Facebook experience and how should brands adapt? “This is going to be really big for the entire digital marketing funnel,” says Blinder, “from awareness and consideration through to purchase. you can imagine all the people searching for pubs or restaurants that their friends ‘Like’ when they’re figuring out where to

go. People can be exposed to a huge range of new results. From a business perspective, whether you’re a small business or a large enterprise with many different retail locations, you really want to get your metadata into Facebook’s system so that you’re showing up on the results pages.”

That metadata, he explains, can include check-ins at physical locations, ‘Likes’ and recommendations. But in order for your brand or company to appear in Graph search results, you need a correctly set up page with a physical address. “a lot of companies that aren’t in the retail or restaurant space,” says Blinder, “probably don’t have physical locations on Facebook, so they need to think of clever ways to get themselves found. We also think this is going to encourage customers to connect via mobile. We’re used to seeing stickers for Tripadvisor or Foursquare. Good business practice in future is definitely going to involve having stickers like this for Facebook, encouraging people to ‘Like’, recommend and check-in, because that’s what’s going to drive results.”

ConvergenCe and aTTribuTionFor marketing teams, says Blinder, this change will require a shift in the way staff and budgets are orchestrated. “The search and the social teams can’t be

separate anymore,” he says. “Those teams and their budgets are going to converge, which can also mean changes to the bonus schemes and the KPIs people are judged on.”

If, for example, you’re a large retailer operating across different locations and hoping for a prominent search result, it may be that Google performs best one day, Bing the next and that Facebook wins out the day after that.

“you need the money to be allocated in such a way that you don’t have two separate teams fighting over it,” says Blinder. “They need to be working together and using that money in the most efficient way on a day-to-day basis. you want the seO efforts to be taking into account what’s happening in the search space as well as in social and on Facebook. It also means attribution analysis is going to be key, going forward. That means being able to measure users going through multiple touch-points before they convert. They might ‘Like’ your page on Facebook, then five days later type in a search on Google and come to your

website. you need to be able to assign the correct value to all these different touch-points. We think that for a long time we’re still going to see a lot of those last clicks coming from Google. But if the first clicks are coming from Facebook – if that’s where the awareness and consideration are coming from – then it’s really important that value is being attributed to that channel for growing business in the long run.”

unSeaTing google?Facebook are famously fond of acknowledging that, in the journey towards completion, the site is just one per cent done. In the case of Graph search, says Blinder, Zuckerberg and his team are probably only half a per ☞

FaCebook already geTS over a billion SearCheS every day wiThouT Trying”

arTICLe jon fortgang

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With new social platforms and apps popping up daily, if not hourly, it’s sometimes hard to remember a time when

Myspace (or even friendster) ruled the roost and the thought of sharing images, thoughts or even videos in real-time,

continuously, seemed like a strange concept. While many of us have seen countless platforms come and go, certain social media platforms seem to be here to stay, while some of the fresher entries into the market are showing more staying

power than others.

James Lowery, Head of SEO at Latitude Digital Marketing, logs on and guides us through new opportunities for brands in the ever-shifting

social media landscape

remember friendster?* me niether

*Pioneering social network launched in 2002. overtaken by facebook. now rePositioned

as a social gaming site

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James Lowery, Head of seo at Latitude digitaL marketing

essays

FacebookWhat it is you should know by now.What We say Not exactly new to the market, but the trusty ‘old’ Facebook (with the practically ancient lifespan of nine years) might just be the channel to invest in this year. While many thought of it as predominantly a branding tool, new developments are shifting Facebook to perform as a hybrid platform for branding and direct response generation for marketers.

The custom audiences tool could be a massive game-changer for marketers and brands. This is a simple tool which allows marketers to reach their actual and prospective customers, rather than basing their targeting strategies on rational assumptions about who their audience may be. For example, if you have collected email addresses at an event, you can target these people on Facebook, encouraging a follow-up action post-event. Facebook achieves this by matching email addresses to Facebook user logins. The email-matching process is heavily encrypted and, in testing, up to 90 per cent of customer emails have been successfully matched to Facebook logins.

For retailers, using the custom audiences feature can definitely help drive extra revenue from customers. one way to make this possible is to encourage repeat purchases for products that have a lifecycle (such as hair and beauty products). by retargeting customers when the product is coming to the end of its cycle, the ad will be highly relevant to your selected (custom) audience and thus they are more likely to purchase the product again. Retailers can also use custom audience targeting to cross-sell similar products. encouraging these repeat purchases will help maintain customer loyalty, and drive more revenue for your business in the long-term.

The travel sector could also adopt custom audience targeting into their Facebook strategy by retargeting

holidaymakers at the same time each year. For example, if a customer made a booking in april for a summer holiday, you could target them again the following april with a message such as “Looking for a summer holiday again this year?”

The finance industry could also leverage custom audiences. keeping customers loyal in the finance industry, particularly insurance, can be hard because it is increasingly common for customers to shop around on comparison sites. The custom audiences tool can help insurers keep their existing customers loyal by targeting them 11 to 12 months after they took out a policy – the time they will be looking to renew. custom audience targeting really is a no-brainer for marketers aiming to engage in deeper relationships with existing customers. connect with your customers, reward their loyalty, keep them keen and reap the benefits.

INsTagRamWhat it is Photo-sharing application launched in 2010.What We say While already popular before being acquired by Facebook in april 2012, Instagram has since gained a huge amount of press attention and new users as a result. engaging via Instagram is a totally new way of interacting with an entirely new audience; an audience that communicates via tinted or filtered images with minimal text. according to a 2012 survey by Pew Internet, 12 per cent of adults say they use Instagram, with just over one in four users between the ages of 18 and 29 embracing it, making it a key tool for brands marketing for the twenty-somethings in particular.

many brands, especially in the retail

and travel industries, realised the potential of engaging with their consumers through Instagram early on, and have established a strong presence across the platform. some retailers have come up with innovative ways of tying online and offline marketing together using Instagram. Urban outfitters encourages its customers to snap ‘selfie’ images while trying on outfits and to upload them using an assigned hashtag. Virgin airways has also embraced Instagram by sharing interesting content and encouraging customers to Instagram their journeys to receive money off from their next flight.

PINTeResTWhat it is allows users to pin photos and images to boards, which can be organised by themes or categories.What We say according to Pew Internet, just over one in 10 adults now use Pinterest. The retail sector in particular has taken Pinterest on with gusto; a leading fashion retailer with a target demographic of females aged between 18 and 25 currently benefits by sharing their Pinterest board of male celebrities

on their Facebook channel. one such upload managed to acquire over 1,700 ‘Likes’ in a very short period of time.

as with any activity, it is important to have a strategy around the types of images visitors are likely to pin. at Latitude we completed research into a number of ecommerce clients and unsurprisingly stock photos of items do not gather much interest. you may achieve a number of pins from potential customers who wish to purchase said item, but what you will witness being pinned frequently are current topics of interest – the ‘keep calm and carry on’ slogans, humorous e-cards and ☞

Facebook’s custom audiences tool could be a massive game-changer For brands”

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WHERE NEXT FOR MULTICHANNEL MARKETING?

I S S U E N 0 . 1 9O C T 2013

THE MAGAZINE FOR DIGITAL PEOPLE IN BRANDS AND AGENCIES

O2, OxfamGB, Spotify, Sony, Tfl, WAYN.comCASE STUDIES, COMMENT, INTERVIEWS, ESSAYS

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6i s s u e 1 9 o c t o b e r 2 0 1 3

figarodigital.co.uk

Want to get involved? Figaro Digital’s autumn weekly seminar programme is underway. Our afternoon sessions focus on mobile, social media, email, video, search, display and multichannel marketing. Speakers from some of the UK’s most successful brands, digital agencies and technology providers present a mixture of case studies, in-depth insight and original research.Find out more at: Figarodigital.co.uk/seminars.aspx.

figarodigital.co.uk

that was the question posed by Browser Media’s director Joe friedlein, who explored the current state of SEo at the figaro digital Marketing conference in July.

the answer, of course, is no, it’s not. “While the search engines rule,” says friedlein, “there will always be a demand for visibility.”

But, says friedlein, SEo is now part of the wider process of promoting your brand and

building authority within your field. How should marketers approach that? “create helpful, engaging content and

engage with commentators,” says friedlein. “How you do good SEo is actually very Pr-based. Build thought-leadership and focus everything on creating brilliant content – that’s what will get you respect.”

upfrontsNEWS, viEWS aNd iNSigHt froM figaro digital’S rEcENt SEMiNarS aNd coNfErENcES

figaro Digital seminar programme

is seo DeaD?

Digital Marketing

Perceptive design is

about continuous improvement,” alastair cole, Partner & Head of creative Services EMEa at Essence, told figaro digital delegates this

summer. “When it comes to digital, one size shouldn’t fit all - customers today are smart, digitally savvy and expect highly tailored experiences as standard. New techniques allow

advertisers and marketers to perceive the changing context of individual users. Brands that can sense what’s truly happening, interpret the information and optimise the user

experience which will engage with real people in a more meaningful way. context is the new king and it’s at the heart of a new approach in digital marketing.”

gooD seo is very pr-baseD”

Context is King

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7i s s u e 1 9 o c t o b e r 2 0 1 3

SOURCE: ADOBE 2013 MOBILE CONSUMER SURVEY

Personalisation is the most critical lever in the marketing

mix at the moment,” Simon Dean, Creative Strategy Director at Qubit, told delegates in July.

“You invest so much money in getting people to your site through SEO, display

advertising and great content,

but when visitors actually arrive at your site, only about three per cent go on to convert. That’s a great opportunity for improvement.”

Dean highlights the importance of tag management in improving site speed and agility and, most importantly, in structuring data. “That’s super-important in understanding visitor behaviour.” And from there, he says, you can start formulating actionable insight. “Look for the sustained uplift,” is his advice to marketers examining test data. “Beware

of false positives.” What are Dean’s

takeaways for marketers looking to put their foot on the gas and accelerate conversions? “Get consolidated,” he says. “Don’t get stuck with data silos from different programmes. Don’t get tools that

create broken workfl ows or ineffi ciencies. Don’t get tools owned by developers for marketing when marketers are the ones that need to be changing content on the website and having that kind of agility.”

GET PERSONAL TO DRIVE CONVERSIONS

12% OF USERS IN

THE US USE THEIR SMART DEVICES IN THE SHOWER

UPFRONTS

GETTING BEHIND THE SHOPFRONT

The consumer journey has become

increasingly complex,” noted Sarah Mansfi eld, Media Director at Unilever UKI, at our Marketing Conference in July. “Drawing the path to purchase back to basic principles is very important. There’s still a desire for value out there. People still need recommendations. Consumers like researching and curating products before they buy – that’s where the fun is - and then sharing their purchases with friends. We need to consider all of this when we’re putting our shopping experiences together. At the heart of it is how we drive brand preference before they get to the store – whether that’s in an offl ine or online environment.”

MOBILE FIRST AND FOREMOST

You need to understand your

users to give them what they need,” Lorenzo Vasini, Business Development Director at ORM, told delegates in July.”Make sure, whatever you’re doing, that it’s relevant. Mobile is becoming the fi rst brand touchpoint. It’s a brilliant chance to design for your device and to foster consumer engagement. The best thing about smartphones is the ability to personalise your customers’ experience so you can give them that relevant, engaging, location-based content.”

LOOK FOR THE SUSTAINED UPLIFT”

SOURCE: FLURRY.COMSOURCE: JUMIO MOBILE CONSUMER

HABITS SURVEY

THE AVERAGE USER NOW SPENDS 2 HOURS & 38 MINUTES PER DAY ON THEIR

MOBILE D E V I C E

ANDROID PHONE PRIMARY &52%

SOURCE: ADOBE 2013 MOBILE CONSUMER SURVEY

iPHONE PRIMARY DEVICE

27%

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FIGARODIGITAL.CO.UK

Case StudıesBRAND > AGENCY KEY TO DIGITAL SECTORS

CONTENTS

B Blue Cross FatSand 26 Bonmarché Venda 19 British Gas me Rufus Leonard 14

C Captify Inspiring Interns 22 Chester Zoo Sitecore 14 Costa Coffee Adestra 20

D Dahl Brothers Oracle Responsys 13 Dead Legacy Livelink New Media 20 DHL dotMailer 20

E Endsleigh Cogworks 14

F Feelunique.com Inviqa 21Forever21 Sociomantic Labs 19

G Godolphin Jaywing 16 Goody Good Stuff Shoutlet 22 Gov.uk RedEye 24

I ILX Group Absolute Digital Media 16

J John Lewis Adobe Marketing Cloud 18

L Ladbrokes Branded3 13 LED Hut SLI Systems 24 Lulu Guinness Leapfrogg Digital Marketing 21

M Majestic Wine SDL 18 Manchester Evening News Communicator 20

P Phones 4u Exponential 26 pi Turn 18 S Selecta Green River Media 16 Spicers of HytheSleeping Giant Media 18

T Thomas Cook Airlines affilinet 13 The Met Office Webtrends 13 Thinkbox Box UK 21 Toyota Aygo Bloom Worldwide 22 UUnited Airlines Ensighten 24

V VSO Digital Tactics 26

WWarehouse Chalk Social 19

To read the full versions of all this issue’s case studies online, follow the link at the end of

each case study or go to figarodigital.co.uk/search/

casestudies and search by brand name

ACCOUNT MANAGEMENT

AFFILIATE MARKETING

ANALYTICS BEHAVIOURAL TARGETING

CONTENT MANAGEMENT

CONTENT MARKETING

CRM DESIGN AND BUILD

DIGITAL MARKETING DISPLAY ADVERTISING ECOMMERCE EMAIL MARKETING

REAL TIME BIDDINGPAY PER CLICKOPTIMISATION RECRUITMENT

VIRAL MARKETINGVIDEOUSER GENERATED CONTENT

UX

TRANSLATIONTAG MANAGEMENTSOCIAL MEDIASEO

MOBILE MOBILE APPS MULTICHANNEL NETWORKS

FULL SERVICE AGENCY GAMES GEOLOCATION HOSTING

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MAKING CHARACTERS (AND CHARACTER)

COUNT

FIGARODIGITAL.CO.UK

REMEMBER WHEN COMEDY was the new rock ‘n’ roll? Well, here in the hyper-connected teenies, social media may have overtaken – or at least incorporated – key elements of both. David Schneider and David Levin, founders of agency That Lot, are on a mission to provide social with a shot of energy and innovation, humanising branded content with humour.

MAKING SOCIAL WORKDavid Schneider needs no introduction, but we’ll give him a quick one anyway: actor, writer, comic and director, he starred alongside Steve Coogan in The Day Today, Knowing Me, Knowing You and I’m Alan Partridge. He’s written extensively for TV and radio, worked with Armando Iannucci and Chris Morris and cropped up regularly on screens big and small for two decades.

Now, with professional Tweeter David Levin (“Yes,” says Levin, “that is an

actual job,”) the pair have launched an agency that specialises in

helping brands and businesses create effective

and entertaining Twitter content. Schneider has been a

passionate advocate of social media since its inception, but the move from award-winning comedy to digital content is an unexpected one. So how did he get into this?

Comedian David Schneider and professional Tweeter David Levin are the founders of social media agency

That Lot. They talk to Jon Fortgang about writing, rioting, comedy and bringing brands to life on Twitter

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COMEDIAN AND WRITER DAVID SCHNEIDER AND PROFESSIONAL TWEETER DAVID LEVIN

ESSAYS

“Doing adverts and working for brands meant I ended up looking at what they were doing on Twitter,” he says. “Some of them were great. But a lot of them weren’t, or simply had no presence at all. So I had the sense of there being an opportunity to justify to my family all the time I spend on Twitter, and being able to call it work. What I find really exciting is being able to apply all that I’ve learned as a comedian and a writer to the way brands and businesses use Twitter.”

Levin, meanwhile, is one of the UK’s most practised professional Tweeters. A writer with a decade’s experience behind him, he’s the voice of The Voice and The Apprentice on Twitter, as well as a clutch of other accounts. Out of hours he runs the massively popular and shamelessly scurrilous @The_Dolphin_Pub. For him, it all began during the London riots of 2011 when, as a resident of Hackney, he started Tweeting about what was going on around him. One rumour sparked that night was that The Dolphin pub had burned down. It hadn’t. But in response Levin set up a spoof account for the pub which spread like wildfire.

“I don’t want to insinuate that the riots helped my career,” he says. “But Grace Dent and Caitlin Moran both started to Tweet about The Dolphin straight away. One of them said it was one of the only good things to come out of the riot. Now, that’s obviously not actually true. But it probably helped me!”

WRITING RIGHTNow Schneider and Levin now have a roster of clients including Beats By Dre Headphones, PG Tips and IKEA, and the pair also present the Guardian’s Twitter Masterclass events. “We come at this from a slightly different angle,” says Schneider. “David’s a writer and I do comedy, so we use humour a lot in what we do.”

“A lot of the social media people who work in big agencies are hired because they’re really smart with social media,”

says Levin. “They know how those platforms work, they know how to do clever things with hashtags, but they’re not writers. Twitter is a very editorial medium. I think you need to approach it in the same way as a blog or a magazine. With The Dolphin, for example, people say that if they haven’t been online for a couple of days, they’ll go straight there and check it out, which is exactly what I do with accounts I like. I’m not saying that to run a successful Twitter account you have to be a writer. But it makes it significantly easier if you are - or at least if you’re into writing.”

It’s not just words on Twitter that That Lot are interested in. They’re constantly on the lookout for new ways to have fun with the format. An eye-poppingly original example is the work done by @kpcuk, who creates ascii-style pictograms using punctuation points and special characters. “There’s so much noise on Twitter now,” says Schneider. “We’re really looking for ways of cutting through - new formats that make people go ‘wow!’ To succeed you really need a lot of personality.” BEING HUMAN WITH HUMOURSo when brands come to Schneider and Levin, what are they asking for?

“It varies,” says Levin. “For some it’s ‘we want to be on Twitter and we want to be good. Please help us!’ Others want a very specific thing doing. There’s a term we’ve started using – it may be a bit wanky, so I apologise – ‘reactive listening’. That’s the idea of looking at people who are talking about you and then chatting to them in a way that brings them over to your brand.”

It’s the focus on funny stuff and formal innovation that forms That Lot’s USP. But aren’t there some brands or

businesses for whom comic content simply isn’t an appropriate approach?

“There are very few accounts that can’t benefit from being a bit more human,” says Schneider. “We did some work with a prostate cancer charity. They were trying to improve their Twitter feed during Movember – the idea was to get men to go to the doctor’s. We offered them some

funny Tweets which they used. But the funniness there had a purpose: to

get people to the doctor. You might

think, cancer, right – no comedy there. But you’d

be surprised where it can work if the comedy

matches the message. It’s about tone of voice and humanity: being a person. A lot of businesses are still very formal – everything begins with a sort of martial arts bow - so it can be good to loosen up. It makes them more approachable and therefore more follow-able.”

“I spoke at Social Media Week on the same panel as someone from Woking Police,” says Levin. “They were featured in the Daily Mail in 2012 because they’d Tweeted the lyrics to ‘Ice Ice

Baby’ by Vanilla Ice.”In case you missed it, that Tweet,

alerting motorists to treacherous road surfaces, ran as follows: ‘If ice is a problem, yo, you can solve it. Check out this link while my DJ revolves it.’ Helpfully, the link took users to the force’s road safety information page.

“That’s a very humorous approach,” says Levin. “It trended, but it got a mixed reaction. Lots of people thought it was great. Other people wanted to know why the police were doing jokes on Twitter. I think they did well, though. It was great PR. And let’s not pretend there’s not a human at the end of your Twitter account. Why hide that?” ☞

IT’S INTERESTING TO LOOK AT THE STRUCTURE OF A TWEET AND COMPARE IT TO THAT OF A JOKE”

ARTICLE JON FORTGANG

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I S S U E N 0 . 6M A Y 2014

FOR DIGITAL PEOPLE IN BRANDS AND AGENCIES

The indispensable guide to digital agencies, suppliers and technology providers

C A S E S T U D I E S � E S S AY S � P R O F I L E S � I N T E R V I E W S

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a n n u a l s o u r c e g u i d e

ur activities online have changed dramatically. Two critical differences now present a very real challenge for marketers. First comes the challenge of the speed at which consumers are interacting with the brands important in their lives.

Second, the speed and scale at which consumers are interacting with each other. Today’s consumers demand to be engaged with on a whole new level; they demand transparency and above all else they demand service in real-time.

PROBLEM:

BROADCAST MENTALITY STILL PERSISTSThe decisive question for content producers is this: do you see your audience as receivers of your information, or as co-producers? Do you see your brand as just a brand, or as a potential media entity in its own right? For most brands, if they are speaking truthfully, they know they should be the latter but are really operating as the former, broadcasting messages via digital channels hoping to hit the high-life with a key message going viral.

Content marketing

Storytellıng at the Speed of NowKate Cooper, MD of social

media agency BLOOM Worldwide, explores

some of the challenges and opportunities

presented by real-time content marketing in

a consumer ecosystem where everything

operates at the speed of now

PROBLEM: PRODUCTION IS STILL SLOW

Applying old world production techniques to the brave new world of ‘now’ means brands just aren’t able to keep up with the pace of competitors, let alone consumers. Big budget, big-ticket all-singing, all-dancing productions have limited value in a realm where the currency of real-time eclipses the polish and shine of glitzy high-production TV ads.

OPPORTUNITY:

REAL-TIME ENGAGEMENT = IMMEDIATE RESULTSIf you can overcome ‘broadcast’ and ‘slow’, the opportunities are there for the taking and the results can be immediate.

The well-known example of the OREO blackout ad, which was released within minutes of the power outage during the 2013 US Super Bowl, captured the zeitgeist and became the real winner amidst the ad spending frenzy. Speed of

delivery and reach are two factors that you need to keep in mind. Working with a team who are proactive and constantly searching for that ‘eureka’ moment will make your job easier.

FIGARODIGITAL.CO.UK

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1 5a n n u a l s o u r c e g u i d e

FEATURE

KATE COOPER, MD AT BLOOM WORLDWIDE

quickly as possible. We are all fully aware that social content has the potential to effect purchase decisions. If you put time, energy and a creative spin on your content strategies you

will see an impact on profits and sales.

THE SOLUTION:

REPURPOSED CONTENT

Ask yourself what content you have in your locker right now. How about all those images in your brochureware? How could those be used on Facebook?

Shooting a new ad? Conduct behind the scenes interviews with the technical and creative geniuses behind the camera. Broadcast six-second teasers on Vine.

THE SOLUTION:

CURATED UGCWho better to tell your story than your customers and, especially, your advocates? They speak the language of the consumer not the language of the brand, making key messages more accessible. They also operate at the speed of the consumer meaning that issues around production schedules become a thing of the past. Shape the online narrative using UGC around key brand storylines. If you’re a travel company why not get people talking

about their #holidaysmiles?bloomworldwide.com

5 WAYS TO GET STARTED WITH REAL-TIME CONTENT MARKETING:

1

AUDIT Look again at the brand stories you already have within your business.

2

PLAN Proactively create branded content

and keep a bit of budget back for those unexpected opportunities. Have a process in place for how to jump on those opportunities within hours, not days. A content calendar is a must to

prevent the process becoming unwieldy.

3

REPURPOSE Create a bank of images already used in other marketing collateral. Check copyright contracts and renegotiate with all your suppliers to enable you

to reuse the plethora of existing content sources in real-time

scenarios.

4

CREATE Light touch micro-content captures a

moment in time or a sentiment current and relevant to your brand narrative. Brainstorm ahead of key

dates or events and be creative so that your brand has something to say

about a key event.

5

CURATE Create an online hub and draw in

all the user-generated stories relevant to your brand. This can be

you blog, your Facebook page or your website. Categorise content along key brand stories and creatively slice and

dice how UGC is shown to present your key messages.

OPPORTUNITY:

CONNECTED BRAND NARRATIVE

The challenge of telling your brand story at the speed of now actually presents your brand’s greatest opportunity. Freeing yourself from the shackles of old world pace means you have the opportunity to connect and tell the story of your brand like never before.

Yes, generate your own creative assets. But how about partnering with the very people you are trying to engage to work on asset production alongside you? LEGO do this brilliantly. Search for LEGO online and you will inevitably find far more co-created or user-generated content than the brand produces itself. LEGO sees itself as a facilitator rather than a producer, helping its advocates to tell their brand story online.

So how do you achieve all of this with real-time content, in a world where old mind-sets and production methods still apply?

THE SOLUTION:

FAST MICRO-CONTENT

Let’s think now like a regular person. You’re busy. You’re distracted. You’re going to give me 3.8 seconds of your time. Great. Thanks. Enter micro-content. Snackable information which can be digested quickly and shared instantly. Six-second Vine videos, GIFs and 140-character Tweets have carved the way for brands to provide a more targeted and attention-grabbing message. There are some obvious time limits to micro-content so you have to be creative and connect to your audience as

DO YOU SEE YOUR AUDIENCE AS RECEIVERS OF YOUR INFORMATION, OR AS CO-PRODUCERS?”

ASG6_p14-15_Bloom_Feature.indd 15 09/04/2014 19:58

Want to

INCREASE SALES? Just Take the MAGIC

Pıll, Rıght?

Digital marketing

couple of recent occurrences at 7thingsmedia got me thinking about digital media and how it’s perceived alongside wider online

marketing channels.Without naming names (!)

a couple of the 7thingsmedia PPC and sales team members ordered ‘Lose Weight – Increase Muscle’ pills (ironically) on the internet. The pills were made from ‘ground-breaking’ ingredients and came with the simple instruction to take just one a day. The pill would work its magic by miraculously adding muscle mass whilst removing those hard to reach fat cells, all without the need for hard work or sweat. Easy, right?

CHALLENGES FOR BRANDSThis got me thinking about the state of digital media and the role of media agencies. In the last 12 months some of the big agencies – I’m thinking, for example, of the Publicis-Omnicom merger – have got bigger. But there are still a growing number of independent agencies challenging the vast network and infrastructures of those bigger agencies, and I like to think 7thingsmedia is one of them. This is happening against a backdrop of brands building out their own digital specialists to not

only ‘think’, but also ‘do’. Digital ad spend, as reported by the

IAB, is still increasing year-on-year, with many brands now starting to shift towards digital ad spend and away from traditional advertising. Consumer behaviour and digital’s unique ability to show complete transparency will clearly be the main driver for this. However, digital advertising seems synonymous with ‘instant sales - and fast!’ Just take the pill and without exercise, hard work or diet change, your body will magically transform. Too good to be true, surely?

Therefore I ask: is the work of media agencies really instant? Can it be easily replicated, without the blood, sweat and tears? Having worked with some of the largest advertisers globally in digital and performance marketing for over 10 years and been agency-side for over 7 years, clearly the answer is ‘no’.

CATCHING UP WITH DATADigital is advancing at a faster rate than most brands are able to react to and some areas of advancement invariably lead to

dead ends, causing wasted resource and costs. ‘Big data’ is

today’s buzzword, and quite rightly so. Being able to join the fragmented

dots of consumer media consumption is still the promised land from a media planning and buying perspective. But what happens if you set your strategy on too little data, wrong data, or worse still, mere assumptions?

In fi ve years we have built an agency that understands the complexities faced by brands in an ever-changing digital

world, and we devise strategies that guide and

cut through these.

FIGARODIGITAL.CO.UK

David McDermott, Performance Director at

7thingsmedia, explains why the relationship between brands and their agencies needs to be a partnership

based on foresight and innovation


7thingsmedia, explains why

easily replicated, without the

Having worked with some of

agencies challenging the vast network and infrastructures of those bigger agencies, and I like

digital specialists to not Performance Director at

7thingsmedia, explains why 7thingsmedia, explains why

strategies that guide and

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FEATURE

At the heart of these is one very simple ethos: placing the right message to the right people at the right time. This will always apply, no matter how big the digital ecosystem becomes, whatever the next ‘disruptive’ technology platform may be or which new performance acronym measures the success: the fundamentals of advertising will never change.

No channel should be a tick-box - and no brand should be shoehorned into just one channel. A channel isn’t a one-strategy-fi ts-all-approach that can be easily replicated! Our ethos is always to understand the complexity of our brand’s objectives and devise the optimal strategy, across all channels – ensuring agility.

So what is the role of a (good) media agency? It is to be a brand’s digital partner and create a united and formidable team. On one side, the brand is the absolute expert and champion of the product. On the other side, the agency should guide and steer the brand through the digital landscape.

Building effi ciencies will play a part in this, but it shouldn’t be the determining factor. Buying group strategies and procurement-led agency pitches will help with economies of scale and increasing bottom lines, but inevitably these approaches can be restrictive. Marketers need to lift their heads out of their

DAVID MCDERMOTT, PERFORMANCE DIRECTOR AT 7THINGSMEDIA

IF YOU DO WHAT YOU’VE ALWAYS DONE, YOU’LL GET WHAT YOU’VE ALWAYS GOTTEN”

spreadsheets and choose an agency on its foresight – its ability to inspire and innovate beyond basic ROIs in the short term. Focusing on bottom lines will invariably lead to tried and tested methodologies and strategies, which fail to refl ect the evolution of the space in which it is being placed.

GAINING PERSPECTIVEA quote that I hold dear is, “If you only do what you’ve always done, you’ll only get what you’ve always gotten.” This is true in digital media where media plans can easily become predictable and suit the needs of the media agency rather than the brand it represents.

What about media plans created by a brand’s in-house digital team? There is no

question that more and more digital

experts are moving brand-side but the ‘frontline’ they are

moving away from is often consumed with the brand

and product – and quite rightly so. Nevertheless,

this means they rarely have the luxury or time to step

outside the brand’s immediate concerns and look

towards the broader industry horizon. This is where a pioneering agency has the advantage of a broader perspective to plan for the future.

So, it is with these thoughts that I return to my initial question. Is what we do instant

and can it be easily replicated? Can you get that sought after body instantly - with just a pill? Yes, digital advertising is growing exponentially, and ad spend is shifting from traditional media. Yes, specialist teams can easily be built to run in-house digital media capabilities. But, in a world where tomorrow will not be the same as today and what was done yesterday is already outdated, it is the role of a media agency to not just ‘plan

and buy media’ but to provide a true partnership to its brands.

Just be careful of taking the magic pill as you’ll never know the possible long term side effects and how irreversible they may be.

7thingsmedia.com and increasing bottom lines,

So what is the role of a (good) media

rightly so. Nevertheless, this means they rarely have the luxury or time to step

outside the brand’s immediate concerns and look

partnership to its brands. Just be careful of taking the

magic pill as you’ll never know the possible long term side effects and how irreversible they may be.

time. This will always apply, no

ecosystem becomes, whatever the

innovate beyond basic ROIs in the short term. Focusing on bottom lines will invariably lead to tried and tested methodologies and strategies, which fail to refl ect the evolution of the space in which it is being placed.

GAINING PERSPECTIVEA quote that I hold dear is, “If

2 7a n n u a l s o u r c e g u i d ea n n u a l s o u r c e g u i d e

but inevitably these approaches can be

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Digital marketing

2014The Year

of the Customer

Bill Nussey, President and CEO at Silverpop, explains why

focusing on personalisation and experience will provide brands with greater loyalty

and revenue

FIGARODIGITAL.CO.UK

e are in the midst of a customer revolution. Buyers now have more control than ever, driving marketers to create the most compelling and fulfilling customer experiences yet.

Marketers have always been the bridge that connects their businesses to customers, but in the past the emphasis was on communicating brand offers. The problem? Marketers didn’t know which customer needed which offer or where the customer was when they were delivering it. So marketers were trying to provide valuable and informative customer experiences, but only a small

percentage of people were actually experiencing them. And this challenge has only been exacerbated by the explosion of communication channels.

This year and going forward, marketing needs to reinvent itself, moving beyond its roots in broadcast marketing to strategies that greet each customer as an individual, offering them the best possible customer experience at every interaction, both digitally and offline. Successful businesses will need to engage with each customer when and where that customer prefers with content that is perfectly tuned and individualised. Here are a few of my ideas for marketing teams everywhere to have their most successful year yet.

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FEATURE

BILL NUSSEY, PRESIDENT AND CEO AT SILVERPOP

THE FUTURE OF MARKETING IS LIKE HAVING A PRIVATE CONCIERGE WHO KNOWS EACH INDIVIDUAL’S INTERESTS”

SHIFT CONTROLFirst, shift from broadcast, batch-and-blast messaging to behavioural marketing automation. Using individuals’ actions to deliver relevant, real-time one-to-one messages is not a nice-to-have anymore. It’s a necessity. Of course, this has always been the case to some extent, but now digital marketing technology has caught up. With the right technology in place, you can capture a range of customer behaviours — in your emails, on your website, in your mobile app, at your physical locations (crossing a geo-fence or checking in on Foursquare), or even on your customers’ daily exercise (via smart-watches, for example). And just as importantly, you can attribute these behaviours to individual customers.

We have been excited to see the innovations of Silverpop customers recently, especially with the increase in automated, behaviour-driven campaigns we’ve seen in the past year. This new way of thinking doesn’t mean you have to de-silo all of your applications – you still want to use the best-of-breed tools and plug them in to your marketing platform. However, you must bring awareness across the silos and centralise the interactions to have actionable data within your marketing tool.

Secondly, pick one channel you’ve never individualised before. Once technology helps you capture these cross-channel, cross-device customer behaviours, it’s up to marketers to weave an engaging story. In other words, it’s great to know that a customer was in your mobile app yesterday, and today that same person is in your store - but how can you leverage that information? The best marketers will be taking that data and using it to create amazing customer experiences. Start simple – pick one channel where you’ve never added a touch of personalisation, and incorporate one instance. Or, add even more customised content to an existing

channel to make it even more helpful, fun or engaging.

IN-STORE, ON-MESSAGEThirdly, look for creative ways to use customer behaviours to drive cross-channel interactions. Imagine, for example, that a customer walks into your physical store, and within a few moments his phone vibrates. Voila, there’s a text message from your company thanking him for being a loyal reward member and reminding him that he has 6,000 reward points that he might want to use today. A few minutes later, a customer enters that store for the first time after downloading a mobile app and receives a text thanking her for visiting and highlighting a few unique aspects of that location.

These types of interactions will require marketers to shift their approach. Most marketers are trained to think, “What should we put out there to get a four per cent return, or five per cent more

clicks, or 200 downloads?” Those are their metrics. But if you shift your frame of thinking to, “Let’s help our first-time buyers have an awesome experience with our brand, nurture them, and send them relevant post-purchase follow-up recommendations,” you’ll drive even better results. Sure, you’ll still include calls to action to get them to buy more, but focusing on the experience versus just pushing a ‘buy more, buy more’ message will produce more revenue and

loyalty than if you focused solely on revenue and loyalty.

PLAN FOR THE JOURNEYThink of marketing as a travel company and customers as tourists. Most marketing today does little more than herd a large crowd of tourists towards a small set of the most popular destinations. More advanced marketing is like a tour bus — more destinations and smaller crowds, but with a fixed sequence and generic experience. The future of marketing is like having a private concierge who knows each individual’s interests, budget and pace.

This guide walks alongside each person, delivering a completely unique and tailored experience.

Once you’re laser-focused on the customer experience, you can start thinking about ways that you can become a personal concierge for your customers, using the behaviours you’ve harnessed to deliver individualised content, across channels and in real time, that guides them through their unique buyer journeys.

silverpop.com

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SEO

SEO has long been seen by brands as the most important and profitable way to drive sales online, so you might wonder why we at Branded3 (an SEO agency) believe it’s the last activity that they should be focusing on. The simple truth is that

SEO has changed so much in recent years that it’s now totally dependent on other marketing activity and just doesn’t work as a stand-alone channel anymore.

It’s changed from being an activity that was conducted on its own by an agency (or an in-house SEO techie) who just got on with it and sent a report at the end of the month, to being dependent on every other channel - from PR and content strategy to products and design.

Is the Last Thıng Brands Should

be Doıng ın 2014SEO is no longer a standalone marketing channel,

says Patrick Altoft, Director of Strategy at Branded3 – it’s an integral part of your overall marketing strategy.

He explains why brands need to get with the new programme or risk being left behind

Why

FIGARODIGITAL.CO.UK

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FEATURE

PULLING RANKWe firmly believe that you can only rank if you deserve to rank. This means that brands need to have the sort of site that people want to find when they are searching for something. If you are not very well-known, have mediocre products, poor customer service and a low-quality or badly designed website then there are dozens of other sites that Google would prefer to rank higher than you.

Too many smaller businesses are happy to neglect website design, content strategy, social media, online PR and customer service in favour of doing SEO because they know that ranking well on Google will give a directly measurable ROI. The problem is that in 2014, all of these things are SEO - you have to have great design, great content, great customer service and lots of people talking about you on blogs and social media sites in order to show Google that you deserve to rank. By not doing all of these, you are dooming your SEO campaign to fail.

Some sectors (such as fashion) are well aware that brand and design are important and SEO is a secondary consideration. But there are still many markets where products are not exciting, brands are less important and businesses focus on rankings first and marketing second. These are the markets where SEO isn’t working well on a long-term basis because the tactics being used are often not those that Google wants to reward.

There are thousands of businesses in the UK in these markets who have wasted money swinging from one SEO trend to the next over the past five years, only to end up with declining rankings and poor performance. The time has

PATRICK ALTOFT, DIRECTOR OF STRATEGY AT BRANDED3

SEO HAS BECOME A BAROMETER OF BRANDS’ OVERALL ONLINE PRESENCE”

come for clients to stop looking at short-term tactics that are doomed to fail and to focus on building a business customers love to find. The rankings will follow suit.

PENALTY SHOTSOne of the key areas of concern in the SEO space at the moment is that those working at the cheaper end of the market are increasingly unable to deliver long-term sustainable results within the sort of budget that SME clients have to spend.

Smaller clients can no longer afford to do the sort of good quality SEO that is going to deliver real long-term value, but there are still plenty of agencies targeting the SME market promising results – something has to change. Google has been clamping down on SEO activity that doesn’t adhere to its Webmaster Guidelines over the past two years with some notable headline penalties against major brands in 2014 already.

Sites such as Expedia, Irwin Mitchell, uSwitch, Halifax, Dialaphone, William Hill and musicMagpie have all been

reportedly penalised by Google with plenty of blogs speculating on the causes. (It’s important to note that the industry can only speculate about penalties because only the agency, the client and Google really know what’s going on; the outside world has to make an educated guess based on trending tools such as searchmetrics.com.)

FROM SEO TO PRAs the world of SEO changes, the most interesting trend recently has been to see whether SEO agencies can become PR agencies quicker than PR agencies can become SEO agencies. From what we have seen, the SEO industry has won

that race hands-down. Most large SEO agencies have comfortably transitioned into delivering the sort of media coverage for clients that was always the domain of a PR agency, either by training or (as we did) hiring a team of PR experts to take on the role for them.

SEO agencies have always been nimble and willing to adapt to the latest trends while PR agencies appear to be more traditional. The biggest hurdle a PR agency faces is that it’s really difficult to hire in the SEO space at the moment. If a PR agency wanted to hire a technical SEO team it would be difficult to find candidates experienced and dynamic enough, especially outside London.

We know first-hand how hard it is to hire in the SEO space as we’ve grown to 70 people without hiring anybody with previous SEO agency experience. Indeed, most SEO agencies in the north have long since realised that the only way to grow is to become heavily involved in graduate recruitment, something you can only do when you have a really robust training programme in place.

We see the future of SEO as an umbrella service covering the optimisation and improvement of all marketing channels, one where there are no short-cuts and no temptations to break Google’s guidelines for short-term gains at the expense of long term sustainable rankings.

SEO has become a barometer for the overall online presence of brands with rankings dictated by how much your customers and potential customers love your brand and want to find you in the search results. Two years ago this seemed like an impossible goal, but in 2014 it’s the reality and brands have to adapt to the new model or risk being left behind.

branded3.com

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Social media

Socıal ROI and CRM Data’s

Blıssful UnıonRoy Jugessur, Head of EMEA

at Shoutlet, Inc. explains why this is a marriage that matters

to your business

FIGARODIGITAL.CO.UK

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FEATURE

The phrase ‘social media ROI’ is still a daunting one to many, but progress is being made to qualify and quantify social marketing initiatives. Companies are quickly discovering that developing quality social presences leads to identifying brand

loyalists, encouraging buying behaviour and gathering meaningful data that can impact future cross-marketing activities.

SOCIAL MEDIA ROI V OTHER POINTS OF VALUEThe question of exactly what social media return on investment means is still being asked. Some call it ‘return on engagement or ‘return on influence’. These describe a few of the ways companies are getting value from social media, but technically they don’t describe real ROI. Social media ROI is a measure of the financial impact on your business, whether that happens immediately through a direct sale or revenue gained down the road.

That’s not to say engagement and influence aren’t important – they’re critical. The interactions your social media programmes generate aren’t always linked to a sale, but they are important components in achieving business objectives.

For example, social media is a fantastic tool to build – or grow – your email list. By hosting custom apps on Facebook, you can connect your engaged customers with forms for newsletters, sweepstakes and contests that opt into your email marketing. According to ecommerce research by Monetate, the average order value from email messages in Q2 of 2013 was £60 – and that figure continues to grow with social marketing influence, resulting in long-term value of cross-channel marketing initiatives.

ALL METRICS AREN’T FOR EVERYBODYWhen it comes to looking at the value social media brings to your business,

ROY JUGESSUR, HEAD OF EMEA AT SHOUTLET, INC.

SOCIAL SHOULD BE PART OF THE BIGGER CROSS-CHANNEL MARKETING PICTURE”

different stakeholders will be interested in different sets of data. Forrester Research classifies these stakeholders into three groups: social strategists and community managers, mid-level interactive and marketing managers who are interested in brand-related data like awareness and purchase intent, and C-level executives who want the financial picture.

So while social strategists and community managers need lots of data that indicates social performance in order to optimise future communication – metrics that pertain to interactions with content (Likes, Retweets, shares), conversations (comments, replies), and consumption (video plays, click-throughs to a blog post) – as you move up the marketing ladder those kinds of metrics become less relevant.

WHY DATA IS THE KEY TO SOCIAL ROI SUCCESSThe good news is, you’re not starting from square one when attempting to answer the ‘what is social ROI?’ question. Chances are, your business has already put structures in place that can help prove your return on social. For most businesses, that starts with customer relationship management (CRM) data. Social CRM and CRM are traditionally viewed as two different things, but the case should be made that they should flow in and out of each other, building a cohesive approach and holistic view of what your customers like, love, and loathe.

Tracking customer behaviours is important for several reasons.

You’ll better understand your customers. By knowing fan behaviours and preferences, you can better segment your communication strategies to give fans what they want – when they want it.

Brands like Best Buy, 24 Hour Fitness, and Cloetta use social affinity data in Shoutlet Profiles to optimise all customer engagement.

You’ll know what resonates with buyers and what falls flat. Rather than waiting for data after a purchase, many brands use social as a test-bed for products and services. Feedback via polls and contests can be applied to everything from product R&D to campaign message decisions.

You’ll improve future engagement strategies. Social should be part of the bigger cross-channel marketing picture.

Using fan feedback to help determine segments will help build marketing strategies and tactics that work best for specific demographics.

You’ll increase word of mouth. If you figure out how to intelligently segment your online communities based on data, you’ll know exactly what to say and when to say it for a positive reception. Those fans will in turn trust your brand more, and will often share their positive experiences within their own networks.

You’ll stay in touch. The beauty of social is that it encourages two-way

communication that keeps brand marketers in-the-know; which is critical in staying relevant and top-of-mind for your fans and followers.

You’ll receive unfiltered feedback. Consumers following your brand pages on social are vocal. They are going to tell you what they like and what they don’t like. Having a smart listening strategy in place will give your brand the leg up when it comes to using your fan base as a resource.Read more in Shoutlet’s whitepaper: info.shoutlet.com/resources-BeyondEngagementPaperDownload.html

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