Author: Damian

We’re not talking submarines but rather the latest live streaming video app launched by Twitter 12 months ago. Though relatively still quite new in the online world and realm it’s been gaining considerable support and gaining momentum with Twitter reporting the app has had in excess of more than 10 million users.
As Periscopes popularity continues to grow, brands globally are trying huddling behind closed doors or at their weekly marketing meetings; looking how they can leverage this latest platform to grow their business and gain new followers.  Unlike other apps, Periscope allows you to “forge a more personal relationship with consumer” by giving you a fast track to enhance and promote your brand in a new and exciting way.

 

It’s a great chance to engage with your current or potential customers in a more human, accessible way, it’s ideal for quick product demonstrations or interactive customer support, you can easily capture and share live events or use for a Q&As. Already we’re seeing brands globally using it to host live press conferences, and to hold live press interviews for media outlets around the world.
Though like anything, if you’re considering launching your first Periscope campaign, start by studying other brands that have already been successful. Here are 4 great examples of Periscope marketing campaigns which will help you understand the platform better, or get you inspired.

 

Spotify
Spotify was one of the first brands to join Periscope, actually creating an account the very day that Periscope launched, and held their first Periscope session only a few hours later. Adweek reports that nearly 400 people watched the event the first day and gave them 1,534 hearts (Periscope’s version of Facebook likes)—a big deal, considering that the service was less than 24 hours old at that point. The success of their first Periscope set the stage for Spotify to create even more streaming events over the coming months, with the brand now boasting 94,948 waiting and watching to tune in.

 

Dunkin Donuts
Periscope was just one of eight platforms that Dunkin’ Donuts was using to promote its iced coffee products among Millennials this past US summer – Spotify, Snapchat, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, Vine, and Facebook are all in on the fun, as well. This diversified approach promises to expand the brand’s reach and encourage cross-platform engagement. The campaign is comprised of five concerts in five different cities, footage from which consumers will be able to access through their social site of choice. The event was such a hit last year; Dunkin Donuts have already announced their events for the 2016 Summer!
Benefit Cosmetics
The global brand has an ongoing Periscope feed, which has attributed to them building brand equity by live streaming demos and tutorials using their makeup and products as well as other cosmetic related topics. The feed reaches more than 2,000 viewers each time they stream.

 

Red Bull
Red Bull was quick to launch a Periscope campaign, with the big brand live streaming their Red Bull Guest House event. Rather than specifically promoting their product and going for the hard sell of their energy drinks, the focus was on image rather. Shooting footage at a long weekend party direct from Miami Beach. Coincided with Miami Music Week, it’s certainly no coincidence the once industry only event is now appealing to more consumers and the youth market.

 

It’s no secret that traditional forms of media, (particularly those with those old school printing presses), really felt the pinch as consumers favour getting their daily dose of news and gossip, online and largely for free.

Pacific Magazines who’ve over 20 of Australia’s large selling publications in their portfolio unveiled its time to get with the changes and embrace technology. Recently unveiling two major digital destinations for fashion and beauty. They’re bringing together its women’s brands under one banner, creating a digital women’s network that integrates with their e-commerce; these being BeautyCrew and StyledBy Marie Claire.

This site will be the first time Pacific’s brands will come together in one destination. The BeautyCrew launches supported by commercial partners including L’Oréal, Coty, Estée Lauder, Unilever and Parfums Christian Dior. While StyledBy Marie Claire combines curated fashion content and a unique personal styling experience with an e-commerce platform.

With advertising revenue in magazines declining significantly in recent years, this move stands to change to conversation with advertisers, says Jackie Frank of Pacific Magazine.

Pacific’s followed Bauer’s lead, with the publisher launching an integrated content hub around its lifestyle themes in 2014. Pacific Magazines still though has a commitment to print with the two digital networks being as to not disengage with traditional readers who favour shiny flashy pages they can pour over while getting a pedicure. For advertisers having access to cross platform advertising is largely important though, as is the ability to enrich and gauge their engagement.

How women and consumers are accessing information is now multi-dimensional, as is their approach and adaptability moving forward.

 

 

 

 

 

Age isn’t just a number.

Asking someone their age isn’t just particularly frowned upon, but something that can land you in some severely hot water.

That’s just what happened, where clubs in Britain have been advertising that dance classes are ‘not suitable for over 60s’,  and who could now face prosecution under equality laws.

Said club, was advertising salsa classes ‘not suitable for people over 60’ in a local paper, which assumes people over the age of 60 are not fighting fit and ready to get down to the Salsa!  Whatever their motive, this is a prime example of age discrimination and is unlawful as governed by the Human Rights. In a little over a year, the commission has received more than a hundred complaints that adverts were discriminatory, which is now under further investigation.

Scores of complaints about allegedly discriminatory advertisements reveal that many businesses are breaching laws designed to allow fair and open access to jobs and services – often without realising it. This isn’t just happening in Britain though, anyone advertising or tailoring their advertising and marketing (if not done correctly) could be breaking the law, the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) has warned.

Globally and more so locally, each state and territory has in place a series of short guides and checklists for those who publish advertising, marketing and communication materials. If you’re a business or establishment that serves alcohol, it’s assumed one’s team is already familiar with these.

These guides are in place to dispel confusion and misunderstanding of the law, something which shouldn’t be taken lightly. Tackling discrimination and ending confusion will not just help prevent businesses breaking the law – but it will create more opportunities to unlock talent and help drive any global economy.

Tourism Australia launched a pretty snazzy campaign that takes Giga-Pixel Selfies for Tourists who stand on specially marked areas at famous Australian landmarks and destinations.

Designed predominantly for Japanese tourists visiting the country, the concept is based around the idea of visiting the site and triggering the ultra high resolution photos made of hundreds of photos that are automatically composed as a single image and sent directly to the recipient.

Very cool stuff!

The world of marketing boasts a vast array of self-justified phrases which circulate around the tongues and speaking circles of marketers.

“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” or more colloquially put “she’ll be right mate” are testament to this assertion. They reverberate around the office walls of marketers, operations managers, directors and executives. Furthermore, they are not geographically-bound to any one region. They affect the decision-making of a retail chain in the UK, as much as the marketing team of a solo F&B operator in Australia.

It is solely due to this belief that there are a vast amount of poor campaigns by good brands, world-wide.

Becoming complacent and adhering to status quo with a marketing strategy is what’s “killing the cat.” Marketers in control of a national brand have big shoes to fill. The pressure of delivering campaigns falling nothing short of excellent lingers around their aura like a shadow follows its owner and the pursuit for brilliance has become ever so challenging in an interconnected, noisy, digital world.

Alas, a sanity-check exists to determine if a campaign clouded in a layer of doubt, really can penetrate the legion of both realised and yet-to-be fans of a brand.

That sanity check is based around one concept. The level of transparency in a message.

Not withstanding the pressure of being perceived as a buzz term and certainly not relating to a graphic element located within marketing collateral, transparency is the answer to the question “Will people believe this campaign? Or do we need to adjust the truthfulness and delivery of the message?”

Delivering honest copy within a marketing campaign can be trivialised by many, although it presents a real challenge during the conceptualisation stage. The relative ease at which a marketer can fall in to the trap of implementing tired tropes and marketing-spawned idioms is ever-present. So some crowd-sourced thinking must be applied here.

 

If we are to examine a restaurant which asks for its patrons to purchase a certain amount of product in order to gain 10% off their dessert, it’s safe to say that one couldn’t astutely label that as an “honest campaign.”

The reasoning for this can be quite deeply and analytically derived, as a slew of psychological fallacies pepper the very fabric of such promotions. Yet it’s safe to say that in its simplest and purest form, consumers are simply avert to giving a damn about an offer which is masked in the guise of a very basic thought from the party offering it; “give me a gallon and I will let you have a sip.”

The above is a commonplace marketing tactic by price-driven or complacent brands. Neither the former nor the latter is an attribute which any brand should aspire to implement or sustain quickly. It’s toxicity has historically been revealed in group-buying business models and marketers which are conducting such activities simply to tick the “I sent a promotion out this week” box in the check-list of weekly activities.

Transparent and honest messages are tough to conjure for marketing is a game of riddles, semi-truths and “revenue first, customers second” sentiments. Yet, whilst all of this may be private thinking living in the minds of creatives, message creators and executives at agencies and consultancies, one should never forget that consumers are quite skilled at rapidly diagnosing the bullshit levels of any campaign, irrespective of channel or industry.

Be honest.
Be truthful.
Be sincere.
Be transparent.

Just like Turkish Airlines did with their Periscope project.

 

 

 

 

 

If a campaign is difficult to interact with, the percentage chance of participation from an audience is likewise diminished.

For example, let’s take a look at the following two competitions and their internal mechanics. For the purpose of this exercise, we will examine a non-existent “Comedy Club/Show” brand.

Competition A asks for participants to be present on-site at the Comedy Club’s venue/event and fill in some paperwork with personal details including their name, email, mobile number, date of birth and a little more. Paper and pens have been provided and the participant is asked to fill in the form in exchange for their entry being put in to the draw to win a trip to the Maldives.

Competition B asks for participants online and off, to simply  “dob” their funniest friend in to a simple text input. Distributed via email, social, mobile and on-premise with a simple, intuitive engagement mechanism.

With an attached disclaimer (and no pretense towards dis-ingenuity), the two scenarios above do in fact different in mechanics as much as they do in the delivery of the message. The former lives within a lottery/game-of-luck world, whilst the latter decides to harness the power of creativity and human emotion to evoke a personal need for participation.

Yet even with that fact in mind and with a plethora of statistics to support it, the latter outperforms the former in nearly every aspect. Vanity metrics such as insights and page views are higher, sharing is significantly amongst the social circles of participants and general word-of-mouth (whether it be electronic or real-world) is most certainly higher.

All of this leads to enhanced customer database growth, greater brand visibility and a spike in the “warmth” receptors of an audience’s cognitive perception of a brand’s positioning in their social life. Whilst a portion of its success can be attributed towards the aforementioned mechanics, there is no denying that a simpler call-out for interaction lends itself to a better performing campaign.

Time and time again, data and statistics validate this assertion. There is very little subjectivity to the correlation drawn between the ease-of-interaction with a campaign and its associative engagement rates.

 

In a recent study by a team of researchers at Cornell University in the US, some analysis was undertaken on the shelf placement and eye positioning of 86 cereal mascots/characters in 10 grocery stores.

The study concluded that cereal brands aimed at children have their brand mascots exhibiting a downward eye inflection compared with cereals targeted at adults. It was concluded that the positioning of the boxes on a vertical axis on the supermarket shelves and the drawn out eye contact to match that of children, were both evident in the cereal brands included in the study.
The study continued to experiment with various versions of the cereal boxes having the mascot’s gaze digitally altered and found eye contact from the cartoon characters increased feelings of trust and connection to the brand, which consequently influenced choice over competitors.

Concerns arose from the study as the authors noted that “making eye contact with the spokes-character on the cereal box fosters positive interpersonal feelings, which may transfer to the cereal itself.” The crux of the problem lies in what the authors say is “children’s vulnerability to such an influence and the concern that such marketing techniques aimed at children could be exploitative.”

So the ultimate question; is it?