Advertising / Marketing Archives | Page 28 of 44

Are you looking for a way to drive connection through narrative? Want to tell the story of your company or messaging? In this blog, we’re discussing all things video storytelling – including brands who do it best and actionable advice on how you can get started.

Businesses of today don’t have it easy. With such a fierce world of competition, even having a solid business plan, a stellar product and visionary leadership isn’t enough to ensure raging success. To truly cut above the noise, what’s needed is an unrivalled marketing strategy that not only gets people to listen, but gets them talking too. Enter: the art of storytelling.

Storytelling is an ancient technique in grasping the attention of those around us. Cave dwellers used pigment to paint on walls with their hands to create stories and myths, and ancient Greeks carved their language into walls to tell how history was moving forward.

Fast-forward to 2021 and storytelling remains the epitome of engagement. Though unlike our ancestors who had to rely on horse-carriage-delivering letters and old-fashioned word-of-mouth marketing (which could take months and even years to get across the message) today we are privileged with the advancements of technology.

The internet and social media has made it far easier than ever before for brands to tell their story. Marketing through storytelling is a sure-fire way to garner attention due to the fact it elicits emotion. Stories can tug on our heartstrings, influence who we trust, take us back to nostalgic memories, and help us make sense of otherwise complex information. A captivating story can communicate a brand’s core messaging in less than two minutes – and using video as a vehicle to deliver this message far and wide has proven to be incredibly successful.

From motion-graphics and animation, to documentary-style video; brands from all shapes and sizes have experienced the results that can be derived from telling their stories through engaging content.

Let’s take a look at some of the ways brands are harnessing the power of video storytelling to build deeper connections with their target audience.

NIKE

Stroll your way down a street and it’s likely it’ll only be a matter of minutes before you come across the much-recognisable Nike Swoosh. The success of Nike, which has a lifespan of over 50 years, can much be attributed to the brand’s ability to foster connection through emotive storytelling.

“Why do people get married—or do anything?” Phil Knight, the founder of the shoe giant, posted to the Harvard Business Review in 1992. “Because of emotional ties. That’s what builds long-term relationships with the consumer, and that’s what our campaigns are about. Our advertising tries to link consumers to the Nike brand through the emotions of sports and fitness. We show competition, determination, achievement, fun, and even the spiritual rewards of participating in those activities.”

This mantra has long been woven into Nike’s marketing strategy, from TV ads and magazine features, to the social media clips we find ourselves mesmerized by today.

Last year, shortly after the inception of the Coronavirus pandemic, the shoe giant released a particularly emotive video that has so far garnered just under 60 million views on YouTube alone. The split-screen masterpiece has been highly praised for its emotive message of inclusiveness and perseverance at a time when much of the world was under lockdown and organised sports was upended by the pandemic.

Key takeaway: Building stories around emotion is a far more effective strategy for brand building than overbearing messages of features and benefits.

AIRBNB

A great example of a brand that truly understands the importance of storytelling to connect with its audience is Airbnb. The tourism business even has an entire YouTube playlist dedicated to videos showcasing their community of both guests and hosts. From capturing the heartwarming story of a family adventure to an MTV Cribs style video with a quirky Superhost and their unique home – this window into their member’s lives enables viewers to become truly invested in the brand and its ethos.

Positioning the customer at the center of the brand – in effect, letting the customer be the brand – is essential to the Airbnb philosophy.

This technique works for Airbnb not only because it helps consumers to build an affiliation with the Airbnb brand, but because it helps them overcome one of the biggest pain points of using a service like this: who are the people I will be staying with, and what will the experience be like? The stories woven into engaging brand video provide the answers.

Key takeaway: This example shows that sometimes the best brand stories don’t come from the brand at all, rather the passionate community that supports it.

MCDONALDS

Global fast-food chain, McDonald’s, has come up with some truly remarkable marketing campaigns over the years, using creative digital content to drive customers towards those magically comforting Golden Arches.

The campaigns are not only designed to increase footfall but also to increase brand loyalty and engagement. Once a single burger joint, McDonald’s now dominates the world of fast food and is worth an estimated US$106.4 billion.

Consumers flock to familiarity, and the fast-food chain delivers just that wherever you are in the world. The familiar branding of yellow and red can be found in countries across the globe, from Bristol to Tokyo.

Instilling this feeling of comfort and nostalgia is something that drives McDonald’s video marketing strategy. Their ads communicate relatable storylines throughout, making the consumer feel more connected to the brand as a result.

A recent example is the brand’s “Inner Child” Christmas advertisement from 2020.

The animated tale, created by Leo Burnett, tells the heart-warming story of a mother desperately trying to encourage her teenage son to put down his screens and take part in family rituals in the run-up to Christmas. The storyline is, no doubt, a scenario recognised by families everywhere.

Key takeaway: Your storyline should communicate something relatable to the audience in order to build a connection.

How you tell your brand story goes a long way in how consumers engage with your product or services. From the messages conveyed across TV ads, social media advertisements, and pretty much every form of marketing content, customers pick up pieces of this story and internalise them with every interaction that they have with your brand.

To build a strong connection with your current audience and attract new customers, it’s important to craft and share content that tells your story both creatively and authentically. Video marketing is the optimal medium for innovative brand storytelling. Video captures the details of your brand stories and conveys them in memorable and engaging ways.

Looking to learn more about brand storytelling through video? Get in touch today.

Paul Feldwick worked at the legendary creative agency Boase Massimi Pollitt for over 30 years. His latest book, Why Does The Pedlar Sing?, examines what creativity really means in advertising. In April, he joined Bristol Creative Industries to share some of his insights. Dan Martin summarises the fascinating event.

Paul Feldwick has a distinguished career in advertising and has worked on some of Britain’s most famous advertising campaigns including the PG Tips chimpanzees, Rowan Atkinson promoting Barclaycard and the Sugar Puffs Honey Monster. What all those ads have in common is entertainment, a factor which Paul believes is essential in successful advertising.

But there is actually a long-held belief by many that entertainment actually doesn’t work. Claude C. Hopkins famously argued in his book Scientific Advertising in the 1920s that people don’t buy from clowns. “Advertising pictures should not be eccentric”, he wrote. “Don’t treat your subject lightly. Don’t lessen respect for yourself or your article by any attempt at frivolity. People do not patronize a clown. There are two things about which men should not joke. One is business, one is home. An eccentric picture may do you serious damage. One may gain attention by wearing a fools cap. But he would ruin his selling prospects.”

“Father of Advertising” David Ogilvy was a big fan of Hopkins and Sergio Zyman, who worked for Coca-Cola in the 1980s and helped launch the Diet Coke brand, said that advertising that merely entertains does not work.

But Paul Feldman is a big fan of entertainment in advertising, a subject of his book, Why Does The Pedlar Sing?

“The tradition of advertising that works by entertaining is not a new one, it probably is very ancient indeed”, he said during the event. “I see it as going right back to the medieval peddler, who would travel from house to house from village to village with what he was selling. He was a travelling entertainer, he would sing songs, he would tell jokes and he would dress in a funny way. He was all purpose, general entertainer.

“Entertainment as a way of selling things contradicts all those arguments about people not buying from clowns and selling a serious business. How is it that despite the fact that so much advertising through the ages has used entertainment, have we got saddled with the ongoing belief that selling ought to be a serious business?

When serious advertising does work

Before he tackled why entertainment and humour are good for advertising, Paul acknowledged that Claude C. Hopkins’ argument does hold up for direct response advertising, the kind of ads that you see in Sunday newspapers.

“It tends to be very sober,” he said, “it tends to be giving you the facts, it tends to be avoiding jokes and it doesn’t do anything that is eccentric or odd. If it’s well done, it works absolutely brilliantly. You know it works because the advertisers know exactly how much each insertion sells and exactly what the responses are.

“The split-run technique used by direct response advertisers originated back in the 1890s. It was based on using coupon responses that Hopkins evolved his give the facts, give the information argument around.”

Keeping your brand name before the public

“We used to tend to believe as a default that advertising works by a matter of rational persuasion; it has to give reasons why, it has to give consumer benefits. That’s the language that we still use a lot. If you look at most people’s creative briefs, they still have the idea of the central proposition. There has to be a single-minded proposition, we are telling people why the product is better.”

But Paul said that idea was turned on its head by the work of marketing specialist Andrew Ehrenberg and then Australian professor called Byron Sharp, who wrote the influential book, How Brands Grow.

“He had the radical idea, which was originated by Ehrenberg, that advertising doesn’t really work by persuading people or giving information at all. It works by creating something that they call mental availability. To put that very simply, it’s like fame. All that needs to happen in order for a brand to grow is that it needs to come to more people’s minds, more often, and then they’re more likely to choose it.”

Paul continued that this is also why people choose one brand over another. “Why do more people buy McDonald’s products than Burger King? Because more people think about McDonald’s more often than Burger King, and they have more associations with McDonald’s than they do with Burger King because they’ve had more experience of it.”

Why entertainment in advertising works

Paul said neuroscientists like Antonio Damasio have shown that what underpins our decisions is something that’s emotional. If we don’t have an emotional response, we simply cannot make decisions so there’s no such thing as an entirely rational decision. “That’s why so much advertising has done something different, and what it has done differently is using entertainment”, he added.

To illustrate the point he used the example of the massively successful advertising campaign by tea brand PG Tips which used anthropomorphic chimpanzees dressed in human clothes. It started in 1956 and ran until 2002.

The brand remained a bestseller throughout that period despite lots of advertising by other tea brands and the introduction of much cheaper own brand products by supermarkets. Paul explained: “PG Tips maintained a significant business advantage, not by telling people why their tea was better, but because people remembered it more, it was more top of mind, and they felt more positive about it. That was through doing advertising that was entertaining and fun.”

Another example is the Compare the Meerkat advertising campaign from Compare the Market which Paul says uses the principles of entertainment.

“It has characters, it has drama, it has incident, it has talking animals, it’s childish, it’s ridiculous.” It is also massively successful.

Holding his own cuddly meerkat, Paul Feldwick said the brand has gone one step further by using merchandise that generates even stronger consumer connections with the brand. The Kevin the Carrot campaign by supermarket chain Aldi is another example of a business linking merchandise to its entertaining advertising.

Another brand ticking the entertainment box is Premier Inn and comedian Lenny Henry.

“It has to distinguish itself from the very similar business Travelodge and it has been hugely succeeded in doing that,” Paul Feldwick said.

The use of Lenny Henry also epitomises the use of a ‘distinctive asset’. It’s something or someone that is unique, distinctive and recognisable. The meerkats and Kevin the Carrot are other examples.

“If you create something that is trying to say something about your product, the chances are you’ll produce something that looks pretty much like what all your competitors are doing,” Paul advised. “But if you produce something that has nothing whatsoever to do with your product, like a meerkat, then you have got something that is unique and is part of the psychology of what lodges in people’s memory.

Good distinctive assets are those that follow the rules of what makes good entertainment, Paul Feldwick said.

Establishing and maintaining a business blog is unfortunately not as easy as sitting down and writing the first things that pop into your head. As in daily face to face conversations we can all be guilty of going off on a tangent now and then, and the same can be true of our blog posts. A little bit off centre this way and that can be interesting and add depth, but the most successful blogs offer a service and don’t deviate from that purpose. Here is how to keep your company’s blog on track.

Your blog, website and business will remain the ‘go to’ source of information, as long as you keep your end of the bargain and continue to publish useful content consistently.

There are endless reasons why creating video content should be on your marketing to-do list. But, if you wanted a single reason as to why it’s so imperative for your business or brand, let it be this one: search engine optimisation.

SEO is essentially the foundation of your entire online marketing presence, referring to what you do in order to grow your visibility on online search engine results pages (SERPS). In a hypercompetitive world, SEO is one of the best ways for businesses to be seen by their target audiences.

Many of the common SEO strategies centre around keyword-focused blog writing to a comprehensive link-building strategy. But a successful SEO technique often overlooked by many marketers is the use of video content.

In fact, SEO is impacted by video collateral far more than a lot of people realise. With this in mind, we’ve pulled together four ways video content can help your business climb the rankings of Google.

Google loves video content

You’ve probably noticed that when you make a quick search on the Google, video thumbnails appear as results quite frequently. Videos are a great medium for storytelling and with the human brain hardwired to be distracted by moving images, more and more consumers are watching video content at an alarming rate. Google acknowledges this fact, and as such, consistently ranks this kind of visual content in its search results.

When it comes to video content improving SEO, Google’s internal algorithm for generating search engine results has a lot to do with it. As well as taking text into account when assessing the relevancy of a web page to a specific keyword, Google takes into account other media content you have to offer searchers.

If your web pages have a nice mixture of copy, imagery and video, this will show Google that your content is varied, valuable and informative. The trick is to ensure your video content is optimised for search by doing your keyword research and ensuring these keywords are in your video’s meta tags.

Drive traffic to your site with video

Another quality that Google takes into account when ranking your website is the amount of incoming traffic you have. If you’re regularly getting a great number of visitors, they’re quite clearly coming for a reason, and other people making similar searches are likely to feel the same about your content.

Social platforms and video hosting sites such as YouTube and Vimeo are also great ways to drive traffic back to your site. In fact, people are more likely to visit your website through watching video on social media channels than through any other type of content.

By creating regular, engaging video content that draws your target audience in, the more traffic you can drive to your pages. This eventually will boost your SEO rankings.

Earn more backlinks

Did you know that blog posts which include video content attract three times more inbound links than posts without video? This statistic from Moz highlights the powerful role video can play in earning more backlinks to your website.

Getting quality backlinks helps your website build authority. To sum backlinking and SEO up, in a nutshell, the more people share your links, the more credible Google will see you as. And with this higher credibility and authority, the better ranking you will attain.

It’s not about simply building numerous links in order to rank highly though. It’s vital to create high-quality content that will lead to organic links over time. Originality will always be one of the main factors of success in using videos to build links. Just like any other content, you must consider how to make your videos stand and thus earn more backlinks.

Keep visitors on your site for longer

When ranking web pages, Google also pays close attention to how long users are staying on your site once they arrive there. If people are staying on your site for a good amount of time, this clearly indicates to Google that there is useful and valuable content on this page. Following this, Google is likely to reward the website via its search positioning. On the other hand, if you have a poor bounce rate, this communicates to search engines that your content isn’t all that great and users are leaving your website to seek answers elsewhere.

Video, when done right, is an incredible tool in keeping visitors on your page longer. The fact is, today’s modern consumers are far more likely to watch a video on a subject than read a lengthy block of text. We just have to look at the rise of video-first social platforms such as TikTok to understand just how vital video content has become. If you’re not already incorporating video into your marketing strategy, you risk losing your target audience to competitors who do.

Boost your brand’s social presence

Social media marketing plays a vital role in video promotion and distribution. According to Buffer App, video content on Facebooks receives, on average, 135 percent more engagement than a photo.

Social media is not only a sure-fire way to get more eyes on your content and create conversations online, but it can also play a key role in giving your SEO efforts a boost. While social engagement doesn’t directly impact search rankings, a strong correlation has been shown between a higher number of shares on social media content and higher positions in search engine results pages. While the authority of a social account doesn’t directly impact search engine rankings, it is possible that links shared on social media (conjoined with engaging video) could be marked as credible back-links and therefore influence a page’s rank.

What this means is we can help clients to grow and scale their businesses on AWS. So you could get a cost saving, industry-leading and super secure application.

To achieve our AWS Select Tier status, we had to demonstrate a whole lot of team knowledge and prove the strength of our experience too. So, over the past 4 months, we’ve delivered High Availability architecture for clients like Osborne Clarke and the UK Hydrographic Office.

So, we’ve written this blog to tell you just why you should take note about what AWS has to offer, and answer a few of the questions you might have.

Why is AWS your chosen cloud service provider?

AWS offers a huge list of services and a robust global infrastructure that we knew could serve our clients around the world. If it’s good enough for 90% of the world’s Fortune 100 companies and the majority of Fortune 500 companies, it’s good enough for us.

And now our partnership status is testament to our experience and knowledge when it comes to designing and implementing cloud architecture.

As an application implementation, development and infrastructure partner, we can achieve a very close link between your applications’ functionality and its environment, ensuring you always get the very best performance.

What can you do for me?

It’s likely you already know on-premise infrastructure can be hugely expensive. Or you might be using cloud computing, but finding it’s still costing you a fortune. With the right cloud architecture in place, not only can you gain a huge price advantage, you could also save countless hours of time, too.

Commissioning just one new server can take several days and thousands of pounds of hardware investment. But in the cloud, the same process takes just a few seconds. Plus, you can spin servers up and remove them again easily, and without having to worry about hardware.

Our use cases are normally centred around creating web architecture, where this flexibility is useful for creating cost effective solutions. A traditional web architecture might consist of several web servers behind a load balancer, where traffic is distributed across the instances according to some rules.

The problem with this traditional set up is that during lulls in user activity, e.g., overnight or over the weekend, you end up with more servers than you need – you’re just haemorrhaging money.

Conversely, during traffic spikes, you might not have enough capacity to meet demand, putting your application’s performance at risk.

Auto-scaling prevents this by automatically adding more servers to the group if demand requires it. When the demand drops, these servers are removed.

Why is High Availability architecture so important?

Because in the words of Werner Vogels, “Everything fails, all the time”.

All technological solutions – no matter how perfect we might like them to be – will have points of failure and downtime. In fact, even cloud solutions within AWS are subject to the same risks.

By creating an infrastructure that anticipates this failure, we can overcome the risks and mitigate the impact before a failure ever happens.

For example, the AWS network consists of several geographical regions based around the world. These regions are further divided into Availability Zones. An Availability Zone is made up of separate physical data centres that are connected within a region.

You can then split your services across Availability Zones, so should one develop a problem, you’ll hardly notice – your application will still be up and running.

At P+S we follow the AWS principals for High Availability across all of our clients’ architecture to ensure there are no single points of failure, and recovery is automatic wherever possible.

Is AWS’ Cloud Service secure?

This is for good reason, given the critical nature of data security and harsh penalties for businesses who breach regulations.

There are multiple features in AWS’ tools and services ensuring every design meets stringent compliance requirements, with our own architecture including many of these features as standard.

For example, we deploy AWS CloudFront as a CDN as standard in front of all our sites, together with AWS Web Application Firewall and AWS Shield to protect your site against web vulnerabilities and attack vectors, including the OWASP Top 10 – globally recognised by developers as the top 10 risks to application security – and Distributed Denial-of-Service attacks (DDoS), which you may have seen recently taking a number of the Belgium government’s websites offline. It also ensures you’re compliant with Data Protection standards such as ISO 27001.

AWS also provides the ability to create entire virtual networks and subnets within the cloud, with complete control over data and user access and flow. This gives you the ability to lock down access to subnets, instances, and services to only authorised sources. For example, you can block physical access to web application servers, ensuring access can only be gained from the load balancer or approved IPs.

So I don’t need servers?

No. One of our favourite methodologies in cloud infrastructure is ‘server-less architecture’.

Server-less architecture means the servers or machine resources used to run a particular task are handled by the cloud provider. So you don’t have to worry about provisioning a server or maintaining it. This saves a lot of time and money; we can simply spin up a database or run code.

This methodology is extremely useful when working on prototypes, for example, allowing us to quicker develop and verify our ideas. It’s also useful for running Continuous Integration workloads to speed up deployments (useful for Autoscaling groups) and helping you manage repetitive tasks or queues.

For example, we successfully offloaded some database queue processing from the application into AWS Lambda. This meant we could configure a smaller database instance than would otherwise have been necessary.

At P+S, we believe every business should be able to offer an excellent digital service to their customers. That means creating flexible digital architecture that grows as you – and your customers – need it to. It’s faster, more adaptable, and because it’s flexible, you won’t waste money on servers you don’t need.

Your application shouldn’t go offline unexpectedly. And we don’t believe you should have to pay more for a secure website, so we’ll ensure both your data and your customers’ info is protected at all times.

And our newly earned AWS Select Consulting Partner badge proves that commitment.

During our Digital Marketing Futures series earlier this year, we gave a conceptual view of the marketing trends those in our industry need to keep their eyes firmly trained upon.

Following on from this, we’ve picked out seven specific trends that we’ve seen change or accelerate during the recent lockdown, and that we think you should watch out for over the next 12-24 months. So here’s our list of seven post-pandemic trends to look out for in 2021 – and beyond.

Video marketing

This trend is easy to predict and is one that – hopefully – you have already begun implementing in your campaigns. It’s reported that by 2022, 82% of global internet traffic will come from video streaming and downloads. What’s more, 72% of businesses have reported that video increased their conversion rates.

Video covers such a huge range of mediums, including live streaming, one-to-one videos, long format, short format – the list goes on.

In lockdown, we’ve seen huge gains in people using over-the-top media. The most mainstream example of this is YouTube, but it also encompasses all the paid searches such as Netflix, Amazon, Disney+ and HBO.

It’s no surprise this has increased over lockdown, however what is surprising is why people are doing it. More than half of 13-39 year-olds planned to watch TV series and films on these streaming services as a way to maintain their mental health in lockdown.

Now even TV remotes have buttons installed for Netflix and other streaming services. We can now programmatically get at users with video on these connected TVs through different over-the-top media outlets – and this is pushing forwards the decline we are seeing in linear TV.

Visual search

This again isn’t a trend that’s new to us, but it’s something that has become much more mainstream. Nowadays, 62% of gen Z and millennial consumers want visual search more than any other technology.

We are fundamentally getting much lazier in how we do day-to-day activities, and users now are choosing to search for information through pictures. Google, Pinterest and Microsoft are all leading the way with their various technology features that allow you to find similar products based on things that you upload.

These days, it’s not uncommon for you to take a photo of clothing, furniture or kitchenware at home and then use available systems to find similar products that are available to purchase. Or you can use your camera to take a picture of a barcode and then use a system to find that product online and where you can buy it from.

It’s going to grow as consumers become more familiar with these systems post-lockdown, and it will likely be used by many on a daily basis. You will need to start thinking about how this will play into your marketing strategy over the coming months. To start with you should ensure your structured data is sound and you have high-quality imagery, and make sure your site is optimized for speed.

Voice search

This is a trend that has crept up on us; it’s really everywhere now and demand for it is going to accelerate beyond lockdown. Research shows people are now more comfortable chatting away to Google Assistant, Siri, Alexa or Cortana. Predictions now are suggesting that 50% of searches are expected to be carried out through voice activation over the next few years.

Voice commerce is also expected to drastically increase as these types of sales are expected to hit the $45bn mark by 2022 in the UK and US. Another recently-released survey from YouGov showed that one in four Britons reported owning some sort of smart speaker.

When implementing voice search into your strategy, you need to consider the types of searches that are most common among users – for example, ‘near me’-type searches are huge. In this instance, you should make sure that you’re a local entity and you’ve used localized keywords in your web copy.

From a technical perspective, over 50% of these searches are going to be on mobile, so your mobile site needs to be up to date. With the Core Web Vitals update just around the corner, they become much more important.

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

AI has gone from being a buzzword to very much a reality, and marketers’ use of AI soared to 190% between 2018 and 2020. With the likes of Microsoft Azure’s cognitive services, it’s very much now something that’s within reach of every website and every developer.

The API is there and designed to make it accessible, and from a pure marketing perspective AI is baked into the platforms that we’re using. It’s used to collect data, generate insights and anticipate customer trends and moves.

Until now, we’ve taken this kind of automation for granted. Bidding strategies and responsive ads all use forms of AI and machine learning to adapt to the signals that are coming in to improve results in real-time.

One of the other interesting areas where AI will play a huge part is how it’s currently being explored as an alternative to cookies and other third-party trackers as we transition into this cookie-less world over the coming years.

The IAB is expected to release some guidelines and best practices for the use of machine learning at all the different levels of digital advertising production. In a post-pandemic world, leveraging AI becomes even more important as we see these trends shifting all the time as lockdowns come and go. It’s about them being able to react to those changes in real-time.

The need to lean into AI more means this sector will continue to grow to the point where we’re not talking about AI because it’s something we all expect.

Conversational marketing

Conversational marketing is a way of moving buyers or customers through a marketing or sales funnel by using real-time conversations. It’s about fast, real-time interactions, and a lot of businesses are now turning to chatbots.

Over 50% of customer queries may be managed today via AI chatbots. These bots are not necessarily new, but the uptake has accelerated the technology behind them and it’s helping marketers to establish and maintain relationships during the pandemic.

More and more brands are turning to chatbots and conversational marketing to do some of the heavy lifting exercises around support inquiries or sales, and a great example of this is Facebook’s Messenger bots.

However, these bots can be used for more than just support inquiries. Lidl’s wine bot called Margot informs you of the different types of grapes that are used in their wine and will give you wine pairings based on what you are planning to eat. You’re invited to have fun with these chatbots and use it all the way through the funnel, from sales activation to more of a brand-building exercise. We will soon get to the point where it’s hard to determine whether or not you’re talking to a chatbot.

Extended reality

This may be a new term to you, but it’s actually an umbrella term for three immersive technologies that you certainly know. Those terms are:

Virtual Reality – this is where you place a user in a 100% artificial environment, like Oculus Rift.
Augmented Reality – this uses overlays to display virtual objects but in a real-world environment like Pokémon Go, where you’re outside chasing Jigglypuff or Squirtle.
Mixed Reality – this is a bit of a combination of the first two that goes beyond just overlays by anchoring virtual objects into the real world that you can interact with. The best example of this is Microsoft’s HoloLens.

This is a trend that’s growing at lightning speed, as the global market size of extended reality is estimated to increase 7772% to over $3.7bn by 2025.

These may not seem applicable to the marketing world, but in reality it’s a technology that has been thrust forward in the past 12 months by the reduction in the hardware costs, the availability of them, and the increased demand from people trapped at home looking for some alternative ways of engaging.

It’s not just big, heavy headsets now. It’s using YouTube’s 360-degree videos or the augmented reality filters that come with Snapchat, Instagram and TikTok, all the way through to DIY VR equipment. These are changing the conception of this immersive experience so that it is available to all.

Marketers need to meet this demand quickly by upping their game in terms of engagement, interactive content and the personal experiences they produce. Users can now connect with a brand with the kind of intensity and emotional response that hasn’t been possible with one-way traditional media.

Neuromarketing

For those who are unfamiliar with this term, neuromarketing is a strategy that analyzes and measures people’s brain activity and reactions from their nervous systems to determine which types of content they find engaging.

Essentially, you’re checking when a user has an emotional response to something. Thanks to the advances in tech over the last few years, it’s becoming much more of a reality that these types of tests can be accessible to all.

A good example of this is eye-tracking. This is where you use technology to track eye movements to understand where someone fixates on a particular point of a website, or to count the number of blinks that are occurring, which can be an indicator of how much attention someone is paying to your ad. You can also use emotional response analysis, which is where you use technology to identify whether there has been an emotional response to an ad.

A successful neuromarketing campaign that used emotional response analysis was created by Always in 2014. The brand took the phrase ‘like a girl’, flipped it on its head and turned an insult into a movement of confidence. This brought the emotional response that you would expect, it generated revenue and popularity and even won the Brandon Emmy for their campaign.

Advances mean that this kind of marketing has gone from being a more sci-fi way of marketing to something that’s very much mainstream.

Final thoughts

If you’re looking to get ahead of your competitors in 2021 and beyond, then you should definitely consider implementing these trends into your marketing campaigns where possible.

While these trends have emerged as the ones to watch in recent months, we do have to bear in mind the circumstances in which they have appeared.

One of the key things we will have to do over the next 12 months is to identify which of these trends are actual trends and which are just passing fads born out of necessity from lockdown.

To say it’s been a turbulent year for the travel industry (and us all) is an understatement. But with the end of lockdown insight and the travel ban looking to be lifted, the industry is beginning to reawaken and make plans for the future.

But attitudes and behaviours have changed as a result of the last 12months. So, to plan for our best comeback, as marketeers we must recognise and reflect the changed landscape.

The latent demand for travel is unquestionable, with ABTA stating that 70% of UK holidaymakers plan to travel in 2021.

And it makes sense. After this year we are all looking for some escapism. A chance to leave our homes and now repetitive lives, and see something new, experience some excitement and reconnect with those we care about.

But with so much lost holiday time, UK holidaymakers are wanting to come back with a bang. This is the time for bucket list style holidays and experiences. Whether that be trekking in the Andes (once we can), a round-the-world cruise or treating ourselves to 5-star luxury closer to home.

With money saved from staying at home, holiday credit banked and credit cards looking light, those not financially affected by Covid are set to travel in style as soon as they are able. And as marketeers, we need to show them we have that extra special experience for them.

Try parking the budget holiday message for a change and dial up the wow factor you can offer. Use communications to inspire and excite. Show them how to go that extra mile, whether it be exotic long-haul or a luxury glamping site in Devon. Use the time now to build the anticipation, so when the world opens up, they are revved up and eager to travel with.

In the UK with the vaccination programme going well, not surprisingly it’s the over 50’s who are most likely to have booked a holiday so far – they know when they will have been vaccinated and feel most free to take time out.

But for families and under 50’s the story is different. Whilst the demand is just as strong, the unknowns are greater. Will they need a vaccine to travel? What about children’s vaccines? And what about summer school?

Whilst now this is leading to stagnation, as soon as these questions are answered holiday planning for families and under 50’s will quickly turn into bookings.

As marketeers we’ll need to be ready. Keeping travellers inspired, excited, and keeping us front of mind whilst the unknowns exist. Then bamm! – ready to drive bookings when the moment is right. And if things change, back again to slow – inspiration and front of mind.

The same is true for the destinations we promote. Just two weeks ago Greece was pipped as a “safe” bet for 2021 holidays, but with case numbers across Europe on the rise, and France entering its 3^rd lockdown, even 2020 travel corridors are looking uncertain for 2021.

Planning for a 2-speed approach will allow to adjust your message quickly as external factors change. Adjust your speed and sales focus to take advantage of opportunities as they arise, then dial back and refocus on inspiration and information as new challenges emerge. Plan for it now, as one thing is certain, it will not be a straight road out of this crisis.

Trust has always been a key factor for travellers choosing a holiday company to book through and/or travel with. But over the years, with independent travel confidence growing, low-cost holidays emerging and online operators sprouting, travellers have been increasingly happy to choose untrodden paths for the sake of saving money or to experience something new.

Keeping me safe and getting me home are huge influencers now for travellers choosing who to book with and where to travel. As such, companies and destinations that are tried and tested will win. Whether it be a household name travel operator or the same cottage in Cornwall they’ve visited before. Don’t underestimate the power of the familiar and safe at present.

Therefore, as marketeers we need to focus primarily on our past customers, now more than ever, over winning new business or growing market share.

We have already an element of trust with these travellers but building upon this will help to ensure they choose us, over other familiar brands they have travelled with, when the timing is right.

Don’t just sell a holiday, but also sell you. Ensure your past customers are left feeling you are still right for them, and you are right for right now.

A customer journey map visually brings your customers’ journeys to life, making it much easier to see how their experiences flow across your brands’ touchpoints. It’s a strategic approach to optimising your customer experiences – far more effective than trying to understand and improve individual touchpoints at a tactical level.

Your customers don’t see your touchpoints as separate entities – for them, their experience with you should be seamless. The only way you’ll truly understand your business from the perspective of your customers is to take a step back and review their journey from end to end. Armadillo Innovation Director, Rob Pellow, spoke with Feefo about customer journey mapping and why it’s key:

“The key is to understand what to do when you have the information, especially around personalisation. The journey needs to be holistically joined up. It’s good to know that your customer is moving from email X to website Y and then seeing social post Z, but the real key is making those journeys as consistent as possible.

In our CRM-focussed world, this is always the most important thing to us – someone who has identified themselves by hard data gathering or observed behaviour will always have that reflected back to them. This regularly presents tech challenges as very few brands have the oft-sought after single customer view powering every bit of their tech stack. So, while you are creating these user journey maps, you should also have an eye on optimising your data flows so that at worst, customers aren’t seeing conflicting messages and, at best, you use every touchpoint to leverage relevance and engagement.

Quite often, that means we build connectors – ways for us to gather the data and then distribute that to wherever it’s needed in order to deliver the best possible ROI on all campaigns, short and long term.”

Customer journey maps can be used to meet many objectives. It’s a good idea to have a clear set of goals for your mapping project before you begin, to make sure that you maintain focus and mine the most relevant data. Some of the most popular examples of when and why a customer journey map might be used include:

Now you know what a customer journey map is, why it’s important and how it can help your business, it’s time to create your own.

Recently, Armadillo Chairman, Chris Thurling, spoke to South West Business Insider on the topic of choosing your marketing agency. When dealing with creative abstracts such as brand, message, creative strategy, digital engagement and design, it can be difficult to know what exactly it is you should be looking for. Chris provides his advice on what to consider when seeking out a marketing agency that’s suitable for your business.

Even though there can be good reasons to select a sector specialist agency, there are strong arguments the other way. One of the main benefits of using an agency with broad sector experience is its ability to bring fresh perspectives compared to in-house teams or agency specialists. Generalists have learnings from brands in different sectors that they bring to a brief, and ultimately the skills are transferable. Partnering with an agency that works across various sectors also decreases the chances of merely rehashing your competitors’ work and increases the likelihood of innovation.

An agency’s ability to indicate potential ROI ahead of the project depends mainly on how much information you are willing to divulge. The more transparent you are, the more accurately an agency can indicate the potential outcome. However, without detailed insight upfront, this can be difficult.

Crises such as the one we are living through often see brands choose to abandon strategy and go into panic mode. For example, brand building activities get dialled down in favour of budget savings or short-term customer acquisition approaches. Smart and confident companies tend to hold their nerve and continue investing in their brands with the long-term in mind.

These comments originally featured in the South West Business Insider, April 2021. Follow the link to read the full article, including comments from a variety of other business leaders and industry professionals.

NIKE

AIRBNB

MCDONALDS