Clubhouse is the social media network that’s taking the world by storm. Despite only launching in April last year, the app had 8.5m downloads at the end of February 2021 and users including the likes of Elon Musk (@elonmusk) and Mark Zuckerberg (@zuck23).
Drew Benvie (@drewbenvie), social media expert and founder of Battenhall, joined a Bristol Creative Industries event to share tips on how entrepreneurs, marketers and other creatives can use the app to grow their profile.
Here’s a summary of his advice.
With 8.5m downloads compared to Facebook’s 2.8bn active users, Clubhouse “is teeny weeny as a social network”, Drew says, but due to the high profile nature of its users “it’s really starting to turn heads”.
Drew believes Clubhouse sits in a space between social networks such as Twitter, Facebook and Tik Tok and audio/video platforms like YouTube, Spotify and BBC Sounds. “At first I thought this is going to change social media,” he says, “people are going to start listening to things instead of writing or reading, but actually the data suggests it’s increasing use of other social media, and it’s also not really cannibalising mainstream audio or video. It’s kind of complementing that too.”
Drew says what excites him about Clubhouse is that “anyone can rock up, it’s really them and it’s unscripted”. That includes high profile people. Drew was hosting a room (we explain what that is below) about social media and Damian Collins MP (@damiancollinsmp), the former chair of the Parliamentary committee that grills big social network bosses, showed up to listen and then asked to speak. The next day he joined again.
Clubhouse is an app on which users host, listen to and participate in audio groups, known as rooms, where typically one or more moderators host live discussions.
Clubhouse is currently only available on iPhones and iPads. You also need an invite to get access. Speak to someone you know who’s on Clubhouse and ask them for one.
Once you’re in, set up a bio. You can add whatever you like including links to your Twitter and Instagram accounts. You can follow people on Clubhouse but there’s no messaging functionality within the app.
In terms of what username to pick, Drew recommends your real name as Clubhouse is all about real people having conversations.
The Clubhouse algorithm is still “a bit ropey”, Drew says, so to find interesting people to follow select topics that you’re interested in and look for interesting people talking about those topics.
Clubhouse connects with your phone address book so it will show you your contacts already using the app.
When you follow someone, click on the alarm bell icon in their profile and you can select to be notified always, sometimes or never when they speak on the app.
Rooms (sometimes known as events – see below) are where the conversations take place. All rooms are live and they are not recorded so you can’t replay them (although lots of people are secretly recording rooms and uploading videos to YouTube such as this one with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg). At this point in Drew’s talk, an attendee said she was in a room with Brad Pitt!
To get used to the app, join rooms that look interesting to you. A room has three tiers; a stage with the people speaking (some of whom are moderators), people being followed by the speakers and everyone else.
Everyone not on the stage is muted and you can’t speak. If you want to speak, you can raise your hand and a moderator can invite you to the stage. Moderators can also remove people from the stage or from the room completely.
It can be nervewracking to speak for the first time but hang out in rooms that appeal to you and when you’re ready and have something to say, raise your hand and speak succinctly.
Your followers can ‘ping’ you to join a room. Exit a room with the ‘leave quietly’ button.
Rooms can be:
The app will show you rooms based on who you follow and the topics you’ve selected.
If you click ‘start a room’ and select the type, it will go live instantly.
If you want to schedule a room for the future, Clubhouse describes that as an ‘event’. Create one by clicking on the calendar icon at the top of the app.
Clubs are anchors for your activity on Clubhouse. They are like what Facebook business pages are to your personal profile. It allows people to follow a theme. There are thousands of clubs covering all sorts of topics including social media, artificial intelligence, movies, public speaking, comedy and start-ups. Within a club, individual rooms are created to have live conversations. When a room goes live, you’ll be notified.
When you get on the app, click the magnifying glass icon top left and you’ll see lots of clubs to follow.
To set up your own club, click on your profile image at the top right of the app and then the + next to the icons of clubs that you are a member of.
When starting a room or a club, Drew recommends planning with other people to maximise exposure. When someone is co-hosting with you, make them moderators.
Listen to rooms to pick up best practice moderator skills such as introducing the show/room/event (they are called all those things!), welcoming people to the stage and keeping the conversation flowing.
To build momentum, it’s a good idea to host a room at the same time every day, week or month.
Drew says speaking in a room tends to grow your following by around 10% of the room’s total participants. You’re also likely to pick up followers on other social networks if you’ve included links in your bio.
You can’t send someone a link to your profile on Clubhouse but you can send them a link to an event you’ve planned.
People are also using other social networks to promote events such as this Twitter account for The Good Time Show, which is part of Good Time, one of the most high profile clubs on Clubhouse. An event with Elon Musk in that club broke the app!
In Clubhouse, you’re talking to strangers and you’re listening to strange conversations. There have been reports of trolling and harassment so Drew advises being safe by not allowing random people to speak in your rooms or letting them be moderators.
Other social networks are already taking on Clubhouse. Twitter Spaces is live and Facebook is rumoured to be building an audio product.
“A wider brand audio strategy on audio is something I would absolutely recommend you start considering if you think Clubhouse is interesting for you,” Drew says.
Think about why your audience would want to engage using audio and harness influencers across Clubhouse.
Drew Benvie runs ‘Trending’ which has a room discussing the latest social media trends every Tuesday and Thursday at 11am GMT.
He also recommends ‘9am in London’ created by Abraxas Higgins (@abraxas), one of the most followed UK Clubhouse users. His club hosts a daily “no agenda” room at 9am GMT.
You can follow Drew on Clubhouse at @drewbenvie and members of the Bristol Creative Industries team, Alli Nicholas, Dan Martin and Chris Thurling, at @allinicholas, @dan_martin and @christhurling.
If you’re a Bristol Creative Industries member who’s on Clubhouse, let us know by following us or sending us a tweet.
With less than a decade left to achieve Vision 2030, many organisations in the KSA region have successfully embarked on the journey to digital transformation. This is especially true when it comes to internal operations, streamlining workflows and taking administrative tasks online.
Some, though, will have found the task of transforming their marketing functions much more challenging.
The reason? Internal, administrative processes are fundamentally different to marketing tasks, and will require a different mindset to succeed.
Internal processes are typically clearly defined, as are the roles of users. When it comes to digitalisation, the objective is to automate repetitive administrative tasks providing greater efficiency and transparency. For many internal operations, the IT environment is well-defined, and the success of moving away from legacy processes to new software, programs or processes relies simply on ensuring their robust, secure implementation.
In these circumstances, transformation projects can involve long development cycles and large capital budgets, and traditional IT project management frameworks are often appropriate.
But compare this with the role of marketing. Just as with other internal processes, any new technology needs to enable your team to efficiently operate at scale and to integrate securely with your CRM and ERP systems. But here the similarity ends.
Marketing technology connects your team to a constantly evolving audience with developing needs and preferences, and a fast-moving, innovative technology landscape where today’s new attractions quickly become old news.
Your marketing team’s focus is on optimising your commercial impact across all points in the customer journey. They rely on multiple digital channels, new media techniques and real-time data to connect with their audience and outpace the competition.
In short, speed and accuracy are of the essence, and your team needs to operate consistently and efficiently at scale.
You need the foundations of a good marketing automation system. But in the fast-moving world of marketing, the ability to innovate, test and learn is vital for competitive advantage.
Given these drivers, applying a traditional, large-scale IT approach to marketing digital transformation is doomed to failure. In fact, the stories of organisations who’ve tried and failed are widely publicised. For those still battling on, by the time their project is complete the media landscape and their audience will have moved on, with more nimble competitors steps ahead alongside them.
Marketing transformation can’t be viewed as a capital project with a start and end date. It requires a framework environment to enable a constant state of innovation, enabled by minimum viable products (MVPs), deployed in test-and-learn sprints.
It might sound counter-intuitive, but the framework anticipates and accepts a certain level of failure. However, it also ensures you integrate successful innovations to create an evolving, interoperable, open ecosystem over time.
So how does it work?
Every development is planned, managed and measured by its potential and actual impact on Return-On-Investment (ROI).
Discovery and planning are vital parts of the marketing transformation process. They create the vision and framework for everything you do.
While it would be a mistake to adopt small innovation sprints at the expense of thinking big, with your vision and framework in place, you can then narrow your focus down to a few key marketing processes.
By assessing the points in the customer journey that will produce the greatest commercial impact, whether through efficiency or improved customer acquisition and retention, you can create a prioritised roadmap of development sprints.
It’s at this point that many projects falter.
Once you’ve prioritised your starting innovations, there’s no doubt you’ll come across a number of cases where your system needs full integration and complete end-to-end interoperability to work optimally.
Instead, you need to focus on the minimum viable product (MVP) you need to test the innovation and measure its ROI.
The MVP approach may well require additional manual processes to start with, but it will put your innovation in the hands of your users quicker, and prove (or disprove) its commercial return against a smaller investment.
The push for modernisation from Vision 2030 is a bold, ambitious aim. To achieve it, marketing must have a clear vision for what the ultimate customer journey looks like, and how technology can facilitate it.
Success doesn’t rely on a large capital budget to create the ultimate, perfect machine: It lies in an agile framework, enabling a constant state of ‘test-and-learn’ innovation. An attitude which champions flexibility, evolution and growth is key, as is a commitment to innovation and a focus on ROI.
This shift in mindset can often be the biggest cultural challenge for an organisation to overcome. That’s why at Proctors, we work closely with our clients across the KSA region – and the world – helping them to achieve success and avoid the pitfalls which cause stalled or failed digital marketing transformation initiatives.
Get in touch with us and let’s talk about how we can innovate your marketing strategy.
Advanced SEO techniques. SEO optimisation. How to rank where it counts. The pressure really is on businesses to prioritise SEO when it comes to their content marketing strategy or apparently risk disappearing forever into the black hole of – gasp – page 6 of Google Search results.
Don’t get me wrong, yes, SEO is an important element of any strategy and there are plenty of technical on-page steps you can and should be taking to make sure your website and online content is performing well. But to anyone who still believes that SEO just means peppering your website and blog with keywords in every other sentence, you’re forgetting something crucial. Google Search isn’t your target audience. It’s a channel to reach your target audience. If you’re a slave to the SEO keyword, you may tick a few of Google’s boxes (actually not as many as you think, more on that below) but you will undoubtedly alienate your prospective customers because your content will read so badly that they’re unlikely to then trust you with their business.
When it comes to content marketing, the not-so-secret ticket to success is quality. In today’s world of keywords, topics and featured snippets, it’s easy to forget that Google actually places far greater emphasis now than ever before on content that is well written, and rewards said content with a higher ranking in search results. In fact, unintelligible content that’s been written for an algorithm rather than a human will now actively count against you.
But don’t panic if you’re finding that your content isn’t performing as it should or not driving quite the interest that you thought it would.
Here are three tips to improve your content marketing:
1. Quality is king. That means that your blogs, whitepapers, e-books, case studies and the like need to be well written, error-free, no typos or dodgy grammar, no keyword gibberish. But they also need to be on the right topic and engaging for the reader, and that means content which helps or educates is far more likely to perform better than a brochure which sells your product directly. It sounds like some sort of paradox, but content marketing is at its very best when it raises awareness of your business without pushing your services directly. Good content should position you as the go-to expert for your particular specialism, ensuring that you spring to mind first when the reader, a prospective customer, needs your services. It should drive loyalty which in turn drives purchase consideration. But we’ll say it until we’re blue in the face – quality, quality, quality.
2. Keywords should be treated like seasoning – a light sprinkling of the right ones leaves a much better taste than a dredging with every word possibly associated with your business. It’s very easy to find yourself down a keyword rabbit hole when deciding what to hook your content on, particularly with so many online tools available, but I guarantee you’ll be left with more questions than answers: should I include longer tail keywords with a lower MSV, or a shorter keyword with broader reach but fierce competition? What even is a long tail keyword anyway? Keywords are important as they do after all ensure that your content will pop up when people are searching for that subject, but we really want to avoid keyword soup at all costs. We suggest you keep it simple, particularly as an SEO beginner: start by thinking about what you want to be famous for as a business – content marketing, for example – and then consider the key questions that prospective customers may have when searching for help on that subject – Should I write a company blog? How do I start an e-newsletter? What is the difference between a whitepaper and an e-book? Turning each of those questions into a blog post or how-to guide will make sure you’ve got the most important keywords covered. We’re not big-headed enough to suggest that this is the only way to work with keywords, but it will at least start you on the right track. Keep it tightly linked to the services that you offer to make sure it’s relevant (Google takes this VERY seriously), and don’t forget to link back to your website.
3. So, you’ve written a brilliantly engaging, insightful blog post with just the right number of relevant keywords. But there’s little point in getting this far and then have the blog sit on your website with no eyes on it. The final consideration then when it comes to content marketing should be how to disseminate your content properly. Here it helps to think first about the channels that you already own, such as your social media, an e-newsletter out to your customer database or internal comms to your own employees and then out to their own networks. And then you can think about other people’s channels that you can piggyback on. Can your content sit as a guest blog on someone else’s company site? Can you do some simple PR outreach to target media and see if they’re interested in running the piece? Can you repurpose an older blog that has already run by turning it into new shorter ‘how to’ social media posts?
If you’ve made it this far and would love to know more about how to improve your existing content marketing or take the leap into content for the first time, we’re happy to chat.
www.sparrohouse.co.uk
We’ve re-launched!
“Creativity is the Cure ™”
Ted Talker Anne Thistleton headlines virtual event around the power of creativity in decision-making
We’re extremely excited to announce that at Create Health we have re-launched under the banner “Creativity is the Cure ™”. Committed to injecting a dose of creativity into healthcare communications, we kicked off the re-launch with a virtual event headlined by renowned TedX talker, ex-global marketer and Mind Science practitioner, Anne Thistleton.
This re-launch comes 12 months after our management buy-out led by Ed Hudson, managing director, and Phil Blackmore, creative director. It’s been an exciting year as we also secured an investment of £500,000 from Creative Growth Finance from Creative England in October 2020.
“We firmly believe that Creativity is the Cure™ for the future of healthcare communications – it’s behind everything we do at Create Health, and we’re really excited to share this more widely. Brilliant ideas aren’t just good for business, they make a positive difference to healthcare professionals and their patients. We need to appeal to the subconscious mind, not the rational one, if we truly want to change behaviour, and our creative campaigns have shown this time and again,” comments our creative director, Phil Blackmore.
Underlining the proposition, ex-The Coca-Cola Company marketer and Mind Science expert, Anne Thistleton, took the role of Keynote Speaker at our virtual re-launch event, sharing her wealth of insights around Mind Science and how to unlock behaviour change by appealing to the subconscious mind. A massive thank you to those who attended the event as well as those who took part in the panel discussion around the challenges of reaching the audience and the power of creativity: Anne Thistleton, Karen Hand, global marketing director of ConvaTec; Craig Wightman, chief design officer of Kinneir Dufort, and Andy Milsom, CEO, Kanjo App.
Now 14-strong, we welcomed a raft of new hires last year including Polly Buckland, strategy director, and its first in-house animator, Matt Sugrim. Carrie Fick joined us as marketing manager last month too. We’re thrilled to unveil our new branding and a refreshed website as part of the re-launch.
Ed Hudson, our managing director, added: “Marketing theory is based on the assumption that minds – especially scientific ones – think rationally and make decisions along rational lines. But that’s not true – as is underscored by Mind Science experts like Anne. We’ve seen countless times that it’s the truly creative campaigns rather than the rational ones that have the biggest impacts on brand and buying behaviour in healthcare. Decision-making is led by the sub-conscious mind, and that’s why our most creative brands, grounded in insights, are the most powerful ones.”
Joel Kurtzman, editor-in-chief of the magazine Strategy & Business, is credited with coining the term ‘thought leader’, which he defined as:
“A thought leader is recognized by peers, customers and industry experts as someone who deeply understands the business they are in, the needs of their customers and the broader marketplace in which they operate. They have distinctively original ideas, unique points of view and new insights.”
So, why should we make thought leadership part of our marketing strategy, and why is it good for business?
In our last Insights piece, we talked about the importance of social proof in buying decisions. We explained that social proof provides comfort and reassurance to buyers, and thought leadership works to deliver exactly the same emotional responses. It achieves this by creating positive attributes for your brand:
These attributes are clearly attractive to buyers, as they provide that all important comfort and reassurance. Consequently, thought leadership has been shown to translate into:
This ‘value’ is explored in the article “7 Surprising Stats About the Underappreciated Power of Thought Leadership“, which focuses on the results of a LinkedIn and Edelman survey which reviews how thought leadership is regarded both by ‘sellers’ and ‘buyers’. It reveals some fascinating statistics including, for example:
“Thought leadership can lead directly to sales. Almost 60% of business decision makers said that thought leadership directly led to their awarding of business to an organization. Just 26% of sellers believe that thought leadership can lead directly to closed-won deals.”
So, if you are now convinced that thought leadership should form part of your marketing strategy, then where do you start? The general recommendation is that the first step should be to define your objectives, which may be:
If we go back to Joel Kurtzman’s definition, he talks of a thought leader demonstrating a deep understanding of the business, customer needs and the broader marketplace. I’d suggest that these are excellent guiding principles to bear in mind when selecting a topic.
To help with the process, it is also worth brainstorming the following questions:
Finally, it is also worth considering whether you want to focus on a mainstream issue or something more niche, that could provide you with an opportunity to differentiate yourself from the competition.
At a basic level, the thought leadership piece should be well-written and follow a logical flow. If you don’t have good copywriting skills, then engage someone who can translate your ideas into a compelling written piece.
Clearly, any work created under the heading ‘thought leadership’ also needs to hits the mark in terms of offering deep, thought-provoking insight that delivers real value to its intended audience. It’s important that you work to educate and engage that audience, that you make them think and create those positive associations with you and your brand.
First and foremost, it’s key that you gain visibility for your thought leadership on those channels and platforms that resonate most with your target audience. Although these pieces lend themselves very well as press/ advertorial-type material, there are a wide range of other marketing possibilities:
Finally, as with any marketing activity, think about which metrics you’ll use to assess the success of your thought leadership. These may include:
If you’d like to learn more about how thought leadership may help your business, then please contact me for an informal chat on 07941 916985 or email [email protected]
Alternatively, you may want to review our other Insights pieces or take a look at how we help start-ups, scale-ups and SMEs achieve their potential.
JonesMillbank, Bristol-based video production company, marked their 10 year anniversary last week. Having collaborated together since 2008, Co-Founders Russell Jones and Adam Millbank founded JonesMillbank in February 2011 and have become a mainstay of Bristol’s creative community.
“It goes without saying that the last year has certainly been the most interesting and challenging of the last 10. It’s somewhat odd that we found ourselves forced into the freelance world following the financial crisis of 2008, and now 10 years after founding the company we’re adapting to the next one” said Russell.
“It’s been an amazing 10 years, and like most anniversaries it’s gone both fast and slow; some elements of our work have changed dramatically whilst others have remained remarkably similar.”
“That’s particularly true of equipment vs content; we used to film on magnetic MiniDV tapes where you’d have to capture footage in real-time by playing the tape back like a VHS, and now we’re shooting in 8K raw on 1TB solid state drives. And yet what’s in front of the lens is still predominantly people and their stories”.
“The last year has certainly been interesting, but way more successful than we ever thought it would be when the proverbial was hitting the fan and projects were getting postponed and cancelled left, right and centre back in March 2020.”
“In fact September 2020 turned out to be our busiest month on record. We managed to adapt rapidly; we directed two music videos for IDLES, a new sector for us, our animation capabilities flourished, and we helped our clients continue communicating through virtual tours and live streams alongside ‘traditional’ video content.”
JonesMillbank boast a broad range of cross-sector clients, with recent projects for The Royal Mint, University of Bristol, Universal Music, Toshiba, NHS, Bristol City Council and Battersea.
Adam added: “Graduating into a recession and then marking ten years in lockdown has bookended the last decade of working interestingly. Despite all the changes, the challenges, the highs and lows, what’s been constant is the absolute love for what we do. Telling stories will always be the most interesting and engaging thing I can imagine doing and to have been able to do it with the friend I graduated with has been nothing short of a privilege.”
“I think what’s ensured that JonesMillbank has had such a solid foundation throughout the last decade is the fact that although both myself and Russell are quite different people we understand each other so well and can make joint decisions on what we do. Just like any good long term relationship!”
“We’ve always pushed ourselves to get the most value out of budgets and when I think back to the very first pieces we created the attitude was just the same. It wasn’t easy back then to get a company to take a chance on two individuals with no real portfolio or experience so we can appreciate all the risks people took with us in the early days”.
“We’ve traveled the world and met the most interesting people along the way and who knows what the next decade has in store. Seeing the team grow, the projects get more ambitious and the pure enjoyment that we all get from being creative every day is something I’m hugely grateful for.”
On the 10-year anniversary, Russell said “we usually try to make the most of things like this, with previous Christmas parties seeing us spend a few days in Athens, Bucharest, Warsaw and Bruges. So we’ve decided to delay our party until the summer when we can celebrate and commemorate properly with the whole team and their families. Everyone was bored of Zoom a long time ago!”
***
JonesMillbank are a passionate full-service video production company
They work exclusively in-house with a talented team of multi-disciplined creatives, all the while telling authentic stories long before it was cool for a range of clients such as University of Bristol, Battersea, The Royal Mint and IDLES.
jonesmillbank.com
01173706372
[email protected]
This year, we’re kicking off our first guest blog series with Jon Mowat, founder of the award-winning video and marketing agency, Hurricane Media and author of the book “Video Marketing Strategy”.
Sharing his thoughts on how lockdown has affected the video marketing landscape, to suggesting how brands can best adapt to meet these new trends, Jon’s insight unpacks issues at the very forefront of video today.
“People have realised you don’t necessarily need production to be shiny. You just have to be authentic.”
When it comes to video consumption and engagement, the three key things that lockdown has affected are volume, duration and tone. During lockdown, adults spent 40% of their day in front of screens and their time spent on streaming services doubled. Not only have we gained back time from the commute, but video has also become an essential part of our daily life – be it video calls at work or social media.
Duration is the other thing that’s changed – long form video has increased in popularity, as have webinars. So the average watch time has gone up too. I was talking to a colleague of mine at the video marketing platform, 23 – they’ve seen a 1710% increase in webinar usage on their platform in 6 months, and most webinars are over 30 minutes.
The third effect of lockdown is that the tone of video has changed. Brands have been forced to develop a more authentic tone of voice and react faster to the real world. Some of the shine has gone from brand films due to the impact of the pandemic on production, but everyone’s realised you don’t necessarily need it to be shiny. You just have to be authentic.
The big video trends of 2021? Well, these will continue to be driven by an increased fragmentation of formats. We’ve got YouTube, Facebook and Tik Tok as established leaders, but there will be others like these in the pipeline, as well as more variations of video being shared on these channels. Some will be 5 seconds, some 15 seconds, and some 25 seconds. On top of that, you’ve got the addition of longer form content coming into the marketing stack more and more, from webinars to mid funnel consideration content.
“Brands need to adapt to people becoming less sympathetic to corporate messages – they want more emotive, “real” quality content.”
Brands need to have a wider strategy than just one single form of content. At Hurricane, we help brands to consider how they’re going to repurpose their content across all of these platforms, as well as which to focus on. Trying to be on all of them will stretch resources too thin and weaken your targeting.
Alongside this, brands are having to adapt to the fact that people are becoming less sympathetic to corporate messages. Viewers want more emotive, “real” quality content. So brands also have to think about how they can make content that’s emotional and that really connects to its audience.
On top of this, with different parts of the sales funnel using different platforms, brands also have to focus on using the right content at the right time. For instance, you may have an initial 15 second video on Instagram to capture attention, followed by a three minute YouTube piece, ultimately driving viewers to a two hour webinar. It’s about understanding the digital sales funnel and serving the right content at the right time.
“The days when you could just put content on your website, put it on your social, and still make traffic, are long gone.”
There are two parts to this: ensuring your content gets found by a SERP and creating content that’s engaging. SERPs, especially YouTube, care about two things: clicks and engagement. Essentially, this means it’s not enough making sure people click, you need to make them stay too. A good way to achieve this is by doubling down on thumbnails and descriptions, making sure that you’ve got that strong emotional connection in the first ten seconds. And, if it’s long-form, you need to give people reasons to stay by building up to a crescendo and dropping a few stats at key moments as you go along.
The second thing is that, now more than ever, you have to put paid behind your content. The days when you could just put it on your website, put it on your social, and still make traffic are long gone. Content that hasn’t got paid behind it is now being actively punished by SERPs as they want to push things that are being paid. So with paid activity, yes you’re going to get found by a new group of people, but it also means your organic posts will appear higher to your existing followers. If you choose not to put money behind your posts, they are more likely to disappear without a trace. So firstly, focus on people clicking it and watching it, but then also focus on getting people to find it, which is through paid activity.
“What we’re actually doing with video is we’re affecting behaviour by changing brain chemistry. That’s why it’s so powerful. It’s a science of activating emotions.”
There are four key reasons that video works: one, it has a moving image; two, we just can’t put our phones down; three, it’s highly targeted; and four, it allows emotional storytelling.
So first, let’s look at moving image. As humans, we’ve got these things in our eyes, called ganglion cells, that are designed to pick up movement, which evolved over time to stop us getting eaten. If you look at a scene and something moves, your eyes are instantly drawn to it. The ganglion cells trigger a reaction so you pay attention. It’s known as the Snake Detection Theory and it’s why, if your phone is facing down on the other side of the desk and you get a LinkedIn notification, you’re instantly drawn to the tiny lighting change that you eyes detect. You don’t stand a chance of ignoring it!
Number two is that we love dopamine. And every time we pick up a phone, and see that we’ve got a like, or a social mention, or we get re-shared, we get a little kick of dopamine. The phone is a dopamine pump and we love it. Loads of research has been done into it, and app developers know how to maximize its addictiveness, which is why you get irregular notifications and irregular likes, because we’re never quite sure when that treat is coming.
Then the next thing is that it’s highly targeted. As marketers, we can now target specific socio-economic groups. This targeting means that we can be much more effective with our content. Unlike TV which has a mass audience, you’re aiming a video at people who are exactly your audience. You can look at keywords they’re using, their consumption patterns, their location, what conversations they take part in and more. All of which means people are served highly relevant videos.
And then the big one is emotional storytelling. Since neanderthals sat around campfires 700,000 years ago, human beings have communicated through stories (both visual and verbal). When we tell a story, and when we hear a story, all sorts of chemicals kick around our brain. The amygdala kicks off, the hippocampus kicks off, and we get all of these neurochemicals like vasopressin, serotonin and endorphins pumping around the body. These make us ready to listen, and ready to learn. And, when we tell emotional stories with video, it’s the same reaction – we are naturally more engaged and our vasopressin, endorphins and oxytocin levels go through the roof. What’s fascinating is that this correlates directly with behaviour. For instance, High Cortisol and oxytocin levels directly correlate to how much money you’re willing to give to charity.
In the real world, if you show a powerful charity film to people, they are more likely to donate. So the worst thing to do is to create a film that just says, “well, here’s a thing that we do that’s important”, because you’re not connecting emotionally at any point. Whereas, if you add a personal story and emotional music, then we’re forced to directly connect with it. It bypasses the logical part of the brain and creates an emotional response. So what we’re actually doing with emotional stories is directly changing behaviour by changing brain chemistry. That’s why it’s so powerful. It’s a science of activating emotions.
I think my favourite campaign at the moment is for Sykes Holiday Cottages, which is on national TV at the moment. Not only were we able to build on the existing creative that we had done for the brand, but it speaks directly to the current climate of the pandemic. We’ve managed to centre the messaging around why you should holiday in the UK without being horrifically obvious or alarmist, while being focused on the authentic and warm truth that we all love spending time with our family on holiday.
Alongside this 30 seconds “above the line” TV commercial, we’ve also targeted individual pieces of content digitally at the four of Skyes’ key audiences. What we’re doing is reaching a mass audience with the TV, while at the same time, highly targeting specific audiences on Facebook and Instagram with different messaging and formats. The campaign is connected with the same central idea, but additional video formats have been approached in a different manner depending on the audience. I think that’s very much the way everything’s going; taking one single idea and then running it through all the assets and all the different platforms.
We’ve also just created a series of 15-seconds-long adverts over Christmas for Shelter which were very successful. This was coupled with a 45 minute Christmas carol concert, which delivered great engagement rates and generated a lot of donations. This goes back to my earlier point that there’s no longer ‘the perfect’ duration, there’s only the correct duration for what you’re trying to achieve. It’s now about being flexible and changing your approach based on your understanding of the platform – asking yourself who’s on it, what they want and how to talk to them in the best way.
I think the key takeaway for 2021 is that video will make a huge difference to your brand, but it’s worth being mindful about where you spend your money. No matter the budget, if you haven’t planned it – what you’re doing, why you’re doing it, and who you’re talking to – it won’t have the desired impact and you’ll waste money. Ultimately, video will help transform your brand but you need to know what it is you want to achieve with it, and it’s a good idea to consider getting someone on board to help you do this.
The second edition of Jon’s book, Video Marketing Strategy: Harness the Power of Online Video to Drive Brand Growth, published later this year, delves deeper into the future of video and it’s increasing importance within the world of digital marketing. You can find it on Amazon or purchase directly from the publisher.
As we continue to grow we are looking for some top talent to join us in our journey.
We’re looking for an awesome PPC Paid Media Executive or Manager specialising in Google Ads management for our growing Premier Partner advertising agency. Passion for PPC a must. We are looking for 2+ years experience, part time and remote working considered. Salary £20k – £27k dependent on experience. Launch Online is committed to creating a diverse environment. We recruit, employ, train, and promote regardless of race, religion, colour, origin, sex, disability, age.
Contact us by using one of the contact methods below. All enquiries will be treated with the utmost confidence. All enquiries will be treated with the utmost confidence.
Phone Number: 01392 280300
Email Address: [email protected]
We’re looking for a Digital Marketing Data Analyst with agency experience and a proven track record of delivering marketing insights to give clients the edge of their competition.
You’ll have experience with tools such as Google Analytics, Tag Management, and Google Data Studio. You’ll be joining an award winning growing paid media agency and working with an exciting client list of ambitious advertisers.
This role can be fully remote or you will be able to work from our Exeter office when it is safe to do so. Part-time or flexible working hours are welcomed.
Launch Online is committed to creating a diverse environment. We recruit, employ, train, and promote regardless of race, religion, colour, origin, sex, disability, age.
Salary range from £25k – £35k depending on experience.
Contact us by using one of the contact methods below. All enquiries will be treated with the utmost confidence. All enquiries will be treated with the utmost confidence.
One of the highly recognised awards in our industry are the annual UK Search Awards.
We were nominated a few years ago we felt a little overwhelmed when we sat in a room of well known brands competing to win.
At the end of 2020 we were quietly confident that our results for selling holidays in a Pandemic with our client, Aria Resorts would be a pretty strong entry in the Best Use of Search category.
And, well we did and…. [drum roll] Won Best Use of Search! Well done Launch Online.
“The results from Launch Online have been nothing short of staggering – Launch has exceeded our already high targets, and helped us deliver record breaking results. These results were achieved during unprecedented times, but they are what the team strives to deliver every day.” Aria Resorts
Launch Online, was crowned the top agency in its class at the European Agency Awards 2020 for its work through the pandemic to support South West and UK tourism businesses.
We were delighted to have won the award for best European PPC Agency and Best PPC Campaign, specifically for our work with UK self catering business, Aria Resorts, to help guide the hospitality business through the turmoil of the pandemic and secure a vital sell-out summer season.
The European Agency Awards were held on October 22, rewarding digital, marketing and advertising agencies across Europe. The judging panel featured leading names in marketing, advertising and digital from some of Europe’s leading brands.
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