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Vision 2030 has opened up tremendous opportunities for KSA organisations to take their place on the world stage over the last five years.

But, when first impressions are so important, how do you project a brand that connects with a culturally diverse, global audience? How do you convey your unique heritage in a contemporary way? And how can you remain distinctive across a fast-changing digital landscape?

Digging deeper than surface aesthetics

Success relies on connecting your brand to the needs, aspirations and psychological motivations of your audiences. The words and images you use must resonate in their minds. They must feel that you share your purpose with theirs.

But words can be empty if they are not delivered by someone they trust, so the tone and personality you use to tell your brand’s story is important. It must be clear and authentic, spoken with heart and passion.

Above all, you want your brand to be distinctive. It should set you apart from others who tell the same story. It must lead with conviction and clarity. Only then will your brand create advocates in all who work for and do business with you.

Thinking ‘digital first’

There was a time when brands were created and then translated into digital applications as an afterthought. Today, in a world where the primary touch points will almost certainly be online, a ‘digital first’ approach to your brand is essential.

Of course, this raises important considerations for your logo. It should remain crisp and distinctive when rendered on the smallest of screens.And it’s worth considering how your brand narrative and tone will remain authentic in videos and infographics. How will it sound through digital assistants? How will it connect through augmented reality and artificial intelligence? What will the experience be online, in apps, and at virtual trade events and meetings?

Once you have explored the brand digitally, you can confidently translate it into what your audience experiences in the real world.

Connecting authentically

Creating brand authenticity requires a balancing act:

1. Be distinctive in your organisation’s purpose and personality

2. Be true to your rich and distinct heritage

3. Integrate into the global business community.

Visually, your brand will bridge the gap between the incredibly unique and individual cultures of the MENA region, which celebrate delicacy, nuance and complexity, and global brand dynamics which favour bold simplicity.

It is advisable to include semiotic audience research – the study of shapes, colours and images – as part of the development process, as these can take on different cultural meanings across diverse audiences. Reaching an understanding of these differences can help avoid any unintended miscommunication through the visuals you apply to your brand image.

Tone of voice should be driven by similar considerations. To connect pan-culturally, it is best to speak with clarity, whilst retaining your distinctive personality. At all times you will want to appear confident, but approachable.

Creating strategically

We have talked about connecting your brand to the needs and motivations of your audience. To achieve this, your process will need to be grounded in thorough audience research. Not only will this drive the best creative outcomes, it will also help your team to make decisions based on an objective view, rather than personal likes and dislikes.

Equally though, brands that successfully achieve resonance are a true reflection of their organisation and people. Your will ideally represent who you are now, and who you want to be. No matter how appealing your brand, if your people aren’t ambassadors, holding its values and purpose in their hearts, it will be unauthentic.

Involving everyone in your organisation – at every level – in the discovery and development process will create engagement and a passionate shared ownership of the brand you create together. The objective should be to make sure that everyone is able to both understand, and be a living embodiment of your beliefs, aspirations, purpose, ambition and approach.

For your audience, this means that the promise your brand makes through its marketing is realised when they do business with you in person.

Planning for success

We have merely scratched the surface here. At P+S, we use a whole host of further considerations, applications and insights to develop brands for our international clients.

From tone of voice (how you speak to the world) and SEO (how you increase your voice’s reach) to the materials and platforms you choose to convey it all. Getting the right brand message, to the correct audience, at the optimal time, is the key to developing a brand that not only attracts but thrives long-term.

In short, creating and communicating a successful global brand requires strategy, creativity and technology. If you can harness all three, the world is yours.

If you’d like to tell us more about what you’d like to achieve from your brand, and explore what we can offer you in terms of developing and promoting it, please get in touch today via [email protected].

Over the last year, we’ve learnt the hard way that businesses who can react, pivot and adapt are far more likely to survive than those who rigidly remain on a single-track traditional strategy. In the current climate, this means that significantly more pressure now lies on business teams who are responsible for effective use of budget and creativity. There is a need for them to pull off greater impact for less budget, or an entirely new commercial direction with a leaner team.

It is a huge challenge and now more than ever, we’re seeing the true value of experience coming into play. You’ve no doubt heard the phrase ‘nobody ever got fired for buying IBM’, it’s been bandied around the business world since the 1970s and has numerous different interpretations. But what it essentially comes down to is the importance of choosing the safe pair of hands when bad things happen, the value of going with the established choice that’s less likely to fail because it’s been around for longer and has been thoroughly tested.

The original saying obviously referred to software (and is since horribly outdated) but it does still ring true today for people in the creative industry. Quite simply, in these difficult social and economic circumstances, now is the time to be working with seasoned experts, those with many years of creative and commercial experience to draw upon to solve the challenges faced by businesses.

So here are our three core reasons for choosing experience right now to move your business forward:

1.     Speaking the same language

Senior creatives have been around the block enough times to speak the same language as any client. They can demonstrate empathy for how work needs to be sold in, the challenges they might face and can help manage stakeholders. That’s not to say, of course, that more junior members of team don’t bring huge benefits to the table – knowledge, enthusiasm, a valuable different perspective that comes with youth, to name just a few. But when times are tough, you just can’t underestimate the power of being able to draw on previous experiences and turn that understanding into action.

2.     Fewer and faster

Experience means there’s no need to layer teams when working on a project, which is vital when dealing with reduced budgets or rapidly changing projects or timescales. Teams can be kept really lean with senior team members doing the work rather than overseeing it. This delivers cost and time efficiencies to clients that they will really appreciate. In most creative agencies, the senior members of the team tend to be light touch with clients – there if you need them, but not directly involved on a day-to-day basis. At Sparro House, ours are hands on – no bloated hierarchy, just experience put to good use.

3.     Flexible innovative thinking

Experienced industry veterans can and should, at the right time, challenge the thinking of clients and inspire them to take a different direction if it’s the right thing for the business. Don’t make the mistake of confusing experience with outdated thinking or a safe pair of hands with a boring or traditional approach. The right seasoned veteran can uniquely combine agile out-of-the-box thinking with the confidence to act that only comes with years of experience. Now is the time for innovation to flourish as businesses try a new direction but any risks can be tempered by placing creative responsibility into the hands of those who’ve been there and done that.

Dr Matthew Freeman, Reader in Multiplatform Media at Bath Spa University, has founded Immersive Promotion Design Ltd., a new marketing consultancy for the world of Extended Reality. It supports Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) businesses to better communicate with their audiences about the magic of immersive content. 

The company builds on sector-development research funded by StoryFutures Academy and Bristol+Bath Creative R+D, and brings together expertise from the BBC VR Hub, Limina Immersive, StoryCentral, Raucous, Bath Spa University and beyond. Last year the team partnered with The National Gallery, Anagram and Studio McGuire to build research-led and audience-tested promotional campaigns for live VR and AR experiences. This led to the creation of new promotional strategies, prototypes, industry bibles and teaching resources for how immersive experiences can be better marketed to today’s audiences.

Talking about Immersive Promotion Design’s success so far, Matthew said: “Many people have recognised the enormous potential of immersive technologies like virtual and augmented reality to transform the creative industries as we know them. Up until now, however, the immersive sector has struggled to reach bigger, more mainstream audiences – the kinds of people used to streaming Netflix but not yet interested in VR headsets.

“The challenge is obvious: How do you communicate the magic of being in a VR experience via social media, posters and trailers? Immersive Promotion Design Ltd. provides a step towards establishing a new promotional language for VR and AR, opening the door to a bigger, more diverse immersive audience. We are very excited to see where this journey takes us.” 

Visit www.immersivepromotion.com to find out more.

Sought after indian themed jewellery from Emma Chapman from Frome and Jaipur was again the highlight of London Fashion Week. This short film explored her story and sources of inspiration.

https://vimeo.com/512609515

McCann has further strengthened its strategy team with the promotion of Kathryn Ellis and Gideon Wilkins to managing partners.

Kathryn has over 15 years of experience in leading brand, business and communications strategies, alongside holding the position of associate lecturer in Advertising at Southampton Solent University. She is a leading voice on growing and retaining female talent within the industry, and her acclaimed research in this area has formed the basis for her many keynote speaker appearances at IPA and Creative Equals events, as well as her published work. Whilst at McCann Bristol she has been integral in rebranding the Royal Mint, launching Motability’s first ever direct to consumer campaign and taking Pink Lady apples global.

Gideon joined McCann Birmingham in 2019, having previously held the position of Global Brand Guidance Director at Kantar where he led the Unilever account. In just 18 months, he’s been instrumental in further innovating the McCann strategy offering, enhancing its signature planning and research capabilities, as well as introducing a host of exciting new talent and skills.

The promotions follow the 2020 appointment of Gary Armitage as Regional Head of Strategy, Mastercard last year, and are the latest steps in expanding McCann Central’s 30-strong division of strategy, research and planning specialists, who sit at the core of its effective creative.

Dean Lovett, CEO at McCann Central, commented: “Strategy, planning and research are a fundamental part of everything we do here at McCann and in our pledge to help our clients play a meaningful role in people’s lives. Every day, our expert strategists, planners and researchers uncover insights to guide our creativity and – crucially – create positive results for our clients, which is why we are delighted to be further strengthening our strategy team.

“It’s an exciting time for our business and we recognise that a strong strategy team is central to continuing to deliver the world-class work for which we are known and building on our celebrated philosophy of, ‘Truth Well Told’. We’ve always prided ourselves on the strength of our offering but thanks to these latest developments, we are now the strongest we’ve ever been.

“We’d like to congratulate Gideon and Kathryn on their promotions. We have no doubt that, along with our brilliant team, they will continue to ensure our creative work is the bravest and best it can be, and more importantly truly effective for our clients.”

The McCann strategy team brings different agency disciplines together to build campaigns with a shared, consistent approach.  Its strategists’ experience, skills and capabilities include brand planning for digital communication and creative development, from analysis of consumer trends, needs and segmentation, focus groups, workshops and co-creation, to campaign creative and proposition evaluations.

Okori, one of our digital designers here at P+S, talks about the short film he created for the BBC last year.

In 2019, I happened upon an opportunity to make a short film for national television. Funnily enough, I remember consciously avoiding film studies in sixth form because I struggled with dialogue and thought “I could never make a film”. I probably do still suck at dialogue, but I guess that doesn’t really matter because my film has zero words in it; work to your strengths I suppose.

Funnier still, was the fact that I had never directed a film in any capacity before. This was very much my first, and very much a deep dive into an unknown world, full of quirky executive producers and stressed out assistant directors.

I eventually emerged from that world (barely in one piece) and back to reality, only to discover that the short film in question – A Fashion Show – can be found on BBC iPlayer, Apple TV, and on the British Urban Film Festival website.

Okay, so, how did this all come about? The answer is…almost by accident.

I was 21 at the time, fresh out of university with a marketing degree and a dream to be in advertising. After all, adverts are just short films, right?

So, I find myself at a premier for a short film in Bristol. It featured my mum actually. She’s not an actress though; she designs luxury handbags. There are all kinds of people there, most notably, a man called Michael Jenkins. See, Michael’s a cool guy; I think he actually directed the film being previewed, and I had overheard that he had previously worked with the BBC. So, being curious, I approached him, introduced myself, and asked if he’d like to get a coffee or something. He said “Sure”.

Fast forward, and we’re at the Bristolian treasure that is the Watershed, having a hot chocolate (I don’t actually drink coffee, I just say it because it sounds professional, you know?) and talking about ourselves. It was a good time. Before we left I showed him some of my freelance marketing/advertising work, to which he mouthed something about keeping in touch. I took this to mean the usual “This was nice, but now we’ll never see each other again”, which was fair enough. I was just happy I got to have a great chat!

Low and behold, some months later, Mr Jenkins did get in touch, with an opportunity he thought I’d be interested in. Turns out it was the BBC New Creatives competition. I didn’t think I stood a chance, but what’s the harm in trying?

Now, a day or so before the deadline, I was watching the Gucci 2018 A/W fashion show with my brother and the idea struck me for an abstract social commentary about race, told through the vehicle of a fashion show.

Feeling inspired, I quickly messaged my most talented friends and convinced them to get involved. It felt like an opening scene in Oceans 11. You know, when they do the “I need you for one last mission!” and the other person responds, “Nah, I’m out of the game.” And then the person says, “But, we could be big time!” and then the other person’s like, “Okay. I’m in!” And the team assembles.

Let me tell you, it was exactly not like that. But let’s just imagine how cool that would be.

Anyways; we submit it. Then we wait. Weeks go by. I should mention that in between meeting Mike and getting his email I had found a job in the elite practice of selling car insurance. As esteemed as it gets, with the working hours to match, there was really no way I could find the time to make a film on the side, but that was okay because it was never going to happen anyway.

News flash, I did get it! We got through! I got a call whilst at the coffee machine at work (again, being professional), where I was told that I’d be given £5,000 to make whatever wacky ideas I had a reality. I didn’t get a coffee but I felt like I had just backed an espresso. Safe to say that I was very excited.

Fast forward once more and we’ve met the executive producers, been assigned our non-exec producers (so, just producers), and been given a wad of money to go make a film. How much do I know about making a film? Zilch. But this was what I had my team for. Thanks to Fran, Luke, Mike, Tallulah, and my friend Shanice who was volunteering as PR, I was able to reduce my running around like a headless chicken by 23% – I really am indebted to them. They saved that film from being an absolute flop. I had no chance on my own. I think that was the first lesson I truly understood about teamwork– letting other people lead where they’re strongest. 

Things didn’t go smoothly: we had mishaps and malfunctions, even a reshoot which almost made me give up on the whole thing. But we made it through pre-production. The most stressful part? Casting. Did I even pay attention to acting experience? I was pretty much going off gut feeling and had these questions about race prepared to gauge how interested actors were in the concept. I just wanted people who cared. I think that’s important in anything you do as a team; picking people who want to be there. When you’re acting the leader, you want people who are even more passionate than you.

I was lucky enough to find a cast full of brilliant, talented, and motivated actors and actresses – many of whom are my friends now and hopefully always will be.

So, we film the first shoot, it’s good but not great. The execs make us do a reshoot. After moping to my girlfriend at the time, telling her that I don’t want to do it and that I might just fob off the whole thing, I’m eventually convinced to stop being so silly. Once again, saved from a blunder by someone else.

We do the reshoot, and its brilliant! It’s weird…you can feel when you’re doing something cool, although I was still very nervous about how it would all turn out. A key actor couldn’t make it, and we had to call the exec producer to be the stand in. Ironically, he played the man behind the scenes, orchestrating a creepy fashion show. How meta is that?

Fast forward a couple of months and we’re premiering the film at Encounters Film Festival, the UK’s leading short film festival. Then a month later ‘A Fashion Show’ is being aired on BBC Four in front of thousands. Next, it’s on BBC iPlayer! It was all very surreal. In2020, it was picked-up by the British Urban Film Awards and Apple TV, which again, is crazy to think about.

The common thread through all of this, is that it’s important to have good people around you and that it’s okay to be a little out of your depth, because you can learn to swim as you go. 

That’s the story of how far just taking an improbable leap can get you. Sometimes, if it’s something you really want to do, and you’ve got a chance, just give it a shot. You can always get support down the line. Making a film was something I swore I could never do. Turns out I was wrong.

So, what have you been telling yourself is impossible? And is it really? 

Listen to Okori talking about his experience here.

For digital advertisers who are striving for growth, expanding into new countries is a clear opportunity. However, by targeting additional international audiences, customer experience (CX) becomes even more of a critical driver of success.

According to research by CSA Research;

“…brands need to apply a culturally relevant, customer-centric focus to all business decisions to meet consumer’s diverse expectations and gain competitive advantage within the global marketplace.”

But putting these well-intended plans into practice isn’t always straightforward, as Gartner recently discovered when they asked CIO’s for their industry perspectives;

“…customer focus is a top business priority for CEOs and subsequently a large investment area for CIOs. Despite these efforts, consumers report significant gaps in enterprises’ ability to make digital experiences easy, to earn their trust, and to deliver desirable results.”

To address this, here are three principles that advertisers can focus on to help deliver relevant messages and a fantastic Customer Experience, globally.

Understand the touchpoints

We all know that awareness of the individual interactions through which consumers engage with your brand is vital – from physical stores, websites, social media, online reviews, and digital advertising through to customer support, the checkout process and shipping. Each touchpoint must accurately and consistently represent the brand and desired messaging.

When you’re entering new territories, don’t make the mistake of assuming these new audiences will behave the same. You need to review your customer journey plans and ensure you adapt accordingly; ensure you’re sensitive to the needs of the local markets and the cultures of each country, in order to deliver a truly authentic CX.

Speak their language

As well as understanding the differences in behaviors, it’s essential to understand the linguistic differences too. This is true for the entire customer journey, from initial advertising message, throughout the website journey and for the duration of the customer lifecycle.

This includes customer reviews. The same CSA Research (Can’t Read, Won’t Buy) we mentioned earlier found that more than 73% of responders…

“…would prefer products with user reviews in my language, even if the app or website itself is not translated.”

Luckily, there are exciting new ways to achieve linguistic nuances that can noticeably impact the performance of your campaigns. Thanks to Machine Learning, these developments in translation technology are happening at an incredible rate.

In late 2019 Google announced a new Natural Language Processing model (an approach they called BERT) and only 7 months later (in May 2020) OpenAI announced success with a model called “GPT-3” which is more than 10x the scale of any comparable model.

The impact for digital advertisers is that as these models improve and are built into ad tech stacks, the platforms will better understand the context of interactions online, in any language, and this will enable even more relevant, timely messaging. Continually helping to enhance customer experience.

Research & test

To deliver high-quality CX, organisations must truly understand their customers, their needs, pain points, habits and local preferences, which are all powered by data. But quantitative data is only one part of the solution. You need qualitative data too.

Remember, when gathering qualitative feedback, it needs to be both geographically and linguistically relevant. Surveys, polls, stakeholder interviews etc. all need to be conducted with the relevant location-based focus applied.

For one recent project, a client of ours was launching into a non-English speaking country for the first time. Thankfully, they were keenly aware of the need to be sensitive to the local market’s needs and took no convincing to invest in rigorous research and testing.

Through user testing with native speakers, we successfully uncovered several key website requirements for the local audience. These needs were unique to this specific locale and would have otherwise gone unnoticed, damaging the brand’s credibility and its chances of success on launch.

Then, of course, don’t stop once you’re activity is live in the new country, conduct ongoing testing too. With a global testing and optimisation programme, a key goal should be to uncover a combination of winning tests that are both location-specific and location agnostic.

Continually uncovering those location-specific wins, while consistently overlaying global optimizations will ensure amazing Customer Experiences while also achieving growth.

One final point. Don’t get so absorbed in delivering such a great Global Customer Experience that you forget your original goal; delivering more effective advertising campaigns and generating greater ROI. If you forget this and get distracted by all the fun CX tools available to invest in, your CFO will soon remind you.

We don’t need to repeat what you’ve already heard – 2020 was pretty unforgiving. This post, however, is not about the last year, it’s about looking forward to the upcoming year and beginning to predict what tools we might need to include in our arsenal for the coming year.

We’ve gathered insight from our clients, and the Financial Services industry as a whole, and have pulled together key activities that every business in the Financial Services industry should do now, to take their marketing to the next level in 2021.

Have a plan that changes

One thing that will remain certain, especially for the early part of this year, is uncertainty. The most effective marketing plans will be built to be fluid,  flexible and adaptable – that way change can be easily navigated.

When Covid struck and the country came to a stand-still, there was a wide-spread feeling of uncertainty both around people’s personal finances as well as the wider economy. For Financial Services companies, this presented an opportunity to step in and provide assurances and insight.

Starling Bank ran a content series offering money management and financial advice to those who had been furloughed. Moneyhub Enterprise, on other hand, made their unique insights available in the form of a spending tracker – monitoring the habits and trends of users and allowing businesses to see where and how people are spending (or not spending) and plan around this.

More broadly, when it comes to making these plans, don’t put all your eggs in one basket – as we’ve seen, anything could change. In terms of execution, consumers need brands they can trust more than ever. A number of 2020’s challenges are likely to remain well into next year and beyond, so smart FS brands will continue to step in and help the consumer navigate through this difficult time.

Focus on ROI

A lot of brands will be working with smaller budgets going into 2021, so keeping a close eye on the bottom line and ensuring shrinking budgets are being put to best use will be more imperative than ever.  Any good marketeer will always be focussed on the performance – now is absolutely the right time to report back on 2020’s performance in detail ahead of next year. Marketing budgets are essential for business success, although can often be the first for the chop. Taking the time now to look back on this year will help bolster the likelihood of a stronger budget as we go into 2021.

For smaller brands, no matter which channels of distribution make up your marketing mix, ensure you are able to track each pound back to the source. This may mean spending more time in your website analytics or planning campaigns differently, to ensure that each member of the team is working towards a common ROI based objective.

More broadly, a lot of brands (particularly in the FS space) will work across different platforms and systems and these may not talk to each other. This year is a good opportunity to revisit this. Create a plan, along with other stakeholders, your marketing team, agency or partners and decide which goals are most  important to you and begin to get those systems in place to allow for accurate tracking.

Say Thank You

One positive outcome of 2020 was the increased sense of community and camaraderie, and this has been reflected in the business world too.

Organisations who have taken care of their staff and their customers have been rewarded and those who have not have had their cards marked. More broadly, research from summer this year shows that Financial Services brands are the least trusted brands by customers – although there are exceptions. FS businesses that take a personal approach can create a brilliant relationship with customers.

This year, take the time to say thank you to staff, clients, partners and customers that have stuck with you over the pandemic. It will go a long way!

Switch up your content 

There is a huge opportunity for brands in so-called ‘low interest’ categories to rise above the noise by pushing boundaries and going against the grain. This is particularly true when people are looking for something to make them feel good.

Brands in sectors like insurance, energy, banking, medical, law and so on are bound unnecessarily by un-written, and frankly antiquated, rules of branding and marketing. Each with a similar look, similar fonts, similar messaging and similar marketing tactics.

However, when a brave marketing manager bends these rules and gets it right, the result is often break-away growth. We’re already seeing a rising trend in comical or satirical ads, in place of emotional or aspirational ones, Tesco’s ‘No naughty list’ for instance.

And we’ve all seen it happen on the big stage in markets like insurance,  with ‘Compare the Meerkat’ all those years ago, or more recently in the energy sector, with Good Energy.

It comes down to idea generation and creativity and the possibilities for creativity right now, particularly in the FS space, are quite literally endless. So, be brave, do something different and push the boundaries in 2021.

Look for growth in growing areas 

We’re all very aware of how quickly the media landscape is changing. New mediums online and offline are worth investigating, so use 2021 as a chance to consider what ‘new’ things you’re going to do. Key media channels have seen real growth this year, January affords some time to stop and reflect on what has worked, and to weave these into your plans for 2021.

Let’s take podcasts as an example, there are currently more than 850,000 active podcasts available to listen to, and 12% of adults in the UK listen to podcasts every week.  You just have to look at the success of Churchill Insurance’s ‘Little Chapters of Chill’ campaign which harnessed the power of podcasts to promote mindfulness for families struggling during lockdown.

Podcasts work in the same way as any form of online media, you either create, grow and own the channel as many brands are, or you buy media to reach users that might buy from you.

Podcasts as a form of consumption are growing faster than any other. On top of this, the targeting is becoming more advanced and the audience is far less distracted than other online channels.  Hence why 2020 saw the launch of dedicated podcasts from Barclays, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, JP Morgan and others.

Plus, the old can still be new – Newsletters have seen something of a resurgence in 2020, offering a welcome return to a direct relationship between publisher and reader. A great example of this is Morning Brew. 

Creative approaches to video-led marketing, podcasts and newsletters are three of many interesting and accelerating means of distribution, to unearth new customers and more effectively engage your current customer base in 2021.

There we have it, five crucial considerations for anybody at the heart of a Financial Services marketing world, for a time that will hopefully be a fantastic and prosperous year for us all.

We’ve had the pleasure of working with a range of Financial Services Businesses, in the South West and afar. If you are planning now, for 2021 or you are looking to supercharge your marketing, we’d love to help.

Get in touch.