Join now

All

• All
• Articles
• Jobs
• Members

• About
  • About Us
  • Contact
• News & Events
  • News
  • Events
  • Newsletters
• Jobs
  • Search Jobs
  • About SW Creative Jobs
  • Post a Job
  • Internships
• Membership
  • Member Directory
  • Join
  • Membership Perks
• Login

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?

Benefits of thought leadership

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.”

Where to start?

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:

Choosing the topic

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.

Writing the piece

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.

Maximising thought leadership content

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:

Monitoring success

Finally, as with any marketing activity, think about which metrics you’ll use to assess the success of your thought leadership.  These may include:

What next?

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.

The impact of lockdown on video consumption

“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.

Forecasts for video trends in 2021

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.

How brands can adapt to meet these new trends

“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.

Creating content that stands out

“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.

Why video creates better connections between brands and their audience

“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.

Favourite Hurricane campaigns

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.

Takeaways

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.

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 named best in Europe for Covid response

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.

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.