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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.

What do a Bristol-based integrated marketing agency and a team of world-leading wet blasting experts have in common?

No, this isn’t the start of the world’s worst joke. It was, however, a topic of discussion at Proctors HQ recently, as we talked about a series of surprising discoveries during Vapormatt and Proctors’ first year of working together.

But what similarities could there possibly be between a business who engineers and manufactures technology for some of the world’s most high-tech sectors; motor racing, aerospace, additive manufacturing/3D printing, medical implants and surgical tools; and a business whose bread and butter is creating marketing campaigns with a gut-punching impact?

40 years of expertise

Vapormatt and Proctors’ working relationship started in 2020, otherwise known as The Year We All Want to Forget (But Can’t). Rather than this challenging 12 months compounding the pressure placed on our first projects together, it instead highlighted a number of the incredible qualities shared by both businesses.

From our ethos, to our team spirit, to our niche specialisms – there’s a lot to be said for what we share. And one of the most apparent surface-level similarities between our businesses is our age.

Both Vapormatt and Proctors have more than four decades of expertise, cementing both companies among the longest established within their respective fields.

Stewart and Terry Ashworth founded Vapormatt in 1978, growing quickly after a move from Guernsey to Taunton. Before long, Vapormatt had outgrown their new facility and discovered their niche: they wanted to build their own machinery, to their own high standards, so it matched the teams’ exceptional skill and proficiency.

This shift marked the true birth of Vapormatt’s wet-blasting business as it looks today. Vapormatt is a true pioneer of wet-blasting technology, offering world-leading tech complemented by unrivalled capability.

Similarly, Proctors has spent the last four decades refining its knowledge, practice and gaining unrivalled experience in the marketing sector. From the heart of Bristol, our 70-plus team is made up of award-winning creative, strategy and technology professionals – all of whom are experts in their own specialisms.

Measured and controlled success

For those not in the business of marketing and advertising, it can seem as though concepts are produced at random. A unicorn promoting an energy company? Meerkats pushing insurance products? There is, in fact, method among the madness. Every marketing decision has been researched and calculated in order to create the desired impact on its audience.

At P+S, we like to think we take things even further. We take a learn > build > measure approach to marketing strategy – meaning our work doesn’t stop when the campaign has launched. Instead, we continue to refine our marketing efforts on an ongoing basis.

And Vapormatt are much the same with their approach to engineering the right technology for each of their customers. Their design philosophy is ‘if you can measure it, you can control it’. And as a result of this focus, Vapormatt are leading the way when it comes to repeatable and reliable processing.

If you don’t already know, at its most basic level, wet blasting is a precision-driven process which uses water and slurry to refine an object’s surface with microscopic accuracy. It leaves nothing to chance. And the reason for Vapormatt’s esteemed reputation is largely due to their measured approach and exceptional attention to detail, powered by their understanding of every clients’ business.

Vapormatt’s patented technology and Proctors’ meticulous marketing strategy have a similar foundation: eliminating error and achieving the best results for our customers.

Our relationships set us apart

Any business worth its salt knows it’s not just a single product or function which is responsible for success. And both Vapormatt and Proctors value their customer relationships above everything else.

Vapormatt may be a world-leading technology business, but it’s their aftermarket service which offers the most value to their customers.

Because Vapormatt’s technology is highly specialised, much of their machinery is custom built – meaning it can take more than just ‘plug and play’ approach to use it. But Vapormatt’s promise is that they will work with every single client, offering hands-on guidance and remote assistance, individual expertise and teams of professionals to support every project. In fact, once the team have committed to a project, they don’t just find their clients the right tech and leave them to it: they stand by their side at every step of their production journey until they’re satisfied.

It’s a similar relationship to the one Proctors has with its clients. We don’t just push out marketing campaigns for our clients and leave. In fact, we view every job as an opportunity: to build deeper relationships between our clients and their customers, to open up new channels of brand-customer communication, or to simply assess what we can change to make our communications even more powerful.

And testament to the strength of our relationships? We’ve been working with many of our clients for decades, as we continue to bring them new ideas, fresh proposals, and identify innovative, relevant opportunities for their businesses.

For both Proctors and Vapormatt, our success lies in not just serving our clients: but in helping them realise new potential beyond what they ever thought they could be capable of.

‍Never afraid to be bold

‍When it comes to surface treatment and finishing, dry blasting is still the world’s dominant technology. Even companies who do offer more advanced, precision-driven wet-blasting processes will still offer dry blasting as a service in order to try and secure a larger market share – to capture those customers who may be resistant to trying something new.

However, Vapormatt focus solely on wet blasting – for today and for the future. And rather than seeing this as a limitation, the team knows it pays dividends. As a result of focusing purely on wet-blasting technology, Vapormatt are world leaders in their field. They’re the go-to name for wet-blasting machinery across the globe. And as a result, the team have complete confidence in both their ability and their technologies, so they can guarantee the quality of their machines’ output for every single project.

And at Proctors, we’ve never been afraid to be bold either. Whether through larger-than-life messaging or extraordinary creative, our mission is to make our clients stand out from the crowd, whatever it takes.

From implementing brave B2B messaging, to innovating with Augmented Reality, digitalised direct mail and interactive online content. Whether the brief is to create a simple email or to discover the most effective way to market a new product, we dedicate ourselves to finding more exciting ways of engaging our clients’ customers and showing off their products and services.

Building the world of tomorrow, today

As it happens, this particular integrated marketing agency and Vapormatt’s world-leading high-tech wet blasting business have more in common than you might think.

No matter how niche, technical or specialised your business is, you deserve to get more from your marketing. So if you have an ambitious marketing plan, big dreams for your next product launch, or just need a bit of a boost when it comes to a creative social strategy, talk to Proctors. We’ll be more than happy to put our heads together with yours and see where the year takes us.

Noisy Little Monkey has won a HubSpot Impact Award for the design and build of a new website for global communications agency, Indicia Worldwide.

Awarding exceptional client work

The international HubSpot Impact Awards recognise HubSpot partners for client work which goes above and beyond – hundreds of HubSpot agencies apply for one of these awards every year and Noisy Little Monkey are over the moon to be awarded for their web design project and CMS migration with Indicia Worldwide.

The judges feedback said, “The results are fantastic. It’s clear from Indicia Worldwide’s video testimonial that you were a true HubSpot partner to their business. Indicia had already purchased HubSpot, but worried they wouldn’t get the right value out of it. They brought in experts to fill their gaps, and were shown the power of HubSpot’s platform. This is a perfect example of how HubSpot partners bring value to their clients.”

Getting more value from HubSpot

Helping clients get the most from HubSpot is Noisy Little Monkey’s mission. So when Indicia Worldwide approached the team for help migrating their CMS from WordPress to HubSpot, Noisy Little Monkey jumped at the chance to reimagine the site and focus it on the inbound buyer journey.

This approach generated brilliant results for the client; in a six month YoY comparison, Indicia Worldwide saw a 200% increase in organic traffic and a 1250% increase in new leads through their site.

You can read the full case study and view the testimonial here.

If you’re a HubSpot customer, or considering HubSpot, and would like the support of an award-winning agency to help you unlock more from the platform, get in touch with the team today.

 

 

Several times a year, Google makes significant and broad changes to their search algorithms and systems. These ‘core updates’ are designed to ensure Google is delivering on their mission to present relevant and useful content to searches. Whilst the latest instalment has gone under the radar, the updates are a pretty big deal, with many websites having lost rankings, engagement and revenue as a result. So, what are the latest changes and how will they affect how we produce content?

At YS, we’ve pulled together a checklist of questions to ask yourself in the new year, focused on Google’s key factors needed to create killer content in 2021.

The quality check

The expertise check

The presentation check

The comparison check

For those of us generating content everyday, it can be easy to forget that it’s purpose is to serve the genuine interests of visitors to the site, rather than attempting to guess what might rank well in search engines. Carefully formed content provides value to your audience by solving their problems and in doing so, it positions you as the Go-To for your particular area of expertise.

By asking yourself the questions above and by asking others who you trust, to give an honest assessment of each piece that you produce, the quality of your content will be improved remarkably. If you’ve noticed some of your pages drop in search ranking, consider looking closely at these questions to understand why and how you can improve.

At YS, our goal is to maximise the value of your content to engage and re-engage your audience,  bring new customers to your business and help get your message out there.

Whether you’re looking to build and maintain a blog for your brand, drive traffic through ranking across core terms or get the message out through press, social and distributed marketing YOURS . SINCERELY can help.

 

If we learned anything from 2020, it’s that the world is changing faster than expected and that new trends are shaping our realities.

For businesses, this means increased pressure to adapt and remain relevant to their customers.

Here are three top social media trends we’re expecting to flourish in 2021.

Memetic media will continue to boom

Memetic Media, or memes, act on 4 levels:

  1. See (publish, share, or repost engaging posts that will be seen by a large number of users).
  2. Think (users associate the brand with a positive feeling that memes have instilled in them, such as fun, nostalgia, feel good, etc.).
  3. Do (purchase).
  4. Care (users continue to engage with the brand by repurchasing it, or/and becoming brand ambassadors).

In 2020 users engaged with memes as a form of escapism. From August 2019 to July 2020, the mention of memes increased by 26% (Talkwater).

Although they are most popular among younger audiences, brands like Pryvate, a secure communications app, demonstrate memes can be very successful among all age groups when used in the right manner.

Memes work better on social media than branded content, because people want to be entertained on social media.

That’s why a dog meme will always be more engaging than a corporate post, as long as the meme is, in some way, relevant for the brand. Plus, memes are usually memorable, and they tend to create brand associations.

Behind the Scenes: bring back the human touch

In the context of Covid-19’s work from home and partial or full lockdowns, many of us have missed connecting with real people in their natural environments.

The chance to get to know someone beyond their corporate title is something that social media users showed increased interest in during 2020.

Behind the scenes content humanises brands, giving them a face, a smile, and a personal story.

Symantec, a security products enterprise, or Crowdstrike, an internet company, capitalise on this approach to generate more engagements for their posts. This translates into increased brand awareness and more opportunities for finding leads, converting them into sales from social media.

User-generated content takes the floor in 2021

Users are creating and uploading pics and videos on TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat daily. In fact, Snapchat has included e-commerce brand integration since June, allowing brands such as Nike, Jordan, Gucci, and most recently Levi’s, to showcase their products.

Like this, snappers can use these cool brands to style up their avatars, and then post photos or videos of them wearing branded items.

User-generated content can be highly effective for brands. Look at Ocean Spray, where a user recorded himself enjoying the drink while skating and listening to the Fleetwood Mac song, ‘Dreams’.

The video went viral, the song (popular in the seventies) came back into the charts and the person taking the video created a trend, as many other users began replicating the clip.

Want to find out more top trends for 2021? Our new Digital Trends report features another seven social media trends for this year. Download our full report today.

In this socially driven age of the mega-celebrity, the rise of influencer marketing shows no sign of slowing any time soon. But what does it take to make it work in the B2B world? In our experience, one rugby legend, one uber-tough brand and one committed team should just about do it…

The premise of influencer marketing is pretty simple. Choose someone with clout in your target market – someone trusted, admired or looked-up to – and associate them with your brand, product or service. Awareness goes through the roof, positive perception is sent soaring, and you achieve cut through that’s otherwise hard to find.

Although not a new strategy, influencer marketing is growing and has been proven to be effective: a survey by Mediakixs revealed that 80% of practitioners have found influencer marketing to be an effective tool. And it’s a real money-spinner – according to Influencer Marketing Hub’s 2020 Benchmark report, Influencer marketing is estimated to be worth $9.7 billion, with the market growing by 50% each year since 2016.

The same report reported that brands are recognising this growth, with 66% of respondents saying they will increase their Influencer marketing budgets next year. Although most commonly used for B2C markets, we’ve all clicked on a social post or read an article simply because we recognise the face in the thumbnail, so why shouldn’t it work in a B2B environment too?

TOUGHBOOK meets tough guy

We had the opportunity to put this theory to the test last year. Our clients at Panasonic TOUGHBOOK (the world leader in rugged computing) wanted some means of elevating their brand beyond its already-lofty position, and we believed an influencer strategy could be the way to go.

As we were approaching a B2B market, it was clear from the start that this wasn’t a campaign to be built around the audience reach an influencer has. What was more important was finding somebody who was a perfect fit for the TOUGHBOOK brand, and someone we could build a credible, engaging story around.

We needed someone who matched the ruggedness and strength of the TOUGHBOOK devices, someone who could match the brand status of TOUGHBOOK as world leader in rugged IT, but also someone that could offer more than just audience reach. Luckily, we were able to secure the services of global rugby icon, former Wales and British and Lions captain and absolute giant of a man, Sam Warburton.

A different approach to new territory

We used the formidable (but endlessly friendly) presence of Sam to create a multi-channel campaign, incorporating the more traditional B2B marketing channels, such as LinkedIn and display ads, but also exploring newer territory, such as YouTube ads. Using a combination of campaign keywords and razor-sharp targeting, we ensured that our ads would capture the attention of a new audience for TOUGHBOOK, as well as engaging with the more typical audiences in a different way.

Despite a month or two of delay due to the pandemic and national lockdown, we figured out a way to finally come together for some socially-distanced filming days. This allowed us to capture some amazing footage of Sam doing his thing on the rugby pitch, but also displaying his well-honed studio skills, discussing leadership and parallels between sport and business leadership with Panasonic TOUGHBOOK MD, Kevin Jones.

In five short weeks, following the film shoots, we were ready to go live with a whole range of assets; a mini-series on Leadership, seven videos for YouTube pre-roll ads, a campaign specific landing page, blog content, downloadable digital guide, a selection of display and LinkedIn ads, and social material for Sam to share on his Instagram and Twitter feeds.

A winning result

As with most things Sam Warburton touches, the end results have been pretty impressive. We set ourselves a simple goal of raising awareness of the TOUGHBOOK brand, which we achieved very quickly. The landing page is the fourth-best performing landing page Panasonic have ever created, with over 18,000 visits in the seven weeks that the campaign has been live. Over the first three weeks, we were even outperforming the main TOUGHBOOK site in terms of website sessions.

This was an experimental campaign, with the simple goal of gaining increased brand exposure in a niche market, made possible by the courage of a client who was willing to push boundaries and try something different. And from such a positive start, we’re looking forward to more of the same in 2021, building on the high levels of awareness we’ve established and turning that into a raft of bottom-line boosting sales leads.

Let’s just hope Sam keeps his boots clean for us…

If you’d like to find out more about how we can help your business reach its potential, get in touch with us today at [email protected].