Category: marketing | 營銷 | 마케팅 | マーケティング

According to the AMA – Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large. This has contained a wide range of content as a section over the years including

  • Super Bowl advertising
  • Spanx
  • Content marketing
  • Fake product reviews on Amazon
  • Fear of finding out
  • Genesis the Korean luxury car brand
  • Guo chao – Chinese national pride
  • Harmony Korine’s creative work for 7-Eleven
  • Advertising legend Bill Bernbach
  • Japanese consumer insights
  • Chinese New Year adverts from China, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore
  • Doughnutism
  • Consumer Electronics Show (CES)
  • Influencer promotions
  • A media diary
  • Luxe streetwear
  • Consumerology by marketing behaviour expert Phil Graves
  • Payola
  • Dettol’s back to work advertising campaign
  • Eat Your Greens edited by Wiemer Snijders
  • Dove #washtocare advertising campaign
  • The fallacy of generations such as gen-z
  • Cultural marketing with Stüssy
  • How Brands Grow Part 2 by Jenni Romaniuk and Byron Sharp
  • Facebook’s misleading ad metrics
  • The role of salience in advertising
  • SAS – What is truly Scandinavian? advertising campaign
  • Brand winter
  • Treasure hunt as defined by NPD is the process of consumers bargain hunting
  • Lovemarks
  • How Louis Vuitton has re-engineered its business to handle the modern luxury consumer’s needs and tastes
  • Korean TV shopping celebrity Choi Hyun woo
  • qCPM
  • Planning and communications
  • The Jeremy Renner store
  • Cashierless stores
  • BMW NEXTGen
  • Creativity in data event that I spoke at
  • Beauty marketing trends
  • Kraft Mothers Day marketing
  • RESIST – counter disinformation tool
  • Facebook pivots to WeChat’s business model
  • Smartphone launches
  • Laundry category innovation + more

    Laundry without guilt

    A load of laundry without a load of guilt | Trendwatching – white good manufacturer looks to combat micro fibres. Laundry is a major CPG category and this project offers a potential for partnership with manufacturers, beyond the usual ‘X manufacturer recommends X laundry detergent’.

    Anti-solar panel

    Transmission lines and railroad near Salton Sea. District of Los Angeles smog obscures the sun, May 1972

    The Anti-Solar Panel – A Device That Generates Electricity From Darkness – at a very early stage. What’s interesting the potential for energy handover with other alternative sources to provide constant current

    Branding

    Why strategy should embrace execution | WARCThe Nike ‘Nothing Beats a Londoner’ campaign was a really long process – about a year. In the beginning we had a vision to get really local. Then about halfway through the process, the terrorist attacks happened in London. And a picture emerged of a man fleeing the scene with a beer in his hand. Everyone inside London said that’s what it means to be a Londoner: no matter what happens, they hold onto their beer. And off the back of that, I wrote the line ‘nothing beats a Londoner,’ which wasn’t supposed to end up as the final line but it did. It just gave the creative more depth and a place to springboard from. It changed the energy of the work.

    Consumer behaviour

    Baby Boomers click with online shopping – Trend-Monitor – interesting statistics around overall spending versus millennials

    The more voters hear no-deal warnings, the more they support it | The TimesMuch of this is simply because voters have heard it all before. Trust in politicians and the media, also seen as responsible, is at record lows. The legacy of the 2016 referendum campaign runs deep. Promises from both sides, from the infamous £350 million a week to forecasts of a recession, still endure as easy-to-reach examples as to why you should not trust anything a politician says.  For up to about a year after the referendum, a handful of voters would repeat a number long forgotten in Westminster — that the Remain campaign had said leaving would make households £4,300 a year worse off. This was the archetype of nonsense, largely because of its precision. How could anyone know in such detail, to the nearest hundred, with such certainty, what the effect would be? It can only be a lie. But the aversion to anti-no-deal messages is about more than distrust. Where there is support for no deal in the country, it is fused to a deep sense of patriotism. A feeling that we are British, we have endured so much and thrived, of course we will be okay if we leave without a deal

    The last days of the middle-class world citizen | Financial Times – interesting mix of Extinction Rebellion type environmental despair, economic globalisation, populism and dot.com busts (paywall)

    Design

    Hong Kong students invent self-sanitising door handle | Dezeen – interesting, it is said that brass fulfils a similar self-sterilising role as well

    Legal

    WSJ City | Nike CEO was briefed by banned coach on doping effects – this looks damning for Nike

    US blacklists 28 Chinese entities in latest trade war escalation | Financial Times – interesting that all the companies are focused on surveillance or machine learning (paywall)

    Luxury

    Tiffany deletes ad that looks like Hong Kong protest message – Inkstone – China is getting too sensitive la. FFS its huge, powerful, has nuclear weapons. It needs to grow a skin rather than being raw to the touch

    Off-White, Vetements and The Paradigm of Luxury“Disruption is evolution. Defining the word ‘luxury’ might be a start for defining disruption and evolution as the word and the concept of luxury has different meanings following the demographics of peoples and cultures according to age, race, religion, gender, ethnicity, income, and education”

    Extreme micro-living in San Francisco | Financial Times – luxury upwards storage. What about the economics of furniture versus technology? (paywall)

  • qCPM

    qCPM is emblematic of the state of online advertising. qCPM stands for quality cost per mille. It is used interchangeably with vCPM – valuable cost per mille. The implication being that normal advertising impressions are tainted or of little value.

    Librarian at the Card Files at Senior High School in New Ulm Minnesota ..., 10/1974

    Tainted by advertising fraud, click bots, bad neighbourhoods and faulty data. It is estimated that What other industry would sell its seconds products as the norm?

    So why do you need qCPM? Here is are some examples of the kinds of fraud it would look to catch out

    • Connected TV fraud. Banner ads on a mobile app are spoofed to make it look as if they are video ad placements on connected TV platforms. These were then sold on over ad exchanges
    • Fake pages – Bid requests that included the URLs of pages that didn’t exist
    • Bot networks – impersonate people and generate ad requests on platforms.
    • Plagarised fake versions of news sites

    These were just some of the techniques used by the largest ad frauds.

    There is a constant game of hide-and-seek going on as marketers try to keep up with the criminal activity in online advertising. The criminals always remain at least one step ahead at all times.

    Things are going to get worse. Privacy settings and ad blocking is creating biases in audience data and access that will only get worse with time. More related posts here.

    Scott Galloway claims that Apple’s anti-privacy measures against online advertising are part of a luxury industry in privacy.

    More information

    The Rise Of The qCPM: Rewarding Quality In Programmatic Buying | AdExchanger

  • The future of fashion + more things

    Are sneakers the future of fashion? – i-D – not a bad article. Native advertising for Christian Louboutin’s sneaker collection – though they remind me a lot of various vintage of ASH and Alexander McQueen sneakers. More on the why of streetwear and sportswear merging with luxury. The reason why the future of fashion is more casual is because the big markets are in East and Southeast Asia. They are younger, often the scions of first generation money.

    French Billionaire Arnault Calls Greta Thunberg ‘Demoralising’ | News & Analysis | BoF – interesting commentary with a philosophical angle

    Volvo is asking people to share seat-belt selfies so it can improve safety in future cars | AdAge – Grand Prix for Creative Strategy – interesting approach to norming

    Black & Abroad, Volvo grab Grand Prix glory at Cannes | AdAgeForsman & Bodenfors achieved something similar, but with a completely different message to a entirely different audience. The agency was tasked with promoting equal road safety for men and women, and set about sifting through decades of crash data that Volvo had been collecting since the 1970s. It found that women are more likely than men to suffer injuries from a crash, in part, because most auto companies use male crash-test dummies to test their cars—which over the years has hindered how car manufacturers design safety features for their vehicles.

    Dentsu creative: Ill-conceived purpose campaigns are ruining the industry | Advertising | Campaign Asia – good point by Toshihiko Tanabe. 16 out of 21 Grand Prix awards at Cannes were social purpose / cause campaigns

    UK ministers accused of sealing Thomas Cook’s fate | Business | The Guardian“Two governments were prepared to back a British brand, the UK government wasn’t,” said the source. “Without that, there wasn’t enough confidence around the table to make it work.” 

    In a separate move, the German government were providing Thomas Cook subsidiary airline Condor with a bridging loan, allowing the company to keep flying.

    U.N. postal union clinches deal to keep U.S. in club – Reuters – interesting move given the subsidies Chinese companies are given on postage for small things sold in Amazon Marketplace, eBay etc

  • Things that made my day this week

    Mastertape volume six by The Reflex was on heavy rotation for me over the past few weeks. Mastertape volume six is up to The Reflex’s usual high quality.

    Valerie Plume’s ‘Undercover’ ad makes use of her CIA heritage in a political ad that breaks new ground. It feels like a high quality television trailer. Plume’s identity as a CIA officer was blown by the Bush regime in the run up to the Iraq war. Her husband who was a former diplomat expressed doubts over Saddam Hussein’s nuclear programme. State department official Richard Armitage, leaked her details to the New York Times. So Plume developed a career as an author and aspiring politician. There had been some controversy over anti-Semitic comments that have been attributed to her.

    https://youtu.be/ICW-dGD1M18

    Retail and food services at an architectural level often lack theatre and experience. Once you’ve looked past faux Edison bulbs and raw brick walls, there isn’t much difference between a WeWork office, a clothing boutique and a burger joint. So its nice to see innovation like this – a giant circular juice machine that turns discarded peels of squeezed oranges into 3D printed juice cups. The mix of form, function and theatre and kinetic sculpture is a winning one.

    The baked goods market in china by Daxue consulting – baked goods sales in China are interesting because of their direct link with middle class consumer style consumption. Trying to get good bread in China isn’t easy, even in top tier cities, particularly if you are looking for . More on FMCG related content here

    Keanu Reeves speaks Japanese to Cyberpunk 2077 fans at Tokyo Game Show【Video】 | SoraNews24 -Japan News- – can Keanu Reeves become even more legendary? Yes, because he’s Keanu Reeves. On a more serious note, it will be very hard for Cyberpunk 2077 to live up to the hype around the game. Even if it fails Cyberpunk 2077 has breathed new life into cyberpunk culture and sparked new interest into its canon of literature and film.

  • Influencer marketing – what does the future hold

    What does the future hold for influencer marketing was an event organised by PR Week that I got to attend last week.  Below are some of the thoughts and key points that came out of the event.

    The Competition and Markets Authority

    They are responsible for enforcing The Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Act (2008) (paywall) which governs transparency and claims across all marketing including social media influence campaigns.

    In terms of jurisdiction they have a reciprocal relationship with the FTC to enforce the law on campaigns that are being run out of the US that would affect the UK and vice versa. Geography can no longer be considered a defence.

    In terms of compliance, there is an emphasis on brands needing to monitor influencer campaigns and enforce disclosure. The legal responsibility falls equally across brands, agencies and influencers. All three are obliged to go through content and retroactively apply the act if the content is likely to be resurfaced in the future. So you are less like to have to alter tweets and Facebook posts than say YouTube videos and blog posts.

    In general they felt that brands (and their agencies) were too naive and trusting with regards influencers.

    False and misleading claims at the corporate brand level (a hypothetical example would be gold mine claiming its a green sustainable company) aren’t something that they would deal with, but they acknowledged that this kind of incident would likely breach the law.

    At the moment the Competition and Markets Authority is considering the role of platforms as agents of influence, but isn’t looking at items like Amazon’s recent algorithmic change.

    Unsurprisingly the Competitions and Markets Authority have no desire to get involved in regulating political campaigns on social. The whole area is radioactive. Whilst there would be societal benefit, it would call into question the independence of the civil service and a host legal / constitutional issues.

    Judging by the reaction of the audience, more of them were up to speed and complying with GDPR than The Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Act – not for profits seemed shocked to find out that they weren’t exempt

    Content crowdsourcing platform Tribe

    Tribe talked about how Logitech used Instagramers to create photos for their paid media campaign to drive direct sales.

    Ad creative was lasting a week and a half on Facebook (Facebook & Instagram) before ‘ad fatigue’ set in. From my own personal experience, traditional creative lasted appreciably longer. Tribe didn’t indicate whether they had an opinion on the cause of this premature ad fatigue. Factors that might be responsible include context collapse (lower usage, with less time per session on the platform by consumers) that has been afflicted the Facebook platform for a few years

    Logitech internal division of labour on social influencer marketing campaigns

    One of the perennial questions that is asked is where does PR stop and (digital) marketing teams start with regards social media influencers. Logitech’s approach was a common sense approach to this question. High follower number influencers were dealt with by the PR team just like members of the press or celebrities. Micro and nano influencers were co-opted by marketers as part of the process to drive sales. It makes sense, but it was the first time I had heard it broken down explicitly by a brand in public.

    MSL research on the future of influencer marketing

    They had wanted to explore both consumer and influencer attitudes to extrapolate insights; given the codependent nature of influencers on agencies and brands.

    The research involved surveying 1,000 consumers and 100 influencers. So take the insights with a pinch of salt. The slides weren’t shared but I’ve reconstructed the data from photos I took at the event.

    • 1,000 consumers were asked about their thoughts on the influencer landscape
    • 100 influencers were asked on their views on brand partnerships

    Slide4

    Slide5

    Slide6

    Slide7

    Influencers don’t like to be pigeonholed as influencers, according to consumers the title has become a dirty word

    This conclusion is counter intuitive. The common wisdom is that:

    • Gen-y and gen-z are happy to ‘sell out’
    • Professional v-logger (YouTube, Twitch, TikTok etc) are desired professions in the same way that DJ, rock musician or celebrity were previously

    Yet the influencers surveyed think that they are changing the world for the better. For instance some of them are dealing with fans who share their suicidal thoughts. But the label of ‘influencer’ was considered to have lost its currency.

    Influencers that other influencers respect. People who have demonstrated resilience; they have gone through trials and tribulations and triumphed. Zoella and Lilly Singh were among the most popular cited.

    Influencers feel that they are being treated like a channel and the process has got too transactional. Yet one of their key motivations to stay in their career as influencers is to pay the bills.

    Panel discussion

    If you’d have ran this event ten years ago. The panel discussion would still have been very similar. Measurement was considered very immature, but then the panel bifurcated. Measurement is much easier when you are using advertising and tracking through to a purchase. The discussion got muddled as paid and non-paid measurement strategies were discussed side-by-side without differentiation or explanation.

    Social agency Goat made an interesting disclosure. They’ve worked with about 100,000 influencers and found that the vast majority did not work in delivering sales. But there are no data or heuristics about which influencer is likely to work, or the reasons why?

    What was missing in influencer marketing discussion?

    The main item that I felt the discussion missed was the role of social platform algorithms in creating social bubbles and reducing campaign reach. OgilvyOne’s paper on considering life after the demise of organic reach doesn’t seem to have factored into PR agencies (publicly expressed) thinking some five years after it has been published.

    Secondly, I was surprised at the lack of progress. Whilst the platforms have changed over the past ten years. The issues don’t seem to have altered at all for communications agencies. Whilst some agencies like Edelman (and 90TEN where I am currently working) realise that a blended PESO* media mix is required – there was a large faction of earned media only practitioners in attendance. Ten years later, advertising and creative agencies have learned many of the techniques that PR agencies considered to be their domain in order to improve ‘talkability’.

    This is out of step with clients requirements for two reasons:

    • Clients want to effectively measure their success and the tools available to paid media are more complete
    • As OgilvyOne proved in their research a number of years ago, we’re heading to a demise in organic reach

    Brand marketing is in a resurgence after marketers had fetishised technology-based performance marketing for at least the last decade and a half. Influencer marketing may now be too important to be left to the the PR team…

    *PESO (paid, earned, shared, owned) – different media types.