Category Archives: Advertising

How you say it matters more than what you say

Posted on April 20, 2012 | Leave a comment

Advertising world is interesting (and funny). Every soap brand advertises to be the best for your skin, every car maker claims to give the best fuel efficiency & driving experience and every mobile phone company states that they make the best phones in the world. The message is the same, so what really matters is how you deliver it.

In order to find the best way to deliver the message, you got to know your consumer. What your consumer likes? What are their interests? How they spend time? What are the issues they care about? What kind of messaging worked for them in the past and what didn’t? In other words you need to understand the ethnography of your consumers.

The basic idea behind ethnographic research is to make sure your message is formulated in the right way so that it has the maximum appeal on the target consumer. But this has an added advantage too. It is not always possible to define a target group of consumers by demographic profile. Many times the target consumer group spans across standard demos. So when you reach out to the consumer based on their psychographic profiles, you make sure it appeals to the taste and interests of your consumers.

One of the best ways to do ethnographic research is on the internet. Human beings are social in nature. They talk. They share information and knowledge. They emote their values and concerns. Internet has provided them the best place to do so effortlessly. Social networks have now become the natural place for people to discuss everything from interest and activities to likes and dislikes.

At MavenMagnet we have developed capabilities to listen and understand this information at a macro level without violating privacy of individuals or interfering in their conversations. Our proprietary technology is smart and sophisticated to identify your target consumer group and sketch their psychographic profile.

Advertising involves a lot of creativity. I believe creative people are geniuses. They have the power to add life and excitement to anything from a bar of soap to a bottle of water. Our goal is to empower them with just a bit more critical information about the consumer so that they can channel that message to have a much greater and profound impact.

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Posted in Advertising, Marketing

Super Bowl ads: a social phenomenon

Posted on February 16, 2012 | 2 Comments

Last time New York Giants met New England Patriots in the Super Bowl was four years back. Though the last two minutes heroics of Eli Manning still led the Giants to win the game, much has changed in the world since then. In the social world, the landscape in 2008 was comparatively smaller. For example,there were about 100 million Facebook users and 30 million tweets a month. Fast forward four years, in 2012 there are more than 800 million users on Facebook, more than 300 million tweets a day and 4 billion videos being streamed on YouTube every day. If nothing else, this completely changed the biggest television advertising day of the year.

For the first time, the brands did more public campaigns to gear up to the Super Bowl than any time before. Whether it was in form of contests to make audience vote for the best of the commercials or post teasers online to what to expect this year at Super Bowl. For example Chevy ran a Super Bowl ad contest. The 40 finalist ad spots were viewed on YouTube more than 35 million times and people voted and discussed them for a month. Doritos on the other hand asked people to make ads and submit in their contest. The prize being the winning entry getting airtime during the bowl. Volkswagen building up on the last year’s Darth Vader success dropped a teaser of their this year’s ad titled the Bark Side. It got about 10 million views before the game day.

The entire phenomenon of Super Bowl advertising is taken to another level this year and in many ways, the $3.5 million that advertisers shelled out for 30 seconds had much more impact this year than ever before. Social media enabled the 30 second spot to be a month-long advertising campaign.

But then there was Chrysler’s Halftime in America. No one saw it before, no one heard about it. So when the voice of Clint Eastwood came at the halftime mark, people paid attention to the ad like the good old times. The social media impact here: the official copy of the ad posted by Chrysler was watched more than 10 million times on YouTube within a week of its airing during the Super Bowl!

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Posted in Advertising, Technology

The science in art

Posted on February 6, 2012 | Leave a comment

When I think of art as a topic of conversation, I think of something that can be valued in terms of aesthetic measures like beauty and appeal. It is said beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder. If you believe in that then you would also believe that there is very less logic and reasoning behind it. Something that is a great piece of art for me can be very mediocre for you and something that is a masterpiece accordingly to you may really not appeal that much to me. There is nothing that is universally appealing and beautiful.

Art has a lot more value when it is targeted. You cannot be a successful artist if you are not reaching your core audience. That’s where science comes in picture. There is enough data available in this world to develop rich correlations between distinct things and make you reach your target audience. You can end up being much more effective if the only people who notice you are the people who really matter.

This principle is very apparent in the advertising industry. The right advertisement shown to the right audience at the right time is what really adds value. How do you determine that right audience and the right time? Well embracing computation science to figure that out is a great complement to your gut. One great thing about science is it evolves really fast. Something which was determined using a few hundred data points a decade back can now be much more definitive by leveraging tens of thousands of data points. You got to embrace the explosive power of computation combined with the growth in available information. Add to that techniques like machine learning and artificial intelligence and improve your findings with time.

The biggest challenge for an art driven organization in embracing science is the ability to adapt as fast as science evolves. The longer you manage to last in the state of denial in embracing this evolution, the greater is your ability to make your art less compelling and attractive to the world out there. Art and science are great complements to each other. What art brings to science is the same thing that science brings to art. It’s the effectiveness and the value which otherwise goes untapped.

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Posted in Advertising, Marketing, Technology

The art in science

Posted on January 3, 2012 | 1 Comment

Science is a very general term. So is art. In some sense art and science are opposites of each other and in other cases you can think of them being synonymous to each other. Without going much in the theory of the words, by science I mean something that is based on systematic study. Something that has numbers to back it. It has reasoning and logic behind it. On the other hand, by art I mean something that is subject to aesthetic criteria. Something that is beautiful, appealing and presentable.

I am a big believer in science. Numbers are awesome (though subject to interpretation) overall they prove something. When you do data analysis based on large sets of information, applying scientific algorithms can do wonders. It can generate patterns and extract information that is not even visible by naked eyes. That is specifically evident when you work with social media information. The data is overwhelming and algorithmic processes do an awesome job identifying the hidden knowledge.

But when you try to sell this science, you need something that is beautiful, appealing and presentable to people who are going to use it. That’s the role of art in a science heavy world. No matter how sophisticated software programs you write to extract information or how well you can process data to gain rich knowledge, till you can communicate that in an easy to consume manner, it is of no use. Add a pinch of art to your scientific prowess. Think who your customer is. What do they need? What language they understand? Then put your scientific findings in a way that is appealing to them. That will make them empowered by knowledge and take action on it. That will make your work really matter and make the science in the background worth more than anything else.

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Posted in Advertising, Technology

A campaign done right

Posted on December 8, 2011 | Leave a comment

New York City; Shuttle S; Grand Central to Times Square. If you are looking for a campaign done right, that’s a great example right there.

Whether it is the promotion of Lady Gaga’s new album, Arthur Christmas the movie, or the HTC tablet, the campaign around shuttle S stands out and grabs your attention. The campaign is designed to encompass the tunnel between the Grand Central entrance and the train along with wrapping the entire train inside out with the theme of the campaign.

In today’s world, this campaign stands out from the rest due to a couple of reasons. First is the campaign placement. Take the fast pace of NYC and the power of smartphone in every hand. The campaign mitigates both these distractions. If you are going from Grand Central to Times Square or vice versa, the five minutes that you spend in this transit, any where you look the themed advertisements are there. So no matter in what kind of rush you are, you cannot escape the campaign all around you. Another genius of the campaign is that it is in the subway and being in the subway, the smartphone signal is not there. Though you can still play games and dig in the archive of your emails, the probability of you looking away from your phone is much higher than anywhere else. Plus add to it the duration of the ride being too short for you to pay real attention to anything else, be it your smartphone or the kindle.

Second stand out feature of this campaign is the theme. It’s not just banners all around you. These campaigns are designed with a very thorough theme and flow to grab attention and make you look around at other nuggets of the campaign if you happen to look at a part of it.

This combination of great design and thoughtful placement gives the campaign relatively undivided attention of the consumer for at least a few minutes every day for 21 days. Now that’s a campaign done right!

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Posted in Advertising

From an advertising campaign to a social phenomenon

Posted on November 3, 2011 | 2 Comments

In layman terms, the goal of any advertising campaign is to create awareness. But every once in a while it happens that the advertising campaign evolves to be something much bigger than the original purpose of its inception. A few that come in mind are Santa Claus, Men in Blue and Wavin’ Flag.

Coca-Cola connection with the Santa Claus goes back about 80 odd years. It was in 1931 when Coca-Cola first released the campaigns with the man in red suit drinking the cola.  Over the years, Santa become more famous and got closer to Christmas.

It’s a known fact that the obsession Indians have with cricket is unmatched in the world. Cricket is religion in India and the top cricketer is nothing short of God. If you want to send a message to more than a billion people, the best language used is that of cricket. Pepsi adopted this language and the connection they drew was to the uniform of the cricket team. Pepsi became the official cola sponsor of the team and launched a campaign called “Men in Blue”. Over the years, Men is Blue became the alternate name for the Indian cricket team.

In more recent years, similar happened with the K’naan’s hit Wavin’ Flag. Coca-Cola picked the song to be the promotional anthem for 2010 FIFA World Cup. The song became incredibly famous and eventually became promotional anthem of every team sport out there.

Whether it’s a jolly old fellow becoming the mascot to bring joy and happiness to kids around the world or a fancy name becoming permanently attached to a sports team or a promotional anthem becoming a celebration song for every team sport, if you look back it all became a grand thing partly because an advertising campaign took charge.

Interestingly, none of these were created by the advertising campaign. Santa Claus was a character created much before Coca-Cola created its own version. But eventually Coca-Cola version took over. Indian cricket team wore a blue uniform for the shorter format of the game ever since colored uniform came to the game. But they started to be popularly known as Men in Blue after Pepsi ran the infamous campaign.  Wavin’ flag song was a Canadian hit much before Coca-Cola picked it for the FIFA world cup. But it became a global phenomenon after the Coca-Cola’s advertising campaign.

All these appear so awesome in retrospect but were definitely not planned to become social phenomenon. Advertising brains planned an outstanding campaign. Consumers adopted it and gave it a much bigger purpose than just an advertisement for the brand and the advertisers went along. The beauty is, after a while the audience emotional attachment with the brand is reversed. A seven-year old sees Santa drinking coke and draws a connection with coke. An Indian  cricket fan sees their favorite cricket team wearing Pepsi blue (even though Pepsi changed its color to match the cricket team’s) and gets attracted towards the cola. Talk about ROI, it’s just immeasurable. It’s working for years and it will be reaped by generations to come.

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Posted in Advertising

Social Media: Advertising

Posted on July 30, 2011 | 3 Comments

With about 25% of all time spent on Internet being spent on social media properties like Facebook, Twitter and other networks, social media becomes an obvious choice for advertisers. I would argue about the effectiveness of advertising on social media platforms as compared to sponsored search results or ads on web portals, but with millions of eyeballs spending so much time there, it’s a compelling place for advertisers.

Here I would like to talk about how we can use social media to develop better advertisements. One of the best utilities of social media can be in designing and developing advertisements for any media varying from traditional media like television and print to new media like mobile and web. People spend hours on social media talking about everything from what they like and what they don’t, what characters and themes they are attracted towards, what activities they spend most time on and what are their top interests. People brag about the brands they like, critic on experiences they have with products, and talk about the advertisements that caught their attention while watching prime-time television or walking down the street. This makes social media a great repository of information to act as a canvas to design advertisements, find the right placements for them and learn how people are responding to them.

The idea is to gather social insights from social media and use these insights to develop advertisements. Advertisers can learn from social media what are the best themes to gain attention of their target audience. They can understand what are the best placement opportunities for their advertisements by learning which television shows their target audience are engaging with and which magazines they are reading. Social media is a great repository of information that adds a whole lot of richness to the market research that needs to be done in order to develop targeted advertisements. The creativity of advertisements is as important, if not more, as ever due to the decreasing attention span of the consumers, but with the help of market research powered by social media, advertisers can direct the creativity to focus on the right themes, place these awesome advertisements at the right places and learn from them to develop better ones next time around.

Note: Reach out to us at MavenMagnet to learn about some of the innovative work we are doing in this space!

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Posted in Advertising, Marketing, Technology

Testimonials in the social world

Posted on September 16, 2010 | 1 Comment

Testimonials are basically “free” advertisements your customers do for you. Testimonials play a major role in helping customers make buying decisions. If your advertisements attract the customers to your door steps (or website), testimonials make them buy your product (or service). Like everything out there, the interactivity of the web and dominance of the social media impacts testimonials as well.

Social media has enabled people to talk about you and your product. It doesn’t really matter if they are coming to you and raving or complaining about something. They are already out there interacting with the people who really care the most about what they have to say. So the ideal thing for you to do is not trying to convince them to come and speak to you, but listening to them when and where they have something to tell you. Take a feed from the social platforms like Twitter and Facebook and put it on your website. That’s your testimonials in this social world.

There are a lot of advantages of using the interaction on social media as testimonials. In fact you should encourage your customers to put a word for you in the social world instead of your website. A word out there is more powerful than on your domain. It is credible, it is reaching out to the right audience and it makes your customers feel good and in control of their views. At the same time it is easier and more convenient for customers because they are already spending time on these platforms.

It is important for you as a company to make the social feed on your website credible. The best way to do this is to keep the feed unfiltered. By letting negative feedback appear alongside the positive ones will make your feed credible and hold its importance. It is not possible for everyone out there to love your product. There will be people out there who will not like your offering or even hate it. Deal with it. Reach out to those customers and try to answer their questions. That’s your opportunity to convert them in your favor and rave about your customer service.

Social interactions about your product is a double-edged sword. You got to be careful, or to put in better words, be ready to provide the best because you no longer control what people will tell about you. This is how the social media works. It is no longer a question whether you are getting affected by it or not. Your social world is forming. The real question is are you a part of it or not?

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Posted in Advertising, Marketing, Technology

Communities as advertisement design canvas

Posted on September 25, 2009 | Leave a comment

What do you want in your advertisement? Something that people like, appreciate and get excited about. Something unique that can help them link to your brand. An effective advertisement campaign has a singular theme for all mediums which can be identified by the customers. A good way to design that theme is by using the social media.

Marketers can monitor various elements of web-based social world to identify what people think about their product, which part of their product most excites them and what are the turn-offs. They can monitor what people generally look for when they are shopping. Using this information effectively, and designing advertisements by keeping in mind the factors that will appeal to the customers, marketers can design better advertisements as compared to the ones designed in a silo.

To take it a step further, a company can have their own community where it can interact with its customers. By having discussions on their domain, marketers can extract customer intelligence on the conversations taking place. They can conduct polls and surveys, have healthy discussions and better understand what clicks for their customers. Essentially, by doing this, marketers will be in a way able to indirectly run themes by the customers and come up with campaigns that are most influential in the community.

The idea here is to take help of your most engaged customers in designing the marketing campaigns. Creativity in designing the advertisements is as important as anything else, but just imagine how much more impactful that can be when you are hitting the right strokes in the right style!

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Posted in Advertising, Marketing, Technology

Intelligence in advertising

Posted on August 23, 2009 | Leave a comment

in 2006, $400 billion was spent on advertising worldwide. Most of this budget went on traditional media like television, radio and print. Companies with billions in advertising budget make sure that their message reaches as big a population as possible. On traditional medium, spending is directly proportional to reach and frequency. It is like using an amplifier and reaching as many people as frequently as possible.

But what if you don’t have (or want to) spend billions in doing this? That’s where intelligence in advertising kicks in. The factors like who, what, when, where and how starts playing a bigger role. Note that it starts playing a bigger role…doesn’t matter how big your marketing budget is, these do come in picture, but when it is small, they sit on the driver’s seat.

When we talk about intelligence in advertising, a couple points are considered most important. First, using proper targeting. You don’t have to reach everyone everywhere. If you are selling office supplies, you don’t have to bother homemakers and retired citizens. When you are selling dorm room goodies you know who your target audience is and return to school is probably the best time to reach them. The idea is to reach the right people at the right time using the right message and the right medium.

Second thing to consider when designing intelligent advertising is new media. If traditional media is all about shouting (one-way), new media is all about talking (two-way). If on traditional media budget is directly proportional to reach and frequency, on new media intelligence is directly proportional to influence and impact. Using new media you can form a bond with your customers. Using social media, you can understand what your customers want. You can make them feel valued, have a healthy dialog and take in their input. The idea is to have a conversation instead of a campaign, because campaigns start and end,but conversations go on forever.

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Posted in Advertising, Technology