Author: Sense Admin

Experiential marketing is becoming increasingly innovative and sophisticated, embracing social media and new technologies. However, the importance of real people in experiential should never be under-estimated. In a world where 92% of consumers believe there’s a disconnect between what brands say and what they do, according to the Generous Brands report*, well trained brand ambassadors use their personal and marketing skills to deliver that key element of authenticity, building trust.

Today, many of the best experiential campaigns are run by true brand ambassadors, who are hand-picked not just for their promotional marketing experience, but also because they embody the brand in terms of how they behave and what they say. Take our EDFE Pretty Curious campaign in which we’ve recruited Tissue (STEM CELL) engineers and MSc Physics graduates – who better to inspire teenage girls to pursue a career in STEM than women who are already making waves in the industry? Being truly passionate about the subject matter means that the team can truly represent the brand.

Building the team

As this example shows, the recruitment process is a vital part of every experiential campaign. It’s crucial to meet every brand ambassador candidate face to face and be creative about the interview process. Interactive group sessions can work really well as they help to highlight an individual’s personality and skills, and can tell you more about who they really are than a one-to-one interview. It’s also important to ensure that brand ambassadors are suited to each campaign in terms of their likes, dislikes and interests.

Our award-winning work on The Economist Discomfort Food campaign has demonstrated the importance of having a real value match between staff and the brand – people who are passionate about the arts, current affairs and sustainabilityl; people who are ready to engage with the public on these topics on more than just a surface level and who evoke curiosity in their conversations with others.

Training and support

Having recruited the right team, thorough training is critical, and the more immersive the sessions are, the better. Take our Brompton Bikes activation which saw the team spend the day with engineers at the brand’s factory. Seeing for themselves that the bikes are truly bespoke and handmade in London meant they could talk to consumers with honesty and authenticity. Immersing brand ambassadors in this way gets them excited, inspired and invested in the brand so they perform better.

During campaigns it’s important to give the brand ambassador team as much support as possible to get to know their wants and needs and address any problems that arise. Continuous monitoring and feedback is particularly important for longer-running campaigns, as this allows any issues to be identified and dealt with as quickly as possible.

Encouraging feedback

Post campaign it’s good to get everyone together to discuss what went well and pull out key learnings for next time. Listening to brand ambassador feedback in this way lets the team know how much you value their opinions, building loyalty, while also collecting important insight that can be fed back to improve the performance of future campaigns.

Recognising those team members who have gone above and beyond, and organising regular social events also help to develop a strong team spirit, which can also be developed by having a core team work on repeat activations – Event Manager, Andrew Donald has managed the Coors Light Ice Cave team for the past three years and is a valued member of the core team. He was also recently nominated for Brand Ambassador of the year at the Field Marketing and Brand Experience Awards 2017.

Ultimately, brand ambassadors are real people who are tasked with engaging with ordinary people in the real world. The often complex and detailed nature of experiential campaigns means it’s vital to build strong and genuine relationships with them, so they can do the same with consumers on behalf of the brands they are representing.

Yasmin Bartlett is Senior Staffing Executive at real world marketing agency Sense

 

*Source: Generous Brands 2016, Sense Marketing Services LTD.

A regular series of panel sessions organised by the MAA, GreenJam looks at key issues facing marketing agencies. Each gathering features an expert panel, with the most recent including Sense Deputy MD Lou Garrod, who offered advice on how to best accelerate your agency career. During the session, Lou gave the following four tips:

Know your clients

Make sure you have an ally in your equivalent on the client side and get to know what clients want. Meet with them out of office time – at clubs, events, and conferences.

Do your research

If you work on an FMCG brand, have you read The Grocer this week? Follow trends in the industry, follow all the key people on Twitter, chat, and share their posts.

Win a client

New business is everybody’s business and can be one of the fastest routes to climbing the career ladder, through mining your contacts, passion points and interests.

Get a mentor

If your agency doesn’t have a mentor programme, approach a person you admire and ask them for mentorship.

Next GreenJam

Tuesday 9 January 2018

Becoming horrifically lucrative for brands, Halloween marketing campaigns are now a global  phenomenon, with a recent Mintel report forecasting spending by UK consumers alone hitting £320 million this year, with most spenders being Millennials.

However, the annual fright fest has seen the odd horror show in terms of bad taste, the most infamous of which being Asda and Tesco ‘mental health patient’ and ‘psycho ward’ costumes for Halloween 2013 that promised to have ‘people running away in fear’. Both supermarket giants were accused of a woeful lack of judgement and for stigmatising mental health issues by charities and the public alike, a sign that attitudes towards the historically taboo subject were changing in the real world, something not reflected by the offending products

This year the Marketing Society and Time to Change gave brands a timely reminder not to resort to campaigns and products that stigmatise mental health, and thankfully it seems they all paid attention. So what techniques did some of the best campaigns use to engage their Halloween audiences to make the most of this fun festival without being offensive?

Immersion

For those who want to be scared, nothing beats being fully submerged in horror. Brands would be wise to take cues from immersive theatre experiences, such as Punch Drunk or Hammer House. Take Fanta, it created ‘The 13th Floor’ – an utterly chilling 360 virtual reality experience that takes you on a terrifying elevator journey, from which there’s no escape. While vampires, witches and other ‘mythical’ things are no doubt scary, there’s something even more terrifying about being stuck in a real-life situation that takes a turn for the worse, especially if you’re literally in it.

Brand Affinity

This year Budweiser launched a large-scale campaign to become the ‘go to’ beer for Halloween. Having set-up a bricks and mortars store in London, The King of Fears (gettit?), will be selling a selection of items normally only found online. All who purchase something get a free Budweiser, plus there’s a DJ and late-night Halloween party in a bid to become the only beer you’d want to drink at Halloween.

Budweiser is not the only booze brand to take this experience-led approach to become synonymous with the occasion – Veuve Clicquot is once again running the ‘Widow Series’, an interactive exhibition which this year brings to life the seven deadly sins. There is robust evidence, Mintel’s Trend Experience is All as an example, that creating strong retail experiences can boost sales and drive brand affinity with specific occasions.

Partnership

Fashion retailer Topshop was right on the money this year capitalising on young people’s obsession with spooky Netflix series Stranger Things, which is about to launch its second series. The show’s audience is almost perfectly aligned with Topshop shoppers, so the idea to bring the two brands together for Halloween was a strong of genius.

The partnership involved Toyshop’s flagship store on Oxford Street London into a Stranger Things themed cinema where shoppers were given the chance to watch the first two shows of the second series of their favourite horror series the night before it launched on – you guessed it – Halloween. A great gift to Topshop shoppers and a wonderful promotion for the show’s new series.

Although there were some strong campaigns this year, it was disappointing not to see a truly funny campaign or one driven by purpose, like the following two from last year:

Humour 

As someone who hates being scared and will jump at the slightest thing, I would love it if the secular Halloween festival turned into a gigantic comedy fest. Take Burger King for example – its history of Halloween marketing campaigns has had me howling. In 2016, the “Scariest BK” stunt involved dressing up an actual Burger King in Queens as the ghost of McDonalds. This year there’s the #ScaryClownNight campaign – anyone dressed up as a clown will receive a free Whopper. It’s funny, it’s memorable and it gets people in-restaurant, showing that some good old tongue-in-cheek humour can be an effective marketing strategy. I wonder if Ronald will do anything in response?

Purpose

Tesco just about recovered from the aforementioned debacle, and this year launched a ‘Pumpkin Rescue’ scheme in 2016. Research has found that up to 18,000 tonnes of pumpkins end up in landfills every single year after Halloween, with consumers simply throwing them away and not recycling them. So Tesco partnered with environmental charity Hubbub and the North London Waste authority to save the pumpkins from their grisly fate. The rescued pumpkins were recycled by anaerobic digestion to convert them into energy.

With respect to purpose, with the warnings issued overusing mental health stereotypes, it would have been great to see a brand promoting the awareness of this growing problem for Halloween, and hopefully brands will embrace these two techniques more in 2018.

To me Halloween is a time for being scary or funny (and possibly sexy) – it’s a time for having fun. Mental health issues are not funny – they are nothing to be laughed at or made fun of. Neither are they scary – the perception of a person in an asylum in a straight jacket is extremely outdated, from an era where there was no understanding of mental health. And neither is it something to be sexualised. It was great to see that brands avoided resorting to outdated stereotypes this year and were all the more creative – and hopefully successful – for it.

Jess McGillivray is Account Director at real world marketing agency Sense.

This article first appeared on Cream Global.

No campaign has received more industry attention this summer than Trivago’s. Their recent poster crusade of London has been ridiculed for its strange and repetitive placements and its uninspiring design. Those who worked on the campaign have even had their professional commitment brought into question.

However, beneath the negative press lies an uncomfortable truth for the ad world.

The Trivago campaign has worked.

As a result of the campaign, Trivago’s brand awareness in London rose by a remarkable 15% from 27% to 42% at its peak [Source: YouGov].

Was that Trivago’s main marketing objective? Almost certainly.

Skeptics will point towards brand perception. By being so freakishly ubiquitous, surely we can assume that sentiment towards the brand is at an all-time low.

That’s actually not true. As the campaign rolled out, opinion towards the brand in London remained unchanged [Source: YouGov]. Trivago would have welcomed a positive shift in brand perception. However, I doubt it was a significant aim. I’d even argue that a consistent level of sentiment can be considered a success considering the nature of the campaign.

Given the actual success of the Trivago campaign, it’s strange that the industry hasn’t acknowledged it as an example of effective marketing. The reason for this is the campaign’s creative, which is utterly unremarkable. Advertising craft was completely bypassed as the tool for achieving the brand’s objectives. There’s not a pun or a hashtag in sight, just a women in a blue shirt, one line of copy and a logo.

Instead, Trivago opted for a media strategy that made their advert ridiculously omnipresent. The genius of the campaign is that it is ridiculous.

A row of five identical posters is not only irrational but weird. If anyone were to see that 10 times in the space of one commute then they’d have to take notice. Some marketeers scoff at the absurdity of it all. However, in a world of routine and order, why does marketing have to be rational? Being strange is a fantastic way of grabbing people’s attention, particularly the commuters of London whose behaviour is so regimented. Trivago broke the rules of conventional tube advertising and it worked.

Of course a beautifully crafted advert could have been as effective and cost a lot less money. However, if you can afford to implement an extravagant media strategy, why take the risk on doing something normal? A normal advertising campaign doesn’t guarantee success. Doing something interesting in the real world has a much higher chance of being effective.

What happens now? An entire tube station canvassed by one brand? A TV ad break that rolls the same advert back to back six times?

I for one am looking forward to what’s next. Marketing is an arms race. Trivago broke the rules and were rewarded. It’s up to everyone else to adapt.

Vaughan Edmonds is Senior Account Executive at Sense.

This article was published in Cream Global.

Despite overall marketing budget growth being the weakest since 2015, experiential marketing has bucked the trend.

Figures from the Bellwether report for the third quarter of 2017 revealed that experiential spend had risen by 9.4%, up 2.1% on Q2, while real world marketing was the only discipline to register an increase over the previous quarter.

Digital marketing continued to lead in terms of investment growth at 17%, while PR performed well with a 7.2% increase in spend, but both had dipped compared to Q2. All other disciplines posted static or falling budgets.

Commenting on the Q3 figures, Paul Bainsfair, director general of the IPA, said: “What strikes us most is the extent to which UK companies – and their marketing budgets – are caught up in wider economic and geo-political uncertainty. The vast majority are in a seeming state of paralysis.”

However, this is clearly not the case with respect to experiential marketing, with shows brands increasing confidence in the discipline, for which marketing budgets have risen for the 15th consecutive quarter.

Read the full IPA report summary

In the past few weeks no less than three gender-related stories have hit the national headlines. Jodie Whittaker was announced as the first ever female Dr Who, the BBC revealed its huge gender pay gap and it was refreshing to see the Advertising Standards Association (ASA) announce that it is working on tougher standards for what it called harmful gender stereotypes in advertisements.

The ASA’s stance hasn’t come a moment too soon. The issue has been bubbling under the surface since Proctor & Gamble’s #unstereotyping speech at last year’s Cannes Lions festival, where the brand pledged to end gender stereotyping across its brand advertising. While this was welcomed wholeheartedly, it’s a touch ironic since P&G has done so much to promote stereotypes in its Fairy Liquid commercials, which still featured a woman washing up as late as the Noughties! Only in the 2015 version did they first show a man doing the dishes. But let’s give credit where it’s due.

 

Persistant Gender Stereotyping In Marketing

The ASA reports that this kind of persistent stereotyping, which has built up over the years, can be harmful, as it restricts the choices, aspirations, and opportunities for young adults. This was supported by research released this week by Universal McCann, which found 49% of women surveyed “felt pressure from ads to be a certain way” and 44% agreed that ads had made them feel “not good enough”.

So, what will the ASA’s new regulations mean for brands?

Well, hopefully naming and shaming those that transgress will encourage them to clean up their acts. But rather than this hindering brands’ ability to promote themselves, it should actually make their campaigns more engaging and effective.

Why? Because gender stereotyping is simply lazy marketing.

MarketingValue In Stereotypes?

There is no denying that stereotypes can be effective. In this era of ‘audio-off’ video content, stereotypical behaviour portrayals are an easy way to get across a product benefit or brand’s message. But looking beyond gender stereotypes demands more creativity, resulting in campaigns that are more original and have greater impact.

Furthermore, stereotypical campaigns don’t reflect the real world, where – with the exception of pay it would seem – men’s and women’s roles have been becoming increasingly blurred over the past couple of decades. By falling back on gender stereotypes in their advertising, brands are no longer depicting a world that consumers recognise, so they are less likely to resonate or engage.

This lazy approach smacks of putting products before people. By thinking people first, and acknowledging, for example, the changing role of women within society that’s currently taking place, brands will create far more effective advertising. And this has been proved by the few brands that have made the leap.

Always Like A Girl Emojis Campaign

It’s no fluke that Always’ Like a Girl Emojis US campaign was ruled the second most effective ad in 2016 by Warc research. This was one of a number of highly creative and pioneering campaigns under the Like a Girl banner that address the impact of gender stereotyping head on rather than depending on stereotypes to sell stuff like so many other brands do. The result has been highly effective marketing that has worked wonders for brand affinity, but also transformed the phrase ‘like a girl’ from an insult into an empowering message.

Sport London’s This Girl Can Campaign

Meanwhile, Sport London’s This Girl Can campaign addressed not only gender stereotypes, but age ones too – and it was one of the most successful government campaigns ever run, resulting in a massive increase in British women playing sport. And Twitter got in on the act last week with the release of the latest ad in the powerful and empowering #SheInspiresMe campaign.

Maltesers Look On The Light Side

The 2016 Maltesers ads took things one step further featuring female characters making light of their disabilities as an extension of the brand’s ‘Look on the Light Side’ campaign. This was part of Channel 4’s diversity initiative in which it offered brands the chance to get £1 million’s worth of airtime for free in return for ads that featured disability. While this was a tremendous step forward, we do have to question if Mars would have made the ad without the airtime offer.

The main thing, however, is that Channel 4 inspired Mars to do this and hopefully the fact that the resulting campaign was not only seen as pioneering but also highly successful will encourage the confectionery giant to continue to keep up the good work.

EDF Energy Pretty Curious

Looking at gender stereotyping from a different perspective, EDF Energy’s Pretty Curious campaign toured schools across the UK recently inspiring teenage girls to pursue science, technology, engineering and maths subjects. The aim was to tackle the gender imbalance in these subjects, which is threatening to cause a major skills gap in these key areas that are increasingly vital to the UK economy – and of course to EDF itself.

So by fighting for gender equality, EDF is also helping secure its own future success. But so is Mars and the other brands that are ‘unstereotyping’, because they’re actually doing what consumers want. Returning to the Universal McCann study, the research underlined the business benefits of pushing traditional gender boundaries, with 65% of women and 59% of men saying they like it when brands use traditional media to challenge stereotypes.

So it’s not just what women want, but also what men want – so wouldn’t it, therefore, make commercial sense for brands to want it too?

Sally McLaren is a Board Director at Sense.

Sixth months into our Sense New York adventure, and The Big Apple is certainly exceeding our expectations. There are striking contrasts and similarities with our original London base. Both share the hustle, bustle and excitement, yet New York’s streets of towering buildings that seem to almost block out the sky contrast with London’s more open skyline driven apart by the River Thames. Both are thriving cultural melting pots, but New York has an air of cool chic that London will never match. We feel so honoured to now have homes in both of these incredible urban creations.

Arriving as we did at pretty much the same time Mr Trump took office has been fascinating. Watching his tenure unfold on both sides of the Atlantic has given us a truly immersive experience of the short but turbulent journey. We’ve also gained an insight into how brands approach immersive experiences in the US, and have noticed a distinct difference with real world experiential activity in the UK and across Europe.

We weren’t surprised by Freeman’s recently released research, which revealed that global spend on experiential marketing is accelerating in Europe, the US and Asia, as there is certainly a keen appetitive for real world brand experiences across the US. The fact that the country holds an annual Experiential Marketing Summit (EMS) is testament to its interest and commitment to the discipline. What does it say that there is no parallel event in Europe?

Of course, we simply had to attend the recent EMS 2017 in Chicago – another wonderful city! It confirmed what we had begun to appreciate; that the standard of creativity stateside in experiential is outstanding. The rest of the world can certainly learn a thing or two from their American friends in this regard. There’s also a wonderfully intuitive feel to many of the US real world campaigns.

Particularly of note, two experiences from two brands in the same category but which couldn’t be further apart in their journey. Budweiser, whose Budweiser VR4D Beer Garage provides a great example of cutting edge, high gloss experiential, contrasted with Upslope Beer Company, a little known Colorado beer whose ‘Get Down’ events remind us that simplicity and humble budgets are no drawback in producing memorable brand interaction.

However, having now worked on US campaigns and witnessed many others, we can’t help thinking that as good as the campaigns here are, they could be even better. Many of these great brand experiences could be even greater if more were done in terms of planning and strategy. And we believe this is where the US can learn from Europe.

Applying a little more rigour during execution, as we do in Europe, would boost effectiveness. We also feel more can be done in terms of campaign justification – proving conversion to purchase, monitoring word-of-mouth scores and gauging amplification through social media channels. Essentially, ramping up the measurement side. But perhaps scale is the key point here – maybe us Europeans simply need to do more to justify expenditure, when the scale of opportunity is just way smaller.

Although traditionally viewed as a difficult discipline to measure, the impact of experiential is actually relatively easy to assess if clear objectives and benchmarks are set at the outset, then performance is rigorously monitored during the campaign. This does is not only clearly demonstrate return on investment for brands, but also informs future campaigns.

Of course, great challenges exist in the US compared to the UK that hinder the application of a more rigorous approach and also stronger measurement, the main one being the sheer size of North America. What’s more, the market is incredibly diverse, with so many different regions with distinct demographics and values, each of which are likely to react to the same creative approach in a unique way. In some way, it’s even more complex than running pan-European campaigns across several markets.

Overall, the love of experiential in the US is highly infectious, and we’re loving our short time here. And we can’t wait to rise to the challenge of driving more thorough planning and measurement to make campaigns across the US of A even more effective for brands.

Nick Adams is MD of Sense, which is based in London and New York.