Tag: Marketing Publications

What can the industry learn from the ways movies themselves are marketed – an area of the industry that sees some of its most creative cut-through work?

Savannah Westbrock, account strategy director at Coegi recommends: tailor assets to maximize excitement

All marketers can take cues from how the film industry has tweaked its standard playbook to bring digital and creative strategy together for the best customer experience and brand storytelling.

Consumer attention started to noticeably decline in the 2010s, and theater owners quickly caught on. They started pushing movie trailers to follow the same advice digital buyers give creative teams: shorten your videos. 2.5 minute trailers can be frustrating to sit through; and putting the same on various platforms can fatigue audiences. Thankfully, film marketers have started to improve their playbook and curate messaging for digital platforms.

Shorter ‘teaser’ trailers before the full trailer are becoming the norm; blockbusters now have multiple trailers introducing new footage to excite audiences over time. These strategies can be applied to any brand’s video strategy. For example, use six-second social media placements to tease standard ads. Or adapt your primary ad to digital video placements across social media and YouTube. Consider using sequential messaging to bring the audience through the full campaign story.

Travel was hit hard by the pandemic. Lockdowns and other restrictions decimated business for airlines, accommodation providers and countless businesses downstream of the travel industry. Recovery has been slow in the pandemic’s long tail, with continued trepidation now exacerbated by inflation and cost-of-living crises. Many marketers have been closely involved in travel clients’ pivots, survival strategies and (now) regrowth plans.

We asked five experts from The Drum Network: what should marketers be thinking of during travel’s return voyage?

Thomas O’Malley, senior account manager, Coegi: use the right data in the right way

Travel brands have faced what have, at times, felt like insurmountable challenges during the pandemic. Our team had to be adaptable for our tourism clients, balancing creative ways to meet their goals while maintaining important public health considerations. We began using non-media data to assess consumer reception (and safety) to travel in certain areas.

Still grappling with the evolution of TV and what it means for brands and consumers alike? Then this session is for you. We’ll be covering the evolving television landscape: bundling (and un-bundling), the future of on-demand, and how traditional broadcast TV is keeping up. You’ll leave with a clear view of how brands can take advantage of the best of both worlds – both streaming and linear.

Launching a brand in a new international market is no easy feat. Thankfully Ryan Green, vice-president of marketing and innovation at Coegi, shares some of the key challenges and considerations to make the transition as seamless as possible.

From a technical standpoint, you have to consider possible language barriers, time zone differences, dynamic advertising regulations, platform preference and availability, and more.

From a cultural perspective, there’s even more to unpack. What’s considered funny in the United States could be completely misunderstood, or even offensive, elsewhere. Holidays and lifestyles are likely to vary dramatically. The consumers’ day-to-day behaviors and perspectives are, simply put, nuanced and distinct. Because of this, the most important component of an international marketing strategy is cultural relevance.

With changes in technology and capabilities evolving on what feels like a daily basis, it can be easy for you, as a marketer, to feel overwhelmed, behind, and concerned. You’ll ask yourself: Am I doing what’s best for my brand? Is my strategy outdated? Are my competitors’ strategies better?

With the influx of marketing trends and intelligence tools, we are entering what feels like the early social media age in digital. This means there’s a lot of comparison and self-doubt when flashy tactics gain more attention from onlookers. This leads to marketers chasing after the shiniest new trend without direction on how it will affect their business goals.

If this is you, it’s time to look in the mirror and ask: “Is my marketing strategy sound? Or am I experiencing FOMO?”

The “cookieless future” has been much-discussed during the last few years, with plenty of opinions coming from marketers (like myself). However, the vast majority are not prepared to take action.

It can be easy to fall into the trap of feeling that there’s plenty of time, especially with the just-made announcement that Google’s new target date for blocking third-party cookies has been delayed until 2024.

Sure, there’s always the possibility Google could delay once again, but the reality is inevitable. There will be a day when cookie-based targeting and tracking will be gone. Inaction today will result in failure in the future.

Here are three key ways marketers can set themselves and their brands up for success with the upcoming changes…

It’s time to redefine ROI as a way of remaining diligent in evaluating what’s working and what isn’t over time, because creating a highly profitable campaign takes time. Instead of thinking of ROI as return on investment, view ROI as a return on insight. Insights allow you to understand how media touchpoints are resulting affecting business outcomes and measuring the data points that matter at every step of the consumer journey.

So what steps do you need to take to build sustainable accountability into your marketing strategy?

In a cookieless world, the easy button is dead.

Long before acronyms like GDPR and CCPA, brands turned to the broad reach of ad networks and Facebook’s ever-knowing, ever-changing algorithm. Many gave it a blank check, seduced by the reach, click-through rates, and amassed conversions brought on by Wild, Wild West retargeting approaches.  Brand safety wasn’t discussed.

This mentality fed right into the programmatic narrative: Learn as you go, let the data make the decision.  Media planners, especially those who weren’t digital natives, were intrigued by the ease of it all.  Innovation meant testing new programmatic vendors against one another.  Success was measured by whatever metric was the easiest to track and achieve.  The battle for last click and last impression attribution was in full force, customer experience be damned.

However, savvy programmatic practitioners have always understood there was no easy button.

So where do we go from here?

According to some, ‘influencers’ are out and ‘creators’ are in, heralding a shift from glitz and glamour to craft and artisanship. At the same time, regulators are ratcheting pressure on creators. So what does this moment really mean for online creators – and how can brands and conent-makers adapt to the shifting landscape? Coegi VP of Marketing and Innovation, Ryan Green, joins other industry experts in answering this question.

Ryan Green is vice-president of marketing and innovation at Coegi. What you won’t necessarily see on his CV is that he spent most of his twenties as a professional (and successful) poker player. The Drum sat down with him to find out what it’s like swapping chips for pitches.