GETTING STREAM
AdAge Digital 2011 : Brands Creating Reasons to Engage and Share
Posted by Melissa Summers on Monday, April 11, 2011
I just got back from AdAge Digital. The message was consistent across the board: Brands are putting more focus on developing content that gets their consumers to engage with their brand and share it socially, and less attention on ad impressions.
Advertising helps create awareness of the content, but the most important part is developing a reason for consumers to engage and share.
Key Insights from last Week:
CONVERSE: Letting Go
Geoff Cottrill, CMO of Converse, said they have learned to "let go" of their brand and create content that people want to interact with and share with others. Geoff stated that they spend only 10% of their marketing budget on traditional media, which shocked the room. The rest of their budget is spent on non-traditional advertising, with a growing portion on the creation of content that will get consumers interacting with the brand.
COCA-COLA: Just One Voice Among Millions
Wendy Clark, SVP of Integrated Marketing at Coca-Cola shared their humble approach on Facebook. They look at themselves as, "just one of the 24 million people who like our brand." Wendy estimated that only about 10% of the messaging about Coke around the world is within their control – the rest is created by consumers.
They focus on building campaigns that motivate consumers to create and share. One piece of evidence to support this is on YouTube, there have been 120 million views of content about Coke, and only 26 million of those views are of content that Coke created on its own.
GOOGLE: Rate of Content Creation
One of the most startling statistics of the conference came from Lorraine Twohill, VP of Global Marketing for Google. She shared that in the last two days, more content was CREATED on the web, than existed on the entire web in 2003.
The point is clear – advertisers are putting more of their focus on creating reasons to motivate their customers to engage with and talk about their message. There were many insights shared at the conference. Aside from those above, I found these five stats interesting too.
1. Bing shared that they spend 20% of their online ad budget on video, which has driven a 16% lift in brand awareness, and a 9% lift in intent to try.
2. 86% of consumers are using a mobile device while watching TV (Nielsen).
3. About 37-40% of consumers use Twitter and Facebook via a mobile device.
4. Dell finds that 90% of CIOs make purchasing decisions based on what they learn in social media.
5. Promotions are an excellent way to drive engagement on Facebook, but pay attention to the words and topics you communicate. The words that best drive engagement are event, winner, offer, new, and win. Less impactful words are sweepstakes, promotion, save, coupon, and sale. (Buddy Media)
So what does that mean for the world of digital promotions? There is significant opportunity to create "share-worthy" content. We create reasons to engage and share a brand's message socially. Takeaways from this conference make me think we should put even more attention around that as our value to the marketplace.
What are your thoughts on letting consumers drive your message?
-- Bob Marsh, SVP, Sales Strategy