by admin | Apr 1, 2014 | Brand targeting & positioning
In the week the UK saw the country’s first same-sex marriages, some brands are developing campaigns to appeal to gay and lesbian consumers looking to tie the knot. The move is part of a wider effort by brands to target the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) community in an attempt to better represent their customer base and tap into a multi-billion sales opportunity. Menswear brand Moss Bros is displaying images of Union J band member Jaymi Hensley and his fiancé Olly Marmon wearing designs from its spring 14 collection in 80 stores across the UK. It is the first campaign from the 150 year-old company to target LGBT consumers. It claims it “overindexed” on gay and bisexual men last year in terms of social media activity. Read more about how these brands target the LGBT community...
by admin | Mar 21, 2014 | Brand targeting & positioning
These days, people are more inclined than ever to ignore your ads. If they don’t already have some sort of adblock software installed, they’ve no doubt become used to the sidebar ads and native “sponsored” posts on the sites they frequent. The key to breaking through banner blindness is delivering relevant content to captive audiences, and behavioral targeting is the way to go. Behavioral targeting, as Silverpop CEO Bill Nussey describes, is delivering “real-time, cross-channel, insanely relevant campaigns to one person at a time automatically driven by analytics of their actions, preferences and profiles.” Read more about the importance of behavioral targeting in brand marketing...
by admin | Mar 17, 2014 | Brand targeting & positioning
We were excited to attend DX3 Canada this year because of the access it provided to smart people doing big things. YouTube’s Dave Coleman is one such example, and his session about brand success on YouTube did not disappoint. In less than an hour, Dave laid out a video production content structure that any brand can use to find and engage with their customers. Previously, I had written about Volvo’s ability to split its marketing objective to create video content that effectively targeted each stage of its sales cycle. Volvo created a perfectly executed awareness campaign built around Jean-Claude Van Damme’s ability to do the splits that drove attention to targeted explainer video snippets designed to actually sell $100,000 trucks. It worked beautifully. Coleman not only agreed with my take on Volvo during his session, but used the company as the perfect example of YouTube’s recommended content structure for brands. This structure contains three content buckets – Hero, Hub, and Hygiene – all of which should align directly with a brand’s content strategy (defined by what your brand stands for and what your customers are interested in). Here’s Coleman’s recommended content structure as exemplified by Volvo’s YouTube...
by admin | Mar 13, 2014 | Brand targeting & positioning
The world’s largest-selling brand of cigarette is under fire for allegedly encouraging teenagers to smoke. Marlboro, which is owned by Philip Morris International (PMI), is accused of targeting youngsters across the globe through its ‘Don’t Be A Maybe’ campaign. Each advert in the campaign features young people – with some pictured partying, snowboarding and playing the guitar. Read more about this Marlbor campaign and see images of the controversial Marlboro advertisements...
by admin | Mar 7, 2014 | Brand targeting & positioning
I’m talking to brand managers, brand, stewards, consultants — anyone who is responsible for maximizing your company ad agency’s efforts on behalf of your brands. Don’t let your agency have an academic relationship with the product you are selling. We all know the academic relationship. It revolves around sexy charts, research, case studies, infographics, word clouds, focus groups. The client says to the agency, “Make consumers understand the full, comprehensive robust experience of our brand … and if the agency people get a chance to have that experience on their own time, that’d be kind of neat.” Find out more about why your agency needs a brand commissary...
by admin | Feb 27, 2014 | Brand targeting & positioning
Ever wondered how brand savvy your organization is? Whether your marketing was as strong and sophisticated as it should be? Here’s your chance to find out. Take this quiz — 20 simple yes/no questions — and keep track of your answers. There’s a scoring system you can use to grade yourself below. If you are ready to start the strategic marketing self-assessment, click...
