Month: November 2018

SoulCycle has been growing a content division over the last six months to complement its 90 cycling studios. What began as a couple big hires has expanded to a team of 20 people internally creating experiences and content, particularly for Instagram.

One recent experience is “Sound by SoulCycle,” the brand’s new concert series. The first concert was held in Harlem on Oct. 11 and featured artists performing for 50 riders and more than 300 other attendees. Bose and Ketel One sponsored the event. But it wasn’t just an in-person celebration. SoulCycle’s media team filmed the event so they could share it to their 344,000 followers on Instagram.

“We purpose-built it for Instagram, so we were able to reach a massive audience that wasn’t there. The next concert is designed to not only bring Soul to a bigger audience who can’t get to Vegas but help us market the Vegas studio,” said Greg Gittrich, SoulCycle’s chief commercial officer, speaking at Digiday’s Video Marketing Summit.

Gittrich said SoulCycle’s content business isn’t just a traditional form of content marketing. The team is looking to not just make new experiences for their current consumers and build further awareness but also create new revenue sources. Some of their experiences, like the concert series, include selling sponsorships. They’re also creating exclusive content for platforms like Apple Music and could eventually charge for more content, beyond the fees for classes.

Gittrich, who was previously chief content officer at Mashable, said he joined SoulCycle because of the strength of a brand that isn’t just about working out. He said SoulCycle customers love the brand for five reasons: the joy of the experience; curation of music; the instructors; the sense of community; and lastly, the workout. (SoulCycle is owned by high-end gym chain Equinox.)

This isn’t the first time SoulCycle has hosted a concert. They’ve had pop-ups in Martha’s Vineyard, Vail and at South by Southwest. Now, the company’s focusing more internally on how to and where to share the experiences. In the beginning, when the team was about six people, it was mostly testing short-form video, Gittrich said. Now, SoulCycle has created more serialized content and recurring programming on Instagram. The team has about a half a dozen series in production. One called “Resistance” includes interviews with musicians and actors while they spin on a SoulCycle bike and turn up the bike’s resistance knob after each question.

In the exercise world, SoulCycle is competing with a bunch of studios, large and small. One of its strongest foes is Peloton, which sells bikes for at-home workouts and a subscription service for live and recorded classes. Investing in media is one way SoulCycle can show off to current customers and potential ones, as headphone maker Skullcandy also has done through concerts. SoulCycle also has invested in its instructors as brand advocates. Earlier this year, SoulCycle launched a management agency with advisory from WME.

“I think programs like [Sound by SoulCycle] that create a good brand extension and tend to build community. I might not watch the concert per se, and not totally sure it’d inspire me to book a class but the music at a SoulCycle is always good, so a concert might be worth the fun,” said John Colucci, a Seattle-based social media director and occasional SoulCycle customer.

SoulCycle has a partnership with Apple Music where they create exclusive playlists and share original audio, typically motivational and mindfulness from its spin instructors. The company’s planning to expand more into audio in the next year.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if we looked at podcast length audio. We started with short-form tracks. From production and distribution we thought that was easier for us in our early days and a good way to test,” Gittrich said.

Corey Kindberg, a SoulCycle attendee who works at an agency in New York, said he was intrigued by SoulCycle’s focus on music-related content, noting that it’s such a big part of the classes he attends.

“I wouldn’t say it makes me more of a fan of the brand, but it makes me look at the brand a little differently. It seems as though they’re thinking smarter. There’s been tons of times where I’ve asked an instructor what a song they played was and will listen to it for weeks after the class. Essentially, they’re taking a huge component of their business and bringing it outside of the classroom,” Kindberg said.

However, Kindberg said the media division doesn’t necessarily inspire him to pay for more classes.

As to success so far, Gittrich said he needs another three to six months to really see and understand what’s working. But so far, they’ve been focused on segmenting their audience into cohorts of those who have never been to SoulCycle, those who have but don’t live near a studio anymore and their loyalists.

“We’re in 90 locations and expanding next year to many more. If we can have a relationship with an audience where you can experience Soul via Instagram, your email or a concert, it’s very interesting from not only a brand perspective but revenue. Some people might only go to a concert, might only listen to us on Apple Music, but there are segments of the audience that really want more from the brand,” Gittrich said.

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The post ‘Purpose-built for Instagram’: SoulCycle has a 20-person team building a media business appeared first on Digiday.

After operating for seven months as a subscription business, MeUndies pivoted.

Instead of charging customers a recurring monthly credit they could use or waive, it decided to commit them to monthly underwear purchases at a discounted price, plus get additional benefits like limited-edition products and discounts on other MeUndies products. It’s a model that ties together those sweet recurring payments with customer loyalty. Customer retention implies that brands have more going for them than a snazzy marketing strategy. At MeUndies, members now account for 50 percent of overall business, and Shokrian said that these customers spend double the amount than non-members, on average.

The appeal of the subscription model — turning acquired customers into returning customers on the first purchase — is what sparked MeUndies’ current membership model. When customers sign up, they commit to monthly purchases, at a discounted price — $16 and $14 for men and women, respectively — that can be skipped or canceled. A pair of underwear for non-members costs $20 for men and $16 for women. But members get additional benefits as well: First, and sometimes exclusive, access to limited-edition prints and price discounts on other products like sweatpants.

Direct-to-consumer brands in replenishable categories, like the razor brands Dollar Shave Club and Billie and the tampon brand Lola, use subscription models to boost business in lieu of broad distribution networks.

But as digitally native brands shift attention from customer acquisition to retention, finding inventive ways to keep customers coming back is taking priority over earlier scaling methods, like Facebook retargeting and Google search ads. Early experiments with tools like subscribe-and-save and exclusive product access for email subscribers are lead-ups to a shift to the burgeoning membership model for a highly competitive sector of retail.

“We’re seeing new, digitally native brands consider more what loyalty and memberships mean for their businesses. It’s an example of how at the highest level, in the DNA of these brands, they are by default thinking about lifetime value, repeat rates, and how to get customers to stick around,” said Corey Pierson, co-founder of customer analytics company Custora. “Old-school retailers cared about loyalty, but in terms of points, and purchases and same-store metrics. For DTC, it’s about keeping customers engaged in an incredibly competitive landscape.”

Brands are taking steps to build customer loyalty that could easily turn into paid perks. Glossier, for example, offers subscribe-and-save on its site for skin care products and is building a social content platform that will ask people to sign up. The outerwear brand The Arrivals uses waitlists to gather customer information and give those people who sign up early access to new products. To Pierson, these tactics are the first steps in a shift towards a membership-driven strategy.

“To have a growing brand, you need repeat buyers. You can’t just have one time buyers,” he said. “The subscription might be the gold standard — buying every month — but memberships drive frequency of purchase and engagement that resembles that behavior.”

Overall, Jean-Marc Bellaiche, the chief strategy officer at ContentSquare, a customer insights platform, said he’s seen brand clients invest more budgets and resources into retention, a different beast than acquisition.

“A few years back, digital marketing money was flowing and the idea was, ‘Let’s build traffic and buy paid traffic through search and social.’ Teams were focused on acquisition,” said Bellaiche. “Now we see many brands moving toward retention, UX and analytics, and building those teams with employees that work on those topics only. There’s a clear rebalance. Loyalty means a healthy business. One-time customers do not.”

Shokrian said that the company still uses Facebook and Instagram and Google to drive brand awareness and new customers — he also said that 40 percent of first-time purchasers become members — but that the company internally looks different than a traditional DTC brand. He added that the brand doesn’t have one membership team, but that it’s infused into all departments, including marketing, data analytics and print design.

“If you have a customer coming back to you nine to 10 times a year, it’s a no-brainer to introduce a model to get them from 10 times a year to 15 or 20,” said Shokrian. “Predictable revenue is really important for companies as well. You need that. It creates loyalty, and it’s proof of concept from a business perspective. You’re able to foresee growth.”

Other companies, like the lingerie brand Adore Me, and the athletic apparel brand Fabletics, have built membership models that condition customers to become “VIP members,” which means they can get cheaper products if they agree to sign up for monthly recurring credits — similar to MeUndies’ original subscription model. This guarantees customers come back to check in every month, informing the companies around what high-value customers buy and don’t buy on a regular basis.

But most DTC brands claimed to practice price transparency, by giving the most affordable prices to customers by cutting out retail middlemen. Tiering prices for members and non-members makes it more difficult to defend a transparent cost structure.

With many of these digital brands now past the five-year mark, however, there’s an opportunity to build memberships based on perks, not pricing. And as these brands are now faced with difficult scaling challenges as well as competition, proving that customers will commit dollars not just to buying new stuff, but to a deeper relationship with the brand, will be critical for next-phase growth. That’s where customer data comes in.

“Once you know your consumer, you can get past the logic of promotion. When you don’t know someone, you have to talk about price,” said Bellaiche. “If you know the consumer, you can personalize the experience and provide more than just discounts — product recommendations based on membership models, content, exclusive sales and events. These brands with cult followings could build something worth paying for, and that’s where we’ll see this shift.”

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The post DTC brands are embracing membership models to improve retention appeared first on Digiday.

One of the biggest trends to hit the agency business is clients taking more marketing control. Marketers at the Digiday Brand Summit Europe this week in Monaco who have adopted in-house strategies discussed misconceptions about the realities of taking media buying and other marketing in-house.

Here is a myth buster:

The post The myths of in-housing media buying: ‘People think it’s going to be easier’ appeared first on Digiday.

At the Carrollton, Texas, Walmart Supercenter, customers can now add a therapy session to a grocery run.

The clinic, which rolled out this week, is a pilot program run by Boston-based behavioral health provider Beacon Health Options; the company is leasing space inside the Supercenter. In it, it’s offering therapy sessions for customers for depression, anxiety and stress, grief and relationships. The program is an indirect way Walmart can extend its reach into healthcare, building on moves earlier this year, including a tie-up with health insurer Anthem, launched in August, to improve over the counter drug access for seniors, and reports of early-stage acquisition talks with Humana, a health insurance company, in March.

Christina Mainelli, chief growth officer at Beacon Health Options, said the company is using a retail footprint to apply a consumer-influenced approach to how it offers the services. These include the ability to serve customers beyond normal working hours, as well as ways to reach providers beyond physical meeting spaces, including through Skype and from next year onwards, text messaging. Walmart and Beacon Health Options won’t share customer data as part of the arrangement.

“It’s where people are finding themselves on a day to day basis — they’re in retail settings in the midst of the activities of daily life,” said Mainelli. “The goal is to provide increased access to quality care.”

It’s also the most recent example of a retailer repurposing physical stores into service hubs as more customers purchase necessities online. Traditional stores are turning to this model to keep foot traffic coming in by adding more value propositions. Home Depot offers in-store advisory services for customers working on home improvement projects, for instance, while Office Depot is using some of its store space to offer co-working and business consulting services.

Walmart would not comment for this story, but the in-store mental health service offering is another component of a bigger push from the retailer to become a family-oriented service hub. Walmart’s broad reach among the U.S. population is a foundation upon which to build these added services: According to Walmart, 150 million customers move through its 4,800 stores every week.

“Walmart has a good tradition of being on trend with what people need; they moved services to the front of the store — some have McDonald’s and Subway restaurants and dry cleaners,” said Curt Munk, evp and head of strategy at FCB/RED, the retail arm of agency FCB. In addition, Walmart recently announced plans to build “town centers,” or campuses where people shop, dine, exercise and take part in community activities.

Mental health clinics, and other health care services, help tie customers to the brand and create more reasons to visit physical locations. By working with a third-party provider, the retailer can help manage some of the risk involved, said Jeff Becker, senior analyst at Forrester Research.

“Anything that keeps customers coming through the front door of a Walmart is a good strategy as sales erode to online shopping,” Becker said in an email. “By leveraging a third-party mental health provider to offer these services, there is very little risk for Walmart, beyond the opportunity loss of what they have done with the physical space occupied by the clinic.”

The challenge, he added, will be to keep costs reasonable for customers. Sessions will cost $25 to $30 as part of an early promotion, but prices will jump to $110 to $140 in February (the company will offer a sliding fee scale for uninsured customers).

“Retail clinic-based mental health aligns with the economic reality of traditional retail clinics – they will improve access to care and improve the member experience, but it is unlikely that they will meaningfully reduce the cost of care,” said Becker. “The prices per session noted in the announcement align with the average price of a therapy session.”

Beacon Health Options will be closely monitoring traffic over the next 90 days to help determine the next steps beyond the Carrollton pilot, including expansion to new markets. Mainelli said the company is also considering other retailers as physical hubs for its mental health services offerings.

“There’s so much disruption going on in healthcare that’s allowing individuals who work in healthcare to think outside of the box and expand the limits of what’s possible in meeting the needs of patients in a better way,” she said.

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Under Armour is dipping its toes into Instagram’s IGTV to distribute episodic content, but it’s starting with a series originally conceived for YouTube.

The “Icon Creator Labs” series features YouTube sneaker influencers Jacques Slade and Jazeri Allen-Lord, who interview artists like Shelby and Sandy, Kenesha Sneed, Tommii Lim, Hyesu Lee, and Jen Mussari, as they create their own designs for sneakers on Under Armour’s Icon sneaker customization website.

The series so far has five six-to seven-minute episodes, all first published in their horizontal versions to YouTube on November 13, and then individually posted to IGTV in their vertical versions beginning on November 13, with the last one posted on November 29. More episodes are slated for 2019.

On YouTube, where Under Armour has 200,000 subscribers, the episodes have generated 3.5 million views, 13.6 million total minutes watched and a 3:47 minute average watch time, according to Under Armour. The reach is far lower on IGTV, where the videos range from receiving 10,000 to 20,000 views so far. That’s despite Under Armour having 6.4 million Instagram followers.

“IGTV is a new platform and in a lot of ways it’s unproven,” said Jason Mitchell, co-founder and CEO of independent social creative agency Movement Strategy, which produced both the YouTube and IGTV versions of the series. “[Under Armour] wants to be there and test it out, but it’s hard to justify the resources it takes to create really great compelling content for a platform that everyone is trying to see how impactful it will be.” Under Armour wouldn’t comment on the cost of the series.

Still, for Under Armour, IGTV wasn’t an afterthought. Daley said the idea to produce the same exact series for IGTV came when Instagram first launched the platform in June when the series was only in pre-production.

Although the storytelling remained the same, there were technical challenges that came from shooting the same video for YouTube’s horizontal format at the same time as IGTV’s vertical one. So far, companies and influencers have mostly experimented with IGTV by repurposing Instagram Story content, an easier feat since Stories are already in a vertical format, with few companies like Bacardi, MTV and Nike creating content specifically for the platform.

“This is the first time we’ve had such a big production where we were simultaneously trying to create the same content for both orientations,” said Daley. “It was definitely a new challenge that we had to do for the depth of the thinking.”

The question is whether repurposing content for IGTV, while cheaper, is the best use of the platform.

“They are two different platforms,” said Mark Frankel, executive creative director at Landor. “IGTV offers scrappier, less developed influencer-driven content and YouTube has more professionally produced content.”

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The post Under Armour is running a YouTube series on IGTV appeared first on Digiday.

A Canadian medical center is employing the personal touch to fight prejudice and dispel misconceptions by opening a pop-up spa where all 15 massage therapists are HIV-positive. The provocative activation was created by agency Bensimon Byrne for HIV/AIDS treatment center Casey House. Located in downtown Toronto, the spa, called Healing House, will offer free hand,…

AT&T’s ad tech unit Xandr has big hopes for TV advertising, but the company said Thursday during an analyst call that it’s also going to be heavily involved in powering online ads. “You will continue to see Xandr media business outpace the television market in 2019,” Xandr CEO Brian Lesser told investors. “And now what… Continue reading »

The post AT&T’s Xandr Officially Combines Its TV Ad Biz With The AppNexus Digital Ad Platform appeared first on AdExchanger.

Yahoo News stands by an ad it released after backlash over the language it used. The ad has a barrier with one wall that says “immigrants enrich us” in blue and another that says “immigrants endanger us” in red. The tagline is “See all sides.” The ad is seemingly part of the “See All Sides”…