Month: April 2019

“We are bringing so many different advertising opportunities for our clients today, operating social-first, omnichannel. It’s complex. It’s new. We felt this was a year that we had to be situated to have much more detailed conversations with our clients, less about sizzle and more about what we offer and here’s how you can partner with us,” Carone said.

Group Nine’s absence comes as the NewFronts has scaled down over the years, reducing from a two-week show to one week in New York and a two-day event in Los Angeles. Refinery29, which hosted presentations from 2015 to 2018, is not participating this year, as well. Snap participated in NewFronts West last October but decided to host its own partner summit, which featured news beyond new content offerings, earlier this month.

Industry insiders said there’s a myriad of reasons not to host a NewFront. One big reason is they don’t come cheap. Another is a lack of intimacy. While publicly broadcasting offerings may take less time than individual meetings and offer some earned-media attention, it doesn’t provide white-glove service that some clients prefer. NewFronts also introduces accountability, which can make a content creator look bad if they never end up delivering.

For Group Nine, the cost wasn’t the main concern for joining the NewFront. In fact, its alternate plan requires flying several executives across the country and overseas. The company was more interested in hosting productive and personalized discussions within their clients’ offices rather than requiring them to come to New York for a one-day, one-hour show.

“It’s really reallocating the way you would spend your industry marketing dollars and making sure for us how could we get a more significant bang for our buck. This wasn’t necessarily about spending less it was about spending much smarter,” Carone said.

If companies are willing and able to afford it, NewFronts can offer legitimacy to ambitions. A former Refinery29 executive said the company originally saw the event as a way to legitimate its video offerings even if they didn’t have a big audience. In 2016, Refinery29 used the NewFronts to launch “Brawlers,” a YouTube channel about female athletes, and it had signed Smartwater as a partner. In 2018, Refinery29 announced its plan to launch Channel29, an OTT channel, in the fourth quarter of 2018. The service was intended to feature ad-supported original programming and shopping. Late last year, the company nixed the name and repositioned it as a Refinery29 app across streaming platforms like Roku.

By throwing a quality event featuring sizzle reels, star appearances and good snacks, Refinery29’s NewFronts also provided a case study for its event business, said Amy Emmerich, president of North America and chief content officer of Refinery29.

But the company decided against participating this year. Instead, Refinery29 is focusing its time and attention on producing content and preparing for its expansion of 29Rooms, Emmerich said. That event is going on a national tour this summer and will provide an opportunity for executives to meet with marketers and potential clients at each location. Similar to Group Nine, Refinery29’s executive team is also focused on intimate meetings with partners (Emmerlich was in Los Angeles last week for clients meetings.)

While platforms like Hulu, Twitter and YouTube have become mainstays at the NewFronts, Snap decided not to join this year. At the NewFronts West in October, Snap had announced Snap Originals, its new brand for its original programming, which it had elaborated on during its partner summit. A Snap spokesperson said the company isn’t ruling out presenting in the future and considers the NewFronts to be a highly influential event.

Group Nine also is evaluating its future with the NewFronts.

“We did it the last two years as Group Nine, and it’s been really successful. But I think for this year, we want to test if we could have more of an impact and build momentum in the marketplace if we go to where our clients are,” Carone said.

The post ‘Less about sizzle’: Publishers test alternatives to annual NewFronts appeared first on Digiday.

The company plans to ramp up its sponsorships with esports leagues, including Team OpTic and Counter Logic Gaming as well as teams like Immortals, Team Dignitas and SK Gaming. It will also be spending money on Twitch on co-branded partnerships, as well as Facebook advertising to target gaming and esports fans. It’s also going to be making a new drink flavor focused on gamers, its second since the launch of Mountain Dew Amp Game Fuel last year.

Portwood said the brand is also exploring more opportunities on Cheddar, whose sports TV channel focuses on esports.

What Mountain Dew has done in esports and gaming is “unique for the category, but not for the approach,” said Kate Wolff, svp of client services as RQ, who has built communities around gamers for brands like Google Play and YouTube, who pointed to Redbull’s approach to extreme lifestyle and sports as an example of how a brand can play in this space.

“By coming in hard fast and first to the category, they’ve achieved such a strong correlation with extreme sports that some may even say the sport is now an extension of the brand,” said Wolff. “Mountain Dew is looking to achieve the same thing by showing up first and going big across not just marketing but their products as well.”

A focus on gaming isn’t entirely new for Mountain Dew. In 2007, the brand recognized that gamers had already adopted the beverage brand as a part of gaming culture.

“The gaming space is one of the fastest-growing areas of the consumer world,” said Portwood. “We feel like we have a real opportunity there as a first mover.”

Per Nielsen’s Esports Playbook for Brands, one in five global esports fans are new to the space. In the last year, Nielsen found that non-gaming-related brands sponsoring esports has grown by 13% year over year and that 90% of U.S. esports fans on Twitch can name at least one non-gaming-related sponsor in esports.

For Mountain Dew, it helps that there has been a cultural shift around gaming, with growing consumer attention via platforms like Twitch garnering approximately 15 million daily visitors, per a pitch deck acquired by Digiday.

“As esports rise to reach similar sports-minded audiences, investments in esports marketing are a smart move for the brand,” Wolff said via email. “They’ve already started sponsoring esports teams including Dignitas, Splyce, SK Gaming and Immortals, among others, and have started the Mountain Dew League for amateur esports athletes in partnership with ESL. Just how Gatorade is known for fueling athletes physically, Mountain Dew can coexist with the brand and fuel gamers mentally.”

Wolff also said that gamers are a natural fit for Mountain Dew, as the brand is known for its history with sports, specifically with its sponsorship of the X Games Dew Tour.

“The advertising portion of it is important from an awareness building standpoint, but we ultimately make sure that the fans and the professionals really know that we’re there for the long haul,” said Portwood.

Since its launch of Mountain Dew Amp Game Fuel this past winter, the brand has reached 47% of consumer awareness around the product with “repeat rates on it at about 40%,” said Portwood, adding that the social sentiment has been 96% positive.

“The key to all of this for us is to keep that focus on the end consumer,” said Portwood. “As long as we keep that first in our mind when it comes to consideration of partnerships, investment, innovation then we will be in good shape for the future.”

The post ‘Opportunity as a first-mover’: Mountain Dew is spending 40% of its marketing dollars targeting gamers appeared first on Digiday.

Acquisition costs are rising
“With Facebook, we have a stable acquisition cost for maybe 90 days, and then we’ll see an algorithm switch. We can go from a $14 stable acquisition cost over two weeks; the next month it will be $40 to $70.”

Retailers are diversifying their marketing mix
“We’ve tried a bunch of different strategies, and retargeting has really been our only successful, stable methodology. We started putting money into Instagram, and had actually zero conversions.”

“A challenge we’re having is just when we think about targeting — within every platform, you have so many different ways of targeting, and they’re not always consistent.”

“We have amazing content, amazing engagement on things like Instagram, but on things like conversion to sales, we just personally haven’t seen it yet.”

Pinterest hasn’t quite stuck
“We’ve been pitched by about 17 account managers from Pinterest, [probably] because our product is very heavily gift-based. And we get pitched probably three or four times a month from different account managers. That to me just spoke about a lack of organization.”

“The traffic seems very, very top of funnel.”

Agency anguish continues
“We worked with probably six agencies before we found one we liked. It’s hard to get someone you can trust. But at the same time, you can’t be doing everything yourself, especially if you’re not heavily VC-backed.”

“We have an agency partner managing of all our Facebook and Instagram ads right now. We create most of the content, and then we approve everything that goes out before it goes out. But we’re relying on them for the day-to-day management and to deal with the algorithms. They report back to us, and if we’re worried about something, we’ll bring it up.”

Attribution is more than just conversion
“We recently rolled off of [selling on another major retailer’s site] and with that we over-invested in affiliate and paid social to try to ramp up the traffic that we were going to see on the loss. Obviously, conversion on social platforms wasn’t as high, and it was driving down the conversion we’re seeing overall. It’s just hard to tell that story up the funnel to executives who are just looking at spend numbers and last click return numbers and not being able to see the whole picture.”

“Everything’s got a role — and for some of our programs, like on social, that role is to get into top- of-the-funnel traffic, so we have a measurement based on website traffic, engagement levels and things like that. We’re not looking at every program the same.”

“[With influencers,] what we’re seeing is an immediate impact on the day that they post. But also we’re trying now to have measurement on that long-term attribution. That’s the part we’re struggling with.”

How can retailers connect the dots between online and in-store retail?
“We don’t know what we’re going to look like as a business 12 to 18 months from now, so signing a five-year lease is terrifying.”

“If you’re looking to actually scale a business profitably, you’re probably not going to do that in a pop-up in Soho.”

“Our main challenge is that a lot of customers will add a product in store to their online cart, but then not many people go home and actually purchase. It feels like losing the sale when we had it.”

“Here’s the new path to purchase: Research user-generated content on Instagram. Visit a store to test a product. Then buy online.”

“The hardest thing for us is turning a brick to a click. That’s the challenge we face now: Having people in stores, where you can sell them something, but then getting them after their in-person purchase to build a relationship with the brand online. The store of the future is probably not the in-person store, but people still like the tangible experience. It’s really hard for companies without stores to reach people who have a barrier shopping online.”

“We’ve switched our marketing strategy to set the stores up as customer acquisition [channels]. It’s a full circle approach as far as getting online customers to shop in store. Then once they’re in the store, we try to get them to find us online. The idea is that it’s full-circle, but it’s not so easy to make that circle happen all the time.”

“The biggest hurdle for us is competing priorities among the store operations team and the digital commerce team. We’re one company, but they’re always butting heads.”  

Questioning text-driven commerce
“It’s cool to see different ways to reach the consumer, but there is no f–ing way [some customers] would give their phone number out. It’s a privacy issue — even getting emails is really tough. The easier it is for someone to buy something, the easier people will do it.”

The post ‘You can’t be doing everything yourself’: Overheard at the Digiday Retail Summit appeared first on Digiday.

By the end of 2019, the German football club wants to have 1 million fans, said Loesner, whose plan for the app currently revolves around producing four to five weekly clips. Clips on the club’s profile mainly consist of players such as Serge Gnabry performing dances that have gone viral. It’s a similar approach taken by Bayern Munich’s rival Borussia Dortmund, which has posted 16 times since it launched its profile at the start of April. TikTok’s status as a gateway to the quirky world of dance routines has made it easier for football clubs like Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund to build a presence given so many players now celebrate goals by doing dances.

Bayern Munich’s content strategy for TikTok is run from the club’s German headquarters, though its marketers in the U.S. and China also contribute.

With marketing on the app in its infancy, there’s less competition for early adopters and that means it can be a cheaper alternative to established platforms like Snapchat and Instagram for the likes of Bayern Munich. There’s potential for low-cost viral marketing campaigns that could generate engagement at a fraction of the cost of ads on more established but crowded platforms. That’s why Loesner sees it as an organic play for now. Brands including Red Bull, Nike and Coca-Cola have taken a similar approach, with each verifying their profiles on the app.

Part of the reason advertisers like Red Bull, which has 2.4 million followers on the app, have seen their audiences swell in a short period of time is due to the fact that people can sign into the app with their Facebook account. “Brands can use the technological bridge that exists between Facebook and TikTok to drive followers from one platform to the other,” said Thibaud Clement, CEO of social media scheduling tool Loomly. “It’s a growth hack.”

A big draw for using TikTok is the creative aspect of the app, which essentially allows anyone to become a creator. GlobalWebIndex data revealed that 66% of TikTok users like seeing other people’s creativity and 60% like being creative with the videos they make. If Instagram’s pitch is focused on turning all its users into photographers, then TikTok wants its users to become videographers, according to its pitch deck.

Record labels and their artists were among the first to see the marketing potential in the way TikTok users circulate music content. Six in 10 users of the app like to share their music discoveries on social media, per GlobalWebIndex, while 53% share music videos specifically.

Sony Music turned to TikTok earlier this month to promote the hit single “Haaye Oye” by Ash King. It created a first-of-its-kind musical sticker, which featured through the song’s music video. The record label is incorporating TikTok into more marketing campaigns for artists who have the right persona, and tracks that chime with the app’s younger demographic, said Anya du Sauzay, head of digital marketing at Sony Music.

It’s clear that music content, from better-known musicians and small-scale creators alike, has the potential to do well on the platform, said du Sauzay. There’s a direct link with viral success on TikTok with streams on services like Spotify and consequently success in the charts, she added.

Creating content specifically for a profile on a new app can be a costly investment for limited reward. Compared to Snapchat and Instagram, TikTok’s offer to advertisers is limited, which leaves many to question the return in the absence of a suite of targeting and measurement tools — so much so that it’s often easier for those advertisers to run smaller campaigns with TikTok influencers, who can offer a better guarantee of success on the app thanks to the audiences they’ve already amassed. Influencers are also a cheaper alternative to those on other social networks.

According to influencer firm Social Chain, between 1 million and 2.5 million followers would cost around £500 ($646) to £800 ($1033) per post on TikTok, whereas an advertiser would expect to pay £8,000 ($10,339) to £9,000 ($11,632) on Instagram. The issue with influencers on TikTok, however, is that brands have to be ready to cede more control to them than ever.

“TikTok says it’s a platform where you as a brand have to let influencers do their own thing; otherwise, the content won’t have the connection you’re trying for,” said Zanna Wharfe, senior strategist at We Are Social. “Two years ago, brands were treating influencers as traditional advertising talent; whereas now, we’re seeing the ones we work with adopt a more collaborative approach, which means looking at what that talent is doing on a platform like TikTok as opposed to just being drawn to the follower count.”

The post How marketers are testing TikTok appeared first on Digiday.