Month: July 2019

Consider this: Tokyo is thirteen hours ahead of the U.S., and a massive portion of U.S. viewing will inevitably be of the time-shifted, digital variety. In the four years since the last summer games, digital viewing has become dominant. Digital delivery will allow marketers to address their ads not simply on audience demographics, but also contextually. 

That means advertisers will have to start by finding the creative that works best with different types of content, and then optimize accordingly. It would be no surprise, of course, to see a skateboard brand place skateboard-related ads on the platforms and streams where viewers are watching the new skateboarding events; Olympics advertisers were doing that sort of thing in the age of Jesse Owens. 

But this time around, there will be thousands of streams and video replays available to viewers at a moment’s notice, dramatically expanding upon the number of contextual targeting opportunities for brands and the athletes they sponsor. Advertisers will have an unprecedented chance to make sure that all of their products find the right audience at the right moments. 

Think of it as the first next-generation ad exchange. With the Olympic Games as their platform, advertisers will be able to deepen connections between consumers and their brands. 

Keep in mind that not all Tokyo advertisers will be official Olympic sponsors, looking for TV-style viewership measurement. Some will simply be placing themselves adjacent to the news, commentary and pictures about the latest events. We’ll see brands turning to tools like image recognition to stay close to their audiences. For instance, a runners’ apparel brand might computer vision to place ads for shoes and shirts directly adjacent to news stories that feature images of tracks and fields, or that feature images of famous athletes.

In 2020, brands will be thinking beyond the “official” view, looking toward the broader digital landscape. Social sharing, for instance, is now one of the primary mechanisms by which brands and their logos are placed in front of consumers. Savvy brands will be thinking not just about how to create content that’s ripe for social sharing, but about how to use targeting tools and third-party measurement to maximize and assess the content’s impact. 

Digital-out-of-home is another major programmatic platform that was left under-exploited in Rio. Brands are now able to assess precise factors such as the day’s news events, time of day and even minute data points such as foot traffic patterns to make sure their content hits the streets at the exact right moment, and in front of exactly the right audience. 

So imagine if a brand’s sponsored athlete, who happened to be a Manhattan native, became a surprise medalist. The brand would then be able to light up the New York streets, during rush hour, at the moment the athlete’s victory became public knowledge.  

Across social media and OTT, brands will have to reassess what’s in their digital toolkits. They’ll have to think beyond demographics, critically assessing the most effective contexts in which to spread their messages and signage. They’ll also have to turn to emerging digital tools and technologies to measure their ads’ effectiveness —  namely, their ability to drive intent, consideration and overall awareness. 

Rio may have been a disappointment —  but Tokyo won’t be. It’s fair to say that it will be the first programmatic games.

For a deeper look at the tools and technologies that advertisers are using to stay ahead, see our straightforward guide to Tokyo 2020 here. (Link to guide.)

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It’s not entirely a new problem, though it may be a tenser one now. While agencies have certainly had to figure out their stance on taboo clients like Big Tobacco or Big Pharma in the past, the new era of political polarization comes as the agency business in general is grappling with a new reality of fewer agency-of-record contracts, more project work, in-housing, competition with consultancies, extended payment windows and other various issues that affect the bottom line.

“It’s not a new thing that agencies have had to walk a fine line between making money and working with clients that ‘do the right thing,’” said Allen Adamson, brand consultant and co-founder of Metaforce. “But that world has exploded now. The world has become so polarized that everyone wants to vote in different ways, with their paycheck and with the business they work on. Ogilvy is the first [agency,] but it won’t be the last.”

Ogilvy is certainly not alone — companies like Wayfair, Microsoft, Amazon, Salesforce, Deloitte and Marriott have all dealt with some level of employee protest in response to connection to the Trump administration in recent years — but it may be the first high-profile advertising agency to deal with it on this level.

Initially, following the election, the political divide within agencies was initially one of personal political preference and internal culture. Now, as a humanitarian crisis plays out on the U.S. border, Ogilvy’s work for the Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) has been called into question and stirred up a debate among agency employees. 

On July 24, Ogilvy CEO John Seifert sent a memo notifying employees that the agency would continue to work for CBP. The memo followed a meeting Seifert had with 45 employees on July 9 to not only clarify Ogilvy’s relationship with the government agency and address employee concerns but defend the work. Since early July, Ogilvy has grappled with scrutiny of its contract — both internally (by employees) and externally (in the press) — following a tweet by immigration advocacy group RAICES that claimed the company handled PR for CBP. Per the memo, Ogilvy’s “assignment focuses exclusively on hiring better and more diverse applicants.” 

“There’s nothing seemingly more divided these days than one’s politics,” said Rob Shepardson, co-founder and partner at creative shop SS+K, which worked for the Obama campaign. “It has divided the country, it’s divided families, it’s divided companies and agencies. We’re not immune to it. It was always the case in many ways and any responsible owner or founder of an agency would be conscious of who they worked for. But it’s certainly has ratcheted up in the last couple of years since Trump’s been in the White House.” 

Money versus values
Historically, agencies have always had to figure out if they should work for controversial or taboo clients like companies that are military contractors during times of war or Big Tobacco or even Big Pharma. But now, under this political climate, even commenting on the issue can be seen as too sensitive to consider. (A number of agencies, both independent and within holding companies, declined to comment for this story.) 

Agencies are handling the new political divide in different ways. Some creative shops, like Stink Studios, believe that agencies need to accept the new reality rather than justify working for companies or organizations that don’t align with the shop’s values. 

“Everything is political, and always has been, but that we’re hyper-aware of how politics informs our decisions during times of supercharged political turmoil,” wrote Mark Pytlik, CEO of Stink Studios, in an email. “In the era of Trump and ICE and conscious capitalism and the environmental crisis, the stakes are just so much higher these days. The old excuse of ‘business is business’ to justify a questionable contract is simply no longer a viable response, if it ever was, and the internet makes it impossible to sweep an ugly client under the rug. Brands are increasingly becoming more purpose-driven, and there’s no reason that agencies shouldn’t be as well.”

Others, like creative shop Forsman & Bodenfors, will poll employees about a particular piece of potential business to take the pulse of the agency, said Mike Densmore, CEO. “We ask how they would feel,” said Densmore. “Would they be proud to work on it? Is the work not aligned with our mission as group? People really respect that and feel they are included and that drives the decision for us.” 

“If an agency takes on a client whose ideology is polarizing it has accepted that it too, and all its employees wear the badge of this client,” wrote Scott Goodson, founder and CEO of StrawberryFrog, in an email. “It’s very dangerous for leadership to take on a client that staffers are strongly against. The new structure agencies is not the topdown structure of the past where the chief sits in a bugle in the penthouse of a marble office structure. Today modern leaders sit among their teams, work closely with their people, understand them and their values and try to understand their point of view.”

You can work anywhere
Some agencies have offered employees who feel uncomfortable working on a certain account the opportunity not to work on that account and instead be put on another piece of business. That solution is one that Bryan Christian, CEO of Proof, an Austin-based shop that has worked for government contracts as well as the Army, has employed in the past. But for Proof, whether or not the company resigns an account, is up to the agency management.

“You have to trust your agency management,” said Christian. “But people can choose where they work. If someone is the polar opposite of what our accounts are, they should look for a place where they’re more comfortable. It’s fine to raise concerns to the management of the agency. It’s also fine to look for a job if your agency has an account you’re not supportive of.” 

Adamson believes that while Ogilvy may be at risk to lose employees over maintaining the CBP account, the bigger risk to the agency will be if the CBP decides to leave the agency. Agencies already struggle with differentiation at a time when they are strapped for cash and clients who feel an agency doesn’t want their business may leave, causing further headaches. 

“It’s not so much the agency’s choice but clients saying they don’t want people on their business who don’t believe in what we’re doing,” said Adamson. “Or are creating PR or social media challenges. Clients are fickle, and this gives them yet another reason to leave an agency.” 

The post ‘Everything is political’: As Ogilvy internal turmoil continues, agencies grapple with a new market reality appeared first on Digiday.

Mailchimp’s decision to bring original content production in-house appears to be paying off. The company has been able to save money as a result of the move, but a Mailchimp spokesperson declined to say how much it has saved. Since the June 10 launch of Mailchimp Presents, the company has generated more than a million views of its shows and downloads of its podcasts, according to the spokesperson. The people that have been checking out this original content “tend to be really, really similar to our most valuable customers,” said Mark DiCristina, Mailchimp’s head of brand and Mailchimp Studios. “They tend to pay us more. They tend to pay us more quickly. They tend to be more engaged.”

While Mailchimp is producing documentaries, scripted and unscripted shows and podcasts, it is not exactly pivoting to become an entertainment company, though it is acting like one by offering to pay production firms six figures per episode for shows, according to a person with knowledge of the matter; the Mailchimp spokesperson declined to comment. But for the most part, Mailchimp Presents is largely a marketing initiative designed for the small business owners and entrepreneurs that visit Mailchimp’s site regularly to manage their email marketing and social ad campaigns. That is why the company is sticking to short-form programming, with its show episodes typically running between five and eight minutes apiece, standalone documentaries hovering around 15 minutes in length and podcast episodes sticking between 15 and 25 minutes in length. “We don’t expect to take the place of Netflix,” said DiCristina.

Mailchimp Presents marks an example of a marketer opting to take in-house work that it had previously hired agencies to handle. In Mailchimp’s case, the aim was to produce content that people would want to check out as opposed to ads that people are forced to sit through. “It felt like, as long as we’re sponsoring shows, we’re paying rent to get in front of people. We’re interrupting the thing that they want to be engaged with. And we go away the minute we stop paying,” said DiCristina.

To be clear, Mailchimp has not stopped advertising altogether. In the first quarter of 2019, the company spent $1.9 million on advertising, but that figure was down from the $2.3 million the company had spent in the first quarter of 2018, according to data from Kantar Media. Mailchimp continues to run digital and out-of-home ads, with a little TV and print advertising thrown in, said DiCristina. It also still advertises within podcasts, though its investment in podcast advertising had tapered off by 2017, he said.

However, Mailchimp has tamped down its brand advertising investments to redirect that money to its original content productions. “A lot of the money that we were spending on brand advertising has been shifted to the creation of original content and the promotion of that content,” said DiCristina. He added that “most” of the company’s brand advertising dollars are now going to Mailchimp Studios’ work, which will expand beyond the Mailchimp Presents programming to include more traditional marketing fare, like educational and how-to content.

Considering that Mailchimp is primarily distributing its original content on its own site, the undertaking would appear to be mainly a customer retention effort. However, it is also a brand awareness and customer acquisition initiative, according to DiCristina. The marketing team within Mailchimp Studios will be running ads to promote the Mailchimp Presents programming. Additionally, in some cases, Mailchimp will be distributing the content outside of its site. People can listen to its podcasts through platforms like Apple’s Podcasts app and Spotify, and “Second Act” — a documentary series about people making career changes co-produced with Vice — is airing on Vice’s TV network Viceland this week and next week, said Sarita Alami, production lead at Mailchimp Presents.

Mailchimp had been moving toward taking content production in-house during the roughly two years in which it had worked with Droga5 until severing ties earlier this year. Over that time, the marketer learned from the agency what all goes into making content and began to hire employees to do more of that work internally. Then last fall Mailchimp and Droga5 began the process of handing off content production to the brand’s internal team, with the agency helping the marketer to develop its original content strategy and connecting its then-client with production companies. “Droga5 was instrumental in the initial development of this initiative,” DiCristina said.

Since cutting ties with Droga5, Mailchimp only works with agencies on a project basis, according to DiCristina. In addition to the production companies it is working with to make shows and podcasts, the company also works with Hollywood talent agency WME “in more of a consultant capacity” for its content development pipeline, said Alami.

To handle original content production on its own, Mailchimp had to recruit people with experience producing and marketing entertainment content. Six or seven of the employees on the nine-person Mailchimp Studios team were hired from the entertainment industry, said DiCristina. To convince those people to join the company, Mailchimp played up the relative freedom that they would have working for a brand versus working for a production firm that is responsible for making the content, but is not in charge of budget or distribution, according to Alami. “We’ve been able to liberate ourselves from all of that,” she said.

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“Whatever we do in print, we want to make sure there’s a strong digital extension to that, more than a video but a narrative around the activation of content,” said Ahmad Swaid, head of content at Dazed Media. “On social, the audience isn’t an observer but participator; we’re thinking about how can we get them to participate.”

TikTok, with its community of creators and hashtag challenges, has participation at its heart. Dazed’s latest print front cover will feature Lil Nas X, American rapper popularized on TikTok for his country rap single “Old Town Road.” The Dazed issue theme, “How the West Was Won,” follows the rise in cowboy culture. Aptly, the publisher is running a weeklong #LasooChallenge plus more original content from the magazine cover shoot. Dazed will have an eye on how many people take part in the challenge in order to measure the impact.

“It was a perfect opportunity,” said Swaid. “With TikTok we’re not just distributing content but getting people involved in what we are doing.”

The platform also suits live events and music, as radio giant Global has found. In June, Global streamed Capital’s Summertime Ball — the radio show’s live music event — on TikTok over eight hours, the stream had 19 million comments, likes and shares, and average watch time of 48 minutes, according to the company.

But Global’s fastest-growing social media channel is The PopBuzz TikTok account, which added 100,000 fans in June and currently stands at 174,000 fans. Here it posts behind the scenes footage from longer-form shows that are exclusive to TikTok and short clips from celebrity interviews.

Dazed is also keen to post original TikTok content rather than repost from elsewhere. The publisher has several other content plans beyond this week that it couldn’t share details of. For now, all options are open. TikTok is a fertile place for it to find new talent, as it has done on Instagram for its Dazed Beauty community.

“Long term, Dazed is a youth platform and TikTok is a platform that today’s youth is on,” said Swaid. “It makes sense for us to explore it rather than jump on a hot shiny new thing.”

As ever, being first to experiment on newer platforms means analytics, and as a result, monetization, is more fledgling. But publisher Jungle Creations sees the impressive early growth as strong indications of future commercial opportunities.

“Historically, as a company, we build the audience first and commercialize later,” said Melissa Chapman, chief content officer at Jungle Creations. “It’s a new younger demographic, and we’re having a lot of success without over committing on resources.”

In the last month, Jungle Creation has created a verified account for one of its brands, VT. Since then, it’s grown to 150,000 fans with some videos — a woman pushing a Pomeranian in a swing — fetching 2.5 million views. So far, its strategy is scouting out what’s trending or featured on the platform, then sourcing related videos from its archive. One staffer has incorporated TikTok to their daily workload.

In the U.S., a select number of agencies have access to TikTok’s self-serve platform, due for a wider U.S. roll-out this month. With this, it’s testing interest-based targeting, custom audience and pixel tracking. This is on top of targeting by age, gender, location, operating system and network on the device.

Like any platform that has an element of user-generated content, TikTok has faced scrutiny for brand unsafe environments. Its younger user base has also put it in the firing line for alleged misuse of children’s data, cyberbullying and young users feeling exploited by creators through digital gifting. Although there’s not much evidence yet that these cases will dent the platform’s ability to attract budgets from other platforms. In the U.K., Mediacom is currently not buying on TikTok as it’s considered high risk in terms of brand safety, which could stymie growth if other agencies follow suit.

For publishers posting on their own channels who have full control of what appears in their environment, this gives them an edge.

Before the end of the year, Chapman wants to get to 1 million followers on VT, a number that would signal commercial viability to brands and agencies looking to reach younger audiences.

“It’s a great place to unearth new trends and reach new audiences,” she said. “It’s exciting, but we’d want more clarity on the long-term commercial strategy before we put more of our key media brands on there.”

The post How culture media brand Dazed is using TikTok appeared first on Digiday.

“Go There” is the latest example of a TV news network taking a different approach to news programming on social platforms. To compete with all the other content grabbing people’s attention on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat, these networks are adapting their programming to more closely resemble that content. NBC News has succeeded in making that adjustment with its show “Stay Tuned,” which it has been expanding beyond Snapchat to YouTube, Instagram and TikTok. Now CNN will see if it can do the same with “Go There.”

While “Go There” will feature some traditional news footage, CNN is adopting more of the “vlogging” style popular on YouTube and Instagram by having its reporters film themselves talking into their phones. “It’s far more conversational. It’s not entirely scripted. You can think of a lot of this as a first-person diary,” said Ashley Codianni, executive producer of social and emerging media at CNN.

Additionally, CNN’s new daily news show on Facebook will not have a host recapping the day’s news. Instead, each 10- to 15-minute, square-formatted episode will zero in on a single topic, such as climate change, race and identity, immigration and economic inequality. The show’s premiere episode will concentrate on gun control with reporting from Detroit’s so-called “Red Zone,” a hotbed of gang violence, said Cullen Daly, executive producer of digital productions at CNN.

With “Go There,” CNN appears to be eschewing several characteristics that Facebook has identified as working for daily news shows in its first year of funding news programming for Watch and that the network employed for “Anderson Cooper Full Circle,” such as its vertical formatting, high-profile host and recap-style programming. That may be especially surprising considering that “Anderson Cooper Full Circle” became one of the most popular news shows on Watch, and its success was why CNN opted to take the show off Facebook to distribute on its own site and app, according to Business Insider. But trying something different than what it’s done in the past is pretty much the point with “Go There.”

With “Go There,” CNN is producing a news show aimed at “the next generation of news junkies,” said Codianni. That translates to teenagers and up.

But Facebook is not exactly overrun with teens seeking out shows to watch. “This is obviously an opportunity where we are being paid by Facebook to experiment,” said Codianni.

While Codianni said Facebook did not provide any suggestions or feedback on the style or format for “Go There,” the new show would appear to be part of the social network’s continuing efforts to home in on what kinds of news programming people will tune into on Watch. After debuting 21 news shows on Watch in its first year of funding shows, Facebook told publishers that it would not renew two-thirds of those shows, Digiday reported earlier this year.

A majority of the employees that CNN will have working on “Go There” will be dedicated to the show, according to Daly. Those employees will include members of Daly’s digital productions team and Codianni’s social and emerging media team. Additionally, “there will be some people who work on this who it’s 80% of their jobs [and for others] it’s 30% of their jobs,” said Daly, who said it was hard to give a rough headcount “because it’s kind of evolving.”

CNN will distribute the show on its main Facebook page and cross-post episodes to CNN International’s Facebook page. To help drive viewership, the network will also promote the show on some of its sites and will likely take advantage of Instagram Stories’ link feature so that people can swipe up from that platform to tune into episodes on Facebook, Codianni said.

In yet another adjustment, CNN will release new episodes of “Go There” at 8 p.m. Eastern instead of 6:25 p.m. Eastern, when “Anderson Cooper Full Circle” had bowed its episodes. The network decided to push back the release time after seeing that a lot of viewers had tuned into episodes of “Anderson Cooper Full Circle” between 8 and 10 p.m. Eastern, which Codianni described as the “sweet spot for mobile viewing.”

In addition to the show’s vlogging style and focus on a single topic of particular interest to young viewers, CNN has made another adjustment with “Go There” aimed at audiences whose idea of a show is an Instagram Story. Each episode will feature a progress bar atop the video similar to the one displayed atop Instagram Stories, which is a feature that was developed specifically for this show, said Daly. “We’re trying to replicate that user habit within this video but also create that line of suspense and expectation that the video is continuing,” she said.

The post Inside the development of CNN’s new Facebook-funded Watch show, ‘Go There’ appeared first on Digiday.

It was different from what you were used to.
The agency I was at used to be smaller. It had its issues, but it was very casual. But it was very long hours, with big expectations, and a toxic environment where every mistake was treated like the end of the world. So I wanted to go brand-side. 

What were expectations there?
I expected the brand side to be less stressful and have more support. The work itself was a lot more relaxed. It was really simple work. Brand-side was a lot less stressful. Not so with the structure. They had this system, where you had to follow this management system. You were not permitted to talk to anyone except your supervisors, but nobody else above them or anyone senior to you. If you break that rule, there were consequences. We weren’t even allowed access to the same floor as the execs. They were very particular about this rule, and it created almost a class system of sorts within the company, with lower-level employees all striving to reach the higher ground we were denied access to. 

That’s extreme.
Everyone there thought it was extremely stupid. But this corporate culture was tied to the culture of the company. A lot of employees on my level, there was this sense that the people higher than us were gods. We were lowly people whose work didn’t matter. Everyone wanted to be a manager.

What happened next?
I was basically put on probation. I didn’t know why. I’m a hard worker and a friendly person, so I had no idea what was up. It took me some digging to find out, but I eventually discovered my supervisor felt threatened by me and had decided to put me on probation to get rid of me. I believe she did this as a result of the strangely competitive culture at the company.

What makes you think that?
I had shared some best-practices to someone when she had asked for feedback. She told me I needed to make my personality more “floofy.” And then I found out other people my level had also complained. The culture of this company created a unique and toxic situation where co-workers on my own level immediately saw me as the competition they needed to eliminate, and where my supervisor saw me as a threat to her own status as someone in power. With two very different pressures coming from both sides, it made it impossible to succeed there. It was also just really unpleasant. I rarely cry, but I cried multiple times in the bathroom at that position.

What were the implications of this?
The thing is, you’re basically dispensable when you work in marketing at a big company. And nobody wants to rock the boat. I worked for the digital marketing team, which is supposed to be innovative and experimental. But a culture of cover-your-ass means you can’t do that. I laugh when I hear of big brands hiring innovation offices or trying to be nimble. That’s great but if you are in a place where nobody can shake things up and have a personality, it is hard.

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