Month: July 2021

“The Olympics are still a major advertising event but it’s definitely lost its luster,” said Brendan Gahan, chief social officer and partner at Mekanism, adding that planning for this Olympics event wasn’t as big as it has been in the past. “The only thing bleeding through to the public are the controversies (cardboard beds, Sha’Carri ban, Covid cases, etc). The Olympics isn’t dominating the culture and conversation it once did.” 

The games kicked off last Friday with the Opening Ceremony and will run until August 8th. While NBC is broadcasting the Olympics in the U.S., ratings have already shown a dip — but the exact cause is unclear. “The numbers say there was a 33% drop in U.S. viewing audience compared to 2016,” said Karan Gera, svp and group planning director of Deutsch. “But it’s hard to say the lack of in-person audience is the reason for it.” 

As for the advertising, commercials that have appeared so far during the games feature messages of athletes’ perseverance. That’s a typical strategy for the Olympics and one that may make it more difficult for brands to stand out, according to agency execs. 

“For marketers, it seems like nothing has changed but everything has,” said James Denman, head of innovation and marketing at Yard NYC, of this year’s Olympic advertising messages. “The commercials are in the can, the manifestos are written, and the globally approved taglines are approved. What feels true this year, is that when an Olympics feels diminished, the grandiose global marketing statements seemingly shrink in parallel.” 

Without the usual attention and fanfare, this year’s Olympics will likely be yet another unusual event in a year and a half of unusual events since the onset of the pandemic for marketers to contend with and grade on a curve. 

“Watching the Olympic opening ceremony, it felt like a dress rehearsal rather than an actual ceremony for an event that brings the whole world together,” said Gera. “Maybe that is the way to look at this year’s Olympics as a dress rehearsal to how the world is coming (or trying to) out of COVID.”

3 Questions with Siobhan Nolan, vp of marketing at Spotlight Oral Care

How is your brand thinking about marketing and brand messaging this summer? How has (or hasn’t) the pandemic impacted that?

Last year we kept our marketing simple — focusing on the ingredients and the efficacy of our brand. Our customers are health conscious so in the midst of a global pandemic, we really wanted to assure them that they were using the best products possible for their overall health. This year, people are beginning to travel again. So, we have focused on more of a summer campaign — TV advertising on Love [Island] in the UK and we are also going to be launching a co-branded travel kit in the U.S. with a skincare brand that we love and are so excited about.

Given we’re not completely out of the pandemic and new variants are on the rise, how should marketers approach messaging the remainder of the summer?

The main thing is that we are considerate in our messaging. As a global brand, we are very conscious that countries are opening up at different rates. A lot of our customers may have been affected by the pandemic with illness with family members, potential job losses and long periods without being able to see family. So while we will celebrate the end of this pandemic with our customers, we will remain conscious that it has hugely affected people and will be considerate of that fact in our marketing.

Are there plans for the Spotlight team to return to the office or continue remote work?

We will continue to work remotely but provide the opportunity for teams to meet and have time together when it’s safe to do so. It’s important to have that personal contact but it’s also great that we can be flexible with staff with what works for them. We are in different countries, time zones, etc. so working from home provides the flexibility to jump in and out when you need to. And we love that we get to see families, dogs and insight in our staff’s homes! — Kimeko McCoy

By the numbers

Since 2020’s whirlwind of political events, social justice movements and climate change crusades, marketers have made it a point to make social activism part of their core strategy. For example, when Georgia moved to pass new restrictive voting legislation, brands like Delta, The Home Depot and Coca-Cola released statements. However, the brand messaging was perceived as performative, which led to threats of brand boycotts. While social activism marketing may seem like a win for advertisers, shoppers feel differently, especially when it comes to millennials and Gen Zers. Recently, MullenLowe U.S. released a study looking at the efficacy of brands getting involved in politics and other social issues. Find the breakdown of the numbers below:

• Regardless of whether the decision aligned with their beliefs, 41% of Americans somewhat or strongly agreed with brands making a public statement about their stance on the new voting law in Georgia.

• 41% of people also agree that more brands need to proactively speak out against legislation that threatens to restrict voting rights. 

• Conservatives (58%) felt strongly that the brands who spoke out against the Georgia voting law only did so to garner positive publicity. — Kimeko McCoy

Quote of the week

“The brands that are progressive in this area are the ones that understand the fact that self-expression is such an important component of why people spend so much time online. They can be who they want to be.”

— Christina Wootton, vp of brand partnerships at Roblox, told gaming reporter Alexander Lee about brands getting into then Metaverse (the piece was a WTF of the Metaverse).

What we’ve covered

• Independent ad agencies are focused on finding new ways to market themselves, reports senior editor media buying, planning Michael Burgi.
• Ro, a direct-to-consumer telehealth brand, detailed their return to and overall OOH advertising, per marketing reporter Kimeko McCoy.
• Senior news editor Seb Joseph surveyed media and marketing execs about the songs that have gotten them through the pandemic to cobble together a pandemic playlist.

These recent signals from the AG are “kind of narrowing down the gray area that some people were assuming,” said Kagan.

In addition to indicators from specific enforcement letters, lawyers are reading the tea leaves left in a series of generic CCPA case examples the agency published on July 19 which show evidence of enforcement around tracking for analytics purposes and opt-out notices. 

Analytics trackers are “definitely something to pay attention to”

In one case example published by the AG’s office, an unnamed social media firm was accused of non-compliance after sharing personal information about people’s website activities with third-party analytics providers without providing appropriate notice or opt-out capabilities. “After being notified of alleged noncompliance, the company updated its privacy policy and removed all third-party trackers from its app and website,” stated the case description.

This sign that data sharing via analytics trackers could constitute a data sale “is definitely something to pay attention to [because] this is something that the AG is looking at,” said Kagan.

Lee said there are a variety of factors the AG might take into consideration when assessing compliance when it comes to analytics trackers — such as which entities are involved in data flows, what analytics trackers are used for and whether they are tracking people across multiple sites or offline. “There is a lot of nuance in how these tools work, so it’s hard to create a bright line rule,” she said.

A separate violation for each cookie could add up

Much of the enforcement activity thus far revolves around so-called notice-to-cure letters which serve as fact-finders and warning notices to companies, asking for information and giving them a 30-day period during which they can work directly with the agency to make fixes that bring them into compliance with the law. But if companies using cookies and other trackers for ads or analytics fail to make necessary changes and are found in violation, the penalties could cost companies using tens of trackers a great deal, said one privacy lawyer who asked not to be named.

The state could charge companies for each individual instance of a cookie-related violation; for instance, it could charge for each time a California resident interacts with a website without proper notice or opt-out capabilities, said the lawyer, adding, “In cases like these, the number of violations may be large.” A big tally of violations can add up to high civil penalties. When violations are found to be unintentional, each one could result in a $2,500 fine. If found to be intentional, that fine soars to $7,500 for each violation.

“There is room for that interpretation in the statute, but I don’t know how the AG plans to calculate a ‘violation,’” said Jessica Lee, partner and co-chair of the privacy, security and data innovation practice group at law firm Loeb and Loeb.

The threat of counting each time a cookie is used as its own separate violation is probably more of a tactical means of incentivizing compliance than an actual plan for calculating penalties, said Alysa Hutnik, partner and chair of the privacy and security practice at law firm Kelley Drye and Warren.

She said it is “unlikely” that penalties would be assessed that way. However, she said California’s Department of Justice has “a fair amount of flexibility” in how it might tabulate penalties; for instance, it could base them on the number of days a company is non-compliant, or according to an amount of data records affected, she said.

The bureau in Houston, which officially opens in September, is the FT’s first joint office with Nikkei, the Japanese financial news company that acquired FT in 2015 for $1.3 billion. Both publishers are investing in office space in Houston to double down on coverage of global energy and how it’s affecting oil, gas and tech companies based in the U.S. The Hollywood bureau will focus on the business of the entertainment industry.

The FT’s U.S. readership has increased in the last few years, starting with Brexit coverage, followed by the COVID-19 pandemic which doubled its U.S. audience before the U.S. presidential election last year tripled it, said Peter Spiegel, US managing editor of the FT.

U.S. readership accounted for over 40% of FT.com’s traffic in the week leading up to Election Day, Spiegel said — usually, it makes up about a quarter to a third of the website’s audience. However, the publication is already seeing some of that taper off. FT.com had 1.4 million total U.S. unique visitors in June 2021, down 14% compared to the year prior, according to Comscore.

FT began covering energy with a standalone vertical about a year and a half ago, hiring Derek Brower as U.S. energy editor in January 2020. In 2021, an FT.com reader was twice as likely to read an energy story compared to last year, according to Spiegel.

The FT has about 1.1 million global print and digital subscribers, about a third of which are in the U.S., according to Spiegel, who said U.S. paid readers are “overwhelmingly digital,” around 80%. He did not provide exact figures.

The growth in its U.S. audience — and failing to continue to develop more of a readership in Asia after making a “huge investment” — led the company to reconsider its strategy here, Spiegel said, who did not provide additional commentary on what that investment looked like.

A three-year growth plan for the U.S. was born. “We were punching below our weight, with not enough editorial or marketing resources” behind FT’s reach in the U.S., Spiegel said. Now year TK of that three-year plan, he did not provide context on how much money the company is pooling — or will continue to invest — into its U.S. expansion.

The FT is targeting “global Americans” or those involved in an industry or sector that is “global in scale,” such as finance, energy and tech, Spiegel said. Or Americans that have family, business or academic ties to global markets. It’s not necessarily about competing with other financial publications like The Wall Street Journal, but being a part of the mix of subscriptions a “global American” — and left unsaid: those that have a wallet of one — might pay for. “I do think there’s space for all of us,” Spiegel said.

By targeting this demographic, the publication could theoretically also attract luxury advertisers, a category that wasn’t hit as hard during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The publication is focused on news quality, over specific beats or filling teams. A US-China correspondent role for its D.C. bureau, as an example, aims to get scoops on relations between the two countries ranging from foreign policy to trade. The FT’s U.S. headquarters in New York City is focused on financial coverage and a bureau in San Francisco covers Silicon Valley and tech. The FT also has an office in Chicago.

The Houston bureau is technically a reopening — the FT had an office there that shuttered over a decade ago. The joint bureau will be mostly about pooling resources and sharing a physical space. Editorial will remain separate. However, there may be opportunities down the line for the FT and Nikkei to co-host events, Spiegel said. In August, the FT will open another bureau in the Los Angeles area to cover the media and entertainment industries. These new bureaus mean the FT will have more offices in the U.S than in the U.K, Spiegel said.

“When you expand a new audience for a media company, especially a business-to-business one like the FT, the way you typically expand is through a specialization,” said Ava Seave, principal of Quantum Media, a management consulting firm specializing in media. Choosing a city like Houston to focus on the energy sector, “makes sense and is a smart way” to “expand your market by a speciality,” and find areas of coverage that differentiate the FT from other publications covering that sector as well. Being in Houston could give the FT “a competitive advantage,” Seave said. (Houston employs nearly a third of the country’s jobs in oil and gas extraction.) 

Yahoo is on a mission to drive brand affinity across its portfolio by turning casual readers into fanatics who are willing to spend money with the media company.

That strategy has led the company to experiment with new mediums and types of content, as well as new innovative partnerships, said Joanna Lambert, head of consumer at Yahoo. In the latest episode of the Digiday Podcast, she said she wants to reach 900 million monthly, paying users by further enticing them with shoppable videos, online sports betting partnerships, cross-brand content offerings, and more.

Lambert and her team now has more to work with: in May, Verizon Media was sold to private equity firm Apollo for $5 billion, in a deal that would make the suite of brands — including the Yahoo portfolio, Techcrunch, Engadget, In The Know and others — renamed to Yahoo. This deal has yet to close, so Lambert did not speak much about it, but did say that as a remaining 10% stakeholder in the new media company, Verizon will remain a partner on 5G projects, which has been a large focus for innovation, she said.

Below are highlights from the conversation that have been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Yahoo Mail sees newsletter opportunity with Gen Z

The resurgence of newsletters is fascinating, especially in the last couple of years. We’re seeing huge, massive growth, particularly in the Gen Z category, so much so that we actually celebrated our one year anniversary of The Yodel, which is the newsletter specifically that [takes] the best of the content across all of our platforms, both our first-party content as well as partner content and then pushes it through to these new audiences. Gen Z is really engaging in newsletters. I think it’s a fantastic way to quickly, swiftly summarize the news of the day and keep up-to-date with what’s going on. It’s a great customer experience [and] we’re seeing more and more interest from advertisers with our newsletters as well.

Turning readers into spenders

There’s a really strong affinity between our daily Fantasy players and betting, [but] one of the things that’s been really interesting is we’re also able to recruit betters outside of our sports properties. About 20-25% of the betters that we’ve recruited have come outside of Yahoo Sports or Yahoo Fantasy. Think about the Yahoo Mail users or Yahoo Finance users who maybe haven’t yet discovered Yahoo Sports, but we’ve been able to recruit them. And the reason that we’ve been able to do that is over the last year or so, we’ve really been doubling down on our platforms’ personalization capabilities. I want to be able to not just serve you every day with Yahoo Finance because I know you’re interested in investing and you’ve been managing your portfolio on Yahoo Finance, [but] if you also have an interest in sports, I want to also be able to serve you sports. Or maybe you have an interest in lifestyle and you want to look at Yahoo Life. As we’ve been able to develop that platform, it not only benefits us to be able to better serve audiences with all of the different things that they feel passionate about but it’s also helped us to be able to find and serve customers in other parts of the platform, things like betting.

Readers will pay for value 

[The subscriptions business] is really [for] fanatics, particularly on Yahoo Fantasy Plus or [Techcrunch’s] Extra Crunch or Yahoo Finance Plus. It’s the most engaged audience that is the most interested in being upsold a subscription product. It’s not necessarily by demographic. We’re seeing a lot of Gen Zers, especially in the Extra Crunch and Yahoo Fantasy Plus products, but it really is a spectrum across all of the generations that we serve. Household income, you know, obviously, across our platform, we serve a very diverse audience, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that the higher income [audiences] are the most engaged in buying subscriptions. If there’s value to be had, if someone sees value in something like a subscription or buying something on our platform, then they’ll definitely buy it from us knowing that we’re a trusted source.

Many brands are still struggling to communicate their values and purpose in a way that resonates with consumers. This tension is particularly acute for brands striving to establish trust with Gen Z audiences, who are “making decisions with their wallets,” said Vice Media Group’s Global CMO, Nadja Bellan-White.

The first step is actually knowing what your purpose is. “Have a clear North Star,” said Bellan-White. Brands have to stand for something that existing and potential customers relate to, whether it be empathy, social justice, authenticity, or something else. Critically, brands have to show, not tell. “Watch this space, because a lot of brands that are on top will no longer be there because I’m telling you, you can’t just be a mouthpiece for action,” Bellan-White said. “You actually have to take real action.”

Cheryl Guerin, EVP of Marketing at Mastercard America, talked about how Mastercard has translated its mantra of “doing well by doing good” into real-world action. Guerin said projects like the Strivers Initiative, which provides financial and technological support to help businesses owned by Black women build and leverage their digital presence, are making a real difference. “What’s really important is we didn’t just show up at the worst of times,” Guerin said.

L’Oreal Group CMO/CDO Marc Toulemonde captured the sentiment of many speakers with his description of “super-inspiring” Gen Zers who are committed to diversity, inclusion and a values-driven approach to consumption. Nadja Bellan-White said the days when young consumers might set aside their discontent with a brand because they like the brand’s products are over.  In fact, Gen Zers are more likely to create their own product and brand to replace the brand that has irked them.

Brands that maintain open, regular communication with Gen Zers and are responsive to what the demographic says are best placed to create products and experiences that are true to Gen Z’s aspirations and needs. America Eagle CMO Craig Brommers said the brand regularly consults a panel of 2,000 Gen Zers to take the pulse on a variety of questions. “At any moment, on any given day, we can ask them what’s the best approach to this opportunity or this issue,” Brommers said. “And they really give us a read on the right tone.” Emily Ketchen, CMO & VP with Lenovo’s Intelligent Devices Group, talked about drawing on a cohort of customers she described as “corporate trendsetters” — highly accomplished young people around the intersection of Gen Z and millennial generations – to find out how younger people want to interact with technology. “They’re adamant about the kind of technology that they will use, and what is important to them and how they see themselves using that technology,” she said. These insights are shaping the brand’s thinking about the hybrid work models that are emerging as many workers return to offices on a part-time basis. One manifestation of this: A campaign Lenovo ran with lifestyle influencer and Love Squad founder Ally Love.

Marketers may have breathed a collective sigh of relief when Google announced it was delaying the phase-out of third-party cookies until 2023, but now is the time for action. Cookies are still going away, and the search intensifies for new ways of tracking identity that respect consumer privacy.

Gary Burtka, vp of U.S. operations at RTB House, shared early results of the company’s tests with cookie-free solutions in partnership with Google. After testing around 500 campaigns, they’ve seen 94.5 percent effectiveness in retaining CTR, even without cookies. Meanwhile, publishers were able to retain over 99 percent of their revenue margins.

Burtka also stressed the important role contextual targeting will play in the post-cookie landscape and pointed to other ID-based solutions in the pipeline. RTB House will be the first DSP to test Liveramp’s new ATS solution, for instance. “This new ATS solution is going to be more secure and actually faster because it matches directly to the DSP,” he said.

Data ownership is also going to be critical for brands going forward. Shake Shack CMO Jay Livingston talked about the “low key battle” between restaurants and delivery partners as they compete for customer data. Whether your brand faces this kind of tension with a partner, CMOs need to make sure they’re doing all they can to leverage data collection. Building a customer loyalty program is one solution Shake Shack is looking at, but Livingston said the challenge is figuring out how to ensure the program actually promotes acquisition. “How do we increase frequency without just paying all of our best guests over and over to eat here?” he said.

Marketers can’t lean on any one tactic or solution to guarantee success in today’s landscape, but the one consistent truth is that over-reliance on legacy approaches is yielding diminishing returns. The antidote to complacency is the courage to test and learn, and the CMO Summit returned to that theme repeatedly.

America Eagle’s Craig Brommers talked about the importance of leading with innovation on social platforms, citing his company’s success at leveraging Snapchat as a driver of conversions. The brand’s AR-powered Snapchat connected lens has been a hit with Gen Z, who have embraced the tool’s virtual try-ons and a feature that allows friends to shop together. 

Physical retail is bouncing back but will look very different after the pandemic. We heard from brands like American Eagle and L’Oreal about their preparations for the so-called phygital-centric future of retail, from video shopping and consultations with in-store associates to live streaming. “Be curious, and push yourself,” said Brommer.

Marketers don’t always like to hear this, but you’re not going to get it right all the time. “You have to be willing to move quickly and have a level of agility while staying really tightly anchored again to your brand values,” said Emily Ketchen of Lenovo. Humility is your friend, Ketchen said.

Marketers need to be energetic about finding new ways of engaging audiences, new tools and formats, Nadja Bellan-White said. “And by the way, you’re completely able to make it up as you go along,” she added.

Phygital

Marketers love a portmanteau, and this one refers to the blending of physical and digital realms that gathered steam due to the pandemic. From events to retail, phygital is the new normal. It’s what consumers want, particularly Gen Zs, and creating seamless phygital experiences is an exciting, rewarding challenge for marketers. The technology is now there to make it happen, with ever more sophisticated iterations of AR, VR and AI redefining the limits of what phygital can achieve. “It’s getting more and more blurred,” said L’Oreal Group CMO/CDO Marc Toulemonde. “There is no e-commerce or brick-and-mortar shopping, there is a phygital shopping experience.”

“We’ve stabilized the pure hybrid — how do we move to a place where we can thrive in hybrid and we can create technology and solutions for whatever the situation may be?” — Emily Ketchen, CMO & VP, Intelligent Devices Group, Lenovo

• With many of us returning to the office at least on a part-time basis, the conversation is shifting to how to build models for hybrid workplaces that will be sustainable beyond the pandemic. Emily Ketchen talked about the pivotal role technology will play in facilitating this shift toward a more adaptive, flexible workplace. It’s a decisive test of the ability of businesses and leaders to accommodate the needs and preferences of their employees, and one that will impact the careers of many marketers.

“I’ve developed a healthy skepticism of influencers, but they’ve come roaring back during this pandemic, and some of the influencers we’ve worked with, either from a partnership perspective or organically, have really led to some terrific results, and Instagram influencers are delivering as well.” — Craig Brommers, CMO, American Eagle

• Influencers remain essential partners for many marketers thanks to their enormous reach and ability to create content that resonates with their audience. Of course, as platforms like TikTok come to the fore and livestreaming steadily gains momentum in the U.S., there are changes to the ways marketers work with influencers, but as Craig Brommers said, influencer campaigns and partnerships are still a vital part of any brand’s marketing strategy.

“You cannot put a single point of view and say ‘This is all BIPOC, this is all multicultural so therefore that’s how I’m going to market.’ No, that’s just not how it’s going to work anymore.” — Nadja Bellan-White, Global CMO, Vice Media Group

• Marketers need to be more sophisticated in the way they speak to BIPOC communities. Too often we see campaigns based on lazy assumptions and painting communities with broad brushstrokes. Nadja Bellan-White urged marketers to consider the diversity that exists within BIPOC communities, and to address consumers on the basis of who they really are. “The different backgrounds, first generation, second generation, those that have grown up here, those that come from multi-ethnic, multi-generational, multicultural backgrounds — all of this is part of the BIPOC community,” she said. Challenge yourself to think more globally, and look to other parts of the world for insight and inspiration. “You can’t just be the CMO of the United States, you have to be a global chief marketing officer,” Bellan-White said. “That means taking into account things that are happening all over the world, and not just what’s happening outside your front door.”

41 percent of Black-owned businesses had to close their doors, either temporarily or permanently during the pandemic, according to research from the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research. Cheryl Guerin, EVP of marketing, Mastercard America, cited this stat while discussing brands living their purpose and matching words with actions.

• Brands can now take segments from Experian, InfoSum and LiveRamp and feed them into Predictive Audiences, which rolled out in January, to help brands navigate away from third-party cookies. 
• Comscore’s contextual audience segments are built using a global panel of 3 million internet users, two thirds of whom are located outside the U.S. 
• Comscore charges for the service based on usage.

Replacing, not rebuilding

As advertisers tilt their budgets back toward contextual targeting, there is a lingering question around how much contextual will be able to replace the always-on, automated audience targeting models that many of the largest advertisers spent years building. 

Comscore’s tool is partly meant to help answer that question. An advertiser that has first party data on a small slice of its most coveted audience segments could upload that data and find contextual segments that deliver the same kinds of people, but in greater numbers. 

“We use the clean rooms or matching providers as the mechanism to understand a seed set of panelists or opt-in folks who have performed a given behavior,” said Rachel Gantz, gm of Comscore’s activation services. “We are able to see different media consumption patterns and behaviors and behaviors. 

“We can translate that to contextual signals that are predictors.” 

Other tech providers have begun offering novel ways to repurpose contextual segments. Earlier this month, Centro announced it had launched a contextual offering designed to slot cookie-focused audiences into contextual signals on its DSP, Basis. 

Experimentation and activation

Earlier this month, brands and publishers went from having a few months to a couple years to solve the problem of third-party cookie deprecation. That change, which has thrown open the doors to lots of experimentation, has bought Comscore more time to build out this side of its business. 

“Planning and measurement were their core,” said a source at one large digital media company that uses Comscore, who asked not to be identified while discussing a current partner. “But what they’re moving toward is activation. They have a tremendous view of the internet because they’re on so many pages.”

“They’re moving into activation because they know [everyone’s] days as a standalone service provider are over,” that source continued. “You can’t just be tag validation, can’t just be brand safety anymore. Otherwise you get replaced.”