Month: November 2021

“We needed to attract younger audiences, with a specific focus on the 18–24 demographic that has potential for developing a longer-lasting and deep relationship with the Far Cry franchise as we continue to evolve,” said Ubisoft brand manager Angela Lin. “Younger audiences live and breathe digital, which is why our launch campaign was digital-first.”

The cross-platform campaign had Ubisoft and creative agency Funworks working closely with social platforms to create bespoke content for each. Across platforms, the crux of the campaign was Giancarlo Esposito, who played the role of Antón Castillo, the fictional villain of Far Cry 6. In various ads, Esposito taunts players for failing to win the game, shares gameplay tips and directs bone-chilling stares at the camera. “All of our videos from this campaign have a 99%+ like ratio on YouTube,” said Lin, pointing out that independent fan-made compilations of the ads have attracted hundreds of thousands of views. 

The campaign was the brainchild of Funworks, whose ideation process involves workshops with comedians and improvisers who get a sneak preview of the game. It was this approach, which Funworks CEO Paul Charney describes as “the science of fun,” that helped convince Ubisoft to break the fourth wall and address players directly via the Esposito ads. “Humor is saying the quiet part loud,” Charney said. 

Once they nailed down the “big idea” of enlisting Esposito, the creatives at Funworks brought the idea to social platforms such as Instagram, Snapchat and Facebook to figure out how best to execute on each. Of the participating platforms, Snapchat was particularly engaged, according to Funworks co-founder Kenny White. “A couple big things really stood out,” White said. “For me, I think one is that they showed us their best-performing ads,” which became a blueprint for the drily humorous Esposito ads.

This enthusiasm lines up with Snapchat’s push to take advantage of its growing gaming audience. And while the pseudo-interactive and heavily auditory nature of the Esposito ads make them a natural fit for Snapchat, this seamlessness was a natural result of Ubisoft and Funworks’ platform-first approach. “By working that far upstream, Funworks was able to develop creative in line with Snap’s best practices,” said Clayton Peters, head of U.S. Verticals at Snap, pointing out that 58% of Snapchatters are console gamers, according to Q4 2020 data from GWI.

That said, the feedback for Ubisoft’s Esposito-led marketing campaign has not been entirely positive; for a minority of consumers, increased interactivity and fourth-wall breakage can be uncomfortable. For example, some players were disturbed when they received emails purportedly from the Far Cry 6 villain taunting them for giving up and listing gameplay stats such as hours played and number of weapons collected. But the email side of the campaign was entirely separate from Funworks’ social platform push, and “the team we worked with at Ubisoft actually wasn’t on top of that either,” Charney said.

Dissenters notwithstanding, Ubisoft’s unusual Far Cry 6 campaign has received a warm reception from audience members across platforms. Though formal results for the campaign are still forthcoming, the game developer already plans to apply the lessons it’s learned to more platform-first campaigns in the future.

“Leaning into the behavior of consumers on each platform and tailoring assets to that behavior has been a huge learning for how to stand out in a positive way,” Lin said. “Replicate that across multiple social and other channels, and you’re onto something that will delight consumers and make your campaign unmissable.”

“Live shopping on social [media] has been hugely successful in China and now is making its way to America,” said Nick Meyer, director of social strategy at Campbell Ewald. “What tells me there will be a successful adoption is that live shopping is the technological next step to #TiktokMadeMeBuyIt. Users have been self-identifying as social influenced purchasers for quite some time proving the behavior is there. So by combining the purchase influence of top creators with the ease of in-app click-to-buy features, social commerce has a new wrinkle we need to pay attention to.”

It’s unclear how quickly brands will adopt live shopping but marketers and agency execs say they are looking to experiment there, especially as more platforms add the capability. 

“For most consumer brands, live shopping is still in an experimental stage,” said Brendan Gahan, partner and chief social officer at Mekanism. “For us, it’s appearing in more and more of our recommendations, but only being implemented a handful of times — usually as part of a ‘test’ budget.”

At the same time, with shifts due to Apple’s iOS 14 and the need to diversify, live shopping comes at a time when marketers may be more open to testing it out. “Advertisers targeting capabilities have suffered — so they’re also looking for new sales avenues,” said Gahan.

Aside from targeting capabilities and iOS 14 changes, the rise in costs due to the shift to digital advertising over the last 18 plus months of the pandemic has marketers looking to diversify spending and testing new channels.

“The pandemic caused a disproportionate shift to digital that resulted in significantly higher costs due to increased online competition,” said Mike Feldman, vp and head of commerce and retail media at dentsu. “Advertisers are hungry for new options that are both cost-effective and impactful, and livestream shopping fits that mold. It’s also different given its interactivity as shoppers are getting more product info and personal touch, which leads to better engagement and loyalty on top of sales.” 

It’s unclear how quickly marketers will adopt live shopping or the longevity of the feature for advertisers. That said, there are some brands that have been doing live shopping long before the platforms began offering it. 

BetaBrand was among them, “staging live, interactive product drops since 2019.” In all, it has already hosted 480 broadcasts, according to CEO and founder Chris Lindland.

“Since last spring, it’s been the only way we’ve launched new products, directing our entire audience via email and SMS to watch and interact with the broadcasts,” said Lindland. “Most every week, we add new features to our chat and Shopstream feed, all designed to hook customers into participating and, ideally, communicating with one another.” 

Per Lindland, live shopping is “incredible marketing because nothing shows social proof like an energetic live bazaar.”

3 Questions with Meghan Hurley, vp of marketing at Farmer’s Fridge

When the pandemic hit, Farmer’s Fridge went from being a B2B company to a B2C. How did you all pull it off?

Farmer’s Fridge started as a healthy vending machine. Once the pandemic hit, we lost 80% of our business. So, we launched a DTC delivery program. At the same time, we launched into retail. We pivoted from a vending machine company into an omni-channel, all over the place company. We really used Facebook to scale, as every other DTC brand, then went back and started doing more traditional efforts. Then, we also started launching more consumer-friendly stories. We were seeing some success that restaurants weren’t able to see. So, [we were] partnering with these chefs to bring attention to their products, the work that they were doing [donating] to different restaurant relief funds. Right now, we’re looking to do some awareness campaigns in the next year, once we can keep up with demand.

What did you learn from that pivot?

We really found our brand voice. Before, we were more reserved as a brand. With the pandemic, we were able to be a bit more fun and engaging. We sell salads. They’re not always approachable. We really want to be approachable, to be there when you need us. We’re all friends and we’re not judging you for your food choices. We couldn’t really figure out that story before. With the pandemic, we were able to poke a little bit more fun at ourselves and be a bit more approachable and fun. That has been our biggest learning is that that works, people like it and it comes very naturally to the team.

What impact did that have on Farmer’s Fridge’s media mix?

Before, there was nothing. Now, we’re really on Facebook. We just recently launched Google Ad words [and] direct mail. We’ve seen really great partnerships with public radio. They offer a lot of flexibility, so we’ve seen good returns on that in Chicago. We were planning on doing a big campaign this year, but we’re tapping out on demand. We pushed it to next year and I’m hoping that’ll be a much more diverse media mix. 

Because we’re launching in new markets, Facebook has been the easiest to get all of those customers. I have a performance marketing background, so I know I need to diversify off of Facebook, so we are starting to test everything. But we’re also making sure that the channel is profitable. We only get so much budget to play with and as we go into the new year, as we get new customers, it opens up that testing budget a little bit more, which will hopefully help diversify away from Facebook.  — Kimeko McCoy

By the numbers

The travel industry is on the mend from the blow COVID-19 dealt it, as many are looking to book expensive vacations starting next year, according to recent research from Rakuten Advertising. Per Rakuten’s research, many travelers have already slated travel plans for 2022, meaning travel marketers should start preparing sooner rather than later. Find more details and key data points from the report below:

• More than 90% of travelers say they plan to look for bargains when making travel-related purchases. Of those, over a quarter (27%) will use customer review sites to find deals, surpassed only by online search results (40%).
• Sites and apps that show offers from multiple brands (22%), online ads (22%), and card-linked offers (21%) are all very popular among travelers looking for deals.
• 56% of travelers say they don’t plan to change their travel plans regardless of concern around new surges in COVID-19 cases. — Kimeko McCoy

Quote of the week

“Whether a marketer today is running a brand or awareness campaign, they are still looking for a return on that investment.”

— Geoffery Litwer, vp of programmatic and display media at Tinuiti, on stage at the Digiday Programmatic Marketing Summit in Miami, Florida, when asked about brand and awareness campaigns versus performance marketing.

What we’ve covered

• As the metaverse industry continue to heat up, these are the leaders emerging from the gaming space.
• Work from home became work from wherever for this startup.
• How Twitter’s God-is Rivera is offering Black voices a seat at the table.

Everything has accelerated since the pandemic, including the historically slow-moving TV ad market. Not only did this year’s upfront cycle blow by, but early talks ahead of next year’s upfronts are already underway.

“We’re having earlier conversations,” said Kim Kelleher, president of commercial revenue and partnerships at AMC Networks, in the latest episode of the Digiday Podcast. “Maybe it’s because I come from digital media and publishing, which were always-on mediums, that television is starting to feel a lot more like the always-on world that I came from. We’re having conversations already about next year.”

To be clear, Kelleher described those conversations as “preemptive” planning discussions. “Certainly not negotiating,” she said. Still, the fact that conversations about next’s upfronts are taking place a month after this year’s deals took effect indicates how the overall TV ad market is changing as the dividing line between linear and digital blurs and advertisers reevaluate their options for reaching audiences.

“There’s a level of thoughtfulness that needs to go into the media mix and the distributions you’re going to choose to tell and market your stories with,” Kelleher said. “It’s never too soon to start.”

Here are a few highlights from the conversation, which have been edited for length and clarity.

Adapting to advertisers’ supply chain challenges

Flexibility has definitely been the word for the last couple years, and I think rightfully so. Forcing [advertisers] into a situation where they’re marketing something that’s not on the shelves is just not the business we’re in. So we’re having a number of ongoing conversations. Things are shifting in real time: out of fourth quarter into first quarter, out of first quarter into second quarter.

The future of the upfront

At the end of the day, the upfront advertisers are securing price and inventory and the flexibility they negotiate. Based on this last upfront, it looks like demand for that is still very, very high. That could very well be, and likely is, tied to the uncertainty around avails and inventory overall. But I see the upfront staying relevant for at least a few more years, frankly until there’s a better opportunity to meet their needs on their marketing side of things. Television still works. It’s a mainstay of their plans.

Making more TV inventory available for household-level targeting

Initially we were overlaying [AMC Networks’ own] promos [with household-targeted, or addressable, ads] because that was controllable inventory. We could run addressable units and overlay against our own house promos without interrupting any other advertiser’s overall footprint. That is viable, but obviously that promo inventory works hard for us. We don’t want to eat too much of that [promo inventory by repurposing it for addressable ads]. I do think there’s an opportunity to start looking at [direct-response] advertising and overlaying DR. And then I also think there’s an opportunity for advertisers that are large enough and making enough creatives to overlay against themselves.

Nielsen’s potential role in next year’s upfront deals

I don’t think we have made enough united traction for it to change [from upfront deals being based on Nielsen’s measurements]. That being said, I think it’s an open and ongoing discussion. But time is going to get very tight for it to change in a meaningful or truly disruptive way going into this upfront. But that’s just my opinion. Something could happen before then, and we’re all ears and ready to react.

Indeed, new research from global recruitment firm Robert Walters indicates 34% of U.K. office workers would refuse a job offer if a company’s environmental, sustainability or climate control values do not align with their own. In the U.S., the figure is even higher: 41%. France and Chile (both on 53%) top the list, closely followed by Switzerland (52%).

It’s a “new era of recruiting,” according to Chris Poole, managing director of Robert Walters U.K. “While all the normal questions still get asked around pay, benefits, training and career paths, increasingly we get asked: ‘What does X company stand for?’” he said.  

Before accepting a job offer, people now carefully consider their prospective employer’s social media output, check the “about us” pages on its website and Google the latest news articles about the company to see if its actions match its words.

“Employers failing to improve on their sustainability credentials should expect to see a knock-on impact to their hiring,” said Poole. “With there being so many avenues to being environmentally conscious as an employer, there simply isn’t much room to ignore the matter.” Moreover, he added: “As a workforce strategy, ESG [environmental, social and governance] has become a competitive advantage in attracting and retaining talent.”

However, while a commitment to improving sustainability is attractive to employees, the opposite is true if businesses offer token gestures. Younger workers are especially attuned to this, according to Gordon Wilson, CEO of Advanced, a U.K.-based software company. His business’ recent trends report found 56% of 18 to 24-year olds “are accusing their employer of ‘greenwashing’, meaning that they overstate and gloss over their sustainable business efforts for business gain,” he said. 

“We cannot afford to ignore the voice of this generation, which has much greater personal awareness of their values and the impact they want to have on the world than previous generations. These are the voices of future leaders, and they’re joining the business world with an inherent distrust.”

Young people want to align themselves with companies that are doing the right thing for the planet and society, and are working towards positive change. “They want more than just a job,” added Wilson.

This insight chimes with the experience of Andrew Hunter, co-founder and economist at job-search engine Adzuna. “Having a strong ESG strategy can be a big talent draw for a brand, though people are becoming increasingly aware of greenwashing and are judging employers based on their actions, rather than their opinions,” he said. 

“It’s part of a wider trend where company culture and beliefs are becoming more important to job seekers, financial reimbursements alone are taking a bit more of a back seat, and work-life balance and well-being are instead coming to the fore.”

Hunter points out the social element of ESG is also about sustainability.

He notes that many of the businesses leading the way in this area are B Corp certified, including Homeboy Recycling in California, which provides on-the-job training and employment opportunities for ex-offenders. “Rubicon Bakers is another B Corp focusing on creating opportunities for marginalized sectors of the workforce,” he said. “In the U.K., The Body Shop has a focus on providing employment for people experiencing homelessness or with lower levels of education. Making sure these jobseeker segments don’t slip through the cracks is an important aspect of ESG efforts that we forsee growing.”

Rita Trehan, founder of DARE Worldwide, a global transformation consultancy, believes that a well-known Swedish teenager, who has been in Glasgow at COP26, is spearheading the drive for younger workers demanding greater sustainability. “Greta Thunberg’s ‘Blah, blah blah’ message has resonated with people,” she said. “The conversation today is more scrupulous, more cynical, better at challenging businesses and governments on the gap between policy and impact.”

Trehan pointed to statistics that show a vital distinction to make for businesses looking to dial up their sustainability credentials: nearly three-quarters of employees believe all workers are responsible for upholding a sustainability policy. It needs to be baked into the company culture, she added.

And yet, businesses that want to do so will need to tread carefully if they’re to avoid being accused of greenwashing, according to James Hand, a data scientist and co-founder of Giki—which stands for Get Informed Know your Impact—a social enterprise in London that helps people live sustainably. “There aren’t any ‘quick wins’ that don’t end up looking like greenwashing,” he said.

Instead, companies need to include all stakeholders and map the carbon impact of their operations to inform their sustainability policy, said Hand. “When they have measured their operational footprint, having a net-zero plan and building a staff engagement program can really help bolster their credentials and, more importantly, actually have an impact. Some 70% of emissions come from individuals, but organizations can bring those individuals together to make sure we halve emissions this decade,” he added.

Taylor Francis, co-founder of Watershed, a climate-action startup based in San Francisco, agreed and stressed that companies who improve their sustainability credentials have higher employee retention — 40% higher according to a 2020 Deloitte report.

“Employees are putting pressure on their current employers to introduce more accurate methods for carbon accounting, and more actionable and aggressive plans to reach true net zero,” he added.

Clearly, what’s been discussed at COP26 is just the tip of the (melting) iceberg.

“If retailers become retail media networks, then they are a data source and can offer much more distilled and accurate data to create a better user experience and create a better and more efficient process for advertisers,” said Oz Etzioni, CEO at Clinch, regarding grocery retailers and other traditional retailers. 

Expanding on the point, Etzioni said the retail media network boom is empowering retailers to make their loyalty and CRM data even more valuable. 

“They aren’t just offering inventory as a publisher, they also hold the most precious data points — the type of data that isn’t available anywhere else,” Etzioni said. “This data is from people actually engaging with the location and products and who have given their consent to collect.”

One of these networks spoke with a Modern Retail reporter about the industry, “The most important piece of this business is that our first-party data allows us to base our audience off of real people,” said Kristi Argyilan, who was president of Target’s media network, Roundel, at the time. “The results when you market and use data based on real people is significantly better than data pools that are out there.” 

For effective personalization, first steps include mapping goals  

Advertisers start the journey toward effective personalization by identifying what they are looking to achieve. While these goals may shift as they learn more about navigating advertising on retail media networks, it’s important to have very specific targets at the start. Otherwise, initial results could take marketing teams in so many directions that focus suffers. 

It’s also important to consider the number of signals, time for processing, conditions, channels, and other needed elements — and that will need to be continuously updated, as personalization is never a set-it-and-forget-it type of tactic. 

Etzioni suggests thinking of the way retail media networks operate as somewhat akin to the travel industry. 

“They get you excited about going on vacation and offer many different destinations and flight options from several operators, bringing you down the funnel to actually decide to make a purchase, and then they track those purchases,” he said. “The whole idea is to get you into the CRM. They want to know when you’ll travel next, and if you’ve already booked a flight, they know you then have to get a hotel. With the travel industry, there’s on-site, and off-site advertising and the retail media industry is becoming smarter by looking at what works for others.”

Next steps for retailers on the path to personalization: Location, intent and device type 

With goals mapped, an essential next step in driving personalization with retail media networks is to optimize product recommendations by shopper location and intent. 

“It’s about location services and showing what the specific offers of nearby locations are and being able to match the products with what consumers are usually shopping for,” said Etzioni. “There’s a lot to consider, like what type of messages to show a specific user, and there’s a lot of A/B testing to be done to identify the right language and give users more ad experiences to segment them further,” 

Beyond location and customer responses, other factors include what’s happening around the consumer at a given time.  

“Once they get more data across locations, they can take it to the next level and start dealing with weather conditions,” Etzioni said, by way of example, “and then specific times of day and matching the different experiences to the different devices where people do most of their shopping. What specific products are they likely to purchase on their phone versus their desktop? What about during the day versus at night? There are different behaviors that those retail media networks and the advertisers need to learn to tie into their experimentations.” 

Outcomes: Retail media networks plus personalization are driving conversions

Finding ways to deliver ads that are closely aligned to consumers vastly increases conversions, but to do it right, advertisers need to engage with retail media networks strategically. When they do, the returns are manifold.

“Advertisers will be most amazed by the amount of and the speed of the data they get back,” Etzioni at Clinch added on the benefits of retail media networks and personalization. “The data will be much more robust because this is first-party data and these are people that are actually buying online and in-store, and the feedback is pretty much immediate. It’s actionable because they’re constantly engaged with the brand. Data is being built up constantly.”

With this, Etzioni advised a focus on creating — or obtaining — needed audiences for more specific targeting: “The big retailers will start buying those niche retailers who have very specific audiences rather than building up that sort of audience on their own. Those niche audiences can be very precious, premium audiences and allow for hyper-specificity.”

Advertisers will benefit from being able to target such niche audiences for their products.  Leveraging such data — at scale — will increasingly rely on retail media networks.