Month: May 2022

“The shopping spree we’ve been on is pretty prolific. And most of that is really geared towards being one of the dominant media players in the United States and North America,” Webby said in the latest episode of the Digiday Podcast.

While the bulk of Future plc’s buys have been purchases of publications, the strategies behind them have not solely been about adding like inventory and like audiences. That was the case with its deal for WhoWhatWear, announced in May, to bolster the publisher’s portfolio of women’s lifestyle publications. But its acquisition of entertainment publisher CinemaBlend last year opened the company up to entertainment advertisers that hadn’t yet become part of its client base, Webby said. Meanwhile, the March acquisition of Waive will help the company to build on its first-party data platform Aperture as Future plc develops its own identifier, Future ID, which is designed to not only help the publisher prepare for the demise of the third-party cookie but also capitalize on its burgeoning U.S. business.

“We feel really good about our ability to not have to rely on cookies at all. And we have that ability today. One of the benefits of having such a vast user base that’s all on our same owned-and-operated platform is we’re already reaching one out of every three U.S. online adults,” said Webby.

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

Acquisition as advertiser diversification tactic

The fact that we keep adding new content plays with new acquisitions gives us a whole new range of clients to talk to, so not everyone in the marketplace is going to be down at a given time. Certainly we’ve seen some clients either may have supply chain issues or they couldn’t get product out, and so maybe they’ve canceled campaigns or delayed it. That absolutely has happened in different pockets. But I think we’ve been fortunate that we’ve been able to weather that by having a really diverse portfolio of brands and users.

Acquisition as advertiser acquisition play

When we first acquired CinemaBlend, we weren’t doing business with the likes of Hulu or Disney+ or HBO Max or any of the big Hollywood studios or streamers. Today we do business with almost all of them. So that was a really good example of us looking at the marketplace, finding a site that can really add to our portfolio of brands in giving us a new content property that we can go to market with and bring in a whole new set of clients and users to our overall portfolio.

Acquisition as cross-selling opportunity

We acquired The Week; we also acquired Kiplinger’s Person Finance. That has created deal opportunities in the wealth category for us as well as current events. So we’ve been able to look at advertisers that they had traditionally had a lot of strength and long-term relationships with, and now we’re bringing new Future brands to the fore for them that they’re able to now communicate with users. So we’re cross-selling quite a bit. That’s one of the benefits that we look to when we bring new brands into the portfolio.

Acquisition as first-party data strategy

We’ve migrated TheWeek.com onto our owned-and-operated platform, which we call Vanilla. We have over 250 web properties all on the same platform. That enables us, from a first-party data standpoint, to look at a user as an individual and understand where they come into the Future portfolio, what content resonates with them, where do they go if they go from TheWeek.com and then click over to Guitar World or MarieClaire.com. We can identify that person as a unique user. If someone’s looking for a certain audience that The Week has in strength, we can also look at how that segment might play out across the entire Future network.

Influencers formed a key part of the marketing strategy behind the “CICAVERSE,” a Roblox world built by the British shoe brand Clarks. The branded space, which launched on May 16, includes a digital Olympic stadium, Roblox-ized Clarks Cica sneakers (the namesake of the experience) and a scavenger hunt mini-game that awards winners limited-edition virtual Roblox items — and, for the first 100 winners, real-life prizes.

“To be able to have an experience in Roblox that has a real-world extension, and excitement and energy around that — that is something that we really like to dig into,” said Josh Neuman, president of MELON, the metaverse development studio that designed the experience for Clarks.

To further encourage Roblox users to enter their branded world, Clarks brought in three Gen Z and Generation Alpha athlete–influencers — breakdancing 15-year-old B-Girl Terra, 16-year-old Parkour practitioner Robbie Griffith and Connor Stitt, an 11-year-old BMX rider — to promote the experience across their social feeds.

The Roblox space was built with these influencers in mind, featuring mini-games based on their passions and interactive Roblox characters modeled after each influencer.

“The importance of the youth athletes extends well beyond their roles in the Roblox game,” said Clarks CMO Tara McRae. “We began working with them over a year ago and they had a huge impact on the actual design of our Cica shoes.”

In addition to the Gen Z athletes, Clarks gave sneak previews of the space to native Roblox influencers — streamers who spend most of their time inside the platform — and MELON dropped hints among its network of Roblox influencers as well. MELON also intentionally shaped the experience to start conversations among influencers, in part by making the scavenger hunt into a genuine head-scratcher.

The challenge prompted Roblox users and YouTubers to make their own independent guides for the experience, much like they would for a non-branded Roblox game: a YouTube search for “CICAVERSE” reveals over a dozen videos with thousands of collective views, all posted at some point during the past week.

“It even got to the point where we were working in real-time with Clarks, and we hadn’t planned on releasing the first clue for 24 hours — but there was such attention within a couple [of] hours after launching that we contacted their head of social media and had him release the first clue early,” said MELON svp of partnerships and operations Heather Healy. “We also had to start putting little hints on the Clarks homepage, because everybody was talking about it.”

This multifaceted influencer strategy was effective at generating interest in Clarks’ Roblox space: in the week since its launch, the experience has been visited by over 1.5 million users, with an average of 1,000 active users in the space, according to figures provided by Clarks. It’s far from the first Roblox activation to succeed by enlisting influencers: to promote Nike’s “NIKELAND” experience, for example, media company Studio71 employed the prominent Roblox YouTuber Kindly Keyin to promote the space across his social channels and create sponsored content inside it. “As we partner with brands and help pair them with the right talent, it really is all about promoting discovery of their metaverse experiences,” said Studio71 co-CEO Adam Boorstin. “That is, to us, a key value that our talent can provide brands, vis-à-vis the metaverse space. They have massive audiences; they’re talking to a lot of fans in a very specific community.”

As more brands dip their toes into the metaverse, they risk burning users out on branded experiences that are more akin to interactive commercials than games. Proper gamification is one way to circumvent this, with the most well-designed experiences inspiring community conversations and content in their own right. Fine-tuned and authentic influencer partnerships form another important part of the puzzle. 

Traffic inside the CICAVERSE is already healthy — it took less than a week to hit one million visitors, according to numbers provided by Clarks — but the shoe brand is ready to jump into the metaverse with both feet. Moving forward, Clarks plans to continue adding new content to its Roblox world, building on the bridgehead it secured with the help of influencers both inside and outside of the Roblox community.

“In the coming months, we’ll be maintaining a drumbeat of interest in the game,” McRae said, “as we roll out exclusive opportunities and challenges.”

• Method One, which will specialize in behavioral science offerings to understand and make use of “the more emotional subconscious decision making that you make before you can explain it,” Flicker said;
• Function Growth seeks to install an internal marketing team in-house with clients to generate faster and more effective growth.

The company will also run XenoPsi Ventures, which will house any direct investments in startups, especially DTC ones, or the launch of new products. To help staff that, Flicker employs a larger-than-usual crew of finance pros that handle investment and risk analysis.

Flicker, who wholly owns the entire company, said XenoPsi enjoyed 28 percent revenue growth in 2021 over the prior year, and expects to match that rate of growth in 2022 — he declined to cite an actual revenue figure.

The following interview has been edited for space and clarity. 

Function Growth is an outgrowth of XenoPsi investing in brands. What clients have you helped, and how?   

So, our first client Shady Ray’s is today the fastest growing mid priced sunglasses company in the country. But when we met them, they were a startup where the founder was having sunglasses shipped out of his dad’s living room. He has this vision that there’s a real problem in the industry. Either you have $200-$300 pairs of sunglasses that you’re afraid to wear outside for fear that you’ll lose or break them, or you have $5 gas station sunglasses of low quality. So he created a premium, mid priced sunglasses company. When XenoPsi got involved with him, he needed the team to do everything from brand creation, to website, to advising on his advertising. When we started with him, he was doing $300,000 a month — he’s gonna do $60 million this year.

So that’s where you got the idea of taking an equity stake in some of the clients that you work with?

Yes. E-commerce and DTC startup guys all have a few basic needs. One, they need senior marketing and advertising [expertise]. And two, they don’t have any cash. So how do you solve that? One, you stop working by the billable hour, and two, you take shared risk/shared reward models of working together in order to help them grow. The biggest problem is ad agencies get rich while these brands go out of business, because they have high upfront fees — high billable hours. All clients, not just e-commerce founders, want the best work done as fast as possible. The problem with billable hours is, as an agency, I can’t make more money if I move fast — I’m disincentivized to do what the client needs.

How do you go about implementing this approach? 

No new clients of our companies will work by the billable hour. Function Growth will often start with identifying the outcomes that the brand needs. We start with a fixed price for fixed work, so they can plan their budgets. And we take a percentage of the revenue or profit from their growth. If they grow, we get a percentage of what they earn because of our work. And if they don’t grow, they’ve had a fixed fee that they can count on, and they know there’s no incremental costs. And we have XenoPsi Ventures that will get involved if what we really need is a quarter of a million dollars or a half a million dollars to jumpstart their growth.

What about Method One — how do you put the behavioral science knowledge to use? 

When we first partnered with [bourbon brand] Elijah Craig, it was a bartender favorite in 2013 and one that the trade loved. But it had not had it’s coming out within the consumer world. They couldn’t understand why it wasn’t growing faster with the bourbon craze [happening at the time]. What we realized [after doing behavioral science work] was, it wasn’t an advertising or marketing problem, it was that the actual packaging didn’t look like a bourbon bottle. So first, we decided to not launch a new ad campaign to start, but reblow the glass and redo the label. It took 18 to 24 months to do that. And then we launched a campaign that explained that Elijah Craig was the founder of the bourbon movement. Because he was the first to char oak barrels, and that’s what gives bourbon its brown color and its caramel taste. We went from 70,000 cases to 246,000 cases [between 2015 and 2020].

There’s Snickers’ sexually-charged vein tweet or even Oreo’s celebrated Dunk in the Dark tweet. But what happens when brands fly too close to the sun and end up facing public backlash? 

It’s a lesson Duolingo learned last week, coming under fire for a comment on TikTok about Johnny Depp and Amber Heard’s defamation trial. The pushback quickly reignited conversations around brand safety and how far is too far when it comes to creating edgy, viral content. The language app has yet to comment publicly. Earlier this year, Pabst Blue Ribbon beer brand found itself in a similar situation after posting a sexually explicit joke on Twitter.

“I’m just curious what the total end game is and if this will be a domino effect, or brands are going to take a step back and… focus on overall product value and what makes them unique,” said Brandon Biancalani, head of paid advertising at Modifly social marketing agency.

While it can be argued that all press is good press, experts say there must be a method to the madness and some topics are off-limits. “Anything that is dealing with tragedy is not a place you want to approach it in a light-hearted way, because it’s just going to fall flat,” said Noah Mallin, chief of brand strategy for IMGN, in a warning to all brands leveraging social media.

That’s not to say that brands can’t speak to issues that are important to them and their consumers. But it only works if the brand has a history of aligning itself with said issues, Mallin added. “The other danger there is it feels like the brand is hijacking an issue to make themselves the center of it,” he said. 

Many times, it’s a high-risk, high-reward responsive marketing play, social media experts say. In a crowded advertising landscape, brands are constantly working to break out from the noise, often playing into cultural moments to capture a portion of the attention around the day’s topic. But, experts say, it’s a tough line to toe in today’s highly polarized society.

“It’s almost like you don’t say sorry these days. You almost just have to either stand by [the misstep] or remove it and wait,” Biancalani said, adding that consumers hold brands to a higher standard today than ever before. Seemingly, brands can either play it safe and sit out edgier, potentially viral plays, or take the risk that could be a viral reward or viral blowback.

That blowback comes with the territory as “we live in an era of outrage porn,” Brendan Gahan, partner and chief social officer at Mekanism, said via email. Per Gahan, the strategy works for brands like Duolingo, which is known for its so-called “unhinged” content. And as long as there’s an audience of consumers to be won, brands and advertisers will continue to push boundaries, both knowingly and unknowingly, he added.

When it does happen, Gahan said it’s unlikely many will remember these “perceived missteps.” In the grand scheme of things, the blowback toward Duolingo and others that have pushed the boundaries has been minimal, he said.

If anything, brands should take more risks to stand out from the crowded digital advertising space, Gahan said. “To be able to cut through the clutter is incredibly difficult. It’s only going to get harder,” he said.

3 Questions with Jamie Norwood, co-founder of Stix women’s wellness brand

Why is organic strategy so important for a niche brand like Stix?

Like any other direct-to-consumer brand, when we first got started, we learned quickly that we didn’t want to be at the mercy of Facebook. We really went all in on organic and built out Real Talk. It’s our hub for sex and health education. It’s definitely not to say we don’t use paid. We absolutely do. We’re finding a lot of success on TikTok ads right now. We definitely route a lot of our strategy in organic. Because there’s so much education and content within our products, it really allows us to own that relationship [with customers]. 

What have been the results of those organic efforts?

We’ve seen a lot of success with loyalty and repeat orders. The number of orders per customer is really affected by organic, especially when we are getting information from our customers. We have a quiz so we know from them where they are in their life stage when it comes to their health, are they trying to get pregnant, are they not? We can then go on and recommend specific products to them. And not just products, but also content and education.

Conversations around diversifying media spend and marketing mixes have been bubbling up again with data privacy regulations and creeping CPMs. How has that impacted your team?

We think about channel expansion and diversification all the time. [In] our monthly marketing meeting, one of the areas we spend the most time dissecting is revenue by channel. We want to make it as even as possible. We really want to even things out and add new channels in all the time. One of the worst things we could do would be to say these five channels work for us. We’re going to stick to these and not look anywhere else.

By the numbers

Amidst the talent wars, Great Resignation and push to return to the office, companies are also dealing with the workplace generation divide as Gen Z joins the workforce. This next generation of employees has a different definition of success than previous generations, according to new research from learning management system TalentLMS. See key findings from the report below:

• 77% of survey respondents find it important to work for a company that cares about diversity, equity, and inclusion.
• 7 in 10 Gen Z survey respondents find it important to have in-person socialization with their colleagues.
• Of those surveyed, 31% find it difficult to cope with pressure and stress at work.

Quote of the week 

“We’re not seeing advertisers cancel budgets — it’s too early to do that. There is, however, a cautionary note in a lot of the plans we’re working on now. Clients want to hold on to as much of their budget as possible while they wait to see what happens.”

— Dave Mulrenan, head of investment at Zenith U.K., on how marketers are preparing for more uncertainty in 2022.

What we’ve covered

• Why the vast majority of marketers are unhappy with their Customer Data Platform 
• Why a PR agency founder says brands need a reality check
• Inside a CBD brand’s OOH ad strategy

The plan is straightforward enough: expand regional editions in promising markets where it already has a strong editorial base. 

First stop: the U.K.

It may sound like another strange move by Bloomberg Media. The U.K. is mired in a cost of living crisis, after all. But it’s a crisis that — at least for now — is hitting lower income households hardest. There are many other people who continue to pay inflated prices for the goods and services they want as evidenced by the profit margins to emerge from Q1. Bloomberg Execs are hoping this extends to business journalism — especially as its own subscriptions in the U.K have been on a tear (growth was up 30% in 2021 alone). And they may have a point. The current economic plight is a big story that’s only getting bigger. It’s not hard to see why those who can afford a Bloomberg subscription might buy one.

“We’ve been here in the U.K. for a long time with a newsroom of over 500 journalists and analysts, but we’ve always served the core reader that is the Bloomberg terminal customer that has used our news service,” said David Merrit, senior executive editor at Bloomberg News. “But we’ve never thought about packaging and promoting our work to the broader audience in the UK who are interested in business and finance.”

This is the real litmus test for how well Bloomberg Media’s plan works, if at all. It can’t win over the broader audience Merrit previously cited by chasing stories only the likes of bankers and financial traders would read. Now, there’s a clearer focus on what people across the U.K. might want to know about the economy. This puts Bloomberg Media up against the likes of the Financial Times and the Times — staples of business journalism in the U.K. 

Moreover, it’s willing to spend money to do it.

Indeed, several high-profile, senior journalists have already been hired including BBC broadcaster Emma Barnett, the editor of Politico’s London Playbook newsletter Alex Wickham and senior tech investigations reporter from NBC News Olivia Solon. And more are on the way, said Merrit. The communities that follow those high-profile hires are more important than ever to publishers that are trying to become less reliant on advertising and more dependent on subscriptions and other direct business models. 

“You need more personalities to pull people in these days,” said Merrit. “You look at the site today and you’ll see there are the headshots of the columnists — that’s new. We’re leaning a lot more into that. If you clock on a story there’s an option now to follow the author so you can get alerts for everything that person says and does.”

Which is to say those individuals are more central to the growth of the institutional Bloomberg brand. Barnett’s weekly interview series “Emma Barnett Meets…” launched in January and continues to air throughout the year. There’s also a host podcast and radio shows being fronted by talent at the publisher including  a live daily political show. 

“No one doubts the coming months are going to be tough because households will have to make difficult decisions across all aspects of their budget, and advertising will inevitably be softer,” said Douglas McCabe, CEO of Enders Analysis. “However, the other big theme of our times is a renewed confidence in the role and purpose of U.K. media in all its manifestations — PSBs, production, publishing, agencies, news services. Online advertising will keep growing in a tough economic climate.”

Commercially, Bloomberg Media’s local push should be all upside — at least in theory. Subscription opportunities aside, there’s a lot more ad inventory being created, whether it’s on TV, online, at events, even on podcasts. This way marketers get more of what they want, said Duncan Chater, managing direcor of Bloomberg Media in Europe. 

Half of the publisher’s revenue comes from advertising, and a further 25% from online subscriptions, with the other half coming from events, global partnerships and licensing deals. Nevertheless, subscriptions continue to be a priority despite it being a relatively young part of the business. Since Bloomberg Media launched its online subscription venture in 2018, it now has around 380,000, more than half (66%) of whom pay the full price. The best way to make money in media is, as always, in lots of ways.

“From a revenue perspective, we’re on the back of eight record consecutive quarters,” said Chater. “Our Q1 revenue in this region is up 87% year-on-year and that’s on the back of a record Q1 last year. So there’s a huge demand for this very precious audience that we reach. In fact, we reach 100 million business and world leaders every month.”

This will be like catnip to some marketers — those that want to, and can afford to, pay a premium to advertise on renowned titles like Bloomberg. Dwindling trust, differentiation and budgets have heaped pressure on marketers to demonstrate the value and impact of their brands. Capitalizing on that angst is key for a media business that generates around 90% of its advertising revenue from branded content. The rest of the ads business is built on a mix of programmatic direct and programmatic guaranteed deals. 

“Every business right now needs to communicate their purpose and vision in a different way,” said Chater.