Month: July 2022

This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

As a social media manager, what are the issues you’ve faced with the job?

Social media managers are wildly underpaid. A lot of brands kind of treat it as still a new profession when it’s not. It’s been around for over 12 years, at least. And so a lot of times they just kind of put their arms in the air like, “We don’t know what we should pay. There’s a ceiling to this. You can’t make more than this.” And then you see other companies hiring and paying almost double. And you’re like, “So this is a possibility.”

Another thing is that social media managers like myself, we’re kind of a joke. We had to kind of be an “army of one.” A lot of people think that’s just coming up with tweets, which doesn’t sound very hard and shouldn’t be paid very well. So that’s fair. But that’s not usually what we do. We’re producers for graphic designers. We’re creatives. We have to come up with a lot of the content ideas. We have to collaborate with clients. We have to kind of just have our finger on the pulse of pop culture. There’s a lot that goes into it and a lot of brands just kind of make you do a million things for like no money. And I think that’s one of the biggest problems.

What do you wish organizations understood about the role/pressure social media managers are under?

Their expectations [can be a bit much]. I mean, you should be able to be on call. But sometimes it is a little ridiculous. Sometimes I will be on a plane or something and I have to quickly buy the internet and do something. Social media is kind of like a 24/7 gig. People are always going to tweet you. When I worked for my last company, I worked for a show. There was a major actor who tweeted at us that like midnight on a Friday, I had to respond to it. So, you know, that kind of sucks. But it’s also fun. It’s like a very lively profession. You’re always on your toes, which is nice. But yeah, it would be nice if you’re appreciated a little bit more.

What do you wish you could change about the role?

I wish there was some help. Every social media manager for a big brand, even for a small brand, but especially for a big, big brand like the one I had [worked for] is [in need of] help. You should at least have an intern, you should have an assistant, you should have a graphic designer. We should have a structure. It sounds like I’m speaking about my specific situation, but I know many social media managers for this case. You’re not given much help and you should be given as much help as possible.

There is an ongoing issue where the employers expect many social media posts from social media managers to go viral. What is your take on this as it brings more pressure to social media managers?

I didn’t experience that as much. I was given a lot of autonomy in my last position. It was more the apathy of the people above me who were just like, “Yeah, just make the brand look good. Whatever. I don’t care.”

[Brand marketers] need to understand the social media landscape and how things go viral. They just hear the word viral from their kids. They don’t know what that means. They just know that it means to make it popular. How does this get popular? And they just kind of make their own assumptions. They ask too much of social media managers. Making something go viral is very difficult.

Would you ever manage a social media account for a brand again?

Depends if the right situation and the right money came around. I think I’m a little over it. I mean, the thing with it is I hate to be honest about it. I’m [in my thirties]. I started my last job when I was 25. And, you know, I was like in the, in the know. I knew all the trends with Snapchat and Instagram and all that stuff. But right now you’re expected to know every trend. I think it’s honestly a young person’s game.

For this reason, Goodway Group has purchased Canton Marketing Solutions, a four-year-old consultancy headquartered in the U.K., in a move the independent media agency hopes will allow it to better compete with some of the industry’s most established names.

So, what’s on the table?

The financial details of the deal were not publicly disclosed, but it’s worth noting that while Goodway Group is making the purchase, its own consultancy arm Control vs. Exposed will absorb Canton.

Rob Webster and Nick King, Canton’s co-founders, will now serve as global vice presidents of strategy and commercial respectively and will report to Paul Frampton-Calero, the U.K.-based president of CvE who said the combined headcount of the two will exceed 40.

Founded in 2018, Canton has worked with brands including Nokia, gaming giant Paddy Power, Staples, plus global telecoms operator Vodafone to help them to exert a greater degree of autonomy over the operations of their online media buying.

All of this is in addition to Canton consulting on the Walgreens Boots Alliance’s retail media ambitions with Frampton-Calero identifying the newly-acquired outfit’s “independence” from vested interests in specific technology vendors as a unique selling point.

An agency buying a consultancy that helps brands in-house?

Upon first look, this may seem counterintuitive, but that’s only if you subscribe to the binary notion of ‘in-house vs. outsource’, the fact is there are various shades of grey in between.

The fact that privacy restrictions are prompting the internet’s largest platforms to subsequently curb the free flow of user data between anonymous ad tech middlemen means marketers have to take more responsibility over their use of data.

All of this involves reining in the number of partners they share critical user data with, many now realizing that ‘off-the-peg’ solutions are far from ideal, a reality that means outside counsel and operational expertise are still required.

Both Frampton-Calero and Webster bring with them decades of experience of operating within the industry’s holding groups and have witnessed these changes in recent years as laws such as CCPA and GDPR prompt platforms like Apple and Google to disrupt the earlier status quo.

“The most important skill that advertisers need right now is knowing how to change with the ever-changing platforms, and that means consultancy is becoming more important,” Webster told Digiday. “For instance, when Apple removed IDFA last year lots of brands needed help with adjusting, especially those that were reliant on Facebook which is a huge [paid-for media] channel on iOS.”

But isn’t this relatively plain sailing once marketers address changes on their key advertising channels?

True, many digital marketing firms have feathered their nest on the basis of ‘where there’s mystery, there’s margin … ‘ but the fact is it is increasingly incumbent upon brand-side marketers to protect their users’ data.

And if they are to use said user data for the purposes of marketing intelligence, brands’ marketing organizations will have to develop new skillsets with nascent technologies, a gauntlet requiring the mastery of a whole new set of acronyms.

“CvE has been helping brands with decisions over their operational model such as whether or not to in-house, continue to work with an agenc, and what will the org-design [sic] look like,” Frampton-Calero told Digiday.

“It’s also involved looking at how you can turn data into a strategic asset and looking at how you can future-proof your technology stack,” he said, adding that absorbing Canton’s operations will help it extend its services from “high-level consultancy” to hands-on implementation.

Webster went on to say, “In the first-party data world you have to use a CDP [customer data platform] and clean rooms, these are not skills that advertisers or even agencies (really) [have], it gets really quite technical.”

But aren’t there companies that already provide such competencies, and isn’t this what agencies historically do?

Yes, recent years have seen the emergence of companies that eschew the ‘agency’ nomenclature in preference of marketing lines such as ‘platform partnership provider’ but essentially what they offer is core competencies on the internet’s major media buying platforms.

Think of the expertise that companies such as Accenture Song (a.k.a Accenture Interactive), Jellyfish or Media.Monks can offer clients on Amazon or Google’s respective ad stacks – platforms that have only risen in prominence over recent years.

According to Frampton, the addition of Canton to the CvE-fold will enable it to offer more bespoke consulting services when it comes to advising clients on which ad stack best suits their needs, as opposed to recommending a one-stop-shop service.

“We’re not though-and through resellers … that said, companies like Google (while not the answer for everyone) have built a really good interface, and some people like one-stop-shops,” said Frampton-Calero, adding that “we’re not committed to certain trading deals or partnerships.”

A further sign of the growing need or agencies to provide specialist assistance to clients activating on the internet’s major platforms was demonstrated last year when GroupM’s MediaCom launched what it called “the largest Google practice in the U.K.”

However, multiple sources separately told Digiday that such outfits often struggle to maintain staff with such skillsets, a byproduct of the traditional business models of holding groups, according to Frampton-Calero and Webster — plus a scarcity of talent.

Speaking with Digiday, ad tech veteran Ari Paparo cited the difficulties in sourcing such experienced talent as a contributory factor for the launch of his latest venture Marketecture, a portal he hopes will help plug the skills gap.

“It’s not like 10 years ago when you’d have a few people within a small profit center within the holding company that understand this stuff, but now that programmatic has eaten advertising you need the broad mass of employees that are involved in any form of media to understand this stuff,” he said.

CvE’s Frampton-Calero observed that the growing need for bespoke knowledge of specific ad tech and martech platforms means that many advertisers are starting to compartmentalize the briefs they hand out to agency partners whereas previously they would have preferred to opt for a single agency across separate markets.

“I think you’re starting to look at things and say, ‘I don’t need scale in the same way that I used to, what I need are smarts and agility,’” he said. “There will always be some clients that want a network to run things, and there the holding companies will always have a foot up, but what I’m hearing is that more and more brands are starting to modularize their contracts so they can take specialist things out.”

“Because of all the iOS changes and privacy, a lot of companies can’t afford to compete in the paid space the way they used to,” said Ring Concierge founder and CEO Nicole Wegman. “I don’t think there’s going to be much of a choice but to lean in on the organic aspects of the social media platforms.”

Since this time last year, Apple has allowed users to choose whether they want to be tracked across apps, resulting in a shrunken data pool for advertisers. Smaller brands like Ring Concierge have navigated the changes by spending more time developing organic strategies and building a more authentic rapport with followers and shoppers. 

The startup is doing “everything we can to not be heavily reliant on paid because we just don’t feel like we can control it the way we can control organic,” Wegman said. The brand uses shopper feedback via Instagram polls, questions and comments to influence not just products, but also its paid targeting strategy.

Ring Concierge’s total marketing budget is earmarked at 6% of revenue this year — the same percentage as last year, Wegman said. However, the company’s revenue has doubled year-over-year, meaning the marketing budget has doubled as well. (Wegman declined to outline specific details.)The nine-year-old, New York City-based company says at least 70% of its current revenue comes from organic posts on Instagram, including Reels and Stories, which link to products, via Instagram shopping.

In 2021, the jewelry retailer spent $14,600 on media, according to Kantar. Those numbers do not reflect social media as Kantar does not track those figures. So far this year, Ring Concierge has spent $267,200 on Facebook and Instagram, according to Pathmatics. That figure was $366,600 in 2021, significantly up from the previous year in which the brand spent $135,900 on Facebook and Instagram. 

That’s not to say there isn’t a paid strategy, it’s just not the dominant strategy, Wegman said. At the moment, Ring Concierge has a daily posting schedule to stay in front of its more than 500,000 followers. For the most part, everything is produced in-house, according to Wegman. However, the jewelry brand does work with influencers, opting to gift products in exchange for promotion as opposed to explicitly paid agreements with said influencers, she said. It’s unclear how much influencers are gifted as the retailer did not respond to a request for details in time.

The organic strategy cuts out steep customer acquisition costs that often come with paid social ads. Plus, data gleaned from the strategy can inform retargeting and retention capabilities when it does use paid ads, said Tory Bergmann, Ring Concierge’s marketing and social media manager.

Consider it a workaround for the data lost to iOS 14, said Brandon Biancalani, head of paid advertising at social agency Modifly. “If they have a great organic strategy, why not lead into a conversion strategy with all of that data,” he said. “From a paid perspective, it’s a super-smart play to get good organic strategies going because that’ll only benefit paid right now.”

For now at least, Wegman is seemingly on the right track as Instagram and its parent company Meta look to compete with TikTok, according to Noah Mallin, chief of brand strategy for IMGN. 

What was once a pay-to-play algorithm, Mallin said, has shifted, opening up the organic space as TikTok competitor Reels hopes to gain traction. 

“Right now, brands have this window where they can organically post Reels, and if it’s decent, it’ll do pretty well,” Mallin said. The window could be shortlived if Instagram regains its competitive edge, at which point advertisers will need to diversify efforts. 

Aside from Instagram, Ring Concierge’s media strategy leverages earned media, in-person activations, Pinterest and eventually TikTok, Wegman said. The brand is dabbling with the ByteDance-owned app after it launched an account in 2019. A strategy, however, is still in the works.

“It’s really a matter of just trying to touch as many platforms as possible,” said Wegman. “I don’t think, at least in the foreseeable future, any of those things or even will even become close to the impact that Instagram has on our business.”

After seeing the Almond Board of California’s “Do You Almond” campaign that incorporated some tongue-in-cheek executions, as well as a truthful message about almonds’ goodness, while also playing to their audience’s interests, Marvel approached them with the idea of partnering with the Thor: Love and Thunder storyline. The ads will be appear on social channels such as Facebook, TikTok, Twitter, and Instagram and streaming platforms such as YouTube and Hulu, and and so that they can reach the target audience where they spend most of their time watching videos.

“Hopefully it will capture consumer attention so we can just continue to build awareness of how amazing almonds are to fit into people’s own personal wellness journey,” said Fleischmann. The video spots were a joint effort between both brands along with agencies Sterling Rice Group and Porter Novelli.

The aim of the campaign is to emphasize how almonds can be viewed as a reliable source of good health. Essentially, the campaign’s key message showcases almonds as a nutrient-dense snack that can be easily incorporated into the daily wellness regimen and help consumers achieve their wellness goals.

“Associating eating almonds with superhero powers is a really clever way to encourage younger consumers to eat almonds and feel excited about it,” said Adam Dornbusch, CEO and founder of EnTribe, a user-generated content marketing management platform.

“This is a clear endeavor to reframe the narrative around healthy food (and almonds). The Almond Board of California is leveraging entertainment to democratize health and increase the adoption of healthy habits,” said Valeria Mares, evp and global head of communications planning at Mediahub.

It is unclear how much of the non-profit’s advertising budget is allocated to the campaign as Fleischmann would not share overall budget specifics. According to Kantar, the non-profit spent close to $82 million in 2021 for marketing efforts and nearly $20 million so far for 2022.

Fleischmann noted that the spend was 50/50 split between streaming and social media as the ads can be seen on platforms such as YouTube, Twitter, and Instagram and as well as streaming platforms. As for how the budget was split between the social media platforms, Fleischmann declined to disclose that information.

Working with entertainment franchises like Marvel has increasingly become a popular practice for marketers. As previously reported by Digiday, Liberty Mutual, Bushmills and Booking.com have recently partnered with entertainment franchises on co-marketing efforts to boost brand awareness.

“At the end of the day, content is king, so brands need to make sure that the content they create around that partnership is engaging to their audience,” said Jaylen Culp, associate integrated strategist for the marketing communications company Campbell Ewald.

Eunice Shin, partner and head of technology, media and entertainment practices at Prophet, a growth strategy consulting firm also chimed in about how celebrity star power can enhance a campaign’s message.

“The Almond Board benefits from the film being headlined by Natalie Portman and Chris Hemsworth, two celebrities with strong star power who are seemingly pristine matches to the wellness message that the campaign is looking to spark,” Shin said.

Apollo tries to punch above its weight — employing only eight full-time staffers and a total of 30 people working in some form for the agency — looking to find major TV opportunities for its clients, which also include VF Corp, Intuit and MailChimp (which was acquired by Intuit). 

When it comes to bigger agencies vs. smaller, “we don’t see a single difference, in truth,” said Gavin. “Apollo’s got the relationships, they understand our markets, they’re available anytime and every time we’ve needed them. They don’t sit back waiting for us to come to them. And it’s helped us to take our our message and our engagement globally.” 

The strategy has since expanded into a three-year deal with the New York Yankees, including in-stadium signage and a similar “Max Value Play of the Game” announcement on YES Network and radio coverage. Because of Coupa’s global reach — it has offices in Europe, Latin America and Asia with more than 3,000 employees worldwide — Apollo also landed sponsorship positions for the brand in Formula 1 and German soccer league Bundesliga. 

It’s Perko’s philosophy to go big where other smaller agencies might shy away. “We’re in the company of some established brands because the perception is that something like the World Series is out of reach” said Perko, who cut his teeth in digital-first shops including Publicis’ Digitas and more recently GroupM’s Essence (now MediacomEssence). “And then it can be within reach, if you have the ability to focus on doing one thing really well, and figure out how you’re going to be really successful there.”

He also believes his tenure in the industry has served to Apollo’s advantage. “The industry for over a decade only focused on performance,” Perko said. “There’s a whole generation of talent that doesn’t really know how to do brand marketing and make an emotional connection with a brand.”

Apollo got its start actually helping other clients find agencies to work with, which is how Dave Raggio, vp of acquisition marketing at Intuit’s Quickbooks, started formally working with Apollo last year — although Raggio and Perko had worked together at Digitas years before. 

“He realized that you don’t need to have a $150 million media budget to do [big things], said Raggio of Perki. “You just have to be smart about how you create a moment, capitalize on that moment, and surround it with the right activations.”

Raggio convinced MailChimp’s CMO Michelle Taite to turn to Apollo when Intuit acquired the email firm, given the track record he had with the agency. “I knew that Apollo Partners would be a good partner that would be able to help them evaluate their current state and provide some thought leadership and … help them transition into the Intuit world,” he added.

Perko said he hopes to expand into new client categories, including quick-serve restaurants, as a means to keep growing revenue. Although he declined to offer a revenue figure for Apollo’s first year, he said he intends to grow revenue by about 150 percent in 2022.