Marketing Campaign: Inviting influential thought leaders to experiment with your brand is a great way to start.
In the marketing industry, influencers have become a hot commodity, with some high-profile individuals commanding six-figure (or more) payments to integrate their partner businesses into their social media dialogues. “How do we know the person behind the handle is actually conversant with the goods they’re pitching?” is still one of the technique’s most popular criticisms.
Besides, inviting influencers to co-create content with your brand is a terrific strategy to combat charges of lack of authenticity.
Avtex Solutions, a customer experience management organisation, set out to distinguish out by attacking its marketing goals with an entertaining, influencer-driven video content platform. Experience Points, the resulting web series, is a mix of game show and expert conversation.
Avtex teamed up with two top industry influencers to serve as hosts, and high-profile customer experience experts and practitioners were asked to compete as contestants. Each episode consists of three mini-games in which players earn money for their preferred charity by completing CX questions and giving insights into what it takes to achieve an excellent customer experience.
The series is a victory for Avtex, which exceeded its impression, online visit, and video watch goals, regardless of whether the contestants get the answers right or wrong. At the 2021 Content Marketing Awards, it was also named Best Use of Influencer Marketing. Better yet, Experience Points established a relationship with new industry experts and influencers, resulting in organic recommendations to new potential clients.
Use social media to slay your awareness challenges.
A single hashtag may not appear to be a high-value campaign element. It can, however, catapult a new effort into the collective social consciousness and develop a vibrant, branded community where your audience can share their passions with the correct planning, vetting, and creative reinforcement.
But don’t use popular hashtags haphazardly in all of your brand’s postings in the hopes of gaining undeserved attention. To give a forum for like-minded fans to gather, express their thoughts, and show off their skills, create and employ easily recognisable key words.
In 2020, WarnerMedia debuted HBO Max, a revolutionary LGBTQIA+-focused reality competition, as well as its new streaming service. The show Legendary immerses viewers in the flourishing ballroom “voguing” scene. HBO’s content team used social media to develop dialogues and dance-related activities that tap into the universal yearning for true self-expression to raise awareness and excitement for the show among its younger target group.
The #LegendaryChallenge on TikTok, which gave instruction on the choreographies utilised in the show’s theme tune, was a key component of the campaign. To enhance performance highlights known as “gagging” moments, signature moves and conversations about the value of ballroom dancing for the LGBTQIA+ community were broadcast on Instagram Stories.
Give your supporters something to speak about.
Consumers (especially younger generations) are increasingly willing to support businesses that put their money where their mouths are – especially when it comes to issues like sustainability, diversity, equity, and inclusion, and giving back to their local communities.
In fact, according to survey results from 2021 Survey Monkey, 78 percent of customers say they made a purchase based on values in the previous year, and 55 percent believe they are considerably more likely to buy from a company that shares their values.
Planters, the Kraft Heinz snack brand, sat out the media circus the next year in favour of a more meaningful, cause-centric marketing approach after killing its famous Mr. Peanut character — and resurrecting it as an infant, baby-Groot style – for its 2020 Super Bowl spot.
Planters used the estimated $5 million to recognise people (and organisations) whose “small deeds of extraordinary substance make the world a better place,” as the campaign’s debut video says.
According to CNBC, Kraft Heinz’s chief growth officer in the United States, Sanjiv Gajiwala, the campaign reflects a shift in the company’s marketing strategy. “Instead of the brand talking about itself,” the story says, “the corporation wants to have more frequent, ordinary connections.” “For us, that means reorienting our marketing teams to focus on agility, thinking about how we can develop more relevant content that connects with our consumers in more innovative ways,” Sanjiv explained. And, most significantly, during key stages in the consumer’s life.”
Emphasize the individuals who make your stuff.
Behind-the-scenes videos are a terrific method to humanise and relatable your brand and staff. Highlight day-to-day activities, your offices, your production processes, or interesting areas of the firm that audiences may not be aware of.
Consider interviewing staff, speaking with vendors, or shooting conversations with your greatest customers to give your video story more authenticity. All of these things can provide customers a better understanding of how your business operates, what makes it distinctive, and who is contributing to make it a success. Viewers are more likely to share your brand narrative with others if your films are both entertaining and educational.
For its audience of marketers, photographers, and artists, digital asset management platform PhotoShelter created process-oriented movies of innovative creative campaigns. The resulting series offers insight into leading brands’ creative initiatives, including GE, the Premier Lacrosse League, and the University of Maryland Medical System.
The videos go into what makes the brand unique, as well as how producers put its benefits to use – something that most on-screen brand presentations struggle to do. PhotoShelter gets its message across through human emotion rather than pitchy promotion by allowing customers to share their use cases and experiences – in their own voices.
