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Archives for April 2014

The Degradation of Digital Data for Brand Marketers

digital dataDigital data isn’t really degrading. The truth is that it’s never been very good, and as much as brand marketers like to talk about the importance of big data and analytics, both are far from perfect in the digital space.

The Evolution of Digital Advertising report from comScore clarifies why digital data, particularly demographic data, is so flawed. Ironically, comScore uses data to make its points, but nevertheless, the points are quite valid and bear some consideration from brand marketers.

The problem with digital data for brand marketers is broken down into five key areas:

1. Misleading Click Data

Click-through data is rarely reliable. Not only is it filled with click-fraud, but comScore’s research found that exposure to display ads doesn’t just impact online sales. It also lifts in-store sales. In fact, comScore reports actual lift in offline sales is five times higher than the lift in e-commerce sales. Ultimately, relying on click data to measure the performance of a digital ad campaign is often not enough.

2. Inaccurate Demographic Data

Demographic data is often identified based on previous sites visited (using cookies, discussed in #4 below), content consumption, and registration data. However, comScore reports that this demographic data becomes outdated quickly and isn’t 100% realistic. According to the research, more than 60% of computers have multiple users. How can brand marketers be certain that their ads are being shown to the right users based on previous behaviors and content consumption when multiple people are using the same computer?

3. Misleading Impression Data

Impression data is misleading because it doesn’t account for some critical things. For example, 100% realistic impression data is impossible because some people leave the page where the ad appears before one second. Furthermore, some people will visit the page, but they won’t see the ad because the browser window isn’t set to full-screen. The ad might not be visible unless they scroll around the page (or the site uses a responsive design that resizes it to the smaller screen size). Furthermore, traffic fraud artificially inflates impression counts when no one actually saw the ad at all. The advertising industry has been combating traffic fraud for years, but it still happens every day—a lot.

4. False Cookie Deletion Data

As mentioned above, cookies are used to serve ads to the target audience, but many people, websites, and ad servers delete cookies.  That causes higher than planned frequency because ad servers deliver additional, “new” impressions to people who deleted the cookies from their browsers.

5. Disregarded Platform Data

In the United States, more than half of internet time is spent on mobile devices, and that number continues to rise very rapidly. Similar results are being found in other countries around the world. According to comScore’s research, more screens equals more time spent on each device overall, but tracking ad campaigns across devices is far from accurate. Furthermore, processes for collecting and analyzing data are quite different from one device to another. For example, while 60% of computers are used by multiple people, it’s safe to assume that most smartphones are used by a single person. Understanding these nuances as you track performance between devices is equally important as learning how to track across devices.

What do you think are the biggest problems with digital data for brand marketers? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Image: Janet Ramsden

Creative Uses for Infographics in the Corporate World

I’ve been thinking about infographics and corporate communications recently, having noticed how more and more companies are including them in their corporate websites – typically in the Media section, or in the About Us section. So I was delighted when Scott Huntingdon suggested that he write a post about infographics. Over to you, Scott…

Infographics are popping up all over the place, in everything from small business blogs to how-to slides, corporate emails to online magazine articles. There is a reason for their popularity, and if you haven’t tapped into their unique tactical power, perhaps you should start thinking about how your marketing strategy and/or communication channels could benefit from creative infographics.

Branding and Beyond

You may or may not have already used infographics in some of your marketing efforts. Infographics like this typically spread branding awareness, communicate the benefits of a particular product or service, or attempt to connect to the customer in one way or another. Below, we can see this exemplified in this 2015 Ford Mustang infographic.

mustang-infographicImage from CJPonyParts.com

This is a perfect use of an infographic: visual representations of one or more communicated concepts, commercial goods or information accompanied by small bits of text to help describe or support what is visually communicated. Here we see what’s new about the 2015 Mustang: The car is pictured itself, while the small bits of images and text tell us in a creative way exactly what’s different about this model (such as how many clowns it could hold).

african-kulula-airlinesImage: Flickr

However, corporations that have used infographics in much more creative ways get much more attention. When Kulula Airlines underwent a brand new fleet design, guess what it included?

The entire aircraft exterior is painted as a giant infographic, not only a highly creative one, but very effective as a means of branding and redesign.

Corporate Communications

Communicating with your audience or target market is not the only way to use infographics effectively. Infographics can certainly help to improve in-house corporate relationships using humorous, engaging or creative infographics, which can easily be shared not just within corporate walls but with your target audience. It’s no secret by now that many times what goes viral on social media contains glimpses of what’s behind the scenes at a particular enterprise.

Additionally, infographics can be used to help deliver a briefing, manage projects and teams, assign tasks, deliver corporate newsletter content, or any other type of in-house communication. Using these methods can actually help clarify and quicken productivity goals, because all of us, not just your target audience, are highly visual creatures, your staff and management teams included.

For example, it’s not unlikely that a flow-chart infographic to present the marketing budget assessment may be a more effective means to communicate how it fits in with overall corporate goals. Humorous infographics can lighten the mood of a serious meeting, just be careful not to use them for something very serious like a merger or buy-out.

We tend to understand information better and more quickly when it is handed to us visually. Most of us forget things we’ve read even recently, but we remember clearly things that we have seen.

Help for Creating Infographics

Obviously not all of us are visual design artists, but there are some great tutorials and tips for creating infographics to be both informative and well-designed. These visual tools for communication are going to be seen around the web more and more, and for good reason: They deliver information in several seconds, make that information more memorable, are highly shareable and add diversity to communication efforts. All of these things are good reasons to use infographics for in-house communication purposes as well as external ones.

Thanks, Scott!

Scott Huntington is a social media marketer from Pennsylvania. Check out his blog, blogspike.com

Why You Need to Harness the Power of Visual Branding

visual branding eyeglassesHuman beings are very visual. We’re physically and emotionally affected by what we see. An image might make us feel something deeply or it might motivate us to take some kind of action. Images can stand alone or greatly enhance words, and you can use them in your brand marketing efforts to boost results.

Visual branding has gotten a lot of attention in recent years as digital and mobile platforms have improved and made it easier and less expensive to add visuals to marketing campaigns across a broader set of media and distribution channels. Furthermore, research shows that visuals improve marketing campaign performance in both online and mobile spaces.

With that in mind, you need to prioritize visual branding as part of your integrated marketing strategy, and you need to convince your leadership team that investments should be made in the creation and procurement of high quality, unique visuals. Here are five primary ways visual branding can improve marketing results:

1. Visual Branding Evokes Emotions

Images can instantly elicit emotions that connect consumers to your brand. Think of ads you’ve seen for charitable organizations, particularly those dedicated to helping sick or starving children and abused animals. Visual branding is a cornerstone of nonprofit branding, but it can be applied to any brand. Take a look at Nike ads. Even Google has embraced visual, emotional branding in recent years with marketing campaigns that focus on visual storytelling.

2. Visual Branding Gets Noticed

People’s eyes are typically first attracted to motion (e.g. online video content or animated GIFs) or color (e.g., colorful images). A web page or print ad filled with words can be designed so white space and typeface draws consumers’ eyes through the copy. However, they’re far less likely to instantly click away or turn the page if a moving element or colorful image captures their attention.

3. Visual Branding Drives Sharing

Did you know that online content which includes an image typically gets more social media shares, particularly on Facebook, than content that does not include image? There is a reason why sites and tools like Vine and Instagram are so popular. People love to share visual content. Make sure you offer some visual content from your brand for them to share, too.

4. Visual Branding Is Memorable

Some images are hard to forget, but even the most mundane image increases memory and recognition for many people who are visual learners. If you rely on text alone, you’ll miss a segment of the consumer audience who is better able to recall images than words.

5. Visual Branding Is Quick and Easy to Consume

As the saying goes, “a picture is worth a thousand words.” While text can give context to images and tell a more complete brand story, an image can communicate a great deal very quickly. Today’s consumers move quickly, particularly online. Visual branding provides another way to communicate your messages to an audience that might never stop to read your content or messages.

How do you integrate visual branding into your marketing plan? Leave a comment and share your thoughts.

Image: Alfonso Romero

Google Surpasses Apple for Mobile Ad Traffic for the First Time in Q1 2014

apple androidThere was big news in mobile advertising this week, and it’s a sign of a significant shift that brand marketers need to know about. For the first time, Google’s Android surpassed Apple’s iOS and took the top spot for mobile ad traffic for the first quarter of 2014. The data comes from Opera Mediaworks’ Q1 2014 State of Mobile Advertising report.

Not only did Google steal the number one global mobile ad traffic position from Apple with 42.8% of mobile ad traffic compared to 38.2% for Apple, but it also had big gains in year-over-year monetization. At the end of the first quarter of 2014, Android accounted for over 33% of mobile ad revenue, which is a 24% increase over its 26.7% of mobile ad revenue at the same time in 2013.

Focusing on just the U.K. market, Apple’s iOS still holds the top spot with 55% of ad impressions and 66.9% of ad revenue. This isn’t surprising considering Apple’s dominant market share position with 62.3% of unique U.K. users tracked by Opera Mediaworks having iOS devices compared to just 18.6% for Android and 14% for BlackBerry.

The report also offers some statistics related to U.K. mobile users’ preferences and behaviors. For example, U.K. mobile users prefer mobile apps, not mobile websites. Opera Mediaworks determined this based on ad impressions, with mobile apps accounting for 72% of ad impressions in the U.K. market, which is significantly higher than what was found in the global market (31%). Furthermore, U.K. mobile users aren’t afraid to click on mobile video ads. In fact, mobile video ads account for one in seven mobile ads in the U.K., which is much higher than the one in 40 ratio identified globally. As a result, click-through rates on rich-media ads are nearly twice the click-through rates on banner ads in the U.K.

Google’s Android has been the dominant platform for some time now, but app developers and advertisers continued to put their time and money into Apple’s iOS. It’s easier from a development standpoint to develop for Apple’s standard operating system than it is to develop for Google’s operating system that can differ from one device and one manufacturer to another. However, ad traffic and ad revenue statistics are showing that there is a shift happening, and ignoring or de-prioritizing Google’s Android is not a good strategy anymore.

What do you think? Is your brand focused primarily on Apple iOS or does your marketing strategy give Apple iOS and Google Android equal attention? Leave a comment and share your thoughts on the mobile shift and what it means to brand marketers.

Image: Karlis Dambrans

Visual History of Top Car Brand Logos

mercedesThe most well-known car brands in the world have a lot of brand equity, and in Interbrand’s Top 100 Global Brands of 2013 study, more auto brands (14) made the list than any other category. In fact, 20% of the top 20 global brands according to the 2013 ranking are auto brands: Toyota (10th place), Mercedes-Benz (11th place), BMW (12th place), and Honda (20th place).

Many of these big car brands have logos that are recognized around the world. These logos are not just identifiable, they also hold emotional value to consumers. These logos represent a promise that the brand will deliver on its expectations in every customer interaction. The brand reputations might not always be stellar, but the logos have become tangible company assets that deserve a dollar value attached to them. After all, even the most hated brands have logos with value.

I’ll leave a conversation about calculating brand equity for another day. Today, let’s think about how these logos evolved to become not only iconic symbols and assets for their respective companies but also elements of social culture, particularly for brand logos that have been licensed for use on a wide variety of merchandise like clothes, luggage, and more.

A new infographic from Woodstock Motors (shown below) looks at the history of some of the big car brands and their logos. Some of the stories are steeped in the legacy of the people behind the companies, but my favorite story is the one that explains how the Volkswagen logo was developed. The iconic VW logo was originally designed as part of an office contest in 1938 by an employee named Franz Xavier Reimspiess.

I’m an advocate of simple logo design (if it doesn’t look as good in one color as it does in full color, then you should go back to the drawing board), so I love these types of stories about simple logo design that are rich in company and brand history rather than designs based on mathematical equations and complicated geometry, which cost hundreds of thousands of dollars (or more) and take years to develop.

Of course, all of the logos for the big car brands are simple, but you’ll see by reading the stories in the infographic below that some designs try to convey a lot more than others. In fact, there appear to be two extremes—highly detailed logos that are weighed down in “meaning” which actually doesn’t matter much to consumers at all or clean and simple logos. Take a look at the designs and think about how your brand identity compares. Is it bogged down in detail or agile enough for effective application in any platform or experience today and in the future?

car logos infographic

Image: John Karakatsanis

Brand Marketing on YouTube – It’s Not Just for Young People

youtube laptop tvDon’t discount YouTube for marketing your brand. While YouTube has a reputation as a site for young people to watch and share short videos, the audience is actually a lot more diverse. In fact, 50% of the U.K. YouTube audience is over the age of 35 and 90% is over the age of 18.

That’s just two statistics released in a new study conducted by Google and Ipsos MediaCT. The YouTube Audience Study surveyed over 1,500 people between the ages of 13 and 64 in the U.K. during mid-2013, and the results reveal interesting opportunities for brand marketers.

Here are some compelling statistics about U.K. YouTube users that might make you rethink how you’re using YouTube to market your brand:

  • 48% are connected to more than 100 people online.
  • 50% talk about the content they watch on YouTube with other people.
  • 44% share videos they watch on YouTube with other people.
  • 50% share or reshare links.
  • 31% are amongst the first to try new products (vs. 14% of non-YouTube users).
  • 58% tell everyone about the brands they love (vs. 33% of non-YouTube users).
  • 41% have taken an action after watching an ad on YouTube.
  • 56% are male.
  • 65% have medium to high incomes.
  • 99% have medium to high education.
  • 89% use the internet daily.
  • Music videos are the most popular (59%) followed by comedy (44%) and how-to/do-it-yourself (40%).
  • 60% watch YouTube videos to be entertained.

While brand videos and ads are certainly not the first things that YouTube users in the U.K. look for, they’re not entirely averse to watching branded content on YouTube. More than one in three (36%) of U.K. YouTube users would rather watch a brand video on YouTube than a commercial, and 34% think that more companies should use YouTube to help them learn about those companies and brands. Furthermore, 28% of U.K. YouTube users believe that the site is a great place for brands to connect with them. More than one out of four U.K. YouTube users are motivated to make purchase decisions based on brand and user content as well as ads that they see on the site. For example, 27% get ideas for things to buy from YouTube videos and 26% say that YouTube helps them decide which products or brands to buy.

A particularly interesting part of the study results identifies when and how people in the U.K. use YouTube. For all locations, people used their smartphones to access YouTube more than any other device. These locations included at another person’s home, at school, on-the-go, at a restaurant or store, or at a social gathering. U.K. YouTube users were only more likely to use desktop computers to access YouTube when they were at home or work. For all categories, users were least likely to access YouTube with a tablet device. However, it’s important to keep in mind that the survey was actually conducted nearly a year ago. If the study were conducted again now, recent trends in increased mobile device usage means that it’s likely tablet usage would be much higher as would smartphone usage while desktop usage would likely be down at all locations.

Are you leveraging YouTube appropriately to connect with your target audience for brand marketing? It’s not just for kids. According to this study, your audience is using YouTube.

Image: Thomas van de Weerd