Author: jamesrh

 

In 2013, The Onion, a satirical newspaper and online content creator, launched Onion Labs.  As The Onion wound down its print operations it needed a new revenue stream, especially as the prevalence of ad-blockers continually hampered critical advertising revenue.  Thus Onion Labs was born, a content creation studio that specialized in creating sponsored content that mirrored the tone and style of the Onion media family’s content, and achieved marketing goals for partner companies.

Currently the content studio enjoys tremendous success.  This is in large part because of the incredible reach of The Onion’s properties.  The Onion claims over 50 million unique visitors per month to its sites, and over 250 million in social media reach.  It knows its core demographics, claiming to ” reach a young, urban, educated, and affluent audience”, provided statistics show that roughly 75% of readers have a college degree, and roughly 33% make more than 75K a year.  These demographics are why companies like Audi, Ford, and Lenovo partnered with Onion Labs.

The case studies put forth on the Onion Labs website demonstrate significant success in terms of increased buying propensity, awareness, and even awards from marketing groups.

The success of these campaigns is in large part due to Onion Labs utilizing The Onion’s distinct voice and humor in crafting content.  This can elevate brands to an entirely new level for people, and get people talking.  The ads themselves often are serious parodies of sponsored content.  By being so on the nose and honest about the fact that it is sponsored content, it effectively lifts the intellectual repulsion from the content, and permits the reader to enjoy the content on its own merits.  Whereas much other sponsored content attempts to pass quietly for normal content, here it is front and center.  In many ways, it enjoys a post-ironic flair to advertising, finding new and more entertaining ways to sell out, which Which the cynical millennials who make up more than 60% of the viewership find tremendously entertaining having grown up in the era of mass traditional advertising.

Recent Example:

View post on imgur.com

Sources:

http://mediakit.theonion.com/

http://adage.com/article/media/onion-people-read-sponsored-content/298745/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Onion

‘Don’t Make a Commercial’: The Onion’s CCO Explains Why So Much Content Marketing Sucks

Recently I heard a story from NPR regarding the practice of nudging.  This is the practice of encouraging consumers to take certain products or services over others by manipulating subtle things about their surrounding and ease of access.  The NPR story specifically mentions healthy food at food banks, such as wholegrain pasta and oatmeal.  For oatmeal, they were able to enhance the distribution of oatmeal merely by putting pictures of it and signs saying “Fills you up!”.  Little things like this can make a big difference in decisionmaking.  The food bank in question stated that this boosted the highlighted items by 46%.

This story made me think about other examples of what might be nudging.  Perhaps candidate’s yard signs near polling places, or even political bumper stickers could be viewed as nudges toward endorsing a certain view or another, as opposed to making a full argument.  Putting snacks and gum near check out lines at supermarkets are also good nudges to get people to purchase them with snap judgements.

Nudging is extremely prevalent in the gaming world, especially the microtransaction driven mobile gaming freemium world.  The game is ususally playable without the microtransactions, but slowly and slowly becomes less and less fun over time without spending money.  Pokemon GO operates on this model for example.  Even full non-mobile games on PC and console often launch with paid downloadable content, designed to try to nudge people into spending more money on the game.

http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/11/07/499325457/food-pantries-try-nutritional-nudging-to-encourage-good-food-choices

This month, in October 2016, an a political ad dropped on YouTube, and presumably our local TV.  This ad was for the re-election of Republican Travis County Commissioner Gerald Daugherty.  The ad quickly went viral, and spawned many news stories.

The primary reason the video went viral was because of its humor content, and that it took a somewhat negative view of the candidate.  Other humor is generated in the structure of the ad being so different from traditional political ads in this cycle.  Most ads are negative on the competing candidate, rather than the candidate behind the ad.  This ad highlights a weakness and turns it into a strength: the candidate is seen here as an insufferable policy wonk, annoying and boring his wife.  For the wife, this is bad, but for the constituents, this is viewed as a positive, that he cares so much about policy.  It is especially noteworthy because so much of this election cycle has been entirely devoid of policy.  The entire ad comes off as very believable, humanizing, and reinforcing of the candidates credibility.

All of this is in stark contrast to the sorts of ads which went viral in previous cycles, such as Carly Fiorina’s Demon Sheep ad.  More often than not, the ad goes viral for reasons that do not promote the candidate.  Sometimes the ad just so entirely misses the mark, or it finds an unintended audience that finds the ad unintentionally hilarious.

While the ad in question here does have some vaguely problematic gender role overtones, it serves as a reminder that intentional humor and policy do still have a place in modern politics.

The video in question:

Sources:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/willburns/2016/10/26/travis-county-commissioner-gerald-daugherty-teaches-us-how-to-do-political-advertising/#4d5b0853048a

http://motto.time.com/4546787/gerald-daugherty-viral-election-ad/

With generational change comes the changing of marketing focus.  Gen Z, the generation born roughly in the lase 90s  until now, has already been aggressively profiled by marketers, eager to find the right angle to influence their growing buying power and familial purchasing decision influences.  Here are some of the major takeaways I’ve seen,  both from a internal marketing presentation on Gen Z that I was fortunate enough to see here at St. Edward’s.

“Digital Natives”

The one people always start with is calling them digital natives, who have always lived with social media, particularly Facebook and Snapchat.  This means that they are essentially always viewing content, and they are labeled as tech savvy.  However, I believe it is a significant mistake to label them as ‘savvy’.  Savvy implies a deep knowledge of the underlying systems behind the tech.  While they are heavy users, that does not make them knowledgeable, no more than driving makes somebody a mechanic, and watching a lot of TV makes somebody able to troubleshoot one, but I digress, they are tech enthusiasts.

“8 second attention span”

It is notoriously difficult to maintain the attention of certain segments Millennials, and this is even more true with Gen Z, who you have an attention span of roughly 8 seconds.  It is said that Gen Z use 5 screens at once to Millennial’s 3.  I question how they came up with that metric, but it is roughly indicative of the difficulties of catching an eye constantly darting between multiple screens.

“Authentic Marketing”

Gen Z don’t want to be marketed to by celebrities, they want to be marketed to from real people, in real scenarios, describing real usefulness of the product or service.  A stark departure from the drop-dead humor approached use to appeal to cynical Millennials.  They also want to participate in movements, even marketing movements, particularly those which do societal good.

Sources:

5 Things Marketers Need to Know About Gen Z

https://www.mni.com/generation-z-marketing.html

An interesting phenomenon in recent years is the rapid expansion of Dollar Stores.  In 2013, Family Dollar planned to open an average of two stores per day.  The pace accelerated for Dollar General in 2016 with 900 more stores, and in 2017 they plan to open a whopping 1,000 stores.  Dollar General began 2016 with 12,500 stores and climbing.

These stores make money both by selling smaller portion sizes at a specifically cheap price point.  If you actually work out the price per unit relative to mainstream stores, the mainstream stores are often the better buy in terms of volume.  Regardless, they accomplish this through strategic relationships with manufacturers and packagers.  One of the chains got their start by strategically buying products during factories’ quiet times to be able to buy them at a lower price.  The stores also focus on generic products, rather than name brands.

While the store concept may be simplistic, there are a lot of subtle touches that make dollar stores successful.  For one thing they typically follow the exact same floor plan, so that customers can expect a uniform experience.  They also strategically place their stores in primarily low income areas, and carefully select the rural areas that they choose to operate in.

Dollar General distinguished itself from the other Dollar chains by partnering with NASCAR and IndyCar racers, further bolstering their brand.

Critics of the rapid expansion question if the growing number of stores is sustainable, and that it might breed more conflict between the various dollar store chains.

 

Sources:

http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/how-dollar-stores-were-planted-in-the-south-and-bloomed-around-the-us

http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-fastest-growing-retailers-0923-biz-20160922-story.html

http://www.forbes.com/sites/walterloeb/2013/06/10/dg-drtr-fdo-do-we-really-need-40000-dollar-stores/#267117f063da

St. Edwards has a variety of brand signifiers: Logos, specifically used fonts, imagery, objects, and Ideas.  St. Edward’s marketing is highly coordinated, run out of the Marketing office, which regulates the use of these signifiers.  Most of the materials are publicly available from St. Edward’s marketing’s website.

The most important elements of the St. Edward’s brand are the big ideas.  The ideas of “educating the heart and mind” and global education are central to St. Edward’s brand.  These are highlighted in both written advertising, and television ads.  The tagline “Take on your world” was in service of promoting the global focus of the university.

Voice is critical in building the brand through written communications.  The marketing provided communication guidelines specifically describe the university’s style and strategies in writing.  Advice like “Tell a story”, “Maintain Warmth”, “Call visitors to action”, are instructive in defining what exactly the St. Edward’s voice is.

Visually, the university has a fairly unified aesthetic.  The red roofs of the buildings, as well as the construction style of all the new buildings.  However, the look of Main Building and Holy Cross Hall is the visual that is most common, in particular the silhouette of Main Building’s tower.  With both older historic buildings like Main Building, and newer buildings like the Munday Library both in play, either can be used to connect with audiences of various kinds.

Beyond the color of the roofs, color in general factors heavily into St. Edward’s branding.  The Blue and Gold official colors of the university are used in the look and feel of the website, as well as banners that are unfurled in special occasions, focused around current student activities.  The red of the roofs and red doors is focused around the grander feel of the university.

The branding of the university is somewhat limited in scope because of the regional reach of St. Edwards, while the University is globally focused, students from Texas make up the vast majority. More than anything else, the best builders of the brand are the Alumni, Students, and Faculty and Staff of the university.  Having suitable marketing materials helps in telling and spreading the stories.

 

St. Edward’s marketing information:

http://think.stedwards.edu/marketing/

Some companies can’t help but be dragged into controversy due to their sheer size and cultural impact.  Skittles has the distinction of being dragged into two different controversies in recent years.  Both of which it responded to in a sedate, minimalist way that maximized the dignity of the brand and responded to the emerging situation in a tactful way that did not alienate anybody.

The most recent issue is when the Donald Trump Jr.  posted an image of a bowl of skittles, with the macro text “If I had a bowl of skittles and I told you just three would kill you.  Would you take a handful?  That’s our Syrian refugee problem.”  This naturally set off a firestorm of controversy on twitter.

What skittles did was put out a statement, importantly, not from the primary Skittles social media account, but from the parent company, Mars.  The social media post stated, simply: “Skittles are candy; refugees are people.  It’s an inappropriate analogy.  We respectfully refrain from further comments, as that could be interpreted as marketing”.  By putting out this statement, they both staked out their company position, and deny critics who would say they are using this for marketing purposes the battlefield by limiting the response to that one message.  By limiting the message to that one line, they have effectively ensured message discipline.

The earlier incident was the death of Trayvon Martin, who had skittles and ice tea when he was shot.  Skittles put out a similar statement at that time:

“We are deeply saddened by the news of Trayvon Martin’s death and express our sincere condolences to his family and friends. We also respect their privacy and feel it inappropriate to get involved or comment further as we would never wish for our actions to be perceived as an attempt of commercial gain following this tragedy.”

There were some calls for skittles to become more involved with the movement, and donate money from the sales of skittles to the cause, however skittles declined to do so.  This drew some criticism, but as the recent case shows, they were not shaken from the minimalist path, which seems to have served them well.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/on-leadership/wp/2016/09/22/skittles-gave-the-perfect-response-to-donald-trump-jr/

https://twitter.com/MarsGlobal/status/778099719922933760/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

http://www.ibtimes.com/trayvon-martin-case-skittles-arizona-iced-tea-speak-out-about-commercial-gain-death-florida-teen

In my time at University advancement I have gained insight into the processes by which we gain and retain donors.  I would like to share my experience briefly.

Metrics:

We track a variety of metrics to track our performance over the course of both a fiscal year and our multi-year campaigns.  First among them is the Alumni Participation rate, which tracks how many alumni have given in a period.  This number is extra important because it is a number that is factored into the metrics by which universities are measured in the US World News college rankings.  Another important set of metrics are the PA LYBUNT/SYBUNT numbers.

PA, or President’s Associate, level donors are donors who give more than $1,000 in a given year.  LYBUNTS or, Last Year But Unfortunately Not This, donors are donors who gave in the last year but not the current one.  SYBUNTs are donors who gave in some year, but not the current one.

The $1,000 barrier is an extremely important point for us.  Donors who give beyond $1,000 in a given year warrant research and potentially major gift officer or annual gift officer visitation.

LYBUNT and SYBUNT, and to a lesser extent, participation, metrics tell the story of how well we are retaining our donors.

Retention:

Great care is taken to get and keep updated lists of LYBUNT and SYBUNTs.  These lists become target lists for student callers as part of our phonathon program.  Additional information baked into the metrics can tell us if their previous gifts were made as a result of phonathon solicitation, these can be targeted first.

Near the end of the fiscal year, which for us runs July 1 to June 30, these lists take on new importance, and an all hands on deck effort is launched to call LUBUNTs to attempt to get them to give.  Even people who usually do not talk to donors make calls, making it an effective all hands on deck operation.

Our stewardship efforts are critical to donor retention, especially for our largest donors.  We must demonstrate the impact of their gifts.  Scholarship donors get to meet their scholarship students, donors who give to buildings get to see their donor signage.  Showing donors that you have made good use of their gift is the best way to get them to continue giving.

Last week, an online ad dropped that took the internet by storm.  This ad was for a mattress store, it featured 9/11 imagery, two towers of mattresses falling over, and then one of the employees saying they would never forget.  The ad drew criticism instantly as being in poor taste.  The owner of the store claimed he had no knowledge of the ads, and declared that the store would be closed, and that 30% of any sales this weekend would be donated to the 9/11 foundation.

A similar, though vaguely less offensive, yet still tacky, product display in Florida also garnered media attention.  It prominently featured two stacks of sodas shaped in the towers in front of a wall of soda shaped like the American Flag.  This display strategy was apparently put forward by Coke and approved by the supermarket.

This brought to mind the idea of Shock Advertising.  To me this raises the question of where the line is drawn between acceptable and unacceptable shock advertising.  Is there ever a tasteful way for companies to evoke tragedies?  Should they bother trying?  Or is evoking them at all going too far, even for a shock advertising strategy?

Businessbrokendown.com recommends using shock advertising in cases where it’s important to build awareness and start conversations about controversial topics.  It does not appear to be an effective strategy to move general products of any kind, and appears to be much more trouble than it’s worth, even if the mattress ad had been intentionally offensive.

http://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/San-Antonio-Mattress-Store-Closes-After-Twin-Towers-Sale-Video-392998291.html

http://www.cnn.com/2016/09/09/us/911-offensive-commercials-trnd/

Shock Advertising: Is It Right For Your Business?

A brief marketing analysis of why the Ben Hur remake flopped, based on some of the 8 Ps.

In the summer of 2016, Ben-Hur was released.  This movie was a remake of the legendary 1959 movie, Ben-Hur.  It was a tremendous flop for a variety of reasons.  Utilizing some of the 8 Ps of marketing, I’d like to discuss some of them:

Product

To start with, the quality of the remake has been judged by critics as very low.  The Rotten Tomatoes score stands at 26% of the possible 100%.  The audience score is higher, with 66% of those who saw it, liking it, but that is still a relatively poor rating.

The product launched into an already crowded group of remakes and reboots and sequels in summer 2016.  Many of which had disappointed audience.  After facing so many disappointing releases of the summer, launching the movie at this time may have depressed turnout.

Promotion/Place

The movie missed completely with Millennials: Of my group of friends, the only advertising that reached any of them relating to the movie were television ads that ran during the Olympics, which was not viewed by many millennials to begin with, missing a significant portion of the movie going base.  A Variety story confirms that the social media presence for the movie was weak.  Ultimately 94% of the opening audience was above 25.

People

The movie was also marketed heavily to a segment of people based on their religious beliefs, thinking that they would be the segment who would most connect with the movie.  The variety article claims that this did improve the film’s numbers in religious communities some, but that it may have turned off a lot of the non-religious audience.  The outreach to the religious at the last minute also came off as inauthentic, but by that point, the die had already been cast.

Performance

All of this added up to one of the most disappointing box offices in quite some time.  Bringing in only 10 Million in opening weekend of its 100 Million budget.

Sources:

http://variety.com/2016/film/news/ben-hur-box-office-bomb-1201841796/

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/ben_hur_2016/