This Week in Strategy: If you haven't found bad Star Wars puns, you're looking in Alderaan places!
Hi Strat Pack,
It was May the 4th this week, what can I say. I'm allowed a Star Wars pun! We're going to do a great content sandwich this week. That means I'm going to open with some great content, dump some articles about how things are still generally not great, and then end with some great content before we jump in.
Finally some excellent news. I've just discovered Oh, Hello: The P’dcast. You of course remember Oh, Hello, starring Gil Faizon (charmed, he’s sure) and George St. Geegland — the co-dependent geriatric testaments to failed creative ambition played by Nick Kroll and John Mulaney. The podcast comes with an appropriately daffy premise that sees the Upper West Side duo trying to make a show about the death of Princess Diana. Click through to that link up there and read the review. It's a delight. And so is the podcast.
Ok, onto the "important things you should know about but which won't bring you joy" section:
The psychology behind why some people won't wear masks Yes it's a CNN article but and yes it's super depressing (especially for those of you who don't live in the US and are looking at us and wondering what the hell is going on over here...we don't know either actually) but it's an interesting read and worthwhile because it speaks to specific human motivations that I think are universal. That aren't just for Covid-19 but that we can tap into when writing briefs. But that said, it is maximum depressing and it's so goddamn selfish I could vomit.
Why time feels so weird right now - Vox This is so cool and weird and true. Here's a teaser to get you to click through Subjective time perception mainly has to do with the combination of emotion and attention. The type of emotion that we experience affects the type of attention that we have to pay, in combination with our external circumstances. When we’re relaxed and engaging in some kind of routine or productive activity, we’re experiencing what psychologists call flow. Flow is this relaxed, outward-directed attention, and it can be pleasant and calming. That’s exactly when you say that you lose yourself. [Flow can result from] different activities for different people. It could be knitting or carpentry or playing an instrument or golfing or yoga.
Watch Neighbors Connect in "Shelter in Place" - New Yorker This 13 minute documentary is a quiet, contemplative look at the inner life of isolation, made up of the conversations photographer Matthew Beck had with his neighbors, in which they spoke to him on the phone from their windows, while he filmed them from his. It's a beautiful piece of film. And does what the daily coronavirus briefings cannot: it taps into the humanity behind the numbers.
And now for the bottom of the content sandwich. You need to check out Neil Young's fourth Fireside Session digital show while it's still available. It's 37 minutes of Neil playing acoustically filmed by his wife who I today learned is Darryl Hannah. Good for you, Neil. Splash was a seminal movie in my childhood. It starts out with "One of these Days" from Harvest moon and just keeps getting better. Neil Young is killing it.
One last note - remember the Kansas farmer who sent a spare N95 mask to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo that literally made me cry with humanity? He finally got his bachelor's degree from Kansas State University after nearly 50 years. He was 2 credits short when he dropped out in order to take care of his mother after his father died. I'm kvelling.
Alright, stop trying to figure out how to stream Neil's first three Fireside Sessions (actually don't... If you find the links, please send them to me!) Let's jump right in.
The one thing to read this week
1) Chaz's 100 Things a Planner Should Know [BBH Labs]
Chaz Wigley, Chairman of BBH Asia, shares 100 lessons he has learned over his career as an advertising planner. [ED Note: I would copy and paste all 100 things if I thought you had that kind of patience. This list is incredibly valuable. A few...ok maybe a few more than a few of my favorites below.]
1. Your definition of the problem is likely to be more important than your definition of the answer
2. PowerPoint is important, but it’s not everything
3. Get out of the office – if you are not ‘bringing the outside in’, what is your role?
4. If it answers the problem brilliantly but doesn’t follow your strategy, that’s not an issue
5. You are in advertising, nobody cares about advertising. Feel free to write this on your laptop. It will help your work
6. Actions speak louder than words, but actions are harder, so clients keep asking for ads. Keep pushing them for actions anyway. They will thank you in the end. Maybe
7. Dull words and clever thinking are far more useful than clever words and dull thinking. Thank you Dave Trott
8. The objective is always right and fresh. One without the other is inefficient
9. Don’t be too fast to criticise – it’s little bits of somebody up there on that wall
10. If you expect creative people to present you with multiple options then you should be ready to write multiple strategies to tackle the problem
15. You will be drawn into the black hole of conformity without even knowing it. Start projects with a competitive review
21. Don’t make the briefing the big reveal – everyone in the room should already have a pretty clear idea on where you are taking them, because you will already have talked to them….
22. You are not the only one who can contribute to strategy
32. The world is not becoming more ‘Westernised’
33. Culture tends to layer rather than replace
34. We all see the world through our own ‘cultural lenses’ – we just don’t know we are wearing them. Thank you Geert Hoftsede
35. Think unprofessionally when you look at creative work. You are no longer an ad exec. You are just someone walking down the street or thumbing through a feed. You don’t care. What will stop you?
44. Remember that most of the world doesn’t think like you
45. Be a radiator not a drain at work. Yes it’s jargon, but it’s also true
54. Listen to clients. They may have an important point even if they are poor at expressing it
67. Ads (and briefs and everything really) only need to be three things – true, distinctive, motivating. Thank you Heather Alderson
73. Your biggest opportunities will be on the dullest things. Everyone wants to work on the cool sports brand and no one on the boring bank brand. But actually the sports brand is already all worked out and that bank brand is tabula rasa. Don’t be a fashionable sheep
81. When you finally make it to ‘the top’ do not rewrite the creative brief. No one cares, it’s the discussions not the paperwork that count and briefing forms are all pretty much the same anyway
88. If it’s already best practice then lots of other people are already doing it
89. Your brain, like everyone else’s, isn’t designed to be creative. It is a pattern recognition and classification machine. You will often need to consciously jog it out of this mode to do anything fresh
2) It’s (Beyond) Time to Ditch Your Social ‘Engagement’ Metrics [Jerry Daykin - LinkedIn]
Guys this is a long one but trust me it's worth it.
If you’re judging the success of your social media activity based on its engagement you aren’t just looking at irrelevant markings, you’re potentially steering your activity based on a completely false map. I understand that many businesses continue to do so because it’s all we have, and also because the wider industry tends to agree it’s the right thing to do, but once again I’m here to humbly suggest... it’s not.
[Jerry] used to run the social media at Mondelez (who with Cadbury, Oreo and more do NOT mess about in this space). Almost 10 years ago the tech team installed screens in all their HQs so that people could see how their brands were performing on social in real time, and one of my biggest career wins was managing to stop them sorting the posts by engagement and instead by reach. The conversation went from 'how cute that our chewing gum brand in France is engaging people with a kitten', to 'wow, over a hundred million people saw our Cadbury content this month, I suppose we should be investing a bit more in making it amazing and measuring what drives business impact'.
Apple makes huge use of social media when it comes to product announcements, with hidden promoted posts seen by hundreds of millions of people. Yet the @Apple Twitter feed doesn’t have any public organic posts because they don’t waste their time doing pointless things. Nike has hundreds of highly bespoke, targeted and emotional Facebook ads running right this second, but they haven’t posted organically on their Facebook page to generate some ‘engagement’ in about 3 years because they don’t like to mess around either. Both would be brands at the absolute top of the ‘engagement’ game with the biggest chance in the world of it making an impact, both of them are big and clever enough to measure that it doesn’t.
Engagement Never Happens at Business Meaningful Scale:
This one’s a bit of a thought experiment but bear with me. You can take pretty much any brand (and I challenged people to help me find exceptions with little success), look at how much engagement they are receiving on their typical posts and realise with the most basic maths that it isn’t a business meaningful number of people. If every single one of those people who engage (or more realistically if 10%) went our straight away and bought some of their product would it make a difference to their bottom line?
I've had lots of great suggestions of brands which are 'seen' as doing social well so would surely buck this trend... Burger King, Red Bull, Patagonia, Paddy Power, etc. Clearly all leveraging social and digital channels really well to communicate in the broader sense. BUT you can look at the actual ‘engagement’ on any of those and instantly see it is meaningless.
Burger King: 1.8m followers (nice!). Typical post engagement: Roughly 1,000 people. Burger King (normally) serves 11 million people a day. If 100% of the engagers went out to and bought immediately it wouldn’t even be a rounding error in their stats. They have done some good PR stunts (a broader interpretation of earned media) for sure but social engagement is meaninglessly small.
Red Bull? The king of all this. Is it a drinks brand that does content or a content brand that does drinks? We assume it’s an exception to most of these marketing rules and yet their average tweet gets <50 engagements. Ouch. Facebook <5,000, still tiny. Those fans better be buying a LOT of soda - they sell 7.5 billion cans a year folks. Doesn't mean I'm saying Red Bull isn't a good user of social and content, they are clearly phenomenal.
Engagement (and Organic Reach) isn’t Usually with Your Target Customer:
I’m going to come clean. From dozens of suggestions there did seem to be one (or in fact an entire category) which looked to challenge my idea above: automotive. The Tesla Twitter account has 5 million followers and gets tens of thousands of engagements on most things they post. The Lamborghini Instagram account has 26m followers and gets tens of thousands of responses to everything they post. Those are engaging audiences which could have a substantial impact on their business.
I mean REALLY substantial. Lamborghini only sells a few thousand cars a year so those likers are actually going to have to get in line! Tesla has sold almost a million cars globally so they’re filling up every single seat to get their fans on board. They’re such an exception in fact, that they prove an interesting counter point - that often your fans are quite clearly not your customers, or certainly not the customers you need to reach.
It’s complex for a luxury brand for sure because part of the marketing job is to convince millions of people who would never be able to afford you that you are desirable. Fair play, they are doing a good job of that for sure. I don’t have huge proof but I’d be willing to bet the majority of actual Lamborghini buyers had never liked a post on the brand’s Instagram page. Or even if they had they are such a small part of those numbers as to be impossible to detect.
The trouble with the people who engage with you on social media is that they are not, by some magic, the most important targets of your communication. You have very little control over who ‘organically’ sees your content and chooses to engage with it in fact so can do little to steer it to the right people. In most categories you can assume that the engagers with your brand are the existing heaviest buyers, they already pay attention to you and so are willing to connect.
Unfortunately, and this does undermine some of the originally flawed premise of social media marketing, these are the very last people you need to focus communications on. Brands grow by persuading a large number of relatively light and disinterested category buyers to pick them up occasionally. These shoppers are, pretty much by definition, never going to be clicking on your social media content but they’re who really matters. You need to design content that’s good enough to cut through to them, and use media to get it in front of them, if you’re to hope to grow. The good news is you won’t miss the most interested consumers either, they’re bound to notice you too.
There’s a further issue that we almost never talk about: some people are just clicky people. You know what I mean, you probably have an aunt or an old school friend who engages with everything you personally post on social media. Where do they find the time? Why do they bother? No one knows but they certainly exist, and they exist in the world of brands too.
I shall update this piece if I find the research again, but I have seen before evidence from Facebook that (as with everything in life) something like 10% of people drive 90% of the engagement on the platform. There’s a vast, silent majority who happily scrolls through the content and takes it all in, and a loud vocal minority who gets stuck in with the comments and liking everything they see. And of course there are some people in the middle, put your hand down at the back.
So social media engagement isn’t just looking at an arbitrary group of your heaviest buyers, it’s looking at a very specific group of people who like to click a lot. I haven’t seen a study on what makes people more clicky but I’m fairly sure that it doesn’t correlate with purchasing power or customer value. So not only is this ‘engagement’ happening at a meaningless scale, it’s happening with a really odd (word choice slightly intended) and very unrepresentative group of people.
Engagement Doesn’t Correlate with Business Results:
I suppose I could have started with this one, but the data’s been around for about a decade now and it doesn’t seem to convince people for some reason. I’m casually including it here for the record, the simple fact that ENGAGEMENT DOESN’T CORRELATE WITH ANY ACTUAL BUSINESS METRICS.
There’s black and white evidence that the engagement part doesn’t correlate with business results. At all. Not with brand metrics, not with purchase intent, not with actual sales. A campaign can have very high engagement and drive nothing for your brand or very low engagement and deliver a huge amount.
But Engagement is All We Have...?
This unfortunately is where the rubber hits the road. The sad reality is that we measure engagement because it’s the only thing we can measure. Sure we also measure it because of a vast collective delusion where marketers have convinced themselves it’s what really matters but that’s another story (that you just read).
Here’s the thing: engagement isn’t bad. Having people react and respond well to your content is a good indicative sign. It’s a sign from a certain skewed audience but it can be helpful rapid feedback. The comments themselves can surface up some real gems and opportunities, there’s a huge consumer relations piece in terms of positively managing them for sure. There CAN be some consumer insights that come rapidly from comments too, though you need to be cautious of just how badly representative such things are and treat them with caution. Positive post engagement is a good thing.
There I said it - but whilst keeping an eye on engagement might be an interesting way of ‘feeling the room’ it is a VERY slippery slope towards wanting to start to optimise and improve to that KPI. Anything that you measure you want to improve, and so you start down this slippery slope of trying to please the wrong people, not doing the right thing for your brand.
I know of many brands, and have tried it myself, who try to use engagement on organic posts to identify the right ones that resonate to promote to a much broader audience. It’s a nice idea in principle that speaks to the agility we all expect to get to in digital but it needs to come with a huge health warning that you are optimising to a largely meaningless metric.
What you really need is some way of running a small trial of content and then seeing what impact it has on brand metrics or sales. That is tricky but not impossible if you can set up the right situation, or if you have the paid media scale to tap into research tools that allow you to do just that.
And then finally it comes to trying to report back on the success of a campaign and engagement is all you have, so what do you do? Well it’s not ALL you have. Reach is a KPI that is relatively easy to track on most platforms which actually exactly correlates to meaningful business results. Of course the main driver of reach tends to be how much paid media you spent, but you can track how hard that media worked and frankly whether you are operating at a business meaningful scale. Your engagement numbers WILL be too low to matter, but if your total reach is still to an audience that couldn’t dramatically impact the prospects of your business then you are wasting your time.
Time spent and passive engagement can be a powerful tool too. Most consumers are never going to deliberately engage with your content through clicks but their passive actions in terms of how long they stick around for, if they watch a video all the way through etc can provide powerful hints at what is working and what isn’t. If nothing else they can be a stark wake up call on how important it is to front load your key messages for when people are around to see them. Facebook has toyed with various ‘relevancy’ scores over the years which try to combine passive and active engagement to give a clearer picture, but the fact they keep getting retired suggests there’s no super easy fix. Increasingly platforms are developing new tools which do make it easier, like options to optimise towards likely brand uplift etc. but you should be cautious about exactly who these approaches end up focussing your content on.
A lot of this extrapolates right across other digital marketing channels and results in the unfortunate dilemma of our time: do we focus on, optimise to and obsess over the huge amounts of real time data that we do have even if it has no real impact on our marketing performance at all; or do we try and go to our senior stakeholders and tell them that unfortunately we are still waiting on some slightly slower research which we hope will show which of our approaches works harder. Sadly our industry is setup to pick the blind shortcut most of the time, and as a result who knows what direction you’re headed in. And of course there are many hundreds/thousands of marketers who DO get this, to whom I can only apologise for wasting your time.
3) How the world’s biggest advertisers are spending (or not) [Digiday]
Usually the received wisdom in the marketing industry is that spending on advertising through a recession can make a company stronger when they come out the other side.
But this is a crisis like no other. Entire industries have ground to a halt, while others are thriving. Compare and contrast: Consumer goods giant Procter & Gamble — which has seen a lift in sales as people stock up on household items — is upping its marketing spend. Coca-Cola, on the other hand, has drastically slashed its ad budget as out-of-home sales of its products in venues and convenience stores has cratered.
Digiday analyzed the most-recent earnings updates from the top 10 ad spenders in the world (according to RECMA data from 2018) to see how they are adapting their marketing strategies to the ongoing crisis.
Procter & Gamble: Increased spend and plans to keep reminding consumers about the benefits of its brands
The world’s largest consumer goods maker — and the biggest advertiser — is well-positioned during the crisis as people have flocked to supermarkets and online stores to stock up on household staples like Tide and Charmin. The company’s organic sales were up 7% in the first quarter, its best sales growth in a decade. P&G said it increased its marketing spending by nearly 2% in the first quarter.
Unilever: Maintaining spend, but seeking media bargains
Unilever’s sales performance in the first quarter didn’t exactly mirror that of its largest CPG rival. Sales were flat for the first quarter — analysts had expected 2.1% growth. The issue? While consumers did stock up on its brands like Dove, Axe and Knorr, Unilever felt the hit in its food and ice cream divisions. Plus, much of its business is in emerging markets, where stockpiling hasn’t been as much of a phenomenon. Unilever withdrew its growth and margin outlook for the year, owing to uncertainty around the severity and length of the pandemic.
Unilever Chief Executive Alan Jope said on the company’s first-quarter earnings call that it has halted any new major ad productions that were in the works, reviewing ad spending to take advantage of cheaper ad rates and “dialing up areas with strong ROI.”
L’Oréal: cutting advertising in the short-term, but preparing for a bounce back
L’Oréal’s first-quarter sales dropped 4.8% — as the hair salons to which it sells products and other retailers were forced to pull down the shutters as countries entered lockdowns. A bright spot was skincare sales, which rose 13%. L’Oréal CEO Jean Paul Agon described the current situation as a supply crisis, not a demand crisis, and that the impact should be temporary. E-commerce and digital have become a core focus as L’Oréal focuses its marketing activity to meet the needs of new at-home beauty trends.
“When stores are closed it doesn’t make sense to advertise on products and it can be even frustrating to advertise on products that consumers just cannot buy,” said Agon. “Definitely we will cut on these advertising spendings for this short period of time.”
Renault Nissan Mitsubishi alliance: Cutting back in the short-term
French automaker Renault’s sales slumped 19% in the first quarter as dealerships shut and consumer demand for cars has dropped. The company has suspended its financial guidance and said it’s seeking financial support from the French government.Renault “reduced advertisement[s] as much as we can in the last part of the quarter; we are going to do the same in Q2,” said Clotilde Delbos, acting CEO and CFO at Groupe Renault “Nevertheless, we do hope the activity is going to restart.”
Amazon: All systems go
Unsurprisingly, Amazon’s revenue soared in the first quarter as consumers quickly shifted to shopping online. But conversely, while revenue rose 26%, profit dropped 29% from the year-ago quarter. Costs rose as the company raced to fulfill the surge in orders.Marketing expenses increased 32% on the year-ago quarter to $4.8 billion. However, the company said it had been lowering marketing in some areas as a way to dampen consumer demand for non-essential items.
Coca-Cola: Slashing spending
Coke has been severely impacted by the closure of bars, restaurants, movie theaters and stadiums, which make up a large proportion of its sales. Plus, people aren’t making the kind of impulse purchases of soda that they usually did from convenience outlets. “We have determined that in this initial phase there is limited effectiveness in broad-based brand marketing,” said Coca-Cola CEO James Quincey on the first-quarter earnings call. “With this in mind, we have reduced our direct consumer communication, [and we have] paused sizeable marketing campaigns through the early stages of the crisis and will re-engage when the timing is right.
McDonald’s: Promoting its free meals for first responders
McDonald’s has been forced to close many of its restaurants around the world and service has been restricted in locations that are still open.McDonald’s is still spending. Late last month, the fast food chain launched a U.S. campaign airing on national television promoting its free meals for first responders push, as Ad Age reported. Elsewhere, “digital customer engagement remains a priority for our business,” said CEO Chris Kempczinski on the company’s earnings call.
4) Quick Hits: A few articles that are concise, important, interesting, impactful, and I'm not going to write long descriptions for them
Strategy WTF Now? [Mark Pollard] A great quick resource on how to use the cacophony of our times to your advantage. From Mark: Strategy is the art of pulling apart what exists and turning it into a new reality. Hence, from mess comes what's next.
Good Web Design [Good Web Design] Bookmark this page. A collection of the best landing pages organized by section (faq, pricing, features, social proof). (H/T Julian Cole...thanks Julian!)
'Murky programmatic delta': 88% of ads can't be tracked says new PwC, ISBA investigation [Mi3] You read that right, sports fans! A world-first, end-to-end programmatic advertising investigation piles more pressure on the stubbornly opaque digital advertising supply chain. The new report from PwC and the Incorporated Society of British Advertisers (ISBA) highlights how *ahem* fucked up the programmatic marketplace is. Here are some of their key findings. 88% of advertising impressions could not be fully traced through a spaghetti map of programmatic suppliers and operatives. Eighty-eight percent!! 51% of advertiser programmatic budgets reached publishers, known as ‘working media.’ 15% of advertiser spend is lost in an “unknown delta” that could not be attributed, representing a third of supply chain costs. This is insane. And it's where your clients are putting so much of their media dollars.
That One Time Branding Saved the Day: RxBar [Medium] A really interesting read, and a story well told about how RxBar used branding to differentiate . The bar form tells you what it is. What [they] struggled with is the claims are outrageous. It’s gluten free, soy free, dairy free, all natural. The list of claims are like 20. That shit doesn’t matter. That’s why our approach to how we work and everything is “no B.S.” That just became a kind of a quirky master claim essentially. If everyone else is spewing the same promise to a consumer, they will pick the least expensive option. Consumers are freaking sick of hearing all of these claims. They want to form a relationship and connect, not be told why your company is better.RxBar’s new look isn’t flashy at all, but it’s honest. Consumers are sick of being told how awesome your business is, they are looking for something to believe in and align with. Something that genuinely speaks to their values from the get-go. Avoid B.S. like the plague and consistently deliver your truth.
Are behaviours really changing because of lockdown? [Warc] The current upside-down situation has meant many behaviours have changed in a short time – not always willingly. And what, she wonders, has happened to our attitudes, which are much harder to alter? Since much of the behaviour change that can be seen is enforced, it means that people’s attitudes have probably not changed much. The driver for these behavioural changes is forced by the government and our own sense of the greater good, not a change in values, beliefs, or attitudes. The fact that attitudes have not really been affected could mean that none of these changes are going to stick. There is a need to go further to understand what people cannot articulate or show through their current (forced) behaviours.”
The best brands tell stories [Marketing Examples - Twitter] A copywriting example from Huit Denim
5) Department of Great Work
Heinz Ketchup Made a 570-Piece, All-Red Puzzle for You to Solve, Slowly [Muse by Clio] Looking for a slow diversion? One that's just as slow as pouring ketchup from a Heinz bottle? Well, the brand has created one: a 570-piece jigsaw puzzle whose pieces are an identical shade of red. Sure, this is probably many people's idea of a nightmare. But for those who actually enjoy the challenge of monochromatic puzzling, it's a fun and very on-brand stunt. The puzzles are being given away in 17 countries. From agency Rethink
AKQA and Nike turn sky into canvas for creativity with Air Max AR drive [Campaign US] I think maybe I included this because I love the article's lede so so much "Damn. Cloud storage never looked so sexy." Air Max Cloud, which celebrates the launch of Air Max 2090, encourages people to look to the sky canvas for creativity amid the pandemic chaos. The platform is accessed via smartphone (no app needed) and contains exclusive songs & music videos from artists who are trying to inspire young people across the country from their homes. Here’s how to access the Air Max Cloud: 1. Go to AirMaxCloud.com.br in your phone's browser 2. Point your phone to the sky 3. Find the Air Max Cloud (get it?!) 4. Get access to exclusive content without leaving your home
Missing Sounds of New York: An Auditory Love Letter to New Yorkers [New York Public Library] The New York we know and love is one click away: cabs honking, pigeons cooing, bike messengers whizzing by, strangers gossiping, the hum of a local library. A new immersive experience, the album is a collection of audio landscapes that evoke some of the sounds of New York City. Missing Sounds of New York, a partnership with creative agency Mother New York, is a love letter to NYC, connecting New Yorkers around the familiar sounds of urban life that they love and miss during this unprecedented time of social separation. Each track uses a combination of sounds to create familiar, ambient canvases on which mini stories are placed: a glass breaking in a bar, a dance performance on the subway, an overly enthusiastic baseball fan. Missing Sounds of New York reminds us of what makes New York so special for so many people. From Mother New York
JetBlue will do a flyover of New York City with 3 planes on Thursday evening [The Points Guy] The New York City-based airline will fly three Airbus A320s at low altitude over the city’s five boroughs on Thursday, May 7, between 7 and 8 p.m. in what it called the “JetBlue Flyover Salute.” This coincides with the company giving away 100,000 roundtrip tickets to nurses & first responders including 10,000 for NYC nurses. The Navy took some flack about doing a flyover a few weeks ago (last week?) and I'm seeing some similar pushback but here's the thing: it's not costing taxpayers shit, the fuel was donated because oil is basically free now, these JetBlue pilots need to hit x number of hours to stay certified and unlike your car, if planes don't turn on they start to break pretty fast. And in conjunction with the one hundred thousand tickets it's really doing something. So hats off to New York's hometown airline. I like it.
Ryan Reynolds launches PowerPoint presentation instead of an ad for Mint Mobile [The Drum] Reynolds starts the ad by explaining that it was in the middle of making an ‘epic’ ad but that because of coronavirus, they’ve stumped for just a PowerPoint. The ad then continues onto a parody of PowerPoints, complete with cheesy stock imagery and, at one point, a puppy. The ad is for low-cost wireless carrier Mint Mobile, of which Ryan Reynolds is the majority owner, and was created by the ad agency Reynolds also owns, Maximum Effort Productions.
6) Platform Updates
Here's an update I am not happy about: Digiday now has a metered paywall? 3 Articles? What the hell guys!?
Facebook warned it may lose a key seal of approval for ad measurement [Reuters] Facebook Inc is at risk of losing a key seal of approval that gives companies confidence they are getting what they pay for when it comes to advertising with the social-media giant. The media industry’s measurement watchdog, the Media Rating Council, told Facebook in a letter that it could be denied accreditation due to deficiencies in how its reports on the effectiveness of advertising on its products. The notice says that Facebook has failed to address advertiser concerns arising from a 2019 audit performed by Ernst & Young, most notably concerning how it measures and reports data about video advertisements.
TikTok is testing a ‘shop now’ button for influencer videos [Digiday] The button would create a link between advertisers and prominent creators to let those creators display a prominent call-to-action button in their videos (like what you can do on every other platform). Still in an early testing stage, the creator call-to-action ads are only available to select advertisers and agencies. The exact revenue-share split has not been determined, although the company has been discussing a 20/80 split in TikTok’s favor, said people familiar with the program. The “Shop Now” button is now available to all advertisers to drive traffic to their websites — but is separate from the creator call-to-action beta test.
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