The (Ad)lympics are Upon Us

The opening ceremony of the 2016 Rio Summer Olympics is tonight, but advertisements for the 16-day worldwide competition started many months ago. Every brand, especially the sponsors, is striving to make an impact to one of TV’s largest audiences.

The Olympics is very similar to the Super Bowl because advertisers have a huge TV audience, which drives competition for brand exposure with expensive TV spots. The games dominate primetime for 16 consecutive nights, and brands have to be in the Olympics if they want to reach their consumers in the third quarter. However, advertising to a worldwide audience comes at a very high price. For example, NBC has surpassed $1 billion in national advertising including broadcast, cable and digital sales.

The 2012 London Olympics had a reach of 3.6 billion, and the Rio Olympics are expected to draw an even larger audience with cable, live streaming and even virtual reality programming. Now, you can feel like you are at the games with 360° storytelling without buying an expensive plane ticket (or contracting the Zika virus).

Of all the advertisements that are constantly flooding our screens, the Olympics have some of the most passionate, inspiring and powerful ads that I have ever seen. Each athlete has a personal story of failure and triumph that can easily be tied to a brand to make an emotional impact. These messages, whether funny or serious, resonate with us beyond the worldwide competition.

Below are my three favorite advertisements from the 2016 Rio Olympics.

P&G “Thank You Mom”

This ad is one of the most emotionally relatable commercials that I have ever seen simply because moms are the best. I can’t watch this ad without tearing up because it’s obvious most moms do ANYTHING to help their child achieve their dream. The tagline “It takes someone strong to make someone strong” is powerful and resonates with viewers in a relatable way because moms have been our rock all along.

United “One Journey. Two Teams”

This commercial is more amusing than anything as we all can relate to running through the airport to catch a plane. At least these Olympians make it look graceful while performing their own stunts. I loved how creative the ad was at showing the athletes’ talents to catch a flight in time. The 60-second spot promotes United as the official airline of Team USA for the 2016 Olympics.

Samsung “The Chant”

This commercial hits close to home for me, as I have friends from South Sudan because of my involvement with The Lost Boys of Sudan. They are the kindest people on the planet and they’re finally getting a well-deserved first appearance in the Olympic games. Samsung created a compelling commercial about how much joy the 19-year old runner, Margret Rumat Rumar Hassan, is bringing to the newly independent country. How inspiring is that?

All in all, it’s an exciting time of the year for sports fans and advertising enthusiasts, like me. I am most looking forward to for the 2016 Olympics are the commercials (and Kyrie Irving, of course, representing The Land all the way in Rio). While everyone else will be fast-forwarding through commercials, I’ll be paying special attention to those that inspire and impact me like the ones above.

Sports Aren’t A Beauty Pageant

Dove, a brand known for their positive portrayal of women, is calling out media outlets for criticizing female athlete’s looks—just in time for the 2016 summer Olympics. The “My Beauty, My Say” campaign hopes to change the media’s focus from appearance to performance arguing, “When they [the media] only see an athlete’s looks, they don’t see her at all.” Dove shares real-time quotes on social media, sportscasts, and magazines by popular media entities like TMZ and Bleacher Report, and offers viewers a chance to respond to these quotes. They range from discussing a female athlete’s “frizzy hair” to saying a female athlete is “built like a fire hydrant.”

 

Some may believe critiquing athlete’s looks or attire is just part of being in the public eye, but where do we draw the line? Since April 1, 2016 there have been 86.5 million comments about female athlete’s appearance according to http://www.dovehaveyoursay.com. Instead of focusing on their athletic performance, here’s the breakdown of what’s being discussed:

• Clothes: 11%
• Body: 26%
• Age: 6%
• Beauty: 50%
• Hair: 7%

When 50% of the discussion surrounding female athletes is solely focused on their appearance, it’s time for a change. A woman’s level of attractiveness or appearance has no bearing on her abilities as an athlete. By focusing on her beauty or body, the media takes away from her hard work and abilities as a professional athlete. Dove put the ball in our court (pun intended), bringing attention to the current offensive approach to women’s athletic coverage, to drive change. It’s time to take the shot: http://www.dovehaveyoursay.com

Stand Out or Stay Out: The Basics of Video Marketing

By 2018, 69 percent of total Internet traffic will be video. Every minute, 48 hours of video are being uploaded to YouTube. From 2012 to 2014, mobile video views increased by 400 percent.

These facts are hard to ignore when video is taking over the world as it holds the highest CTR of all digital advertising formats. But how can brands turn these statistics into forms of engagement with current and potential customers? How can brands constantly create content to combat the Internet’s flood of video content? How do brands master the infamous viral video?

So many questions yet so little time to create interactive, high quality videos! Videos have exploded on social media because they are so engaging, especially User Generated Content. Think about GoPro (Case Study), as the brand mission is to capture the user’s most exciting and extreme moments. Hours upon hours of GoPro footage have been uploaded to YouTube to share experiences with current and potential customers of the brand. These customers directly market the brand through UGC, which builds a huge momentum of exposure for GoPro to go beyond a restricted snowboarding or surfing brand. The views of the UGC turned branded content have directly increased with the company’s sales. Brands need to learn from companies that are using their trusted and personalized UGC and earned media for advertising purposes. If brands can accomplish that feat, they will thrive in the flood of videos taking over our social channels.

Secondly, how do brands create enough content to stay current with the trends and compete with the billions of videos on the web? It’s not enough to simply be creating meaningless content, instead, brands need to be consistently creating and sharing great content. Unfortunately, there’s no quick formula to make amazing, engaging content. Brands must completely understand their own personality and how it can provide value to their potential or current customers. An audience analysis, content audit, competitive analysis and content planning are essential steps in the process to determine how the brand’s videos will positively reach the audience. All of these strategy and planning steps eventually lead to content creation that’s interactive and easily sharable. Check out these great examples of content marketing to get started!

Lastly, brands can conquer the viral video by simply changing their approach. Again, UGC or ‘found footage’ must be utilized to humanize branded content. For example, Android’s viral “Friends Furever” was composed entirely of UGC of unusual animals interacting with each other and was the most shared ad of 2015. Brands can now find previously existing UGC that can be molded to fit a brand’s ethos. Instead of paying an agency millions to create a commercial with expensive celebrity endorsers, brands can now choose relatable, realistic videos.

A brand that does not use video marketing is like eating a PB&J sandwich without the jelly—it just doesn’t make sense and it gets you nowhere. Our digital world is expanding and there’s not much room for growth without video content marketing. Brands can easily reach and engage with their target audience if they take advantage of UGC, create a content strategy, and just possibly, conquer the viral video

Forget Waverly Place, She’s the Wizard of Social Media

Selena Gomez is 24 years old and a single post from this former Disney star is worth more than most people make in a year, two years, three years… A single promoted post from her is worth $550,000, which tops the list of all celebrities – including the Kardashian/Jenner clan. This value is based off D’Marie Group’s algorithm that takes into consideration 56 metrics. These include: followers, post frequency, engagement, post quality, click through and potential to create sales. So although Gomez is not guaranteed to make half a million dollars on every sponsored post, she essentially could use that as a starting point for negotiations.

You’re probably asking yourself, how can a social media post be worth so much money? (Or if you’re me, how can MY posts be worth even 1/100^th of that?) There are several factors to Selena Gomez’s monetary value. First, she has 200 million followers on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook who are actively engaging on her accounts. (Not to mention on average, 200,000 more join them every day, increasing the total number of her followers daily.) Brands will pay big bucks to have their product placed in front of that many people – especially if they’re conditioned to engage with the content that typically is pushed out from the page. According to AdWeek, users trust influencers as much as their friends, and around 40% say they have purchased something because they saw an influencer using it. These influencers are seen as real people, and their fans trust them, even if they’re being paid to promote a product. The relationship social media creates between influencers and their followers makes every suggestion feel personal, so if Selena Gomez says to buy a product, her fanbase is likely to do so.

Gomez isn’t involved in many brand partnerships. She’s (or at least her management is) selective about what brands she endorses. Right now that includes Coca-Cola, Pantene, and Kmart. Her feed isn’t diluted with promoted posts. According to D’Marie Group a post by Selena Gomez, or supermodel (and Kardashian) Kendall Jenner, will produce 12x the return on investment compared to standard digital marketing efforts.

Here are a few other top celebrity endorsers on social media:

Kendall Jenner: $125,000 – $300,000 per post

Cara Delevigne: $125,000 – $300,000 per post

Taylor Swift: $125,000 – $300,000 per post

Gigi Hadid: $125,000 – $300,000 per post

Scott Disick: $15,000 – $20,000 per post

Kim Kardashian: $20,000 per tweet

Khloe Kardashian: $13,000 per tweet

Ashley Benson: $5,200 per tweet

Did anyone else die a little inside after that? If you need me, I’ll be working on my Instagram.

Don’t Be Socially Awkward

As millennials, we’re expected to be the all-knowers of the digital world. We’re on the pulse of social media, and we’re expected to keep up with the downloads and be down with the uploads. It’s pretty crazy – no wonder those Boomers would rather us do it. As tail end millennials and Gen Z-ers are becoming old enough to enter the workforce, it’s easy to see that many of us have difficulties with social etiquette.

For starters, a lot of younger folks struggle with giving away all the information they possibly can share about themselves online. (We’ve all been guilty of it one time or another.) Being comfortable with yourself is a great quality, but it’s important to keep some personal things off the web. My simple test is: Is it something your future employers or grandparents would want to know about you? If the answer is no, don’t tweet about it. I’m glad you’re having a great time on Saturday at 3:17AM, but alerting everyone online that you’re blacked out and can’t find your shirt is not the best call. That’s a story to tell where no one can screenshot it – like in person.

It always makes me laugh when people say “I post what I want, it won’t stop me from getting a job!” I’ve talked to a plethora of employers, and every one of them goes to the fabulous tool we know and love: Google. It takes 2 seconds to type in your name and find out everything about you online. If you don’t have a personal page, odds are your Twitter or Facebook will be the first thing to come up. If it’s not protected, keep it PG-13 – use the employer/grandparents test if you’re not sure. It’s only going to get worse as tech savvy people step into positions of power. No one finds online information faster than millennials with a bone to pick; imagine one as your boss.

So the lesson learned is to be responsible, but that doesn’t mean you have to act like a robot. It’s good to add some personal flair to your social media pages and show people you are a real human. Let people see that you coach basketball in your free time and you love sharing pictures of your dog. Just don’t share everything because “Revealing too much leaves you with nothing.”

Anyone who needs to clean up your social media accounts, here’s a great link: http://www.tweetdelete.net

…you know who you are.

Pokémon Go’s (Ad)mented Reality

As some may say, Pokémon Go motivated more American kids to get off the couch in one week than the last seven years of Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” campaign. Even though these kids are glued to their phones, they are actually going outside and walking around! American kids exercising at their own free will – what is happening to the world?  The mobile application has taken over the nation as one of the most viral applications of all time. In fact, the number of active daily users on Pokémon Go has topped Twitter and sees more engagement than Facebook!

So what is so special about Pokémon Go and how is it surpassing powerful social media tools? Well, the app uses location-based augmented reality to engage users into capturing, training and battling virtual Pokémon that appear in real-world settings. As a player travels throughout the real world, the player’s avatar moves along the game’s map to find Pokémon near the player’s location. Pokémon show up on the player’s screen in real settings where players can capture them with Pokéballs. Sounds fun right? Yes, but warning: it’s highly addictive to “Catch them all.”

The images above show what the game looks like from the user’s perspective. The far left represents the real-life augmented reality and middle and right screens show the virtual maps.

Since the game uses augmented reality, it is engaging users with the technology of both the real and virtual world of the game in one place. Many establishments have seen a boost in business, especially in walking-accessible cities like NYC and Chicago. Niantic, the company that created the game, wants to offer businesses an even more powerful method of bringing new customers into businesses through Pokémon Go. Soon establishments will be able to become “sponsored” spots in the game that will drive sales and traffic even further. These businesses would pay the company to become locations within the virtual game board with the promise of more foot traffic.

The high engagement level of the game has advertisers interested as a perfect place to target their audience. When locations are sponsored on the game, advertisers could pay per visit, similar to the pay per click on Google’s search ads. The potential for paid advertising that encourage players to visit a business or store is a huge opportunity! More details will be coming soon from Niantic, so keep a look out for new advertising opportunities within the interactive app. Whoever would have thought that Pokémon would become a phenomenon twenty years after the first game on Gameboy was released!

P.S. Plus they show up in funny places too!

Snapchat’s New Groove

The people have spoken and Snapchat has listened. If you’re on social media, you’ve seen the conversation—Snapchat users wishing to rewatch stories and see images past their current disposable nature. The popular messaging app’s newest update will allow for just that. Users can save photos and videos to a newly launched “Memories” page on their app. They can choose to keep images to view later, resend an image or video, and even edit captions.

Snapchat also installed the ability to photo search for simple terms in the images within Memories. If you take a video of your dog, simply type in “dog,” and all those adorable images will pop right up. (If only Apple had that capability…)

Memories will show users data they’ve saved from the past, much like the TimeHop app. Any images users put into their Memories folder will show up on the app on the same date in the future. This “blast from the past” idea has been a well-liked update to Facebook as well. Even better, users can combine their stories to make one long video to share. A lifelong friend’s birthday roast seems like the perfect use for this feature.

Snapchat is consistently improving it’s offerings, giving more incentive for users to stay within their app longer, or for light users like me to get on more often. Snapchat is even growing rapidly among users over age 35. The continued improvements to the application will allow Snapchat to see user growth and soon, Snapchat might be the next Facebook contender. Stay tuned…

A Lesson in Storytelling ft. The Cleveland Cavaliers

This week, history was made in the Land. The Cleveland Cavaliers won the NBA Championship, ending Cleveland’s 52-year drought and bringing happiness, glory, and 1.3 million people to our city on the lake. I was lucky enough to see the excitement of game seven firsthand. When the buzzer went off in the fourth quarter, the city exploded. It was louder and more intense than anything I’ve ever witnessed: screams, tears, drinks flying, hugging, dancing, shirts waving, and high fives all around. As I walked from my viewing spot to Quicken Loans Arena, chants of “Let’s Go Cavs!” echoed across the streets. This was only the beginning.

On Wednesday, Cleveland hosted the championship parade. The scene downtown during game seven was nothing compared to the parade and rally—bringing an estimated 1.3 million people to a city with a population around 300,000. With fans swarming the streets and blocking the parade routes it took more than five hours for the team to make it through a one-mile parade route to the rally zone near the Convention Center. Confetti sprinkled the famous Cleveland skyline and people scaled buildings and sat outside windows stories high just to get a glimpse of our championship team. It was an extreme outpouring of love for them and the city of Cleveland.

You might be wondering what this has to do with advertising. Cleveland fans spend days allowing this team in their living rooms, bars and restaurants. They watched the team evolve with LeBron, without LeBron, and were there with tears and celebrations for “the return.” As a city, they got so close to the championship they could finally taste it. Their faith was tested. And this week, they rejoiced in celebration after emotionally counting down the minutes waiting for them to succeed or fail during sixteen long games. It’s a great story. It’s a Cleveland story.

And storytelling is essential to advertising. There are many forms of storytelling, but the Cleveland Cavaliers perfectly followed the narrative of The Hero’s Journey. Quickly, the Hero’s Journey begins in the ordinary world with a “call to adventure” (enter the NBA, win your hometown that championship.) What follows is the hero’s “refusal of the call” (I’m taking my talents to South Beach) and eventually a “meeting with a mentor” (The Heat) who provides the hero with training and advice to help them on their journey. Then, they “cross the threshold” (welcome home LeBron) and “find allies and enemies” (love and hate in Cleveland fans). They “prepare for the ordeal” (…twice) and finally take possession of the treasure! (2016 Champions!) The “road back” (flight home from California with Cleveland’s most prized-possession) and the “resurrection” (a moment of rebirth, once again the King of CLE.) Finally, “the return” (not that one), where the hero returns home and has the power to transform the world as we know it (1.3 million people waiting to see LeBron, his team and our trophy.)

1.3 million people arrived to celebrate with this team because they’ve been a part of their story; they’ve watched the 2016 NBA Champion Cleveland Cavaliers brand be built—52 years in the making. They care.

We’ve entered the era of consumer empowerment. Brands need to do more than communicate outwardly to their audience. They need to tell stories, entertain, educate, inspire and touch lives.

The Cavaliers team does an exemplary job at delivering what the audience wants. They give us a great product to watch on the court but extend the story off the court as well. By utilizing social media we have an opportunity to be a part of their lives both on the court and at home. They’ve shown us the celebrations, created inside jokes with us (Lil’ Kev), and let us see the world from their perspective. We get to experience this story through the players’ eyes.

Our involvement allows this Hero’s Journey to resonate with us deeper than most. We’ve invested ourselves in this team, and it’s become a part of us. We felt the anguish watching the buzzer slowly count down, we crowded the streets in celebration as the team flooded the court, and we cried with JR as he gave a heartfelt speech about playing for his family. The emotional rollercoaster is what connects us with this team, and motivates us for the future.

The Cavaliers team has told its story. Through them, we’re encouraged empower ourselves and write our own story. It’s our call to action – show that no matter our struggles, Cleveland is a success story. How will you respond?

 

Big thanks to my editor, Kelly Gentile.

 

Riding the Victory Wave

As we all know, the Cleveland Cavaliers made history in our city in the thrilling NBA Finals Game 7 coming back from a 3-1 lead by the Golden State Warriors to defeat them 93-89. That night, the 52-year major league championship curse on Cleveland sports reversed as “the block” replaced “the shot,” “the drive” and “the fumble” once and for all. Excitement spread throughout the city and it has been electrifying to see the dedicated fans of Cleveland finally get what they deserve. Of course, social media erupted with videos of the team’s reactions, posts from overjoyed fans and even a congratulations tweet from President Obama.

The wave was explosive, even if you weren’t a Cleveland sports fan; you wanted to be in that exhilarating moment. Since the unforgettable victory, brands have been trying to ride the wave of congratulating the Cleveland Cavaliers on accomplishing the nearly impossible. At this point, it’s almost overdone by brands now, as I have seen SO MANY posts about how brand X supports the Cavs.

However, one particular brand stands out as a leader in riding the victory wave, especially because they posted their content IMMEDIATELY after the intensity of Game 7 was finally over. Nike released “Worth the Wait,” a powerful new commercial in honor of Cleveland sports fans via Twitter. It’s almost like they knew the Cavs were going to win J. As LeBron and Kyrie are signed to Nike, this move was almost as clutch as Kyrie’s 3-point shot that led the Cavs to the big win.

If you haven’t seen the video, do yourself a huge favor and watch it now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWGgMbcTbFk. In one minute, the video captures the heart and soul of why Cleveland fans are so dedicated to their sports teams and how great it feels to finally be champions. I still get chills seeing the faces of the emotional young and old fans that have waited years upon years to be champions.

Riding the wave is essential for any brand to make an impact on social media engagement. Here are three ways to do it successfully (just like Nike did with “Worth the Wait”):

1. Timing: Nike had the best timing by releasing their previously filmed content immediately after the Cavaliers’ title was announced. The result of the NBA Finals was fresh in everyone’s mind and they could easily relate to the commercial.
2. Relevant Angle: Nike knew their audience perfectly when creating this advertisement. It was relevant, interesting and engaging to watch as a NBA and/or a Cleveland Cavaliers fan.
3. Social is about people not logos: Nike does not expose its logo until the end of the commercial. The ad focuses on Cleveland sports fans with real human emotion wearing Cavaliers gear and reacting as the Cavaliers make history.

Nike followed these criteria and stood out against other brands that were late to the party (or parade) of congratulating the hardest working team in the NBA. Since the videos release, it has been liked 70 thousand times on Twitter and viewed 2.4 million times on Facebook. Nike successfully rode the victory wave by allowing every viewer to understand how meaningful this championship is to The Land.

 

And I’ll just leave this one here:

Eight Essential Advertising Acronyms

During the past two weeks, I have heard many acronyms used in different contexts. Each time I hear a new one, I write it down in my notebook to look up later. I never realized how many acronyms are used in the day-to-day agency life!

Below are the eight advertising acronyms I learned at Brokaw during my first two weeks:

1. CTA
   • Call to Action: the backbone of advertising. A CTA includes words that give the audience instruction to provoke an immediate response or action. Without a CTA, advertising leaves the audience with no direct way to respond and is ineffective.

2. RFP
   • Request for Proposal: a document created by a business to request bids from advertising agencies when extra funding is available for a project. Brokaw often receives requests from clients to join a bid for a new project opportunity. A lot more work than I thought goes into these!

3. KPI
   • Key Performance Indicator: measures how well companies, business units, projects or individuals are performing compared to their strategic goals and objectives over time.

4. DMA
   • Designated Market Area: geographic area in which the radio and television stations in that city account for a greater proportion of listening or viewing public than those in neighboring cites. DMAs are defined by Nielsen Media Research to identify the best markets to target.

5. EOD
   • End of Day: often used to designate the time something must be completed. EOD is traditionally around 5 p.m. but many vary depending on the company or client needs.

6. CTR
   • Click through rate: a ratio showing how often people who see the ad end up clicking on it, used to gauge how well keywords and ads are performing online. A high CTR indicates that users find the ads helpful and relevant.

7. SEO
   • Search engine optimization: the process of maximizing the number of visitors to a particular website that ensures the website appears high on the list of results returned by a search engine.

8. ONEWS
   • Oh no! Not another newsletter: the weekly newsletter Brokaw sends out to their clients and employees about current industry trends that relate back to advertising.

Acronyms are essential to understanding and staying up to date with the fast-paced environment of an advertising agency. As an intern, I am trying to learn as much as possible about the different aspects of advertising shown in these acronyms above. It is important to know these terms, ask questions if something is unfamiliar or use good old Google for a quick refresher.