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GAT: Meta on track to surpass all linear TV spend
In just a few years, ad revenues going to Meta – owner of Facebook, Instagram, and Whatsapp – could outgrow the entire global linear TV industry, based on current trajectories; the findings of a new Global Ad Trends report indicate changes to global advertising as social media stands to become the world’s largest ad channel.
WARC Media members can find the full report here
If you’re not yet subscribed to WARC Media, you can access a sample of the report here.
Why social’s supremacy matters
Global social spend is set to total $247.3bn in 2024, up 14.3% year on year, ahead of paid search. This could see it grow to become the biggest advertising channel by spend.
But that’s a tussle among the new giants. Perhaps the more consequential shift is that on current trajectory, just the adspend going to Meta alone is set to earn more than the entire global linear TV industry.
It’s a moment that would signal a changing of the guard, not only from old media to new, but from a significant plurality of companies making money from global ad growth to a consolidated market dominated by global tech players.
What’s behind this
Both Facebook and Instagram grew by more than 20% year on year in Q1 2024, and Meta is forecast to earn $155.6bn in ad revenue this year.
- Tools like Meta’s Advantage+, which automates aspects of creative and media planning, are increasingly popular with advertisers.
- Meta reportedly increased its ad load in Q4 2023 to 19.1%, with most Reels sessions now having seven or more ads.
Elsewhere in the market
- The +18.3% year-on-year increase forecast for TikTok in 2024 marks a significant slow-down from the 87.8% growth rate it clocked up last year, despite the introduction of new search and shopping ad formats.
- Pinterest is set to enjoy a 17.3% year-on-year increase in ad revenue in 2024, while Snapchat is forecast to grow 13.7%.
- X’s ad revenue in 2024 is predicted to decline by 6.4% globally and 5.1% in the US – but this appears to be stabilising.
Editor’s view
“Much of social media’s success has been driven by Meta’s remarkable renaissance. However, social’s stronghold on budgets can also be seen in TikTok’s rise, and a return to double-digit ad revenue growth at Snapchat and Pinterest.
“However, with this dominance comes challenges, such as rising advertising loads in social environments, and the impact of AI on media planning. In this report, we take a holistic view of the global social media landscape, which shows no sign of losing momentum” – Alex Brownsell, Head of Content, WARC Media.
TikTok goes long on long form
TikTok is testing long video uploads of up to 60 minutes as it comes for YouTube’s increasingly TV-esque territory – the feature is now in testing in a limited number of markets with no immediate plans to roll it out.
Why longform matters
This potential move to longer uploads suggests that TikTok, which recently began testing a horizontal full-screen viewing mode, is thinking about what it might become beyond a short video platform.
Aside from its noisy political troubles in the US, TikTok’s position in the market is robust to say the least, with a global audience almost as large as the relatively older Instagram. Its business appears to be growing briskly too, with a reported 40% revenue jump in 2023 chiming with research observations that it is particularly strong with new customer acquisition.
Strategically, a longer-form TikTok would open up other critical avenues for brands to reach users in an increasingly sophisticated way, with options for creative from super-short social-first content to tear-jerking brand campaigns tucked into a full episode.
The story
TechCrunch confirms observations from social media consultant Matt Navarra, which tallies with a longer trend of TikTok increasing its upload limits to accommodate bigger stories.
- TikTok tells TechCrunch that the tests are about bringing a broader canvas to creators to use with greater flexibility. Currently, it’s very much part of the TikTok lexicon for creators to split their longer form content into multiple parts, which will be indicated in a video.
- Increasingly, users watch serialised chunks of movies on the platform, a potential new avenue. In August last year, Peacock made the first episode of a new show available in five parts on TikTok, echoing YouTube hype strategies.
In context
Just as everything is an ad network, so all social platforms are apparently abandoning what made them unique. But TikTok appeared on the scene at a time when there was no single social media platform to rule them all.
Each scratches a particular audience itch, with Instagram and TikTok good for short, regular updates or short-ish, multipart videos, and then YouTube for longform. But for an increasingly TikTok native audience, there may come a time to circumvent YouTube – at least that’s the theory.
Sourced from TechCrunch, WARC, CBC
Shaking up marketing at Chelsea FC
The past couple of seasons have been difficult for Chelsea FC on the pitch, but behind the scenes a new CMO has been shaking up the marketing side of things.
Claire Cronin was appointed as chief marketing officer of the football club in August last year, a few weeks after Mauricio Pochettino became manager. And, like him, she’s been on a mission to change things. “My default setting is impatient,” she told an audience at Advertising Week Europe. “I will not wait for anything.”
Here’s what she’s been doing:
Increasing diversity
- “We need people from other industries, other countries, people who’ve worked internationally,” she said. “What I’ve inherited at Chelsea is a team of very passionate people, but who fundamentally haven’t worked in that many industries or that many geographies.”
- “If we’re trying to be the world’s favourite football team, then we need a leadership team and a team culture that is as diverse as our fan base” – that means across everything from age range and career backgrounds through to neurodiversity.
Flattening management structures
- One of Cronin’s main innovations has been to move away from hierarchical management structures. “What I’ve been saying to them is that if we want to be a learning organisation, and if we want to accelerate people’s career path, you need to skip level reporting.”
- “We want to empower people with the information to step forward and help shake things up and innovate the way we do things, to make things happen.”
Making values clear
- “The number one thing we’re focused on is, ‘What does Chelsea stand for?’” Cronin said. “What are we doing from Monday to match day? How do we stay relevant and in consumers’ and fans’ lives? How do we build a connection to fans all around the world who might never set foot in Stamford Bridge where we play?”
- Having clear values has also entailed rejecting some sponsorship opportunities. “We would rather partner with brands and categories where we are mutually building each other’s brands together,” she said.
- Having started the season without a shirt sponsor, Chelsea has found a partner in Infinite Athlete (and has managed to sell replica shirts twice over, adults buying the timeless one without a sponsor, children buying the new kit with sponsor added).
BEC
[Image: Chelsea FC and Infinite Athlete]
SVOD cancellations are CTV’s native ad opportunity
One fifth (21%) of UK households have cancelled streaming subscriptions due to price concerns, new research shows.
A new report* from Teads, the global media platform, also reveals that 14% of UK consumers say they are planning to reduce the number of streaming services they use in the next 12 months.
Why ad-supported CTV matters
From a consumer perspective, cost-of-living pressures could drive them towards ad-supported Connected TV (CTV) apps, which saves money without sacrificing the amount of video content available to them.
That should create new opportunities for advertisers, but over six in 10 (61%) of them currently never include CTV advertising in their marketing strategy, and almost half (49%) don’t understand the advantages of CTV as a marketing channel.
Takeaways
- More than a third of consumers only watch ad-free content (37%) and just under a third like to watch broadcasters’ content online (30%).
- Streaming sports on a TV at home is by far the most favoured option for people in the UK, with a third (33%) of UK consumers saying they watch big sports on a CTV device (smart TVs, set-top boxes or other streaming devices).
- But as many big sporting events are exclusive to broadcasters, there is a need for a more creative approach to advertising – and CTV native advertising on a smart TV home screen could be a good way to effectively reach this audience.
Key quote
“A home screen is the first thing a consumer sees when switching on a smart TV. So, while it helps viewers with content discoverability, a home screen also gives brands a unique opportunity to reach their target audiences where they are” – Dan Black, Head of CTV, Teads UK.
* Figures in Teads’ CTV Pulse report come from an online survey of 2,075 consumers and 505 marketing decision makers. Research was carried out in early March by YouGov.
Sourced from Teads
Marketers are thinking differently about long-term vs short-term
Advertising and marketing impact people—our relationship with ourselves, with each other, and with the planet, and like it or not, the decisions marketers make today will directly affect what happens tomorrow - rather than thinking of marketing and brand through a lens of short-and long-term measurability, perhaps we'd be better served thinking of the two as functions of time, says strategist, marketing professor and best-selling author, Dr Marcus Collins.
Why horizons matter
Prioritising today, while neglecting tomorrow can have negative consequences on people, society, and planet. In contrast, companies that master both short and long-term horizons will ensure long-term growth...
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53% of ad agency professionals anxious about climate
The advertising industry is far more worried about climate change than the general public, but many struggle to shift their agency or clients’ strategy, with many uncomfortable even raising the issue, according to new research from the IPA.
Why climate anxiety matters
A quarter of agency professionals wouldn’t feel comfortable voicing their concerns about the clients they work with and their impact on climate change. While the majority (55%) say they would feel comfortable, the balance of what’s good for the business and what’s good for the planet creates an uncomfortable tension in some agencies. Across the board, however, ad agency people are anxious and most (70%) feel the industry is doing too little.
For the full overview of WARC’s intelligence on climate and sustainability, check out our hub on the topic.
A sense of gloom
In response to whether their company was doing enough to address climate change, almost half of ad agency respondents (49%) said it was doing too little.
Partly, it comes down to influence, with only a minority of respondents agreeing that they have any influence on policy in their companies across several dimensions, including:
- ‘Strategies to reduce adverse environmental and social impacts’: 25%,
- ‘Distribution of work to team members’: 51%
- ‘Personal development and training of employees’: 51%
- ‘Mental health and wellbeing’: 30%
Discrepancies with the public
Fifty-three percent of respondents from IPA agencies feel anxious about climate change, with 37% feeling demoralised about the issue. This is far higher than the 37% of the general public who say they feel anxious and 14% who report being demoralised.
Of the general population, 21% report having a positive impact on climate change, while 18% believe they have a negative one. Perceptions among the ad agency respondents are more negative, with only 12% believing the ad industry has a positive impact on climate change and a considerable 48% believing it has a negative impact on climate change.
Good news and bad
“It is great to see that a healthy percentage (53%) of young people would consider working in our industry and crucially that, contrary to our hypothesis that the ad industry may be off-putting to them in terms of its perceived impact on the planet, it appears this isn’t the case,” says Pauline Robson, chair of the IPA Media Climate Action Group and managing partner, head of sustainability, EssenceMediacom.
“On a more cautious note, however, what we are seeing instead is that those working in our industry are far more anxious about climate change and the ad industry’s impact on it, and so it’s important that our businesses take heed of this and that we explore how we can help support and empower them best”.
Methodology
The research was commissioned by the IPA Media Climate Action Group and carried out in April this year by Ipsos. In total, the survey received responses from 545 IPA advertising agency employees, 1067 adults (general public) aged 16-75 in the UK, plus an additional 475 young adults aged 16-24 years old.
Sourced from the IPA
Corona brings a fresh perspective to the Olympic Games
Partnerships are “a fundamental and important” part of building brands, according to the global VP/marketing at Corona, who says the beer shares many of the same values as the Olympic Games.
“The Olympics wants us to get a better side of us via sports,” Clarissa Pantoja told an Advertising Week Europe audience. “We believe the same, but with the connection [via] nature.” The fit felt “very natural”, she added.
How it fits
- Whether it’s the Olympian athlete feeling the need to win a medal or the ordinary person feeling the need to perform in their jobs: “We all feel that pressure,” Pantoja explained. “So relaxing and celebrating – it’s such an important part of our journeys.”
- “Corona can bring to the Games a very fresh perspective on the importance of those things in life,” she continued, “which is very connected to what we believe in, our purpose.”
- That purpose includes celebrating “golden moments” in life, when people take time out to relax (a current series of events around the world is focused on the “golden hour” around sunset). “There are many golden moments happening at the Olympics,” Pantoja observed.
Background
- In January, the IOC announced that Corona Cero, the zero-alcohol variant of the brand, would be the global beer sponsor of the Olympic Games.
- Parent company AB InBev has a history of involvement with sports but Corona is “the first brand in our category to be part of that global level with the [Olympic] Games”, said Pantoja.
- Both AB InBev and the IOC contribute to the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
- Corona has developed a global platform, #This is Living, which aims to help people disconnect from their daily routines and reconnect with nature. “Connecting and protecting nature is a very seamless and authentic way for us to talk about our purpose,” Pantoja added.
BEC
Ford rethinks its approach to digital
Ford Europe has reassessed the role of digital within its marketing, becoming much clearer about the role it should play and the metrics against which it should be judged.
Setting media roles
- In the recent past, Ford has been transitioning from a broadcast-first mentality to a digital-first mentality – driven in part by the pandemic – without necessarily questioning the rationale behind that approach.
- “We had good intentions in terms of being digital first, but we lost the meaning in terms of why should we actually be digital first,” Jen Meyers, head of media and partnerships at Ford Europe, told an audience at the recent Marketing Society Digital day event.
- The conversation subsequently shifted towards first establishing objectives for the core lines within the business and only then assessing where digital fits in helping achieve those.
- “We established media principles, brand principles for how each of those core lines should show up in marketing and show up to an audience,” Meyers explained.
A new audience
- Ford is having to find a whole new audience as it ramps up its EV offer. Not too long ago, the brand could think in terms of upgrading its existing customers, taking them from an entry-level Fiesta, for example, to a Cougar or Puma.
- “Now, as we’re entering the electric marketplace, we can’t do that anymore,” said Meyers. “We have an entirely different customer, an entirely different price point, an entirely different market to hit.”
The product portfolio
- Electric vehicles: They’re the future and “we skew our plan to be big and bold as we talk about our electric vehicles”. As part of that, Ford has started building social-first assets that resonate with the target audience.
- An example is the record of the first-ever drive around the world in an EV [pictured] by Lexie Alford, who was following in the footsteps of Aloha Wanderwell, the first woman to do the same trip in a Model T back in 1922. Less polished creator content is also running alongside that, stressing the range of the Ford Explorer which made the trip.
- ICE and hybrid vehicles: There’s still a large volume of such products to shift and “digital helps us identify signals that someone is interested in searching for a petrol vehicle…creative is a lot more price focused”.
- Transit: Where can marketing find the B2B customer.
The digital play
- A crucial aspect of digital marketing, Meyers added, is that “it can earn you a place at the table with your CFO”, as the conversation shifts from media metrics about reach and impressions into business metrics “where I can show up and explain that, for this dollar invested, this is what we’ve achieved.” In auto, that’s focused on driving traffic to the website, getting engagement and ultimately leads.
- It also means not optimising media to a traditional media metric. “We look at purchase intent,” said Meyers “What actions are [people] taking on our website to signal that they may be a potential buyer?” That’s a complicated piece to unpick, including everything from vehicle homepage views through dealer searches to pricelist downloads.
- “Think about customer journeys, and what actions someone might take, and build your optimisation plan based on something that’s customised and unique in order to be successful,” she advised.
BEC
[Image: Ford’s ‘Charge Around the Globe’]
Indian CTV penetration boosting addressable TV advertising
Addressable advertising in India will exceed 16% of total TV ad revenues by 2026, with nearly 10% of TV ad revenue coming from long-form streaming video, predicts a new study.
The research from media investment company GroupM highlights a significant transition from traditional linear TV to connected TV (CTV) across the Indian television landscape.
Why advertising matters
With increasing mobile penetration and fast internet in India, the number of smart TV-owning households in the country is on the rise. CTV content and its popularity therefore offers marketers the chance to further monetise this opportunity and look at a greater share of TV advertising within the marketing mix.
About the study
GroupM Nexus, in collaboration with Ampere Analysis, conducted a survey involving more than 4,000 online respondents in India who exhibited high social media engagement. The survey included both male (52%) and female (48%) respondents across various age groups (18-64), with 40% residing in metro cities.
Key insights
- India is one of the largest TV markets worldwide, second only to China. According to Ampere Analysis, the total number of TV households in India surged to 217 million in 2023 (from 210 million in 2020).
- Widespread availability of reliable high-speed internet has helped in the adoption of OTT services, with 52% of Indian households having internet access in 2023, up from 36% in 2020. This figure is expected to reach 59% by 2026.
- 47% of respondents owned a smart TV and 25% of non-owners planned to purchase one within a year. Connected TVs are expected to reach over 45 million households by the end of 2024.
- Subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) services now reach 88.3 million households, making India the world’s third-largest SVOD market with over 160 million subscribers.
- 11% of respondents were found to be cord-cutters who no longer use any pay or free TV services; 54% of them continue to watch addressable TV services.
Opportunities for marketers
- High receptivity to advertising: 65% of Indian internet users (486 million users) are willing to watch ad-supported video content.
- A key channel for sports marketing: 44% of respondents enjoy watching sports, making them a crucial target for advertisers due to their high engagement levels and higher income levels, with 13% reporting earnings above average.
- Reach more audiences: Combining addressable TV with YouTube advertising can reach and target up to 90% of respondents.
- Active shoppers: Addressable TV audiences have reported household incomes 1.09 times higher than households watching free TV services. E-commerce players can take heart knowing that the audience more than actively spends on shopping and leisure items compared to non-addressable viewers.
Netflix to broadcast NFL Christmas games in strategic first
Netflix will stream the NFL’s marquee Christmas Day games as part of a three-season deal – its first move into major live sport properties – representing a significant shift in the streaming giant’s sport strategy.
Why Netflix’s live streaming matters
Big appointment viewing occasions are an important conduit for new subscribers, but now armed with a growing advertising tier, Netflix is looking at this as an opportunity across all of its business.
Earlier this year, Netflix announced a long-term deal with WWE to bring the wrestling series’ flagship weekly program, Raw, to the service. Success in both arenas could pave the way for much more live sport on Netflix.
What’s going on
“Last year, we decided to take a big bet on live – tapping into massive fandoms across comedy, reality TV, sports and more," said Bela Bajaria, Netflix chief content officer, in a press release.
“There are no live annual events, sports or otherwise, that compare with the audiences NFL football attracts. We're so excited that the NFL's Christmas Day games will be only on Netflix."
The full 2024 schedule, including the games to be shown on Netflix, will be available later today.
In context
Netflix’s business model has been changing with the arrival of advertising in 2022. In other segments of the business it has become more and more serious about gaming.
On sport, however, it has always played a different game from other streamers who bid for rights alongside the traditional networks – and as viewers flocked to their platforms. Netflix has been more interested in the narratives around sport and has made some incredibly successful documentaries out of them.
But live events have been creeping into view on Netflix: in November 2022, it live streamed its first comedy special, seen at the time as an experiment with the technology. A year later it broadcast a novelty golf competition and was gearing up to show live tennis.
Sourced from the NFL/Netflix, WARC
Marketers want more policy input
Top marketers have an appetite for more policy input on key issues such as sustainability, risk management and reputation, according to a new study from the World Federation of Advertisers.
Bridging the Gap* identifies a greater acknowledgement of the importance of policy developments and trends to marketing and marketers than there was in 2019, when the WFA carried out similar research: 56% of marketers (up from 45% in 2019) said they consider policy professionals to be “critical business partners and collaborators”.
Why policy matters
“As marketers will increasingly have to navigate geopolitics and culture wars while tackling a growing number of challenges, such as sustainability and environmental claims, smart marketers will look to new and innovative ways of systematically integrating policy thinking in order to mitigate risk and identify opportunities,” explains CEO Stephan Loerke from the WFA.
Takeaways
- Nine in 10 marketers and policy professionals agree policy is relevant to marketing, compared to 70% in 2019.
- Three in four marketers think the current levels of collaboration could be improved even further, although a majority of policy experts are now satisfied.
- Over 80% of marketers feel that policy professionals need to develop a better understanding of how marketing works and the value it delivers, while only 36% of public affairs professionals think the same.
- Sixty-two per cent of policy professionals say they collaborate with marketing teams on a regular basis, whereas only 32% of marketing respondents say they collaborate on a regular basis with policy teams.
- Forty-eight percent of marketers feel that they only collaborate with policy teams when the need arises and one in five say collaboration between the two teams rarely occurs.
Driving systemic collaboration
The WFA has launched a Framework for Positive Marketing Behaviours, designed to help marketing teams identify opportunities and manage risk on a number of critical issues.
*Findings are based on 45 responses from 35 multinational companies, spending an estimated cumulative total of $52bn on marketing globally. Forty-two percent were senior marketers and 58% were policy leaders.
Sourced from WFA
[Image: snapshot of framework, WFA]
Why Oatly embraces failure
“We love failure,” says Oatly chief creative officer John Schoolcraft. His rationale is that every time the business is sued, it’s a new brief; and every ad that fails becomes a chance to do a better ad next time.
Why failure matters
Speaking at Advertising Week Europe, Schoolcraft, who rejects the idea of a marketing department – they’re just “approvers” or “terrible buyers of ideas” – acknowledged that the brand is “always doing what people think is wrong”.
But he insisted that “every single decision we made was made on the basis of what’s right for society” – and that speaks to an unwavering commitment to the brand’s purpose of promoting a sustainable alternative to the global dairy industry.
Takeaways
- Prepare in advance. When Oatly ran a Super Bowl ad featuring its former CEO in a field, playing a keyboard and singing a self-penned jingle about the product, it reasonably assumed that not everyone might like it. So it printed T-shirts with the message, “I totally hated that Oatly commercial” and biked them to the first 200 people who wanted them.
- Embrace the haters. The spiky, underdog image Oatly presents doesn’t always chime with reality (it has sued a small business, and private equity firm Blackstone is a major investor). “There’s a lot of things that went wrong,” Schoolcraft conceded. But rather than attempt to hide those things, it built a website called fckoatly.com (and fckfckoatly.com for those who really hate the brand) that addresses the negatives head-on.
- Get the legal team on side. Schoolcraft joked that “our lawyers are also in the creative department, because we’re always getting sued”.
- Bank the wins. A campaign challenging the dairy industry to reveal its carbon footprint led to the British government consulting Oatly on putting carbon footprint legislation in place. “That, for me, is a much bigger success story than the sales numbers for the month,” said Schoolcraft.
Key quote
“Failure is the most important thing to create success” – John Schoolcraft, Global Chief Creative Officer, Oatly.
BEC
Three new rules of brand growth
A major new analysis from Kantar proposes three critical rules for brand growth as part of a decision-making framework for marketers.
‘Blueprint for Brand Growth’ is an analysis of 6.5 billion global attitudinal and shopper data points from the past decade – a collaboration between Kantar’s experts, industry leaders and advanced analytics work combining Kantar’s unique BrandZ and Worldpanel data assets.
Big idea
Brands that are meaningfully different to more people command five times the market penetration today, and have a real advantage in penetration growth over the next two years.
“For the first time anywhere, we have combined a decade of attitudinal brand research with actual shopper behaviour to more holistically understand the tangible impact marketing has on growth,” explains Jane Ostler, Kantar’s EVP of thought leadership, in a statement.
“Among other elements, we see that emotional connections in advertising are crucial. When optimised, they build differentiation and predispose consumers toward a brand, boosting sales and loyalty. ”
Three rules of brand growth
Kantar recommends three “growth accelerators” as decision-making frameworks, laid out in full in an e-book on their site and condensed here:
- Predispose More People: Creativity, advertising and experience builds meaningful difference as well as mental availability for your brand. When optimally executed, this drives 9X higher volume share, 2X higher average selling price, and a 4X likelihood of growing share in the future.
- Be More Present: Optimising distribution, customer journey, range, pack, pricing and promotions wins 7X more buyers than those present in only half of buying occasions.
- Find New Space: Innovation focused on identifying incremental spaces (motivations, occasions, tangential categories and services) doubles a brand’s chance of growth. Increasing the number of usage occasions by 10% results in revenue growth of +17%.
These three accelerators, Ostler reports, will instinctively feel familiar to CMOs. They are now, though, underpinned with quantifiable evidence of their impact on brand and revenue growth.
Theoretical background
The research chimes with some emerging observations from Kantar’s BrandZ datasets proposed in a talk by UK Insights and Effectiveness practice managing director Dom Boyd and Oxford University professor Felipe Tomaz last year: mainly, that meaningful difference is the defining attribute of growing brands rather than their distinctiveness.
Critically, Kantar’s analysis goes against a prevailing observation in the discipline that distinctiveness through memorable branding is more important than meaningful difference.
The long-standing marketing debate, in the words of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, surrounds two similar but separate ideas:
- “Distinctiveness is all about making your brand easily identified by customers.”
- “Differentiation is about features of a product or service that differentiate a brand in the eyes of the customer.”
This reached a high point with the publication of Byron Sharp and Jenni Romaniuk’s How Brands Grow (2010), in which the authors argue that “rather than striving for meaningful, perceived differentiation, marketers should seek meaningless distinctiveness. Branding lasts, differentiation doesn’t.”
Kantar isn’t proposing that branding distinctiveness is wrong, but rather that focusing on the attributes of market penetration as the main objective are insufficient to drive sustainable brand, revenue and margin growth.
Ideas in action: Heineken
“A brand like Heineken is at a very different stage in different markets worldwide, so using the Meaningful Different and Salient Framework, we've been able to really get underneath the drivers of meaningful differentiation to understand and connect with certain consumer groups that deliver brand growth across different markets,” says Tony Costella, global consumer & markets insights director at Heineken, in a statement accompanying the release.
Sourced from Kantar, WARC, Ehrenberg-Bass Institute
WARC Creative examines Coca-Cola's superstar status
Coca-Cola has consistently delivered highly successful campaigns since 2018, earning recognition for effectiveness and media excellence, but in recent years has struggled to be amongst the top brands for creativity, analysis reveals.
This profile, available exclusively to WARC Creative members, examines the performance of Coca-Cola in the WARC Rankings and explores the approach it has taken to marketing, comparing it to WARC’s comprehensive set of creative effectiveness frameworks.
Why Coca-Cola matters
Coca-Cola's status as the most successful soft drink brand in the world is evident in its advertising performance. The brand regularly is the top soft drink brand across the...
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Short form video can boost brand recognition across buyer journey
Adding short-form video to the media mix can improve brand recognition by 20% and drive impact across every stage of the buyer’s journey, according to new research from WARC in partnership with TikTok.
‘Short-form video: How to supercharge your media mix and drive full funnel impact’ examines the rise of this media strategy and how it can increase reach, attention and amplify other channels.
Why short-form video matters
Fragmented media consumption and rising advertising costs are making it harder for brands to reach and connect with audiences, who are increasingly turning to short-form content, contributing to the rapid growth of video platforms including TikTok, YouTube Shorts, and Instagram Reels. And advertisers are following: 70% of them already sell on social platforms, according to WARC Media.
Short-form video boosts reach
- More than half of social and video platform users consume short-form videos daily, and over three -quarters watch them on smartphones. A typical TikTok user spends an average of more than an hour per day on the platform.
- Audiences are consuming more short-form content than ever, led by a desire for a balance between choice and curation in the content they consume, and enabled by predictive algorithms and skippable content.
Short-form video drives meaningful attention
- Immediate attention: Short-form content engages the neural networks associated with intuitive, quick, and automatic processing by commanding attention in a less effortful and analytical way.
- Immersive attention: Full-screen, sound-on, short-form content creates an immersive viewing experience that draws audiences in and keeps them engaged through predictive algorithms.
- Multisensory attention: Short-form videos incorporate visual, auditory, and sometimes textual elements. This multisensory approach can lead to richer information processing by appealing to different cognitive channels.
Short-form video has a unique role in the media mix
- Not only is short-form video able to fulfil multiple objectives across the funnel, it can also boost the performance of other channels when used together. When executed with TV, TikTok generates incremental sales of 5.5%.
- Awareness: Short-form videos serve as powerful tools for generating awareness about products, brands, and trends. YouTube Shorts content acts as a pathway to brand discovery leading audiences to long-form content on the platform.
- Consideration: Research from Google suggests improving mid-funnel performance requires more time spent with the brand, so longer ads provide a greater lift. Short-form ads can amplify the impact and reinforce the messaging of longer formats.
- Purchase intent: Short-form videos can nudge consumers towards a purchase. A study by MAGNA, IPG Media Lab, and Snap Inc. showed that six-second ads generate identical lifts in purchase intent compared to 15-second ads.
How to succeed with short-form video
- Design: Consider the role of short-form video across the entire funnel and identify the specific outcomes the campaign should achieve.
- Plan: Tailor creatives to the platform and leverage branding devices to drive recognition. Consider how the frequency and duration of campaign activities and various ad formats will impact performance.
- Measure: Link back to the objectives and measure what the brand set out to achieve.
A complimentary copy of the full report is available to download here. A webinar discussing the findings outlined in the report will take place on 28 May at 14:00 BST.
The WARC Awards 2024: Shortlists revealed
Shortlists for The WARC Awards for Effectiveness 2024 are now available to view, ahead of the winners’ announcement later this may.
All the shortlisted work can be viewed here:
About the WARC Awards for Effectiveness
The awards, which you can find out about here, are judged by 120+ high-calibre international judges representing their respective regions. A total of 171 campaigns have been shortlisted from 35 markets across the five awarding regions.
The winners of the Bronze, Silver and Gold awards across all five regions will be revealed on 22 May.
All Gold winners will automatically progress to compete at a Global level: a super jury made up of all the regional jury chairs will then award the coveted WARC Grands Prix, the ultimate recognition for marketing success.
The Grands Prix will be revealed on 13 June via the Effectiveness Show part one. The Effectiveness Show part two will include interviews and insights from the Grands Prix winners.
Behind the lists
Asia-Pacific leads with the most shortlisted entries (64), followed by North America (46), Europe (38), Middle East and Africa (15) and Latin America (8).
Strategic Thinking, a new category launched this year, has the most shortlisted campaigns (31), followed by Instant Impact (26), Long-term Growth (19), Cultural Impact (17), Brand Purpose (16), Partnerships & Sponsorships (15), Customer Experience (13), Channel Pioneer (9), Business-to-Business (8), Channel Integration (6), Use of Data (6), and Path-to-Purchase (5).
Key quote
“Guided by the universal frameworks of the Creative Effectiveness and B2B Effectiveness Ladders, our brilliant regional juries have brought their expertise to the table and judged diligently and with rigour to select the shortlists.
“Winning a WARC award isn’t easy, so all shortlisted entrants should be hugely proud of their work getting to this stage,” says John Bizzell, Awards Lead, WARC.
Hainan plans could reshape China’s luxury market
The island of Hainan, which already boasts low income tax rates and import duties as well as visa-free access for citizens of many countries, is set to become the world’s largest duty-free shopping zone.
What’s happening
- The Financial Times reports that China intends to establish a single duty-free zone with a separate customs system in the island province as early as next year.
- In doing so, it is hoping to boost domestic consumption by further encouraging shoppers to buy luxury goods at home rather than overseas.
- DFS, the LVMH-owned travel retailer, is building a “seven-star luxury retail and entertainment destination” in Sanya, expected to be ready in 2026.
Why Hainan matters
“It’s a huge market,” Charlie Chen, head of Asian research at China Renaissance, told the FT; the provincial government has set a target of annual duty-free sales of Rmb300bn ($42bn).
Chen also suggested that the island can be a “beneficiary of the consumption downgrade” – Chinese shoppers choosing shorter domestic trips instead of overseas ones, and buying the less high-end products available in duty-free outlets (brands tend to sell their latest and most expensive items in flagship duty-paid stores in mainland China and Europe).
Key quote
“We believe that Hainan is well-poised to become one of the fastest-growing luxury markets in the world, maximising both domestic and international consumption” – Benjamin Vuchot, Chairman and CEO at DFS.
Sourced from Financial Times, TR Business
Ultra-long-form audio on the rise among B2B elite
Senior executives are busy people who require briefings, cheat sheets, primers and other bitesize pieces of information – yet, curiously, increasing numbers of the business elite are tuning into a monthly four-hour podcast about business history and strategy, with significant implications for B2B content and advertising.
Why long form matters
Good things come to those who wait: big, complex and nuanced stories need time to breathe, especially when the details and context are important. For big stories about businesses, we’re talking about action over the course of years or decades, and casts of characters in the hundreds or thousands. Great stories about practitioners for practitioners can ultimately influence busy people.
What’s going on
The Wall Street Journal profiles Acquired, a monthly podcast dealing with business case histories of book-like proportions. Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffet’s venerable investment firm, was dealt with in a nine-hour epic. Costco’s back story took seven.
Initially focusing on successful tech acquisitions, the podcast – which has 500,000 average listeners per episode – now looks at the stories behind successful companies, or effectively the pursuit of greatness.
It is in many ways a luxury information product with the craftsmanship to match. Each episode takes hundreds of hours of research and recording. Hence the relative infrequency. The creators think of themselves less as journalists than as historians, making stories of lasting interest about lasting success stories
The media equation
Advertisers are noticing, according to the Journal, and it’s reflected in their premium inventory prices:
- A four-episode sponsorship costs between $400,000 and $600,000.
- Advertising on the podcast’s archive (around a third of recent downloads) costs $40,000.
This reflects the audience’s elite makeup: 40% of listeners are C-suite or VP level, the producers say.
In context
What the story says about business-to-business marketing chimes with emerging best practice:
- Premium environments are vital to perceptions of advertising and company quality.
- Brands, including in a B2B space, can reap huge benefits from becoming more ‘human’.
- Audio straddles traditional brand/performance dichotomies: audio, whether podcasts or radio, can achieve both long and short-term objectives.
Sourced from the Wall Street Journal, WARC
Solo Brands puts Snoop behind it
It’s all change at Solo Brands – the outdoors company has brought in new leadership, a new marketing agency and shifted the balance of its marketing activity as it looks to move on from an outwardly less-than-successful partnership with rapper Snoop Dogg.
Background
- In late 2023, Solo Brands announced rapper Snoop Dogg as its official “smokesman”, part of a campaign for its Solo Stove smokeless fire pit.
- While the campaign raised brand awareness, it didn’t deliver the anticipated sales uplift. That, combined with “increased marketing investments” – the costs of hiring Snoop and a first-ever national campaign – negatively affected EBITDA.
- Observers noted that the chosen brand ambassador was a far cry from the usual Solo Brands positioning around family-friendly, outdoor activities.
What’s happening now?
- CEO Chris Metz, who joined the business in January this year, told an earnings call that “We believe we were able to capitalize on the new customers we acquired through the Snoop campaign”, without supplying any specifics (although the company founder has spoken of how the Solo Stove has been “catapulted into the cultural conversation”).
- More concretely, Solo Brands has made tactical changes to its marketing with the aim of creating a more balanced approach between acquisition and retention marketing.
- “We’re mining our current customer base with more effective promotions and more timely promotions around key holidays,” Metz explained. A new team is “taking the same content that we have … and using that content in a more effective, more compelling way”.
- Additionally, the business has entered a new partnership with media agency PMG in order to improve its marketing effectiveness on the flagship Solo Stove with a fully integrated program.
- Strategic store openings are also on the agenda as Metz believes these increase brand awareness.
Why it matters
The choice of celebrity to front a campaign is fraught with difficulty, not least for the people with final approval. But it’s still possible that the Snoop campaign could be a slow burn (pun intended), attracting consumers who might not otherwise have considered the brand. And as a one-off it’s unlikely to alienate a practical buyer convinced of the product’s benefits.
Solo Brands and The Martin Agency will be discussing the Snoop Dogg campaign as part of the Creative Impact track at Cannes Lions next month: The Scoop on Snoop: Unpacking a Viral Hit.
Sourced from Seeking Alpha, Marketing Dive, Adweek
[Image: Solo Brands]
Curaleaf aims to be ‘early and aggressive’
Being “early and aggressive” is the way to win brand loyalty in developing cannabis markets, according to the chairman of Curaleaf – that and having superior products.
Context
- Regulatory and legislative changes around the world are slowly but surely shifting perceptions of cannabis.
- Recent reports indicate that the US Drug Enforcement Agency is set to reclassify marijuana from a Schedule I drug on a par with heroin and LSD to a Schedule III drug like ketamine and some anabolic steroids.
- Last month, Germany removed cannabis from its narcotics list, effectively decriminalising it for recreational use and opening up greater access for medical products.
- “In the first month since the [German] law took effect, we have seen a substantial increase in patient counts entering the marketplace,” Curaleaf chairman Boris Jordan told an earnings call.
What it means
- Curaleaf, a medical and recreational marijuana dispensary, believes that its evolution from a multi-state operator in the US to a multi-country operator with a presence in 15 markets is something that differentiates its business from its peers.
- And it claims that its strategic investments made over recent years are now starting to pay off: in Q1, its international business grew 59% year-over-year and 12% quarter-on-quarter and is on track to hit $100m in 2024.
- As the cannabis market develops, distribution of Curaleaf’s brands across all channels will become increasingly important; the company is “laser focused” on expanding the global reach of its brand portfolio, including Select, Grassroots, Curaleaf and 420.
- In Germany, Curaleaf is working with telemedicine platforms, doctors and pharmacies as part of its program to promote and sell its brands. “We know that being early and being aggressive is the way to win brand loyalty, and having superior products,” said Jordan. “These are all things that we’re doing, trying to stay on the edge of it. We think we have a pretty strong position at the moment and we’re seeing that reflected in the numbers that are coming across.”
- Curaleaf is also moving into the adjacent THC market with an assortment of edibles and beverages ready to launch in Q3
Sourced rom Seeking Alpha, AP
[Image: Curaleaf International]
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