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Marketing Through Volatility: Key takeaways from the most-awarded work of 2020

Many advertising and marketing industry awards were paused in 2020 but not all; a new WARC report, Marketing Through Volatility,  uncovers insights behind some of the world’s most-awarded campaigns of last year  – for creativity, media and effectiveness – and examines the strategies of brands that were notable in their response to the disruption of the past 12 months.

Marketing Through Volatility has been compiled using the WARC Rankings proprietary methodology.

Eight key takeaways

1. Urgency can create a space for innovation

The urgency to respond to the events of 2020 created a space for innovation for some brands, which pivoted their creative ideas while remaining highly recognisable.

2. Successful brands retain their authenticity through crisis

The most awarded brands have a strong sense of their brand, and they stay true to this in their messaging.

3. Bravery and risk-taking is often rewarded

The most awarded brands are commonly brave brands: brands that take risks and challenge category norms.

4. A strong brand purpose is sustained and consistent

2020 put a lens on the authenticity of brands and their overarching purpose. Many marketers are convinced that their consumers now prefer brands with a sustained, consistent purpose, applied across media.

5. There is opportunity in continued brand investment

Whilst there’s been a shift towards performance marketing over the past 12 months, evidence abounds that brands that continue to invest in brand-building through recessions see success.

6. Customer-centricity enables a rapid response to change

A focus on the customer has made it easier for brands to detect and respond to changes in consumer behaviour during and post-pandemic.

7. 2020 highlights the need for scenario planning and agility

The most awarded work of 2020 highlighted the benefits of scenario planning and being agile enough to pivot in the face of challenge.

8. Successful media strategies lie on a solid data bedrock

The need for solid first-party data strategies was accelerated by the pandemic, when the ability to target customers using connected and digital channels was paramount.

The full 2021 WARC Rankings  – Creative 100, Media 100, Effective 100  – will be released in November to allow the inclusion of a full set of show results, including those that were postponed or cancelled in 2020.

IPA Bellwether finds budget cuts easing and optimism growing

There are signs of recovery as cuts to UK marketing budgets are softest since Q1 2020, though pressures of lockdown restrictions remain.

As the UK’s vaccine rollout meets relaxed restrictions on the population, IHS Markit, which authored the IPA’s Q1 2021 Bellwether Report, expects a +3.7% expansion of GDP in 2021, followed by an even quicker rise of +5.8% in 2022.

On the back of this expansion, it forecasts a 3.5% increase in adspend for 2021 and 6.9% in 2022 to move toward the longer-term trend.

Key ideas

• A net balance of -11.5% of 300 panellists reported a contraction in total marketing budgets during the first quarter of 2021. While severe, this is substantially better than the -24% decline of Q4 2020.
• Looking at 21/22, a net balance of 17.4% of companies expect to see an increase in budgets for the next year, up from 12% in Q4 2020: the strongest growth expectations in the IPA Bellwether since 2018.
• How these increases are likely to be spent point to a return to the brand building trend that was accelerating pre-pandemic, as +10.1% of marketers anticipate increases in main media advertising, +7.4% in PR, and +6.8 in direct. Meanwhile, expectations around sales promotions were neutral.
• Further cuts in the coming year are expected: -28.4% of marketers expect to spend on events, while a -4.9% balance of marketers will spend less on market research.

Renewed optimism

• The IPA’s Bellwether panellists showed optimism for the first time since the beginning of 2015, with the balance of companies feeling more confident than Q4 +26.2%, up from -5.8%.
• Own-company prospects strengthened markedly, with a net balance of +36.6%, the strongest optimism for six years.

A picture of the future out of decline

Out of the continued drops in marketing spend, a picture emerges of how marketers and their companies are looking ahead by exploring where declines are slowing.

• Event spend: -43.2%, up from -62.9% in Q4 2020
• Market Research -17.8%, up from -25.0%
• Sales Promotions -16.2%, up from -26.5%
• Direct Marketing -11.8%, from -13.9%
• Main Media -8.2%, from -21.8%
• Public Relations (PR) -8.0%, from -8.5%

Key quotes

“Upbeat forecasts from UK marketers for the coming financial year, after the marked reduction in budgets through 2020, bolsters expectations for a post-pandemic recovery and bodes well for the UK economy. Without a doubt, the improvement in budget plans from the previous survey period will have been supported by the release of the UK governments roadmap to relaxing restrictions.” - Eliot Kerr, Economist at IHS Markit and author of the Bellwether Report.

“With companies’ confidence levels regarding their financial prospects soaring and with almost three quarters of UK companies either revising their marketing budgets upwards or keeping them the same this quarter versus last, the trajectory is very much moving in a positive direction and at a good pace.” – Paul Bainsfair, IPA Director General.

Sourced from the IPA

Tencent’s lessons from expanding overseas

The secret to successfully taking games into overseas markets boils down to one thing, according to Tencent marketing manager Man Zhou – understand the locals better than they understand themselves.

In a detailed description of how Tencent went about making Chinese games popular in Japan, Man points out that many key lessons in trying to grab a share of the global games market – estimated to be worth some $180 billion in 2020 – have come from getting things wrong in the past. 

Her conclusion is that a product can't be popular in a new market without accurate local insights, steady content marketing, and a carefully planned final release.

Three keys for success:

• Have an efficient international team, able to make use of localization insights, and “overcome the obstacles of time and space”.
• True insights into players comes from “thinking about and doing what players tell you they want”.
• Don’t focus only on big publishing platforms, but also on smaller and medium-sized ones, as these can offer incremental gains.

Key quote

“Both Chinese and foreign games share the same goal when trying to enter one anothers' markets: to maintain deep localisation insights into the publishing trends and statistics of the region they are targeting and to be more local than the locals.” Man Zhou, marketing manager of the global publishing department's product centre at Tencent Interactive Entertainment Group

Sourced from Games Industry

Univision and Televisa agree merger to build streaming titan

Two of the world’s leading Spanish-language media companies have announced a multi-billion-dollar merger, with the plan to challenge Netflix in the Spanish-speaking world. 

The $4.8 billion tie up between Mexico’s Televisa, the world’s most prolific producer of Spanish-language TV programmes, and Univision, the largest US Spanish-language network, will create the biggest Spanish-language media company in the world, combining bases in Mexico and the US.

The deal, expected to be finalised later this year, involves the two companies combining media, production and content, to create a new entity, Televisa-Univision, they announced. Univision will pay around $4.8 billion for Televisa's content.

The details

• Televisa produced around 86,000 hours of content last year, and each company has numerous rights to sports events. 
• Univision’s assets include the Univision and UniMás networks, nine Spanish-language cable networks, 61 television stations and 58 radio stations, as well as a recently launched streaming service, PrendeTV.
• The plan is to launch a global streaming service early next year, focused on a market of 600 million Spanish speakers, and challenging the likes of Netflix in the Spanish-language market.

Key quote

"We are creating a company which is a leader across multi-media categories, unified over the largest territories and with the scale and focus to deliver the most compelling content experience to Spanish-language consumers around the world. 

Sourced from the Hollywood Reporter

Women prefer mobile and puzzle gaming

Women now represent almost half of all gamers and they are more likely to be found playing puzzle-based or creative games on mobile devices, according to data from games insights company Newzoo.

Why it matters

Women now represent almost half of online gamers and this represents an opportunity for advertisers, as long as their communications are well-targeted. Around 70% of mothers, for example, play online games and this group is more receptive to advertising and more likely to recommend products to their friends.

This might be a missed opportunity, though, as WARC's survey of over 1,000 marketers finds that 40% of brands don't plan to advertise across gaming formats in 2021.

Takeaways

• 94% of female gamers play games on mobile, compared to 90% of male gamers.
• Two-thirds (66%) of female gamers play games on consoles.
• Women prefer puzzle-based games (44%) followed by games that offer the ability to make creative choices (31%).

Sourced from Newzoo, WARC Data

Recommendations for commingling set-top box data and Smart TV ACR data

Two sources of TV viewing and advertising insights – set-top box data and data from Smart TVs’ Automated Content Recognition (ACR) systems – operate in siloes. The Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement has conducted research on how to commingle these data sources, and developed recommendations.

Why it matters

The fact these data sets are siloed hinders the ability of media ecosystem to truly understand viewing habits and data that will help in planning, buying and optimizing ad campaigns.

Takeaways

• Looking at the household composition of homes with STBs, and those with enabled Smart TVs, illustrates that each segment is distinct and different from the US population.
• That said, many homes overlap between data sets, so they need to be matched and divided into: STB only, STB/Smart TV ACR , and Smart TV ACR only.
• Data sets should span multiple providers to represent different geographic footprints and amplify the complementary measurement properties of both collection techniques.

The big idea

CIMM is looking for the industry to coalesce around its recommendations to move marketers toward a holistic depiction of viewers’ consumption behavior, enhancing campaign optimization. It will also help media owners maximize their ad inventory.

How Lifebuoy Vietnam navigated COVID-19

Soap brand Lifebuoy flourished in Vietnam due to the pandemic; the brand’s Ngọc Nhân Mai shares how it leveraged technology with an infection alert system that supports its brand mission.

Why it matters

Lifebuoy Vietnam’s real-time infection alert system was originally deployed to encourage consumers to use soap as part of their handwashing routine. However, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Lifebuoy became more than just a brand as its technology made a real impact on consumers’ lives with disease updates and health tips.

Takeaways

• Since 2019, the infection alert system has alerted 3.5 million mums every month and helped Lifebuoy grow by more than 20% in Vietnam.
• The demand for soap spiked during the pandemic and Lifebuoy’s penetration in urban areas rose from 20% to 35% in late 2019. 
• One of the lessons that Lifebuoy Vietnam has learned over the years is that brand awareness is always paired best with relevance.

Douyin fights loss of customer trust with crackdown vendors

China’s version of TikTok, Douyin, has promised a fresh attack on vendors that break its e-commerce rules amid fears the platform will lose customers because of a loss of trust.

Not yet a year old, Douyin E-commerce claims its business has already grown more than 12 times in terms of gross merchandise value, reports Caixin. But the ByteDance-owned platform, which is challenging the country’s e-commerce giants, Pinduoduo, JD.com and Alibaba, has been heavily criticized for the behaviour of some of the merchants selling through its platform.

The details

• Kang Zeyu, Douyin’s E-commerce head, told an e-commerce summit in Guangzhou the platform would crack down on a number of recurring problems, such as sellers faking sales figures, not making customer ratings clear, and selling fake goods.
• By the end of 2020, Douyin had discovered and “taken care of” 438,800 videos and 14,400 livestreaming sessions that broke its policies and rules, the company said. And 9,384 sellers had been removed for selling counterfeit goods.
• Kang also said that Douyin had deployed its own algorithms to gather data on customers in order to present targeted ads, describing the effects as “just like street shopping when people do not always know what they desire at first”.

Key quote

“We wouldn’t mind seeing the gross merchandise value of items sold on the platform decrease, but we have to step up regulation on retailers and their services through our platform.” Kang Zeyu, head of Douyin’s e-commerce unit. 

Sourced from Caixin 

Spotify edges ahead of Apple Podcasts in downloads

Spotify has edged ahead of Apple Podcasts in monthly downloads, according to data from podcast hosting company Buzzsprout.

Why it matters

Podcasts have become more popular in recent years and major players like Spotify have been investing heavily to attract users and advertising spend. This appears to have paid off for the company, as it has grown strongly over the past six months and is now marginally ahead of Apple Podcasts.

However, the overall market has become more fragmented and this makes it more difficult for one larger player like Spotify or Apple to lead.

Takeaways

• Spotify went from recording 15.6m downloads in October 2020, half of Apple’s 30.0m downloads, to 25.1m in March 2021, the same as Apple.
• Total podcast downloads have increased by 33.4% in six months.

Sourced from Buzzsprout, WARC Data

Question marks over the future of corporate travel post-pandemic

Views on the long-term effects of the pandemic on business travel are mixed, but, in a clear signal that things may not return to the old normal, Virgin Atlantic’s boss has warned the industry faces big changes – and quite possibly permanent ones.

The airline is planning for a reduction in corporate travel of 20% over the next two years, compared to pre-pandemic levels, chief executive Shai Weiss tells the Financial Times. And, while he believes there will be a recovery, he questions whether business travel will ever make a total recovery.

The details

• Business travel makes up as much as 75% of revenue on some flights, according to PwC. While Weiss says he believes people are fed up with video conferencing tools like Zoom and Teams, Weiss says, airlines will inevitably feel the effects of the changes in the way people now work.
• One YouGov poll found 40% of those European business travellers surveyed said they would fly less often on business trips post pandemic. The chief executive of Star Alliance, the world’s biggest airline group, predicts a third of business trips will go; while others in the industry, such as Lufthansa and Delta, are much more upbeat about business passenger numbers picking up strongly once travel restrictions are lifted around the world.
• A surge in cargo flights has kept some 60% of Virgin Atlantic’s fleet in the air; but Weiss warns cargo alone will not be enough and that the threat to airlines from the loss of passenger traffic due to the pandemic will remain “existential” until passenger numbers pick up at scale.

Key quote

“Will business travel return in the same way? No, I don’t think so. But do I think there will be a return to business travel? Absolutely!” Shai Weiss, chief executive Virgin Atlantic. 

Sourced from the Financial Times

From start-up to global fashion brand – how Shein conquered the world

It may not yet be a household name yet, but few teenagers will not know the name of Chinese fast-fashion brand Shein.

Founded in 2008, Shein now has around 30 million Instagram followers and on TikTok #shein has amassed 6.2 billion views and appears in over 70 other trending hashtags. It recently emerged as US teens’ second-favourite e-commerce site after Amazon.

Shein is known for its vast offering of on-trend clothes at ultra-low prices. It also sells a wide range of other goods. It sells to 200 markets globally, and has doubled its sales over eight consecutive years, Jing Daily reported.

In 2020, sales were worth almost $20 billion. Its phenomenal growth is a study in a successful social media strategy.

The details

• While Shein works with big names, such as Katy Perry, Lil Nas X, Rita Ora, Hailey Bieber and Yara Shahidi, it mainly relies on social media marketing, encouraging fans globally to become affiliates, and allowing up-and-coming influencers to promote the brand and earn commissions.
• The result is a huge number of commission-earning influencers, ranging from those with massive followings, like Addison Rae (79.5 million on TikTok alone), to those with a mere 2,000 followers. In India alone, Shein reportedly worked with around 2,000 influencers when it launched in 2018.
• The brand’s biggest strength, though, is user-generated content on social – it appears in millions of so-called “clothing hauls”, or review videos, on TikTok and YouTube. Of the top 10 most-watched Shein videos, only two were sponsored by the brand.

Sound Bite

“Hauls are really advancing. As we’re starting to see them within TikTok and Reels videos, instead of having to watch a full 15- to 20-minute YouTube video, brands and influencers can demonstrate more looks within a shorter time period, and ultimately reach more potential customers.” Emily Trenouth, head of influencer marketing at MediaCom

Sourced from Jing Daily, WARC

Two in three adults prefer digital finance services

Two in three (66%) adults say they prefer digital platforms for services like mobile banking or online loan applications wherever it is possible to use them, according to a YouGov survey across 17 markets.

Why it matters

The coronavirus pandemic has made a 'no-contact lifestyle' more relevant, continuing a longer term digital shift in financial services. Brands have recognised this and advertising spend is following, with online investment from the financial services category doubling in value since 2017.

Takeaways

• This rises even higher to three in four adults in India (80%), Mexico (79%), Poland (78%) and Spain (77%) saying they prefer digital platforms.
• A majority (56%) of consumers also say they intend to avoid bank branches in future.

Sourced from YouGov, WARC Data

Senior players are the fastest growing segment of gamers

Think of a typical gamer and the chances are that Gen Z and millennials come to mind. But, in fact, new research shows the fastest-growing group of gamers is those aged 55 to 64, so-called OAGs, or Old-Aged Gamers.

This gaming group grew by 32% last year according to a study by market research company GWI, which surveyed 19,000 people across 15 key markets.

The details

• Younger audiences still love gaming, but a look behind the stereotypes shows a far more diverse gaming community than might be expected. Some 86% of all internet users played games in the second part of 2020 alone.
• A spike might seem unsurprising because of the pandemic, but a separate GWI study in October last year revealed only 2% of UK and US internet users had begun gaming since the start of the
• Gaming has become significantly more popular among grandparents and parents of children aged three-plus, indicating, say researchers, a new trend of gaming as a family-time activity.
• Socialising with friends was the most common reason for gameplaying, cited by 26% of players, ahead of escaping reality (22%), and immersion in storylines (18%).

Sound Bite

“Gaming has become its own form of social media. Gamers want to interact with one another and share their achievements and experiences. Having a social function within games also promotes a desire for inclusivity; gamers want to stand out among their fellow players.”  David Melia, VP Sports and Gaming at GWI 

Sourced from GWI