Getting Creative: 2020 Highlights
2020 was such a rough year, I felt obligated to dedicate the masthead image to the “Moldy Whopper” which aptly represents 2020. Burger King launched the Moldy Whopper ad campaign in early 2020 to highlight the lack of preservatives in their burgers, in order to draw a truly unique comparison to their rivals. While the campaign included broadcast and broad media exposure, the ad went viral digitally. It may not have increased Whopper sales, but it did capture tons of free media exposure. In other news, the Superbowl happened as it does every year, involving breaks in between commercials for some football. Check out some of the best ad creative via The Drum’s Superbowl highlights. Shout out to The Drum for being a critical resource for this article. I’m a long-time reader and fan, and they’ve done an exceptional job curating content, including Creative Works: the 10 most viewed ads of 2020. One brand that generated a great deal of buzz from its Superbowl ad was Planters and the killing off of its 104-year-old mascot as outlined in this article: The Mr. Peanut Death Super Bowl Commercial Refuses to Die.

Making Lemonade During The Pandemic
While Asia was rocked by COVID-19 in the Fall of 2019, the US didn’t feel it until March of 2020. Face masks, handwashing, thermometers, quarantine, remote work and Zoom meetings became a part of our daily lives. Marketers had to adjust to the resulting layoffs, hospitalizations, deaths, restrictions and changing behaviors. Smart brands adapted quickly, tweaking logos, messaging, creative and channel strategies to reach those stuck at home. One notable COVID-19 messaging adjustment came from a global fast-food chain: Why KFC isn’t stickin’ with its famous finger lickin’ slogan… for now. For the remaining brands, I outlined a few notable coronavirus communications strategies in the article Ten Marketing Communications Strategies to Navigate the COVID-19 Crisis. I also shared insights into the impact of coronavirus on the mom-and-pop storefronts: How to engage customers and market your retail business during a pandemic. One of the positives to come from pandemic is a renewed focus on authenticity in marketing: Coronavirus is prompting brands and tech players to show the real power of purpose. Regardless of the degree of your marketing or business pivot during 2020, humans have changed for good. I address the impact of the pandemic in the article COVID-19 changed consumer behavior and marketing strategy. In case you were looking for a silver lining in all of this, Facebook (aka Mark Zuckerberg’s) earnings were impacted, earning $3 billion less than pre-pandemic estimates.

Making Social Change
On May 25th, George Floyd was slowly suffocated by police, on a now infamous 8:46 video. While excessive force and deaths are common among minorities in the US, this particularly graphic video became a rally cry to eradicate racial injustice. Protests started Minneapolis and spread quickly across the US and around the globe. Some brands reacted quickly and powerfully, like Ben & Jerry’s, and others followed suit, as covered by The Drum: Brands show solidarity with George Floyd protests, but can they contribute to real change? The ripple effect extended to Facebook and Twitter in the form of advertising boycotts. Despite media attention, this summer’s Facebook ad boycott did not affect the social network’s ad revenues. Many brands elected to reallocate ad budgets back to Facebook moving into 2021, but time will tell whether any meaningful change resulted from the boycott. One lasting impact that snowballed quickly after George Floyd protests was a new cultural awareness filter regarding product names, mascots and packaging that could deemed insensitive. Names changed across the board, ranging from professional sports teams (The Redskins) to household products, as outlined in this article: Eskimo Pie Becomes Edy’s Pie: Here Are All The Brands That Are Changing Racist Names And Packaging. If you’re still unsure what your brand can or should do to honor (or simply minimize blowback) from the racial equality movement, I’ve outlined a few key stopes in this article: How You and Your Brand can make Positive Change in honor of George Floyd.

Maximizing Brand Strategy & Engagement
For the past few years, influencer marketing has been a big buzzword and a growing marketplace. The pandemic further fueled growth, as consumers were relegated to shopping online for most of the year and looked to influencers for ideas. I’ve outlined my perspective in this article: Influencer Marketing Strategy Best Practices, Tips and Trends. The coronavirus ripple effect forced marketers to evaluate new ways to engage consumers and influencers. The best example of opportunistic influencer marketing engagement is outlined in this article: Ocean Spray finally reacts to viral skateboarding TikTok. I’m a big fan of authenticity in influencer marketing, so I felt the Ocean Spray example was a gold standard for what will be a more intentional brand strategy moving into 2021. Another trend I couldn’t help but notice, was a rash of brand collaborations and product licensing deals between CPGs, QSRs (and other brands that lack cool abbreviations). The Drum provided an excellent summary in this article: From Dunkin’ PJs to Doritos’ sweaters: why brands are leaning on licensed products. Last but not least, I have to give a shout out to my idol, both personally and professionally: Yes, Ryan Reynolds Really Writes His Own Stuff, and He’s Got 7 Marketing Lessons for You. Beyond his acting and comedic chops, Reynolds brilliant marketer and a very astute businessman, from whom we can all learn.

Evolving Channels & Platforms
While I kicked off my digital marketing career in the mid 90’s as a search engine marketer, I’ve always preached the virtues of a multi-channel approach. In this article, Omnichannel marketing in the new digital age, I outlined the importance of integrated messaging and tracking across media. The pandemic forced many lagging businesses and marketers to make a digital transformation to deliver products and services online. One of the channels that benefitted from quarantine, was podcasting. While I first co-hosted a podcast over a decade ago, podcasts were relegated to a nerdy subset of the consumer spectrum. Not anymore, as Forbes outlined in its article, Podcasting Is Going Mainstream. I provided an outline for brands looking to join the fray in this Business Journal article: Podcasting strategies for quarantine life and beyond. Finally, virtual meetings and events became the new standard form of communication, as well as marketing. In a two-part series, the Anvil team outlined a game plan for slow adopters looking to ramp up event marketing in 2021: The Power of Virtual Events, Part 1.

For many, 2020 was a year to try to forget. For smart marketers, however, it will be a year to remember. Brands and marketers demonstrated an ability to pivot, be more authentic and create content with a greater sense of purpose. Look for that trend to continue. When it comes to digital marketing strategies and trends in 2021, we have you covered as well. For more insights into the year ahead, check out Anvil’s 2021 Digital Marketing Predictions.

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Designing Connected Content, Mike Atherton, Facebook
Mike reminds us that most consumers are consuming content via social media, vs. through your corporate website. As a marketer, you need to be where your audience is and providing them information in a way that they prefer: format, frequency, design, etc. Oftentimes, the structure of content is an illusion. Mike gives a site architecture as an example, where the structure is somewhat arbitrary, vs. embedded in the content themselves. An example of the new mode of navigation is Google’s sidebar or search results pages, where content is linked based on relevance vs. hierarchy.

The concept of Connected Content is…
• Specifically about the things that matter to an audience
• Structured according to how these things connect in the world
• Stored outside of any interface, ready for use in every interface

One tip Mike outlined, is to Map The World. Determine how content links together as you create it. Embed links to connect content and context. These relationships create value and help paint a clear picture. The technical term is Domain Modeling. Here’s an example:

Once you’ve mapped out your link structure, the next step is to open the windows. Rather than take a traditional UX/UI design approach, Mike recommends separating concerns into three categories: interface, content and domain model. Overall, the session was insightful in rethinking the content and design creation and integration process.

Ignore at Your Peril: 9 Trends That Will Shape Marketing in 2019, Loren McDonald, IBM Watson Marketing
This session covered trends shaping marketing. A few of those trends, as outlined by Loren, include:
1. Integrating Marketing & Customer experiencer: always be thinking about the Customer Journey in everything you do.
2. Eliminate data silos: ensure data is being shared across platforms to inform the customer journey and targeting marketing effectively.
3. Monitor real-time customer struggles: identify and address customer friction points.
4. AI and Machine Learning: it’s the future, but it’s only as good as the data being fed to it
5. Digital marketing agencies transformed into consultancies: Accenture, Deloitte and other big consulting firms have incorporated digital marketing into the service offering, to be competitive, spur growth and enhance relationships with clients. Loren advises going niche or expand on the agency side. Brands, conversely, need to decide who they want to work with… who is going to best meet their needs and help achieve goals.
6. Regulations & GDPR: Loren believes its largely a good thing. While meeting with legal isn’t fun, it’s important, considering 55 percent of consumers prefer not to share personal data. As a result, there are a few key steps to take to be compliant: focus on data hygiene, instilling trust, acquisition quality and rethinking metrics.
7. Agile Marketing: 37 percent of marketers report they’ve adopted some flavor of agile marketing. Agile is a tactical marketing approach that allows teams to divide marketing workflow into smaller chunks and iterate over a shorter period of time.
8. MarTech + AdTech are coming together. 86 percent of digital display ads in the US will be programmatic by 2020. Media buyers are most at risk with the evolution of automated media buying, bidding and measuring. Related tech includes Demand Side Platform (DSP) and Data Management Platform (DMP), which both help brands and marketers understand the impact of advertising throughout the customer journey.
9. Customer Centricity will drive customer innovation. Everything is a subscription these days, from cars and razors to food and clothing. This model provides critical margins for businesses with largely compressed profits. Unfortunately, companies have to restructure to better serve customers… with a customer-centered approach vs. discipline silos.
10. Bonus: In the emotion economy, purpose creates loyalty. Loren uses Kaepernick and Nike as an example. Good idea, since I’ve shared my thoughts on the Nike Just Do It campaign when it launched last year. Brands are selecting their customers based on purpose, which implies fans are more engaged and others are fired. I agree this is a powerful trend, as does the Anvil team.

Build a Loyal Base of Listeners: B2B Podcasting, Sean Campbell, Cascade Insights
Of course I felt obligated to attend this session on podcasting, as that was my topic as a Digital Summit presenter and I’ve written about developing a podcasting strategy. According to Sean, he believes too many marketers or brands are just shouting and need to stop. Cascade built a podcast a few years ago (now at 200 episodes) and Sean shared his experiences and lessons with the audience.

His overall philosophy is that consumers want content to be “narrow” so the goal is to deliver, while appealing to the broadest audience. Sean reminded the audience that audio quality is the “location, location, location” of podcasting. Don’t cut corners on your audio quality. Also, don’t cut corners without editing, which is essential to streamline the flow and make it more engaging. Sean recommends against self-hosting podcasts; use Libsyn or other podcasting host platforms. He also recommends finding a niche (topic/theme) and sticking to it. Your podcast shouldn’t be for everyone, it should be for those that matter to you – your target audience.

Don’t forget to talk up your podcast with your customers/clients and other important constituents, especially considering they are the primary or secondary target audience. As a result, it’s okay to engage the sales team and incorporate sales messaging. In fact, Sean recommends crowdsourcing questions from your customers and prospects to help formulate the content, guests and format. Pro tip: pre-record questions from your audience and air during the show when high-profile guests are only available outside of your planned recording sessions.

Advertising isn’t a bad thing, especially when integrated properly. Overcast and Podcast Republic are effective ad platforms that generate new listeners/subscribers for very little ($400 or so per campaign, based on demand). Most ads run for 30 days, which is good for reach and recall. Sean also recommend a mid-roll ad (15 seconds) to promote your business in the middle of your podcast. Use Voices.com for quality voice talent for ads.

In terms of guests, shoot for the moon with thought-leaders, influencers and otherwise engaging guests (funny, informative or unique). Don’t get trapped in thinking a job title or level of experience makes a great interview. Vet and prep your guests in advance. Think quality over quantity, not just in terms of guests or content but podcast frequency. Most guests tend to create evergreen content, which is inherent to the interview format. While attribution can be challenging due to limited metrics, it can be powerful. For example, the podcast we helped produce and market, Craving the Future, generated a global hotel consulting client for our customer.

Conversational Strategies to Reach Today’s Consumer, Grad Conn, Sprinklr
In this session, Grad outlines the concept of B2B social account-based marketing. Specifically, the concept is prospecting targeted (named) accounts in social via a programmatic approach. Grad outlines the concept of CXC, where mentions are distributed through the company via the Sprinklr application. If you don’t understand what a CXC is, worry not, as it’s Sprinklr-specific jargon as far as I can tell. To help illustrate the concept, he used Burger King as an example.

Grad goes on to outline the process for ABM:
1. Identify account based on success levels of traditional outreach methods, revenue or employee size targets, brands are engaged in social (specific to Sprinklr)
2. CXC team is activated and begins ABM research process (to learn more about the brand and key contact
3. CXC team develops a research brief to provide context for engagements
4. Set up listening to asset with research and develop key insights (using Sprinklr platform)
5. Look for opportunities to create and share custom content that engages the prospect

One example used was the CMO of Sonos, and how they targeted her after she moved to Lyft. They developed custom “congrats” creative and shared it directly with her via social (from Sprinklr profile). A second example was the CMO of Mastercard, who received custom creative, resulting in sharing and a thank you.

The conference will continue this afternoon, but I won’t be able to provide recaps. I recommend attending a future Digital Summit in your city or better yet, in Portland!

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