Small brands, Big returns, marketing is like VCs

Strange and dangerous things happen every day, and some represent bold and adventurous breakthroughs. October 24, 2014, Google Knowledge Atlas Senior vice President Alain Justas (Alan Eustace), a respected engineer and leader, from the stratosphere to parachute, broke the Filix Baum Gartner (Felix Baumgartner) The world record set in 2012 made a big splash. Dressed in a special spacesuit, he climbed up to more than 25 miles in a helium balloon, then jumped, jumping up to 833 mph, or even exceeding the speed of sound. More interestingly, Eustace is planning this jump with complete secrecy, he is working with a small team of professionals, and not a penny from sponsorship.

Eustace did this because he wanted to be: Guided by enthusiasm, the sheer danger of skydiving. This created a new world record and opened up research into the stratosphere. The jump was orchestrated by a small team, without the involvement of a large organization, which probably gave Eustace and his team the freedom and speed to break records.

For us, the link between Eustace's adventure jumps and the development trend in branded advertising is clear: especially in the digital field, the greater the risk the brand assumes, the greater the rewards, and the positive impact on the brand's target and sales. Following the Eustace news, we want to delve into the impact of risky behavior related to brand advertising on digital platforms.

Ambush Big Event

When it comes to America's big event ads, we have to mention the Super Bowl (Bowl). The 48th session of the Super Bowl last year reached 111.5 million, becoming the highest-rated television program in American history. The 49th session of the Super Bowl is expected to break this record. These figures pale in comparison with the impact of digital video, which has more than 1 billion subscribers a month to visit YouTube. In fact, the goal of the digital platform is to get people to watch the Super Bowl ad, not just the game itself, 50% of the Super Bowl viewers will watch the ads on YouTube before the game is aired, and 62% of viewers will watch the ads after the game is over. Big brands can always make a splash in big events like the Super Bowl, but we're seeing more and more of the smaller brands winning.

Take the Newcastle Brown Ale in the Super Bowl inversion as an example. After knowing that the company had no advertising license and no more than 4 million budget to break into prime-time commercials during the Super Bowl game, Newcastle showed the world its almost successful advertising. Straying from the traditional path, Newcastle took the risk of creating digital ads, copying focus group videos and cloning a "behind-the-scenes" Anna Kendrick by Anna Kendrick and Kishon Johnson (Keyshawn Johnson). Newcastle created ads that could be made if there was a huge budget or a license to spot commercials during the Super Bowl. The move, which has seen more than 10 million times, spurred viewers to tweet, share and comment on social networks, has made Newcastle enough to measure the audience's response, and 600 news stories have mentioned it. Newcastle made a deep impression on the audience, and in the move was a market with sales support in the store, with a high three-digit growth. Newcastle ambushed the Super Bowl, making its rivals wonder what the benefits of their golden-file advertising effort have been.

Adweek the Newcastle AD as the first in 2014 years, and one of the lessons that brand advertising can draw from it is that adventure is everywhere. Newcastle are willing to put their budget in innovative digital channels, while avoiding the security and flaws of traditional channels. Newcastle have proved that risk can be rewarded, and the company may have inadvertently paved the way for brands of all sizes to rethink whether it is worthwhile to advertise in big, expensive events like the Super Bowl. Newcastle are not the only brands to take on this risk. They are part of a larger trend that we have been focusing on.

Small brand, Big return

Admittedly, big brands like Coke and Nike have invested in some really good creative work. In some cases, such as Oreo (and its parent company billion international, formerly Kraft Foods), these well-known brands bear some predictable risks. However, we see that more often than not, small brands or less well-known brands can benefit from greater advertising risk.

In terms of advertising spending, Turkish Airways (Turkish Airlines) is not a small brand. However, until recently, Turkish Airlines had dwarfed the number of mainstream competitors, such as United Airlines (United), American Airlines (Anglo) and Delta, in terms of brand awareness and visibility. A few years ago, Turkish Airways responded to its global popularity with a popular advertisement starring sport superstar Kobe Bryant (Kobe Bryant) and Messi (Lionel Messi). The initial advertising content began to build brand awareness, but the airline realized that it needed to keep this momentum up to its core goal: to improve the brand awareness of Turkish airways around the world, to cover new, adventurous target audiences, and to recall the effects of the test activity by measuring the brand. Turkish Airways has created an activity with the core concept of "self-portraits" (one of the hottest buzzwords of the 2014). The "Selfie Shootout" ad became the fastest-spreading ad in the history of YouTube, with clicks reaching 77 million within a week, up to 114 million in total by January 2012. Turkey's brand has increased its search rate on YouTube to three times times, and Google's search rate has increased by 16%. Remember that the number of brands has also increased by 16%.

Turkish airways, by putting digital video, rather than television, as a carrier of mass marketing, shows a risk appetite and innovation capability. While we expect this behavior to grow dramatically over the next year, Turkish Airways may be remembered as a pioneer of this phenomenon.

Another example of bold and adventurous digital marketing is the Graham Biscuit brand Honey Maid. Although Honey Maid is the international brand, but regardless of its brand or products in the Oreo and other star brands in front of the eclipse. Graham Biscuit itself is said to be a healthy food invented by Presbyterian pastor Sylvester (Sylvester Graham) in 1829, and the beginning of a healthy tradition has made Honey maid's marketing campaign even more impressive. While other brands such as Cheerios have talked about using non-traditional advertising families in their creative ads, Honey maid head-on the issue, launching a nationwide creative campaign to introduce a gay father's family, a punk rock family, an interracial family, A military family and a single father's family. The slogan is: "No matter how the world changes, healthy food will never change." Honey Maid, a daily health snack for every healthy family. This is health.

It has also been rightly pointed out that linking the term "health" with political and religious extremist images is risky. Honey Maid took the risk and overtook it. Advertisements inspire a predictable controversy: Many people follow social media to comment on how unhealthy the ads are, for example, some people write "disgusting". Honey Maid responded with a follow-up ad in which the two artists printed every email, tweet, or post about hate, and turned the information into a very real physical form of "love". The video shows that the number of advertisers is more than 10 times times that of those who hate them. On the first day of its launch, more than 1.5 million people watched. In the end, online content drives 12 million of total viewing, with Google's Honey maid's search rate soaring 400%. Within two months of the first broadcast, sales of Honey maid jumped 7%.

Unfortunately, it is considered risky for a brand to take a stand on a divisive social issue, and few brands are willing to embody the changing nature of the American demographic structure in advertising. The Honey maid not only embodies the changing nature of demographic structure, but also provides a "healthy" label for emerging family structures and a flexible response to negative comments in a creative, forward-looking way of thinking. Gary Osifchin, senior marketing director for HIV/AIDS, said Honey maid's actions were based on instinct rather than data: "We have not even tested whether the idea is feasible ... We're largely just showing the Americans who they are ... This is the reality. Who would have thought that a whole wheat biscuit brand would discuss the issue at this level?

Risk Management

This is not the first time we have seen smaller business entities leading the way in the risk. Some of the famous brands, such as Walby Parker or Dollar Shave Club, were built on the basis of a re-examination of the long-term business model. Especially in the technical field, some of the biggest rewards are often due to a few small bets, not big ones. A notable example is that Twitter was originally a hatching project conceived by a podcast start-up. Such risks, whether necessary or passionate, are the driving force behind human innovation and forward-looking thinking.

A similar phenomenon is having an impact on digital advertising. Small brands can act more flexibly and quickly, what we call "flexibility" (nimbleocity), which can lead to faster decision making. The digital field is suitable for experimentation because the user is more tolerant of faulty or uncut content, which means that the brand has the opportunity to increase influence through several smaller digital content bets rather than focusing on one or two major projects. The risks involved in digital experimentation may deter big brands because they are less flexible and less likely to fail. Flexibility is the main reason why we think small brands will win in the digital field.

Experience Summary

Brands and organizations often ask us how to think about digital advertising in different ways.

Our suggestions are:

Know your brand. In particular, be aware of what your brand means, and think about how you can best express that meaning through digital media. Honey maid unswervingly expresses its modern definition of "health", and its marketers are flexible enough to respond quickly when viewers question the definition.

Add value to your users. We used to talk about consumers as viewers, but "viewers" were too passive for digital users. The marketing content that customers are looking for is a tool to entertain, share information, or provide practicality. Compared to the past, it is vital for brands to know the user base they want to influence and to think about how to talk to them, not to speak to them. Our guiding principle is to continue to add value to your customers in exchange for their attention. Newcastle want to talk to the millennial generation who likes to drink beer. What better way to please their preferred screen than to use their language?

Embrace risk. This is a terrible proposition in a world where every initiative requires tangible results and the approval of a legal team. But in the digital realm, great creations increasingly require greater risk. Creative institutions need permission to experiment with smaller bets and then to repeat the idea flexibly after the release. The digital field is the best choice for experimentation, because users want to gain a broader range of content and quality on the digital platform than the "traditional" media. Like Turkish Airlines, brands are increasingly shifting their marketing budgets to the digital realm. It may be useful to have at least a small portion of the budget to be put on a digital test, because sometimes these smaller bets will yield the biggest rewards.

Whatever the mission, the adventure is always terrible. However, with the increasing chaos of digital waste, these risks may soon represent the only real opportunity for brand advertising to stand out. Whether it's a big brand or a small brand, even a small risk can bring a big payoff. Now is the time to challenge the risks in the digital arena and demonstrate the strong influence of the brand.