DM Magazine February 2019

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Start thinking Why inclusive about people marketing is crucial

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vol. 32 • No. 2 • February 2019

The Authority on Data-Driven Engagement & Operations

Digital Marketing Extracting value from influencer marketing

How to Video and e-mail: successfully a winning duo market content ❱6 ❱ 10 HARNESS the POWER of mobility analytics

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PRESIDENT Steve Lloyd - steve@dmn.ca DESIGN / PRODUCTION Jennifer O’Neill - jennifer@dmn.ca Advertising Sales Mark Henry - mark@dmn.ca CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Chris Marshall Jessica Bevilacqua Jay Menard Duncan Blair Suzanne Rappaport Antoine Bonicalzi Stephen Shaw Jon Davids Elizabeth Del Giudice Alison Turmelle Oscar Zaragoza Alexandre Gravel

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The influencer marketing playbook Courtesy CASACom

EDITOR Brendan Read - brendan@dmn.ca

Extracting value from influencer marketing

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Customer Centricity

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The state of digital advertising

Start thinking about people

Interview with Seraj Bharwani, chief strategy officer, Acuity Ads

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Lester Wunderman

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Doing e-mail fundraising well

Inclusive Marketing

Content marketing/management

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Vol. 32 | No. 2 | February 2019

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Adding magic to DM

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Why inclusive marketing is crucial

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Excellent Execution

How to successfully market content

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Choosing the right CMS February 2019

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Marketing paradise DMN.ca ❰

Customer Centricity

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Start thinking about people O

Duncan Blair is director of marketing, Article (www.article.com).

ur job as marketers is to increase the probability of someone meaningfully, and profitably, engaging with our brands.

I don’t mean engaging in the abstract sense of likes, comments or shares. Rather, I’m talking about concrete business outcomes such as purchasing, subscribing, donating or volunteering; whatever it is that your organization exists to achieve. Actions that are best collectively described as “purchasing”.

People don’t purchase from you because of an e-mail, a banner ad, a direct mail piece or a TV commercial.

Each of these marketing communications are vehicles that deliver messages that may or may not increase the probability of purchases.

In reality, people purchase from us for all kinds of reasons: some simple, some complex. Our role is to better understand our customers’ distinct needs in order to prescribe solutions that will increase the probability of purchases.

The outcome of this understanding of your customers’ needs might be an advertising campaign.

But it might be a new distribution channel, a pricing adjustment or a change in the product or service.

Unfortunately, marketers too often think that the solution to any problem is an advertising campaign.

Instead they should start thinking about people in order to reach their business objectives. Here’s how.

We need to understand the people that we are creating products and experiences for.

Break out of the silos Marketing has been compartmentalized by channel, with smart channel experts working in myopic silos.

They are given mandates to grow channel-specific key performance indicators (KPIs) with little to no thought as to how these meaningfully contribute to overall business performance.

We should measure things that matter, but too often we pick the things that are “easy” and discount or corrupt the items that are not by trying to make them “measurable”. Too many of us are wholly absorbed with a few trees, failing to notice that our forest is slowly dying.

Let’s look at a couple of examples. Take word of mouth marketing, which is very difficult to measure reliably. As a result, you see brands running convoluted customer referral campaigns that significantly erode the value of recommendations in the hopes that they can capture and measure the effect. In doing so, they ignore that the measurements are meaningless. How many brands have you referred to friends that you didn’t have a great experience with? The way to get recommendations is to build great experiences: not to make the recommendations trackable or bribe the referrers. ❱ DMN.ca

Here’s another: e-mail signup programmes. I have yet to speak with a marketer that has run a robust incrementality test on an e-mail programme, but many brands have “sign up for e-mail and get a discount” offers. Often these include user experiences that could best be described as hostage taking. All of this is built on an assumption that capturing potential customers’ e-mails is good, usually supported, at best, by flimsy A/B tests.

The e-mail channel numbers look great, subscriber numbers are up and e-mail revenue is up, but there is no appreciation for the cost at which it is coming.

How many of those people would have purchased regardless? How many took advantage of the discounts and never open a single e-mail? How many people were turned off enough by the aggressive e-mail capture and left to never return?

I’m not suggesting that capturing e-mails doesn’t work, only that most marketers don’t know for sure that it’s a worthwhile pursuit for their brands. That’s because most of us don’t do the hard work of measuring it in a meaningful way: one that recognizes e-mail as part of a much larger set of interactions with our brands.

Spend time with your (potential) customers The way to avoid these traps is to spend time understanding how people actually interact with your category. When was the last time you spoke with a prospective customer? I am consistently surprised by the number of marketers who spend little or no time in the field. One of the marvelous things about human beings is that, in most cases, they don’t need much of an excuse to tell you what they think about something, particularly if it is bothering them.

To be effective in our roles, we need to understand the people that we are talking to and creating products and experiences for. Not as a persona on a sheet of paper, certainly not as homogenous groups with well-worn stereotypes, but as individuals. If you listen carefully you will learn just how little they care about your brand. But you might just learn something tremendously useful about your category and the role it does play in their lives.

Investing the time and developing the skills to understand people’s frustrations, motivations and ambitions will have much better return than figuring out a way to e-mail your list more frequently, develop a sequential remarketing campaign or build an augmented reality app.

My company sells furniture. I make a point of engaging with people shopping for it, both ours and others, whenever I can: whether online, on the phone or in person. I am actively trying to create more time for my team and I to do this in 2019 because I believe it is the single best investment in long term growth we can make.

I’m willing to bet it is for you too.

February 2019

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EMail Marketing

Video and e-mail: a winning duo

By Antoine Bonicalzi

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he appetite for online video is at an all-time high. By 2022, online videos will make up more than 80% of all consumer Internet traffic1.

Video is most likely your audience’s favourite content format.

At the same time, e-mail is still going strong. 86% of marketers say e-mail is “important” or “very important” to them while it accounts for a return on investment (ROI) of over £32 (approximately CDN $55) for every pound/dollar invested, according to a British study2. We can safely say that e-mail is one of the most effective ways to distribute your content.

So how can e-mail and video can be used together to communicate more effectively with your audience?

1. Use video strategically to build your e-mail list. Since e-mail marketing is still very effective3, investing time and energy on building an e-mail list still makes a lot of sense. And the use of video can definitely help you build that list. a. Build hype and a list of interested viewers. If you’re working on a video project (like a short film or a web series), you can build anticipation before it’s completed and have a list of interested people to distribute it to when it’s released. For example, Ouisurf is a business that organizes surf trips. It releases video series regularly and when a series is coming up, it asks web site visitors to subscribe to be notified when the series is released. The company build its e-mail list and when ❱ DMN.ca

the series is out, it has a list of interested viewers who are eager to watch the content. And in the meantime, it can send offers and other content to those new subscribers. b. Offer a video course. This is a classic online marketing tactic.

You offer a video course (a series of educational videos) in exchange for an e-mail address.

People who are interested in the information that you are providing will want to join the course and therefore will join your e-mail list. c. Collect leads in the video player. With Wistia’s Turnstile e-mail collector, your viewers can enter their e-mail addresses right within the video player.

This advanced feature makes it easy for you to gate videos and drive qualified leads to your e-mail list.

2. Maximize video distribution with e-mail. Let’s say that you share a new video on your brand’s Facebook page, Instagram account or YouTube channel and that you are hoping to get some organic (viral) reach from it. You know that the first minutes after you post are crucial; you need to get views, likes and comments fast so that the social algorithms show you some love. If you have a healthy e-mail list, you can reach out to your subscribers, let them know about your new video and drive some targeted traffic to it. Your e-mail subscribers are some of your best fans, so they are likely to check out your content quickly and interact with it. We tend to think that e-mail should drive traffic

back to our web site.

While that’s true in a lot of cases, why not send some traffic to our best social media content?

Especially if it helps us get more viral reach.

3. “Include” video in your e-mails. Video is engaging! Including or sharing a video in an e-mail can lead to open rate increases of 19% and click-through rate increases upwards of 50%4. a. Should you embed HTML5 videos in your e-mails? Yes, you can, but note that not all subscribers will see them. It all depends on whether or not their e-mail client (like Gmail, Hotmail or Outlook) can support the most recent video format, HTML5. If HTML5 is supported, the video will play within the e-mail itself. If it’s not supported, subscribers should see what’s called a “fallback image,” which is a still image that looks like a video. This image sends subscribers to a web page where the video can be played.

That is something that Wistia offers as a beta feature. They provide a code that you embed in your e-mail and that code takes care of the fallback image.

I think that more and more e-mail clients will support HTML5 videos. At Cyberimpact, we are rolling out videos in e-mail in 2019. If you want to maximize video views, why not give it a try? If, on the other hand, you want to maximize conversions (like a purchase) you might want to link to a landing page instead. b. Simply use an image with a link. This is a tried and true method. It’s simple, and it works well. Here are a few best practices: ❯❯ Let people know there’s a video in the subject line and e-mail text;

Choose an enticing thumbnail from your video and make sure there’s a play button (hint: friendly faces attract clicks); ❯❯ Link that thumbnail to a page on your web site; and ❯❯ Keep the number of calls-toaction limited. c. Add motion to your e-mail with GIFs. Instead of using a static image, you can use a GIF to add movement and give readers a preview of your video and really entice them to click to watch the whole clip. The one thing to remember is that file size matters. GIFs won’t animate in an e-mail until all of the frames are loaded, so larger file sizes can create a subpar experience.

If you’re lucky, an oversized GIF might pause on the first frame.

Conversely, it could appear completely blank. As a rule of thumb, e-mail GIFs should be under 125K. ❯❯

You’re up!

Hopefully, you’re now inspired and have a few ideas of how you can start using video and e-mail together. Start experimenting and I’m willing to bet that you’ll see improvements on the key performance indicators (KPIs) that you care about.

Antoine Bonicalzi is the marketing director for

Cyberimpact , the Canadian e-mail marketing platform (www.cyberimpact.com).

1 Cisco, “Cisco Visual Networking Index: Forecast and Trends, 2017–2022”, report, November 26, 2018.

2 DMA, “DMA insight: Marketer email tracker 2018”, report, March 29, 2018.

3 Miriam Reis, “Is Email Marketing Still An Effective Strategy In 2018”, Digital Agency Network, blog, January 18, 2018.

4 Campaign Monitor, “How to Use Video in Your Email Marketing”, guide.

February 2019

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Email Marketing

Doing e-mail fundraising well

By Alison Turmelle

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f you work for a non-profit or charity where building a robust digital fundraising programme isn’t a priority, you’re certainly not alone. Whether you’re struggling to get the buy-in from your leadership team, don’t have the time to maintain a solid programme or simply lack the knowledge of where to begin, I’m here to offer some words of encouragement: you don’t have to do it all.

With online giving growing year over year, even as overall giving decreases, it’s hard to make a case for not doing digital in this day and age. But with so many ways to reach your supporters through digital channels, it’s certainly easy to get overwhelmed.

Why e-mail So, I recommend you pick one tactic, and do it really, really well.

And that tactic should be e-mail.

E-mail is a favourite of many digital fundraisers for good reason. It’s quick: you can develop campaigns with much shorter lead times than other channels, allowing you to be nimble in responding to crises or current events. It’s cost-effective: you can fire off a message to thousands of constituents without having to pay for each piece of mail. And, it can be highly personal: offering incredible opportunities to make deeper connections with your donors.

Tips and tricks for successful e-mails Let’s say you’re already sending at least a couple e-mails per year (hopefully that applies to everyone!) but your open rates, click-through rates and revenue are all far below where you’d like them to be. What should you do?

First, keep your medium in mind. An inbox is not a mailbox, so if your e-mail solicitations bear striking resemblances to your direct response pieces, it’s time to get out the big red pen. Our attention spans, especially online, are growing shorter and shorter.

You can’t just transcribe your heartfelt four-page appeal onto a screen and call it a day. Many (if February 2019

not most) donors are reading your message on 5”-6” screens. You need to keep things concise—ideally about 200 words—while still letting the power and emotion come through.

Next, personalization. Nothing irks me more than the dreaded “Dear Supporter” opening, especially in a solicitation e-mail.

I know the organization has my name—after all, I gave it to them!—and they can’t be bothered to use it when asking me for more money? When most e-mail programmes allow for some form of personalization, not capitalizing on this opportunity is a surefire way to lose me as a donor.

And using a donor’s name is really just the tip of the iceberg. Just think about how much more personal that e-mail will feel if you reference the project they gave to, their last gift amount or note how their dollars are going right to work in their city. Just make sure you test that e-mail before you send! Because if there’s one thing worse than “Dear Supporter,” it’s “Dear <First Name>” as a result of a failed data merge.

or bi-weekly basis. Maybe your donors respond better to a callto-action button in a particular colour, while those of another organization find it too aggressive and show their displeasure with a lower response rate.

While you can look to best practices and the testing of others as a jumping off point, it’s always best to test things out with your particular audience(s). I’ve often found that what works for one organization’s donors, or even specific subsets of donors within an organization, falls flat with another.

More than just asking Unfortunately for resourcestrapped organizations, fundraising online isn’t as simple as sending a solicitation a couple times per year. Two fundraising e-mails as part of your year-end fundraising push does not an e-mail programme make. In order to truly build connections with your donors and prospects, you need to think about your communications touchpoints throughout the year.

E-mail offers a great opportunity to show your donors some love and keep them engaged with your cause.

Finally, testing. There are so many articles out there on how to craft the perfect e-mail: the most compelling story with the best call-to-action that will bring you the most revenue. But to be honest, I’ve found it often comes down to trial and error. Or rather, trial and learning! You really need to find out what works best for your particular donors.

And that applies to every aspect of your individual e-mails and your programme as a whole. Some donors might think that a monthly e-newsletter clutters their inbox, while others would be saddened to not hear how their gifts are making a difference on a weekly

If your subscribers only hear from you when there’s an urgent funding need, you’ve got some work to do! Donors give because they want to make a difference: and it’s your job to show them that they are. That means donors should hear about how their gifts have been used at least as much as they receive a solicitation from you, and ideally, way more.

Some organizations are hesitant to send more than a few e-appeals per year, thinking that their donors will be annoyed by their constant requests for money. But if between every solicitation you make sure to report back, sharing stories of the people a donor’s gifts have helped,

updating next steps for the project they’ve supported and showing how donors are making a real difference, I guarantee those solicitations will be much better received.

We all know that renewing your current donors is much easier —and much more cost-effective— than finding new ones. And e-mail offers a great opportunity to show your donors some love and keep them engaged with your cause.

Set it, but don’t forget it!

One last thing I really love about e-mail, is automation. Automated messages allow fantastic opportunities to steward your donors, help new donors learn more about your cause and celebrate milestones without having to click “send” every time! Automations could take the form of: ❯❯ A series of welcome e-mails to help you develop deeper connections with first time donors; ❯❯ A bi-annual survey to give your donors the opportunity to share their opinions on your work; and ❯❯ A gratitude-filled stewardship e-mail recognizing the anniversary of a donor’s first gift, showing them all of the incredible things they’ve helped accomplish over the year.

With a little legwork at the beginning, and regular checks to make sure data is up-to-date, automations can be a great way to save time and resources while keeping the revenue rolling in.

Making it work for you Now that you’ve got some new tricks up your digital sleeve, I urge you to try out some of these ideas with your constituents! E-mail is certainly not one-size-fits-all, and it takes time (and regular tweaking) to build a strategy that maximizes resources and delights your donors.

Alison Turmelle is the communications, digital and marketing coordinator at Good Works (www.goodworksco.ca) a consulting firm that works with Canadian charities to engage donors at a truly human level and build donor loyalty and commitment. You can contact Alison at alison@goodworksco.ca.

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Content Marketing/management

Adding magic to DM

By Alexandre Gravel

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magine if you sent your direct marketing (DM) assets to a highpotential audience that already engages with and trusts the brand? You get magic. That’s what successful content marketing enables.

To understand how that magic happens let’s look at what content marketing is. Here is the definition by the Content Marketing Institute, the industry reference on the subject.

“Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience—and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.”

The main element to remember about the definition of content marketing is the notion of value.

What makes content marketing different from other forms of marketing is that what is produced and distributed creates value in the eyes of its target audience.

There are the three ways to create value with content: 1. Inform 2. Educate 3. Entertain All the content a brand, media or organization produces falls into one or more of these three buckets.

The goal with these ways of creating value is not to directly influence the consumer to purchase or buy, but to create a meaningful relationship between the brand and the consumer. A relationship based on trust. “I have seen that in the past you, Mr. Brand, have helped me, let me now consider you for my next purchase.”

Content marketing, then, is not a sprint, but a marathon towards that transaction. That relationship is built over time, through multiple touchpoints and content assets, with the goal of being part of the equation once that customer needs to buy your service or product.

Editorial articles, how-tos, ❱ DMN.ca

tutorials, product guides, videos, testimonials, all these can be considered part of your content marketing programme, as long as they bring value to your audience.

Meeting DM on the customer journey Consider these companies and their consumer-facing content.

1. Lowe’s has hundreds of videos that explains how to install its products including hardwood flooring, drapes and toilets.

2. WeWork publishes a lifestyle magazine called Creator that tells the stories of entrepreneurs who use their facilities.

3. Mattress retailer Casper launched a web-based magazine (and a companion e-newsletter) devoted to all things sleeprelated.

work at Toast with footwear manufacturer Kamik. Our role as content marketers has been to build a content strategy that complements the more direct response messaging that lives on social media, magazines, e-mail and mailings.

The work was challenging. You do not buy rain boots every other week, so how do you maintain the relationships between the brand and the mothers that are the main customers of the brand?

Through a content programme that promotes the notion of “outside free play,” that guides parents in how their children can develop their autonomy while playing outside and by deploying this on social media, through influencers, content partnerships with various media and on their owned platforms.

The goal...is to create a meaningful relationship between the brand and the consumer.

These are only three examples of the hundreds of brands that use content marketing to build and grow highly qualified audiences.

Tying content marketing with DM Now how does that tie in with DM? Content marketing helps a consumer through their customer journey. It accelerates some of the stages by making sure the brand is there as consumers define their needs, consider various options and debate functional elements.

DM combines the need consumers have for personalization (but not too much, we don’t want it to get creepy!) with the capability to convert those individuals into customers.

Content marketing and DM then work hand-in-hand. A great DM campaign will combine content that creates value with high-impact messaging that drive the conversion.

An example of this is our

Building a high-performance content strategy Content marketing has to live up to its partnership with DM. The key is having a robust content strategy. We have developed a content strategy workbook in light of a large number of projects we have carried out in a variety of businesses, of different sizes and from different sectors of activity.

It can be downloaded for free from our web site: www.gotoast.ca/en/workbook.

Built in the form of a questionnaire, the workbook allows marketing teams to ask themselves the right questions and thus be able to evaluate whether the key elements of a good content strategy are well documented and reflected in their own organization.

We have divided the guide into 11 steps, which are all components of a successful content strategy.

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Step 1: Business goals.

Clear goals are key to achieving meaningful results. They create a clarity that can be shared throughout the organization, ensuring that everyone is clearly aware of their effect on the results.

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Step 2: Personas. In business it is essential to know your target. This exercise often requires executives to make choices, because “we want to sell to everyone” will not help you in content marketing. You must discover and understand the expectations and needs of your audience and its segments.

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Step 3: Customer journey. Knowing your target is key. However, this person doesn’t have the same content needs throughout their buying process. Do you know the stages each of your customers goes through before and after making a transaction with you?

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Step 4: Tone and manner. You know your goals, your audience and their decision process. It is now time to establish how you’re going to address your various target audiences and how your message will be developed. Will you be a brand with a humorous tone? A brand with a strong personality or more of an informational brand?

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Step 5: Content pillars.

Content pillars represent the expectations and needs of your personas. They establish what will be of interest to your audiences. By combining them with the organizational goals you set in Step 1 of your content strategy, you can ensure that all the content produced will be relevant to both your audience and your organization.

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Step 6: Tactics and platforms. Where should your content be found?

What tactics do you implement?

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Courtesy Toast Studio

Courtesy Toast Studio

Content Marketing/management

These photos are from a content marketing programme created by Toast Studio for footwear manufacturer Kamik.

Based on your knowledge of your personas and their expectations, will you move forward with inspirational content or educational content? Or a combination of the two? This step dives into the specifics of implementing your content strategy by establishing the platforms where your brand will be present and the tactics that you implement.

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Step 7: Editorial calendar. Thanks to the previous steps in our process, it is now possible to put everything on a timeline. Good annual, quarterly and monthly planning ensures that you stay aligned with previously set goals, put all content into context and facilitate the work done by the creative and deployment teams.

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Step 8: Responsibilities and organization.

Implementing a successful content strategy requires a clear and well-managed organizational structure and division of responsibilities. The relationships among the various agencies and collaborators, as well as the steps of development, production and deployment, must be communicated and understood by the various stakeholders.

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Step 9: Production.

Content production cannot be effective unless all previous steps have been completed. This step is where the vast majority of the budget of a content strategy is spent, and it is essential that it is well planned and that reaching goals remains at

the heart of the actions of every creator involved.

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Step 10: Distribution and deployment.

Content is entirely useless if it is not seen and appreciated by the audience for which it was produced.

Distribution and deployment are often taken for granted in a content strategy, but there must be a concrete and complete reflection on how the content produced will be brought to your audiences and amplified if necessary.

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Step 11: Performance.

Having goals is good.

Measuring results in order to reach them is even better. Your content strategy must provide

the right ways to measure as well as processes to communicate results to everyone involved.

Uncommunicated results cannot benefit the content strategy or its initiatives.

Content marketing can inform, educate and entertain your target audience, but it has to bring real value to the table in order to create a lasting and faithful relationship between the brand and a consumer.

Going through these 11 steps will guide you in building a highperforming content programme that will directly increase your chances of your DM campaigns being successful. Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s how you will get true marketing magic.

Alexandre Gravel is co-president and strategist, Toast Studio (www.gotoast.ca).

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Content Marketing/management

How to successfully market content

By Chris Marshall

A

s a freelance creative consultant and content creator, I often work with clients in developing approaches to assist in reaching their audiences through storytelling (copy, photo and video). This requires the right information to engage the right audience. Whether it’s reaching consumers in either consumer packaged goods (CPG), or in entertainment marketing verticals or working with businesses wanting to have impact with other businesses, the need for devising a focused narrative is paramount.

Effectively targeting your audience In order to be an effective content marketer, you need to ask yourself a few questions about targeting your audience: --What kind of conversations do I have with my business or consumer demand space?

--What are advocates worth to my business growth?

--What is it that sets me apart from my competitors?

If you are to successfully move the needle on customer response and activation, you need to know where your customers reside, what they are interested in and why you can provide a solution to their problems better than any other business.

Becoming a niche expert A good approach is in developing a niche service to a specific problem, becoming the key expert on how to get things done, in an otherwise generalist market.

This is where the investment in content marketing can produce your biggest customer return on investment (ROI). Devising the best plan to help develop a business to business (B2B) or business to consumer (B2C) relationship with your intended audience will help provoke conversations and establish your expertise in specific areas. It will provide an arena for ❱ DMN.ca

discourse on issues surrounding a customer issue or the potential solution that your service offers.

Having the ability to provide solutions further strengthens your position, whether by saying “we can help” or “we’re listening to the issues and we’re developing a solution for them”. You’ve become both the sounding board and the solution provider. But most importantly, you’ve become your customers’ trusted partner: a trust that will help turn those customers into advocates who will spread the word on the great experiences they have had with your business.

What to consider So, what are some key things to consider when devising a content marketing plan?

1. Who is your audience?

Gathering insights and analytics around your primary audience or consumer is key. Knowing their behaviours and potential issues where your product or service can offer a benefit should be the intended target. In taking a deeper dive into this data, you’ll be able to find your targeted audience segment, and in the process, this understanding of the audience segment behaviour will help set the tone of your content narrative.

2. What’s your core offering and how is it different from your competitors? There is a lot of noise in the social space and when you are a generalist you are in the ether with other businesses vying for the same clients. You’re a small fish in a very big and active pond. So set yourself apart. If you have a specialty that may reside in the same circles, explore what that may look like and put it out into the conversation. Analyze where there may be a demand space for an offer that others just can’t offer. The pond may be smaller, but you’ll be its biggest fish.

3. Developing a consistent voice.

Developing a persona for your business in the social space

is imperative to developing the trust of your intended audience. Your persona must exhibit knowledge and have an authenticity to command the space. This persona should be an approachable non-intimidating entity that welcomes and revels in discourse.

4. Dedicating individual(s) and teams. Your business should have a dedicated individual or team that maintains the voice and distribution across all your content streams, laying the roots down on those streams that make the most sense in reaching your targeted audience.

On top of your own content, curating other poignant pieces of content will further legitimize your expertise in the space, and demonstrate that you welcome all voices into the conversation.

5. Continuously measure impact and reassess engagement.

It is an imperative measure to see how your content engages with the demand space. How is your content reaching your audiences? And has it garnered any impact? Through search engine optimization (SEO) you’ll be able to see if your content reached specific key words in online searches (all the more reason to have a more specialized solution).

Where are the eyes going? Is your voice participating in that conversation? Also, monitor which of the content pieces had a greater response in the analytics.

What are the underlying takes from those conversations?

Is there a takeaway here: a significant pain point or observance that needs to provide a solution for your customer?

6. Ensure the content is on the first pages of searches. Over 70% of B2B purchases begin with an online search1. Again, being more specialized narrows the competitive content, giving your business the advantage of a higher placement in the online search and bigger opportunity

of clickthrough to your business’ feeds.

7. Assessing your media. If you have a content marketing budget that allows for advertising opportunities, determine where paid media (advertising, displayed, native, influencer, promotions) reach could live on top of your earned (shares, mentions, reposts) and owned (business web site, social channels and blog) media.

These types of assessments may expand audience reach, and if the content aligns with the feed, audience engagement.

How your content is consumed should be continuously assessed and tracked. A best practices approach would involve (at very least) a quarterly review to determine how your business is speaking with its demand space.

The bottom line is in order to have a successful content marketing plan you have to develop a strategy that’s driven by data to reach your targeted audience. This is the only way your business will ensure advocacy from your consumer or business demand space. Remember to think about the audience’s journey to find you; don’t expect a sprint towards the discovery of your business. It will be a marathon.

Taking the time to leverage the benefits of your core offering, the authentic persona your business represents and offering information through engaging content, will put your company on the map and on the road to content marketing success. This is a long-term relationship that is built on trust; an ongoing conversation that is not only beneficial to their business or personal goals, but to the growth and longevity of yours.

Chris Marshall is founder/creative of Content

Citizen (www.contentcitizen.com).

1 Ashley Wilson-Rew, “33 B2B Marketing Statistics Show Why Your Current Strategy Blows”, Inbound Marketing for Manufacturers Blog, Protocol 80, October 26, 2017.

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Content Marketing/management

Choosing the right CMS

By Jay Menard

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anaging messages, integrating systems and delivering the right content to the right audience is a challenging endeavour: especially for those at the helm of enterprise-level companies with demanding user needs and content requirements.

For that reason, a content management system (CMS) must be at the centre of any digital experience platform. A good CMS can integrate with existing tools, amplify messaging and automate tasks to help free up capacity for greater-value efforts. The right CMS will be the foundation of a platform that will improve your company’s productivity, streamline your internal communications and support overall employee satisfaction.

But finding the right CMS solution takes time, effort and preparation. And success comes from being open to new ideas, being honest about expectations and being willing to talk to end-users to find out what they actually need.

Focusing on needs, budget first With so many content management platforms around out there, it can be difficult to decide which one will work best for your organization. As a user experience (UX) researcher and content lead at one of southwestern Ontario’s leading open-source web development companies, I have perused a lot of requests for proposals (RFPs) and participated in many discovery meetings.

Invariably, one of the biggest mistakes I see in RFPs comes from the clients being too focused on what they have, as opposed to what might be out there.

Oftentimes, if an organization is heavily invested in Microsoft solutions—which many are —there’s an underlying feeling that all solutions should be built on Microsoft. After all, if they’re a Microsoft shop then they clearly should create SharePoint solutions, right?

Well, not really. After all, there are many solutions that integrate February 2019

seamlessly with Microsoft products and platforms that you may already be using, including open-source solutions.

Whether you’re looking to Active Directory for user authentication or gathering employee information, to SharePoint for document management, if there’s an integration possible Drupal or WordPress has almost certainly done it.

By keeping your options open and not allowing tech dogma to limit choices before an RFP or bid process, then you open up the opportunity to explore a much wider—and often better—array of solutions from which to choose.

Another frequent mistake comes from choosing to not invest in user studies. Sure, you may have a solid understanding of your staff and their varied needs, but it’s important to get input from a variety of end-users before you set your requirements. Whether it’s through focus groups, internal surveys, UX exercises or one-onone discussions, an investment in knowledge will pay off in a betterinformed solution and, ultimately, less rework.

Finally—and this may sound crazy but hear me out—companies should be comfortable sharing their budgets. Many RFPs don’t disclose budgets with the idea that they’ll solicit a variety of bids, with vendors trying to offer more for less. Unfortunately, that usually ends up in companies having to sift through a bunch of submissions that are off the mark.

Instead, your time is better served outlining your needs and budget, then letting vendors make informed responses. This will save everyone’s time and ensure that you’re getting relevant bids.

After all, what’s the use of saving a few thousand dollars if the final product completely misses the mark and your staff are frustrated by the new solution: and less

Starting the selection A good place to start is to make sure you have an understanding of the following: ❯❯ Functionality. What are your organization’s needs? Can the proposed solution support them? Your fundamental requirements should rule out the vast majority of options and narrow your search; ❯❯ Cost of support. What’s the total cost of ownership? Are you required to pay licensing fees? ❯❯ Size of the development community. Is there a viable pool of developers or firms that can help you with your future needs or expansion? Are you locked into a vendor because there’s no one else to support you? and; ❯❯ Company culture. Does your vendor align with your corporate vision and goals? You’re going to be spending a lot of time working together, so you want to make sure there’s a match.

important to ensure that you give vendors adequate time to respond.

You can rush the process and get canned or superficial responses.

Or you can give enough time for vendors to put together thoughtful responses that actually meets your needs. An investment in time will return exponentially in the quality of responses you get back.

Doing the leg work up front pays off in the end. Whether it’s user research or clearly outlining requirements and scope in an RFP, taking the time to do it right the first time makes a difference.

If all parties are well-informed and clear at the beginning, that means they’re going to be better aligned throughout the process.

The more you know early on ensures that there no surprises during development: and those “surprises” usually cost time and/ or money to rectify.

Be open, be thorough and be honest in your approach and you’ll increase your opportunity to find a solution that actually meets your needs.

And for as much time as we suggest to research, it’s equally as

Jay Menard is UX research and content lead, Digital Echidna, (www.echidna.ca).

productive as a result?

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Influencer Marketing

Extracting value from influencer marketing

By Suzanne Rappaport

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nfluencer marketing is not new. Brands have been partnering with influential people for decades.

From celebrities to athletes, these influencers were, for a long time, the faces of our favourite brands.

At some point over the last decade, this model began to shift.

Brands turned to real-world people to represent their companies and be their faces instead. Adding a new layer of authenticity and credibility, these newfound influencers helped shape a new era of media and marketing.

Then, as brands began to capitalize on the reach of influencers, the model shifted yet again: creating new celebrities and a new cost of doing business.

While the rise of high-reach influencers created great opportunities for brands to reach their audiences on a much larger scale, it also presented new challenges around brand saturation and lost messaging. As a result, many companies began to seek out micro-influencers in an attempt to focus on quality versus quantity and grow brand affinity alongside these influencers’ growing fan bases.

Whether high-reach or micro, celebrity or other, influencers play a key role in brand marketing today. And, while we don’t foresee this type of marketing disappearing anytime soon, we do know that not all partnerships are created equal.

Credibility is key To ensure mutually beneficial relationships, brands must know their audiences and perform their research so that the selected influencers align well to the brands’ core values and speaks to their key demographics.

However, an often-overlooked criterion is credibility, and it’s one ❱ DMN.ca

that can be even more impactful than the others. Meaning, beyond their own personal styles and follower bases, are the influencers promoting other companies that align with your brand’s values?

Are they promoting start-ups or new companies that have not been properly approved or vetted yet? Or companies with poor reputations?

Do they promote products that work well with yours? Or compete with your offerings?

One influencer I worked with years ago was promoting a new on line on-demand medical app. When I saw the posts for this app, I thought “what a fantastic idea!”

It’s something I would use as a parent. However, after trying to use the app myself, I quickly realized that it was not ready for launch: there were glitches and issues with scheduling for example.

It’s all connected. Every partnership is a direct reflection of your brand.

Offering free products or services to influencers is also key.

It ensures an authentic approach to the content and will help to alleviate any hiccups in advance of the promotion.

Value is the new currency To maximize the value of influencer partnerships, brands should look beyond singular initiatives and leverage these opportunities as ways to create content that can live on long after the launch.

Many times businesses are focused on the launch-at-hand: a new restaurant, the latest product or must-have service. As such, they work with influencers to promote that news, using their platforms to share the details. While this approach offers reach for the launch, it does not provide longterm value.

A great way to maximize partnerships with influencers is

to work with them on what they do best and create omnichannel content that can be leveraged on your company’s web site or social channels year-round.

For example, if you are working with a food influencer for the opening of a new restaurant, why not engage them to also create new recipes for your web site or shoot some great food photography for your Facebook page? It’s a mutually

Every [influencer] partnership is a direct reflection of your brand.

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Courtesy CASACom

Influencer Marketing

beneficial agreement as the brand receives additional content (and content is king!) while the influencer receives exposure to a larger audience by being credited/ tagged in the brand’s posts. It’s a win-win for everyone.

Define success in advance Oftentimes, brands are so eager to “get out there” with their message that they fail to define February 2019

clear success metrics in advance of their launches. This is particularly important when working with influencers, as the way you define success should impact the way you select your partners.

If your key performance indicator (KPI) is brand awareness, you’ll likely zero in on high-reach influencers that can distill your message quickly to a large audience. However, if you’re

basing the success of a programme on purchasing power or clickthroughs, engagement will be more important than reach. You can have a lower reaching influencer with a high level of engagement: meaning, the followers they do have are more responsive and take action more often than other influencers’ followers.

Setting clear success objectives at the onset of a programme is vital

to ensuring your brand receives the best value from an influencer partnership and selects the best person to represent you.

Suzanne Rappaport is managing director,

CASACOM Toronto (www.casacom.ca). She is a seasoned PR professional with over 15 years’ experience in implementing strategic communications campaigns for top-tier companies on both the agency and clientsides in various sectors.

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Influencer Marketing

The influencer marketing playbook

By Jon Davids

I

n a recent survey of marketers on the tools and tactics they plan to adopt in 2019, influencer marketing ranked fourth on the list, with 48% of marketers saying they planned to adopt the strategy in the next 12 months1.

As someone who has been in the influencer business for six years, I can say that I’ve heard this refrain over and over: “influencer marketing is the next big thing”.

The fact is, influencer marketing has been exploding since the start of the decade and shows no signs of slowing down. And it’s increasing in popularity at a faster clip than ever.

As more and more brands invest billions of dollars2 in this growing vehicle, I want to lay out a playbook with best practices to maximize the likelihood of strong and sustained results for marketers.

communicating what success looks like. Is it a ton of likes on Instagram? Is it retweets on Twitter? Is it purchases on the e-commerce channels? Or an awareness lift in a national brand survey?

3. Getting organizational buy-in.

Convincing marketing executives who are steeped in traditional strategies to embrace a vehicle that is still largely misunderstood and unregulated can certainly be an uphill battle.

The winning playbook Select influencers that are already aligned with your brand values Influencer selection is typically the make-or-break moment of your campaign. But it goes deeper than just finding someone within your category. In most cases, the sponsored content which a creator develops for you is going to look

Influencer selection is typically the make-or-break moment of your campaign.

The challenges Before I get into the best practices, I’ll highlight the common stumbling blocks that keep marketers from finding success.

1. Translating brand objectives in influencer executions. There is often a disconnect between what the brand manager expects and how they communicate that to the content creators and/ or their representatives. This can manifest itself through little to no communication of brand objectives, competitive positioning and brand messaging. When these things are missing, an execution is likely to fall short.

2. Defining success. As an extension, brands are often at a loss for understanding and ❱ DMN.ca

and feel identical to 99% of the other stuff across their channel.

For this reason, it’s critical to identify influencers who are producing content that could easily integrate your brand. When you try to change an influencer for your campaign, you’ve set yourself up for failure.

Brief influencers appropriately Bring your creators into the campaign with a thorough comprehensive brief delivered in a digestible format. That could be a one-page document, a short video, a PowerPoint or a phone call. Ensure your brief has a structure and checks the necessary boxes. Influicity has a number of resources to assist with properly briefing influencers. Bottom

line is your brief must cover the objectives, brand messaging and what you expect from them in crystal clear terms.

Let influencers flex their creative muscles within your concepts In many cases the brand will come up with a creative treatment and the influencers will make it their own. There is a clear art to making this work. There must be a balance between the framework you provide to the influencer and their ability to spice it up in their own style. The concept must have a firm template and a malleable centre that allows the influencers to flex their muscles appropriately.

Be crystal clear with deliverables, deadlines and diligence Ensure that your influencers fully understand the project requirements they are agreeing to.

The “3 Ds”—deliverables, deadlines and diligence—are critical. In other words, what exactly is the creator going to provide to you, on what timeline are they going to provide it and what are the nuts and bolts you expect?

The last “D” is also a reminder to the brand that it’s on them to conduct a thorough vetting of the influencer, the depth of which could change from brand to brand. A local business might be fine with a cursory review of their social media channel while a

financial institution may require a background check. At Influicity, we have conducted criminal background checks on influencers before onboarding them for a national brand campaign.

Focus on the right KPIs The key performance indicators (KPIs) will vary greatly from brand to brand and even within each campaign. One common mistake is for the brand to focus on too many KPIs within a single campaign, and sometimes where one is at the expense of the other. For example, if your KPIs are to maximize awareness AND engagement, the first objective is actually working against the second. Achieving both within the same campaign would be tactically impossible.

When plotting out your objectives, ensure the KPIs are aligned with the campaign in every way. Does the timing make sense? Does the budget make sense? Do these influencers make sense? Setting the right KPIs and achieving them is a vital component to driving a sustainable and scalable influencer strategy for your brand.

Jon Davids is founder & CEO of Influicity

(http://influicity.com) Instagram: @influicity 1 “B2B Tech Marketers’ Planned Adoption of Trends in 2019”, MarketingCharts, December 19, 2018.

2 Kevin Gallagher, “The Influencer Marketing Report: Research, strategy & platforms for leveraging social media influencers”, Business Insider, September 24, 2018.

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Feature

The state of digital advertising Interview with Seraj Bharwani, chief strategy officer, Acuity Ads

E

ver since the earliest ads began appearing in newspapers at the start of the 19th century, advertising has been tolerated by people as an acceptable source of information on products or services. But in recent years, as the volume of digital advertising has grown, its public favourability has declined sharply. Most people now feel “bombarded” by interruptive digital ads, “creeped out” by ad retargeting and resentful at the constant intrusiveness.

According to Forrester Research, just 21% of the online population still believe ads are a good way to learn about new products1.

Everyone else feels preyed upon, knowing their identities are being exposed and traded by ad networks across the web.

Advertisers, for their part, aren’t feeling they’re getting their money’s worth. Still the world’s biggest ad spender2, Procter & Gamble (P&G), had harsh words for the industry a couple of years ago, accusing it of waste and fraudulent practices. And the world’s second biggest advertiser, Unilever, has called the web a “digital swamp”.

The web has reached a “tipping point”, according to its inventor, Tim Berners-Lee, who favours a total reboot. The problem, of course, is that the web’s commercial model revolves entirely around brands spending money on ads, these days mostly through programmatic advertising.

The AdTech industry has been trying to clean up its act, but until they give people a better reason to view and click on ads, a day of reckoning is coming.

As the chief strategy officer for Toronto, Ont.-based Acuity Ads (www.acuityads.com), a leading AdTech company, Seraj Bharwani recognizes the need to rethink the current ad-based model. He was one of the founding members of Digitas in the nascent days of the web and over the years he has helped shape the digital February 2019

strategies for many top consumer brands, among them American Express, P&G and AT&T. In this interview he shares his perspective on the past and future of digital advertising, as well as his ideas for industry reform.

Note: This interview has been edited and abridged for clarity and conciseness.

Internet then and now Stephen Shaw (SS): The doors to the Internet swung open to the public a quarter century ago.

Not long after that, you joined Digitas as an early pioneer in this business.

Seraj Bharwani (SB): That’s right, in late 1994. The Netscape browser had just come out.

SS: It must have been a pretty exciting time. Did you have any inkling that the Internet would become as pervasive as it is today?

SB: One of the first conversations I remember having at Digitas was with Leon Gorman, who was the CEO of L.L. Bean. As he was sitting across the table from me, I was explaining all the reasons he should take his company online. Leon was of course very courteous and polite and said nothing. And so finally I asked, “Leon, what do you think?”

Leon took a L.L. Bean catalogue on the table, slid it across to me and said, “Have you seen this catalogue before?” I said, “Yeah, of course, Leon, I have.” And he said, “Do you know something? I know exactly how much revenue I get for every square inch of the paper in this catalogue. So what’s the Internet going to do for me?” Of course, back then we had no proof points.

There were no case studies at the time. There were so few web sites out there. And e-commerce was still in the distant future. But you know what? The meeting ended well. He said, “Let me tell you why I want to be there. My customer file is getting older every single year.

The Internet is all about young people and I need to bring younger folks into the L.L. Bean franchise.”

SS: Now here we are, 25 years later, and people are starting to question the state of the Internet. Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the Web, recently called it, “...an engine of inequity and division, swayed by powerful forces who use it for their own agendas.” Is he right?

SB: In the early days, the idea behind the Internet was to serve as a collaboration platform. But today you have these two forces that have taken control: one is commercial, the other is tribal. Until we find a way to break that stranglehold, we are going to be in trouble.

SS: Tim Berners-Lee is suggesting a decentralized platform where people own their own data and only make it available to the people, groups or brands they trust. Is that a technically viable proposition?

SB: It is viable…but look, people generally avoid things that take effort. People always opt for convenience. It is not a question of technical feasibility.

SS: A counterpoint is that the Chinese shopper has embraced the complexity of mobile commerce, making a trade-off between convenience and privacy.

SB: That’s because they leapfrogged the desktop era.

Mobile was their jumping off point.

Digital transformation SS: Digital transformation is at the top of the corporate agenda today.

Why are so many organizations still struggling with it?

SB: Back in 1995 I made a presentation to 50 brand marketers at Kraft General Foods, explaining the power of the Internet. They looked at me like I was smoking something. They were perfectly happy playing the classic recency/frequency TV ad game.

They thought, why did they need to do anything different? Why did they need to have direct consumer engagement? The thought that you could be disintermediated by direct-to-consumer start-ups never even occurred to them. For

Courtesy Acuity ads

By Stephen Shaw

Seraj Bharwani , chief strategy officer of Acuity Ads.

them, it has always been business as usual…until now.

SS: Is that because marketing has always treated the Internet as a channel and not a different way of doing business?

SB: Absolutely. Look at Walmart.

Under 5% of Walmart’s business is coming from online. Their thinking is that it’s just another store.

SS: Extra shelves.

SB: Just a few more shelves for people who are online. It was a limitation of their mental model.

SS: Real change seems to be driven out of fear more than anything else.

SB: Now it is, because look at what P&G experienced. Gillette used to have 72% of the global men’s shaving market. Today they’re at 55%. That is a massive blow for them. It’s also happening in hair care, it’s happening in beauty.

SS: Let’s stick with P&G whose chief marketing officer Marc Pritchard called the digital media supply chain murky and fraudulent.

He said that digital ad viewing time is less than two seconds.

He complained about brand safety. About lack of supplier-side transparency. Has the digital ad industry lost the confidence of big ad spenders like P&G? SB: P&G has been our client for 10 years now. A lot of his concerns are absolutely valid. The number one challenge is consumer attention. Brand-generated content is growing at 20% to 25% a year whereas the growth in consumer media consumption has ranged from 5% to 8%. That gap keeps growing every single year.

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Feature Which means there is a massive competition for viewer attention.

Now, look at the other side of it: publishers. Publishers are saying, “Look, consumers don’t have the attention span any more and therefore you as advertisers must shrink your content down to 10 seconds or six seconds or even three seconds.” They want to jam in as many ads as they can. Up until a year ago, you would have a pre-roll ad and a mid-roll ad, that was the ad load. This year, there could be as many as seven different ad interruptions, depending on the length of the video. I’m not saying publishers should not make money. But this is absolutely going to hurt advertisers.

advantage right now and that’s Echo and Alexa. Will the voice interface soon become the way we interact with the Internet and by extension brands? And if Echo and Alexa establish dominion over the household, doesn’t that give Amazon a huge advantage?

SB: There’s one very important reason why the voice interface will be extremely compelling: consumers love the convenience.

It’s so much easier to tell Alexa, “Just ran out of AAA batteries.

Order some for me.” And Alexa will be happy to give you the Amazonbranded triple-A batteries. But if you need visual support to make a product choice, a voice interface won’t be enough.

SS: And it just increases the frustration people feel using the Internet. A lot of ad clutter gets in the way of what they want to do.

SB: The other thing that’s happening is programmatic.

Now you’ve got the SSPs [supplyside platforms], exchanges, the networks, the DSPs [demand-side platforms] and so on. Each of those is taking some piece of the revenue pie to the point where if an advertiser spends 100 bucks, you’re lucky if $30 went into actual ad exposure. That was Pritchard’s big complaint.

Ad avoidance SS: So let’s talk about the elephant in the room: ad avoidance is on the ascendancy. Will that bring down the “free and now” Internet?

SB: 800 million people are blocking ads today. But here’s the thing: I don’t see a household wanting to subscribe to dozens of different subscription services.

By the time you subscribe to your third video streaming service, you are spending anywhere between $45 and $50 a month.

That means people will always need ad-supported media. The way publishers can solve the problem is to make the consumer ad experience way better than today. I had the Pandora people on my panel at AdWeek last year and one of the examples they talked about was giving users the choice of watching an ad or two right at the beginning of a scheduled playlist in return for no other ad interruptions.

Tech giant competition SS: One of the other challenges is, of course, you’ve got to play by the rules of the two biggest tech giants out there that are hogging most of the ad dollars, which is Google and Facebook. Now along comes Amazon competing for those same ad dollars. How do you see this battle playing out?

SB: I think Amazon is definitely going to get its fair share of the media money. Ultimately the limitation on how far Amazon can go is going to be dictated by the consumer experience. I would say that money spent on Google and to some extent on Facebook is being used in part to build brand equity, especially on the video side of their business. The performance dollars will start going to Amazon. The consumer mindset on Amazon is very different than the mindset on YouTube: you’re there to buy something.

SS: Amazon has one other big ❱ DMN.ca

SS: You’re also seeing the rise of lifestyle brands and platform ecosystems that interconnect different suppliers serving the same audience.

SB: Look at Red Bull Media. I mean, that’s a lifestyle. And they are bringing together a variety of partners. Whole Foods helps people know the right things to eat; it is completely content-driven.

SS: There’s this other concept called “share a life”, the very thing you were just describing, where a brand is invited into the inner circle of a person’s life. But it does

demand trust and the trust is dependent on what the brand is willing to do with the data people are willing to offer up in exchange.

Europe’s GDPR [General Data Protection Regulation] is now forcing companies to think differently about this. What does the GDPR and other privacy regulations portend for the future of digital advertising, which is largely dependent on the ability of knowing who’s browsing at a specific point in time?

SB: I’m glad that the Europeans showed leadership on that front and now North America is following suit. On the other hand, people aren’t necessarily that diligent in protecting their own data even if they say they’re concerned. For example, you go to a publisher site and it tells you they’re tracking cookies: you’re not going to read the ten paragraphs in the terms of agreement. You’re just going to say, “Okay” and move on.

Just because you have consent isn’t really enough. A much better way to deal with all of this to establish the context in which people live, depending on where a person is, what they’re reading, what they’re watching, what they’re consuming, as opposed to explicitly asking people for all of that information.

SS: But that comes back to the issue of privacy. People don’t know where that data is being transferred and hence the need to have explicit consent.

SB: Brands have to become utility-driven, where the service they’re providing is integral and warrants a quid pro quo. This goes way beyond just messaging and interruption. It is about converting the brand into a service to help people live a better life.

Purpose of advertising SS: Advertising’s original purpose was to be a source of information, not a source of annoyance. You have a background in artificial intelligence or AI. Where do you see AI playing a role in all of this?

Does advertising take on a whole different form?

SB: I would say that the role of advertising is either informing people or inspiring them. So I’ll give you two examples of brands we’ve worked with over the last year. One is Excedrin, the pain

relief medicine. Excedrin was the number five player in that category for years. They decided they needed to be more specialized.

So they said, “We’re going to be the masters of migraine.”

As opposed to just doing hardhitting advertising, they recruited migraine sufferers to talk about what they do to minimize the incidence of migraine: all of those things besides just popping pills.

They created videos of those people, showing what they do in an average day to better manage their condition.

SS: The brand as trusted advisor.

SB: Absolutely. Okay, so now let’s talk about Lysol.

SS: That’s quite a switch.

SB: There are now 15 competing brands and products that can kill germs. So they wanted to elevate their message, and the way they elevated it is by saying, “Lysol protects your children like you protect your children as a parent.”

SS: An emotional message.

SB: A completely emotional message. Very inspiring, very touching. This is what I mean by connecting in a very different way.

Remember our discussion about Alexa? It’s very easy for Alexa to give you a recommendation based on what’s the cheapest option.

So, you need to get the consumer to say specifically, “I want Lysol, I want Excedrin.”

SS: When you started down your career path 25 years ago you probably couldn’t have imagined where we’d end up today.

SB: Things are happening so fast.

And frankly, I will say that as messed up as digital advertising has been, I see enough evidence that the entire supply chain is being cleaned up to make the future truly quite exciting.

Stephen Shaw is the chief strategy officer of Kenna, a marketing solutions provider specializing in customer experience management. He is also the host of a regular podcast which can be found on CustomerFirstThinking.ca. Stephen can be reached via e-mail at sshaw@kenna.ca.

1 Forrester Research, “Consumer Technographics North American Online Benchmark Survey (Part 1), 2017”, April 2017.

2 Bradley Johnson, “Samsung overtakes P&G as world’s largest advertiser”, AdAge, December 3, 2018.

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In Memoriam

Lester Wunderman passes away at 98 “Father of direct marketing” created a trillion-dollar industry Lester Wunderman, chairman emeritus and founder of Wunderman, the original and largest direct marketing advertising agency, passed away on January 9, 2019 in New York, N.Y. of natural causes. He was 98 years old. Our thoughts are with his family.

A trailblazer in the advertising industry, Mr. Wunderman launched a new kind of advertising agency in 1958: one that focused on delivering sales for its clients.

That agency concept caught on and led to the creation of today’s trillion-dollar direct marketing industry. The visionary marketing techniques he conceived and perfected over his long and brilliant career transformed the advertising industry and continue to shape the interactive marketplace.

Mr. Wunderman is fondly remembered by Sue, whom he married in 1975, his son Marc and daughter Karen and three stepchildren, Patrick, James and Thomas. He is also remembered and revered by the thousands of people who work for the agency that bears his name.

While he left the helm of Wunderman in 1998, he reported to work every day at the agency’s offices, where he often visited with

clients, executives and interns alike.

A New Yorker throughout his life, Mr. Wunderman was born in 1920 in the Bronx. After an apprenticeship served at several agencies, he joined Maxwell Sackheim & Company in 1947, where he became executive vice president. In 1958, he founded Wunderman, Ricotta & Kline, now known as Wunderman.

In 1967, in an address at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Mr. Wunderman identified, named and defined Direct Marketing which led the theoretical and practical growth of the industry ever since. As a result of that speech, he was named “The Father of Direct Marketing.”

Mr. Wunderman received many awards and tributes from the direct marketing industry, including inductions into the Direct Marketing Association’s Hall of Fame in 1983, and the American Advertising Federation Hall of Fame. In the July 23, 2001 issue of Time, Mr. Wunderman (along with David Ogilvy and Sergio Zyman) was heralded as “Great Pitchmen over the Years.” Most recently he was awarded the Golden Apple from the Direct Marketing Club of New York in recognition of over 50 years of contributing to the direct marketing community and Marketing EDGE’s

Lifetime Achievement Award.

His book, Being Direct, was published by Random House in January 1997 and reissued in 2004 with new information, including the first-ever Consumer’s Communications Bill of Rights, and his views on the Internet. In 2010, it was translated and published into Chinese. An earlier book, Frontiers of Direct Marketing, was published in 1981, and his speeches and articles have appeared in publications worldwide.

Mr. Wunderman’s achievements do not, however, fully describe the impact he has had on our industry.

In 1967 he served at the behest of U.S. President Lyndon Johnson to champion usage and acceptance of the fledgling U.S. Postal Service’s Zip Code.

A passionate believer in the arts, Mr. Wunderman collected the artwork of the Dogon tribe of West Africa. Mr. Wunderman made two visits to the region including spending time living there. Mr. Wunderman donated his collection to The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Dapper Foundation in Paris, which is now part of the Louvre.

Mr. Wunderman became fascinated by photography many years ago, studying at The New School in New York City and

working privately with several well-known photographers.

Long ago, he met regularly with Cornell Capa, Karl Katz and Jacqueline Kennedy to discuss the possibility of a professional school of photography. And so, the International Center of Photography was born, and has thrived ever since.

His photographs have been on display at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, in association with his collection of Dogon sculpture, and 50 photographs remain in its permanent collection.

As the head of Wunderman, he served as an inspiration and visionary, providing thoughtful counsel and valuable insight.

“Lester possessed the curiosity of a scientist, an artist’s eye, the soul of an author and the heart of an entrepreneur,” said Mel Edwards, CEO, Wunderman.

“Lester was a true visionary with a lifelong commitment to innovation and creativity,” said Mark Read, CEO, WPP. “He will be remembered and respected for his achievements and revered as a friend and colleague.”

In Lester’s own words, “If there is a lesson to be learned, I believe it is to not do anything half-heartedly.

If you are going to do it at all, give it all that you have to give.”

Do you make decisions about your marketing operations?

Are you responsible for customer acquisition, retention or loyalty?

Is your department in charge of fulfilling orders or customer service?

Visit our website at www.dmn.ca and learn more about the magazine February 2019

DMN.ca ❰

// 18

Inclusive Marketing

Courtesy Walmart Canada

Why inclusive marketing is crucial

M

odern consumers expect diversity in advertising, and they’re putting their money behind brands that deliver on this tenet. Over the past few years we’ve witnessed consumers become increasingly vocal about the need for better representation in marketing communications. The once aspirational images featuring wealth, privilege and a narrow definition of beauty are no longer resonating with shoppers. Instead, they are gravitating towards brands that authentically reflect the real world around them.

Having grown up in a time of incredible social change, Millennials are especially supportive of brands that show ❱ DMN.ca

Inclusivity as brand differentiator From a business standpoint, brands have been able to differentiate themselves from competitors on the basis of inclusivity, setting themselves apart by consciously making themselves more accessible to a wider range of consumers.

This move towards inclusivity is particularly evident within the fashion and beauty industries.

Rihanna’s Fenty Beauty makeup line is a prime example of the benefits of inclusion. With

Courtesy Walmart Canada

By Jessica Bevilacqua and Elizabeth Del Giudice

respect for individuals across different backgrounds, including race, gender, sexuality, ability, family structures and income levels. With these consumers slated to become the largest living adult generation in the U.S. as early as this year, brands can’t afford to ignore their demands1.

Walmart Canada is a leader in inclusivity marketing. Here are two examples, the Baby Digest Cover and Rascal & Friends.

Brands have been able to differentiate themselves on the basis of inclusivity. diversity at the heart of its product launch, its 40 foundations covered the spectrum from the fairest of skin tones to the deepest shades, ensuring all skin types could find a match.

Fenty Beauty’s focus on diversity within both product development and marketing communications has paid off in spades, resulting in it earning an estimated $72 million within its first month of sales2.

February 2019

// 19

Inclusive Marketing The brand’s social media success, measured in earned media, also out performed its major competitors over the same time period.

On the flip side, fashion brands that once built their base through promoting unrealistic beauty standards and exclusive lifestyles are now struggling to achieve relevance and are being labelled tone deaf and out of touch. Take lingerie darling Victoria Secret.

Its unrealistic standard of beauty, coupled with its over-the-top luxurious fashion shows, have left consumers feeling cold in recent years. To make matters worse, Victoria Secret’s chief marketing officer (CMO) recently stirred up controversy by mocking the idea of having trans women and plus-size models walk its runway.

The backlash was immediate with consumers and competitive brands taking to social media to express their disapproval and protestors demonstrating outside of retail stores. This stubborn refusal to acknowledge consumers’ changing values has resulted in declining sales and loss of market share3.

Incorporating inclusivity This consumer mindset is spilling over into various industries, from large tech to grocery to automotive, creating a need for brands across all sectors to develop content that recognizes individuals across a diverse set of backgrounds.

Inclusivity is no longer a “nice to have.” Instead, it should be considered an essential part of marketing content if brands want to continue resonating with their audience.

With this in mind, we highlight concrete ways to incorporate diversity into a brand’s marketing campaign. It begins through fostering a culture of inclusivity within the workplace and building diverse teams. Hiring individuals from various backgrounds will allow businesses to draw on various perspectives, potentially uncovering new business opportunities in the process.

Within marketing content, brands should seek to address inclusivity in an authentic and respectful manner, avoiding stereotypes at all costs. Gimmicky campaigns can quickly teeter into insensitive territory if consumers believe brands are exploiting February 2019

already marginalized individuals.

Importantly, brands should take a hard look at where they currently stand with respect to diversity. Once a business has taken stock, it can incorporate realistic benchmarks to measure its progress towards achieving greater inclusivity. This could mean hiring more diverse talent, featuring more models and spokespeople who come from a variety of backgrounds or creating products that cater to a broader consumer base.

Lastly, brands should foster open dialogues with consumers and encourage constant feedback. Flexibility, and openmindedness is key to staying relevant within this quickly changing environment. Two-way communication means that businesses should also take the opportunity to publicly celebrate the ways they have moved the needle towards creating a more inclusive brand.

Inclusivity benefits both consumers and the brands that embrace it. A wide range of consumers can feel a stronger connection with brands and their products, while brands can forge connections with a larger, more varied consumer base and grow their bottom line. The key to success is staying true to the brand and avoiding disingenuous programmes that simply come off as publicity stunts. When inclusivity is incorporated with sincere intentions, brands have the potential to inspire social change through their marketing messages, encouraging representation and respect for people across all backgrounds.

Check us out online dmn.ca

Jessica Bevilacqua is sales and marketing

coordinator at St. Joseph Communications (SJC) (www.stjoseph.com). Jessica supports the company’s sales team as well as assisting with digital marketing campaigns for external clients.

Elizabeth Del Giudice is a digital marketing professional, ranging from public relations to social media. She also focuses on the creation of SJC content.

1 Richard Fry, “Millennials projected to overtake Baby Boomers as America’s largest generation”, Pew Research Center, March 1, 2018.

2 Yasmine Gray, “5 Reasons Why Rihanna’s Fenty Beauty Was Named One of TIME’s Best Inventions of 2017”, Billboard, November 22, 2017.

3 Rebecca Jennings, “The stubborn irrelevance of the Victoria’s Secret fashion show”, Vox, December 3, 2018.

For online advertising opportunities contact

Mark Henry, mark@dmn.ca For online editorial opportunities contact

Brendan Read, brendan@dmn.ca DMN.ca ❰

// 20

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// 22

Excellent Execution

Marketing paradise A

Oscar Zaragoza is a senior consultant with Environics Analytics, specializing in providing consumer insight and location-based intelligence for businesses in the retail, financial, insurance, and senior housing sectors.

ttracting aspirational and luxury brands to a mall is tough at the best of times. Convincing them to commit to a multi-use development project years before it opens is almost unheard of in today’s market.

That was the challenge facing J. Richard Hill & Co. when the company was tasked with identifying target retailers for his client, Wai Kai Commercial Development, LLC. Wai Kai is a planned 235,000-square-foot mixed-used development in West Oahu, Hawaii located around a 52-acre manmade lagoon adjacent to the Pacific Ocean. Projected to open in fall 2021, it is designed to capitalize on its idyllic location. The coastal development features spectacular views of Diamond Head, ocean waves that spray into the air as they crash against the coral shelf and unobstructed sunsets at the end of the day. “It’s as authentic as you can get,” said Rick Hill, president and CEO of J. Richard Hill & Co. Hard data needed But Hill knew the picturesque setting alone wouldn’t be enough to get retailers to take a chance on this project, as it is located about 25 miles west of Honolulu and away from several established tourism hot spots. To identify the ideal tenants, Hill needed hard data to support the leasing effort by making the case that this was an opportunity that retailers couldn’t pass up. The company devised a plan to develop a targeted campaign to appeal directly to the nine luxury and aspirational retailers it thought would be the best fit for the development.

“This research gave us a level of information that put us on par with the research being done by prospective retailers” -- Rick Hill.

It was a unique challenge. Established malls have long struggled to gain complete views of their visitors to woo tenants and develop relevant and effective direct marketing campaigns. But in this case, with only blueprints and a site map, there were no visitors to profile. To compound matters, the leasing team was not clear on exactly what type of consumers typically shopped at the luxury brands it was targeting or if those consumers were already present in sufficient numbers around Wai Kai. Turning to mobility analytics To answer these questions, J. Richard Hill & Co. worked with Environics Analytics, which recommended mobility analytics to profile the customers visiting those retailers on the U.S. mainland. Mobility analytics works by using aggregated mobility data collected from smartphones to identify devices observed in defined areas.

By geofencing the existing standalone stores for each target retailer, Environics Analytics was able to ❱ DMN.ca

connect visitor data to its demographic, behavioural and other data to build detailed profiles of the consumers visiting those stores. To make it easier to spot patterns, shoppers for each brand were divided into segments around shared attributes. If the mobility data identified a segment that visited one of Hill’s targeted retailers 30% more often than the average consumer, then those retailers were singled out for further study. The research also explored whether any of the targeted retailers engaged the same type of consumer, which would also help bolster J. Richard Hill & Co.’s real estate proposition.

Pleasantly surprising results Armed with these insights, the next task for J. Richard Hill & Co. was to see if those same types of consumers were already present in high concentrations around the planned Wai Kai development. To ensure a fair representation of the local community who could easily access the development, the area was divided up into 14 sectors, factoring in drive times and natural barriers such as geography, major roads and expressways. Once these sectors were identified, Environics Analytics segmented the existing households by ZIP code and at the U.S. Census Block Group level to see if the same consumer segments identified on the mainland using the mobility data were present in Oahu.

The analysis revealed that there is a clear and significant demand for upscale and luxury retail in West Oahu. Prior to getting the results, Hill believed that wealthy people with household incomes above $200,000 would have been the main consumers shopping at the brands he was approaching. But the data revealed some surprises. In one instance, a segment that largely consisted of young single households with incomes of $60,000 visited some of the target retailers 10 times more often than the average household. “What jumped off the page for me was that they were spending a disproportionate amount of their incomes to achieve a certain aspirational lifestyle,” he said.

The information really opened his eyes about how perceptions about consumers can be so different from reality. “We found the households around our site represented some of the highest potential for luxury retailers,” he said. “I think that surprised a lot of people.”

The study revealed that there are more than 100,000 households in West Oahu that are likely shoppers of luxury goods. High net worth and aspirational households in the Wai Kai area are more than three times as likely to shop at the luxury brands that J. Richard Hill & Co. identified as potential fits for its development. Most importantly, in West Oahu the greatest concentration of households with the highest probability to shop luxury retail are centrally located in the neighbourhoods around Wai Kai. “This research gave us a level of information that put us on par with the research being done by prospective retailers,” said Hill. “It has allowed our leasing team to have meaningful, ongoing conversations with upscale and luxury retailers.”

February 2019

Reach marketers & financial executives Our magazines are must-reads for key executives in core corporate competencies.

Can you help our readers: • Create a strong financial structure and healthy economic ecosystem to ensure capital and cash flow keep their engines running?

• Determine who their customers should be, how they can reach them most effectively, and how they can turn data-driven marketing into profitable sales?

• Build efficient and effective financial systems to enhance payments and billings between their companies and their customers and vendors?

• Convert all the data and information they collect from every contact point into tangible benefits that increase revenue and reduce costs?

• Equip their companies with the tools, technology, systems and hardware needed to manage their operations, to create new services or products, and deliver them to their market?

• Manage their customers with smoothly functioning support departments that are properly staffed and equipped to solve problems, foster loyalty and retain customers?

• Make any or every step in that chain better, faster, cheaper, and more profitable?

We can help you tap into the ecosystem at the points that will drive your campaigns.

To advertise or get more information and media kits:

Mark Henry 905-201-6600 ext 223 | 1-800-668-1838 | mark@dmn.ca Visit our websites:

DM Magazine, www.dmn.ca Contact Management magazine, www.contactmanagement.ca

Payments Business magazine, www.paymentsbusiness.ca Canadian Equipment Finance magazine, www.canadianequipmentfinance.com

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