Mediaboss Marketing

Kate Mara in "Megan Leavey."

Two days before the June release of Kate Maras latest film Megan Leavey, the House of Cards actress was promoting the movie at an event in Washington.

But Mara wasnt attending a premiere or a promotional junket for the biopic about marine Megan Leavey and the bond she formed with Rex, her military dog, while serving in Iraq. Instead, she was speaking at a rally calling for the restoration of online animal welfare records held outside the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The rally was broadcast live on Mail Online, and an accompanying Care2 petition calling for the release of animal welfare records attracted 160,000 signatures. Megan Leavey, meanwhile, ended up a modest indie hit, grossing nearly $13 million.

That a rally held outside a government building may have been among the films most effective promotions highlights the increasing coordination between movie marketing and political and social advocacy. The boundaries between films and social causes are blurring in todays on-demand, streaming-centered cultural landscape.

Movie studios are now aligning with good causes to support the release of films in ways that they never used to, says Cynthia Parsons McDaniel, a former Head of Marketing and PR at three different film studios, who says Twentieth Century Fox FOXA, +0.18% which partnered with the Teenage Cancer Trust with 2014 teen romantic drama The Fault in Our Stars.

Whether its by doing a film or working with charities or doing certain docuseries, what Im trying to do is spread positive messages, actress Cara Delevingne, star of the new film Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, recently told WWD.

Hollywood has always been purpose-oriented, both on the screen and off with prominent actor-activists ranging from Ronald Reagan to Angelina Jolie. But now causes are gaining in prominence and priority.

Take Sonys The Emoji Movie, to be released July 28. While the movie is on one hand typical family oriented summer fare, a key component of its marketing is an antibullying campaign.

Sony and the I Am a Witness campaign, run by nonprofit organization The Ad Council, released a trailer showcasing footage from the movie that relates to confronting oppression.

Emoji! I thought the conversation just got dumber, exclaims a green troll in the trailer. Internet trolls just ignore them! replies Hi-5, the hand emoji, voiced by James Corden.

The campaign aims to give the movie a layer of social worthiness the comedy might otherwise have lacked. You wouldnt have seen something like The Emoji Movies antibullying trailer accompanying the release of a family movie a decade ago, said Parsons McDaniel.

The biggest blockbusters now associate themselves with the worthiest missions. The Star Wars: Force for Change program, a charity launched by Lucasfilm and Disney in 2014, harnesses the power of Star Wars to empower and improve the lives of children around the world, according to its website.

The Force for Change program might not exactly be in danger of eclipsing Han Solo in minds of Star Wars fans, but it is by no means an insubstantial part of the galaxy.

A recent fundraising campaign, held to coincide with Star Wars 40th anniversary, raised $3.4 million with proceeds benefiting Unicef and Starlight Childrens Foundation. (Rival sci-fi franchise Star Trek also runs a number of charities overseen by its distributor Paramount.)

Investing in good deeds amounts to loose change for a Disney DIS, -0.25% or VIA, +0.74% franchise. For some films, however, an association with a cause can carry significant risk.

The Promise, a drama starring Christian Bale and Oscar Isaac set against the backdrop of the mass killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turks that began in 1915, was released in 2016. The films budget, reportedly just under $100 million, was funded by late Armenian-American businessman Kirk Kerkorian.

Despite wide distribution and a release coinciding with a movement for Congress to promote a bill requesting that the U.S. government highlight the killings, The Promise attracted mediocre reviews and grossed just $8.2 million in the U.S. Its mission was further derailed by a vociferous social media campaign in which Turkish websites flooded popular film database IMBD with one-star reviews.

The renewed emphasis on philanthropy is changing how filmmakers view their creative projects. Yet some movie industry creatives think the emphasis on messaging can go too far.

Causes are at the forefront of movies more than ever and the activism among actors, suppressed for a long time by the studios, is now considered a positive, says Emmy-winning screenwriter Jake Jacobson. But its getting to be product placement for ideology. I dont see what benefit it is for a film to do that other than preach to the choir.

Twenty years ago, you could have just told a story and people would have read into it what they wanted, said Ernest Thompson, who won an Oscar for writing 1981 tear-jerker On Golden Pond and directed 1969, a 1988 Vietnam War drama. Now audiences are hungry for guidance and inspiration to step outside of the norm.

Thompson is now developing a movie entitled Allegiance Farm about child abuse. My intention is for the girl I cast to become a spokesperson for other children to have the courage to speak out, he said, using her stardom and social media to boost advocacy on the issue something he says wasnt possible three decades ago.

Now the girl who gets cast [in Allegiance Farm] can get peoples attention and tell other [abused] children where they can get help and give them ideas, Thompson said. The implications for this are limitless.

Yet Thompson still believes subtlety is key for entertaining, rather than just educating, an audience. If a movie is advertised as a message, youve got a problem, he said. If you can make an audience laugh and think, youre accomplishing your goals more effectively.

Excerpt from:
Hollywood is using social causes to sell movie tickets - MarketWatch

SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Simply Measured, the pioneer in social analytics, today announced the release of its third annual State of Social Marketing report. This comprehensive piece of primary research expands on prior reports by providing insights from more than 2,700 social media professionals in 111 countrieswith the perspectives of both brands and agencies.

At the end of the day, your job as a marketerany kind of marketeris to sell. This is true even if you are tasked with increasing brand awareness and cultivating a community on social, as three-quarters of our survey respondents are, said Scott Fallon, vice president of Marketing, Simply Measured. It just means that your target market is closer to the top of the funnel. As more budget is devoted to socialsocial spending is expected to rise to 17.3 billion by 2019 social marketers will be pressed to make the link between engagement and conversions. Social marketers wont stop paying attention to engagement and amplification metrics, but they will be asked to set and meet conversion goals, too.

There is a severe gap here today: 90 percent of marketers surveyed struggle to measure ROI and/or tie social to business goals. The report positions 2017 as the year of contradictions, with social ad investment increasing, but a lack of industry-wide goal-setting, and more than half of brands saying that influencers are vital to the success of their social programs, but over 76 percent of brands saying they have no dedicated budget for influencer marketing. Brands are saying one thing and doing the opposite in multiple categories covered in this report, whether due to unsubstantial resources, lack of expertise, or both.

Agencies, however, are pushing for results from social more than brands: 73 percent of agencies set goals for either web traffic or conversion goals, while only 57 percent of brand marketers do. This indicates that social marketers at agencies have stronger goal-setting (and achieving) baselines than social marketers within the brand environment.

Whether brand or agency, social media is a foundational marketing strategy thatif properly tracked and analyzedhas the ability to impact the buyers journey at all stages in the funnel, explained report author Lucy Hitz, head of Marketing Communications, Simply Measured. However, marketers still find difficulty quantifying the impact of social media and are unsure of how to distribute resources to generate the most value from their social campaigns.

In-house marketing teams and agency professionals experience unique challenges and are offered different opportunities. If youre an in-house marketing team, youre focused on a long-term, constantly evolving brand. If youre an agency, youre brought on to achieve specific goals and have to show your value in a specific amount of time or your clients will go elsewhere, Hitz commented. We wanted this report to reflect both sides.

The third annual report highlights findings to pinpoint how marketers can fully leverage the power of social media.

Key Report Findings

The report compares the results of brands and agencies to gain perspective on the unique experiences of these two sectors, and the challenges and successes that accompany different sectors of the marketing industry. 64.8 percent of respondents were brands and 35.2 percent of respondents identified themselves as agencies.

Summary of report findings:

The report was expanded this year to include the global marketing community. Responses were collected from marketers in the US, the UK, Australia, Canada, China, Denmark, France, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Africa, Sweden, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, Venezuela, Vietnam, and more.

The report findings reflect a global perspective about changes in social marketing staffing, the universality of budget constraints, and how social marketings role is evolving in the minds of business leaders, commented Fallon.

Download the full report here.

About Simply Measured

Simply Measured is the worlds leading social analytics provider, offering the industrys only full-funnel social analytics platform. Simply Measured helps marketers measure everything from conversations to conversions, so you can prove socials impact and improve performance.

Read more from the original source:
Simply Measured Research Finds Increase in Social Marketing's ... - Business Wire (press release)

As a small business with limited time and money to get your brand out to your customers, its critical to focus on the strategies and tactics that will deliver the greatest impact. But where do you start and what should your playbook be?

In my experience, an aggressive combination of social media, email marketing and digital out-of-home (DOOH) advertising is a powerful and effective marketing mix for small businesses.

Social media marketing is, for the most part, completely free. It will require consistency and time to stay dedicated to putting out a unique blend of meaningful content that is engaging to your audience on a routine basis. Not only will that serve your customer base, it will teach you to think outside the box of just constantly asking for the sale. You will need to keep your audience engaged with a variety of interesting tidbits and nuggets sprinkled in with the occasional offer that they can opt into. While you are doing this, you are establishing brand equity, reputation, and a strong social media presence. According to Arch Digital Agency CEO Ahna Hendrix, getting social media marketing traction requires consistency as it is a marathon, not a sprint. Youre building brand equity over time. Once youve built out your social media marketing program, you will be ready for Step 2: email marketing

Email marketing is a terrific mechanism for staying top of mind (and top of inbox) of your customers who have opted into learning more about your business or products as well as those you feel could be candidates to become future customers. Remember, you have slowly and steadily been building your online presence and reputation via social media so now you can link all your profiles to all the email marketing campaigns you send out. Your email marketing messages should be just as engaging and well thought out in terms of content so as to not come across too salesy. You also will need to segment your email list depending on where your audience is in the funnel, to better target your email marketing campaigns. Everyone knows you are here to make a sale, but its critical that you add value first and when your customer needs what you have to offer, they will seek you out. Unless you have enough meaningful content or a specific reason to do so (such as a major product or service announcement) try not to send more than two mass emails per month, lest you end up being caught in your prospective customers spam filter abyss.

All of that leads us to our third and final point: now, you are ready to scale up and put your brand on the map with digital out-of-home (DOOH) advertising.

DOOH advertising is a unique form of advertising available on high definition digital billboards and digital signs and screens. From highway digital billboards to screens at the gas pump and digital signs inside bars and restaurants these screens serve as a perfect way to elevate your brand image and create that subconscious brand recognition that major corporations pay billions of dollars per year to obtain through traditional TV advertising. Thanks to technology, DOOH is more accessible than ever. You can launch a digital billboard campaign within a specific geofenced area, e.g. the San Francisco Bay Area, with a weekly budget that works for you and for whatever date range you desire to reach a large segment of your local target customer base.

Your creative for these billboards should be simple, large and brand focused. You are trying to get peoples attention for just a few precious seconds and make that lasting impression that causes them to want to pull out their smartphones and search you out for more information or drive straight to your location.

This Pinterest page for sample effective digital billboard ads. Your DOOH advertising campaign will connect the dots between both your offline and online marketing efforts.

In summary, in order to make your small business grow into a large business, the right marketing playbook for success includes a healthy combination of social media advertising, email marketing, and digital out-of-home-advertising.

Also Read: AdSemble is a marketplace for the digital OOH industry

Link:
The Local Marketing Playbook From Social to DOOH - MarTech Series (press release)

Free Webinar | August 16th

Find out how to optimize your website to give your customers experiences that will have the biggest ROI for your business. Register Now

Ever since the founding of Facebook in February of 2004 and Twitter in March of 2006, marketing has completely changed. Brands that once built campaigns to push market awareness through standardized marketing channelsare now using social media to drive brand awareness and sales.

A prime example is the streetwear industry, which does a great job of using social media to control supply and demand. Instead of focusing on pushing a lot of low-priced items, these brands sell out a limited number of extremely marked-up items, which are fueled by social media hype and promotion. Combining social media trends and viral content allows them to leverage the hype and causes the demand to far exceed the quantity available.

I absolutely love this business model, which led to me connecting with Elie Neufeld, founder of DHTK. After identifying streetwear as a major trend in fashion, he launched the brand to merge a variety of major trends, creating one lifestyle brand. By leveraging trends in sports, fashion and other facets of youth lifestyles, DHTK demonstrates the end result of correctly executing on marketing trends. While talking to Neufeld about his growth strategy for DHTK, he shared his gameplan for viral growth, which is universal and can be applied to any industry.

Related: 8 Reasons a Powerful Personal Brand Will Make You Successful

Being active on social media gives you a glimpse at whats popular in todays society. In recent years, LeBron James has grown from being one of the top basketball players, into a worldwide cultural icon. Between appearances in blockbuster films, brand alignments and switching from the Cleveland Cavaliers to the Miami Heat and back again, James has become a larger than life on and off the court.

DHTK accurately identified sports as a cultural trend with a number of top performers -- LeBron James, Michael Jordan and Stephen Curry all push culture forward with their massive following and influence. Turning to social media can provide you with the insight to clearly identify the major trends that people are talking about.

Many brands and entrepreneurs are able to spot major trends, but simply following them is not enough. You need to be able to understand what the cool factor is and leverage it to grow your brand. If you are able to associate your brand with a trending cool factor,you ride that wave, drawing attention to your company, which is fueled entirely by that trend.

For example, when Drakes album If You Are Reading This It Is Too Latedropped, DHTK combined hip-hop trends, Drakes growth, unique album design and typeface styles, which resulted in the release of the first It Is Too Late-inspired designs. It was a success because it combined the unique album design with the company'sown brand style.

Related: 5 Habits of the Wealthy That Helped Them Get Rich

Building brand awareness requires you to identify content that will work with the specific trend you are going after. It doesnt matter if we are talking about a brand in the fashion, music or sports industry -- each requires a unique style of content the consumer demographic wants to consume.

DHTK understands it fits into both sports and fashion, so it creates social media posts that work with both niches. Determine relevant trend niches, identify the prominent hashtags, and spend time determining what content styles your target audience enjoys interacting with. When you do this correctly, the outcome is more engagement and more potential customers discovering your brand.

Influencer marketing is one of the most promising trends -- consumers want to be able to relate to the people they follow on social media. Associating your brand with influencers can result in consumers automatically relating with you, based solely on that relationship with someone they follow on social media. Its important to make sure an influencers brand story aligns perfectly with your brands narrative.

You do not need to necessarily establish a paid relationship with influencers in order to associate with them. DHTK, which stands for Dont Hate The King, has clear associations with the common phrase people recite when referencing LeBron James (also known as "King James" in basketball circles). This association combines the respect and power of LeBron with the power and aesthetic of the DHTK brand story without any formal partnership.

Related: 22 Qualities That Make a Great Leader

No matter what industry you are in, leveraging marketing trends can help you boost viral engagement and increase brand awareness and revenue. Pay attention to what people are talking about, thenfigure out how to do something interesting to get people talking about your brand.

Jonathan Long is the founder ofMarket Domination Media,a performance-based online marketing agency, blerrp, an influencer marketing agencyand co-founder of consumer productSexy Smile Kit&trade...

More:
4 Ways to Leverage Marketing Trends for Viral Growth - Entrepreneur

I once worked with a B2C client that offered a college prep product for high schoolers. They wanted help expanding their content engine and getting the word out; in their mind, their problems were related to capacity, not quality of content.

See, they had their audience figured out (or so they thought). Their blog articles featured liberal use of memes and casual conversation. Videos featured students talking about preparing for college or tackling hard exams. The only reason this stuff wasnt hitting was because it wasnt out there enough, right?

But as we dove into the problems that faced their specific target audience, we found that many of the assumptions that had been made were wrong. Sure, high schoolers like memes just as much as the next person, but they dont want to see them coming from a brand that feels like theyre trying to force a connectionit came off as manipulative. Sure, it was nice to see videos with high schoolers explaining college readiness topics, but their audience wasnt looking for guidance from their peersthey wanted to see and hear an expert talk. But even before I had seen any of this content disconnect, I knew right from the start this was going to be a brand with some trouble because of a key red flag.

They didnt have an established style guide.

An established, documented brand style sheet is essential for any content team that wants to hone their voice for their audience. At the most general level, these documents can be a few pages long and dive into the minutiae of how you want to be presented and perceived in the market. Put to work overtime, these guides can turn into invaluable hundred-page documents that answer even the most specific questions about word choice, presentation, and tone.

If your brand doesnt have any documented brand style, then youre essentially hoping that your entire content team is silently on the same page about hundreds of different editorial points without any form of concrete reference. This likely isnt a bet your brand should be investing in.

At this point, you either have no style guide and need guidance for getting one started, or you have an established guide youre looking to hone. In either case, it can be daunting to figure out what you want to tackle next. Brand voice contains thousands of variables that range from the specific (does your brand use contractions or avoid them?) to the vague (what attitude does your brand try to convey?), which makes choosing a starting point hard.

A good place to start is with the foundation of your voice. These elements tend to be a bit more intangible, and they affect everything that comes out of your content team. I like to refer to them as Tone, Complexity, and Purpose:

These three elements cant define your entire brand voice, and they will need constant tweaking and detailed supplements over time. But messing up any one of these attributes can absolutely cripple your content engine, while an odd word choice here or there might not hamper you so much.

Image attribution: Sylwia Bartyzel

But how do you know where your brand should fall along these brand attribute scales? Sure, you can start with educated guesses, but ultimately the proof is in engagement. Social media provides an excellent space to listen to your audience and figure out how they want to be interacted with. The trick is making sure you have solid measures to tie back to your foundational brand attributes.

Complexity is a good place to start because it actually has some of the more concrete measures for your brand to bite into. To get a feel for you brands ideal complexity, copy messages and posts from your social platforms (Facebook ideally, since it imposes the fewest limitations on posters) into a readability score generator. I personally like to use the Flesch-Kincaid scale.

These readability scales will examine elements like word and sentence length to assign text a rough score that corresponds to a grade level. Using these tests specifically on social interactions is going to be inherently rough since they are designed for longer blocks of text, so expect a margin of error of a few points in either direction. For reference, most people can read at an 8th grade reading level. Unless your audience is unusually well educated, youll want your content to at least match this level of readability.

Tone can be a bit more difficult to quantify, but it isnt impossible to do so. Here, its often best for your content marketers to actually read posts themselves, rather than to leave analysis to a computer. (While there are some fascinating conversations happening in linguistics about how to measure formality, we just dont have reliable tools at our disposal to do this yet.)

Start by getting a list of posts of your shared content from the past six months to a year, and list them from highest to lowest engagement (you can absolutely include shared or retweet posts of your content in this list). Then, go through these posts and have members of your team assign a score of one to seven (informal to formal) for every post text, comment, or message. You should quickly be able to see some trends from your more popular content, and then its up to your team to decide how to synthesize this score into language for your brand.

Understanding what is most useful to your audience is actually quite easy: People tend to share things they find useful and that they think their friends may also find useful.

The primary metrics youre going to want look at here are how far your content goes when shared. There can be a load of confounding variables here, from irregular ad spend to posting time and everything in between. To wade through some of this information, you can also cross-reference your list from most shared to least with some sentiment data. Highly shared, highly positive content is likely hitting the right place for your audience in terms of utility. Try to focus on formats or story approaches that fit this top-performing material.

Image attribution: Wilfred Iven

Updating how your brand speaks is an ongoing process. Your social media marketing offers powerful ways to evaluate where you currently stand, but the most useful practice you can instill in your team is to have a constantly growing, constantly evolving style guide. Use this tool to prune out what doesnt seem to be hitting and encourage creators to focus on language or topics that remain consistently relevant.

After that, all thats left to do is let your brand be the welcoming, engaging, useful presence youve always meant it to be.

For more stories like this, subscribe to the Content Standard newsletter.

Featured image attribution: Clem Onojeghuo

Read the rest here:
Numbers for Words: How to Update Your Brand Voice Using Social Media Marketing Data - The Content Standard by Skyword