The Marketing Leadership Playbook

REIMAGINE(ALMOST)

EVERYTHING

From TV-Led to Digitally Led

02 INTRODUCTION: Bryan Wiener, Chairman

03 SETTING THE FOUNDATION: Establishing New Success Metrics and Benchmarks for BudgetingBryan Wiener, Chairman

Marketer POV with Tom Bick, Brand and Advertising Senior Executive

06 ORGANIZATION:From Digital as a Channel to Digital as an Organizational MindsetSarah Hofstetter, Chief Executive Officer

Q&A with Pete Blackshaw, Global Head of Digital & Social Media, Nestlé

09 BRAND STRATEGY:From Relying on What Worked Before to What’s Right for Right NowLee Maicon, Chief Strategy Officer

Case Study: Red Roof Amplifies Its Search SuccessCase Study: Oscar Mayer Brings Home the Bacon Using Digital

13 CONTENT:From Why Will They Listen to Why Will They CareShankar Gupta-Harrison, VP of Strategy

Case Study: Nestlé Lean Cuisine Challenges Women to Weigh More

16 SOCIAL:From Real-Time to Right TimeMatt Wurst, VP, General Manager of Social

18 MEDIA:From Winning with Scale to Outsmarting with Specialized ExpertiseJared Belsky, President

Case Study: How Jameson Used Data to Win the First...and Last...Pour

21 BRAND REPUTATION:From Reactive Crisis Management to Building the Right OffenseRebecca McCuiston, SVP of Influencer Marketing

24 MEASUREMENT:From the Pursuit of Perfection to Creating an Analytics-Driven CultureJared Belsky, President

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Dear Marketers,

In the past year, we’ve seen cord-cutting and web-based TV services on the rise, the physical world getting smarter and more digitally connected through the Internet of Things, and dramatic changes in media and commerce as mobile gives rise to new ways of doing business faster and more seamlessly.

It’s time to reimagine (almost) everything.

Our industry is moving through an accelerated transition from TV-led to digitally led marketing. The confluence of pressures that have been building for over a decade are reaching a boiling point that portends dramatic change over the next 24 months. In fact, Forrester predicts digital spending will surpass TV in 2016, becoming the number one media category for the first time.

Yet our industry is operating at its core much the same as it was in the pre-digital era. Despite shifting their budgets, many organizations have held onto outdated ways of working during the decades-long shift to digital, even as changes in technology and consumer behavior fundamentally disrupted, and continue to disrupt, the model.

Together, marketers, agencies and the industry as a whole can overhaul the legacy infrastructure that has been holding us back, and pave the way for more progressive, digitally led approaches to marketing and media that are designed to break through and accelerate revenue growth.

So why are we publishing this playbook for marketing leaders? While many marketers want change, knowing how to change is less obvious. One study by the Association of National Advertisers and McKinsey found that while 81% of marketers believe they need formal content and distribution processes to navigate marketplace disruption, 84% have no such processes.

Through our experience (and good fortune of) working with leading marketers around the world, we have compiled this guide, to help marketers reimagine organization, brand strategy, content, media, reputation management and measurement in this new era. We don’t claim to have everything figured out, but our aim is to help move the industry forward by advancing the conversation on how best to evolve so marketing will continue to be an effective engine for driving company and economic growth.

The world has changed, communication has changed, and consumers have changed–now marketers stand to benefit by overhauling what worked in the old era and adapting new approaches for the future. There is far more risk in standing still than there is in advancing with an active test-and-learn approach. It’s not easy. But we’re all in this together.

We hope you find this to be a helpful manual for navigating the change ahead and welcome your comments and debate. Most of all, we look forward to partnering with you on the journey to reimagine the future of marketing.

Happy reading,

Bryan Wiener, Chairman, 360i

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• Causation–Challenge assumptions of causation that rely on historical models of customer behavior.

• Investment–Be careful that this process is used for optimizing marketing investment allocation rather than a mere cost-cutting exercise, which has happened at more than a few corporations.

“To reimagine (almost) everything, marketers have to start by making substantive and

sustainable changes.”

2. Don’t Exclude the Value of “Non-Working” Media Dollars

Another relic that impacts budget allocations is the working vs. non-working media ratio. “Working” represents paid media and “non-working” includes everything else needed to make the advertising–like research, content development and agency fees. Marketers are often being publicly measured by their financial organizations on how they can maximize the percentage of working media out of the total marketing budget. This ratio made sense in the TV era when the only way to reach consumers was through paid, interruptive advertising, but in a world where earned media (i.e., social media, influencer marketing and PR) has enormous impact, this outdated ratio of working to non-working dollars is no longer helping marketers succeed. The quality of an organization’s insights, ideas and content is a huge factor in whether its message will resonate and gain effective reach, and all of these things are technically “non-working” dollars. On the flip side, in an era when consumers can so easily ignore interruptive advertising, marketers should

ESTABLISHING NEW SUCCESS METRICS AND BENCHMARKS FOR BUDGETING

The future of the advertising industry is being driven by dramatic changes in consumer behavior–led by an increasingly influential population of millennials–and the meteoric rise of digital, which is disrupting the current marketing model.

To reimagine (almost) everything, marketers have to start by making substantive and sustainable changes within their own halls. Start by fundamentally rethinking budgeting and marketing success metrics in this new era. This will lay the foundation for setting brands up to connect with consumers in ways that are meaningful, motivational and monetizable. The time is ripe for reimagination. Unconventional approaches are causing positive disruption across industries–from entertainment to retail and beverages. Organizations can create new opportunities by considering these three effective ways to modernize:

1. Take a New Approach to Budgeting

It’s time to retire the age-old process of building marketing budgets by tweaking last year’s plan up or down a few points. Over the last few years, many in the industry have championed new approaches to budgeting, but some organizations have been slow to shift. To help move the needle, here are four steps to budgeting differently in 2016:

• Objectives–Start with clear objectives, an aggregate affordable investment number and a blank sheet of paper.

• Budget Allocations–Challenge teams to create channel-agnostic budget allocations that will allow for the best chance of hitting organizational goals.

by Bryan Wiener, Chairman, 360i

SETTING THEFOUNDATION

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not assume that all paid advertising is actually “working.”

3. Establish New Success Metrics

The success metrics organizations establish drive behavior—for better or worse. Measurement is important, but it mustn’t become the enemy of progress.

“Measurement is important, but it mustn’t become the enemy of progress.”

For instance, many companies use marketing mix models to determine the optimal blend of marketing dollar allocations. These models use historical relationships to determine cause and effect, which presents two challenges. First, earned media is generally excluded from the model, creating a

bias towards paid media and leading marketers to underinvest in areas that drive word-of-mouth impressions. Second, these models often infer causal relationships between watching commercials and making purchase decisions using historical behavioral data, which often doesn’t apply in today’s media environment. Consider the difficulty in using a person’s behavior in a pre-iPhone era to predict how they act today.

Transformation should start from the foundation up. To get to digitally led marketing requires ensuring marketers’ own budgets and success metrics set them up to succeed in a new era.

KEY TAKEAWAYS:• Try a new approach to building marketing

budgets. • Don’t discount non-working media in the

digital age.• Create new success metrics.

START BY ASKING:• When budgeting, am I only tweaking last

year’s plan?• Am I measuring the value of earned media?• Is the way I’m gauging success right for

today?

A version of this article appeared in Wall Street Journal CMO Today

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MARKETER POV WITH TOM BICKFROM MEASURING ROI TO MEASURING MARKETING EFFECTIVENESS

As a marketer, I have had the great fortune of working on some of the biggest and most powerful brands over the past 25 years. During that time, one recurring question always becomes a point of contention—how do I measure advertising effectiveness?

As an ex-researcher and, more recently, as senior director of integrated marketing and advertising at Kraft Foods, I discovered this topic is crucial because it impacts almost all decisions made within the marketing organization. My experience has been that most marketers don’t have as deep or keen an understanding on this topic as they need, and therefore are falling victim to decisions made by others, such as well-intentioned researchers or finance people. Here are ways to reimagine measuring ad effectiveness:

Many marketing organizations are measuring ad effectiveness using regression based (or econometric) models. These are powerful tools that, if built correctly, measure short-term sales effects, or where each GRP or impression corresponds to a shift in sales at retail (e.g., same week sales, a 2-3 week aftereffect, also called ad stock or decay rate). While this is typically accepted as the best way to measure the direct impact of advertising, it has one major flaw; it ignores the long-term brand building effects of advertising, such as repeat purchase, brand equity and flattening of the price elasticity curve. In many cases, these longer-term effects are as important, if not more important, than immediate short-term sales, yet they don’t become part of the equation because they are not measured by marketing mix models.

I can’t tell you how many times I have sat in board rooms where the analytics and finance teams review ad effectiveness by media type and campaign, going down the list to rank various efforts by ROI and cutting those that fall below an arbitrary number. Typically anything below 100% ROI is deemed ineffective and is discontinued. What’s interesting is that the industry average ROI on TV is 72% and it doesn’t raise any red flags for the decision makers in the room. This would imply that either the real ROI is actually higher than what we measure, or the entire industry is going out of business slowly. According to a new Nielsen-CBS study, the long-term impact of advertising (not surprisingly) measures from 1.2 to 3.5 times the effect of the short-term results. Other studies have shown long-term results to be 10 times the impact of short-term results.

The implications of these findings are huge. Outdated success metrics are leading marketers to cut work that is highly effective over the duration of the campaign. But the real power comes in being able to hypothesize how a brand’s advertising should work over time, allowing marketers to project the relationship between short-term and long-term effects. Not all advertising works the same way and not all media is the same. As such, we should expect different types of messaging and media vehicles will have different correlations between their respective short-term and long-term impact.

For example, I would hypothesize that utility brands such as Bounty, rather than image brands, such as Apple, tend to have a smaller short-term to long-term impact ratio. In part, this is due to lower involvement with the decision making process. Additionally, messages that are more rationally based or promotionally based may have larger short-term effects, but probably don’t translate to higher long-term effects.

On the other hand, brands that advertise shared value messages probably are more likely to have a longer term effect, because they are building equity, reinforcing choice and building communities around their brands. This type of messaging isn’t as simple as a “buy today and save” message. Video (including TV and online) also may have higher short term to long term effects due to their ability to more deeply engage consumers through site, sound, motion and storytelling. This is important because often when laying out ROI comparisons, some media tactics like display may show higher short-term ROI than video, but I question if they translate to longer-term impact given display ads are more transactional.

Ultimately, brand marketers shouldn’t measure ad effectiveness by short-term results only. Understand that not all media vehicles or messages have similar short-term to long-term ratios. By using the short-term effect as a proxy, marketers may be making decisions that optimize to the short-term only, but that are not sustainable for creating long-term impact. As the steward of the brand, take ownership by being the most informed person in the room when it comes to measuring the marketing effectiveness.

A version of this article appeared on LinkedIn.

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FROM DIGITAL AS A CHANNEL TO DIGITAL AS AN ORGANIZATIONAL MINDSET

Chief Digital Officer. Center of Excellence. Digital by design. Large companies with entrenched organizational dynamics are struggling to figure out how digital plays into their business models. It’s been more than 20 years since the first banner ad, but only recently have seasoned marketers internalized the inherent importance of digital–how it’s driving communications, inspiring product development and influencing consumer behavior in significant ways–and recognized the opportunity to change the way their businesses and marketing teams are organized.

We often see three barriers to digital success:

• Despite shifts to organizational integration, many marketers are still held back by traditional ways of doing business–like outdated budgeting, ways of working and talent models–that are keeping them from taking advantage of new opportunities.

• Performance-driven marketing has become extremely sophisticated, with the ability to drive impact across the entire marketing ecosystem, but it’s often completely disconnected from brand marketing teams.

• Organizations continue to keep digital at the “edge,” putting responsibility either on

junior employees or those at the core of a standalone group, sometimes called a “center of excellence.”

If any of these challenges sound familiar, it may be time to reorganize to keep pace with changes in technology and consumer behavior. To do this, digital must be–at minimum–integrated, and ideally a first consideration for how marketing and media are planned. To succeed will require marketers to first clarify business objectives and aims, and then recruit the right teams, champion a culture of curiosity, and advocate for new ways of working both internally and with external partners.

“...only recently have seasoned marketers internalized the inherent importance of digital...and recognized the opportunity to change the way their businesses and

marketing teams are organized.”

Here are a few tips to help marketers evaluate what’s right for their organization:

1. Objectives

As with all business planning, the first step is to clarify the objective and North Star–identify where

by Sarah Hofstetter, Chief Executive Officer, 360i

This year digital spending is on track to surpass broadcast, and by 2018 is projected to climb to more than $55 billion. This requires marketers to do two things: (1) Recognize digital as a strategic driver of a brand’s marketing strategies and (2) Change organizational patterns built around digital as a channel by treating digital as a mechanism for consumers to create, consume and share information.

ORGANIZATION

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the organization wants to be and how to achieve that outcome. For example, P&G Fabric Care wanted to build loyalty, move faster and improve processes without having to disrupt or overhaul the larger company, which is why it launched its “always on” environment. This led to fantastic work from Tide and Downy. Recently, it evolved internal practices so the mindset around being culturally relevant could be further ingrained into its communications planning, budgeting, activation and measurement.

2. Talent

Finding the right talent who can embrace change and incorporate newer mechanisms of communication is essential (even if this really isn’t new). This has nothing to do with age or experience level–it’s all about mindset. Marketers should demand interaction and knowledge sharing between brand managers and analysts, tech gurus and platform experts, to get to smarter solutions. It’s important to recruit the right people and encourage them to collaborate with different subject matter experts to inspire them in their everyday jobs. Facebook and Google do this by hiring for aptitudes, such as drive and the ability to think creatively, rather than just discrete skills. This leads them to bring in talent who are hungry to make an impact and natural cultural fits, and ultimately gives them the ability to identify better ways of doing business.

3. Advocates

Ensuring success requires multiple members of the C-suite to champion organizational change by inspiring others, demonstrating curiosity and openly showing they’re learning and adapting. If an organization doesn’t have this leadership already, it should cultivate it. It’s a necessary ingredient for the fabric of a company’s culture. When leadership makes digital and integration a priority, so does everyone else. For example, GE encourages development by having its executives generate “Imagination Breakthroughs” during its twice-a-year meetings of senior executives. This spurs ideas for growth and creates a process to encourage talented people to participate.

“When leadership makes digital and integration a priority, so does everyone else.”

4. Capabilities

Look at the strengths and weaknesses of the organization’s culture and capabilities, and re-evaluate which functions would be better incubated

or fostered in-house vs. outsourced. If a particular capability is core to its operations vs. core to its marketing, is it worth considering incubating it from within? For example, an airline trying to use social media as its primary online customer service channel may have more success insourcing vs. outsourcing, but this would include getting executive buy-in for the right levels of investment. In contrast, a CPG marketer who wants to deploy a dynamic, campaign-based approach to social marketing that requires ongoing investment in research, learning and team development may not be able to attain the right focus or levels of efficiency inside his or her organization to most effectively pull it off.

The key to success is looking beyond the complexity of digital to drive better organization, strategy and change management. At 360i, we are exposed to how many large companies are organized, and it’s clear there’s no one-size-fits-all solution. Across our clients, Nestlé’s Digital Acceleration Team is sparking and infusing digital curiosity throughout a 300,000-person global organization; the Coca-Cola Company is using its Liquid and Linked approach to share content and stories that encourage conversation and sharing; and Pernod Ricard USA is making digital core to its overall media integration by bringing in a newagency partner and approach. Every marketer must find his or her own way towards organizing better for the digital age.

KEY TAKEAWAYS:• Clarify business objectives.• Recruit the right talent and teams.• Advocate for digital integration.• Identify what capabilities can be done in-

house vs. outsourced.

START BY ASKING:• Whom do I currently have on staff, and are

they curious and eager to learn to navigate this changing environment?

• Does my organization have digital advocates in top management? If not, what changes can we make to identify those people and help them gain support?

• What are our business objectives and how can digital be a strategic driver for them?

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Q&A WITH PETE BLACKSHAW, GLOBAL HEAD OF DIGITAL & SOCIAL MEDIA, NESTLÉHOW A 300,000-PERSON GLOBAL COMPANY IS REIMAGINING ORGANIZATION

What is Nestlé’s Digital Acceleration Team, and what has been its impact to date? The Digital Acceleration Team (DAT) was created to bring speed, agility and digitally powered brand building to Nestlé. The program is made up of managers from around the world with high affinity and competence in digital and e-commerce brand building. Eighteen DAT members are rotated every eight months through a state-of-the-art consumer engagement center in Nestlé’s global headquarters in Switzerland where they participate in an intensive training program, lead digital for key businesses and manage senior-level projects focused on digital and e-commerce. These people then return to their respective markets where, as newly trained digital leaders, they can train and inspire others. The DAT teams have informed new approaches to Nutrition, Health and Wellness (NHW), event listening, digital advertising, social CRM, and digital training and testing, and they are now opening up critical new ground in e-commerce. The program has expanded to 16 markets including China, India, Italy, the Middle East, Portugal, Romania, Spain and the U.S.

How does Nestlé stay ahead in a rapidly changing digital landscape?Several years ago, we established the Silicon Valley Innovation Outpost. This team sits right at the heart of innovation and looks at how we can leverage technology advancements and startups to enhance the lives and well-being of consumers. Staying on the pulse of innovation has created marketing efficiencies, new proximity to health trends and faster, better, cheaper methods of communicating.

How do you position the organization for change without compromising the core fundamentals of marketing?Digital and social media are increasingly central to Nestlé’s brand-building process, and the good news is that the company’s long-standing convictions about delighting consumers, enhancing lives and building brands share a symbiotic relationship with digital and e-commerce principles. One of the things that attracted me to Nestlé was “brand building the Nestlé way” (BBNW)–where we define how the organization approaches the fundamental requirements of “creating engaging brand experiences,” “winning with shoppers” and “knowing consumers deeply.” If one peels back the layers of digital vernacular, the fundamentals are already making a compelling case for digital acceleration.

When hiring and recruiting talent, what do you look for?Brand-building excellence is cost of entry. For people that embrace any opportunity to build a brand, digital, social and e-commerce naturally get their attention. I also look for folks who bring a startup and MVP mindset to their work–our DAT principles of speed, agility and flexibility are critical. They must think multi-channel and be digital and mobile by design. I also want leaders who understand how to manage vs. resolve tension. Today’s online realities–from socialization to mobilization–put an urgent premium on understanding “digital dualisms,” the tension points between two real or perceived opposites.

What is your advice to other brand marketers looking to organize for success in the digital age? Don’t lose the passion. Passion powers excellence, the right questions, intolerance of bureaucracy and legacy systems, and outdated assumptions. Passion also encourages us to look under the hood for new opportunities. Don’t forget it’s all still about delighting consumers. Today’s consumers have even higher expectations of marketers and brands, a point I screamed in my book “Satisfied Customers Tell Three Friends, Angry Customers Tell 3,000.” Moreover, what consumers say on the web and in word-of-mouth circles is infinitely revealing of brand value. Stay close to this and you’ll go far.

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BRAND STRATEGY

FROM RELYING ON WHAT WORKED BEFORE TOWHAT’S RIGHT FOR RIGHT NOW

For decades, marketing success meant taking what worked last year and doing it slightly better. A reliance on what worked before became the law of the land, establishing a marketing paradigm that was relatively stable, certain and clear. As a result, brand strategy has traditionally been focused on how to best refine consumer insight based on the prior year’s data and on iterating prior work using copy and message testing to give brands confidence in the perceived guarantee of success. For the most part, it worked. Results were dependable, regressions were performed and CFOs were convinced the investment was worthwhile compared to the year before. However, what got us here won’t get us to where we need to go next.

Today brands operate in systems that are complex and in a marketplace that is far more ambiguous and fast-moving than the decades-old TV-led model. Decisions can now be driven by real-world data, behaviors and cues, allowing marketers the flexibility to optimize performance in days where it once took years, and to create campaigns that are right for right now. By treating strategy as a constant set of decisions and a learning system, marketers have incredible opportunities to build brand audiences and meaningful connections.

Here are four ways for marketers to get ahead:

1. Make Strategic Choices on Current Data

Brands should tap into tools like survey data and social listening, and also look for trends in search, cookie data or the myriad Application Program Interface (API) sources that are leading to new insights about consumer behavior today. Every consumer action produces data, and these data points are often leading indicators for where the broader population is going and where brands need to be right now.

“...what got us here won’t get us to where we need to go next.”

For example, for 360i client HBO, social listening uncovered that conversation among Game of Thrones fans remained high throughout the year. To keep fans engaged between seasons, HBO tapped into fan dialogue, like the widespread hatred of King Joffrey Baratheon in season four and the popular character Drogon going missing in season five, to launch innovative efforts that drove billions of

by Lee Maicon, Chief Strategy Officer, 360i

At one time, brand strategy was evaluated once or twice a year, leading marketers to reliable, consistent outcomes. With today’s marketplace in a constant state of change, brand strategy has shifted to become much more nimble, using a flexible set of questions and approaches that lead to marketing plans that are right for right now.By breaking away from a reliance on solely what worked in the past, brands can take advantage of opportunities to connect with consumers in the right moments and with the right messages, resulting in more effective and breakthrough marketing.

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impressions, ignited influencer and fan conversation, and contributed to record ratings for the show.

Data can also be used to optimize campaigns at the right moments. For client Red Roof, in a campaign that has become the most awarded search campaign ever, 360i merged data sources for weather and air travel with Google search data to optimize and target advertising to stranded travelers in the exact moments they were looking for a good night’s rest.

2. Provide Briefs That Focus on Business Problems Rather Than Tactical Outputs

Marketers should define current business challenges so teams and agencies can develop the most effective solutions. Strong briefs frame problems clearly first, provide insight into the consumer or category second, and then pose a strategic direction that can open up possible solutions. Only then might potential tactical solutions be useful. A good brief will be driven by strategic aims and will inspire the team working on it by not being overly prescriptive. In contrast, bad briefs–unfortunately far more common–are typically too tactical, focusing primarily on proposed solutions rather than business problems. The difference can be small, but framing the brief properly makes the team working on it feel like they are coming up with solutions vs. executing within tight parameters. Ultimately, this leads to better ideas.

“Strong briefs frame problems clearly first, provide insight into the consumer or category

second, and then pose a strategic direction that can open up possible solutions.”

Who would have thought that a bacon-scented alarm clock would unlock sales for Oscar Mayer? The brief focused on the need to make bacon relevant and to create excitement around the sensory experience of the brand, allowing us to land in a surprising and unexpected place. The work has put the brand in a new light with consumers while increasing sales for Oscar Mayer bacon.

3. Find Hidden Differentiators by Combining Feelings to Believe with Reasons to Believe

Research continues to prove that even if a product or service can be differentiated in its rational qualities, or reasons to believe, people over time

will not be convinced of its superiority. Instead, brands must appeal to a feeling to believe.

For example, for the launch of Coffee-mate Natural Bliss, we could have focused solely on the core product attribute–that the creamer has only four ingredients. Instead, we dramatized the rational differentiator with an emotionally compelling film featuring an all-natural café experience with body-painted actors staged as baristas. It sparked an emotional reaction by turning millennials’ heads and grabbing their attention in a way they weren’t able to ignore. The spot created an unexpected feeling about the truly all-natural coffee creamer by using a little shock value to get consumers to talk about the brand. The campaign quickly went viral, garnering more than half a billion earned media impressions.

4. Plan for a Second Act

Most marketers plan only for negative contingencies (if that), but it’s time to plan for positive ones. Create a fund–like a rainy day fund, except it’s a 75-degree-and-sunny fund–for when a campaign goes well. Rather than just launching it and leaving it, think about the opportunity a second act might have to further evangelize a brand with consumers. Now more than ever, marketing ideas and activations need to exist as part of a bigger whole, a point along the path to telling a great story.

The first step to a successful second act is having a simple measurement plan in place that defines what success or failure looks like. The key is what marketers do with that information. Use success as a launch pad to build ideas further and to drive consumer engagement to the next level. For example, the success of Red Roof’s flight-cancellation coup led to a clever second act targeting the nation’s roadways using a next-generation technology that surveyed traffic patterns to serve ads to drivers in need of a break from unexpected travel delays. By creating room to make ads relevant in more ways than one, the second act can be even stronger than the first.

Eschewing reliability and planning for change creates the opportunity for marketers to craft better advertising. The future is bright, but marketers need to have the right mindset, tools and teams to capture that opportunity.

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KEY TAKEAWAYS:• Modernize your brand strategy by tapping into real-

world data to get a better picture of things as they are, not as they were.

• Go beyond reasons to believe and ensure your brand can deliver a feeling to believe.

• Always leave room for a second act. The worst thing you can do is launch successfully and not be prepared for a follow-up.

START BY ASKING:• Where is my brand now? Where do I want it to

go? How can we get there?• If I were developing a strategy for a brand for

the first time ever, where would I begin?• What does success look like? How can I share

my vision for what success looks like?

MASTERING THE SECOND ACT: RED ROOF AMPLIFIES ITS SEARCH SUCCESSChallenge: Taking advantage of the worst winter in decades, 360i client Red Roof used technology and an innovative approach to mobile search marketing to outsmart deep-pocketed rivals by automatically turning thousands of flight cancellations into thousands of opportunities to win the battle of the click.After achieving huge gains in conversion and online bookings and becoming the most awarded search campaign of all time, the brand set out to find its next opportunity to reach more travelers seeking last-minute accommodations and serve them relevant, real-time offers.

Insight: With hundreds of properties located on the nation’s busiest roadways, Red Roof is in a prime position to aid travelers in their misfortunes and outflank competitors by giving traffic-jammed travelers a place to stop and rest.

Strategy: For Red Roof, 360i built the next generation of our award-winning custom marketing automation technology to monitor interstate traffic conditions across the country. The technology surveys thousands of miles of road conditions for traffic congestion and, based on time of day, updates Red Roof’s paid search campaigns in real time, serving copy that speaks directly to the traveler and communicates the exact distance to the nearest Red Roof (and a good night’s rest).

Results: Since launch, the campaign is already outperforming previous mobile benchmarks, reaching a projected 1.6 million travelers annually and leading to a 225% increase in bookings. Furthermore, Red Roof continues to lead the way in marketing automation and mobile search innovation.

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OSCAR MAYER BRINGS HOME THE BACON USING DIGITAL

Background: People love bacon, but they aren’t particularly choosy about which bacon they buy. Oscar Mayer wanted to prove that its bacon is truly a cut above the rest so that more people would seek out Oscar Mayer bacon by name in the grocery store.

For over four years, 360i has worked with Oscar Mayer to challenge the CPG category by breaking away from traditional strategies to take risks and create groundbreaking, made-for-digital campaigns that were right for the moment. Oscar Mayer has become an innovative first-mover, loved and lauded by consumers and press, all while increasing its bacon sales. Here’s how:

To get here, 360i and Oscar Mayer first focused on the business challenge and need to make the brand’s bacon relevant, ultimately creating enthusiasm around Oscar Mayer bacon that resulted in exciting and unexpected solutions that have moved the business forward.

The Great American Bacon BarterOscar Mayer sent comedian Josh Sankey off on an unprecedented, social-powered adventure dubbed “The Great American Bacon Barter,” where he ended up bartering 2,168 bricks of bacon with over 1,000 bacon-lovers across 3,125 miles, earning more than 335 million earned media impressions. Carrying no cash or credit cards–just 3,000 pounds of Butcher Thick Cut bacon–Josh’s goal was to prove that his bacon was as good a currency as any by bartering his way from coast to coast. He shared real-time social updates, and the brand also partnered with leading digital lifestyle publication Thrillist to offer a dedicated website featuring daily “Bacon Barter” updates, social tracking of Josh’s adventures and the “Bacon Meater,” which let fans know how many bricks of bacon were left for bartering.

Say it with Bacon People shop for bacon a lot like they shop for fine jewelry: by meticulously inspecting it before making a purchase. So for Father’s Day, Oscar Mayer created an experience that allowed women to gift luxurious bacon products to the leading men in their lives, which led to 500 million impressions and a 3.3% year-over-year increase in sales. The campaign parodied the consideration process for purchasing a diamond, educating bacon connoisseurs about the “Four Cs” of Oscar Mayer’s superior bacon: Cut, Color, Cure and Consistency. The campaign launched with a video that parodied classic engagement ring ads and encouraged people to visit a digital pop-up shop where they could purchase luxe bacon gifts for men. Oscar Mayer released new batches of gifts each day at varying times, and fans rushed to follow @oscarmayer on Twitter to learn exactly when the next batch would be released for sale.

Wake Up and Smell the BaconFew culinary experiences rival the unmistakable scent and sounds of bacon cooking in the morning. So Oscar Mayer developed the world’s only alarm clock device and app that lets users awaken to the sound and scent of bacon, earning more than 520 million media impressions and driving another 4.2% year-over-year sales increase. Through nine months of R&D, 360i developed a custom Oscar Mayer bacon scent, prototyped a device to deliver it, and built a user-friendly alarm clock app. To promote the product, Oscar Mayer released a web video inspired by the ridiculous, whimsical tone of contemporary fragrance ads and launched a website where bacon fans could apply to win one of the limited-edition devices. To help build buzz, a handful of devices were seeded with reporters and influencers (“Wake Up and Smell the Bacon” needed to be experienced to be believed), and digital media was used to spread the comical video to the masses.

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CONTENT

FROM WHY WILL THEY LISTEN TO WHY WILL THEY CARE

Very few words in the advertising lexicon create more passion and confusion than “content.” The phrase “content is” returns about 17 times more Google results than the phrase “advertising is,” suggesting that people think “content” needs a lot more explanation than advertising, despite being around for a significantly shorter time.

The difference between advertising and content comes not from its media type, the channel where it was deployed or anything else about the work itself–it comes from the intent behind making it in the first place. Ads, no matter how compelling or entertaining they are, are primarily intended to be placed in interruptive paid media placements to try to catch consumer attention at a moment when it has no competition, whether that’s a commercial break, a pre-roll or an interstitial. Content, on the other hand, is created with the intention that it must compete for consumer attention in an environment with other unbranded content, like a social feed, a content site or even regular TV programming.

“Very few words in the advertising lexicon create more passion and confusion than

‘content.’”

The reason the content vs. ads debate can be so contentious is because the split between ads that don’t need to compete for attention and content that does is disappearing. Unless a brand’s advertising dollars are being spent on something that can earn consumers’ attention, those media dollars are being wasted. To take advantage of this trend, marketers need to shift their thinking from “Why will they listen?,” to “Why on earth will anyone care about this?” Here are three tips to make shifts in content:

1. Listen to What Consumers are Saying

The first step is stronger consumer insights–not just broad strokes of demographic and psychographic information, but also detailed, insightful tribe analyses. These not only reveal what consumers think about a brand, but also what their passions are, what their dreams are and how they feel about prevailing cultural issues of the day.

While traditional modes of research that draw from surveys, polls, interviews and other approaches that directly solicit information from consumers remain valuable, social listening and search-based research can allow marketers to listen to consumers in more unguarded moments. People typically use a search bar or a Tweet-compose window as a type of

by Shankar Gupta-Harrison, VP of Strategy, 360i

Consumers are more empowered than ever to avoid traditional ads. The difference between ads and content has nothing to do with format, length or media. It’s all about what comes first: grabbing consumers or communicating a brand message.With consumers increasingly able to avoid overt sales messages, content provides an alternate way for brands to reach them.

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therapy–somewhere they can share things theywouldn’t in an ethnography interview or online survey.

When developing content, a critical piece of the puzzle is understanding the types of content and channels an audience tends to consume–is there a prevailing tone, set of topics, interest area or platform that the audience favors? If so, how can a brand best tap into that? Ultimately, brands that succeed in content creation are brands that are utterly obsessed with their consumers and the content they prefer.

360i’s client Oreo, for example, has been doing in-depth consumer listening for years, starting with the 2012 “Daily Twist” work to identify moments in pop culture where it could insert the playful Oreo twist. When the brand noticed a high volume of conversations about remixing the classic “Twist/Lick/Dunk” ritual, we responded with a series of “Snack Hack” videos and content that explored playful and creative ways to eat an Oreo cookie, tying the brand to an emerging food-hacking trend.

2. Define a Brand Personality

After thoroughly exploring and listening to the consumer, it’s good to take another look at the brand itself. Many marketers who think they have a deep and nuanced understanding of their brands have often only seen them manifested in traditional advertising, which leads to a narrow and myopic view of how a brand can be expressed. Bringing a brand to life in digital and social requires a fully developed brand personality that marketers can use to react and respond to consumers in a lifelike way.

This will also help marketers develop a consistent brand voice and visual aesthetic, which is even more critical to success given the fragmentation of consumer attention and the proliferation of platforms across which brand messages need to be spread. Consumers gravitate towards brands with cohesive values and voices.

“Ultimately, brands that succeed in content creation are brands that are utterly obsessed

with their consumers and the content they prefer.”

This important personality work begins with understanding what role a brand plays in people’s lives and how it makes them feel. From there, brands can develop an archetype character that

can be shared with everyone who’s responsible for communicating on behalf of the brand.

Over time, our client Hanes has built up a strong tone of voice for its product line with work like “Soften the Blow” and “#XTEMPSTRESSTEST” with influencer Logan Paul, bringing together a mixture of comfort, expertise and cheeky humor. The latest content, “Hot & Hairy,” continues bringing that tone to life and highlighting Hanes as an innovation leader in the comfortable basics space.

3. Go Ahead, Get All Emotional

With their newfound brand personality in hand, marketers then need to make entertaining, provoking, educating or emotionally moving consumers a communications priority. This is a big shift in mindset for many marketers, who often focus their efforts on things like key message repetition and product romance shots. These communications, while powerful marketing tools, often aren’t enough to break through and resonate with a disinterested and distracted consumer.

Traditional marketing focused on proof points that showed the brand could deliver what it claimed to deliver. But in today’s environment, crowded with products and brands, all of which are able to offer compelling reasons to believe, the emotions that brands inspire in people come to the forefront and are imperative. The key differentiator for a brand is the values it espouses, and the emotions those values inspire in consumers. Figuring out that feeling for a brand and letting it lead communication is core to creating content that will draw people in rather than simply interrupting them.

360i’s client Nestlé, for example, ignited authentic social conversation about weight and value perception among women by asking them to weigh more than their weight in an emotionally powerful video that inspires women to instead weigh their accomplishments, helping consumers to see Lean Cuisine in a new light as the conversation took off.

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NESTLÉ LEAN CUISINE CHALLENGES WOMEN TO WEIGH MORE

Challenge: As Nestlé Lean Cuisine embarked on a rebrand that introduced all new advertising, packaging and frozen entrée options, it needed to evolve perception from its diet brand heritage and become a modern health and lifestyle brand.

Strategy: Lean Cuisine’s strategy was to get people to see its brand anew by igniting a relevant and authentic social conversation about weight and value perception among women, inspiring them to weigh themselves differently by putting emotional communications and content first.

Execution: The centerpiece of the campaign was an emotionally powerful spot featuring real women weighing their accomplishments–such as becoming a parent, making the dean’s list as a single mother, and traveling the world–in lieu of weighing their bodies. The video was seeded on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube and utilized paid media, PR and influencer marketing to amplify Lean Cuisine’s message and spread the word.

Results: The campaign was an instant viral success, changing perception around Lean Cuisine’s brand image and building affinity among consumers. Within the first week of launch, our efforts earned the #9 spot in the Ad Age Viral Video chart and nearly 6.5 million total views. The video was well received, and Lean Cuisine saw a 33% increase in positive brand perception. The campaign is inspiring new best practices within Nestlé and will remain central to ongoing marketing efforts for Lean Cuisine.

KEY TAKEAWAYS:• Use “Why would anyone care about this?” as a first

filter for evaluating work.• Tap search and social listening to get a deeper

understanding of your target audience.• Define your brand’s personality to engage

consumers with the right content, in the right context.

• Put entertaining, educating or evoking emotion front and center in content marketing efforts.

START BY ASKING:• Are my current ads share-worthy?• How can my brand engage people with

something other than product messages?• Is my brand personality defined enough to say

something interesting and differentiated in the content marketplace?

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A version of this article appeared in Advertising Age

SOCIAL

FROM REAL–TIME TO RIGHT TIME

Social networks have evolved to become powerful media platforms, offering brands the potential for scale, reach and more sophisticated targeting to put the right content in front of the right audiences at the right times. Yet many marketers haven’t evolved their approach to social media strategy, content, media and measurement to keep pace with new opportunities, putting them at risk of wasting money and resources. Here’s how marketers can adopt new social strategies to drive business results in today’s communications environment:

1. Coordinate Content and Media Further Upstream

With creative and media more closely aligned than ever before, the connected planning process requires more efficiency among brands and their agency partners. Consider planning paid, earned and owned media together, even if executed separately. Getting alignment in the planning phase will provide more strategic insight, enabling marketers’ investments in content and media to work harder together through a deeper, more holistic understanding of consumer expectations and behaviors. Better input will yield better output.

2. Blow Up the Social Content Calendar Model to Focus on Campaign-Based Content

As the organic reach of social platforms approaches zero, we should look to shift the balance in how brand creative is conceived, created, published, amplified and monitored. Speed does not trump quality. While there is still a time and place for one-off culturally relevant posts and reactive content opportunities, fewer, bigger activations and campaigns are yielding stronger results for clients across sectors including retail and CPG. For instance, one of our clients that has shifted its strategy this way is seeing a return on its social investment that is 6.3 times higher than the total amount spent to produce content and buy the media to support it, significantly outperforming the ROI of its TV advertising. This new model ensures that a critical threshold of quality impressions is achieved, that content is seen, and that the brand connection with consumers is strong.

3. Reduce Waste by Amplifying Content to the Right Target Audiences

Paid social–either directly with platforms or through influencer partnerships–is now required to achieve quality impressions and meaningful engagement with the right audiences on social platforms. When leveraged correctly, the advanced media targeting capabilities of Facebook, YouTube and

by Matt Wurst, VP, General Manager of Social, 360i

For years brands have been in hot pursuit of the always-on social strategy. But the ongoing rise of content on these platforms has also made “share of screen” harder to come by organically. The bar has risen exponentially to compete for consumer attention and participation, and to meet it, brands should consider a social strategy that combines more concentrated campaign-driven creative ideas with specialization in the data and media needed to ensure they’re seen and engaged with.

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new advertising products rolling out from Pinterest, Twitter and Instagram have the potential to be some of the most efficient, effective platforms in advertising. Interest-based, location-based, behavioral and device-based targeting enable marketers to reduce wasted impressions and reach higher-value audience segments, as well as to deliver content with different messages, tones and visuals to different audiences concurrently. Paired with ongoing optimization, we are now seeing lower CPMs and higher click-through rates as paid social media dollars progressively increase.

4. Measure the Business Impact of Social Marketing

Moving from high-frequency content to a consolidated campaign approach might mean “going dark” on certain platforms at certain times. Deep breath. Not only will it not hurt a brand or future content performance, it may actually help it. To get to better social performance, set up the right measurement framework that evolves from focusing on social-only metrics, such as Likes and impressions, to measuring business outcomes, like sales lift or perception change. The richness of data available allows marketers to measure the effects of multiple media touchpoints and individual content units against business results, as well as how they work in combination. By taking steps to invest in integrating the results of organic social listening (how the campaign affects consumer conversation), owned channel analysis (social content performance and conversion), survey data (pre- and post-campaign brand effect) and conversion tracking (pixel-based and online attribution), social impact can be measured beyond impressions and conversation.

“While there is still a time and place for one-off culturally relevant posts and

reactive content opportunities, fewer, bigger activations and campaigns are yielding

stronger results for clients across sectors...”

5. Consider the Strategic Role Social Can Play in the Broader Marketing StrategySocial marketing should be connected to the othermedia and marketing efforts. With the right mix, it has the power to be an effective and cost-efficient media platform. In some cases, it can even drive higher-quality reach, better engagement and more ROI than other channels. As such, spend allocations and budget distribution should be monitored and optimized with greater frequency than in

the past. Ultimately, the key is recognizing social as a platform that can scale a brand’s story and experiences by targeting specific content to niche audiences to drive more participation and better results.

Integrated, campaign-based social marketing delivers greater value and impact when done right, but marketers should be willing to change course. The marketing mindset will need to evolve from standalone content to integrated campaigns. By shifting to connected planning, quality content, paid social amplification and better measurement, social will continue to yield strong results for marketers and strategically drive brands’ marketing objectives. If done right, the opportunity to use social to communicate the right message, in the right place, at the right time by integrating creative content and strategic planning has never been better.

KEY TAKEAWAYS:• Plan paid, earned and owned media together,

even if executed separately.• Focus on quality, campaign-based social

content.• Amplify content using paid social.• Set up a measurement framework to measure

business impact.• Create a balanced media mix that connects

social to other media and marketing efforts.

START BY ASKING:• Do I have a connected planning process in

place?• Is my team focused on real-time content or

campaign-based content? • Am I using paid social to amplify my message

and target consumers across platforms? • What type of measurement plan do I have in

place?

A version of this article appeared in Advertising Age

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MEDIA

FROM WINNING WITH SCALE TO OUTSMARTING WITH SPECIALIZED EXPERTISE

For the last 50 years, negotiation and scaled rates have been the main consideration for how brands select agency partners, and the number of media options was relatively easy to navigate. With the rise of digital, programmatic, paid social and real-time data, the media model has grown increasingly complex and fragmented. Brands recognize a need for change–they want more integration and transparency, they need more innovation, and they struggle with tech-stack selection. However, few recognize the core issues that underpin much of the current upheaval in media.

While brands could once win by having the biggest spend and deepest pockets, today competitive advantage comes from having the most rigorous execution and smartest approaches to winning in the “last 10 yards”–reaching the right people, in the right places, at the right times, with the right messages. Our client Spotify, for example, is combining excellence in social, search and other digital media to generate awareness, educate potential users and drive mobile app downloads. To win means bridging media once divided along the lines of brand marketing and direct marketing, and requires marketers, agencies and technology partners to rethink how they plan, budget and organize along the consumer journey–where media drives impact. Marketers can find large gains in the last 10 yards to conversion. For instance, a landing page change can drive 20 percent increases in search performance, and understanding how to

marry CRM files with Facebook targeting can get the right messages in front of a brand’s current or priority customers.

“While brands could once win by having the biggest spend and deepest pockets, today competitive advantage comes from having the most rigorous execution and smartest

approaches to winning in the ‘last 10 yards’...”

To solve for these challenges requires brands to evaluate media partnerships and build alignment.Here are three considerations for marketers:

1. Reinvent the RFP

The RFP should be a lens into real insights about a brand, its customers and its business challenges. This will lead to RFP responses that aren’t just rooted in the value a partner can create with costs or price, but that allow an agency or technology partner to showcase solutions for addressing challenges.

Marketers can do this by changing core areas of the RFP:

• Costs–Evaluate costs for different aspects of the engagement, instead of commission rates.Consider retained models for specializations like content, social, paid social and search,

by Jared Belsky, President, 360i

The media model has grown more complex and continues to fragment at an accelerating rate. Marketers should capitalize on new opportunities by reimagining their media strategies to create competitive advantages that win in the last 10 yards.

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where productivity is driven by focus and proper allocation vs. scaled media like TV.

• Transparency–Understand what the company is doing to build transparency, eliminate fraud and ensure best practices in media buying. Also, be participatory in the decision-making process and align economically to ensure both parties are working towards the same goal.

• Experience–Involve the team that will work on your brand day-to-day in the pitch process by asking for chemistry sessions and case studies that demonstrate how the team drives success under pressure.

• Competency–Determine what resources the partner has internally vs. what is being outsourced. Four-wall competency can mean greater depth of easily deployable expertise and alignment towards a brand’s goals.

• Talent–Look for talent that will scale new media opportunities in ways that meaningfully impact performance. Growing areas like paid social, for example, require a shift from generalists to specialists across analytics, insights, media and account, working in concert to identify the right cultural moments to optimize. It’s important for marketers to understand, for example, that the hours that go into a $100,000 Facebook paid social video campaign could amount to three times more than a similarly budgeted broadcast buy.

“The RFP should be a lens into real insights about a brand, its customers and its business

challenges.”

2. Acknowledge That Tech Isn’t a Stand-Alone Solution

Technology isn’t a stand-alone solution. It’s important to first have a strategy, and then understand how technology will accelerate it. Similar to how technology like Etrade helps broker stock deals quickly and seamlessly, if the inputs are choosing the wrong stocks, it can accelerate the speed at which an investor is losing money. Likewise, algorithms do a great job of optimizing search or programmatic campaigns, but if they’re directing customers to outdated landing pages or irrelevant creative, it’s difficult to maximize the opportunity. The combination of talent (intelligence) and technology (efficiency) is needed for the best solutions.

3. Plan Content and Media Concurrently

Advertising is more personalized and relevant than ever. Consumers engage with brands across multiple formats and devices, so content delivery must be frequent and unique. We now have fully integrated platforms that balance content (niche and mass), cross-channel device delivery, and advanced targeting and analysis that focus on the changing consumption habits of audiences and demographics. Brands must prioritize both content and media to take advantage of all of this progress.

There’s no shortage of big deals and shiny technologies to power better, smarter media strategies. With so much access to technology and real-time data, it’s time to use this period of change to advance toward the future. By reinventing the RFP and team structures, planning media and content together, and investing in the right areas, we can get smarter in the last 10 yards to ensure media creates advantages and drives business forward.

KEY TAKEAWAYS:• Reinvent the RFP process.• Find the right balance between investing in

specialized talent and technology.• Plan content and media together.

START BY ASKING:• Am I asking the right questions in my RFP to

find the right partners?• Do I have the right teams or partners in place

to consistently drive and optimize analytics, paid social, programmatic, search, etc.?

• Are my brand and media teams set up to use data and media as a competitive advantage?

A version of this article appeared in Advertising Age

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HOW JAMESON USED DATA TO WIN THE FIRST...AND LAST...POUR

Objective: Jameson is the original, go-to drink of the “neighborhood bar” in Ireland. To make Jameson the shot of choice for St. Patrick’s Day in the U.S. and keep its Irish whiskey pouring at local bars, Jameson needed to authentically communicate its message at the neighborhood level, while also achieving national scale and driving increased sales during a critical time period.

Strategy: Through social listening, 360i mapped the consumer journey to St. Patrick’s Day and designed a tiered messaging and targeting approach to engage consumers around the holiday. We strategically designed a cross-channel targeting strategy to engage both consumers and bartenders, and tapped the latest developments in geo-targeting to make the brand’s national message authentic at a neighborhood level in key markets before and on St. Patrick’s Day.

Execution: With the targeting and scale of paid social, the campaign built anticipation and spread the Jameson message neighborhood-by-neighborhood and device-by-device. Jameson grabbed attention using the world’s first-ever 3D social ads to serve up virtual shots directly in consumers’ newsfeeds and enlisted the support of bartenders nationwide. It also drove discovery with paid search ads that helped consumers find new ways to drink whiskey, and used Yelp to align Jameson with nationwide searches for Irish bars and pubs to keep Jameson top-of-mind. Jameson called on bar patrons to share their #ShotsEyeView from their own local watering holes and used geo-fencing mobile location data to intercept bar-goers as they were walking by neighborhood bars, all which kept the shots pouring.

Results: The campaign shattered all benchmarks from day one, driving record social engagement for Jameson. The brand saw e-commerce sales increase by 720%, making Jameson the best-selling alcohol brand of the holiday and contributing to more than 20% revenue growth three months in a row.

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BRAND REPUTATION

Even the most highly regarded brands can come under fire. The climate for brand reputation has changed–from the six o’clock news to up-to-the-minute Tweets and from professional journalists and eyewitness reports to instant live coverage shot and shared by the smartphone-equipped public. Today, crises can be spawned and brand reputations put in jeopardy in just moments, escalating to national and international attention in hours or even minutes.

Technology has made reputation management a 24/7 job for brands, and the explosion of smartphones means every brand action, good or bad, has the opportunity to be recorded and disseminated. As quickly as positive news can build up a brand, a threat or mistake can bring it down. For brands, it’s imperative to build the right offense, ensuring they’re prepared to quickly respond, react and rebuild, no matter the level of threat or scenario. Here’s how:

1. Build a Brand Reputation Team and Plan

When a crisis strikes and a brand’s reputation is at stake, it takes a village to protect the brand. When marketers have minutes, not hours, to react and respond, they need to know who the key decision makers are and who is accountable. Ensure the team is lean, armed with an activation plan, and empowered to make critical decisions quickly. They should have open–and immediate–access to the right inputs from senior management, legal and PR. By making brand reputation core to a company’s strategy and execution, the organization can act quickly and purposefully to manage any situations that arise.

“Technology has made reputation management a 24/7 job for brands.”

2. Understand the Varied Threat Levels

Not every threat is created equal. Consumers are fickle, and their tolerance for mistakes and mishaps can vary significantly, making it tough for brands to identify when they are in crisis. It’s essential to understand the different levels of threat, a brand’s audience, and the larger social conversation of the moment to know how to respond.

We’ve identified six core areas of crisis in the digital age:

High Threat (low consumer tolerance; high likelihood of provoking a strong consumer reaction)• Health and/or Safety: When consumers’ health

or safety is perceived to be at risk, a brand’s reputation is almost always in crisis. Whether it’s a product recall, food contamination or a data breach, brands must work quickly to resolve consumers’ concerns and demonstrate they are addressing the issue.

FROM REACTIVE CRISIS MANAGEMENT TOBUILDING THE RIGHT OFFENSE

by Rebecca McCuiston, SVP of Influencer Marketing, 360i

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• Values: Whether intentional or unintentional, when a brand sparks hot-button topics or issues, such as race, politics, human rights or religion, it’s likely consumers will be quick to call it out.

Medium Threat (consumer tolerance fluctuates)• Attack on a Brand: Consumers or advocacy

groups can use social media to call out or defame a brand, including bringing attention to unethical practices or unhealthy ingredients. This is often led by popular “social crusaders,” such as the Food Babe, or social pranksters entertaining their followers.

• Employee Mistakes: Mistakes by individuals working at a company can often be as damaging as mistakes from a brand. While tolerance can vary, if an executive posts a racy photo or a restaurant employee makes light of contaminating food, it can quickly become a brand reputation issue.

Low Threat (higher consumer tolerance)• External Crisis: Sometimes damaging factors

are outside a company’s control, like severe weather impacting service or an ex-executive being accused of criminal wrongdoing.

• Social Media Missteps: This can happen as a result of releasing content that isn’t well received, like an employee accidentally Tweeting a personal message from a company account or a campaign launch that’s controversial in the context of cultural events.

3. Develop Relationships with Advocates

Advocates can become authentic supporters and benefit your brand, in good times and bad. In times of crisis, they can provide a third-party voice to tell the company’s story positively, correct misinformation and rebuild consumer trust. Advocates can be existing fans and followers on your social channels, celebrity spokespeople, industry experts or influential employees.

“Advocates can become authentic supporters and benefit your brand, in good times

and bad.”

4. Remember Paid and Owned Channels

Crises can have implications across paid, owned and earned. While social forums are natural channels for crisis response, too many brands neglect to bring in SEO, display, media, paid social,

search and programmatic buying teams, where brand associations can quickly exacerbate a crisis by drawing attention at inopportune times. In times of crisis, consider shifting key words to address what consumers search, understand where ads are served to avoid retargeting the wrong audiences, and re-evaluate upcoming marketing initiatives to ensure the messaging and timing won’t draw more negative attention.

5. Be Transparent

No matter the threat, having a reputation plan in place will help brands be more authentic and transparent when the need arises. Consumers want and expect brands to take accountability and action, and the first step is to admit wrongdoing or correct a mistake or misperception. The quicker organizations acknowledge and take action, the faster the crisis will run its course, and perhaps even generate good will.

It’s essential for every brand to have an offense strategy focused on continually building and managing their reputation. It’s an ongoing process requiring them to work across channels to maintain and amplify core values that mirror consumer values.

KEY TAKEAWAYS:• Have a plan in place before a crisis arises and

make reputation core to the way you operate.• Codify best practices within your organization.• Build relationships with brand advocates.• Empower a brand management team to make

quick decisions.• Understand different levels of threat and the

implications on your brand.

START BY ASKING:• What is my brand’s crisis plan? Where do

potential threats exist? • Who is the ultimate decision-maker on

brand reputation and crisis response in my organization and who are the stakeholders?

• Who are our brand advocates and how are we building and maintaining relationships with them?

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CRISIS-PREP CHECKLISTHashtag or tagline? Don’t become a brand faux pas. Google it. Search it on Twitter. Check it out on reddit.

Be mindful of other media.Think through SEO, paid content, content calendar, etc.

Don’t forget Urban Dictionary.There may be other meanings that don’t align with your brand.

Analyze your current brand perception.Understanding how consumers interpret your brand will impact tone and content of response.

Have a response plan; think in 140 characters.Know how you’ll react in the event of a crisis.

Identify company decision makers.Know the executives who should be called in during a crisis.

Monitor the news leading up to, during & after launch.What’s happening can impact how content is perceived.

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MEASUREMENT

FROM THE PURSUIT OF PERFECTION TO CREATING AN ANALYTICS-DRIVEN CULTURE

Technology advancements such as beacons, DMPs, attribution platforms and geo-targeting have spawned larger volumes of more precise data, creating opportunities to truly understand how various channels are working. That’s put measurement and analytics on the rise, both in strategic importance and dollars spent–with share of marketing budget expected to nearly double to 12% by 2018, according to a recent Duke survey of 300 CMOs.

This has left too many marketers paralyzed–generally for two reasons. First, they’re afraid of what they don’t know and aren’t sure how and where to start fixing that. Second, digital marketing analytics is not keeping up with digital marketing, and the pursuit of the perfect has marketers leaving important opportunities on the table. The result is marketing that may not be as efficient or effective as it could be and investment in the wrong tools and products.

Getting familiar and comfortable with data and analytics is imperative for a modern marketer, and can be done with a purposeful analytics learning agenda, as well as a framework for analyzing and testing measurement tools. This approach will enable a proactive data strategy that gets better and smarter over time and drives real business outcomes.

Here are four ways for marketers to set their organizations on a path towards a true analytics learning culture:

1. Draft a Measurement Blueprint

Every organization plans ahead when it comes to tech, finance, data and R&D, but few do so for measurement. Does your organization truly have a measurement blueprint? The same forward-leaning approach that’s applied to those other areas needs to be applied to a two- to three-year roadmap for more rigorous measurement. Getting buy-in from the C-suite on a multiyear plan that includes a testing budget will give marketers the time and resources to enact a true learning agenda and deploy the right measurement tools and platforms, instead of flying from test to test. This not only allows marketers to find and validate the right partners, but also to develop their measurement technology ecosystem.

“Getting buy-in from the C-suite on a multiyear plan that includes a testing budget

will give marketers the time and resources to enact a true learning agenda and deploy the right measurement tools and platforms,

instead of flying from test to test.”

by Jared Belsky, President, 360i

We are approaching a tipping point in marketing measurement as the industry gets closer to understanding more about the returns on each dollar spent along the consumer journey. Increasing digital spend, experimenting with new technologies, and rapidly investing in analytics capabilities are key to helping marketers develop a culture of learning that can derive value beyond traditional media mix models by embracing a future of trackability.

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The blueprint should provide clarity on brand objectives and goals before jumping into tactics.Many organizations rush to test a measurement or attribution system without clarity on what marketing riddle they’re trying to solve. If, for example, the main objective is to gauge the impact of digital on a physical store, the tactics that support that learning objective might be more aligned with beacon experimentation or CRM testing than attribution testing.

2. Create a Culture of Data Curiosity

Develop a culture that allows for some bleeding-edge investment by allocating a percentage of the media and analytics budget to testing. This will help marketers stay ahead of the market and identify potential new data and analytics sources in a lower-risk way.

With that test budget secure, challenge the team to identify and explore three new ways to measure direct impact in the next six months, without relying solely on old models. Consider trying something bite-sized, yet meaningful. For example, a retail or travel brand that already has robust customer email lists might consider building segments into Facebook using its CRM ingestion tools and re-marketing to those groups, or prospecting off of look-alike models. This lets brands stretch CRM- or DMP-type muscles without having to make major investments and increases segmentation knowledge to inform future opportunities.

Other tests may take the form of a Datalogix study to understand offline impact from social ads or a multi-path level analysis between search and display to truly understand the most common and profitable paths to purchase.

“Develop a culture that allows for some bleeding-edge investment by allocating a

percentage of the media and analytics budget to testing.”

Having this budget also lets marketers play in important channels where robust data and measurement aren’t yet available. For example, although mobile marketing is one of the most promising areas for building brands, nearly half of marketers are underfunded in this space because the tracking tools aren’t as developed as the ones for measuring the ROI of desktop.

Unsure of how much to allocate? Great marketing and analytics organizations should consider a test budget of roughly 5% of total media.

3. Make Sure the Creative Team is Platform-Informed and Data-Enthused

There’s great data available to help curious-minded creatives develop more effective work. That’s why it’s important to ensure the creative team has a healthy respect for and knowledge of the data tools available across platforms.

For example, if a brand is creating video assets, data can help the creative team understand and appreciate the implications of the skippable barrier in YouTube, the opt-in audio nature of Facebook ads, or the sequential storytelling opportunities that abound in paid social. A creative with this knowledge might focus on breaking through in the all-important first five seconds when an ad must grab a viewer’s attention before being skipped or thumbed over. And a data-fluent creative will know that he or she can look at video-viewing data on a quartile level to understand precisely where viewing drop-off occurs so the videos can be altered and iterated to better capture user attention.

This data-driven approach also gives creatives the chance to receive quick feedback about how elements of the campaign are performing so they can optimize accordingly. The ability to launch multiple pieces of video content and know within 24 hours that one video’s completion rate is outperforming another opens up a faster, more productive feedback loop between marketers and agencies.

4. Staff for Modern Analytics

A modern analytics staff–whether in-house or at a third-party partner–should include four core positions:

• A database expert to help manipulate the data and set up an analytics database that marketers can own. Financial clients in particular should invest in this position because their ability to organize data and, more importantly, share it effectively with agencies and publishers to optimize is a critical path task.

• A business intelligence expert who is fluent with data access and visualization software packages, like Tableau, to help advance how to visualize and draw value from endless reams of data. This person helps plate the data in a meaningful way for an organization to make decisions based on it.

• A statistician who knows and loves forecasting, SQL, R, and modeling will help crunch data to get value out of it and inform better marketing decisions. This person will help with forecasting, diminishing-returns analysis, and complicated multi-variant testing on creative or media placements.

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KEY TAKEAWAYS:• Create a two- to three-year measurement

blueprint.• Allow space for experimentation to go where

consumers are heading, even if data availability lags.

• Make data part of the creative team’s business.• Staff a modern analytics team, whether that’s

in-house or at an agency partner.

START BY ASKING:• What are the brand objectives and goals that

will be in my measurement blueprint?• How can I measure direct impact differently in

the next six months? • Do the creatives working on my business know

the data available to them across the various digital platforms?

• Do I have the right team of measurement experts who can embrace the new technology available?

• A developer with API expertise will use the data to develop unique solutions to business challenges. For example, this person can help marketers figure out which weather API to test and how to connect it to Google to inform weather-based media bidding strategies, or find traffic patterns to adjust mobile offers in real time.

By embracing an analytical culture of learning and experimenting with new ways of doing things, marketers will get closer to more effective measurement for their organizations and the industry.

Self-Health Measurement Assessment

Do you doubt the efficacy of your media spend at least sometimes?

Do you believe that your display, native and content efforts don’t get enough credit for driving real sales?

Do you think you are spending too much for a complex attribution system your CEO and/or CFO don’t truly believe in?

Do you believe you should be spending more on mobile search, but can’t due to limited visibility?

Is your media mix model causing your media allocation to be out of touch with your target consumers’ media-consumption habits?

Are you unable to easily explain your analytics roadmap for fiscal year 2016?

If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, it may be time for your organization to make changes in measurement.

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A version of this article appeared inAdExchanger

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