Marketing Inspiration #20 - The business of marketing, time travel, and tricking your children

Welcome to your monthly dose of inspo to boost your marketing mojo

Here are some brand new insights from Automated Creative’s Shiny New Object podcast, where senior brand leaders share their vision for the future of marketing.

“You are not your audience.” - Daniel Peach, Head of Digital Acceleration Programmes, EMEA Go to Market Strategy, Google

At all levels and with all audiences, it always helps to remember that you can’t “grade your own homework.” It doesn’t matter what format of presentation you prefer if your boss doesn’t get the message when you present to the board. Equally, it doesn’t matter that you like a certain product specification if that’s not why your end consumers are likely to purchase it.

Daniel’s advice is to always use group thinking and gather feedback from colleagues when launching something new. At Google, he builds in two to three weeks of just refining an idea to ensure it has been socialised enough to not be too biassed to his own point of view. As a piece of career advice, he suggests that we curate a balanced professional network to create objectivity and have resources to rely on for seeing things from all possible angles. Listen to more of his tips on the podcast here.

“You’re in the business of marketing… so act like you’re running a business.” - Kauveri Khullaar, Vice President, Consumer Marketing & Sponsorships, Mastercard Asia Pacific

Marketing is not just communication, it’s a revenue generating part of a company. Mastercard’s Kauveri Khullaar talked about how critical it is for marketers to think about what they can do to drive tangible business outcomes when she was a guest on the podcast.

It’s important for brands to build a strong, distinctive message that consumers can identify with. This leads to end users having confidence in the brand and giving it their loyalty for repeat purchases. It also points to how important marketing can be for financial growth. After all, what good is a product if you can’t communicate it effectively? 

Kauveri also urges marketers to think about what they can do differently - focusing on how marketing can be a revenue centre. Think: “I am not just a marketer, I am an entrepreneur, I am a business person.”

“With customer privacy becoming a priority, marketers must become more intelligent in terms of targeting their communication and showing value to consumers.” - Anju Chauhan, SVP Marketing, YES Bank

In the age of consumer privacy, there is a fine balance between reaching out to consumers to get their data and make your communication as personalised as possible, on the one hand, and not breaching their privacy, on the other hand. While all brands vie for better consumer targeting, the ones who can walk this line will thrive.

Securing first party data becomes, therefore, a key part of a brand’s marketing process. For the banking industry, having transaction histories is an advantage. Regardless, however, all brands need to continuously engage with their consumers and find creative ways to access their information with their consent. 

Ask yourself: how can you design campaigns, products and services that engage consumers in such a way that they are willing to provide their information and feedback? Engage your audience: from content to influencer marketing, through any channels that help create direct lines of communication. And work to create a consumer journey through which people have multiple touchpoints with your brand. 

Find out more tips from Anju on the podcast.

Automated Creative Case Study - Cancer Research UK

Returning to organising charity events after the pandemic, Cancer Research UK (CRUK) wanted to better understand what motivates people to sign up to the Race for Life, as well as boost their registration numbers. We created a campaign that gave them useful insights and drove a significant uplift in participation.

Read more about this case study here.

Come and be an Automate - we’re hiring.

Automated Creative are on the hunt for Client Leads. We’re always looking for people with experience in Client Services, Project Management, Campaign Activation or Media Planning to work with our amazing clients. If that’s you, check out the full job description & get in touch:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1pnOHxbXHhEv8gXQ0G6fr0T3UwPswJSIrDyRRagjpzoY/edit

Come make a difference in a team that was built to be the difference 🙂

AC in the Press

We've been making a splash in the press these past couple of months. Director of strategy Amy Wright gave a reminder in Performance Marketing World of the immense potential of digital transformation to accelerate gender equality and women’s empowerment - and of the risks of amplifying inequality if we follow outdated patterns of thinking. Citing our work for Reckitt’s infant formula brand Enfamil, she also illustrated how testing ad creatives and drilling down into visual and emotional triggers, tone of voice and format can unearth unheralded gender insights. Milk ads cutting through better when they feature photos of dads, anyone? Counterintuitive, we know, but that’s the thing about surprising insights.

Beiersdorf, whose brands include Nivea and Eucerin, kindly explained to AdExchanger how Automated Creative helped them to move past hypotheses and into a happy world in which individually-tagged creative assets are able to demonstrate how a given ad worked with a particular audience. “You’re able to understand the DNA of a top performer - exactly what’s working and why,” said Adam Wright, Head of Digital at Beiersdorf Northern Europe.

And last - but definitely not least; in fact perhaps should have been first - is the news of the arrival of Dan Moseley as managing director for North America, as Automated Creative continues to sprawl out across the landmass. New hires are on the way too, as we entrench a growing client base in the US and Canada, delivering work for brands such as Bose, Upwork, spirits manufacturer Brown-Forman and Haleon. 

This month’s ‘Best Marketing Tip’

“Market the products that you love.”

When asked what was the best item he bought for work with his own money, John Solomon answered: a Theragun. You may think this is just advertising his own company’s product, since he is the Chief Marketing Officer at Therabody. However, John purchased the massage gun before he ever became involved with the brand, out of his own personal interest. This ended up teaching him an important marketing lesson.

Being passionate about your products and knowing absolutely everything about them is key to being a good marketer, according to John. It’s helped him create more meaningful content and to be authentic and dedicated in his role. Find out more of John’s top tips on the podcast.

And there is more Marketing Inspiration this past month on Advertisers Watching Ads - our show where brands watch other brands’ ads and discuss their merits and failings, in partnership with Contagious.

We learnt about a sneakerhead reseller’s worst nightmare courtesy of eBay...

and discussed time travel thanks to McDonald’s Sweden.

Food was big on the menu in March: from Heinz’ Vintage Drip ad

to tricking kids into eating vegetables in Wholly Veggie’s new clip.

And we took on the challenge of watching Hilton’s 10-minute TikTok

before discussing more serious issues like the abuse female identifying gamers receive online, in an ad by Maybelline. 

Do you want to share your thoughts about these ads or suggest a new one for us to debate? Email us on hello@automatedcreative.net.

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Finally, here are some ads you should have seen - via our friends at Contagious:

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