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5 Ingredients of a Successful Social Media Campaign

You’d be hard pressed to find someone these days who doesn’t engage social media on even the most basic level. It’s because of this that social media often takes a back seat when brands or campaigns make decisions about where to invest. Simply put, people need convincing that their organization actually needs help doing something that they personally already do every day.

So what actually goes into launching a social media campaign? What does a defined strategy look like? What are some best practices?

These questions need answering, so we had our social media strategists weigh in.

Without further adieu…

BE GOAL ORIENTED:

Think, what’s my goal?

Your social presence is a process. It lives. It breathes — Take it in stride. Goals will help you reach incremental milestones, which we guarantee you’ll find much easier than trying to conquer the beast all at once.

Do you want as many fans and followers as you can possibly amass, or do you cater to a smaller, more personalized and qualified audience?

Do you want people to donate to a campaign or cause, or do you want to drive attendance at an event?

These are examples of questions to ask yourself, and your team, before embarking on the social journey.

BUILD AN EDITORIAL CALENDAR:

Wait, posts are planned out in advance?

News stations plan feature stories in advance, why wouldn’t you? Good content grows out of good monitoring and strategic planning.

Map out the details. When will you use graphics? How often will you link to your other online properties? How many posts will ask your audience to take action compared to those meant simply to educate?

But don’t constrict yourself. Leave some breathing room for the uncontrollables. Our general rule of thumb is 80/20: plan 80% of your content, and leave 20% for breaking news or the cat meme that’s gone viral on Buzzfeed.

CREATE CONTENT YOU WOULD SHARE

Which of these posts would you click?

A good post evokes emotion and tells a story.

Let’s play a game. Which of these posts seems more compelling?

Post 1: Tomorrow, Congress is voting on the Jobs Act. Make sure to tell Congress to support jobs.

Post 2:  Sara opened her bakery 2 years ago. She’s struggling to pay her employees, turn a profit, and find leftover money to invest back into her store. If Washington continues to overregulate, Sara will be forced to lay off several workers. Let Congress know that the Jobs Act would provide the relief Sara needs to keep her business running strong.

Engaging your audience is as simple as telling a relatable narrative. Show the firsthand effects of the issues your organization supports or opposes. If orchestrated properly, your content will incite your followers to share it, extending your reach to potential fans, supporters, or customers.

INTERACT WITH YOUR FOLLOWING

How do you Engage with your audience?

Someone walks into your business. Do you hide from them and act like they’re not there? Of course not; you greet them.

Someone walks into your Congressional office to express disappointment about a certain issue. Do you hide and act like they’re not there? Of course not; you listen to their point of view and tell them you’ll pass along their concerns.

Why wouldn’t you do the same on social media?

Life is a series of interactions that come together to create an overall experience. This translates to social media. Treat your social feeds as if someone were standing in front of you. You needn’t respond to every comment or tweet, but if someone asks a pressing question or expresses a valid concern, respond. Engagement makes for a better experience, and a better experience means more loyalty.

IMPLEMENT YOUR PLANNING

How do I integrate my new social media strategy?

Social media is not a siloed effort; it’s an extension of your existing marketing toolbox.

When you host an event, provide a branded hashtag, or set up a photobooth, making it easy for your attendees to interact with you online, before, during, and after your event.

Add Facebook and Twitter sharing icons to email signatures and landing pages.

Re-share that video on Facebook that you already have YouTube pre-roll dollars behind.

Leveraging the uniqueness of each marketing tool with social media extends your reach, reinforces your message, and ensures an engaged audience.

“Sadvertising” – What Is It And Why Is It So Damn Popular?

Strike the heart, not the head.

That’s the essence of a recent examination into a growing advertising trend Fast Company swiftly dubbed “sadvertising.”

It doesn’t take much guessing to grasp the meaning of the term; it’s a reference to the shift in advertising towards long-form, emotional, storytelling narratives.

Think about it. Perhaps the most anticipated Super Bowl ad this year wasn’t about an impromptu goat purchase gone wrong. It was a goose bump inducing spot about the friendship between puppy and horse.

This trend is about creating storylines that people want to watch, not feel forced to endure.

It’s about telling relatable narratives that make people say, “Hey, that could happen to me, and if it does, that brand will be there for me.”

Enter Guinness.

http://youtu.be/xwndLOKQTDs

That sentiment of brand trust transcends commercial branding. It’s made its way into one of this cycle’s most heralded political ads.

The notion of pursuing emotional connections with viewers and users is nothing new to CRAFT. We’ve long pushed our clients to create meaningful, shareable content; content that inspires and pushes traditional norms and boundaries. Because when content makes you feel good, you want to tell the world.

CRAFT recently hosted a two-panel discussion, CRAFTing Creative, centered on the intersection of creative and politics. Arising from the conversation was an idea that people don’t always remember exactly what you say, but they do remember how you make them feel.

This lies at the very root of “sadvertising.” Emotional ads don’t necessarily make you run out the door to buy a bar of soap or vote for a candidate, but when the time comes to make a purchase or cast a ballot, you’ll remember how you felt watching that spot.

Despite the elegant play on words, CRAFT Partner Brian Donahue is weary of the term “sadvertising,” (rather preferring sentimentising) fearing the insistence that a story must be sad to elicit an emotional response:

“In politics, we must be equipped to hit all emotions on the sentiment scale.”

Humorous reactions can stimulate equal levels of brand trust, a pillar we touted by parodying the notorious “Dollar Shave Club” commercial.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXcdlBXemUk

Now, here’s the catch. According to PJ Pereira, chief creative officer at Pereira & O’Dell, “there’s nothing more dangerous in advertising than following a trend.” In his experience, “any time you see a trend…it’s about to die.”

So we leave it to you — Is “sadvertising” the flavor of the day, or here to stay?

Let us know your thoughts in the comment section below.

“Please Use This Song” and the Rise of Licensed Music in Advertising

Music is a powerful tool in advertising. It can define a brand identity or help target the ideal audience. From the catchy ad jingles that dominated postwar American radio and television to the indie-pop music that lingers in modern commercials, advertisers have used music to get their brands into our heads—sometimes years after their campaigns stopped running.

This is what Canadian comedian Jon Lajoie has parodied in his latest music video, “Please Use This Song.” Prior to his success on the FX show “The League,” Lajoie garnered a large YouTube following through his hilarious “Everyday Normal Guy” rap series and other comedic songs. He has poked fun at subjects ranging from the banality of daily life to rap MCs that know too much about bees. With “Please Use This Song,” Lajoie uses a peppy, indie-inspired riff to convince advertisers to buy the rights to this accessible, yet seemingly hip, song that cleverly hits on the alternative ad music trend whose origin traces back almost 50 years ago.

During the turmoil of the late 1960s, advertisers began becoming more interested in using popular music to connect with the young Baby Boomers. In 1968, Buick Motors bought The Doors’ hit “Light My Fire”, which it planned to use to market the Opel. Unfortunately for Buick, the deal was done without the consent of Doors’ front man, Jim Morrison. The deal was quickly scrapped when the singer threatened to smash an Opel with a sledgehammer if the commercial ever aired.

The manufactured jingle continued to reign supreme until the early 90s, when Pepsi used the Van Halen’s socially charged anthem “Right Now” to advertise Crystal Pepsi. While the beverage’s sales eventually fizzled, advertisers saw an immediate response. To a maturing Generation X and Generation Y, songs written by legitimate musicians made brands seem more authentic and just a little bit cooler. This trend carried on well into the late 1990s and early 2000s, with companies using the works of The Rolling Stones, The Cure, and Nick Drake to peddle their software, cameras, and cars.

Lesser-known, independently labeled musicians also began seeing huge benefits to their songs being used for commercial purposes. In 2003, Mitsubishi featured “Days Go By,” a hypnotic dance piece by the U.K. house music group Dirty Vegas, in an ad showcasing the Mitsubishi Eclipse. The song skyrocketed up the U.S. Billboard charts, hitting number 1 in the dance category.  In 2005, Sony released a brilliant, playful, and highly acclaimed spot featuring 250,000 rubber balls bouncing gracefully down San Francisco streets to Jose Gonzalez’s delicate “Heartbeats.” The struggling Swedish folksinger was studying for his PhD in Biochemistry when the song became a huge international hit, thanks in part to the success of the Sony commercial.

Professional commercial songwriters began getting wise to the trend; creating wispy, folksy tunes and indie pop melodies mimicking the music of The Feist and Phoenix. This made the “hip but accessible music vibe” that smaller companies, brands, and even political candidates desired far more affordable. Even tech behemoth Apple embraced both indie and the indie-faux musicians, using a childlike, xylophone ditty for their heralded “Mac vs. PC” campaign alongside commercials featuring bands like Honeycut, Yael Naim, and The Black Keys.

This is where Jon Lajoie’s “Please Use This Song” hits a strong cord. Gone are the days of musicians adamantly opposed to “selling out,” instead replaced with a bevy of guitar strumming, independently labeled, singer/songwriters clamoring for the chance to have their work featured in an Apple ad, or at least a decent detergent commercial. This begs the question: have ads gotten cooler or have musicians (or their labels) just gotten more business savvy?

CRAFT Reading List

“The man who does not read good books is no better than the man who can’t.”

— Mark Twain

Below you will find the reading selections of everyone at CRAFT. This list is not made up of our “favorite” reads, but rather the books that made us think, laugh, learn, and grow. These are the books that we recommend for each other and recommend for you.

As A Man Thinketh, James Allen
(Buck Cram)

Big Russ & Me, Tim Russert
(Cory Maran)

Cognitive Surplus, Clay Shirky
(Evan Gassman)

The Color of Water: A Black Man’s Tribute to His White Mother, James McBride
(Bradley Heinz)

General Lee’s Army: From Victory to Collapse, Joseph Glatthaar
(Matthew Attkinson)

House, Robert Remini
(Joe Greeley)

In the Blink of an Eye, Walter Murch
(Nadav Kessous)

Lie Down in Darkness, William Styron
(Alex Finland)

Likeable Social Media: How to Delight Your Customers, Create an Irresistible Brand, and Be Generally Amazing on Facebook, Dave Kerpen
(Catie Weckenman)

Lolita, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
(Louisa Tavlas)

Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold
(Ashley Carter)

Master of the Senate, Robert Caro
(Joe Greeley)

Rape of Europa, Lynn H. Nicholas
(Evan Ross)

Reagan at Reykjavik,   Ken Adelman
(Travis Holler)

Resonate, Nancy Duarte
(Catie Weckenman)

Shit My Dad Says, Justin Halpern
(Buck Cram)

Show Your Work, Austin Kleon
(Jess Matsumoto)

Social/Management Styles, Robert & Dorothy Bolton
(Danielle Theroux)

Start Where You Are: A Guide to Compassionate Living, Pema Chodron
(Matthew Dybwad)

Steal Like an Artist, Austin Kleon
(Jess Matsumoto)

The 5 Love Languages, Gary Chapman
(Morgan Farenthold)

The Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Thomas Piketty
(Zachary Hanover)

The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter and How to Make the Most of Them, Rebecca Solnit
(Liberty Riggs)

The Field Guide to Getting Lost, Rebecca Solnit
(Liberty Riggs)

The Graveyard Book, Neil Gaiman
(Alice Ly)

The Help, Kathryn Stockett
(Lana Tsimberg)

The Mechanical Bride: Folklore of Industrial Man, Marshall McLuhan
(Brian Donahue)

The Paris Wife, Paula McLain
(Ashley Carter)

The Presidents Club, Nancy Gibbs & Michael Duffy
(John Randall)

The Rehnquist Choice: The Untold Story of the Nixon Appointment That Redefined the Supreme Court, John W. Dean
(Evan Ross)

The Tao of Pooh, Benjamin Hoff
(Alice Ly)

The Thin Man, Dashiell Hammett
(Jerry Stephens)

This Town, Mark Leibovich
(Zachary Hanover)

Three Cups of Tea, Greg Mortenson & David Oliver Relin

Who Moved My Cheese, Dr. Spencer Johnson
(Bryan Levine)

Winesburg, Ohio, Sherwood Anderson
(Brian Donahue)

Z, Teresa Anne Fowler
(Sinead Casey)

Does chewing gum make you immune to advertising?

For most of us going to the movies means two things: lots of trailers and lots of snacks.

It turns out, however, that the popcorn and chewing gum you’re indulging in may actually be effecting the way your brain receives advertisements. A recent study published in the Journal of Commercial Psychology suggests that the simple of act of chewing makes viewers significantly less likely to respond to ads – the implications of which stretch far beyond the silver screen.

What does this mean for digital advertising? Perhaps it means that advertisers should take into consideration what activities consumers are engaged in while online. For example – when driving traffic to an organization’s event landing page, video placements  could be day-parted to avoid users who are likely to be eating dinner. Greater ad effectiveness during ‘off-meal’ times could yield  deeper insight into when target audiences are least distracted.

Gum as Interference

Why CRAFT built Levers

Programmatic ad buying, which is what CRAFT Levers does, plugs into and enhances every part of a campaign.

As the latest installment of AdExchanger’s Data-Driven Thinking points out, programmatic advertising, while not a strategy in and of itself, is strategic in its application.

Programmatic is the hub at the center of any integrated digital marketing effort.

In addition, programmatic buying opens the doors to insights buyers don’t normally get from digital ad campaigns:

“Often times campaign optimization reveals niche markets that tend to engage with ads but were previously unbeknownst to a brand.”

CRAFT built its own agency trading desk to bring our core philosophy of campaign integration across channels to the digital advertising practice.

Learn more about CRAFT Levers.

What You Don’t Know Can Hurt Your Campaign

Quick, what sites performed best for your most- recent network campaign? What drove the most clicks? What about conversions?

Media buyers and planners need to know these answers to key questions to better plan, execute and optimize existing and future campaigns. Yet, many do not, and cannot, know these answers. Why?

Because of a lack of transparency. 

Lack of transparency can damage a campaign in several ways, including:

  • Wasted Client Money
  • Potential Loss of Revenue
  • Brand Dilution
  • Damaged Reputation

All of these could threaten the success of your business, resulting in lost clients and lost jobs.

Let’s look at this through the lens a traditional ad buy. A TV buyer would not spend his clients’ budget on ads without knowing where they are airing. So why should a digital buyer, with greater access to insights, accept a lack of full transparency?

Transparency, more than programmatic or native advertising, is the key to the future of digital advertising.

Notably, without transparency you cannot make truly informed decisions about your ad campaign. Without transparency, your “big data” is misinformed and can lead your campaigns astray. Without transparency, you are generating false data and wasting budgets.

We’re not the only ones pulling back the curtain on this. AdWeek’s Mike Shields wrote a compelling article ”The Amount of Questionable Online Traffic Will Blow Your Mind The World Wide Rip-Off“ that examines this ever-increasing problem for buyers and sellers – lack of transparency. In that article, Zach Coelius, CEO of Triggit, hit the nail on the head when he said, “Whenever you buy from someone who won’t tell you where your ads are running, there is a real danger they are ripping you off.”

Following up on this, Digiday published an article “The Hidden Cost Bots Add to Online Ads,” where they continue to highlight and address the fraud issues facing digital buyers and sellers. The article points out, “Not only are brands paying for fraudulent ad impressions, but they’re also finding bots are leading them astray in their efforts to reach real humans.”

So what can buyers do to help ensure their data is real and their campaigns optimizing correctly?

Demand transparency.

If you can see the sites that are driving traffic you can make informed decisions and more easily detect fraud. If you are running a public affairs campaign, and the bulk of your clicks come from ads on CollegeHumor (mentioned in AdWeek article), you should question the results.

Don’t waste your budgets on fake or misguided impressions or clicks. Before you plan your next campaign, make sure you can monitor and manage the sites where your ads run. Demand transparency.

CRAFT’s John Randall Looks Into the Future of Digital (Q&A)

CRAFT is bound by talented individuals who share creative aptitude, technological expertise, strategic thinking, and political or public affairs campaign experience.

John Randall shares all of these.

John Randall’s experience, skills, and talents make him perfectly suited for the job as CRAFT’s Director of Digital. We know all about John’s thoughts on digital strategy and thought we’d share them with you in this Q&A.

Name: John Randall
Hometown: Holyoke, MA

Twitter handle: @jrandall

Why did you decide to join CRAFT?

In addition to the creative and cutting-edge campaigns CRAFT designs and implements, you can’t help but be impressed with the team they have and their vision for the future.  In purely selfish terms, this is an incredible chance to learn from some of the best in the business. But most importantly, a great opportunity to do amazing work and help push digital campaigns in politics and public affairs to the next level.

What are the current trends in (online) advertising?

The two biggest trends right now are programmatic buying and native advertising. Programmatic is not new, but it is becoming more widely adopted, as it allows advertisers to highly automate the buying process based on data—merging two of the differentiating factors of digital.

How should campaigns use big data?

Data is a powerful tool, but like any tool, if its not used correctly it can do more harm than good. Campaigns need to understand that just because you theoretically have the ability to target small groups of people that are not always the best, or most cost effective option. Effective message targeting is essential, but sometimes it squeezes out blocks of people who may be influenced by that specific message. Big Data is nothing new – just read Team of Rivals when it discusses Lincoln running for the House and having voter contact cards – its just the amount of data we can now access and use is now limitless and it’s important to use the data smartly to achieve your goals. Data is a tool, not an end.

What recommendations do you have for candidates running in 2014?

Start early and be aggressive. Digital isn’t a silver bullet or something you can just role out at the end. Also, don’t nickel and dime digital budgets. Spend what needs to be spent to succeed, or at least to know why something failed.

Have a question for John? Ask him on Twitter.

 

CRAFT Wins 2013 Google Engage All-Star Competition

We are excited to announce that CRAFT | Media/Digital has been named a 2013 Google Engage All-Star.  Digital Advertising and Marketing Specialist, Andrew Burk, managed the online advertising campaigns during the length of the contest. This win represents CRAFT’s ability to achieve growth for our clients by both meeting and exceeding specific online advertising and marketing goals.

The Google Engage program helps to enhance companies that offer online planning and strategy, website design and development, digital engagement and search engine marketing. Once a year, Google gives 14,000 leading agencies worldwide the chance to compete to show the most growth for their clients using the search engine’s marketing platform, of which only 200 agencies are invited to attend. In order to be selected as a winner, CRAFT had to reach specific pay-per-click goals across all active marketing and advertising campaigns.

Partner Matthew Dybwad and Andrew Burk, will represent CRAFT at the summit in Google’s California headquarters August 12th. At the Engage event, the pair will receive insights about market trends, one-on-one consultations with Google managers, a tour of Googleplex and more.

Expect the two to share what they learn and their experience right here on CRAFT Framework and for live updates be sure to follow them on Twitter: @mdybwad and @AndrewABurk

Using GIF’s Effectively

You’ve probably heard the word GIF thrown around lately. GIF is the acronym for graphics interchange format. They’ve made a comeback online in the past few years thanks to online channels such as tumblr, reddit, and even Twitter. Once a forgotten relic of the dot com boom, gifs now present an interesting marketing and communications opportunity.

It is not hard to find examples of gifs widely used in communications shops. Brands such as Adidas use gifs to share great moments in sports. Coca-Cola’s “12 Days of gifs” campaign made a big impact on tumblr during the holiday season. Nike has been known to place gifs in their press releases. Even journalists have begun to embrace the medium: the 2012 presidential debates were live-gif’ed. We now live in a time in which people use gifs to narrate complicated issues or processes, a task that Buzzfeed has successfully conquered.

Uses for gifs

Why are gifs all the rage around town? Because they can be leveraged in a number of different ways.

1) Gifs serve as calls-to-action. Use an animation that conveys an emotion and overlay it with a call-to-action. In advertising, it’s important to tell the user exactly what to do or how to feel.

2) Gifs can have an emotional impact. Use a gif that relates to your audience. Whether it’s a scene from a popular movie or a famous line, your audience is more likely to relate better to an issue or article if it is juxtaposed with recognizable elements.

3) Gifs tell a story. Find ones that thoroughly explain an idea or a narrative. While a picture can provide context and enhance content, a gif can linearly explain a complex idea.

4) Gifs bring life to boring facts. If you are struggling to highlight dry statistics in an engaging manner, consider utilizing gifs to animate your illustration and show active progression.

Depending on your communications goal, you can either use a pre-made gif, or make your own.

Using pre-existing gifs

Hundreds of “reaction gifs” can be found online, and utilizing the right ones can help convey emotion or make your audience laugh, cry, and huff along with you. Even the Heritage Foundation jumped on the Buzzfeed Community/gif bandwagon, realizing that complicated policy topics are often more easily digested in gif format.

Making your own gifs

Contrary to popular belief, you don’t need to be proficient in Photoshop to make a quality gif. For example, YT2GIF can convert a YouTube video to a gif without any software. If you’d like to convert a set of still images into a gif, you can use Make a Gif or Picasion. If you’d like to take video on your phone and convert it to a gif, we recommend GifBoom (available on iOS and Android).

A closing thought: earlier this year, a battle erupted over the pronunciation of gif. The inventor of the file format, Steve Wilhite, tried to settle the debate once and for all, declaring it was pronounced “jif.” The Obama e-campaign team responded by saying, “f— that s—.”

Glad that’s settled.