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Why standing out and pushing boundaries drives performance

By Jenny Stanley, Managing director

Appetite Creative

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The Drum Network article

This content is produced by The Drum Network, a paid-for membership club for CEOs and their agencies who want to share their expertise and grow their business.

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February 4, 2020 | 6 min read

Big-ticket marketing campaigns are expected to be just one of the winners in 2020.

Appetite Creative remind marketers of the different styles of marketing that work with consumers.

Appetite Creative remind marketers of the different styles of marketing that work with consumers.

It is essential for brands to demand high-quality, high-performing, immersive, creative ad experiences. Mobile is now expected to lead the way in championing how innovative creative can improve performance and justify the increased investment in this medium.

Here we’ll take a look at four types of marketing that offer an opportunity to stand out on creative and push the boundaries on performance.

Disruptive

Richard Branson once said that disruptive marketing is about risk, being brave, and trusting your intuition. But the Virgin founder also added that the process goes way beyond advertising, forcing a business to rethink its brand and find new routes to where it wants to be.

Disruptive marketing, when successful, is a thing we look upon with deserved awe. It is because of their disruptive force that names like Netflix and Uber become the proprietary eponyms that define entire new industries. That takes vision and courage, but brings with it the kind of success that will only ever be imitated, at best. There is only one Airbnb, only one Dollar Shave Club. These will always be the originals, and they will always be synonymous with a product or service that the consumer suddenly can't live without.

But disruption doesn’t happen by accident. It’s the rigour of the process that leads to it - constantly learning from the consumer, listening to what people want, finding niches, testing and refining and finally bringing the picture into focus - that ultimately changes an industry for the better.

Immersive

The fact that budget for event-based marketing seems a little precarious right now doesn't mean that we should not be thinking about it - it just means that event marketing needs to change.

The onset of digital communications such as video conferencing, messaging apps and social platforms have made face-to-face interactions rarer and sometimes more awkward. So how do we bring them back?

Last year, Appetite Creative designed an event for Vodafone. It was nothing massive, it wasn't expensive, but it was very successful. It involved a virtual treasure hunt inside a shopping centre, with a brand new iPhone as the prize. It sounds simple because it was. Participants used their phones to scan QR codes which, in turn, gave them clues to the location of the next code. The first person to find enough of those codes won an iPhone. The exercise benefited everyone involved: the client, the shopping centre and all the shops and food outlets along the way.

Immersive marketing, delivering messages across numerous channels, is the natural successor to engagement marketing. The message is simple but powerful, and each link in the chain - every participant, shop, phone store, Facebook or Instagram viewer - passes a single idea along the line in one shared experience.

Conversational

Having graduated through handwritten notes, telegrams and faxes and beyond, we suddenly, between the late-1980s and the mid-1990s, got mail. It was fantastic, instant and clean. But it soon became a victim of its own success: that instant email we sent last week still hadn't been replied to, as it was stuck under a colossal digital pile of spam, promos and useless reply-to-all office talk. So we got the Instant Messenger - great, but only if everyone you needed to speak to was online at the same time.

Now, thank goodness, we have live chat.

What we must remember about live chat is that the conversations happen in customer-time. The consumer finally has control. Conversations are still personal and hopefully helpful, but now, thanks to conversational marketing, they are even more tailored to the customer and to that person’s most valuable asset: time. “Customers should be able to pick things up right where they left off, whenever it is convenient for them to continue,” says HubSpot co-founder, Dharmesh Shah. “The key is to remember that conversational marketing should be designed around the needs of the customer, not the needs of the business.”

And with the “when” comes the “where”. We must now invest our efforts in making sure that conversations can happen through whichever channel our customers are most comfortable with, whether that is Facebook at 22:15 after Downton Abbey or on the phone as soon as we all arrive at the office. Businesses now have the chance to provide the right message to any client, at the right time, and via the right channel.

Automated

Automated marketing still carries a stigma. My Apple Watch has just popped up with an email that I don't want, and I know that I am not the only person on the mailing list. It is not personalised to me in any way, and it is a nuisance.

Good automated marketing, however, will put an end to this. It should be backed by an inbound strategy and centred on the prospect. Using the lead and the information collected, it should deliver information, when and where its needed, via the most appropriate channel. It should use data based on social media, price comparisons or content views - not to bombard a lead with information that might be useful, but to actively avoid serving them any information that is not necessary.

At Appetite Creative , we understand marketing, and we want to share that. We pride ourselves on our ability to listen to our clients. If you think you may benefit from a chat about marketing, do get in touch.

Jenny Stanley, founder and MD at Appetite Creative.

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