My Take on Current
Events: Disappearing Ads
Snapchat seems to be all over the place, as Facebook
attempted to buy it for US$ 3 billion this week. I found this opinion piece by
David Berkowitz about disappearing ads that picks up that topic: http://adage.com/article/digitalnext/marketers-world-disappearing-media/245294/
He basically proposes that marketers could use the special
feature of disappearing media to force the audience to pay more attention. There
is a great chance that it could go wrong and a one time availability will not
be well received. However, in a world where everything is available anytime and
anywhere we want, could something rare or scarce might be able to catch our
attention? As Berkowitz says, could it make the viewers pay more attention
because they know that they have to either watch it now or never? I actually
think that this is quite an interesting idea and I can imagine that it would
work. However, it could only be effective if the audience actually knows that
it is a one time view. And the biggest challenge would be to get that into the
minds of the people that are used to having all information at their fingertips.
My TTIY
I am currently working on my TTIY project. I haven’t
discovered anything specifically new this week (I believe I have covered all
communications channels so far), but something Brian said at Likable caught my
attention. He said that 10% off is nowadays normal, and you can already get
that from walking into the store. And I realized that this completely applies
to American Eagle Outfitters. There is always some sort of sale that they are
offering. Either it is a special holiday sale, or just an ordinary “buy 1 get
one free” sale. I think I have never bought something at full price at American
Eagle. This basically means that their strategy is to position the brand at a
certain price level, but they are selling it as another one. Considering the
target audience this makes a lot of sense, as they are targeting15-25 year old
females. In this age group, one might only have a certain budget. Positioning
American Eagle at a good quality price level, but actually selling it for less
and allowing the low-budget teens to buy the clothes is actually pretty smart.
My Recap
So this week we visited Likeable, a social media marketing
agency. The office space was less fancy than other agencies we have seen.
However, the ambience felt very suitable for their work. In terms of scope of
work: What Brian presented and explained matched my expectation for such an agency.
One thing, I was always wondering about was how or if they get approval for
every little tweet or Facebook comment from their clients. But as Brian and
Steven explained, the client usually provides some sort of social media brand
bible that contains guidelines for answers, tweets and comments. This is somewhat
different from what we heard at Cohn & Wolfe. There they most of the time
have to get client approval for every single message. The scope of social media
work I think might be quite different at these two places, though.
I believe that one big challenge is to learn the “brand
language” of each of their clients. If you manage several accounts at one time,
you always have to be careful to use the right tone, language and style that
represents the different brands, and not to mix them up.
Even though I found their work highly interesting, I could
not necessarily see myself working in a social media marketing agency. Without
any intention of devaluating their work, I could rather see myself working on
“big campaigns” than little Facebook comments and tweets.
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