How many of you have read something long and when asked about it can only recall the overall gist of details? We know that we have! This is called the verbatim effect and it is defined as a cognitive bias that causes people to only remember the gist of the information instead of its exact form. And, this isn’t limited to text. It extends to videos, photos, infographics, etc. So, how can brands use this to their advantage in marketing? People are skimmers.
While Supplies Last: Scarcity Marketing Tactics
Why do we all want things that we can’t have? This is what the scarcity principle is based upon. Creating want for a product or service through limited accessibility. Things that seem rare are perceived to have higher value. Marketing uses this principle often to get customers to buy but there needs to be proof of scarcity, of course. Here are some examples of ways that marketing use scarcity.
Extra, Extra Read All About It: Press Releases
News spreads fast nowadays in the digital world we live in. Before the internet, the press release was used to reach a wider audience through sending them directly to journalist. The journalist would then publish in their newspapers to reach a large audience, but only if they deemed the releases to substantial enough to send out. With social media today, it doesn’t matter if anyone thinks your press release is subpar, it’s going to go out anyway. It has become a way for companies to reach their audience directly without the middle man so it’s important for brands to know how to use them strategically to benefit their marketing tools. There are some key elements to your release that you want to make sure you have as well as sending to the proper places. Aside from this you need to know why you’re creating it. Let’s start with that.
Women’s History Month: Erma Perham Proetz
Erma Proetz was the first woman to be inducted into the Advertising Hall of Fame. She was a copywriter, account executive, director, creative vice president and executive vice president, who spent most of her advertising career at Gardner Advertising Company in St. Louis. She received multiple awards for her advertisements in the 1920’s.
Women's Role in Advertisements Today
In 2022, 46.6% of the workforce in the United States was female (Mathew Zane of Zippia). That’s almost half of the entire workforce! So, why then are women still being portrayed in a stereotypical manner in advertisements? A recent article written by The Drum shows that stereotyping women in advertisements has actually went up in the past year by 66%. What’s going on? Are we not in the progressive 21st Century? On top of this fact, women of darker skin tones have been featured 80% less than women with lighter skin.
Getting Up Close & Personal with Gen Z
Gen Z… they crave success. It will be important to understand them in the upcoming years as they come of age and will be the audience that brands are marketing to, if they aren’t already. Let’s talk about their top 3 priorities in life. 1. Clothing and fashion choices. 2. Making money. 3. DEI. Well, this third is as important for society as number one is, isn’t? it’s also important to note that this generation is still young and their priorities may change over time as they age. What are they interested in?
Making the Right Impression: Impression Shares
What is an impression share? If you’re in business that advertises you probably already know but for those that don’t, it’s the percentage of impressions that your ad receives compared to that total number of impressions it could get. It gets this through comparing it to other ads in a similar category. It’s calculated by dividing the number of impressions gotten by the number it has available. The available impressions are determined by things such as targeting settings, approval status and quality, according to Google. There are also different types of impressions shares, such as search, exact match, display impression share, etc.
Women’s History Month: Women Who Changed Advertising Mathilde C. Weil
It’s hard to believe that the first advertising agency was started by a woman in 1880 but it’s true, despite her not getting credit since she was a woman. The agency was M.C. Weil Agency in New York. In the history books, J. Walter Thompson gets all the credit for starting the first ad agency but this is false. She moved to America from Germany in the early 1870’s and worked as a translator. She spoke English, German, French and Spanish. She later worked as a writer for a newspaper and magazines. This led her into advertising when she began selling ad space for a German newspaper. From there she became a liaison for advertisers and publications as she ran her own agency out of the NY Time Building until she died in 1903.
Creativity & Working from Home
We read an interesting article in Adage yesterday about how remote work may be hurting creativity in the workplace so we decided to delve into this idea a little deeper. Creative collaboration can push projects to the next level, but does it matter if these collaborations are in person or digital? Some say that those stating creativity is suffering from at home work is just a cop out for the uncreatively bad work they’ve produced, but could it actually be true? Well, a study was done on this and the results are very convincing. According to this article from CNN, results showed that digital meetings can actually drain creativity and that it is actually easier to come up with creative ideas in person. This is how it was determined.
Electric Lead Magnets
If you’re in any industry we probably don’t have to tell you what a lead magnet is. They’re a great way to offer some value for potential customers in exchange for their email. This helps you grow your database and your business. There are a few ways to go about creating a lead magnet for your brand that include eBooks, whiteboards, coupon codes, case studies, cheat sheets and/or newsletters. It’s important that your lead magnets do a few things in order to attract your audience. Here are some ways to create a killer lead magnet that people won't be able to resist.
Black History Month: The Colored American Magazine
When I searched for the first Black American magazine, Ebony came up. This is the first POC magazine in the United States that achieved national publication. However, The Colored American Magazine was the true first monthly publication in the U.S. and it built the market for future magazines, like Ebony. it was created in May of 1900 and ran until November of 1909 out of Boston. It
Social Media Demographics 2023
Well, we’re almost two full months into 2023 and let’s be honest, the social media space changes frequently so it’s important to keep up with what’s going on and who’s getting on which channels and platforms. We did some research to see who’s hanging out where so far this year and this is what we found.
Could Procrastination Be Part of the Creative Process?
Leonardo da Vinci, Steve Jobs, Frank Lloyd Wright, J.K. Rowling. What do all of these people have in common? They’re all procrastinators. We usually see procrastination as a negative trait but there are new studies showing that it may actually help with the creative process. We’ve done some research and the common theme is that medium, productive or active procrastination is linear with higher creativity. All of those terms mean the same thing. Let’s go back to our previous creativity article where we talked about the different kinds of creativity.
Blog Writing AI: A test
We’ve been wanting to try out this new blog writing AI since it’s all the rage right now. We don’t plan on endorsing it since it’s quite new and there are concerns around plagiarism. That being said, we told it to write us a blog on the benefits of using user-generated content in advertising and this is what it spat back out at us.
De-Influencing
It seems that the forecast for trending influencer marketing uptick in 2023 may be fiction more than fact. We’ve reported that it may be trending upaward this upcoming year through our research, but with economic uncertainty on the rise, that may not be true at all. Everyone in the U.S. has been more cautious with their spending habits and has increased their scrutiny over “influencer authenticity.” This became a recent reality when a popular creator was accused of wearing fake eyelashes to promote L’Oréal mascara. Our favorite part of this scandal is that it has been coined “Mascaragate.”
Black History Month Influential People in Advertising: Tom Burrell
Tom Burrell was one of the first black men in advertising in the 1960’s. He first broke into the ad industry at Wade Advertising in Chicago, worked his way up to junior editor and then moved on to Leo Burnett and many more before founding Burrell Communications in 1971. His mantra was/(is), “black people are not dark-skinned white people.” His message was similar to Vince Cullers
ChatGTP: Pros & Cons of Linguistics Artificial Intelligence
ChatGTP is one of the hottest topics right but what is it? It’s a conversational artificial intelligence chat bot. this is a natural language processing tool that uses the internet to answer search questions, compose emails, write blogs in a conversational style. Let’s talk about some of the pros and cons of this system.
Super Bowl 2023 Advertisement
We’re sad that there weren’t more found content campaigns in this year’s Super bowl commercial spots. The Super Bowl is one of our proudest moments here at Locomotive! The Discover Card campaigns, “Yes & No” aired during the Super Bowl a few years back that we helped source and license content for. That being said, there was one ad this year that stood out to us as relatable and funny. This type of ad falls under the found content space that we deal in and that was, “Football Cat.”
How to Create a Focus Group for Company Data
Focus groups are an important research tool for agencies in understanding their audience. They can be done to be aware of demographics, psychographics and behavioral patterns of their customers. This information can be obtained through surveys but a focus group provides the brand with a deeper understanding of their consumer. That being said, it’s important to ask the right questions when you want to get specific information. Here are some tips to coming up with the right questions for your research.
Black History Month: Influential People
In honor of Black History month this month, every Friday we will be posting a new blog on black history within the advertising industry. Our first blog will highlight Vince Cullers. In 1956, he founded Vince Culler Advertising, Inc. after graduating from Art Institute of Chicago and tirelessly trying to land a job at multiple agencies. This was at the height of the Civil Rights movement and it was the first black-owned advertising agency. It would change history through his two goals:
