Que “Barbie Girl” song voice, “I’m a VUCA girl… in a VUCA world.” VUCA is chaos but what does it mean and how do we bring order to the mess? This concept came about to help us understand the complexities of the world around us concerning uncertainty, rapid changes, disruption, flux in the markets, etc. It seems uncontrollable right? Well, wrong. VUCA helps bring order to the chaos. The acronym stands for volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous. Let’s break each one down and see how one can use this as a guideline in a chaotic world.
Agile Marketing
Agile marketing is a fairly new concept and wasn’t introduced until 2012. It’s a strategy that prioritizes high-value projects and concentrates all resources on them. The team(s) then work in short, intense bursts to complete goals, assess their impacts, and work toward getting better results next time. At the core of this method, its values are:
· Reacting to change instead of following a plan
· Rapid repetitions over larger campaigns
· Rapid repetitions over larger campaigns
· Testing data and validated learning instead of “rules”
· People and interactions over large audiences
· Customer-focused instead of hierarchy
Informational Social Influence
Monkey see. Monkey do, as the saying goes. Turns out that this might not be far from the truth. People tend to conform to what others are doing or saying if they perceive them as a source of accurate information. Humans like to be right, so they look to others who are considered experts in their respective fields to understand something deeper. This typically occurs when someone is unsure of something or lacks knowledge in a particular area. Informational social influence is associated with the internalization of said ideas adopted by the expert
Tailored Advertising
Think of your brand as a personal tailor for each customer of your audience. Your brand voice should remain consistent but customizable to communication style depending on your audience. Think of it like this, you’re selling the same suit but have to tailor that suit to fit each person differently. Same messages but different deliveries based on a particular group’s interests, perspectives, and backgrounds. Here are some tips to help you tailor your advertising efforts.
Labor Day Fun Facts
We’ve written about the history of Labor Day in the past, so this year we thought we’d throw some fun facts at you on the holiday. Here is a quick list of fun facts about Labor Day.
1. Oregon was the first state to declare Labor Day an official holiday in 1887
2. Labor Day is considered the unofficial NFL season kick-off
Agency Case Studies
The proof is in the pudding as they say. We recently sat down and crunched some numbers for a client and were excited to see the data on some of our projects so we wanted to share it. Not to toot our own horn, but we’re very proud of what we’ve been able to accomplish. Here are the results of a few of our favorite and most successful campaigns we’ve done in the recent year, so you can see for yourself.
UBER
The goal of this campaign was to showcase their employees living their work/life balance that’s different from other careers. They choose their hours and take time off when they want. Uber and their respective agency needed 22 videos of people showing what it was like getting ready for their current jobs in a humorous way.
Radio Advertising
Did video really kill the radio star? Is radio advertising still an effective tool with all of the streaming services, social media platforms, and podcasts available now? Let’s take a look at some stats first. “The average American listens to 1 hour and 39 minutes of radio daily,” according to research done by online Market Splash. That’s a surprising number but it demonstrates that people are still listening to the radio. There are some pros and cons, as with anything, to using radio advertising.
Presentation in Business: Become a Champ at Public Speaking
Did you know that, “About 77% of people have a fear of public speaking,” according to Cross River Therapy Group. Why is having good presentation skills important in business? Well, it can mean the difference between getting a new client, sharing knowledge efficiently with the team, and/or it will improve the impact of your message through a self-assured and grounded persona. Here are some reasons why it is vital in business.
Stand Out Advertising: How to Embrace Your Uniqueness
Trends come and go but good advertising lasts forever. We read a great article yesterday on the benefits of standing out from the crowd in the ad business or any business. We couldn’t agree more that it’s easy to go with the flow and just be like everyone else. The hard thing to do is be different and creativity should be wary of consensus. So, as humans how do we step into our uniqueness and let that shine through in a world that attempts to stifle it? Here are some steps you can take to embrace your one-of-a-kind self.
Data Storytelling
We’ve talked about good storytelling in past articles but what is data storytelling? Well, it’s just what it sounds like. It’s the usage of contextualized data collected by a business to craft a story that will be presented to your audience. They typically use infographics, visualizations, interactive maps, and articles. Just like any style of storytelling, data storytelling relies on engaging and informative narratives that can take very complex information and put it into laymen’s terms for the public. This is one of the benefits of data storytelling along with the ability to help brands understand their data and make good decisions going forward. Here are a few other reasons why data storytelling could be right for your business.
Celebrity Endorsement Advertising
Just one endorsement can spell an increase in sales by 4% almost immediately, according to Social Media Week. People idolize celebs and that’s no secret, so when brands use celebrities for their ads people are more interested in that product/service. These ads usually generate a lot of attention. Here are some reasons to use celebrity endorsement in your brand ads.
Business Strategy vs. Business Tactic
Strategy: an action plan that you will take to achieve a final goal. These are set to help businesses figure out what their long-term goals are. Tactic: individual steps taken to help the business achieve the end goal. These two work synonymously together to help a brand reach its goals. Both are necessary for brand success. How do you know if you have a good strategy and a good tactics plan?
Sex Appeal Advertising
We’ve all heard the saying, “Sex sells,” but many issues surround this idea of advertising. It is initially meant to evoke positive feelings about a brand association but one study shows that while people prefer ads with high sex appeal at first glance, when they are in the evaluation stage they prefer ads with low sex appeal (National Library of Public Medicine). While sexual imagery can bring attention to an ad it’s always a risky choice. Here we’re going to highlight the pros and cons of sexual advertising.
Using Good Storytelling in Content Creation
The art of storytelling goes back far back into human history with petroglyphs almost 12 thousand years ago. It’s hard to believe that we’ve been telling stories for that long. Humans are drawn to a good story. We continue to be fascinated by books, movies, shows, and even hatting in our living rooms to catch up with friends. Compelling content is based on great storytelling. As content creators, you want to hook your audience in and make them want to hear what comes next. T
Lagos: Rational Appeal Advertising
As we’ve been talking about emotional advertising, the other side of that coin is unemotional advertising based on reasoning and logic. This rational advertising relies on data, facts, and proof. These advertisements focus on the functional needs of the audience and what they gain by purchasing them. There are a couple of standard ways to appeal to logic.
1. Better Quality of Life: this is typically seen in the medical field or health and fitness industries. Pain-free living, healthier body, and mind, etc.
Get Your Content Licensed: A Guide for Content Creators
We deal with a lot of content creators and influencers on the daily. Some of them are very organized, and others, not-so-much. Their mistakes have led to good content that went to waste. If you are a content creator or influencer it’s important to understand a few things to remain successful when dealing with agencies like us. Here is our list of do’s and don’ts to get your content licensed so you can make money.
Emotional Advertising: Humor Appeal
Let’s take our PEMCO advertisement for example. It appeals to the humor of insurance through user-generated content videos we licensed for the spot. These videos consisted of “whoops” moments such as throwing a water balloon at the window of the house and breaking it. It’s funny, it’s something that consumers can relate to, and it shows the importance of the product they’re trying to sell: homeowner’s insurance. Humor is a great way to evoke positive emotions from your audience all while conveying a message. We find that funny ads are more memorable for us but that’s us so don’t take our word for it. A study done by the Journal of Marketing discovered that “humor is more likely to enhance recall, evaluation, and purchase intention when the humorous message coincides with ad objectives, is well-integrated, and is viewed as appropriate for the product category.”
Zero Party Data: Why & How
Let’s talk about consent before we dive into this topic. Consent is a term that is typically associated with sexual activity as well as within the medical field as informed consent. However, we feel that consent extends to any type of approval given by an individual, including data collection. Third-party data is data from a provider across other mediums that has no direct relationship with the customer, which is why this has been a hot topic lately regarding individual rights. First-party data is the other side of this coin. The more ethical side. The term zero party data was assembled by Forrester research only in 2020 and is defined as data that is shared by the customer, “intentionally and proactively with a brand.” Brands that intend to stay ahead when third-party data goes away should be focusing heavily on zero-party data collection.
Emotional Advertising: Fear Appeal
“This is your brain…. This is your brain on drugs,” says the actor as they drop an egg into a frying pan and begin to scramble it. These types of ads are often designed to create a reactionary response to motivate a particular behavior. In this case, it was to motivate behaviors for non-drug use. We’ve written on emotional advertising before but we wanted to do a deeper dive into each type of emotional advertising. This week we focus on fear appeal. A theory was developed by a woman named Kim Witte called Extended Parallel Process Model that explains why and when people follow health recommendations.
Importance of Curiosity
Desire. The desire to know something. This incredible motivator for learning facilitates the pursuit of knowledge and creativity. Children have this inherent trait of curiosity to learn about the new world they are in, childlike wonder if you will. We believe that when you stop being curious about things and become complacent it inhibits learning and thusly, growth will decay, whether it be personal or professional. When we think of the traits of successful people, the first one to come to mind is probably not curiosity. However, research shows that allowing curiosity to be piqued in a way that you don’t know the answer to something can increase the curiosity of a task and primes your brain for learning. All great, successful leaders were deeply curious in their respective fields. As humans, we have this attribute of wanting to seek out new information and experience.
