Articles from the Past

April 17, 2020

Be Relevant

I had the pleasure of listening to Alfredo Tan, Group Director of Marketing Solutions, at Facebook during a conference on Innovation in Marketing. He shared that 3.5 billion stories are posted on the newsfeed every day. Facebook says that there is 40 to 150 times more engagement on the newsfeed than on companies brand FB page.

With billions of stories on newsfeed every day, how do you make your post stand out? The answer is simple – make it relevant. Start with light weight interaction; always ask yourself “why do I care” and “why should I share” as this is exactly what is going through your readers mind.

Canada is a wired nation, with the social network user expected to reach over 18 M by 2014 (source : Comscore April 2010) and Facebook being the number 1, with 63 % share of visits (source : marketingcharts.com). Marketers and brands have to be innovative in their engagement, approach with their customers on Facebook. Above is one of the simple ways you can try to stand out and stick.

Tell me what you think.

Anupam

A Highly Effective Communication Model

I wrote this post for the CMA last month under the heading, if you tell more, you sell more? The idea is to refine the advertising and communication model aligning it with new marketing. I am reproducing it below, in case you missed it earlier.

Many advertisers believe in the cliché, if you tell more, you sell more. It seems these advertisers think as they are paying for ads, they have a right to mention everything about their brand; its features, benefits, sales offer, slogan and their dog’s name. In doing so, advertisers forget the main purpose of the communication is to connect and convey the idea, not to overload the audience with information.

Gone are the days when you could sell more by telling more. Hard core push selling is being replaced with soft and pull-creating marketing and branding. We live in a cluttered world. You go to Chapters and will find hundreds of books on a topic. You Google a topic and get thousands of results. Though how many of these are relevant, is anybody’s guess. People are not hungry for information. They are satiated and have become selective information-seekers. It is critical to understand that less is new more.

Follow these seven proven steps for building an effective and successful communication model and you would be laughing all the way to the bank.

1. You are primarily selling solutions. Solution to the need and pain points of your target markets. So find out what are the needs of your customers, select one or two needs that you can serve best and provide them with better solutions for these needs. The emphasis is on providing solutions that are BETTER than your competition.

2. Build your concept / communication around the solution you provide. Convey how your solution is better and how it serves the needs, whatever it may be, good-looking hair, a slim physique, a medical concern or pet grooming. Make your communication disruptive and unique.

3. Set your communication objective.

4. Develop a sticky creative with a tagline, copy and include graphics to accentuate the creative into an aspiration, as a picture is better than thousand words. Remember, just one concept or offer per ad and leave white space.

5. Determine touch points for your target market. Implement an integrated media plan, that is, use more than one medium. Using more than one medium and leveraging online options is an efficient way to enhance Reach and get in-market synergy for increasing awareness.

6. Frequency is critical in getting heard and noticed. Opt for higher frequency. I believe if you have to select between number of mediums and frequency, reduce number of mediums to increase frequency. It pays to segment the market and become an active player in it.

7. Complete the loop by measuring market response, campaign results and the ROMI. Try incorporating built-in measuring tools. A communication initiative stays incomplete until you measure its effectiveness, learn from it and tweak the model for greater efficiency and effectiveness in future.

Designing Better Ads – Stop Readers In Their Tracks

I recently attended a webinar on Designing Better Ads conducted by Susan Down, Director Marketing at the Canadian Newspaper Association. Susan inferred from extensive market research and readers’ surveys by epic advertising research organizations. She advised on what generally works and makes print ads stand out from the clutter. Many of us would be aware of the points she highlighted and may be putting some of these in practice. It was, however, useful to get an affirmation and systematic refresher. I share the information with you, as I gathered, adding my two cents’ worth on few points.

Ad Size & Color

1. Ad size matters. Full page ads are noticed 48% more than smaller ads

2. There is no difference in the visibility of ads between right hand side and left hand side page positions. If the ad is attractive, it will get noticed on any page.

3. Color ads are noticed 33% more than black & white ads. The impact of color ads has grown over the time. Susan showed a bar chart to highlight this fact. She also informed that women notice color ads more than men.

Creative

4. Simple creative with one idea (message) per ad works better than putting several ideas in one ad. Similarly, shorter headlines catch readers’ attention.

5. Make ad topical. News is fresh so keep the ad current too. Leverage current events and developments. I see this strategy is being used often these days by alluding to the economic downturn in ads.

6. Match your message with the editorial section of the newspaper. This, I believe, reinforces the message of the ad and also increases the probability of it being noticed by the reader. A person who is reading an article will possibly notice the relevant ad in the same section.

7. Link the message with the brand. There should be a clear connection between ad message and the brand. The tone and feel of the ad should reflect the DNA of the brand. For example, if a brand promises good health or fun, the ad should reflect this through use of aspirational copy, candid graphics and bright colors.

Visual

8. According to the research shared in the webinar, visual makes an impact on readers because mind retains visuals 30% more than text. Bigger visual works better and one visual per ad is recommended.

9. Visuals of children, celebrities and animals work better. Though there should be a clear connection between visuals, copy and the advertised brand.

Ad Appeal

10. Build curiosity in your ads because newspaper readers are information seekers. However, as copy increases the notice-ability decreases. Thus a balance is needed in using the right number of words to present a story. People generally crave for food, health and sex. These elements could be used to enhance ad appeal. Add color to increase ad appeal. Moreover, the research showed that ads with contrast colors grab attention.

11. Don’t use white space / negative space at the expense of other elements. I think this is usually not an issue in print ads because mostly advertisers tend to put more information than less in ads.

Differentiation

12. Create ads on feelings and base it on new and fresh ideas. Try developing emotional response as people buy because of emotions and rationalize it later. Susan advised making ad likeable by incorporating meaningful, genuine and warm copy and visuals.

13. Humorous messages are more effective than threatening messages. Try making your reader smile and leave them with good feelings.

14. Highlight benefits not features because people buy products and services to solve their problems. They look for solutions to their problems, pain points and wants. This is the fundamental branding concept that propagates selling solutions not product and services.

15. Finally, link all communication pieces together. If you are using multiple medium, use similar messages in all mediums in order to enhance the band recall and impact of your communication. I think advertising works best in tandem, when two or more mediums are used to reach the target market and convey similar message. This creates the synergy for effective advertising and communications.

Media Consumption Habits of South Asian-Canadians

Opal researched media consumption of South Asian-Canadians. The data was collected online in the Greater Toronto and Vancouver areas. Television, Radio, Print and digital media were studied. Media consumption by age, gender, city, time in Canada, HH income and education were reported.

We are sharing top-line insights of this study via a series of blog posts here. So stay tuned and visit us regularly.

Internet and TV are the most widely consumed media, as 91% South Asians (SA) use Internet & 89% watch TV at least a few hours in a week.
75% South Asians read newspapers / magazines and 63% listen to the radio. However, engagement, time spent with these two media, is low.
South Asians engage more with new media, as 70% use Internet for more than six hours a week, including 25% SA, who use for more than twenty hours a week.
TV viewership is similar among SA in the Greater Vancouver Area (GVA) at 91% & the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) at 89%. Though TV engagement (time spent watching TV) is higher in the GVA.
Radio listenership & Newspaper readership are higher in the GTA versus the GVA, as 64% SA in the GTA listen to radio versus 54% in the GVA and 77% read newspapers versus 70% in the GVA.
Internet usage is also reported higher in the GTA, as nearly one out of four SA use Internet for more than 20 hours a week in the GTA versus one out of five in the GVA.
TV watching “Most-often watched TV channel” is largely fragmented with no channel scoring more than 10%
About half of the SA listen to both English and in-language radio programs

Media consumed by South Asians living in Greater Toronto & Vancouver areas.

Please comment and let me know if the above insights are in line with your observations or findings, thanks.

The AMA Roundtable on the Emerging Ethnic Markets

It was good to see a full-house in the AMA round-table discussion on The Emerging Ethnic Markets in Canada: The Pioneers of Multicultural Marketing held in Toronto last week. It highlighted the interest in the multicultural and new-Canadians markets.

The panelists for the discussion were from the CPG, Market Research, Telecommunications and Banking sectors. Panelists shared their multicultural marketing approach that differed from each other based on the industry / category they represent. Rubicon Foods primarily focuses on other drivers than ethnicity to expand in Canadian market. Rogers caters to all major ethnic segments with cable TV as TV watching differs across cultures. The RBC engages new-Canadians and also promotes multiculturalism within for continued customer satisfaction and engagement.

There was also discussion on how marketers are still trying to get the multicultural marketing on the map. I think “multicultural marketing not on the map” is an effect and feel that it would be useful discussing the cause to this effect. Why the multicultural marketing has not received the recognition yet? Is it because,

Canadian marketplace is generally slow to adapt.
Ethnic segmentation is not relevant for all categories.
Unstable global economy is affecting due allocation of budgets to emerging segments.
There is a lack of credible performance & achievements in multicultural market segments.
Success in multicultural marketplace is not being measured, documented and showcased well.

Deliberations on the above and other such causes will lead to identification of challenges to multicultural marketing, which then can be worked on independently or collectively for coming up with solutions. This is how I believe we can contribute in bringing the multicultural marketing on the map in Canada.

It would be nice to get your viewpoint on this. Please let us know what you think by commenting here.