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Baker Street
July 27, 2018
Glenn Yajko

Finding New Success In Classic Media

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What do you do when you have a highly-successful Hispanic advertising campaign that has fueled a majority of incremental total sales growth but is beginning to flatten? You reshuffle the media budget and meddle with the media mix.

That’s exactly what Baker Street Advertising did when we decided to introduce Outdoor media to the Siempre Contigo campaign.

We looked to outdoor as a way to increase reach among Hispanic car buyers while avoiding wasteful over-saturation within existing media. In addition, we wanted to bring the inspirational “Siempre Contigo” (“Always with you”) message into the neighborhoods where our prospective buyers live and work. Using mobile data to map movements of the Hispanic audience segment, we identified Out of Home (OOH) locations that over-indexed for reaching the Hispanic community. Locations were not purchased in the traditional 4-week cycle, but rather synched up with TV/Radio/Online in shorter bursts to maximize effectiveness of the campaign message and incentives. In addition, each Northern California Honda Dealer outdoor location was geo-fenced to deliver re-targeted mobile ads to those exposed to the OOH message, thereby increasing frequency and engagement with Hispanic auto-intenders.

Needless to say, the Northern California Honda Dealer OOH campaign of leveraging mobile data to identify place-based locations and deliver “incentive” messaging has been a tremendous success as outlined in this article from Dealer Marketing Magazine.

OOH Media Credits, Baker Street Advertising:
Media Director: Glenn Yajko
Media Supervisor: Jena Benzel

The OOH is an extension of a multi-media campaign including the following heartwarming TV spots:

Antonio’s | :30 TV Spot

Missing Monkey | :30 TV Spot

Floaties | :30 TV Spot

Credits, Baker Street Advertising:
President: Jack Boland
Chief Creative Officer: Brian Bacino
Chief Strategy Officer: Don Donovan
Copywriter: Claudio Martinez-Valle
Art Director: Ken Woodard
Producer: Brody McHugh
Creative Manager: Lesly Pyle
Group Account Director: Dan Nilsen
Associate Account Director: Christine Rodriguez
Senior Account Executive: Megan Boland
Senior Strategist: Howie Leibach
Media Broadcasting Supervisor: Sheila Taylor
Senior Broadcast Buyers: Shelly Kalianis/Cel Vital Bella

Credits, Production:
Director, Brian Bacino, Baker Street Advertising
Executive Producer, Jed Mortenson, Waypoint Films
Director of Photography: Kevin Emmons
Editor: Alan Chimenti, Ntropic
Producer: Tamara Treu, Ntropic
Senior Flame Artist: Amanda Amalfi, Ntropic
Sound Engineer: Andy Greenberg, One Union Recording

Analytics, Honda, Qualitative Research, Quantitative Research, Uncategorized

August 19, 2017
Howie Leibach

Are Millennials About To Kill Ads Too?

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According to new research from The McCarthy Group over 84% of Millennials no longer respond to traditional forms of advertising, nor do they trust it.

And Only 1% of Millennials say a compelling ad would make them trust a brand more.

It sounds pretty dire; but does the ad industry actually believe this?

BSA has noticed a shift in ad strategy to “address” the polarizing belief that Millennials — the same awful generation who killed cable TV, the beer industry, hotels, and even Applebees — will soon want to kill ads too.

Curious how some agencies are beginning to please these Millennial “media-killing” machines?

Here are 3 big trends I’m seeing right now:

1. The product takes a back seat to content.

So Millennials don’t like ads? Let’s just hide the product behind good content!

Recently Chase created a Battle of the Paddle video to promote Chase QuickPay. Rather than hard-sell their payment product anywhere upfront, Chase was more concerned about great content. They got high profile names to play in a competitive game of ping-pong, and only after breaking lots of furniture at the very end do Steph Curry and Serena Williams subtly use product at the end.

Here, Chase realizes that people are coming to watch the stars. They aren’t necessarily interested in shoving the product down people’s throats. Chase’s value proposition is compelling content, not the product — which is downplayed, but promoted towards the end.

This soft-sell strategy relies heavily on attracting organic eyeballs first, with the hope that Chase’s product trickles down to interest just some of the majority of people — most of whom only came for Steph and Serena content.

2. Destroy the ad.

So Millennials want to skip ads? Let’s just blow it up before they can!

This strategy is being utilized by a few gutsy agencies with a defeatist (or perhaps honest) mindset: if you can’t beat them; join them!

Geico grabs your attention by bragging “You can’t skip this ad because it’s already over!” They know you don’t want an ad to begin with. So just skip it … courtesy of them!

Geico, and other top brands like Honda are filming ads with a new POV: the whole concept of an ad is perhaps too aggressive and silly — and they’re willing to play along.

This rather transparent approach says “hey, we know that you know that all we really want is your attention so let’s just be honest about what’s happening here, make you laugh, and maybe you’ll like us a little more long term.”

Sometimes humility goes a long way and you might take interest in the brand. And sometimes they just entertain you for 6 seconds and you move on with your life.

It could go either way.

3. We’re in on the joke!

Millennials are over ads? Let’s just disguise them as something else altogether!

Netflix was caught trolling themselves in order to promote a new comedy lineup.

To promote their new big comedy lineup Netflix disguised billboards throughout LA as rude Netflix insults. Jerry Seinfeld, Dave Chapelle, Chris Rock, Amy Schumer and Adam Sandler all have multi-million dollar deals on Netflix.

By making themselves the butt of a joke, Netflix got lots of blank stares, but also got lots of people talking — and created a PR firestorm in the process.

Like most of their disruptive content, Netflix got by on word-of-mouth for years. So this approach feeds into their DNA — let’s get people talking first — and worry about the construct second.

So is it finally time to flip your Millennial campaigns up-side-down?

In short…no.

At BSA, we believe you should embrace your product benefits; not hide from them. Yes, you need creativity as all the digital concepts above definitely have, but don’t underestimate the most basic and essential ingredient for success: purchase intent!

In BSA’s most recent NorCal Honda Millennial campaign, we are flashy, fun and hopefully trendy. But we also play up the notion that Millennials are ambitious and want to make things happen. The Honda car models tap into their psyche, offering aspirational benefits — Rule The World, Climb The Ladder, Be the Man/Woman You Want To Be!…It all comes together in a Honda….But first we remind them that it can only happen by getting into the dealership.

Ad Trends

These experimental ad formats are a response to Millennials becoming hyper-stimulated, super-low-attention-span-clicking digital natives who get inundated with 1000s of ads each day.

It leads to a risky agency POV of “whatever we put out there for picky Millennials must now be game-changing content they’ve never seen before!”

But Millennials don’t actually want hyper-stimulating, outside-the-box content. They just need content to be relevant, intriguing and useful.

Yes, Millennials skip ads if they’re bored (59% of them skip) but 29% of them actually watch online ads to full completion.

So of the 80 million Millennials out there, at least 23 million will hear you out at any given moment.

Just make sure you have something to say.

Sources:
Huffington Post
Google Images
Adage
Business Insider
MillennialBranding.com
ClickZ.com
http://www.businessinsider.com/millennials-skip-youtube-ads-and-thats-ok-2017-1
http://millennialbranding.com/2015/millennial-consumer-study/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/matthew-tyson/millennials-want-brands-t_b_9032718.html
https://www.clickz.com/84-percent-of-millennials-dont-trust-traditional-advertising/27030/
http://variety.com/2016/digital/news/millennial-gen-z-youtube-netflix-video-social-tv-study-1201740829/

Analytics, Data Analytics, Digital Marketing, Honda, Qualitative Research, Quantitative Research

November 1, 2016
Brian Kelleher

Programmatic Collaboration, What?!?

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Big-brand agencies have complained that there is a lack of Cannes-worthy creativity in programmatic and little integration among the creative, media and data operations that go into a modern ad campaign. This is typically due to the agencies separating their departments into specific silos with little collaboration. Holding companies like WPP are missing many opportunities due to a lack of communication between their creative and media agencies.*

Audience Data Visualization

“We sit on top of the data, see all the signals and know how they are being used, but we don’t have direct access to content creators, so we often need to script up the piece of content we need in order to accomplish the goal that the advertiser wants. It would be amazing if the two can go together in a meaningful way. We are constantly reaching out to WPP agency leads directly or through GroupM. But the [collaboration] hasn’t happened significantly yet.” – Tim Bagwell, VP of Xaaxis Labs, a division of GroupM.

Programmatic creative is enriched with some form of data, either retargeting or audience data, and is served with the intent of advertising something the audience have recently shown interest in while web browsing. For example, a user goes onto Zappos, looks up a pair of Nikes and then leaves the site. That person is then retargeted with those same Nike shoes shown in the unit, or possibly similar shoes they may have missed. This tactic can go deeper to the point that when our media is looking to serve an impression on a given site, if the data for this person also shows this person lives in a windy area, we can serve that person a unit for a Nike windbreaker. You can also use these tools to set up automatic tests to optimize toward the best performing creative for that audience. Audiences are formed within a dynamic creative optimizer. The combinations of what we can learn of a person based on their browsing history, and how we can use this to serve them the most appropriate ads at the best time, are virtually limitless.

Dynamic Messaging

Baker Street Advertising, being a nimble, full-service agency has a great advantage here.  Our ability to make adjustments quickly will allow us to swim circles around the larger agencies where such a change will take much more time to implement.

BSA Image

Examples:

If person A is 3 months away from buying a car, we can serve a broad “see your NorCal Honda Dealers now!” message.

If person B is 2 months away from buying a car, and we know they are interested in midsize cars, we can serve them a carousel unit where they can scroll through various offers for Accords, Civics, or Insights.

If we know person C went to a dealership in the past month from their phone’s GPS, we can pair that with their browsing history to serve them a hard-hitting message, like “that Civic you were eyeing is now only $169/month!”

“A really simple observation I had when I moved from media to creative is that they’re two totally separate worlds. Media people are spending their days figuring out optimization and targeting, but it’s done completely separate of the actual idea.” — Adam Cahill, Anagram Founder, a programmatic agency.”**

Data Analysis

Part of the problem does stem from brands not being willing to share their data. While we do experience the issue of our clients being unwilling to share customer data (a very understandable stance considering privacy issues), our partners are able to gather enough information within their pixels that allow targeting to be highly focused. Pairing this targeting with templated creative management tools that will allow us to create dozens of variations of ads with different copy and backgrounds at the flip of a switch, allows us to break down which audiences are responding to each variation. Our teams need to continue to educate each other on what is available within our targeting capabilities, and why a certain message might resonate with a specific audience.

Of course, this route will bring up questions on the cost of producing so many variations for so many audience segments. How niche should we go with targeting and creative before we hit zero return? We need to test, retest, and continue testing audience segments with various creative. Start by finding a new, micro audience that is responding to a more generic message and adjust units to fit that audience. If media is able to generate a new micro audience that is showing promise, creative can then move to create and assign specific creative to that audience (i.e. targeting football moms with a Honda Odyssey unit with a tag line “Space for all your gear and the kids too.” – [sorry, not a copywriter]. This approach will also help us to avoid creative burnout.

BSA already demonstrates excellent collaboration, and as we work towards adopting new creative tools, such as Rich Media and Dynamic Creative, our teamwork, communication, and education across specialties will make our client’s campaigns that much more successful. Pairing data enabled targeting to custom content through dynamic creative is fast becoming the next big tactic, and we are on a great path to become leaders of this approach.

Brian Kelleher is an Associate Media Director at BSA, specializing in digital strategy, planning and buying.
 
* Digiday – “ The Programmatic Divide Still Persists” By: Yuyu Chen http://digiday.com/agencies/gap-programmatic-creative-media-planning-still-exists/

** Digiday – “Programmatic Creative Inches to a Fix” By: Shareen Pathak http://digiday.com/agencies/programmatic-creative-inches-toward-fix/

Analytics, Digital Marketing, Programmatic

September 5, 2016
Howie Leibach

Can Data Predict “Correct” Advertising?

By:

 
In 2008, Nate Silver predicted Barack Obama as the next president of the United States way before the election took place. While the pundits relied on “gut-feelings,” Nate was skeptical. He rolled up his nerdy sleeves and crunched probabilities that leveraged historical data and micro trends within each municipality — something TV pundits simply weren’t doing.
 
Nate_Silver_2009
Pictured: Nate Silver, Statistician
 
In 2013, Netflix famously predicted “House of Cards” would be a huge hit, way before ever having the green light to produce it. Instead of guessing what show to fund first, Netflix looked at the completion rates of loyal users. Using Venn diagram data, they discovered that the melding of David Fincher’s “The Social Network”  and the British political thrillers was scoring off the charts. The analysis was so strong that they threw $100 million into season 1 — and the rest is history.
 
house-of-cards-kevin-spacey
 
Data is prophesizing BIG things like U.S. Elections and hit TV shows. So you might be wondering: Are we at the point where data can spit out the perfect ad?
 
The answer is, almost.
 
In 2016, IBM created promotional content based on machine learning. With little to no human assistance — the A.I. processed what it considered to be the best message for humans. While thought-provoking, there was a huge problem with it. The ad sucked.
 
This means one thing. Human creativity still matters immensely, and it will for decades. But data is growing stronger, and if used correctly can make a huge difference.
 
In 2016, the BEST creativity isn’t just head turning — it’s action-oriented; inspired by data to work harder. This means stronger segmenting, better ideas, and proof.
 
Baker Street takes this to heart.
 
Like Nate Silver, we embrace historical data for pin-point accuracy.
 
Like Netflix, we predict campaign success (with algorithms and velocity demand) before anyone writes a big check.
 
It’s a rare creative process that gets vetted from start to finish.
 
So while agencies are years away from churning out “the perfect ad,” Baker Street ensures that by coupling data with creativity, it’s more “correct” than ever before.  

Analytics, Data Analytics, Qualitative Research, Quantitative Research