© Copyright 2024
Baker Street
July 27, 2018
Glenn Yajko

Finding New Success In Classic Media

By:

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?

By:

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

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