5 things you need to know this week
Since not everyone has been lucky enough to be drinking rosé on a yacht in the sun in Southern France, here’s a roundup of the top marketing stories from outside the world of Cannes this week.
1. MTV wants to become television’s Instagram
MTV rebrand will see it change its slogan from ‘I Want My MTV” to “I Am My MTV” and introduce a raft of new features allowing social media influencers and fans to create short-form content to appear on its television channels.
The youth brand will take video content produced via Instagram or Vine with the hashtag #MTVbump and show it on its channels in less than two hours through a CMS designed by B-Reel Creative.
The social media content, which could include Gogglebox-style reaction videos to shows such as Geordie Shore or artistic Vine clips, will appear during MTV advertising breaks and also on a new TV segment called ‘MTV Breaks’.
MTV VP of marketing Tanya Leedekerken told Marketing Week: “In the future we want to work with more social networks and get advertisers on board for sponsored content too, as there’s lots of interest.”
2. ‘Internet ad spend will overtake television by end of the decade’
The internet will be the biggest advertising medium by 2017 in 12 key markets – including the UK, China and Germany – representing 28% of global ad spend, according to the latest quarterly advertising expenditure forecast from ZenithOptimedia.
Internet is already the dominant ad medium in the UK ad market with 50% share.
While it will remain second place to television globally, the gap between the market shares of the two mediums will shrink from 11 percentage points in 2015 to just four in 2017.
Steve King, ZenithOptimedia’s CEO, said: “The amount of time viewers spend watching online video on their laptops, tablets and smartphones is increasing rapidly, as well as the launches of new devices, and advertisers are shifting their budgets online to follow them.”
3. Adidas is creating an ‘influencer network’ as it aims to become the top football brand
Adidas is looking to establish an ‘influencer network’ to engage with its football consumers, one of a number of moves announced this week as part of the ‘creating the new’ business strategy it introduced earlier this year.
The brand says it will focus on footwear to grow its football business at a mid single-digit rate each year in an effort to make the brand the “number one in the world”.
This will involve creating “football destinations” in key cities and setting up grassroots programmes, according to the brand.
It will also involve the creation of an ‘influencer network’, which Adidas says “will allow closer interaction with the consumer, who will be an integral part of the product and content creation going forward”.
4. Diageo is trialling beacons with a Pimm’s campaign
Diageo told Marketing Week it is looking to become “more impactful to the customer” as it partnered with London pubs to trial beacons for the first time with a sensor-activated digital OOH campaign for its Pimm’s brand.
The campaign uses beacons installed in selected pubs to measure busyness every five minutes by counting the number of smartphones in the space.
If the temperature reaches at least 16 degrees (warm enough to enjoy a Pimm’s, according to the brand), the beacons then use the information to direct people via digital outdoor posters to nearby pubs and beer gardens where there is space for them to have a drink.
Jonathan Ansell, new technology and media innovation manager for Diageo, told Marketing Week that Diageo will “definitely see how we can take it to the next stage” if the campaign is successful.
5. Peugeot is making social, not TV, its primary focus
Fresh from becoming the first UK automotive brand to use Twitter’s Flock to Unlock (F2U) feature for a digital competition, Peugeot’s digital and social media manager Zoe Macleay says the brand is making social its primary focus over television as “that’s where our customers are going”.
The F2U advertising mechanic allows brands to use Twitter to generate viral buzz for a competition through hidden clues.
Peugeot used it to offer consumers the chance to win its new 208 by hiding the car at a secret location in the UK and asking the public to track it down by tweeting a hashtag to unlock a video clue, which starred vlogger Ben Philips and Peugeot UK’s official ERC rally driver Chris Ingram.
Macleay told Marketing Week Peugeot is standing out among car brands by placing its focus on interactive digital campaigns and moving away from primarily focusing on “samey TV ads aimed at middle aged men”.
