Asos, Ted Baker & Durex: 5 things that mattered this week

Durex wants to ‘close the orgasm gap’

It has been more than six years since RB repositioned Durex with its ‘Love sex’ strapline following the acquisition of owner SSL, emphasising fun and intimacy rather than solely sexual health. The brand is now taking another step in the same direction with the launch of a range to “create a new orgasm category on shelf”.

The products, including gels, condoms and toys, are being launched to support a wider brand purpose of “closing the orgasm gap” between men and women, she adds.

“Two out of three women do not orgasm regularly during sex. We’ve got the answers now with this range that is coming out in March. It is super cool stuff and also enables us to go for this very clear purpose to bridge a gap out there – a very clear consumer need,” UK marketing director Becky Verano-Luri explains.

This follows last year’s moves to create associations with the emotional as well as physical aspects of sex for Durex.

Ted Baker uses Instagram for episodic storytelling

Ted Baker is using Instagram Stories for a new episodic campaign, with the fashion brand calling it “perfect” for soap operas.

The ‘Keeping up with the Bakers’ campaign focuses on a fictional family (pictured above) who move into Tailor’s Lane; a fictional suburb that is hiding several dark secrets. Much like Ted Baker’s previous spy-based Mission Impeccable ad, the new campaign’s main short film will be fully shoppable.

However, this time around Ted Baker will also use Instagram Stories as a “gossip channel”, with daily posts serving as episodic content to reveal more about different Baker family members. People are able to click through a selection of five different “TV channels” in Stories, with each showing content appropriate for the Baker’s world, as well as revealing a competition winner.

Asos on the shortfalls of Netflix-style personalisation

Great personalisation cannot be too reliant on analysing a consumer’s past behaviours, according to Asos.

Even though Netflix and Amazon are held up by many as among the greats when it comes to digital personalisation, their reliance on studying the past behaviour of consumers also has its shortfalls.

Speaking at the Market Research Society’s Impact conference earlier this week, Celina Burnett, head of marketing analytics at online fashion retailer Asos, claimed there’s just as much marketers can learn from what the two digital giants are getting wrong.

She explained: “When I go on Netflix I want to receive personalised recommendations but also to have balance on what shows I am missing out on. Sometimes it just feels like the recommendations I receive on Netflix or Amazon are based on things I’ve done in the past but not on what I might do in the future. If all we offer a consumer is based on their past behaviour then how do we make them aware of what the next big trend is?

Google under fire as brands pull advertising

Google has not had the best of weeks. The tech giant admitted this week it could be doing more to ensure ad safety, as a number of brands pull advertising from its sites.

An ongoing investigation by The Times found that ads from brands including L’Oréal, the Guardian and the Cabinet Office had appeared next to extremist content. For example, a L’Oréal ad promoting the Prince’s Trust appeared on a video posted by hate preacher Steven Anderson, while the Guardian found ads for its membership scheme on videos posted by Britain First.

The Guardian has since pulled all its advertising. David Pemsel, its CEO, wrote to Google to say it was “completely unacceptable” that its advertising was appearing in these situations and that it would not advertise via YouTube again until Google can “guarantee that this ad misplacement will not happen again”.

Google’s new boss for the UK and Ireland Ronan Harris has recently defended the company’s record on ad viewability and transparency. However, in a new blog post, he has now admitted that Google could be doing more. While he says that in the “vast majority of cases our policies work as intended”, he recognises that there are cases where ads appear next to content that it should not.

“We know we can and must do more,” he says.

Social media spend failing to live up to expectations

Marketers consistently overestimate how much of their budget they will spend on social media as they struggle to integrate it with the rest of their strategy or prove ROI.

According to a survey of 388 top US marketing execs that is run biannually by The CMO Survey, marketers are now spending 10.5% of their budgets on social media. Over the next 12 months, that figure is expected to increase to 12.9%.

Yet the survey shows that marketers are consistently failing to meet their own projections for social media spend. Five years ago, marketers estimated they would already be spending 19.5% of their budgets on social media. The actual figure is 10.5%.

Part of the issue could be that marketers are making “minimal progress” in integrating their social media with their wider marketing strategy, according to the report. Asking to mark out of seven how well the two are integrated, marketers gave a score of just 4.1, a figure that has barely changed over the past five years.