Mediaboss Marketing

At the public service agencies CNA spoke to, coming up with mascots requires long-term, cross-platform planning.

A successful campaign goes beyond creating a new mascot. It must also be packaged with a carefully curated line-up of programmes and initiatives that will appeal to our target audiences, said PUBs Mrs Keng.

With Water Wally and Sally, PUB partnered the South Korean educational entertainment company Pinkfong to release a dance-along music video called Turn off the Tap!In the video, Water Wally and Sally imparted water-saving tips to Pinkfong and other characters from the Baby Shark family.

PUB also collaborated with local author Adeline Foo to develop a storybook series titled The Adventures of Water Wally & Sally.

The power of storytelling and music are harnessed so that the messages are conveyed with further nuance and depth, added Mrs Keng.

Where tourism is concerned, mascots also have longevity from a branding perspective, and enable STB to tell Singapores story beyond our shores, said Ms Choo.

When executed well, mascots are a powerful marketing tool. They put a face to a campaign, and add personality to brands, making them more relatable. A well-designed mascot goes a long way in branding when applied appropriately on websites, social media campaigns, live events, she added.

Mascots are also more accessible and likeable, bringing out human attributes such as empathy, curiosity, joy and humour, while conveying messages in an effective and authentic way.

Since his debut, Merli has starred in other tourism projects, such as appearing next to Koreas mascot Hojong as part of a cartoon series marking STBs new partnership with Korea Tourism Organisation in November 2021.

And there is no lack of engagement approaches across different mediums for LTAs Thoughtful Bunch, including meet-and-greet sessions at MRT stations pre-pandemic, contests, events and collaborations with their partners.

We collaborated with local brands like Yakun and PeelFresh to have the characters on coffee cups and juice packs to bring their messages into everyday life for our adult commuters. And for those who are more tech-savvy, we introduced WhatsApp stickers and Instagram filters, said Ms Lim.

Fans of the Thoughtful Bunch can also buy merchandise thats developed and sold under local brand Knackstop, which houses a collection of creative and practical merchandise inspired by the daily experience on buses and trains in Singapore.

But while mascots have traditionally been used for long-term branding, Marketing Interactives Ms Manjur added that many global companies are moving away from using mascots as they dont want the mascot to be more recognised than the brand.

As a result, they may turn towards short-term use of mascots to drive excitement.

Well-known mascots do make a splash in campaigns for brands once in a while for nostalgia, and can add a feel-good factor for short bursts of campaigns of four to eight weeks long, she said.

The International Olympic Committee mascots, for example, appear during the Games season and add excitement, but arent in consumers faces all the time.

See the original post here:
IN FOCUS: Singa, Water Wally, Hush-Hush Hannah - the Singaporean obsession with mascots - CNA

A swearing-in ceremony for incoming Cincinnati Mayor Aftab Pureval and the city's nine council members is set for Tuesday at 11 a.m. at Washington Park.

The ceremony won't look like past ceremonies, typically held at Music Hall before a large crowd of friends and family.The event was moved outside, a nod to COVID-19 safety protocols, and will require anyone attending to provide proof of vaccination or a negative COVID-19 test.

Pureval, along with members of the incoming council, are expected to ride bikes from City Hall to the ceremony, along with representatives from Tri-State Trails and Groundwork Ohio River Valley.

Then the new administration is planning toget to work. Pureval already announced Councilwoman Jan-Michele Lemon Kearney will be vice mayor and said he would recommend former Cincinnati City Solicitor John Curp serve as interim city manager while a national search is done to replace departing City Manager Paula Boggs Muething.

Councilman Greg Landsman will chair council's Budget and Finance Committee and that committee is expected, as soon as during a special meeting Wednesday. to consider Curp's contract.

As they prepare to serve, a little about the new administration.

Aftab Pureval

Party: Democrat

Age: 39

Neighborhood: Clifton

Pureval is Cincinnati's first Asian-American mayor. He most recently served as former Hamilton County Clerk of Courts, winning that seat in 2016, the first Democrat to do so in 100 years. He ran for mayor against fellow Democrat Councilman and former mayor David Mann, winning 66% of the vote. He is a lawyer, who previously worked at Procter & Gamble.

Jan-Michele Lemon Kearney

Party:Democrat

Age: 65

Neighborhood:North Avondale

Kearney is a lawyerand the co-founder and president of Sesh Communications, which publishesthe Cincinnati Herald. She wasappointed to council in March2020to replace Tamaya Dennard. Kearney will serve as vice mayor, a position selected by Pureval and announced last month. She will also chair council's Healthy Neighborhoods Committee.

Jeff Cramerding

Party:Democrat

Age:48

Neighborhood: West Price Hill

Cramerding is a labor lawyer and West Side activist. He was part of a grouprecently helping chart the local Democratic party's future. He serves on the West Price Hill community council and is a founding member of Price Hill Will, a community development corporation. Cramerding has worked on numerous campaigns and is a leader in the county Democratic Party.

Reggie Harris

Party:Democrat

Age:39

Neighborhood:Northside

Harris is a retired professional ballet dancer, trained clinical social workerand licensed therapist who currently serves asthe director of community lifefor the Community Builders,a nonprofit affordable housing developer.He is also the founder of InContext AdvisingLLC, where he has worked withlocal and nationalnonprofits, educatorsand health care providerson issues related to mental health, LGBTQequalityand social policy.He was appointed to the Cincinnati Metropolitan Housing Authority Boardby the Hamilton County Commission in January 2020 and currently serves as the board chair for Equality Ohio. He will chair council's Equitable Growth and Housing Committee.

Mark Jeffreys

Party:Democrat

Age:52

Neighborhood:Clifton

Jeffreys is an entrepreneur, who formerly worked atProcter & Gamble for 16 years. He is an elected trustee for the Clifton Town Meeting and the Cincinnati Parks Foundation. He also is a founder of Go Vibrant, the largest network of urban walking routes in the country. He's the son of an immigrant and husband to Pamela,a pediatrician on the west side. Hegrew up working poor and worked hisway through college in construction and as a janitor. He'sspent the past dozen years creating equitable opportunity in Cincinnati:bringing athletics to hundreds of CPS kids, making thestreets safer to walk and bikeand creating the GoVibrantscape at Smale Park.

Scotty Johnson

Party:Democrat

Age:59

Neighborhood:Mount Airy

Johnson was a Cincinnati Police officer for 33 years and was the president of the Sentinel Police Association, a group of black officers whose mission is community policing. Johnson worked behind the scenes on the Collaborative Agreement between the police department and citizens after the 2001 civil unrest. He is an elder at Christ Emmanuel Christian Fellowship Ministries in Walnut Hills. He will chair council's Public Safety and Governance Committee.

Liz Keating

Party:Republican

Age:37

Neighborhood:Hyde Park

Keating was appointed in December 2020 to replace P.G. Sittenfeld, who was suspended from council after being indicted on federal corruption charges.She is the marketing director for the Jim Stengel Co., a marketing and consultingthink tank. She's the daughter of the late Bill KeatingJr., a lawyer who was known for his community involvement, and the granddaughter of former Enquirer publisher and U.S. Rep. Bill Keating,who died in May.

Greg Landsman

Party:Democrat

Age:44

Neighborhood:Mount Washington

Landsman runs a consulting firm called the 767 Group that focuses on education and child advocacy work. He first won election in 2017. While on council, he worked to pass aneviction-prevention program. Prior to council, Landsman was bestknown for his work on the Cincinnati Preschool Promise campaign.

Meeka Owens

Party:Democrat

Age:43

Neighborhood:North Avondale

Owens graduated from Purcell Marian High School before getting a bachelor's degreefrom Miami University, and a master's degree ineducation from Xavier University. She works on contract as a Social Responsibility Officer with the Hamilton County Board of Health.An organizer at heart, she co-foundedthe Greater Cincinnati Voter Collaborative.She teaches a dance class at the YMCA. She will chair council's Climate, Environment and Infrastructure Committee.

Victoria Parks

Party:Democrat

Age: 63

Neighborhood:College Hill

Parks recently served as Hamilton County Commissioner, appointed to replace Todd Portune before Portune's death. Prior to that, she was Portune's chief of staff. She served in the U.S. Air Force from 1976 to 1980.

Continue reading here:
Meet the new leaders: A little about incoming Mayor Aftab Pureval and the nine Cincinnati council members getting sworn in Tuesday - The Cincinnati...

With the influencer market for branded and platform deals projected to skyrocket to a whopping $28 billion by 2026, a major driver of success is coming from platforms like Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitch. Anticipating tremendous growth over the next few years, now is the time for brands to really take stock in where influencer marketing is headed.

Today, everyone has a way to monetize their own content. The way that influencers are able to participate in brand campaigns has become vastly different now compared to five years, or even one year ago.

Influencers have a variety of platforms and options in terms of the communities that they build online. Amazon Live, Clubhouse, Spotify's Greenroom, Twitch-- all of these platforms give brands the opportunity to connect with large audiences, in real-time. From sports to gaming to live product demonstrations, the possibilities are endless. YouTube and Pinterest are the latest platforms to explore the benefits of monetizing creator content, despite YouTube seeing more monetary success than every other social platform solely off of brand deals via the "Creator Economy".

The term Creator Economy is everywhere these days, focused on by brands, marketers, investors, and content creators, but it is really only a subset of the "Attention Economy". Consumers give more time and attention to social platforms than ever before and of that, more time is given to content creators on platforms like TikTok and YouTube than anything else, even games. Brands pay to be where the attention is, content creators garner it and get paid for brand integrations. The ecosystem is accelerating and the way to hold consumers' attention is changing -- and now, so is the tech they use.

Every platform has its own diverse audience and best practices for success-- not to mention unique data sets. To fully grasp the journey that social media is on in terms of expansion, let's take a look at the technology that's revolutionizing the influencer marketing space.

How Tech Changes Will Amplify Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing has become increasingly complicated as the pool of creators constantly shifts, with new entrants hitting the social stratosphere daily or others experiencing fluctuations in their popularity due to the rapidly changing news cycle.

Because of this, it's becoming a data game. Iexpect that traditional influencer marketing, which relies on simply having a database of influencers, will become less and less effective as brands will have to rely more on technology such as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to increase the return-on-investment (ROI) of their marketing dollars.

These technologies are enhancing targeting across the marketing spectrum, so it's only a matter of time before it also dominates the influencer marketing ecosystem. The composite audiences of these influencers are like buying a TV channel, and multi-billion dollar companies emerged to help marketers make smarter decisions in that medium, the same is happening on social media.

Even when it comes to traditional social media, the amount of data that marketers need to sort through and make actionable can be overwhelming. Add live content and user comments to that, and it becomes near-impossible for marketers to make sense of all the information coming their way, in real-time.

If marketers can find a way to make that data applicable, and build a strategy around the insights they get, they will be able to target their audiences like never before and reach them where they spend the most time and energy.

For example, marketers can use natural-language processing to teach an AI algorithm how to understand the meaning and context of conversations, and to identify trends that will enable brands to better collaborate with influencers. Influencers and campaigns can now be identified through psychographics, key traits or attributions that target specific facets of consumers that brands might not have been able to reach previously.

This tech is constantly evolving with the continued growth and expansion of capabilities that social media platforms see on a daily basis. The changes driving increased users to social platforms isn't limited to advancements in technology though. New guidelines are emerging, allowing new names and faces to join the growing list of social media influencers seeking brand partnerships.

The NIL Movement Brings New Faces to Brands

In 2021 alone there have been some significant shifts in the influencer marketplace. Let's use sports as a case study. In July, the NCAA approved policy changes that have already greatly enhanced college athletes' ability to make money from their name, image and likeness. This means it's not just the top professional athletes that will be able to lend their name to brands; instead, as other governing bodies make similar moves, the pool of available influencers will be significantly larger.

College athletes also bring a newer audience to the arena. By partnering with a collegiate athlete, brands garner access to a younger audience, which can be challenging to do via traditional marketing methods. Gen Z consumers have generally been known to trust the opinion of their favorite influencers more than many other sources of information. The Gen Z audience wants to be inspired, educated, and above all, entertained. College athletes also bring capabilities similar to micro-influencers, in that they are able to potentially build a stronger community based on location or commonalities due to their university affiliation. This new rule provides strong motivation for brands to partner with athletes to reach a new pool of consumers.

It's also projected to go beyond major sports like baseball and basketball-- influencers at every level will be available to brands across every possible sport. If you look at what's happened around the Olympics, that's a huge indicator as to where things are headed. The U.S. women's rugby team made headlines simply from a viral TikTok video.As many athletes from women's soccer to power walking started getting noticed on social media, the marketplace for brands to target sports enthusiasts reached incredible potential. Understanding trends within each sport will be key to getting in front of the right audience at the right time.

A big takeaway from this sudden boom in new influencers via the NIL movement (name, image, likeness)is that these shifts in the influencer marketing space are constant. This is an industry that is ever-evolving with new names and faces dominating a user's home page. Marketers and influencers alike need to be prepared for the shifts in strategy that come from successful campaigns.

Influencer Marketing is About to Shift Again

Influencer marketing has gone far beyond picking a creator to simply hold up a product in a Twitter or Facebook post. It's a cottage industry in marketing that will expand exponentially with the use of new technologies and experts that understand the nuances of each platform format and available tools.

As tech platforms continue to find ways to monetize every aspect of social media, data will continue to become more important than ever to organize the growing pool of influencers available to brands, whether the format is live, short-form video, long form video, gifs, or images.

The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.

Go here to see the original:
Where Influencer Marketing and the Creator Economy Are Headed in 2022 and Beyond - Inc.

As India continues to fight Covid 19 and Omicron, and people continue to fear venturing out, digital initiatives in both advertising and marketing will become more prevalent in 2022. According to the most recent statistics, there are around 3.78 billion social media users globally. The number of such users is expected to climb again next year. Social media trends will rule the advertising and brand strategies in the coming year. Marketing and business will become more varied, inclusive, and responsive to real client requirements in the future. While AI and data-driven marketing will continue to advance, the primary focus will remain on people rather than technology.

Using social media for brand recognition

Traditional in-person events and promotions have given way to virtual space in brand awareness initiatives. We live in a world of social media marketing, and every company understands the value of social media. Whether youre leveraging influencers, referrals, or simply providing good content, social media has proven to be an important part of building brand recognition. This is due to the fact that social media is an excellent venue for brands to maintain client interactions while also increasing their chances of discovering new leads. In reality, many people become aware of new businesses after hearing about them via a friend on social media. Social media sites are a place where people may interact with one another. As a result, its an excellent area for you to interact with clients and build a relationship with them.

Going ahead, 2022 will witness a greater emphasis on highly personalized one-to-one advertising, mobile advertising with in-app and in-game ads, video advertising, video-embedded display banners, native advertising, accelerated automation, programmatic advertising, and even cookie less advertising, among other things. Here are the top 3 social media trends to watch out for in 2022.

Metaverse and its virtual universe

Facebooks name has been changed to Meta. The company has planned a range of new products for virtual and augmented experiences as part of Metaverse. This is a major gamble on the webs future, and it has the potential to change social media space. Companies will be able to benefit from new features which Meta will introduce. With the help of new emerging social media trends, they will be able to expand their product reach and visibility.

The influencers market will continue to grow

Influencer marketing is expected to reach $13.8 billion in 2021, with growth expected to continue in 2022. Influencer marketing efforts add a personal touch to the product, making it more relevant to the user. Thus, B2B brands will continue to embrace influencers in light of current trends.

LinkedIn will grow in importance as a social networking platform

In the digital world, LinkedIn is still a growing star. The company just launched a Hindi version to cater to the 600 million Hindi speakers throughout the world. With 82 million members in a global community of 800 million, India is a key market for LinkedIns growth and the second-largest market in terms of members after the United States. Since the pandemic, Indias member base has expanded by more than 20 million (15 percent year-over-year), and participation and talks on the platform have increased dramatically. This will continue to be a great way for brands to reach out to their target demographic.

In conclusion

Building brand recognition may require some trial and error, but having a dedicated awareness plan will surely help in your brands visibility. By following the latest social media trends, you may position yourself to become a brand that stands out in the eyes of your customers.

Views expressed above are the author's own.

END OF ARTICLE

Go here to read the rest:
Social media will continue to serve as an important tool for brand awareness in 2022 - The Times of India Blog

Follow Leyu, says Chelsea captain Cesar Azpilicueta in a slick promotional video to mark a new commercial agreement between the European champions and Leyu Sports.

You would be forgiven for not having heard of the company, an obscure Asian gambling firm with little to no digital footprint outside of eye-catching sponsorship deals with Chelsea and Paris Saint-Germain.

And listening to Azpilicuetas instruction and following Leyu on the social media website LinkedIn only leads down a bizarre rabbit hole of fake profile pictures, deleted accounts and a seemingly non-existent branding agency.

It is a rabbit hole that raises serious questions for Chelsea who help beam Leyus branding around Stamford Bridge, seen across the world as well as many other European football clubs.

At a time when the spotlight is on footballs uneasy relationship with gambling, Premier League clubs including Aston Villa, Burnley, Everton and Southampton have signed deals with similarly obscure Asian betting companies.

These firms are often represented by untraceable individuals, which in some cases encourage users to expose themselves to cybersecurity risks in order to use their products.

Original post:
Revealed: The obscure gambling firms with untraceable employees working with your football club - The Athletic