Mediaboss Marketing

The following is a guest post by Brian Dolan, CEO of WorkReduce. Opinions are the author's own.

The advertising industry is experiencing a talent crisis of immense proportions that's likely to continue unless changes are made now.

Amid the growing migration from agency to in-house advertising teams, the market has ignored the essential role that agencies have traditionally filled. Agencies have typically been the talent "farms"for our industry. They've owned the fundamental role of finding, nurturing and growing entry-level talent across all aspects of the advertising business.

The shift of these responsibilities to in-house brand teams is choking the pool of top advertising talent,making it difficult for both in-house and agency teams to fill open roles with candidates who have the right skill sets.

In-house ad agencies have been on the rise for more than a decade. Procter & Gamble led the charge by in-housing media to minimize its number of vendor relations and create greater cost efficiencies, with the goal of wresting more control over its brands. It's a strategy that's proved successful: Since then, P&G has expanded its in-housing ambitions to other aspects of its advertising operations, and inspired many large brands to follow suit.

As of June 2020, 83%of marketers were managing their marketing mostly or completely in-house, according to a Digiday survey. A successful case is Draftline, a New York-based ad agency created by AB InBev that has quadrupled in size sinceit was launched two years ago to develop an overarching content strategy for the brewer's social, digital and outdoor advertising. Now, more hires are on the horizon.

Not every brand has the scale or manpower of a P&G or AB InBev, but their strategies could serve as a model to build off of to achieve a more balanced mix.It's interesting to note the difference in team structure and division of labor between in-house and traditional agencies, where each can play to their own strength. For example, in-house teams have an advantage over agencies by being much closer to the brand and their customers. This has created a strong data-collection focus for in-house agencies.

Ally Financial, which claims to be 25%more efficient since having taken programmatic in-house, said it wants to understand customer interactions at every touchpoint to determine what project it should be talking about next. And nearly half of the Draftline agency team is charged with gathering consumer data to inform the creative work, not only for the agency, but also its outside partners.

This has opened up the possibility for a number of in-housed brands to begin partnering again with outside agencies, predominantly on a project basis. But even with this hybrid approach, there's a growing shortage for talent with highly specialized skills, especially in data and analytics.

Consider the traditional agency structure. Agencies would hire bright young people straight from school, with freshly printed communications degrees. These new agency recruits were trained from scratch to learn all parts of the agency business. They may start with more repetitive tasks from ad trafficking to pulling pacing reports and analytics before being trained in strategic or client-facing aspects of planning and account management.

This would create skilled media planners and strategists who not only understand the data, but also the impact it has on all aspects of the brand. Without this training structure, we have data and analytics teams who lack the contextual experience to make sense of campaign numbers. Additionally, we have bright and eager college graduates who can't get hired because they don't have practical experience.

According to Marketing Week, eight of the most in-demand marketing skills are related to highly specialized expertise including paid social media, ad serving, analytics and social media advertising. Many of these roles require a breadth and depth of knowledge that is in short supply.

This issue isn't confined to the ad industry. Companies across industries are at risk of missing out on crucial digital transformation opportunities because they lack digital skills, according to a Gartner study. Even more troubling, most companies don't really understand which skills they need.

Forty-four percent of in-house agencies say they've struggled to attract top-tier talent, according to the Association of National Advertisers. Additionally, 79% cited a need to hire more specialty talent related to video, digital, social media and analytics in a survey released last year by the In-House Agency Forumthat was conducted with Forrester.

Given the direction of the industry, wild swings in consumer behavior and rapidly growing software capabilities, it's clear that the demand for specialized skills will only increase. With the growth of in-house agencies added into the mix, the industry will need to rethink how it finds, trains and recruits the right talent to meet that insatiable need.

Continued here:
Are in-house ad agencies choking the talent pipeline? - Marketing Dive

PHOTO:Krisztian Matyas | unsplash

Over the last 10 years, companies have embraced social responsibility as part of their mission. For some, it is core to what they do. Bombas, for example, donates socks to help the homeless for every pair they sell. Others have made the decision to align themselves with one or more causes that reflect the values of the brand and/or executive team. Wendys has long been a supporter of foster care adoption and have now expanded their social mission to also include environmental sustainability.

For the most part, social responsibility and values-driven initiatives enhance brand perception and the customer experience by delivering a "feel good" element to the purchasing process. But what happens when values become entangled in politics?

Weve recently seen Delta Airlines and Coca Cola take a stand against the new voting laws in Georgia. In response they were labeled "Woke Corporate Hypocrites"and people quickly took sides for and against. With the polarization of politics over recent years this should come as no surprise. Along with polarization has come a new political awakening with more public discourse about political topics, driven by 24/7 media outlets and social media.

As a result of this awakening and heightened sensitivity theres now a natural tendency to view values and causes through a political lens. By default, that ends up encapsulating corporate social responsibility. Ive lost count of the conversations Ive had with friends over the last four years that begin with I wont buy from Company X because they support Cause Y, or I only buy from Company A because they support Cause B. Today, corporate social responsibility programs and cause alignment have the ability to both positively and negatively impact brand perception.

I hope that our current political climate doesnt dissuade companies from social responsibility initiatives. They are a much-needed source of support for many causes. But with the enhanced sensitivity around issues and causes, as companies think about impact on brand perception, its also important to consider how a social responsibility decision factors into the customer experience.

Related Article: What Corporate Social Responsibility Looks Like in 2020

First, how widely are you planning to communicate your commitment to a cause or initiative? Is it something that could be perceived in a political or polarizing fashion? Is it something that will be publicized externally or only communicated internally? If it is going to be publicized externally will that be in the form of a page on your website in the About Us section or will it be integrated into corporate and product messaging?

The louder you are externally, the more aware your prospects and customers will become of your cause alignment which may be your goal. If your cause has the potential to be controversial or politicized it is important to arm your customer-facing functions with messaging relating to the why and how of the causes you support so they can consistently and articulately communicate this externally and answer questions in the appropriate way. In creating your plan consider both positive and negative reactions. A well thought out communications plan ensures that social responsibility initiatives will enhance and solidify a brand with its key constituents.

A more difficult challenge is aligning the values of individual employees with the values and mission of the corporation. What happens when personal political positions collide with business?

Our working environments have become more informal, with companies encouraging employees to engage on their behalf on social media. Its not unusual for work colleagues and customers to connect on various social media platforms. In the early days of social media, when everyone was sharing pictures of kids, dogs, cats and vacations, it was a nice way to create a human connection between a company and its customers, and to strengthen relationships. Most companies created social media policies and guidelines to ensure that employees were posting appropriately about the company and for a while that worked well. You cant, however, separate the perfect company posts from the personal posts in a social media environment. As politics and personal political views invade social media, individual values and political positions become visible to customers and have the potential to impact a customers view of the company.

Related Article: Social Media Hashtags: Protecting Your Brand's Reputation and Trust

As it turns out, this is not a one-way issue. Customers have their own social footprint which have the potential to negatively impact key relationships within the companies they do businesses with. I decided to write this article after a conversation with a sales colleague from another company who told me that his customer Zoom interactions were becoming challenging because of political issues.

Over the last year as weve all gotten used to living in a small bubble, both our social and professional connections have come through video sessions. Weve become increasing informal in our business interactions in both attire and style and those initial how are you?" conversations have become more than a fine, how are you? response. My colleague told me that his customers now want to chat about politics which he finds really uncomfortable since his views frequently differ from theirs. His way of dealing with this is to say Id be happy to chat about politics with you over a beer when its safe to do that but for right now lets move on to . This is a good situational response, but it doesnt really address the issue at the corporate level.

All of this makes me think that we need to expand our social media and communications guidelines to include directions for navigating political discussions in a business environment. I know that some people have personal and professional social media accounts and dont mix the audiences, which makes sense. Im not sure what the right answer is, but I do know that this environment is most likely here to stay, and that we need to have guidelines that frame these issues and provide direction on how to engage and not engage.If any of you have made progress in this area Id love to hear about it.

Anita Brearton is Founder/CEO and Co-CMO of CabinetM, a marketing technology discovery and management platform that helps marketing teams manage the technology they have, and find the technology they need. Anita is a long time tech start-up marketer and has had the great fortune of driving marketing programs through the early stages of a startup all the way to IPO and acquisition.

Originally posted here:
When Politics and Corporations Meet, What Happens to the Customer? - CMSWire

Mark Irwin, managing director, Ardmore

As local businesses begin to recover from the immense personal and professional challenges of the pandemic, many will rightly be considering their strategy for bouncing back and maximising the opportunity of the anticipated surge in consumer spending.

When it comes to thinking about marketing and advertising strategy as the restrictions begin to ease, its important that businesses recognise that consumers have also faced a huge amount of change and upheaval. New individual and collective habits have been formed to adjust to the realities of a year in lockdown that need to be understood first if they are to be changed.

This may appear to state the obvious, but good marketing is all about understanding where exactly your customer is in their own lives what they want from you, what they want to hear from you and how they want to hear it. In this context its important not to assume. Going back to the way things were before may be the right way to interact with customers, but it also may not.

The temptation for local businesses, understandably, will be to rush out of the blocks with their marketing to try and capitalise on the inevitable rush, but its hugely important to take the time to understand where customers are at, identify whether anything has changed and adapt the strategy accordingly.

Close

Mark Irwin

@Press Eye/Darren Kidd

Its not just a case of trying to understand where they are now in isolation, but also how they got there and, more importantly, where they might be going.

There is no doubt that a digital transformation, which was already underway, has been significantly accelerated in almost all areas of the economy. However again, it is important not to simply assume people always want more innovation in their consumer experience.

In the context of the economic uncertainty we will inevitably face for some time yet, trust is important. A good marketing strategy, therefore, should consider a mix of trusted sources of media, which may be more traditional in nature, as well as responding to new channels and trends.

The temptation will be to rush out of the blocks to try and get ahead, but the smart, sustainable play from an advertising perspective is to act quickly but having invested time and effort in listening in the first instance.

Valerie Ludlow, chief executive, ASG & Partners

Brands advertise to raise awareness, increase sales and build loyalty, using media appropriate to each specific objective. In general, small and medium-sized enterprises are more dependent on channels that drive customer engagement.

Covid caused massive shifts in the media landscape because confinement measures were instantly introduced, impacting the audience reach of out-of-home and cinema advertising, and print to a lesser extent.

Advertising spend was quickly replanned and channelled to in-house media, which as a consequence of lockdown grew exponentially.

TV viewership has climbed, but digital consumption has increased even more; the use of social platforms and streaming services have risen; gaming has also grown dramatically.

The consequences of the past year have helped audiences adapt to new ways of shopping, dining, socialising and much more a year where new habits have been formed and helped to keep consumers safe.

With the prospect of a post-lockdown world feeling more likely, local business will now need to rethink marketing strategies to encourage consumers back to the high street or into restaurants, persuade them of the advantages of real world experience over online convenience, and rebuild confidence around safety.

They will also need to revisit media plans and start to consider how to re-capture more mobile audiences who are no longer homebound.

Some aspects of marketing such as events and experiential may be slower to get back to normal, but with schools reopening and the return of employees (in one form or another) back to the office, advertising must re-adapt and re-form to the new needs that audiences will expect in this post-lockdown world.

Ulster Business

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Branding & marketing: Building back a brand as the economy reopens - Belfast Telegraph

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LBSNS (Location-Based Social Networking Service) Market Size, Status and Growth Outlook Till 2025 KSU | The Sentinel Newspaper - KSU | The Sentinel...

The Social Network opens with Mark getting dumped by his girlfriend, Erica Albright (Rooney Mara). Upset over the breakup, Mark goes back to his Harvard dorm room and blogs about Erica, including many insulting remarks about her. Soon after blogging, Mark begins working on a website called Facemash, created to compare the physical features of female campus students, after hacking into the university's database. The website blows up in popularity, grabbing the attention of twin brothers Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss (Armie Hammer). They approach Mark about helping them with a social networking site exclusive to Harvard students. Mark agrees to help them, but instead works on his own similar project, which becomes Facebook.

In reality, the origins of the site were not the same. It's true that Zuckerberg wrote a negative blog post about a woman who may or may not have been an ex-girlfriend although they changed the name mentioned in his post for the film and he did create Facemash, which was taken down by Harvard and led to Zuckerberg facing expulsion (via SlashFilm and ScreenRant). However, according to Vanity Fair, Facemash used photos of both men and women for attractiveness comparisons.

During aQ&A session, Zuckerberg claims he did not create Facebook to "attract girls." He brings up how he's known his wife, Priscilla Chan, since before he started Facebook. If he had the same motivations as the film portrays, his wife likely wouldn't have continued dating him or eventually marry him. According to the Vanity Fair piece, this statement is true: Zuckerberg started dating Chan in 2003, which is the year the film begins. In the Q&A, Zuckerberg insists he made Facebook because he wanted to "help connect the world."

Link:
Everything The Social Network Got Wrong About The True Story - Looper