With increasingly knowledgeable audiences, tracking technologies and available platforms, it’s an understatement to say that a simple online banner just won’t cut it anymore: your consumers expect brands to talk to them, to deliver value or interest, entertainment or show some effectiveness.
“Content is king, but distribution is queen: if you can’t distribute to the right people at the right scale to the right people, it’s almost not worth it to be making all that content,” says Adrian Lee, head of digital at MediaCom, citing one of his recent projects, Audi’s “Progressive Minds” Tumblr blog, where the automobile found representatives across different industries as brand ambassadors; and 50 pieces of editorial were fed through the blog and distributed through Yahoo’s portals, native ads as well as its own brand website.
The initiative garnered 58 million impressions, pulling in more than 280,000 visits (90% were unique) averaging at 1.5-plus minutes of dwell time per page.
Likewise with Acuvue, who spread its Facebook contest for travel vouchers to Korea on Yahoo native ads and, most impressively, a full-blown soft-selling editorial spread on eye care, optical health beauty and its brand ambassador Jun JI Hyun. The joint effort from both Yahoo and Tumblr drew in more than 84,000 views, of which more than 46,000 are unique users who spend a mind-blowing average time of 60 seconds on the page.
“We’re about social listening. Content creation is not campaign based, it’s an on-going in-depth dialogue with your customers. It should also be personal, interpersonal and engaging,” said Heidi Chu, Senior Brand Manager of Acuvue Hong Kong.
CMO of CSL Bruce Lam shares Lee and Chu’s formula of engagement, and it’s one he employed to differentiate his brand against other telecommunications labels in the city. Positioning itself as the biggest telco company in Hong Kong, CSL pushed videos featuring Dayo Wong also on Yahoo’s native ads and portals while launching creative add-on accessories such as the SmartPaMa workshop (tutorials for parents), PetTracker and KizOn (a tracker for children and the elderly).
“It’s hard to get customers to come directly to the store,” said Lam. “So you need to show off your expertise: for us, that is customer service, knowledge, speed and size.”