Instagram connects brands with customers with ‘contact’ feature
Instagram has expanded its offer for advertisers by launching an insights tool and a ‘contact’ option for business pages as it continues to shape its ecommerce offering. The changes are part of a broader launch of business profiles aimed at improving the features on offer for its 200,000 advertisers.
By adding business profiles, Instagram is hoping to make it more obvious to users which accounts constitute as businesses. By signing up for a business profile, brands can also choose how they want their customers to get in touch and a ‘contact’ button will link directly through to a phone number or email address.
Instagram is also expanding the data it provides to advertisers. Its new Insights tool will give brands and marketers more information about the personality of their followers and advice on which type of posts will resonate best with their core audience.
“We want to make Instagram work even better for small businesses, so we listened carefully to their feedback to understand challenges they face, and the tools they need to drive real business results,” says Amy Cole, Instagram’s head of brand development for the EMEA region.
“And with business tools now available across Europe, it will be even easier for small businesses to get insights, connect with new customers and promote their favourite posts straight from a mobile device.”
NHS takes ‘Missing Type’ campaign global
NHS Blood and Transplant is taking its ‘Missing Type’ campaign global, as it looks to build on the success of what its assistant director of marketing Jon Latham claims is the organisation’s “most successful campaign ever”.
The new activity went live in New Zealand and Australia first, followed by countries in Asia including Singapore and Japan, the UK and Europe, and then the US, Canada and Brazil. In total 25 blood services in 21 countries will take part, covering one billion people.
Activity in each region is based around the same challenge – a decline in the number of people becoming donors and giving blood for the first time. Over the past 10 years, this has dropped by 27.6% among the services taking part in the campaign owing to factors including “apprehension” over giving blood, competition for consumers’ time and increased international travel.
In the UK, new blood donors were down by 24% last year compared to 2005. And despite the fact that last year’s Missing Type campaign saw 30,000 register as blood donors in the UK, this is not enough to offset the 200,000 plus donors who stop giving blood every year.
The NHS is aiming for between 20,000 and 25,000 new donors this year but is adopting a different strategy in order to repeat its success. This year’s campaign, created by Engine, includes a TV spot set to air tonight that aims to directly drive footfall to blood drives.
There is also an international film thanking donors filmed with patients from 23 countries. Despite the cost of advertising on TV, Latham says its last TV spot (for its ‘Bleed for England’ campaign) actually had the lowest cost per registration of any recent campaign.
“[Missing Type] hit a nerve with audiences last year but we can’t just run the same campaign again, the results would not be as good.”
Jon Latham, assistant director for donor services and marketing, NHS Blood and Transplant
“This time we want to amplify the message. TV can drive people to donor session if we book the right slots. The advantage is it amplifies what we are already doing and the success of last year. This is a direct response TV approach that aims to drive footfall,” he said.
Domino’s Pizza launches a Facebook Messenger bot
Good news for pizza lovers. Domino’s Pizza is launching its very own Facebook Messenger bot as it looks to create a “conversational transactional experience”.
The bot, called @DOMThePizzaBot, was created by Domino’s Pizza with We Are Social and Talkbe to allow consumers to place an order simply by messaging the word ‘pizza’.
Facebook opened up its Messenger platform in April this year, allowing brands to display codes that can be scanned by users to start an instant conversation via the one-on-one messenger platform.
Nick Dutch, head of marketing at Domino’s Pizza, believes the instant messaging (IM) bot will become “one of the next frontiers of ecommerce”.
“With IM platforms being so ubiquitous already and continuing to grow, it felt to us IM will become one of the next frontiers of ecommerce in Western markets. You only need to look to Asia to understand how they have almost become one stop shop platforms for everything,” he says.
“We chose Messenger specifically due to a combination of the volume of users on the platform and to Facebook being increasingly open to brands developing customer support and transactional bots in their Messenger platform.”
The advertising industry is happy with the Government’s childhood obesity report
From one food story to another – this week the Government launched its childhood obesity strategy report. The long-awaited Government report aims to tackle the problem of childhood obesity as figures show nearly a third of children aged 2 to 15 are overweight or obese.
The strategy includes further details on a sugar tax as well as plans to increase sport in schools. Yet other measures recommended by the Commons Health Select committee last year – such as banning junk food advertising during popular family TV shows and an outright ban on supermarkets placing sweets and junk food at checkouts or the ends of aisles – do not appear.
The advertising industry has welcomed the Government’s decision not to introduce a blanket ban on advertising unhealthy food and drink to children as part of its ‘childhood obesity strategy’, claiming it has “already taken action” by launching its own public consultation in May this year.
Speaking on the report, Advertising Association boss Tim Lefroy says: “Advertising has already taken action to end HFSS ads in children’s media, whether on TV, online or elsewhere. We hope this announcement signals government’s recognition that working together with UK agencies, brands and media will get us further, faster in improving the nation’s health.”
Health campaigners, however, are not best pleased.
“This strategy was meant to be published a year ago, we’ve had a year of delays, and now it has been watered-down to a plan that doesn’t even include marketing restrictions,” says Malcolm Clark of the Children’s Food Campaign. “This is a truly shocking abdication of the government’s duties to secure the health and future of the next generation.”
Is social media really the most engaging channel or are marketers ‘seduced’ by data?
With so many high-profile brands prioritising digital spend, it’s hard to escape social media campaigns these days.
Earlier this week, a poll of 585 Marketing Week readers revealed 56.1% believe social media drives the best brand engagement. Retweets, shares and likes on social media posts are considered a good indicator of engagement for 82% of the survey base.
However, many marketers believe this is just because social can provide traceable data that is easier to interpret than more traditional channels such as TV.
Rob Blackie, director of social at OgilvyOne, explains: “Social networks are increasingly making it straightforward to measure the full impact [of advertising], including people who see a campaign [on one device and] convert [to a sale] on a different device,” he explains.
“[Measurement tools on social media] are making it more straightforward to get the revenue, the sales and the leads, depending on the category, than it used to be. That is making social dramatically more effective than it was a few years ago.”
Simon Tunstill, communications director at TV ad body Thinkbox, agress that social media sites encourage “a host of very active, visible and easily measurable engagements” such as likes, shares, clicks, follows and views. But he believes this is “seductive data.”
Where do you stand on the issue? As usual, let us know in the comments box below.