The Brisbane Advertising and Design Club is now calling for entries from the Brisbane creative community as it brings back its awards after last year’s hibernation.
For the first time, the BADC Awards will cover two years’ submissions from 2020 and 2021. Entry validity is for all work published or aired from July 1, 2019 to June 30, 2021.
BADC president Stuart Myerscough said, “We were really keen to ensure that no work got left behind considering how much hard work has gone on. We made the easy decision to make two years of work eligible, which will mean tough competition across all our categories.
“Brisbane’s advertising and creative community is coming together again to showcase and celebrate the best in creative and marketing campaigns from a very high quality field.
“Our theme Welcome Back from the Wilderness will help encourage and inspire the community as excitement builds to our awards night to be held on 6th November, 2021. It will be overdue but welcome having the Brisbane creative industry together again under one roof.”
The main award category will once again be the Best of Show which was last won by Publicis Australia for their Great Barrier Reef campaign, scUber, for client Tourism and Events Queensland.
Key dates: Entries Close: Monday 2nd August Late Entries: Friday 6th August (30% late fee) Awards Night: Saturday 6th November
Myerscough said BADC was thrilled to welcome back video ad delivery gurus Peach as platinum sponsor and presenting partner of the awards.
Peach is reinventing the way video ads get from edit to ad platform, broadcaster, social and more. Their technology unifies digital and linear advertising ensuring quality, ease of collaboration and distribution at speed: eliminating complexity, delays and costly mistakes.
Peach’s Business Development Manager APC Lauren Yelavich said: “Our relationship with BADC has been fundamental to our success in the Brisbane market over the past few years. We are excited to come out of the wilderness with you all and are committed to supporting the creative genius of Brisbane over the coming year. We look forward to what BADC has planned.”
Creative recruitment company DMCG Global joins the ranks of returning Gold sponsors supporting BADC in 2021 – O’Brien’s Accountants, Cutting Edge, The Post Lounge and Platypus Print Packaging. New Bronze sponsors joining include Compadre Picture Company, and The Sound Pound with Ack Kinmonth Composer also returning. Limited sponsorship opportunities are still available.
The BADC awards is Brisbane’s only creative advertising and design award. Further information is available from www.badc.com.au
An important consideration in building your brand is to engage with your audience in varied and creative ways. These days, your brand persona is needed to be replicated across multiple mediums and not just in static formats. Your customers are looking to engage with you in different ways than in the past.
With the power of audio and video, connecting with customers and a broad audience in an informative and intimate manner is possible on a regular basis, inexpensively and from the comfort of your own office or home.
Webcasting has accelerated over the past 12 months with the interruption brought on by the pandemic. With it not being possible to be physically present in many instances, webcasting has proliferated, offering an opportunity for brands to engage with their audience from a digital perspective.
Services such as Zoom, Google Meet, and Teams have proliferated, not just as a means of hosting internal meetings, but as a way of presenting information and insights to audiences.
Webcasting has proven popular with event organisers to live stream events, where the audience can be opened up to many more people than can likely attend in person, and at a greatly reduced cost.
This type of rich content can be used to build loyalty between a brand and its customers. The ability for interaction is also very important, with viewers able to interact during the webcast and also via social media platforms.
The Power of Audio
With low production costs and few barriers to entry, podcasting as a medium is available to nearly everyone. The popularity of portable music players and smartphones has only made accessibility to podcasts easier.
Audio is still a very powerful medium, and smart brands are using it in creative ways as a powerful marketing tool. It is also a good alternative to video. Not everyone is comfortable using video, so an audio recording can be a viable alternative. People often listen to podcasts because they have an affinity to the speaker and are willing through subscribing to receive regular episodes.
Leading Australian podcaster, Mamamia, has recently launched its latest bespoke podcast series in partnership with Westpac to help women navigate the financial side of everyday life.
‘What The Finance’ is an eight-episode podcast co-hosted by ex-accountant and financial educator, Melissa Browne, and actress, author and advocate Pallavi Sharda. From Savings and Debt to Housing, Investing and Relationships, the series will assist young women looking to make more informed decisions about their finances.
There is easy to use software to help you record, create and host your podcast and will help you distribute it to multiple podcast platforms.
RGC Media & Marketing has its own digital studio available for Podcast and Webcast recording. If you would like to talk to us about how these opportunities can help reach new audiences please contact us on 1300 854 502 or info@rgcmm.com.au
Australian Podcast Rankings
Australian podcast downloads hit 50 million in March, up from 43 million the previous month according to Triton Digital’s Podcast Ranker.
The Ranker provides insight into the Top 100 Podcasts in Australia as well as the Top 10 Publishers in Australia for March 2021, as measured by Triton’s Podcast Metrics measurement service.
Casefile True Crime remains ranked in the top spot, cementing the popularity of the true crime format.
Here is the Top 20 – for the full list visit Triton Digital’s Podcast Ranker.
In 2012 a startup subscription razor service called Dollar Shave Club launched with a quirky and hilarious video filmed in their warehouse. The video quickly went viral, propelling the company to massive growth and 2016 it was acquired by Unilever for $US1 billion. Not a bad ROI from a low-cost piece of video content.
While the power of video content has been known for many years, it has been brought into new light over the last 12 months. With face-to-face communication either banned or extremely limited, businesses have had no option but to embrace video for a range of communication, both internal and external.
In 2021 RGC launched its own video studio to help clients create high-quality, cost-effective video content.
Why Video?
Video is a versatile and engaging content format that not only gives us a real-life picture of what is going on; it’s also easy to share across multiple platforms. Consumers like it because it’s easy to digest, entertaining and engaging, and marketers like it because it can give a potentially huge return on investment (ROI) through many channels.
Video is also very accessible to anyone with internet access, both to watch and to produce. While there is certainly a trend towards higher quality video on a professional level, anyone can hop onto their laptop and create their own video in under an hour.
Need more evidence of the power of video? Here are a few stats.
Demand for Video Content is Increasing – The preference for video content is not just limited to entertainment purposes. Video extends to brands. Studies show that 54%of consumers want to see more video content from a brand or business they support (HubSpot, 2018).
Videos Are Consumers Favorite Type of Content – Users are seeing videos increasingly on every platform. Whether it’s on blogs, Instagram videosor simply YouTube, they are expecting more video content. Videos are a consumers’ favorite type of content to see from a brand on social media (Animoto, 2018).
Videos Deliver Great ROI – Nearly 90%of video marketers are satisfied with the ROI of their video marketing efforts on social media (Animoto, 2018). The same report shows us that 80% of marketers also claim to be satisfied by the ROI of video ads that they have posted to social media.
Videos Helps Consumers Understand Brands – About 97% of marketers claim that videos help customers understand products (Hubspot). Consumers and businesses don’t’ need to be sold to; instead, they’re doing a quick internet search to find the best product in their neighbourhood or even in the world where they’ll proceed to order it online.
Videos Is Great For SEO – Over 80% of all traffic will consist of video by 2021. (Cisco) Search engines love videos because they see them as high-quality content, so to this end, using videos in various types of content as well as on your main web pages can work wonders for your SEO — as long as the videos themselves are optimized properly as well. This means incorporating the right keywords, a solid meta description, and also a strong title.
Videos Drive Conversion – 90% of consumers claim a video will help them make a purchasing decision. (Social Media Today). Wyzowl claims that 74% of people who get an opportunity to see a product in action via an explainer video will buy it. And landing pages are great places to place videos, too. — supposedly boosting conversion rates by up to 80%(just be sure to keep autoplay off so as not to scare the customer away with loud noises).
Types of Video
There are lots of different types of videos out there and part of creating an effective content marketing strategy is having a solid understanding of your purpose before you sit down and create the video (or any other type of content, for that matter).
You want to make sure the both the type of the video and the channel purpose (if you’re posting on social) fit the purpose of the video itself. Here are some of the different types of videos that your business could use to grow awareness and engagement.
Explainers can help educate people about your product and can be used in conjunction with instructions, customer service activities, and a whole other range of applications.
Interviews can help to encourage conversation between sides, or showcase a special guest or influencer. If you are creating videos featuring guest experts, for instance, you can always re-use the audio and market it as a podcast. Below is a video RGC created for its MBA News site and promotional partner the University of Queensland Business School
Product reviews and demo videos can be created by brand ambassadors in exchange for free products. If you can find people in your industry looking to boost their social following, this can be a great way of essentially getting free advertising.
Live video is the best chance to get up close and personal with your audience, and it works well on social channels in particular.
If you want to make video part of your 2021 please feel free to contact RGC Media & Mktng on 1300 854 502 email us at info@rgcmm.com.au.
We’re officially living in the midst of a pandemic and almost everyone has been materially affected. Industries have been turned on their head and in some cases virtually collapsing overnight. Jobs have been lost and businesses shut. And, sadly, lives have been lost, too.
The impact on business and our daily lives has been immense and will continue for the foreseeable future.
Business and marketing plans have been up-ended or scrapped altogether. Whilst marketing budgets mostly have been pared back in line with operating revenues, it’s imperative now more than ever that you don’t lose your voice, manage your reputation and provide clear information and solutions.
Don’t stop communicating
Your customers need to still hear from you, now’s not the time to disappear from view, no matter how tough things are.
Stay visible and engaged, it will help when we come out the other side. Everyone will need to rebuild and those that have maintained their profile and been as positive as possible will be better placed in this regard. Your customers will maintain their trust in you and appreciate hearing about your journey.
People are feeling vulnerable right now and an empathetic approach is critical. Choose your tone carefully and impart your own lessons learned with simple advice. Keep up your regular content marketing program and engage with your customers across your platforms – your owned channels will be even more important to you.
Be authentic
Consumers now more than ever will recognise authenticity and true purpose. Feel-good content that alleviates anxiety and promotes positive messaging will go a long way to enhancing your brand. But a word of warning, you need to show that your contributions are material and not solely for commercial benefit. No one expects you to have all the answers, but ensure you can back-up what you say you will do. Being able to deliver on your promises is crucial. Examine your brand voice to see if it’s still appropriate or should be tweaked for the times.
You are more likely to be remembered for your kindness and generous acts.
Be agile and adapt
Many people are engaging and interacting online for the first time and for others, their online habits are being reinforced and deepened.
You should consider what content people need and pivot with your creative messages accordingly. Listening and talking with your customers will give you immediate feedback about their needs and what they’re looking for from you.
Online marketing spend will increase naturally and take priority over many traditional forms of advertising spend.
Social advertising spend will increase as people turn to their most trusted brands online for reassurance and reliable useful information.
Importantly, track trends, measure sentiment and behaviour and adapt to the new way of working. Devise your plans for life beyond this pandemic and understand the impact on your industry and business and be prepared to lead in new ways.
Podcasting is not new. However, what was once seen as a niche and hobbyist medium has well and truly gone mainstream.
The art of audio storytelling has seemingly been given a shot in the arm through this format and embraced by content producers equally, from those at the kitchen table through to the larger media houses.
Many people first became aware of them when Apple over 15 years ago first offered over 3,000 free podcasts on iTunes. According to Forbes, there are now over 800,000 active podcasts with over 54 million podcast episodes available globally.
With low production costs and few barriers to entry, podcasting as a medium is available to nearly everyone. The popularity of portable music players and smartphones has only made accessibility to podcasts easier.
Michele Levine, chief executive of research firm Roy Morgan, said podcasts are growing in popularity in Australia with nearly 10% of Australians now downloading audio or video podcasts in an average month:
“Podcasts are a relatively new part of the media landscape but are making an increasing impact as audiences for the service are on a steady growth track up an impressive 70% over the last four years to over 1.6 million Australians in 2019.
“The ability to listen to your favourite podcast while commuting to and from work and tuning out from the hustle and bustle on crowded public transport, or just relaxing in your spare time to catch up on what’s been happening in an area of personal interest is appealing to a growing number of Australians.”
Podcast rankings
As the attention of advertisers and brands follows, the seemingly fragmented world of podcasting and audience measurement is becoming more ordered, particularly with radio heavyweights embracing the platform.
Late in 2019, Commercial Radio Australia (CRA) announced the launch of the first monthly Australian Podcast Ranker which sees Australia’s top 100 most-downloaded and listened to podcasts ranked each month. The monthly rankings can be accessed here.
The ranking was launched with a foundation group of podcast publishers including News Corp Australia, Podcast One Australia, Nova Entertainment, Southern Cross Austereo (SCA), Australian Radio Network (ARN), Macquarie Media and SEN/ Crocmedia.
The rankings are dominated by our larger entertainment groups, with many familiar names including Hamish and Andy at the top. True crime is continually popular with News Corp Australia’s series of crime podcasts ranking highly including The Nowhere Child and Who the Hell is Hamish?
How can podcasting benefit your brand?
Have you considered podcasting as a means of engaging with your customers and seeking out new audiences? A podcast may well fit in with your brand strategy and content marketing program and provide the following benefits:
Reach new audiences
Podcasting can help you reach new audiences, especially through recommendations and referrals from satisfied listeners. If your podcast provides relevant and informative listening chances are that others will value your show, even if they’re not currently a customer.
Building relationships with an audience
Even though a podcast provides a largely one-way stream, it’s a great way to speak directly to your audience and is considered quite a personal medium, much like quality radio programming. The audience has elected to opt in, so you have a good opportunity to keep their attention.
Make your brand more real
If you avoid the temptation of the hard sell and instead provide an informative listening experience and make your listeners feel part of a community then your engagement levels will be high and this will be reflected in brand trust and confidence.
Accurate Analytics
The digital medium allows you to accurately measure engagement by tracking key statistics which may include, amongst others:
Ah, Monopoly. Parker Brothers’ accurate prediction of the current Sydney housing market, and perhaps the leading cause of animosity between family members during power outages.
It’s McDonalds Monopoly time, possibly the most obvious example of gamification, where the dynamic duo dangle the veritable deep-fried carrot in front of millions of Australians who are battle-hardened against most marketing efforts of the fast food juggernaught.
Game On
Gamification, simply put – is a marketing campaign masquerading as a game, which serves to bridge the engagement gap between business and customer to improve the likelihood of conversion. This method is proven to increase engagement, loyalty, the consumer experience and above all – move product.
How is gamification profitable? McDonalds simply restrict the quantity of specific pieces of the Monopoly real estate tokens, naturally mitigating any risk associated with too many winners. After all – the game isn’t designed to get you into that brand new Suzuki Vitara, the game is designed to make the business money.
Maccas adds another gamification layer to their marketing in their flashy, yet UX challenged phone app. This provides a modern, yet equally frustrating electronic version on the classic board game, while doubling as a facility to claim and collect your tokens.
But if winning a major prize is statistically improbable, what’s the point? Enter the consolation prize, designed almost entirely to claw you back into the restaurant: ‘Instant Win’ prizes like chips or a small soft drink. When you go to redeem these are they REALLY all you’re going to get? No, you’re likely going to order an entire meal, plus the free fries – because you want those additional tickets. On top of that, Chance Card tokens are also provided as another layer of gamification, unlocking mini-games in the app to win yet more tokens or prizes. Gameception.
Can I Play?
If you haven’t already disappeared to make the hunger-fuelled pilgrimage to the Golden Arches, how can you leverage gamification for your business?
Lets explore the three main tenets of Gamification: building Motivation, Ability & Triggers. Motivation is the dangling carrot enticing the player to play, while Ability enables the player to play by means of providing the playing field (which includes actual prizes), and Triggers get the player off the bench and into the game when they are made to feel the most empowered.
Motivation:
Benefit to You: Breaks down barrier between customer and business, adds another person to the funnel. Benefit to Player: Instills a feeling of easily-achieved win, promise of dopamine kick and tangible ‘prize’.
Ability:
Benefit to You: Nothing intrinsically, this is essentially entirely a liability in terms of costs associated with prizes and marketing. Benefit to Player: Available prizes that people instinctively perceive as goals, while being offered the pathway to achieve that goal by you.
Trigger:
Benefit to You: Customer’s illusion of choice, forced to take action by purchasing product in order to begin the game. Benefit to Player: Starts the game which they have already imagined winning (for a small fee, this holds the most risk for player).
As you can see, this is a zero-sum game when appropriately managed. Where the motivation step benefits both parties, the ability step benefits the player and the trigger benefits the business. Once you’ve quantified your Ability in terms of the value of your marketing investment (prizes, assets & activation), and the Trigger’s value to you (products purchased, emails collected), it’s game on.
Get Your Head In The Game
Obviously a partnership with an international entertainment company is out of the reach of most businesses, so here’s a few good examples of gamification that you could modify to suit your own purposes:
Facebook – Top Fans
Consistently engage with a page’s posts and you’ll have a shiny badge next to your name to show your loyalty to the business when commenting on their posts. This benefits Facebook by ensuring users stay active, benefits the business by increasing post engagement rates and reach, and benefits the user by rewarding them with bragging rights in the form of a tiny badge.
Google Maps – Local Guides Program
Regularly write quality reviews for businesses you visit to increase your profile’s level, earning badges along the way and ascend quicker by writing more comprehensive reviews, or by posting photos and videos. This benefits Google by increasing the value of it’s Maps listings to the end user by bolstering the quantity of submissions while prioritising quality content. Most importantly though, it benefits the business by means of social proofing, boosting perceived trust in the business and promoting it’s good deeds (and punishing bad customer service). Also benefits the reviewer’s profile by positioning them as an authority in their area, and sometimes, winning tangible prizes like socks.
Linkedin – Profile Completion Awards
Microsoft want you to complete your Linkedin profile a lot further than your name and a photo, and do so by awarding you a self-esteem boosting award to say you’re using the platform effectively. This little feature benefits Linkedin by improving the average profile completion rate, ensuring they stay competitive in a Facebook-controlled ecosystem and above all, increasing the amount of increasingly-valuable user data available to them. This also benefits businesses advertising on the platform by giving a strong insight into who the humans in their sphere (both employees and clients) are, and what makes them tick. Your willingly-surrendered data isn’t simply cast into the aether, it does benefit you by building your personal brand, and ensuring you stay competitive (ie: employable and relevant) in your own field.
Asana – Task Completion Narwhal
Asana is a project management tool which rewards habitual task-completers with a cheerful flying narwhal that flies across the screen every so-often when tasks are marked as complete. This simple animation benefits Asana by catering to younger professionals with this fun imagery, benefits the business using the platform by incentivising task completion, and benefits the user by offering a monotony-busting, unexpected surprise for doing something as simple as ticking a box.
eCommerce – Spin-To-Win
This appears most notably on Wish, where you’re given an opportunity to spin a wheel to win the chance to unlock an extra discount on a number of products dependent on the result of your spin. On other eCommerce websites, this is often a variable ($/%) discount on advertised products which is awarded in the same manner. This Wheel of Fortune benefits the merchant by potentially moving the price-conscious consumer closer to conversion with a small chance-based discount, and benefits the user by appealing to their FOMO, and saving them a small amount on an item they desire. Bonus round: Add a data capture element to this by asking for an email address to unlock the spin.
Interested in learning more about gamification and how it can improve your conversion rates? Get in touch, I’d love to talk about how this strategy can put a fun spin on your next campaign.
With ongoing algorithm changes to Facebook and Instagram in particular, the ability to communicate directly with your own database is more important than ever.
One medium of communication that is seeing a resurgence in value by organisations and marketers is the now humble email.
But what is it about email messaging that has lasted and brought it back into vogue as a valuable marketing tool?
Put simply, it is the only guaranteed-delivery option the internet has left.
As The Wall Street Journal’s technology reporter Christopher Mims recently wrote, “In the #deletefacebook era, it’s become a way to fight back against the algorithms that try to dictate what people see.”
Readers sign up to receive email communication and whilst your communication remains relevant, that should prevent them from hitting the unsubscribe button. Email is still free and a direct way of communication which can be personalised.
The key is take the view that you’re building a loyal and engaged community. Members are looking for you to provide insight, authenticity and interesting information — not just sales spiels.
And whilst the Snapchat generation may view email as being antiquated and not immediate, they all have email accounts. The truth is that you can’t rely on email marketing alone and you will ignore social media platforms at your peril. However, email marketing should hold a key place in your marketing communications mix.
Mims quotes Wales-based jeans company Hiut Denim co-founder David Hieatt as saying, “If you ask me, would I want a mailing list with 1,000 people on it or 100,000 followers on Twitter, I’d take the 1,000 emails all day long, because the business you get from 1,000 emails will be much more than you get from 100,000 people on Twitter or Instagram.”
Your email database is valuable and can be maximised from a marketing perspective very cost effectively. Ensure you build your database and gain the contact details of each new client or prospect.
Two very effective marketing programs which enable you to market effectively to your email database include Mailchimp and Marketo.
Mailchimp is a marketing automation platform that helps you to create marketing campaigns and share with clients, customers and other contacts. Mailchimp will assist with your list management and compliance with direct mail requirements. The platform enables you to manage subscribers, generate custom reports, view click-through and success rates, track your emails, and ensure full transparency of campaigns.
Marketo is a powerful engagement service offering a cloud-based email marketing platform with a range of capabilities including marketing automation, social marketing, lead nurturing, budget management, analytics, sales insight, and website personalisation. One of the big benefits is native integration with CRM suites such as Salesforce.com. A leading digital marketing suite, Marketo will streamline your email marketing processes and enable you to provide unique customer offers through personalisation.
Why do brands embrace the faces of celebrity? It’s not a new phenomenon and has been part of our daily consumption for many decades; in fact, it’s difficult not to name a product or company that hasn’t engaged in some form of celebrity endorsement. Celebrities can be a vehicle for brands to reach out to new audience niches as well as the mainstream. Some well-known and successful brand associations include George Clooney (Nespresso), Jennifer Aniston (Emirates), Nicole Kidman (Etihad), Michael Jordan (Nike) and Jamie Oliver (Woolworths). Success can add millions in brand value through positive association and the power of aspiration. Consumers are well aware that these arrangements are paid for but will see past that if the association is credible and real. Guy Sebastian has recently been announced as AirAsia’s brand ambassador in Australia in a deal that promises to work well for both parties. AirAsia receive the benefit of a very likeable personality with a clean image in the vast entertainment industry. AirAsia sees the synergy of entertainment and travel working together in a lifestyle brand sense to appeal to their audience, produce engaging content and attract attention across borders. Sebastian in turn is looking to promote himself further across Asia and AirAsia’s massive reach will assist. The airline has worked before with musicians in other markets and several top executives are former music industry executives including the co-founder, Tony Fernandes. AirAsia X Group CEO Datuk Kamarudin Meranun said the airline was thrilled to have Guy on board calling him a “natural fit for AirAsia”. “Guy embodies AirAsia’s values and ideals with his support of the community through charity work and will promote AirAsia’s brand,” he said. In an interesting twist, about the time Sebastian was announcing the arrangement with AirAsia, controversial Australian tennis player Nick Kyrgios parted ways as an ambassador for Malaysia Airlines after just one year. Sometimes the relationship just doesn’t work out, or maybe, wasn’t a good fit to start with. In another format, Australian radio and TV personality Jules Lund has established a marketing start-up called Tribe which targets brands that want to get active in social media through associating themselves with brand personalities or ‘influencers’. The marketplace model allows users (influencers) to bid online to provide services or endorsements for a product or brand which can then be purchased by that brand. Tribe promises ‘authentic advocacy’, with influencers choosing brands, not the other way around. Tribe has just completed a round of funding to fuel expansion in technology and markets. It has claimed to have worked with more than 500 brands and have about 4500 influencers on its books. If you’re considering a brand ambassador here’s a checklist of some key considerations:
Choose the right brand ambassador! What are they going to do for you and who do they appeal to? Is their association with your brand or product believable? Do your research thoroughly.
It needs to be a two-way relationship with real benefits for both parties. It’s not just about dollars.
All obligations and terms need to be set out in writing for executing. And, also allow for the arrangement not working out.
Meet regularly to manage obligations under the contract and explore new opportunities.
How will you measure the success or otherwise of your investment? Is it in sales, audience recall, specific brand attribute measurements, or digital media traction? Be clear with your own goals and expectations.
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Michele Levine, chief executive of research firm Roy Morgan, said podcasts are growing in popularity in Australia with nearly 10% of Australians now downloading audio or video podcasts in an average month:
