Digest prepared by iMARS Communications.
Customers want to be the main characters
The idea that millennials are killing brands has become a real joke on the Internet. Headlines such as “The Millennials are Accused of Disappearing Soap” or “How the Millennials Killed Mayonnaise” make us laugh, but at the same time they are not completely unfounded. The consumer landscape is changing and experienced brands are using targeted marketing to stay connected.
Futerra, a sustainable development consulting company, recently asked consumers in the US and the UK the question: “Do you think personal actions (such as donations, recycling, and ethical shopping) can really change the world?” 96% of the participants answered yes.
Companies like The Body Shop create a connection with the characters through stories. For example, there is a video on the Body Shop channel on YouTube that tells about the incredible story of women in Ghana.
When you think about the targeted marketing strategy of your company, it is important to put customers first. Customer acquisition strategies, like storytelling, are just one of many ways to position your customer as a hero.
Asos was wrong. The brand is in crisis
Asos abandoned its print magazine 12 years later due to the global crisis. The retailer experienced a staggering 68% drop in profits to £ 33 million a year until August 31. Strongly embraced by problems with distribution and IT and slowly responding to changes in consumer habits, the once bright and brilliant brand quickly lost its appeal.
What Asos did brilliantly thanks to the magazine is the promotion of clothing lines with truly readable content. Closing a journal may make some sense economically, but the signal it sends can only mean long-term damage. When the company announced that it should stop publishing its magazine, distributed free of charge among British Asos Premier subscribers since 2007, again they began to talk a lot about printing as a dying, irrelevant tool. However, a well-designed, print edition is still an extremely powerful promotional tool for a brand that wants to present their stories and create their own voice.
Too late for TickTok?
About 800 million monthly active users, 69% of whom are between 16 and 24 years old. More than 2.6 million references in June, which is 62.5% more than in January. The most downloaded app of 2018 on the App Store. All of these numbers are one of the reasons TikTok is widely admired in the marketing community.
“Most of TikTok is a younger audience. Unlike mature social networks, TikTok has an absolute creativity orientation. It reminds us very much of Vine. The platform has access to millions of songs that users and brands can use, ”said Dustin Smith, Senior Specialist, Social Media Strategy at Carmichael Lynch Relate.
Brands can create their own TikTok profiles, and working with influencers on the platform, according to many professionals, is an easy starting point for interacting with users.
“Users are not interested in brilliant, high-performance content. Exaggeration, eccentricity and self-abasement are the criteria used by the TikTok community. Content that seems forced or feigned has a high risk of getting negative reactions, ”says Praytell creative director Kat Lapelosa.
Other PR managers agree that the launch of their profile means an obligation to constantly create content, and this is already a significant investment, which may be too large for many brands. Nevertheless, experience shows that everything is not so complicated. For example, Crocs attracted over 100,000 subscribers a week after launching its profile.