marketers Archives - Design Theory

Content Consumption Trends This Fall

Content & Copywriting, Entertainment, Marketing, Product Reviews, Social Media

Ah, the beauty of a New England fall season…The crisp air, apple cider donuts and many trees display the multifaceted colors of fall. Content consumption trends this fall are just as varied as trees lining I-90 to the Berkshires. As a device dependent nation, the consumers of content have pushed both manufacturers and marketers to infinite boundaries – a flurry of multifaceted demands to have everything we want (or think we need) at our fingertips all hours of every day. So for mobile technology, Fall 2013 is blowing in with many winds of change for the content consumption marketplace.

Will the PC become obsolete? According to Digital Trends, “research firms have been informing us for some time now that sales of desktops and laptops are on the decline, with consumers turning increasingly to reasonably priced tablets and smartphones that do more than enough to keep them happy.” Even Morgan Stanley analysts have predicted that mobile web use will outgrow stationary device browsing by 2015. This is great news for mobile device makers while stationary PC’s and even laptops sales may continue to fall to below expectation when it comes to content utilization. With the impending November 29th, 2013 Black Friday and Cyber Monday on December 2nd just around the corner, its predicted that consumers’ choices are definitely shifting from PCs to handheld tablets for daily content consumption.

What’s everyone humming about? Yes it is finally arrived – Google Hummingbird. By replacing the old algorithm, Google has answered the call for easy search queries for people on-the-go. Hummingbird is essentially an entirely new ranking algorithm that understands the relationships and relevance of words and phrases, instead of just considering a bunch of individual words. Thus, making it more “human friendly” than ever. So it focuses on ranking information based on more intelligent and naturalistic search requests – providing more useful, intelligent and higher quality content in the digital world.

Seemingly Unlikely Bedfellows – Adobe & Data Analytics? Adobe Marketing Cloud is the latest user interface and in the new Adobe Analytics with an iOS operating system for mobile devices reports the baseline norm from historical user trends and then identifies data points that fall outside that norm. This super smart app offers real-time reporting capabilities to give marketers and copywriters/editors solid intel on readers content consumption, marketing campaign success and on-site conversion as it happens. An SDK mobile app will provide unparalleled opportunity analyze data collected from mobile apps in Adobe Analytics, giving marketers the ability to serve location-specific content to customers based on their location when they access a mobile app. I noticed this most recently while on Pandora. An audible ad, that was specific to my location, popped up to gain my buy-in on their services. This is perfect for true lead generation efforts and capturing the right demographic for a successful campaign.

Branding, Media Style
This fall, many companies are beginning to understand that they need to think more like publishers and not just marketers. Connecting brands with online audiences is essential for true consumer, marketing integration and growth. More brands will use sizeably more video and mobile-friendly content in response to the growing number of smartphones and tablets. Media integration helps businesses generates revenue and strengthens customer relationships by leveraging the latest technology and draw on a full range media marketing resources. Since content consumption is at an all time high, using social video resources like Vimeo, YouTube, Instagram, or Vine ads flavorful social content that reaches your audience in quick and impactful ways.

Content Curation Marketing
For those who don’t know, content curation goes way beyond just making sure website content is both up-to-date and SEO rich. Content curation is the process of connecting content creators, i.e. marketers, bloggers and writers, to easily and quickly target relevant content. Since content is king, content curators oversee and manage the entire landscape of content – from driving product development and marketing strategies to social networking integration, Notably, this is a fantastic tool to boost social media presence and true engagement for key target audiences.

So there you have it folks – all things content and dominant trends for the Fall season of 2013.

What do you think? Are there other content trends you see fading like the leaves of fall or flourishing in full bloom for 2014?

Psychology Marketing Techniques 101

All Posts, Content & Copywriting, Marketing, News & Politics

Marketing strategies run the gamut when it comes to creativity – whether it’s pushing the envelope or pushing your buttons. Psychology Marketing (also known as Consumer Behavior Marketing) is one facet used by the industry meant to do exactly that; push emotional buttons to steer a response causing the consumer to consume a businesses goods, services and even agenda. It is well understood that “emotional marketing” plays a pivotal role in reporting/publicizing world events; selling medical pharmaceuticals-even selling cars! As a result, psychology marketing has become one of the most effective tools to gain attention and cause the consumer(s) to react verbally or financially to a cause, service or product.

Human Interest Stories: The Grandfather of Them All
Wikipedia defines it as “a feature story …presents people and their problems, concerns, or achievements in a way that brings about interest or sympathy in the reader or viewer. Human interest stories may be “the story behind the story” about an event, organization, or otherwise faceless historical happening, such as about the life of an individual soldier during wartime, an interview with a survivor of a natural disaster, or profile of someone known for a career achievement.” Human interest stories give consumers an emotional connection to the problem, product or service being promoted. It makes more difference in reactions and behaviors than most consumers ever realize.

Psychology Marketing is meant to:

– Look at how consumers think, feel and reason-out their decisions and ultimate selections

– Study how a consumer is influenced by their environment such as personal culture and media exposure

– Consider the targeted consumer, their motivations & strategies when comparing products or services for ultimate selection

This is what marketers use to adapt and strategize for their marketing campaigns to more effectively reach the consumer.

Best at the Game: Non-profits
Most non-profit companies have cornered the market on attaching emotional elements to their causes in all forums of media and promotion. So whether it’s a poster, TV commercial or internet ad campaign, their marketing strategies include elements that strike a chord and causes us to pause, consider and act. And once celebrities add their devotion to let’s say a particular cause or movement, undoubtedly the campaign increases its projected success.

Best at the Awww Factor: Pampers
About 95% of consumers love a cute baby and Pampers is kind of capitalizing on that with their marketing campaigns. One of my personal favorites is the Silent Night campaign by Pampers. This great commercial plays annually during the New Year and has a profound effect on all its viewers. How profound? It actually remains one of their most successful campaigns since 2008. Why? Because their Silent Night commercial causes you stop, awww out loud and think about the beautiful sweetness of babies sleeping peacefully. Their marketing team knew your affection and love meter would go up several bars half way through it and they’ve been reaping the benefits ever since the campaign’s inception.

Current Events-Shockwave Effect
Nothing is works in the favor of news media more than shocking news. You know the kind that makes you sad or enraged as what’s going on in the world. It might be hard to conceive that there’s marketing in calamity but there is. Ever since the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, CT, President Obama’s team has been hard at work to market the President’s legislative position in his responses orally in his speeches and with his actions as he continues to meet & address the Sandy Hook victims parents and school officials. His speech writing/marketing team penned an emotionally moving speech that he himself found hard to emotionally contains as he teared-up during his public address. His recent bashing yet inspiring Shame on Us speech moved many with a strong call-to-action for legislative changes in gun control and social responsibility.

These are 2 of my personal picks which includes one of the most watched and emotionally charged marketing campaigns to date.

The CDC’s Anti-Smoking Campaign uses scare tactics by showing us the horrific consequences of smoking. Some of the commercials are just sad but there are some that are inspirational for smokers to do whatever it takes which creates a sense of resolution. Ah yes, they’ve tapped into our fight vs. flight responses and the former outweighs the later.

Liberty Mutual’s Half Acre Campaign reflected a Pay It Forward theme that inspires all of us to take just a moment to do something for someone else, big or small, recognized or not. But it was recognized as the commercial captures. Over and over again people take notice and act in the perpetual the cycle of “do right”.