If it
seems like video has become more and more embedded in every facet of our lives,
you would be correct. And video is only going to continue trending upward in
2020. In fact, the average person will increase their daily online video
consumption by 14% in 2020, increasing from an average of 84 minutes to 100
minutes each day, according to a forecast from Zenith.
With
screen time like that, it’s pretty indisputable that video truly engages
consumers. But even we were somewhat surprised to learn that in 2019, YouTube
replaced Facebook as the #1 platform that affects consumer behavior based on a
study from Animoto. They also found that video ads are the #1 way that
consumers discovered a brand that they later purchased from.
After digging in further to the Animmoto study, we learned that no matter what the social media channel, 24% of consumers made more purchases via social media in 2019 than they did in 2018. Consequently, 58% of consumers visit a brand’s social media pages before the brand’s website. And when they do visit a website, Forbes found that the average user spends 88% more time on a website with a video. In a nutshell, that’s exactly why we started Geile/Leon Video Content Studios, and also why so many of our clients have found great success with online video. Are you curious to see what online video can do for your brand? Get in touch and we’ll see where video fits in with your brand strategy.
In our weekly status meetings, we bring in advertising and marketing trends that we want to discuss. While it’s always a great thought exercise, this week Grace brought in a video from the Marie Curie Foundation from Great Britian, a non-profit organization that deals with palliative care and encouraging families to discuss the plans for a loved one’s impending death.
If that sounds heavy… well… that’s because it is. It’s not an easy subject to talk about, which is undoubtedly why this organization exists in the first place. However, this video spot turns that uncomfortable feeling on its head. Since talking about death is so difficult, the English language on either side of the Atlantic Ocean has an innumerable amount of euphemisms for it. So the Marie Curie Foundation took those euphemisms, added a playful tone, wrote a lighthearted song and animated those expressions in a semi-morbid way.
After watching the video, we reacted immediately. Rightfully, many thought it was a flip and overly cutesy way to talk about such a literally dire subject. Would this actually encourage people to talk about their terminal illnesses and work with their family to put together an end-of-life plan, or would this make the uncomfortable subject even more uncomfortable by making it child-like when a child-like innocence is not conducive to talking about death?
On the other hand, we began to discuss the cultural differences between Americans and the British. Just a look at British television programming shows plenty of humor that celebrates the macabre, including Snuff Box, a sketch show about two hangmen who make jokes while hanging people.
That’s not to mention the differences in how our cultures communicate with each other. While Americans tend to be more direct and to the point, the British communication style can be complex in its indirect nature. In fact, the British have a tendency to often say the opposite of what they mean as a joke. And not even in a sarcastic, or even perceptible, way. Not to mention the sayings, sometimes colorful and often completely obfuscating the entirety of what they really mean.
So perhaps this spot is directly taking on the British tendency to avoid speaking about difficult subjects directly. Does that mean it will be successful at it, however? Can it change a cultural tendency ingrained over generations upon generations?
In the end, we were there discussing it, exactly the call-to-action they wanted to attain. So maybe the results are all that matters. Emotional reactions aside, how effective is this ad? Did we lose something in translation? Maybe it will effect change. Maybe the traditional, somber way of talking about serious issues isn’t working and needed to be disrupted. However, it did bring about a discussion that every marketer should keep top of mind: messaging should have a deep understanding of those who it is targeting first and foremost.
And that’s why in everything we do at G/L, the underlying theme is to make it mean something. It shouldn’t just be clever. It should be effective. And if it means something to our target audience, as our friends across the pond would say, then Bob’s your uncle.
It’s turkey time, and this year we are extra thankful as our year-long 30th anniversary celebration draws to a close. During the celebration we wrote a series of blogs, cleaned up our neighborhood with Brightside St. Louis, helped provide 18,275 meals for those in need with the St. Louis Area Foodbank, and gave some walks (and lots of love) to the dogs and cats at CARE STL.
Our efforts on behalf of Brightside STL in May.
We followed all of that with an amazing open house…which is a professional way of saying a killer party with past employees, partners, friends of GL, and clients.
At our open house, GL Content Studios unveiled a video documentary of our past 30 years that would even make Ken Burns proud. If you haven’t seen it yet or have been itching to watch it again, here it is:
In honor the 30th anniversary of when we first hung our shingle, we have been revisiting some fond memories over the past few months. However, since our founding in 1989, there have been plenty of stories of brands who have bottomed out. We explore some of our favorite stories from the past 30 years of brands dusting off the dirt and getting back on their feet in this series, the Dirty 30, a three-decade retrospective of redemption.
So far we’ve seen Exxon in the aftermath of an oil spill, watched the origin story of Jack Box, reunited Carl Hardee Sr and Carl Hardee Jr, and discussed the Firestone blowout. With so many of us grumbling about their busy flights during the Thanksgiving week, we’re going to fly the not-so-friendly skies with JetBlue.
In 2017, a number of JetBlue flights waiting to take off were delayed due to an ice storm. Many for up to 11 hours. Surely anyone who has suffered through a tedious delay is already feeling that despair of being stuck in the airport, but this was even worse.
The passengers weren’t even allowed to leave the plane even though the terminal was just a short walk away.
As the snacks dwindled and the sanitary conditions in the restrooms degraded, a contingent of passengers demanded to leave, only to be denied. Finally, many, many hours later, official airport vehicles arrived to free them from their captivity and escape to the terminal.
In response to the ensuing conversation regarding what rights a passenger had during a flight delay, JetBlue proactively issued what was known as the Passenger’s Bill of Rights. It included a system of reimbursement for delays and a limit to how long a passenger would be forced to stay on the tarmac during a delay. The passengers on the plane received reimbursement for their troubles and apologies from the airline. Even though there are some things those passengers who were stuck for 11 hours will never unsee, at least they were pioneers for the rights of future flyers.
And if need something to read while waiting to board your flight, check out past installments of Dirty 30:
Throughout 30 years, massive changes are inevitable for every industry, and advertising is no exception. New research, changing demographics and media landscapes and more have made the best practices of old almost unrecognizable from the best practices of today. But through it all, there are concrete and essential truths that have never changed about this industry. Here’s just a few…
Good Creative Wins
While the mediums and the platforms have drastically changed over the years and continue to evolve every day, good creative has always been what matters. From print ads in the 80s to social media ads today, the most important component of success has been and always will be good creative. Agencies that have continuously invested in big thinkers and talented designers and writers are the ones that have survived year after year. At the end of the day, no matter how good your execution and targeting, it’s the idea that matters most.
Relationships Matter
Maintaining strong relationships with our clients, vendors and partners has been paramount to our success as an agency. Printing and hand-delivering production pieces in the old days helped us form great relationships with everyone we did business with then, and that continues now with digital transfers, conference calls, working lunches and emails. Forming those strong bonds have made an immeasurable difference during tough times and bumps in the road. The power of good relationships can’t be overstated.
It has to mean something
Our motto at Geile/Leon is “Make It Mean Something.” At advertising’s core, this is what our work is about. David Ogilvy once said: “It’s not creative if it doesn’t sell.” Playing off of David Ogilvy’s words, when your message and your advertising means something to your target audience, it’s going to sell and it’s going to make a difference. The greatest strength that advertisers can have is empathy – if you can put yourself in another person’s shoes and understand what kind of message will truly mean something to them, you’re going to produce impactful and brilliant work.
You have to love what you do
Advertising is not a business for the thin-skinned or weak-willed. If you don’t love what you do, the crazy schedules and client requests will quickly become overwhelming. But if you’re like us, you just may find yourself enjoying this rollercoaster that we call a career. No matter how things change over the next 30 years, the quality of your work will depend on how much you love doing it and how much passion you bring to the workplace. As long as you’re passionate, and maybe just a little bit crazy, you’re going to have a place in advertising.
There are many things you can do to generate leads among your prospective customers. With Geile/Leon’s 30 years of experience, we’ve compiled a list of the tried and true tactics that have been helpful to our B2B clients in the past.
1. Develop personas
The best place to start in developing a successful lead generation campaign is to know your customers. While this “tip” is now an obvious place to start, it isn’t always practiced by marketers. The reason? B2B organizations target multiple verticals. Marketers may have a high level view of the purchasing deciders in these industries, but to influence them, a more comprehensive understanding is needed. We recommend developing personas for the decision-makers in each of your important verticals. Personas should include not only the typical baseline info such as demographics, but should include information that relates to how they find information, their pain points, their personal motivations and goals, etc.
Building personas shouldn’t be difficult. Start by interviewing your top sales people – after all, they are a wealth of information (and most like to talk). From there, use that information to visualize and direct your content to that specific person, instead of a nameless audience.
When creating a content strategy, you first need to start at determining what your key performance indicators and goals are. Think about your personas and their pain points, then list the value your organization can offer. Next, decide on the content you can provide and how you will promote it. How and where do you want to reach these individuals? Decipher where in the sales funnel is content being developed for.
This information will be reflected in your content strategy, but also closely relates to your personas. How and where do you want to reach these individuals? Decipher where in the sales funnel is content being developed for. A good starting point is asking your sales people how content can help support them while they work their prospects.
A common recommendation is to offer white papers, e-books and webinars to get prospects into the sales funnel (the Awareness stage). As the prospect shows more interest (Consideration), maybe case studies and demo videos are the way to go. And finally, when it looks like they are about to take action (Preference), then product info and competitive comparisons are needed. You can track all this through Lead Scoring if you are using marketing automation.
Leverage your website to attract potential customers by showing them that you are the industry thought leader through the use of blogs. Create valuable content that answers questions your buyers are asking to build up trust with them.
Blogging begins by conducting keyword research so that your blogs are showing up when your customers search those keywords. This is called SEO, or search engine optimization. Doing so will get your blog in front of more relevant potential customers, making it more likely that a visitor to your site will convert into a customer. More on this later.
Lastly, your team members with the most knowledge of the subject matter should be blogging. If they don’t have time to do so, consider a Content Download Day. The process starts with discussions between the marketing staff and product management to identify hot topics and assign SMEs (subject matter experts). The SMEs are then sent a ‘Content Development Planning Document’ which has several high-level questions to help them isolate the most important information. This document acts as a guide for a more robust conversation.
SMEs and staff from our agency (account executives, writers) then attend a recorded session, and from it, we are able to write content that is on-point with no or very little final revisions. Overall, this is a streamlined approach that minimizes the time SMEs have to dedicate while delivering quality content for marketing to use.
4. Be sure your blog is optimized
In order for your blogging strategy to work, though, you must insure that your website is optimized in a way that encourages users to convert into customers or clients. This can be achieved by:
Keep your content up-to-date and accurate
Strategically placing CTAs throughout your website to encourage these users to proceed down your sales funnel
Utilize forms to capture data about your visitors, which will then become your list of leads
Analyze performance and optimize for more success
5. Publish other relevant educational content
In addition to blogging, you should be offering other forms of content aside from blogging. This could include brochures, whitepapers, ebooks, infographics, videos, etc. Generate leads by asking for the users contact information before providing them with the content they’d like to view. You can focus the content on how to deal with industry-specific pain points.
6. Improve user experience (UX) on your website
Say your potential customers are aware of your brand and have found your website. You won’t be able to convert these leads into sales without a properly designed website.
If leads feel like it takes too much time to find what they’re looking for on your website, they will leave. Be sure your site works as its own sales funnel, ushering users through towards the end goal. Strong journey orchestration like this helps to create a positive experience for the customer, ensuring they come back time and time again.
7. Utilize Your Email Lists
If you are with a large organization, you probably have a CRM fully integrated with your marketing efforts. But do they give you the proper level of reporting to track prospects through the customer journey?
If you are struggling with navigating a big CRM or using a less sophisticated program, we recommend a dedicated marketing automation platform. There many out there including HubSpot and SharpSpring. These will allow you to track every interaction with a prospect such as email clicks, site visits, social media interactions, etc., and assign lead scores for each activity. The higher the score, the further down the funnel the prospect is.
Another value with using marketing automation is the ability to set up triggers to see when prospects are interacting with content. In most systems, the prospects can be assigned a sales person and an email can be automatically sent to the sales person so he/she can decide to respond.
Also, it goes without saying, but be sure to follow up with your leads. According to the Harvard Business Review, when companies follow up with leads within one hour, they are seven times more likely to have a meaningful conversation than those who wait longer.
8. Attend trade shows
Take your phone to your next trade show and make short videos. Record your product demos. Ask for customer testimonials. Interview a trade editor. All these make for nice small segment videos which can be promoted.
Another often overlooked aspect of Trade Shows is having a plan to engage the media. We offer clients a Trade Show PR program which consists of media outreach before, during and after the show. This has netted additional media coverage for our clients. These articles and then used in lead generation efforts. If interested in learning about this, please email our VP of PR, Mary at [email protected]
9.Incorporate Video Content For Better ROI
Whether your hiring an agency for a high quality production or doing one in-house, be sure to add videos to your content marketing plan. Adding a simple product video can increase sales by 80%, according to Dream Grow. Not only do videos show a great ROI, but they build trust between you and your customers.
The big question is whether to ask for user information before viewing the video. If the video is intended for top of the funnel awareness, don’t gate it. For videos used in the final steps of the purchasing decision, consider gating it if there is enough exclusive new information. Also, if you are using a marketing automation platform, and include video links in your emails, you will know who is viewing the video, which may eliminate the need to gate it.
Geile/Leon has just recently added in-house video production to our list of services. Check out this team in action with our work for our client Club Fitness.
10. Optimize for SEO
Although this technique was mentioned in the blog section, it’s important to utilize SEO strategies throughout your entire site. SEO is another reason why you should be creating personas too – you find out what keywords your target audience is searching for online. You want your content to be showing up on the first page of Google as close to the top as possible. Smart Insights reported that the first three positions on search engine results pages accounted for the majority of clicks.
Do you need help implementing one or more of these tactics? Let’s chat about how we can help.
You can tell a lot about the way people think by observing the people they admire and the traits they aspire to emulate. As advertisers, we think that applies to our work as well. As we celebrate our 30th year in business, we wanted to look back not just at our own business and successes through the years, but also at the business and successes of the industry as a whole. Working in advertising, every week you encounter something that makes you say something like “Damn… I wish I’d worked on that campaign,” or, “Damnit, that’s a great line, why didn’t I think of that.”
Accordingly, we asked around the office to see what kind of work from over the years still earned our employees’ admiration and praise. It’s a peek into the kind of thinking we have around here at G/L, and a look at the caliber of work we strive to create every single day. Here’s what a few of them had to say:
Anne-Marie Vaughn – Business Manager/Controller
Old Spice – The Man Your Man Could Smell
Like These ads are so entertaining I never get tired of them. I can only imagine how much fun it was for the people who concepted and produced them. I would’ve loved to be a fly on the wall for those video shoots! They’ve also been extremely effective in driving sales for Old Spice. For me, this represents the epitome of what an ad campaign should be.
McDonald’s – McD.L.T. commercial featuring Jason Alexander (1985)
I remember seeing this commercial on TV like it was yesterday. There aren’t many ads from my childhood that I remember fondly— this may be the only one. I loved the singing and dancing, and the styling is as classic 80s as it gets. Can’t say I was ever into the McD.L.T.— they discontinued it before I cared much about keeping the hot side hot and the cool side cool. Plus the packaging was really bad for the environment. It’s fun to go back and watch Jason Alexander in this though.
I remember when this came out (in 2007), EVERYONE would quote it. I would see it all the time on MTV, and the people in my life that thought it was funny was definitely my demographic (young millennials who still love to eat candy). Now, eleven years later, I can still remember how Starburst ran a limited-time campaign of their berries and cream-flavored candy. Why? Because of a catchy commercial.
This award-winning campaign not only increased Snickers sales by 15.9% and grew market share in 56 of the 58 markets in which it ran, but it’s super catchy and I think it’s hilarious. Here’s a great opinion article on why Campaign Live thinks it was a success.
I mean, who doesn’t love these commercials? I challenge anyone to sit through them and not shed a tear. It’s no secret that eliciting emotion is a surefire way to ensure ad recall, and P&G identified a meaningful way to use emotion to make their brand bigger than the household cleaning products it’s known for.
After signing on as a sponsor for the Olympic games, P&G had to quickly develop an advertising strategy that would resonate amongst a global audience. They came to a realization that a common denominator for a majority of their brands was their primary audience: moms. Thus, “Thank You Mom” was born—a series of campaigns dating back to the 2010 Olympics that focus less on products, and more on the people who use them. Couple that with the storyline of an Olympic athlete and a mother’s love, and you have an instant winner in the hearts of consumers all over the world. The strategy is simple, the message is authentic and the creative is powerful. The result is advertising that has a lasting universal message the brand can truly be proud of—that seems like a pretty cool experience to be a part of!
The Absolut Bottle Campaign
Plain and simple, I think this was brilliant creative due, in large part, to its simplicity. True, the brand may have been blessed by sheer luck after the vodka caught Andy Warhol’s eye at Studio 54 in the 1980s. Specifically, the nondescript shape of the bottle. Warhol found it so mesmerizing, he designed an ad for it and the rest is history.
After the “Absolut Warhol” ad debuted, the brand launched the longest uninterrupted print ad campaign ever, featuring 1,500 separate ads showcasing the vodka bottle over a span of 25 years. Each ad was entirely unique, but followed a simple creative formula—”a bottle, two words and a little bit of wit.” This formula won big—before launching the campaign, Absolut had only 2.5% of the vodka market but, by its end, the brand had 50% of all imported vodka in the United States. As uninteresting as people find print nowadays, it’s fun to think about the time when print ads were, in some respects, work of art.
More film than commercial, this ad is the perfect marriage of medium, messaging, music and simple, strait-to-the-point emotion-stirring narrative. It not only snared my attention and inspired me as a college student, but has managed to firmly lodge itself in my mind even now – a full 8-years since I’ve watched it. The ad itself is meant to establish Chipotle as supporters of sustainable farming and to remove itself from the established association with large-scale factory farming. They present this message via a story which follows the journey of an adorable little farmer who’s animated world is reminiscent of Wallace & Gromit. The emotional impact arguably comes across even stronger thanks to the unique visual style and the ability of the filmmakers to illustrate the progression of simple farming’s evolution towards an out-of-control industrial scale and then innovating again on it’s march back to the values and morals we began with. This all occurs over the backdrop of a well-aged Willy Nelson singing his rendition of “The Scientist”, humming into our eager ear holes the relevant line of, “let’s bring things back to the start.”
Aside from being incredibly impactful and strong in terms of delivering its message, the strongest part of the ad is its ability to present itself as entertainment. Before attempting to directly sell its audience on anything we are first guided on a journey and made to feel something thanks to the meticulous and well-planned visuals. As a student in the Missouri State design program I most likely re-watched this ad and its behind the scenes dissection over a dozen times. The effort spent in planning, constructing and shooting this video is on a scale I didn’t believe was possible for an advertisement. I would have killed to have sat in for a day and watched as those tiny pics slowly, shot-by-shot, wobbled their way across a field or were squished into pink meat cubes.
Despite some of the more unfortunate issues Chipotle has had over the years since, I still think of it as the sustainable, grass-roots burrito thanks solely to that 2-minute video I watched almost a decade ago.
Similar to Chipotle, this video blurs the line between advertisement and entertainment. The dizzying display this Ad/Music Video accomplishes is incredibly impressive and manages to present a mundane product such as paper not only as kick-ass cool, but as a limitless implement for creativity. In the process of entertaining the audience they manage to position the brand as a force for innovation as well as conservation (All paper was recycled as well as the video’s proceeds going to Greenpeace).
Coming at it from the creative perspective, much like the Chipotle video, the process and problem solving behind this production is the hero. Working in design we enjoy solving visual problems and this video takes the cake in that department. This video required north of 2 years to plan and prepare all the moving pieces before even one second was filmed. And when all was said and done, it’s an incredibly entertaining, effective and impactful video.
To me, this takes the cake as one of the funniest, most original campaigns ever. In my opinion, the concept and delivery was ahead of its time because it was so over the top. I can still watch it to this day and laugh for hours.
This is a humorous campaign as well, but what I admired the most about it was the fact that it embraced the consumer mindset of wanting to skip over a pre-roll YouTube ad as quickly as possible and instead called the consumer out for it, “You can’t skip this Geico ad because it’s already over.” You think the ads over and instead you get a hilarious turn of unexpected events that started as a boring situation. Such a clever execution with true strategy catered to the platform. On a broader scale, Geico was able to take the most boring product/service in the world (insurance) and make it funny and engaging. It reshaped how other insurance companies approached marketing as well.
These preroll ads were creative and innovative — they were the first preroll ads that were specifically formatted for the medium! GEICO took something people really don’t like to watch and turned it into something that they not only didn’t skip but watched in its entirety! An amazing feat when it comes to preroll ads. In true GEICO fashion these ads were funny too — they used cheesy music, stocky visuals and boring messaging — but all of that combined with a simple live freeze frame resulted in hilarity! GEICO stayed true to their brand while reinventing preroll ads. They showed you don’t have to spend a lot of time to get your message and name out. 5 seconds was all they needed to be memorable — a great lesson for other brands!
Burger King – Flame-Grilled
This series of print ads turned some not-so-good data (more BK’s have burned down than any other fast food chains) into a positive message for the brand. The ads show actual Burger King restaurants on fire — a twisted, fun way to remind customers that their burgers are always flame-grilled. Who doesn’t love a company that can make light of themselves — consumers love transparency and Burger King delivered.
Anyone who knows me won’t be surprised that I’ve managed to work Taco Bell into the conversation once again, but what can I say? Advertising and branding is a delicate balance… on one side, brands tell consumers what their product is, and on the other, consumers tell brands what their product is. Often times, the best campaigns make full use of the latter, embracing an identity that consumers dictate. Such is the case with Taco Bell’s “Fourthmeal” campaign – a campaign that essentially said, “We are good drunk food.” Instead of trying to promote themselves as a place for a quick lunch or dinner a la McDonald’s and other fast food establishments, Taco Bell literally invented a new meal in the day, and came right celebrating the fact that people wanted to eat their cheesy, beefy deliciousness after a late night out and probably a few too many drinks. They extended their store hours, and set the scenes of their spots in late-night alcohol-infused scenarios. Today, even as many of my peers and I try to be more health-conscious during the day, the association of Taco Bell with late-night food cravings remains the same. “Fourthmeal” always felt like something I was doing anyways but never had a name for, and when Taco Bell named it for me, it simply stuck. Twelve years after the campaign’s airing, my friends and I still say “Fourthmeal” when getting late night food.
I loved this commercial so much when it first aired during the 2015 Super Bowl. The line “The people who drink our beer are people who like to drink beer” is brilliant. It says so much about a mindset, so simply. And much like the “Fourthmeal” campaign, it’s a great example of a brand embracing what they already are rather than trying to tap into every new market. I love all beers myself, and I can certainly be found “dissecting” local craft beers and snobbishly assessing them with friends from time to time – when I’m in that mood, no matter what Budweiser told me or made, they’d probably never get my attention. But I’ll be damned if there aren’t also many times that I simply want to have a good time, drink cold beers and let that be all there is to it… Call it the difference between having a drink and just having a damn beer. Like every other cliché, annoying, white millennial male who is desperate to appear interesting, I absolutely loved Anthony Bourdain and read many of his interviews. I often think back to an interview he gave a while ago in which he said, “But look, I like cold beer. And I like to have a good time. I don’t like to talk about beer, honestly. I don’t like to talk about wine. I like to drink beer.” This campaign did a magnificent job of owning that mood, instead of trying to change who Budweiser was in an attempt to capture a part of the growing craft beer market.
Every day, Geile/Leon strives to “Make It Mean Something.” No matter the client, the product or the medium, making it mean something is about telling a story and giving an audience a reason to care.
In 2019, our business turns 30 years old. As we look back on our story to date, we find it important to not just tell it, but, as always, to make it mean something. This yearlong celebration is about cherishing the relationships we’ve made, reflecting on the lessons we’ve learned, showcasing the people who have made it all possible, and giving back to the city we call home. After all, 30 years isn’t just a number. 30 years is the story of the Geile/Leon family that has brought so many people together, and it’s a story that we believe everyone – no matter their industry or profession – can learn from and enjoy.
Throughout 2019, we’ll be reliving our greatest triumphs, laughing about our craziest memories, and sharing our best advice – all right here on this blog and on our social channels. (Editor’s note: Now might a good time to go ahead and plug our Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Follow us if you don’t already!) In addition, we’ll be doing 30 Acts Of Kindness, as our employees find 30 opportunities to volunteer, give back, and improve our community… more on that in a future blog!
We hope that you’ll enjoy this anniversary celebration as much as us, and we invite you to share any memories or stories that you have from over the years with us using the hashtag #Geil30n! In the meantime, keep an eye on this blog and our social channels – the fun is just about to get started!
30 Years, Countless Beers: How we’re making our anniversary mean something
I came across an interesting Washington Post blog (https://www.weforum.org)
on some research published a little while back by the Vancouver School of
Economics and McGill University concerning the geography of well-being in
Canada. With over 400,000 responses from
1,200 communities across Canada, the study truly covered the country’s entire
geography.
Their chief finding centered on a correlation between
population density (concentration of people in a given area) and
happiness. When researchers ranked the average
happiness of all of these communities, they found that average population
density in the 20 percent most miserable communities was more than eight times
greater than in the happiest 20 percent of communities. The paper concluded that life is significantly
less happy in urban areas versus rural areas.
The research found that people in the happiest communities
have shorter commute times, less expensive housing, and less transient
population of residents. They are more
likely to attend church and are significantly more likely to feel a “sense of
belonging” in their communities. There
are other studies done in the United States that support the “rural-urban
happiness gradient” which states simply that the farther away from the cities
people live, the happier they tend to be.
For me, this study supports why we are seeing growth across
new lifestyle segments including weekend farmers/ranchers, hobby farmers, gentleman
farmers, backyard gardeners, etc. These are all people who aren’t quite ready
to pull up roots in the city and move to a small town. But they are seeking a break from the hustle
and bustle, and find it in gardening, part-time farming, or raising chickens,
horses, or a few head of cattle.
If you are marketing to this population, thinking of ways to
tie into this happiness factor with your brand could be very effective. Geile/Leon Marketing Communications
professionals can help you find that emotional connection between your brand
and the rural lifestyle audience.
Tim Leon is President of Geile Leon Marketing Communications
and owns a 137 acre property in southern Missouri where he can be found on the
weekends.
These days it seems like there is a debate about something new EVERY DAY.
Some of the topics can be a little, well, trivial in the grand scheme of things, but nonetheless are discussed in fervor on social media.
Are women’s pockets inferior to men’s? Yes, yes they are. Is St. Louis the microbrew capital of America? Well, no…but we are near the top! Are hit songs starting to sound a little similar? Yeahhhh.
These kinds of topics can generate some pretty strong opinions that inevitably circulate through our culture. But typically, there’s a decided shortage of facts to backup our claims. That is, of course, what makes these debates more of a matter of opinion. But now, The Pudding is here to shift the conversation from online shouting to in-depth sleuthing.
The site The Pudding has taken these entertaining cultural debates and put an actual answer to them. They conduct their own research and collect original data. Then they showcase their findings in a creative and super digestible way.
They use the “emerging form of journalism” called visual essays to tell their findings. Every essay on the site has interactive graphics to highlight the research and data in a way that is accessible to everybody.
Browsing through, you’ll see that the available essay topics are relevant and intriguing too.
The Pudding has tapped into something our culture didn’t even know we needed. Someone to help us FINALLY settle those debates you and your friends have over drinks on a Friday night.
How’s this relate to advertising? What The Pudding does and what those of us in the marketing world do are in essence one in the same: effectively communicate the truth about a particular topic. Getting to the bottom of what truly makes a brand or product unique and telling that truth in an engaging way is the key to good marketing and advertising. Imagine the latest debate is whether or not to purchase your brand or product. Is a shouting match of “buy” vs. “don’t buy” on social media going to be effective? Probably not. But how about a well-researched campaign that connects the essential truths about your brand to the people who will most likely value those truths? Now you’re talking. That’s what Making It Mean Something is all about, and it’s what we do every day here at G/L.
Great creative work is backed and inspired by great research. When you’re ready to discover the essential truths of your brand and make those truths mean something to your audiences, give us a call.
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9 questions to ask yourself to determine if your brand is still relevant
