Author: Melissa Ross

TikTok Expansion Hurting Advertisers?

Melissa Ross
Digital Content Producer

TikTok Expansion Hurting Advertisers?

Digital

Since the start of the pandemic, millions of people worldwide have found themselves trying to kill time during quarantine, yearning to connect with people both inside and outside their front door. Some families needed an outlet to be together with each other that would allow them to have fun, and other individuals wanted an avenue of creative flow.  

Enter TikTok. 

TikTok is a social media app for video shorts where users can create short dances, lip-sync to their favorite movie quotes, show off their talents, and be funny. It’s free for all to use and easy to start creating content.

And while the platform itself doesn’t release user data, outside firms have been keeping their eye on its user base. And what they’re finding is that it’s substantially grown since the outbreak of COVID-19. In fact, TikTok has generated “the most downloads for any app ever in a quarter” in Q1 2020, according to the app analytics firm Sensor Tower.

A Shift In Audience

Since TikTok was first released in August 2016, its popularity really exploded among young Americans and around the world. According to the most recent Comscore data provided to Adweek, US users 18 and older brought in 22.2 million unique visitors in January, 23.2 million in February, and 28.8 million in March. Then in April, the number skyrocketed to 39.2 million. But it seems as though those numbers are primarily coming from the Millennial demographic. TikTok’s GenZ audience grew by nearly 5 million unique visitors from January to April, but it’s just that the Millennial demographic is growing at a faster rate during quarantine.

In January, there were fewer than 5 million American Millennials (ages 25-34) on the app. In April, there were nearly 11 million.

The percentage of U.S.-based TikTok users aged 18-24 fell 5.8% from January to April. During that same time period, the share of 25- to 34-year-olds rose 5%, and the 35-44 demographic grew 3.2%. With content creation in the social media app on the rise, the need for followers and fame has also led to people trying to scourge for a ‘get TikTok followers app‘, even among the older demographic.

Citation: AdWeek

While the app creators most likely see the expanded user base as a positive, advertisers may not see it as such.

Why Advertisers are Sweating

There’s a lot of unknown about how the shift in demographics and overall expansion of users on TikTok will affect the long-term for marketers, but some believe it will present obstacles. 

“Targeting is still fairly limited on TikTok, so as the audience becomes more diverse, you can open yourself up to a lot of waste,” Melanie Nelson, associate director at The Media Kitchen, told Adweek. “We’ve also seen TikTok increase their prices pretty substantially quarter over quarter, which makes total sense. They have a broader audience that they can put in front of advertisers.”

In fact, according Adweek:

The platform’s sponsored hashtag challenge went from $120,000 in Q4 2019 to $180,000 in Q1 2020, a 50% increase quarter over quarter. In that same period, TikTok’s brand takeover product, where a brand’s ad appears first on all TikTok users’ screens when they open the app, went from $70,000 to $100,000, according to one media buyer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Citation: AdWeek

As marketers and businesses see a depletion and cancellation of their ad budgets across countless industries, this increase in cost for paid campaigns on TikTok with wasted spending by not having a more targeted audience build, TikTok may see many advertisers pull their advertising support.

Just like spending just for the sake of spending isn’t wise, targeting a platform just because it’s growing quickly would be a failure to consider the full wealth of data available to marketers. And that’s not to say TikTok is a bad play or a good play! But it would be wise for anyone budgeting what is likely now a limited digital marketing spend would be wise to fully consider what is effective rather than what is popular. 

Luckily, we have decades of experience determining strategies and watching trends come and go. Get in touch and we’ll determine how to maximize the effectiveness of your digital marketing plan.

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In a Time of Crisis, Turn to Maslow for Marketing Advice

Melissa Ross
Digital Content Producer

In a Time of Crisis, Turn to Maslow for Marketing Advice

Advertising

My time during these past few weeks has been occupied much in the same way yours and many others’ has. I spend my time at home worrying. The irony is that we are all isolated while feeling the same sense of worry.  

Is there going to be toilet paper when I brave the grocery store? Is my loved one going to get sick? Heck… am I going to get sick? And I know I’m not alone. 

The word “survival-mode” may be overused (did anyone from Survivor actually risk not making it off the island safely?!), but psychologically, this is where most of the world is at, asking themselves daily, “Are my basic needs going to be met?”

That places me (and millions others around the world) at the bottom of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. The Cliff Notes version is that Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is a psychology model that presents itself as a pyramid, with the idea that needs lower down in the hierarchy must be satisfied before individuals become concerned about fulfilling the needs at the next level up the pyramid. From the bottom of the hierarchy upwards, the needs are: physiological, safety, love and belonging, esteem, and self-actualization.

image courtesy of Simply Psychology
image courtesy of Simply Psychology

According to the Wall Street Journal, within the last week of March, 6.6 million Americans filed for unemployment. Like I said, millions are at the bottom of this hierarchy. Brands know this, too. Those brands that have been created to serve the top of the hierarchy? Most aren’t relevant right now. But that doesn’t mean they’re out of the game – there’s a way that those brands that are normally serving the top needs can connect with people at the bottom. 

Brands like DoorDash are not only helping those end users get food, but also aiding those locally-owned restaurants by waiving delivery fees and pick-up order commissions. They are also supporting their contracted delivery people, known as Dashers, by moving deliveries to no-contact, and providing them with free hand sanitizer. And for those Dashers that find themselves sick? They’re receiving financial assistance  from DoorDash. 

Another shift in DoorDash’s services that we’re seeing: they’ve partnered with convenience stores nationwide so that they’re not only able to provide their customers with food, but also household essentials.

Locally, a St. Louis brand is really changing up their business model to help those in need. Arch Apparel, who defines themselves as “A St. Louis-inspired streetwear brand,” announced on Instagram that they will be creating and selling masks to help in this pandemic. They’re donating a portion of the proceeds to a local group providing meals to St. Louis health care workers. Additionally, all of these meals will be sourced from local restaurants. A great example of St. Louisans helping St. Louisans.

https://www.instagram.com/p/B-kziacpWvs/

And to keep the examples coming from our home base here in St. Louis, Anheuser-Busch announced that it will start producing hand sanitizer. The company said they would consult with the American Red Cross and other nonprofit partners to figure out the best places to send the newly bottled sanitizer, using its extensive supply and logistics network to get the sanitizer into production and into the hands of those who need it. This is just the latest effort in the brand’s long list of supporting communities during times of crisis.

And in a way, that’s the great thing about the economy. At its core, it’s designed to meet people at their position within the hierarchy and fulfill their needs. There are probably hundreds of examples of brands shifting to reach people at the bottom of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs during these difficult times, and that list probably grows by the day. 

It’s important to listen to your customers, discover what they need and strive to demonstrate how the brand can fulfill their needs. But never in our lifetimes have these needs been greater, so it is inspirational to see the empathetic response from so many brands. We believe that is how we will succeed, by working together and focusing on maximizing your Return on Empathy.

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Optimizing Your Video for Social: How to Create an Oscar-Worthy Performance

Melissa Ross
Digital Content Producer

Optimizing Your Video for Social: How to Create an Oscar-Worthy Performance

G/L Approach

Online video is helpful, if not essential, to a successful social media strategy. However, this goes far beyond simply just uploading an existing asset to your profile. No matter what type of video,  whether it’s a television commercial to something you shot on your smartphone, uncut and poorly lit, it’s important to abide by a few key rules of thumb when posting video as part of your social strategy. So what makes an online video well suited for social media? The answers aren’t complicated, but they are crucial.

Online Video Checklist

First and foremost, you’ve got to grab the user’s attention immediately. Our tendency as a social media user is to just keep scrolling, so if you as a brand don’t grab their eyeballs and hold on for dear life, then your video is dead in the water.

Keep in mind that browsing social media feeds is an overwhelmingly mobile activity, with mobile social media time ranging between 63% for those over 50 years old and 78% for those between the ages of 18 to 34. With users scrolling through a never-ending feed full of more and more content to discover, you have very little time to grab their attention.

Data from Facebook and Nielsen shows that 47% of the value of a video campaign comes within the initial three seconds of a video and 75% from the initial ten seconds. Auto-play will give you a hand here, since it immediately immerses the user into your video as soon as it pops up in their feed, but then it’s up to you to keep them there. That makes the first few seconds incredibly important in your video.

Next, make sure you test vertical video. Since the majority of viewers of your social media video will be on their mobile devices oriented to portrait mode, you shouldn’t make them have to rotate their devices to get the full effect of your video. Spoiler alert: they won’t. Creating a video oriented towards the way the viewers are already using their device is especially important when targeting a younger generation. Utilizing vertical video will also demand more attention from the user as it will utilize the majority of the viewing screen.

Beyond ensuring your video is attention-grabbing off the bat and vertically oriented, you should expect viewers to watch the video without sound. The majority of auto-played videos default to having the sound disabled, and research from Digiday shows that the majority of people (up to 85%) never turn the sound on for a video in their feed.

If you don’t create a video that communicates your message without sound, then it doesn’t stand a chance of capturing most viewers’ interest. Instead,emphasize visually appealing shots and incorporate subtitles or text to communicate your message if words are even required. That’s why becoming a visual storyteller has gained so much importance in online video.

Finally, choose your thumbnail wisely. Social media users do have the option to disable auto-play for videos in their feeds. If they do that, then a compelling thumbnail image for your video is the best way to intrigue users enough to click and watch your video. Think of your thumbnail as your call-to-action to press play.

So let’s put that into a quick checklist you can utilize whenever you’re going to post a video on social media. Ask yourself:

  1. Will this capture the attention of the audience within the first few seconds?
  2. Am I utilizing vertical video to better optimize for my mobile users?
  3. Do I need audio to fully tell this video story?
  4. Would my chosen thumbnail entice users to click the play button?

If you answer “no” to any of these questions, maybe rethink how your video plays into your social media strategy and the best practices of social video.

It’s not hard to make an online video, but it can be challenging to make a compelling online video that reaches who you want and where you want in the sales funnel. Luckily, we’re here to help. Get in touch and see how G/L Content Studios and our social team can create targeted social and digital video campaigns for your brand.

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Trending from G/L: Instagram’s Hidden Like Count Test

Melissa Ross
Digital Content Producer

Trending from G/L: Instagram’s Hidden Like Count Test

Digital

Instagram is positive. It’s happy. It’s bright. It makes the users ‘feel good’. But, is the pressure to align with Instagram’s “happy” culture causing users to actually be less happy “IRL?” While no one’s questioning Instagram’s impact on users’ purchasing decisions, a recent test by Instagram could change the way advertisers and influencers use the platform altogether.

Let me explain.

Twitter is known in the social media community as probably the best way to directly, in real time, engage with your audience. But, it can also be a catalyst for bullies. Twitter is a notorious hotbed of abuse, so much so that the social platform has recently abandoned its previously “reactive” approach towards abusive content, and begun to take action on how to be proactive and preventative when it comes to abusive content. On the other end of the spectrum, Instagram looks to be the friendliest of the social media platforms. The visually-led community cultivates positive and motivational messaging, where posts that go viral tend to have a positive message, and where many of the most famous accounts are of dogs and cats.

But some mental health experts say that this positivity presents a unique problem. It encourages its users to post upbeat and staged photos that others could be misleading to others and potentially harmful. Scarlett Dixon is a primary example.

The fashion blogger posted a promoted photo of herself having breakfast, with the intention of promoting Listerine mouthwash. The photo was quickly screenshotted and posted on Twitter, where users called out the inauthenticity of the image. The user stated, “Instagram is a ridiculous lie factory made to make us all feel inadequate.”

https://www.instagram.com/p/BnIlqUShl31/?utm_source=ig_embed

The tweet took off, with more than 111,000 likes and almost 25,000 retweets. Dixion even responded to comments calling her fake, saying, “My feed isn’t a place of reality. I mean, who spends their time in such a beautiful city, perched on a ledge, ice-cream in hand and smile permanently affixed to her face? It’s staged, guys.”

It’s for this reason alone that experts are looking at how harmful Instagram is to its users mental health. In a 2017 survey by the Royal Society for Public Health, 14- to 24-year-olds scored Instagram as the top social platform that most negatively impacts their quality of sleep, their fear of missing out, and their body image.

“It’s a reward cycle, you get a squirt of dopamine every time you get a like or a positive response on social media,” explains psychologist Emma Kenny when speaking to Cosmopolitan about the effect of social media likes on one’s mental health.“It’s like a hit, similar to the way you feel when you have a drink. The social media like triggers that reward cycle and the more you get it, the more you want it.”

Now, Instagram is testing out a way to possibly combat these negative effects on its users, but it might be at the expense of its advertisers, and more specifically, its influencers.

Imagine an Instagram where no one but you can see how many likes or followers you have. That’s exactly what Instagram is currently testing internally. Researcher Jane Manchun Wong discovered the change in a beta view on her Instagram, and Instagram confirmed the testing with TechCrunch.

“We want your followers to focus on what you share, not how many likes your posts get. During this test, only the person who share a post will see the total number of likes it gets,” says Instagram in a pop-up message about the feature test.

An Instagram spokesperson said that the testing is a result of the company trying to find ways “to reduce pressure on Instagram,” which is likely their way of addressing how this validation culture has been shown to hurt mental health and self esteem.

With influencers’ income solely dependent on their engagement rates and likelihood of a post “going viral,” this change can directly hurt their business. By hiding their engagement on posts, influencers could find it harder to get deals with businesses for sponsored content. Brands need to see engagement on content before tapping an influencer to rep their product so that they can gauge their ROI. It would also make it near impossible for users to figure out which posts are popular on the platform, and therefore, influential. For a social media specialist like me, it will be harder to learn what kind of content is resonating with the Instagram community.

As this testing concludes and impacts possible changes on the platform, it will be interesting to see how Instagram social media strategies change across the board for influencers, businesses and advertisers alike.

If you’re in the market for the creation of a social media strategy to fully optimize your business’s digital footprint that will directly improve sales, brand awareness, and engagement, let’s chat.

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Building Buyer Personas for Rural Lifestyle

Melissa Ross
Digital Content Producer

Building Buyer Personas for Rural Lifestyle

Advertising

In marketing, what you’re communicating is just as important as defining who you’re communicating with. But most target audiences only manage to scratch the surface. For example, targeting men ages 25-65, with children at home and a household income of $100,000 is a good start, but have we really painted a picture of their everyday lives, responsibilities, and likes/dislikes? That’s where building buyer personas come in.

Buyer personas are defined groups of ideal customers that represent the multitude of different targets audiences you reach through your marketing efforts. B2C personas are formed through highly researched demographics, psychographics, and lifestyle habits, whereas B2B personas focus more on industry, profession, seniority, and company size. Well-researched and put together personas can help focus your message into something that will truly resonate with your target.

Case Study: Forney Industries

Whether you’re a B2B company or B2C, consider the following for each target audience:

  1. Demographics
  2. Pain Points
  3. Priorities
  4. Values
  5. Media/Research Habits
  6. Attitudes/Opinions/Personality Traits

It’s important to note that while you may only have a primary target audience and possibly a secondary, you can have up to 6-7 persona profiles within each of those target audience segments. A great example of this can be seen in our recent work for Forney Industries.

With our help, Forney Industries sought to launch a new look for their welding line. The goal was to establish their ‘green’ presence in the clutter of competing brands, spread brand awareness and increase the market share of the welding line. With these goals in mind, we then took a look at other key focuses:

  • Aesthetic
  • Tone of Voice
  • Brand Promises

Forney wanted to appeal to a variety of DIY’ers with different skill levels, interests and backgrounds. In-line with their established inclusive, rugged, bold, and informative tone, we aimed to promote:

  1. The ease of use of the Forney welding line
  2. Forney’s exceptional product support
  3. Confidence that these users/dealers have made the right choice by choosing Forney

After establishing these core messages, we created the personas that are most influenced by and interested in these benefits.

How Will Personas Benefit My Business?

Building customer buying personas gives you a valuable insight into the lives of your ideal customers. Knowing them more deeply as a person will not only help build trust in your brand, but also aid you in creating more relevant content that they care about. The great thing about personas is that they’re for all size marketers. No matter if you’re a small business or a large company, they help identify the right message that will influence target audiences to take action and convert.

Developing audience personas gives your target audiences a visual identity which is an invaluable resource for marketing, sales, product development and customer service. If you want to take a deeper dive into this topic, check out this free white paper, or give Geile/Leon a call.

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Trending from G/L: Payless Becomes ‘Palessi’ For New Awareness Campaign

Melissa Ross
Digital Content Producer

Trending from G/L: Payless Becomes ‘Palessi’ For New Awareness Campaign

General

“Real people, not actors.”

It’s a disclaimer you have seen before. Maybe you recall Chevrolet’s “Real People, Not Actors” campaign that kicked off in 2016, or the parody follow-up ad by Progressive titled “Real Actors, Not People.”

Now, adding to the trend of ‘tricking people into saying great things about your brand’ is the Payless Shoesource “Palessi” campaign which has marketers, fashionistas, and influencers talking.

With the help of advertising agency DCX Growth Accelerator, Payless opened a fake luxury brand and storefront, which they named Palessi, and invited VIP fashion influencers to the opening. Payless marked up their bargain shoes – up to 1,800 percent – in order to shift consumers’ perceptions of the brand. These influencers then paid up to $645 for footwear that rings up in a Payless store for $19.99. Then, these real people were captured remarking on the quality of the shoes’ design and creation, before being unveiled to that they were actually from Payless.

One shopper described her purchase of a stiletto heel as “It’s just stunning. Elegant, sophisticated.”

Another said, “I can tell it was made with high-quality material.”

Payless “wanted to push the social experiment genre to new extremes, while simultaneously using it to make a cultural statement,” Doug Cameron, chief creative officer of New York ad company DCX Growth Accelerator, told AdWeek.

In August of 2017, Payless emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy after closing 670 stores.

“The campaign plays off of the enormous discrepancy and aims to remind consumers we are still a relevant place to shop for affordable fashion,” Payless CMO Sarah Couch told AdWeek.

After the fashion influencers were told of the Payless retail price, they were given a full refund and were allowed to keep their shoes, even though many of them still had their foot in their mouth…

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Trending from G/L: Brands Taking a Stance

Melissa Ross
Digital Content Producer

Trending from G/L: Brands Taking a Stance

Advertising

In overwhelming numbers, today’s top brands are beginning to take stances on certain issues and stepping up on a soap box to make those positions known. In recent years, we’ve seen many businesses take positions on social and even some political issues. The conventional thought has long been that doing so runs the risk of 1. alienating some of your audience, and 2. opening your brand up to even harsher criticism of the campaign in question, but with time we’re seeing more and more companies and brands shift their strategies towards embracing the potential positive impacts of commenting on political and social issues.

Maybe it’s companies beginning to cater to Millennials, or maybe these companies have deemed 2018 as the perfect time to begin a conversation about more than just their brand. A recent study from Weber Shandwick, a PR agency, found that 51% of Millennials would be more likely to buy products from companies that have a CEO that have taken a stance on a controversial issue.

In recent weeks, we’ve all seen the Colin Kaepernick Nike ad campaign pop up in social media and on the news, with everyone from the President to your grandma weighing in. But during that time, a few other brands make social statements that demonstrate how doing so can go very right, and sometimes not so right.

Animal Crackers, a Nabisco product, has a new look, embracing a packaging change that animal rights activists have long fought for. The Barnum’s Animals packaging makeover now shows the familiar animals from the original box out in the open, walking freely in the wild as opposed to in cages or circus tents, as previous packaging depicted. This change comes a little over a year after the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus Company closed due to poor attendance that was at least partially brought on by criticism of the company’s treatment of animals.

Mondelez International

Kiichiro Sato/AP

Even PETA weighed in on the Barnum’s Animals packaging change. “The new box for Barnum’s Animals perfectly reflects that our society no longer tolerates caging and chaining exotic animals for circus shows. No living being exists simply to be a spectacle or to perform tricks for human entertainment, yet all circuses and traveling shows that use animals treat them as mere props, denying them everything that’s natural and important to them,” via NPR. 

And in a culture that has seen a hefty spike in vegetarianism relating to animal rights, as well as an ever-expanding market for pet owners (in 2017, pet owners spent $69 billion on their furry friends), Nabisco knew that it was the right time to make this change. While there will always be someone somewhere who is crotchety about change, this packaging re-design was a virtually no-risk move that helps the brand align with consumer values.

Another recently released ad was the new Land O’Lakes She-I-O campaign. While the campaign was aimed at bringing awareness to the women farmers out there, it missed the feminist mark that we believed it was going for.

Land O’Lakes is a consumer brand best known for producing one of the world’s greatest gifts: butter. What consumers may not know, however, is that the brand is also a member-owned agricultural cooperative made up of 1,791 farmers  And, according to the company, many of these farmers are women. In celebration of Women’s Equality Day in August, Land O’Lakes honored female farmers through a video that also served as the kick off to their new “All Together Better” campaign, which is aimed at creating awareness around the crucial role women play in an industry that many assume is dominated by men.

From a production standpoint, the brand and its agency, The Martin Agency, killed it. The overall message, concept and visuals are spot on. The video is beautifully produced, featuring real female farmers in real farm environments. All the pieces are in place to make this a truly effective video…except the music.

Teaming up with country music singer Maggie Rose, Land O’Lakes developed “She-I-O”—a new, progressive take on Old MacDonald that sought to transform the song from an antiquated nursery rhyme to an anthem of female empowerment. Now, I’m no music critic, and perhaps it’s the childish nature of the original, but the song feels hokey and nearly comes off as a mockery of the thoughtful and relevant message. As this Jezebel article points out, “…they cannot get any more specific about what she or we can do, other than working really long hours. In the service of what? Under which conditions?” Maybe that’s too much to ask for a three-minute video, but perhaps a different approach would have garnered a better reaction.

At the end of the day, will the brand’s reputation be hurt by this song choice? Likely not. The overall message is authentic and one they can truly stand behind. But it is one more lesson to be learned about the ways brands should (or shouldn’t) participate in social commentary.

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Trending from G/L: Marketers Moving Away From Saturday Morning Cartoon Ads

Melissa Ross
Digital Content Producer

Trending from G/L: Marketers Moving Away From Saturday Morning Cartoon Ads

Advertising

Who can forget Saturday mornings as a kid? Getting up early (sometimes before mom and dad), rushing into the kitchen, making a bowl of the most sugary cereal in the pantry, and heading to the living room to turn on the television. This was what most of us lived for as kids – Saturday morning cartoons like Dexter’s Laboratory, The Magic School Bus, Pokemon, Recess, Animaniacs, and many more. You could argue that the closest we came as children to having a “zen” moment was during this act of slowly waking up to animated explosions and antics.

And while you most likely didn’t realize it at the time, those mornings were also your first experience with advertisements targeted and tailored specifically for you.

That bowl of cereal. Those comfy pajamas. Even the cartoon you’re watching. You may not have had anything in your wallet, or even owned a wallet, but marketers and advertising agencies recognized the buying power that you represented.

Saturday morning cartoons were the crown jewel for advertising toys and other products made for children. Perhaps the last place where an entire audience could be near-universally reached through a single medium. But stop us if you’ve heard this one before: marketing has changed in and increasingly digital age. How are today’s advertisers replacing the Saturday morning cartoon commercial? In one recent Washington Post article, apparently through Snapchat, Youtube Kids, and other mobile apps.

According to the article, nearly half of 10-to 12-year-olds have their own mobile phone. But once they reach their teen years, that number jumps to 95%.

Because children now have their own personal screens – whether they be phones or tablets – they use them to seek out their specific wants and needs, making it easier for marketers to target them with their advertising. Some argue that collecting this data from children should be a cause of concern for parents. Advocacy groups say that children can’t comprehend why they’re seeing specific ads, and how.

But, with users’ ability to skip advertisements, it should be noted that there’s no guarantee that target audiences will see a commercial or advertisement – in fact, often times the only ads that users will actually see or engage with are those for brands/products they already have interest in or want more information on. So while marketers continue to explore new means of engaging their target market, apps like Snapchat continue to gain interest as a means for increasing overall brand recognition while engaging those who are genuinely interested in their products. In 2017 alone, usage increased by an extra 130 million hours spent on Snapchat during the back-to-school season, connecting with brands through new filters and sponsored snaps.

It might not seem to you that these mediums and medias are as “zen” as the Saturday morning cartoons, but the reality is that they mean just as much to today’s generation as Cocoa Puffs and Rugrats meant to us.

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Trending from G/L: Danish Ad Breaks Barriers

Melissa Ross
Digital Content Producer

Trending from G/L: Danish Ad Breaks Barriers

Media

There are many different sides you can be on in life. Republican or Democrat. Vegan or Carnivore. Religious or Atheist. Categories we put ourselves into that seem to set each one of us apart from the “other side.” In today’s political climate and with the advancement of technology (such as the growing popularity of social media), unity between humans has never been so obviously shaken than it is today.

But a Danish television station ad is taking an aim at that division.

A commercial spot for TV2 Denmark opens onto a soundstage that has clear outlined boxes on the ground. Groups of people make their way across the stage, stepping into these areas that have been marked to define them. High earners versus those living paycheck to paycheck. Farmers versus people who have never seen a cow. Life-long Danes versus those who have recently moved to Denmark.

Us versus them.

But soon, an announcer begins asking questions:

“Who was the class clown?”
“Who loves to dance?”
“Who feels lonely?”

And something amazing happens. People begin to step out of their boxes that “define them,” and begin to uproot the “Us versus Them” narrative altogether. Until finally, the last question is asked: “Who loves Denmark?”

Every single participant stepped out of their boxes cohesively. The ad ends with “Maybe there’s more that brings us together than we think.”

The ad is a reminder – on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, which uncoincidentally was the day the spot was released – that our perceived labels don’t define us. That if we look below the surface, we find how similar our narratives are to those we think are completely different.

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Trending from G/L: Millennials Get The Best of Both Worlds With Agrihoods

Melissa Ross
Digital Content Producer

Trending from G/L: Millennials Get The Best of Both Worlds With Agrihoods

Planning

You’ve heard it before and have seen the headlines: “Millennials Are Killing The So-And-So Industry.” Everywhere from diamonds to napkins, millennials are being blamed for the downfall of many industries that were once booming in the past. And now there’s another thing to add to the list: Country Clubs.

In the 1990’s, baby boomers flocked to tiny golf communities because of the status that went along with it: the real estate was highly coveted because of the green space and beautiful views. But it seems that those that may have grown up in these types of groomed neighborhoods aren’t as interested in buying. Instead, they favor farm-to-table eats, the idea of environmentally friendly living and reducing one’s carbon footprint, but without giving up luxury amenities. Enter the Agrihood.

Short for “agricultural neighborhoods,” agrihoods, according to Business Insider, are “master-planned housing communities with working farms as their focus with ample green space, barns, and outdoor community kitchens. Some boast greenhouses and rows and rows of fruit trees. The homes are typically built to high environmental standards – think solar panels and composting.”

But these aren’t off-the-grid communities with tiny houses. In one agrihood in Palm Springs, California, homes are ranging from the high $300,000s up to $1 million. Millennials are paying big bucks for access to the communal farms, orchards, fresh food, community events, and nature.

With about 150 agrihoods across the country, a large percentage of which exist near larger cities, the attractiveness of getting sustainable living without having to give up big city amenities is another big attractor for millennials, who make up the largest segment of American homebuyers today.

What’s the rise of agrihoods mean to us? That the big growth in lifestyle markets we’ve already seen might be just the start. Our clients that supply products for weekend farmers/ranchers, hobby farmers, gentleman farmers, backyard gardeners, etc. have seen tremendous growth in recent years as millennials seek more and more to break from big city life and live more community-focused lives. But what started as a trend has quickly begun to look like a full-blown movement.

Millennials are blamed for “killing” a lot of industries. And while this generation continues to become a larger portion of the workforce and earn higher salaries, they’re in turn producing incredible growth in new and existing industries as well. Don’t let your brand be the next millennial victim. Contact Geile/Leon today, so we can help your brand find that sweet spot in your marketing communications – because your brand doesn’t want to just be a household name, you want it to be an agrihood name.

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