Tag: Trends

Video Strategy Predictions for 2022

Randy Micheletti
VP, Director of Brand Strategy

Video Strategy Predictions for 2022

Creative

I’m sure you’re out there. Still uncertain if video content will benefit your company so you keep putting it off. You’ll get to it later…well, guess what? You’re losing out right now. Those that doubled down on video in 2021 are for sure seeing the benefits. 

Companies that are proactively using video to keep their customers connected and engaged are winning in 2022. But like all things, video continues to advance. Taking your video strategy from reactive to proactive will ensure your content and experiences are taken to the next level, according to Socialive founder and CEO David Moricca.  

In addition to this strategy shift, here are a few more predictions that are definitely worth exploring.

Be your own content distribution company

While virtual events were hot from 2020-2021, we’re now heading in a different direction. In 2022, we’ll be moving from large-scale virtual conferences to shorter-form, video-content-driven experiences. These condensed videos will allow you to use on your own channels, are easier to measure engagement, and push leads through your digital marketing funnel. Gone are the days of sending audiences to third-party platforms.

Shoppable videos are hot

Driving sales through social media channels like Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook has become impactful. The “shoppable video” is quickly becoming mainstream, and companies should include this in their video and e-commerce initiatives.

The “do it yourselfers” will emerge

As technology enables more people to create and distribute video content themselves, we will see the emergence of more people and companies producing video on their own. While the real estate, financial services, and travel and hospitality industries have dabbled in video content usage in the past, 2022 will be marked by a better ability to scale video creation as a new standard for engaging with their audiences.

Crowdsourced, peer-based learning will become the standard

As many companies struggle with employee retention and engagement, businesses are forced to find better ways to document and distribute knowledge to their workforce. Employees learn best from their peers because they can relate to them. As a result, training videos or written content will be heavily crowdsourced from their peers’ direct experiences in order to most effectively learn the on-the-job skills required for their positions.

Speed to market will continue to increase

As brands continue to embrace a digital-first approach to reaching customers, the speed with which marketers must respond to trending online topics keeps getting faster. When more companies begin adopting this approach, the demand will skyrocket for video content creation tools that enable marketers to more rapidly create a constant stream of fresh assets.

At Geile/Leon Content Studios, we understand how to concept and produce video content and how to use it throughout the funnel to engage your customers. If you’re in need of assistance with any video content we’d love to assist. If you’d like to talk or see samples of our videos, please reach out. We can definitely help.

References:
-Socialive Video Predictions 2022
-Cielo Top 22 Video Trends of 2022, Jan. 3, 2022, Mitchell Parks

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Trending from G/L: Important Lessons on Higher Education We Learned from a Spelling Bee

Shawn Maher
Copywriter

Trending from G/L: Important Lessons on Higher Education We Learned from a Spelling Bee

Trending Now

The Scripp’s Spelling Bee is a long-running annual tournament that pits the nation’s best elementary school spellers against each other in a tension-filled contest to crown the champion speller. Or at least that was what it was designed to do. In this year’s tournament, somehow eight students all tied for first place… and that’s not even the worst part.

One participant managed to circumvent the system and buy his way in without actually earning a spot. For the second year in a row. The student’s parents blamed Scripps Spelling Bee for a lack of oversight while spelling bee officials blamed the parents and school for a lack of supervision.

His parents said they knew their son hadn’t won the school bee. They claimed, however, that he sent the application on his own, and they merely paid fees and made travel arrangements with no suspicion of any wrongdoing whatsoever. When contacted by the Palm Beach Post, his father told the reporter,  “We are busy. We have three kids. We have a job. Unless we have a letter from the school, unless I have to take him somewhere or pick him up, we are not that involved.”

What is lost in the blame game, however, is a lack of understanding about why we strive for academic achievement in the first place. Between this snafu and the recent headline-grabbing, celebrity-laden college admission scandal, whatever happened to the idea of education as a tool for lifelong success?

The value of academic achievement, all the way from elementary school through higher education institutions, is found in obtaining knowledge and mastering skills. Not just framing a certificate or diploma to hang on the wall, but also utilizing your achievements to become successful in all of your future endeavors.

The more difficult the journey, the more rewarding it will be when you finally reach the summit. A diploma may get you in the door, but the invaluable skills that you have gained on the way to obtaining that diploma are what set you up to achieve your life goals. And that is the lesson that seems to have been lost in these recent incidents.

At the heart of these sentiments is what helps foster true success for institutes of higher learning. It is not an appeal to those searching for a shortcut or a transactional relationship. Instead, higher learning is an appeal to a lifelong hunger for knowledge, a quest for self-improvement and an aspiration to become something better, leaving the world a better place than it was before you entered it. It can be tempting, especially in such a fast-moving society, to seek out the path of least resistance. However, if there is anything we have learned recently, it is that the ability that results from a good education is a far more important predictor of long-term success. It may take more time and hard work, but the reward is definitely worth it.

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Trending from G/L: Debating Like A True Marketer

Geile/Leon Marketing Communications

Trending from G/L: Debating Like A True Marketer

Creative

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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Trending from G/L: Tracking 2018’s Design Trends

Ben Schwab
Creative Director

Trending from G/L: Tracking 2018’s Design Trends

Branding

It’s important for any competitive brand that plans on remaining relevant to stay aware and on top of emerging trends within their industry. A large aspect of this involves staying up to date on the ever-evolving visual landscape we find ourselves enveloped by. To cut through this overgrown jungle of visual noise it’s important to not just note and acknowledge these changes in our visual language, but to adjust and adapt with them. Otherwise, we run the risk of fading from view.

Here at G/L we are vigilantly on watch with creative syringes prepped to inject a booster of smart, relevant and modern design trends into work for our clients, ensuring a competitive edge within their respective fields. But don’t take my word for it. There are numerous articles discussing current design trends around the world. Below we highlight some of these trends and how we have incorporated them into our most recent work.

  1. Multiple Brand Color Schemes / Unconventional Colors

By choosing multiple vibrant and unexpected color schemes for a brand they have an easier time standing out. An example of this practice is best shown in our recent work for Cottey College, an all-women’s college located in Southern Missouri. By leveraging bold, full-floods of color, Cottey has developed a strong, visually modern brand for their school.

  1. Color Gradients / Bold & Handwritten Fonts

Being raised from the nostalgic grave by the likes of brands such as Instagram, the use of striking color gradients as well as bold, dramatic handwritten fonts has also been on the rise this year. These elements are both represented in our work for our client Upper Iowa University.

  1. Custom Illustrations / Branded Gifs

As brands continue to look for further ways of differentiating themselves, we’ve seen a trend in design toward more unique and “ownable” illustrations as well as use of playful animations and branded gifs. We used this approach when rebranding Pretium Packaging. During the process of a brand refresh, we heavily leveraged the unique look of their blue-print line drawings in order to visually tell their story of concept to final production of custom bottles, differentiating them further from other plastics companies.

If you’re looking to get ahead of the curve on design that will carry you and your brand into the future, send us a line. We’ve got the design smarts that are up to date and the design skills that are up to snuff. And if you are interested in more eye-candy, check out the rest of our work here.

Source Article: https://venngage.com/blog/graphic-design-trends/

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Trending from G/L: GQ Nails Comedy With Cover

Melissa Ross
Digital Content Producer

Trending from G/L: GQ Nails Comedy With Cover

Design

In recent years, many brands have vowed to reject photoshopped images of women in their advertisements to help combat Hollywood’s beauty standards. Brands such as Dove, Arie, ModCloth, Old Navy, Nike and even Seventeen Magazine have all made pledges to represent and celebrate bodies of every type. But one brand that seems to have missed the memo about the anti-photoshop trend is Vanity Fair.

Earlier this year, Vanity Fair received a lot of backlash for their Hollywood 2018 issue. The cover of the magazine featured many A-list celebrities, including Tom Hanks, Nicole Kidman, Michael B. Jordan and Robert De Niro, among others. But what had people talking the most were the three-legged Reese Witherspoon, and a three-armed Oprah Winfrey pictures inside, which showed just how “out of hand” rampant photoshopping has become.

Vanity Fair acknowledged via tweet that Oprah’s third hand was a mistake on their part, but reasoned that they believed Reese Witherspoon’s third leg was the lining of her dress. Whether they were truly accidental or simply ignorant, both actresses laughed at the mistakes.

Now, the gaffe is being brought back into the light – GQ seized the opportunity to poke fun at the incident on the cover of their 2018 comedy issue, released this month.

Featuring comedians Kate McKinnon, Sarah Silverman and Issa Rae, the cover blatantly mocks their sister publication (both GQ and Vanity Fair are a part of Condé Nast Media). They even added in an online post titled “Mistakes Were Made:”

“GQ would like to apologize to Kate McKinnon, Issa Rae, and Sarah Silverman for the egregious mistakes made in the process of creating the cover for our 2018 comedy issue, the latest in our pantheon of mostly annual love letters to the funniest humans we know. Our intention was to celebrate the three super-funny superstars, who are all that is smart and perceptive and riotous and necessary in comedy right now. We deeply regret that the results violated GQ’s rigorous standards of editorial excellence and the laws of nature.

In an effort to ensure that an error of this magnitude never happens again, and because this sounds like the right thing to say, GQ will be conducting a thorough internal audit of our cover-development process. To demonstrate our commitment to transparency, we will release the results of the review, quietly, in 17 months, on Medium.”

According to a Condé Nast source, “There is mass fury at VF today, the staff and editors are really upset. GQ is spoofing the VF cover which came out with all the Photoshop mistakes, the mysterious extra legs and hands attached to Oprah.” The source goes on to say that the editor-in-chief of Vanity Fair was never informed of the GQ cover, and feel that they are being mocked.

Whether you call it mocking or satire, the GQ cover certainly hits a few key points:

  1. They made the cover timely in light of the recent Vanity Fair cover
  2. They’ve brought the messaging of the issue (comedy) to the forefront of the conversation
  3. They’ve brought attention that photoshopping, if used at all, should be done with consideration and deliberation.
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Trending from G/L: Do You Suffer From PAR-ENT-ING?

Geile/Leon Marketing Communications

Trending from G/L: Do You Suffer From PAR-ENT-ING?

Trending Now

Are you suffering from PAR-ENT-ING?

YouTube content creators from the channel The Dad, delivered a hilarious dose of parenting reality with their satirical video entitled, “Do You Suffer From PAR-ENT-ING?” The video pokes fun at cliché and contrived pharmaceutical industry ads, exaggerating parenting as a disorder that “affects 10 out of 10 parents” and often results in “sleep deprivation, headaches, thinning hair, extreme debt and loss of self-identity.” The video continues to offer parents relief via a prescription called AphukenbrakE, which has side effects that include, among others, a sigh of relief, decrease in blood pressure and hanging with the guys.

The Dad focuses its content on modern fatherhood, serving as a hub for comic relief, community and of course, plenty of dad jokes. The Dad does an excellent job of capturing the humor and the messiness of parenting in a way that’s relatable to parents – both mothers and fathers alike. So, given what we know about millennials and the content that they embrace, the success of channels like The Dad should come as no surprise.

Millennial parents gravitate towards content and brands that they view as authentic and honest, which in the case of YouTube channel The Dad is exactly how their portrayal of parenting can be described. Millennials want to see content that is relatable to their own parenting experiences. In fact, millennial parents feel better about parenting when they hear about other parent’s mishaps. Read more on marketing to millennial parents here.

Check out The Dad’s PAR-ENT-ING video below:

 

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Trending from G/L: Mars Commercials From Another Ad Planet

Geile/Leon Marketing Communications

Trending from G/L: Mars Commercials From Another Ad Planet

Creative

Bite Size Horror

The relationship between marketing and entertainment is a long and storied tale of product placements, sponsorships and the like. It’s made the journey from subtle positioning in the background of a movie scene to TV episodes in popular shows that center around a corporate product. And of course, has anything really come full circle until it authentically and hilariously parodies itself?

But Mars and Fox have combined to write the next chapter in the love story between brands and entertainment. Instead of finding ways to make their brands a part of consumer entertainment, Mars went ahead and skipped both the middle-man and the not-so-subtle product placement by just creating the consumer entertainment itself. And perhaps surprisingly to some, it doesn’t feel forced, branded or gimmicky.

While we would have loved to be in the meeting when the idea of a series of two-minute, branding-free videos was first proposed, “Bite size horror” is a great example of where brands and corporations are heading. It’s not about sneaking in some subtle marketing message – consumers are way too smart for that anyways – so much as it’s about simply saying what’s worth saying and making what’s worth making. Would we be talking about it if the videos weren’t worth it? The connection to the brand isn’t convoluted – bite size candy bars are like mini candy bars, these two-minute movies are like mini horror movies. And the rest is just about making something good and bringing cool projects to life. There’s not much more to it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1olUV3BGvQ

Watch all of the Bite Size Horror Films here.

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Trending From G/L: Marketing to Millennial Parents

Geile/Leon Marketing Communications

Trending From G/L: Marketing to Millennial Parents

Advertising

ICYMI: Millennials are not just the same old flannel-clad, entitled, couch and career surfers anymore. Millennials are growing. Growing into families that is.

That’s right, almost half of our beloved millennial demographic are becoming mommies and daddies. At least 40% of millennials already have children, and that rate continues to climb as millennials continue to age. Considering millennials make up more than a quarter of the population representing 83.1 million Americans, and surpassing the Baby Boomer generation by over 7 million in population, this life-changing milestone means major lifestyle changes for millennials, and major sales category shifts and opportunities for marketers.

As digital natives, this generation has grown-up with cutting-edge technology at their fingertips and has been exposed to marketing messages coming at them from all angles. Millennials understand that brands are going to target them, and here’s what marketers should consider when communicating with today’s millennial parents:

Authenticity

Millennials recognize that parenting isn’t perfect; it’s messy, it’s stressful, exhausting, and absolutely extraordinary. Therefore, millennial parents prefer to see marketing messages that are authentic and honest about the portrayal of parenting. According to research from BabyCenter, 66% of millennial moms say it’s important for brands to realistically portray the challenges of parenting. Millennials gravitate towards brands that can offer a unique, tailored experience that can connect and relate to their own parenting experiences.

Community

Community is critical for today’s millennial parents. Millennials will seek parenting advice and product recommendations from multiple sources including, their peers, other parents, and oftentimes, community boards to get immediate, real-time responses. Much like millennial’s preferences for authenticity from marketers, according to BabyCenter, 55% millennials would rather seek advice from other parents and influencers who are open and honest about their parenting mishaps. And according to, Cassandra’s 2016 Modern Parents Report, 4 out of 10 millennial parents feel better about parenting when they hear about other parent’s mishaps.

Shared Experiences

Millennial parents want to publicly share their experiences navigating the journey of parenthood; the challenges, the milestones, and the joyous victories, all through the lens of a digital camera and shared via social media. And it’s not enough for millennial parents to just share their own experiences, millennial parents are more likely to engage with other parents, offering words of encouragement, advice, and make product recommendations to other parents via social media and community boards.

As millennials continue to disrupt the parenthood industry, marketers need to be more receptive to these lifestyle changes and tailor their messaging for multiple platforms, while reflecting authentic and honest experiences millennial parents are challenged with today.

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Trending from G/L: Above the Fold is a Myth

Geile/Leon Marketing Communications

Trending from G/L: Above the Fold is a Myth

Design

‘Above the fold’ is a myth. No really, there’s an entire web page and a bunch of data to back up such a bold statement. But we get it; you want your most valuable information to be front-and-center in case visitors don’t scroll.

Here’s the deal, unlike in the nineties when scrolling was mostly discouraged, today, everyone (even your 2-year-old) is predisposed to the habit. So much so, that one study found that at least 91% of visitors not only scrolled below the “fold,” but also almost always scrolled to the bottom of the page, regardless of visual cues. And according to MOVR, on mobile, half of the users start scrolling within 10 seconds, and 90% within 14 seconds.

The Screen Estate Debate

While there doesn’t appear to be much argument that, indeed, visitors do scroll below the “fold,” there is much debate on how long visitors engage with content above and below the “fold.”

Studies have yielded varying results on where most attention is spent. Chartbeat found that 66% of attention on a normal media page is spent below the fold. Conversely, the Nielsen Norman Group showed that users spend 80% of their time looking above the fold.

Even if we can’t agree on how much attention is spent above or below the “fold,” it’s still important to include attention-grabbing content at the forefront of your homepage. After all, your visitors will make their decision to continue scrolling based on the content at the top of your page.

(Web) Design With a Purpose

Marketers and designers should design their websites with intention and purpose. Below are some design principles that can be applied to keep visitors scrolling.

 

  1. Use relevant content:  Your website is competing for your visitor’s attention, and your visitors won’t stay long if they can’t easily access the content they’re looking for. Keep your content relevant and straight to the point.
  2. Break up your content: Instead of squeezing anything and everything above the “fold,” utilize the scroll to separate content to keep visitors engaged and interested. Humans by nature are scanners, and we tend to scan a new web page picking out individual words or sentences. It’s crucial that designers and marketers break up content utilizing eye-catching sub-heads, visuals, keywords, or lists.
  3. Avoid false bottom: False bottom occurs when your web design misleads visitors into believing there is no additional content below. To avoid this, arrange your content so that your additional content, such as a grid or sub-head, is placed just slightly above the fold. You can also create visual cues, such as an arrow, that prompts the visitor to scroll.
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Trending from G/L: McDonald’s delivers fabled famous Szechuan sauce to Rick and Morty fans

Geile/Leon Marketing Communications

Trending from G/L: McDonald’s delivers fabled famous Szechuan sauce to Rick and Morty fans

General

Free earned media. It’s the crown jewel of the marketing world. And it really doesn’t get much better than the McDonald’s-Rick and Morty-Szechuan-Sauce story that’s unfolded.

Image via Justin Roiland

The SparkNotes summary: Hit TV show with a dedicated following, Rick and Morty, referenced an old sauce that McDonald’s once served years ago as part of a tie-in with the 1998 Disney release of Mulan. Fans then became wildly curious about the sauce that had been discontinued nearly 20 years before, with even some McDonald’s higher-ups chiming in about its fabled existence.

It became a viral joke that had the McDonald’s name attached to it at every corner. And of course, they played along. But, they did it in such a natural way that fans, consumers and the like weren’t turned off by it becoming too much of a marketing grab.

In advance of the premiere of the new season of Rick and Morty, McDonald’s sent Rick and Morty co-creator Justin Roiland a bottle of that now-infamous Szechuan sauce, complete with hilarious description and label that played right along with the show. Justin Roiland’s tweet of the bottle and its packaging has, to date, garnered 141,781 retweets and 339,146 likes!

Image via Justin Roiland

But the pursuit of earned media like this almost never yields such incredible results. So what was the difference? Simple: McDonald’s never overplayed their hand. They just played along. And that’s a very big distinction.

Instead of latching onto the sudden and unexpected conversation around their decades old sauce, McDonald’s did no more than what felt natural. They didn’t milk it for some tired, multi-month campaign. Or try to turn it into a hashtag. Or any of the other marketing gimmicks that consumers now roll their eyes at. They put some effort into creating the packaging and remaking the sauce, and then let the internet do its thing. It’s no coincidence that, while they later released a few more bottles to fans via branded posts, the most viral post wasn’t even theirs. They just sent the bottle to Justin Roiland and trusted that his tweet, free of corporate hashtags and paid promotions, would do the rest. And they were right.

It’s an important lesson in an age where brands haphazardly try to insert themselves into the conversation. Don’t overstep your role as a brand. Just play along.

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