Mobile Marketing for the Oldies

When you think of marketing to “Older People” what comes to mind? Is it images of retired couples sitting back in a rocking chair? Is it couples that still have a so-called “brick” as a mobile telephone? Make no mistake here; these misconceptions in marketing for the elderly should be cleared up straight away.



In today’s ever-evolving technological world, brands and companies tend to overlook the over-65 demographic, perceiving them as not being tech savvy enough. Many also believe that older audiences are not prepared to switch brands, and therefore aim for younger audiences, hoping to win them as lifetime clients.

While this might have had relevance a few years ago, today’s reality is drastically different. People 65 and over now live longer, and are much more active and involved in the online world. Smart phones, social media, and online communities! You name it and they’re there. It is quite astounding to think that the elderly represent the fastest growing group of social media users, and are using it for the exact same purposes as other age groups.

With this being said, here are a few tips we as marketers can use when appealing to seniors particularly when it comes to mobile marketing.

Keep it Simple Stupid! The infamous KISS rule should be kept in the back of each advertiser and marketer’s mind when creating captivating mobile campaigns that target the 65+ age group. Even though they represent the fastest growing group when it comes to social media and new mobile devices, it can be argued that they are equally as influenced by ads that are much more simple when it comes to both text and image.

Based on research, when it comes to the text, use relatable language. It would make no sense to use colloquial and hip phrases seen on platforms such as “the LAD bible” because most of the time they have no idea what you are saying. It is important to ensure you are putting forth educational facts that will aid your consumers to make an informed decision about your product or service. Then we have image! Like our teachers used to tell us, a picture is worth a thousand words. Ensure that when creating your campaign you use simpler images. You will find that they are more visually appealing to those aged 65 years and older to make a stronger impact.
 

Congratulations! You have passed the first level of marketing to seniors. However, be careful as it is not over just yet. Once you have influenced your 65-year-old consumer to download your app there is another major focal point that you must get right if you want success. This focal point is the sign up/ set up. Generally once an app is downloaded, the user must enter a few of his or her personal details. If this sign up process requires too many steps, you’re bounds to lose users right away.

Keep in mind, those that are 65 years and older certainly did not grow up with technology as a fundamental part of daily life. So, taking this into consideration, many of the actions that feel natural to us “younger people”, require them to think twice. To solve the problem, lets make life easier for them! When designing an app, make sure to strip back the la-di-da fluff, simplify any in-app processes, enlarge small buttons and text, and explain each time you request personal information why you need it and how it’s going to improve their experience.

Lauren Musat
Current student in the Master of Marketing program at the University of Sydney Business School

Ambush marketing: A threat or an opportunity?

Ambush marketing is a strategy in which advertisers “ambush” or take over an event to gain exposure for an advertising purpose. The unauthorised use of an event for marketing publicity it not a new phenomenon. The first recognised example of ambush marketing came shortly after VISA was made an official sponsor of the 1984 Summer Olympic games over its rival American Express. The phrase "ambush marketing" was first coined by the head of marketing at American Express, who proclaimed his company “Have not only the right, but an obligation to shareholders to take advantage of such events”. For the very first time, laws on being the “official” sponsors of the event were starting to be enforced.

Source: http://21mktg.com/

By becoming an official sponsor or partner of an event you are paying for the privilege to associate yourself with that brand. That may be through the use of certain words, phrases or logos intended to raise your company's profile. Even though ambush marketing is a legally dubious practice, this has not stopped many organisations throughout the years from using this tactic to gain notable publicity. The Wimbledon Championships have long been protective over their classy and traditional five star brand image. They have long standing advertising deals with high status brands such as watchmaker Rolex and Champaign producer Lanson as official sponsors. The official water sponsors for the tournament are Evian, who feature their products regularly alongside the athletes. However, this has not stopped rival companies from handing out free bottles of water to spectators entering centre court in an effort to be noticed. In 2009 Pringles handed out 24,000 free tubes of its snack carrying the logo “these are not tennis balls”. The stunt gained widespread praise in the media for being innovative but drew criticism from the events organisers. 

Source: http://magicinads.empowernetwork.com/

In fact, ambush marketing has become such a problem at Wimbledon that the events organisers released a statement this year that they would take a “firm stance” on any ambush marketing. This includes refusing entry to any spectator they believe may be associated with ambush marketing and taking away branded items such as hats, rain capes, umbrellas, sun creams, radios and water bottles.
Ambush marketing can however be highly creative and has produced some very memorable publicity for major brands. The 1996 Summer Olympic games where held in Atlanta saw the then 100m champion Linford Christie defending his title as fastest man in the world. The official sponsor for the athlete’s footwear was Reebok who secured exclusive promotion rights. At a press conference before the race the champion appeared wearing contact lenses showing the Puma logo. This was later shown on the front covers of newspapers around the world, gaining great exposure for the Puma brand.

Perhaps one of the most notable examples of ambush marketing came in the World Cup 2010 when 36 women dressed in orange were ejected from a game between Holland and Denmark. Wearing short dresses and the national colours of the Netherlands the women drew lots of attention from fans in the stadium along with the cameras capturing the event. The stunt had been organised by the Dutch brewery company Bavaria to gain free publicity on a global stage. Shortly after the incident two of the event organisers were arrested with FIFA pressing for legal action to be taken against the brewery for breaching the Merchandise Marks Act.

 Source: http://www.news.com.au/

Ambush marketing appears to be a growing threat that continues to undermine the development of commercial sponsorship. It presents both an opportunity and threat for companies seeking publicity at major events.  However, ambush marketing raises both legal and ethical issues that must not be ignored. While there is certainly a responsibility for marketers to “do the right thing” there must also be counter measures and strategies to deter this behavior.

Even with stricter laws in place, the prospect of having your brand attached to a major cultural event, even in an unofficial way, may be too much for many companies to resist.

Robert Brunning
Current student in the Master of Marketing program at the University of Sydney Business School

Instagram is developing, but what does it mean for brands?

Instagram is updating and building upon its platform with new innovative developments, such as the integration of the Instagram API (Application Programming Interface).

Representing one of the fastest growing major mobile properties, Instagram is home to an engaged and authentic community with more than 300 million users. To further put this giant powerhouse in perspective, the mobile app shares on average 70 million photos per day and gives out 2.5 billion likes.

More importantly, the avid 13-24 year old users feel as though instagram has provided them with a platform to help define who they are through a 640px squared photo - pretty amazing if you ask me! Instagram as it stands allows their users to be visually creative, to find inspiration and to share snippets of their life, perspective and ways they look at the world.

On a more business-oriented level, Instagram poses an innovative opportunity for social advertisers to grow their brand. If you think about it, users on a global scale can engage with brands of their liking on a daily basis by following them, looking at new content uploaded, liking photos, sharing, commenting and visiting its website. In particular, we are seeing retail fashion, travel and automotive sectors rushing to get in front of the millions of users. The so called APIwill allow such sectors a further means to cross-channel and cross-publish content that is directly aimed at their target audience.

A prime example being high-fashion retailer Net-a-Porter, demonstrates just how influential Instagram actually is in building relationships with both existing customers and reaching new audiences that are interested in luxury brands. The instagram API test allowed Net-a-Porter to target very specific European audiences within 24 hours of their corresponding event. In return, the brand was able to drive awareness which resulted in Net-a-porter being able share outstanding fashion content with its customers quicker, easier and better.

With the API release, any company that is doing branding will be able to easily create, test, and optimise their direct response advertising campaigns on Instagram. Another few things that the API will be able to do include:

• Search tags
• Incorporate photos on websites
• View photos from specific locations in real time
• View popular and trending photos
• •Print photos from dvents and tags instantly
• Create compelling campaigns
• Market venues, events, brands and businesses
• Create event live feeds

Advertising campaigns on the Instagram platform have proved to be highly effective and can easily be managed alongside Facebook and Twitter. By doing this, advertisers are able to obtain some valuable information including performance, insights and management efficiencies. By leveraging the full capabilities of Facebook’s powerful advertising infrastructure on Instagram, brands can drive impact at scale across both platforms.

Lauren Musat
Current student in the Master of Marketing program at the University of Sydney Business School

4 Easy Steps to Succeed Using Online Advertising

Advertising online is, nowadays, the ideal, most efficient way of driving traffic to your website and/or business. It instantly extends your reach significantly and gives you greater transparency at a reduced cost in contrast to the more traditional methods of advertising (television, radio, papers etc.). Nevertheless, a successful campaign is one that is a good balance, and knowing what you’re doing exactly is key.

So what is it that makes people click on ads?

This being one of the most frequently asked questions in the digital marketing space, ought to be answered for once. All too often, people opt to advertising online without having a clue about what is it that actually makes people click on ads? Is it the flashy colours? Is it the animation? Is it the statements that push too hard?

Source: http://www.socialhowtomedia.com.au

Read on for a more comprehensive insight on what to do in order to get more customers through your online advertisements:

1. Know your customers - An advertising campaign must be directed toward your niche market. Creating generic ads that do not speak the language or grab the attention of your potential customers is a common mistake. You must always make sure you know the kind of customers you want to attract, and ensure that your ads speak to them on a personal level; for that is what convinces the customers that you are their best bet.
2. Be interactive – Nothing attracts customers more than when they are shown concern on a personal level. And so, one of the many advantages of Internet advertising is that it allows you to get instant feedback from the public on your product, marketing strategies etc. Giving your customers the chance to fill out an online feedback form can be a great way for you to analyse what the public thinks of your company AND your product. Also, you may even create Internet advertising promotions that will encourage people to provide their email addresses to sign up for contests or receiving newsletters. Then, you can use those emails to make the public aware of future products.
3. Pay attention to the colours – Yes, cliché as that may sound, the colour matters. Colours and colour combinations send different messages. The colour signals can be used to send stronger messages online. However, this part is tricky; you should use colours in the right way, at the right time, with the right audience, and for the right reason. For instance, if you are selling bouncy jump houses- where your audience is kids — you don’t want to use a black website – you’d rather go for vibrant, fun colours like orange, yellow, reds etc. While on the other hand, if you’re selling office chairs, you’d opt for the colour silver or black, or even a combination of the two. Its kind of simple if you get hang of it and are able to imagine yourself in the audience’s.
4. Call to action – This part oftentimes is the most prominent on the advertisement, and so, it is vital that your call to action has an impact on the customer. An effective call to action clearly tells the customers what they should do. They should include active words that encourage users to take an action, for example: Call, Buy, Register, Subscribe.

 Additionally, create a sense of urgency with words that can be used alongside phrases such as:

• Offer expires June 22nd!
• Order now and receive a free gift!

Furthermore, the positioning of call to action is important - Ideally it should be placed high on the page and in the central column.

Regardless of how wonderful or in-demand your products and/or services are, your business will not be successful unless your websites and pages generate enough traffic of targeted customers. And so, online advertising must be done bearing all the previously mentioned points in mind.

Good luck!

Alejandro Catalan
Current student in the Master of Marketing program at the University of Sydney Business School

7 tips to increase customer online engagement

It’s not like conventional ways to deal with, advertising where you particularly target prospects with direct reaction offers, engagement promoting permits your crowd and potential clients to associate with you and shape how they might want to speak with you. Engagement promoting starts when an intrigued individual makes a move to start an association with you.

Engagement implies somebody is keen on listening to you, and you must connect with that individual so as to accomplish your business target while satisfying his or her advantage. As a business element you will execute engagement advertising to drive your intrigued gathering of people towards business destinations:

Here are the 7 simple tips to increase customer online engagement:

1. Develop an engagement method: To be effective, you must set up an unmistakable arrangement and methodology for your engagement advertising. Your arrangement will need to incorporate how you will contact your audience members and how you will have the capacity to react and collaborate with your drew in members. This can be done through emails and social media.
2. Integrate with your promoting blend: All parts of your advertising correspondences blend ought to incorporate an 'invitation to take action' for engagement from just asking for remarks or postings at your websites or discussions to empowering audits on your items and administrations.
3. Focus on substance and relationship: Focus on significant and intriguing substance as the way to connect. Focus on building honest relationship with your customers by focusing on their needs and wants and full filling them with your available resources. 
4. Promote memberships: Use consent based systems to empower memberships with upgraded web forms. 
5. Invite audience to collaborate with your Blog / Fans Page: Establish a society and excitement for engagement by urging your audience to contribute with remarks, recommendations and even as visitor essayists to expand the perspectives and assets accessible to your associated group.
6. Conduct overviews and surveys: Run incessant studies to offer chances to start engagement while gaining from and about your listening group. Utilize a studies or web surveys to begin the dialog that is pertinent to the person.
7. Engage with informal communication: If you have not knew about Face Book, Instagram or Twitter that are behind the interpersonal interaction marvels, you should not squander any additional time, go straight to these locales and see how these destinations that are catching actually a large number of individuals who are effectively captivating on these destinations consistently. These locales work in light of the fact that long range interpersonal communication groups need to share and need to realize what their friend network and relatives are doing. Discover how you can influence the engagement and sharing of your substance utilizing these interpersonal organizations.

Keep in mind, once you have an intrigued group drawing in with you, verify you keep the lines of correspondence going, learn and alter your technique to guarantee your engagement advertising will conveyance main concern results to your business by expanding your client base.

There are around 14,000,000 internet users in Australia. Most of them are using social media; about 2,791,300 users are on twitter and 120,000 users on Myspace. About 5million Australians watch videos on Facebook and they are online all day so these sites are good place to engage your customers.

Good Luck!

Alejandro Catalan
Current student in the Master of Marketing program at the University of Sydney Business School

Apple 1984: The ad that changed everything!

For many years Apple have been known as an innovative company that broke boundaries.  It was not until this weeks class in integrated marketing communications that I learn just how innovative Apple had been in its advertising.  To tell this story we must first take a trip back in time to January of 1984. The Super Bowl XVIII was in its third quarter when something truly amazing occurred on the screen. But this did not happen on the sporting field, it happened during the advertising break, which would later become one of the most coveted and expensive slots for marketing.

The advert is set in an industrial grey landscape with what appears to soldiers marching through a tunnel. A “Big Brother” like voice speaks to his army of drones who continue to march forward. Out of the grey background comes an athlete dressed in uniform with bright red shorts and a white top carrying a sledgehammer. The athlete played by Anya Major runs through the crowds of grey drones into a large auditorium. As the Big Brother is finishing his speech and proclaims ‘We shall prevail!’ the athlete hurls the hammer through the screen. A bright white light projects from the broken screen with a voice over and text reading “On January 24th, Apple Computer will introduce Macintosh. And you'll see why 1984 won't be like Nineteen Eighty-Four”.

The ad was directed by Ridley Scott, who five years earlier had risen to prominence with the hit movie Alien. Much like the movie the 1984 ad was ground-breaking in so many ways. The rumoured cost of the ad was $650k, which at the time was unheard off.  The then Apple account manager Fred Goldberg tested the ad using a market research company before airing it in the Superbowl slot. The testing results where very disappointing, with even the Apple board of directors claiming to dislike the advert. But this did not deter Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak who were confident of its success.

So how did this become one of the most iconic adverts of all time? There are a few factors which led to this adverts success. Apple was the first company to produce something truly outrageous in advertising during the Super Bowl. The advertisement demanded attention and had amazing production quality for the time. More importantly it was more than just an ad, it was a minute and a half story. It closely mirrored the George Orwell novel Nineteen Eighty-Four which had been very popular at the time. The “Big Brother” character of the ad represented IBM and their dominance in the personal computer market.

Image Source: http://www.perfectlyintune.com/

IBM represented conformity and rules where the Macintosh represented revolution and freedom. The Macintosh was the first personal computer with a graphical user interface that was relatively affordable and easy to use.

The 1984 advertisement helped to position Apple as the innovative company that many of us know and love today. The ad has long since had an impact not just on Apple, but the world of advertising as a whole.

Robert Brunning
Current student in the Master of Marketing program at the University of Sydney Business School

Philips and its integrated marketing campaign

I know, I know! I have been MIA over the last week. Sorry if you all have been missing my posts, no sarcasm intended. I have just finished another intensive, yet amazing subject called “Integrated Marketing Communications” run by Dr Kathryn Charlton.

The number of late nights and group brainstorming sessions that took place was countless, but boy did we have fun! Besides the potato business cards, cupcakes and role play, we were able to walk away with a huge amount of valuable information that will most definitely come in handy down the track. As the subject was based around creating an integrated marketing campaign, I thought it would only be appropriate to post an article that reflected this topic.

Royal Philips of the Netherlands has launched an integrated marketing campaign in Australia promoting its current brand positioning and refreshed brand identity, “Innovation and you”. The change in message better reflects the brand's mission that aims at improving people’s lives through meaningful innovation. 

The central point of this campaign revolves around the brand’s new visual storytelling platform ‘Innovation and You’. This platform features a plethora of the latest Philips innovations, showcasing real-life stories from around the world behind each innovation. Philip’s campaign was designed in collaboration with Guardian Labs Australia that are the commercial content division of Guardian Australia.

Spanning across a four-month period, a number of episodes will air that revolve around the themes of a healthier, brighter future. These episodes will aim at inspiring Australian audiences, by demonstrating how innovation is advancing healthcare and personal wellbeing. It will further show how innovation is transforming the way people experience lighting in both public spaces and at home.

 “Our commitment is to deliver innovation that matters to people, by transforming healthcare access and delivery through partnerships, improving people’s health and wellbeing and making the world more sustainable through our lighting solutions,” says Kevin Barrow, Managing Director of Philips Australia and New Zealand.

Embedded in Philips belief is the idea that innovation is only meaningful “IF” it can bring forth change to the lives of others. The following campaign that will evolve over the next few months will focus on innovating in areas that allow people to be healthier, live well and enjoy life.

The campaign will be supported by more digital, social and PR activations containing a multitude of mediums such as rich video content, articles and interactive visualisations that showcase the individual experiences of patients, providers, caregivers, consumers and businesses alike about what Philips’ solutions meant for them in the most meaningful moments of care and how it has enriched their world being better connected.

Lauren Musat
Current student in the Master of Marketing program at the University of Sydney Business School