As a long time financial services marketer, you would expect Dan Marks to have the science of marketing down pat. And indeed he does, having built a predictive marketing spend model at First Tennessee Bank (see The CMO’s Periodic Table!) and the marketing tech infrastructure in his current role. But Marks sees the trend towards data-driven marketing going too far, explaining that, “Just doing the science without starting with the purpose is a recipe for failure.” Embracing the art-side of his job, he encourages his team to “remember that we are ultimately serving people” and to look at what’s happening with people in other categories.”
Author: admin
A Big Idea is Bigger Than Your Brand
Packaged goods companies are well known for their marketing discipline and not the place you’d expect to hear a CMO express the need for “tolerating a lot more chaos and ambiguity in the culture and the way we work in order to get to the good stuff.” But that’s just the starting point with Eric Reynolds, who among other things advises against using influencers on a broad scale and believes that unless your brand gets talked about via the “holy trinity of the brand story, the message, and the content” then the idea isn’t big enough to cut through.
How to Make Agency Partnerships Work
As chief Renegade for the better part of two decades, I’ve witnessed first hand the innumerable variations client-agency relationships can take. Some have been multi-dimensional like our phenomenal 15-year partnership with Panasonic. Others have been more focused like the BankCab guerrilla marketing program which drove customers to HSBC for 13 years. Some clients have given us a clean slate to solve a particular marketing challenge while others have been more prescriptive, defining the channels they want us to cover. Some lay out the budget parameters, others ask us what we need to get the job done. Some really truly treat us like partners, others as interchangeable vendors.
And here’s the crazy part, at Renegade we are incredibly selective about the clients we work with, seeking out the one’s that welcome Renegade thinking and want mutually beneficial partnerships. Yet somehow we’ve never been able to predict which relationships will endure. Part of the unpredictability is personnel changes — you start with one client team and can end up with a very different one down the road. Part of it is that only a few clients put a premium on their agency relationships such that they actually train their marketing employees on the care and feeding of these relationships. One exception to that rule is American Express which is why I was so thrilled to interview Pepper Evans, who until recently was Vice President of Branding & Member Engagement Marketing. Pepper actually ran a training program for AmEx marketers helping these folks learn how to be effective clients and as a result get better results from their partners. If the old saying, “Clients get the work they deserve” is true, read on to find out how you can always be on the right side of that formula. (By the way, you can hear Pepper speak at the Incite Group Marketing Summit October 27-28.)
Drew: Some clients approach agencies as vendors, others as long-term partners. Can you speak to some of the advantages of the partnership approach? Is there measurable value here?
Pepper: I firmly believe you should treat your agency like a partner in order to get the best results. That mindset leads to a different way of working together. First, you openly share your business objectives and metrics so that the agency can help you solve your issues. After all, you’ve hired them to provide a different point of view. Second, a partnership mindset assumes trust from the outset. You establish trust as a team norm, meaning they know you as the client have the agency’s back and will defend them and the work internally. In turn, the agency tends to give 110% to the project. Third, by being partners, there is an assumed give and take in the relationship, a mutual respect for each other’s expertise that is critical to success. What I’ve seen is that all of this leads to a commitment to doing great work together.
Drew: What are some of the things you think clients can do make their agency relationships more productive?
Pepper: Clients can make their agency relationships more productive by doing three things:
1—Understand the client’s role in the creative process. It is to provide strategic direction and feedback in the form of comments against the brief. It is not to play creative director.
2—Be appreciative of the creative process. When giving feedback, remember that a human being is behind the work. Don’t be a bully. Say thank you early and often!
3—Recognize the agency is a business too. Both sides have to be financially successful.
Drew: A lot of clients are moving to project-based relationships versus AORs. Are there any downsides to this approach?
Pepper: Project-based engagements mean that team turns over more frequently, leading to new agency staff on your business. You lose that deep institutional knowledge. On the plus side, it can drive innovation by cross-pollinating ideas across brands more frequently.
Drew: Over the years, it’s been my experience that clients with agency experience either make the best or the worst of clients. Do you see it as an advantage that you had worked on the other side of the table? How did that make you a “better” client?
Pepper: I think former waitresses fall into the same camp: some of us, like me, always tip well while others have such high expectation about service, that nothing can live up! In general, I do think it’s an advantage because it makes you more empathetic to who is sitting across the table from you. Anyone who has had a late night scrambling for a client deliverable is well aware of the impact of each client request and how that trickles down the chain within an agency. Without that inside knowledge, it would be easier to treat the agency as a faceless group of people just spitting out the work. And that’s where the vendor mentality can sneak in.
Drew: Working with an agency is an art form that many have yet to perfect. Is this a teachable skill? Is this something that a senior marketer can and should teach to more junior employees who are new to working with agencies? (if you did this at AmEx, please elaborate)
Pepper: This is a skill set you can learn but I also think the partnership mindset has to be emphasized from the top down. In my last role at Amex, I held an agency day for all the marketers in Plenti who worked with our various agencies. We taught them how to write a brief, give creative feedback, and, importantly, work with the agency as a partner. Many of the junior people had never been exposed to these concepts in a formal setting before. I see this as almost a life skill. Plus, a good agency can make you look smart and help your career progression, which is another motivation.
Drew: What are some of the biggest and preventable mistakes that agencies make that prevent enduring them from having relationships?
Pepper: I’ve seen agencies lose relationships in two main ways. The first is by getting greedy and pushing work that is unnecessary, which fractures trust. The second is failing to treat the client with equal respect and assuming an “agency knows best” approach.
Drew: You won a leadership award at Amex for your relationship building efforts. Can you elaborate on that?
Pepper:: I’m very proud of winning the President’s Leadership Award. It was in recognition of my ability to motivate and manage both internal and external teams through challenging situations. I believe my job as a leader is to point out the North Star and then use every carrot (not the stick!) in my garden to encourage people to find the creativity, strength, and imagination within themselves to get there.
Want to Understand Influencer Marketing? Become an Influencer Yourself
Every once in a while you meet someone who seems to be so much more productive than you are that you just have to stop and tip your hat. The recipient of my admiration most recently is Martin Jones of Cox Communications and as you will see in our interview below, Martin is a man who wears many hats from his day job as the leader of social/content/influencer/employee advocacy at Cox Business and the editor of CoxBlue.com to being a member of IBM’s Futurist influencer program, a program through which the two of us first met a couple of years back.
What brought us together again is the upcoming Digital Media World Forum (#DMWF) on October 18-19 during which Martin, Pat Zvick (GlassesUSA.com), Sean Gardner (influencer nonpareil) and I will be running a workshop on Influencer Marketing. The conversation below will give you a sneak peak at just some of the insights we plan to lay before the audience at DMWF. It’s going to be an amazing event so I hope you can join us.
SME: You wear a lot of hats as a marketer for Cox, Sr. Marketing Manager, writer, editor, speaker and influencer yourself. Do you ever sleep? Seriously, how do you juggle all of this?
I do sleep once in a while, but looking at the clock, I can see that it’s already 1:00 am on a Sunday night, and I’m reminded that I have a plane to catch to Roanoke in 3 hours.
Currently, I lead the social media, content marketing, and employee/ambassador brand advocacy strategy for Cox Business. I am also the editor/manager of the Cox Business content hub/portal, CoxBLUE.com
It’s a position that requires wearing a number of different hats at any given time. Marketer, publisher, coder, writer, editor, community manager, etc. Although it’s a Senior Management position, I’m still very much “in the trenches” on a daily basis.
Some days it can seem like a lot, but I’m now in my 20th year with Cox, and I’m still excited to get up and go to work each day. I work for a great company; I’m on an amazing team, and I can honestly say I love what I do.
As for how I juggle the different roles and responsibilities…
● Start each day with a great attitude (coffee usually works well, too!)
● Clarify and list priorities at the start of each day
● Stay organized and use a great task manager app (Yanado is my favorite)
● Automate the things that can be automated
● Learn when and how to say no (or maybe)
● Identify and use platforms and apps that streamline many of the day-to-day and recurring processes
● Delegate and trust others
● Be proud of what is accomplished at the end of each day
SME: Can you talk about a specific influencer program you’ve orchestrated? What were the goals of the program? How did it work out? How do you evaluate success?
The influencer/ambassador program our team has created for Cox Business is one I consider to be a best-in-class program. Instead of simply selecting a vendor and going from there, we determined what our needs would be from the immediate to the next few years out, and we built the program around that.
We’ve spent close to a year building, testing, and receiving and incorporating feedback to ensure we built something that met the needs of the organization, our employee advocates, and our influencers/ambassadors.
The primary needs/goals of the program included:
● Creating an end-to-end influencer/advocacy platform that integrated and incentivized frictionless content sharing and message amplification along with real-life – offline social activities and events.
● Ensuring that the program aligned with and supported our overall business objectives, but would also be flexible enough to easily adapt to small, localized micro-influencer initiatives in each market.
● Allowing influencers, employees, and consumers to participate whenever and at whatever level they felt most comfortable.
● Ensure that the program would be a two-way street in value for both the organization and our influencers. We wanted to create a program that benefited our influencers in terms of extending their professional networks, increasing thought leadership in their industry or community, and opening the door to new opportunities.
We recently completed beta testing in a couple of our markets, and the full program is rolling out now.
SME: Sticking with this particular program, how did you identify your influencers, and what have been some of the keys to bringing them on board?
That’s kind of like asking The Colonel for his 11 secret herbs and spices! We use a variety of methods and tools to identify influencers including social listening, blogger outreach, hashtag research, and more. We also have a direct link to the Cox Social Ambassador program on our site, where anyone who is interested can apply to the program.
Different groups of influencers had to be identified for each local market, as well as for a number of verticals—start-ups, small business, digital health, higher education technology, hospitality, enterprise technology, and more.
Because of the diversity of the programs and the various influencer/ambassador initiatives we will undertake in 2017 and beyond, identifying and on-boarding a wide range of influencers will be our ongoing focus.
To successfully onboard these influencers, we’re constantly working to ensure that the partnership is a good professional and cultural fit for both sides. To retain these influencers, we need to build relationships with them in order to understand their needs, making sure that they are receiving benefit from the partnership as well, beyond any type of recognition or incentives.
From the start, our influencers are given a documented agreement that provides clearly defined goals and measurements of success for each initiative and the overall ambassador program. We’re also very careful about providing our influencers with the tools and assets needed to make their role as achievable as possible.
SME: Can you identify three essential “do’s” when it comes to developing successful influencer programs?
In addition to what I’ve mentioned above, here are a few other steps we’ve found to be helpful:
1. Do support your influencer by promoting and amplifying their content and personal brand. As a brand or business owner, it’s important that you’re aware of what your influencers/advocates are up to and that you’re also supporting them, when and where it makes sense. Additionally, take time regularly to share and mention the content they’ve created for you on your social channels to support their efforts and increase exposure. Content, frequency and creativity, all increase when an influencer or advocate is being supported by brand he or she is working with.
2. Do select the right influencers for your brand and initiatives. Choosing influencers that have the right audience and personality for your brand is critical to success.
3. Do take a look at your prospective influencers’ social media channels to ensure not only that they are the right fit for your organization and have the followers you’re looking for, but also that they have an engaged, attentive audience. A high number of followers isn’t useful if those followers are not listening to and interacting with the influencer.
SME: Can you offer a couple of “don’ts” or influencer program faux pas?
1. Don’t assume that every person who has a large following or is a recognized name in social media will necessarily be a great influencer for your business, event, or campaign. A good influencer is not measured by the size of their following, but rather but by their ability to get their audience to take action.
2. Don’t underestimate the power of micro-influencers. For example, let’s look at the IT industry. A CIO may only have 300-500 followers, but if many of those followers are also CIO’s and other tech leaders, that person could potentially become one of your most powerful influencers. This applies to any industry, community, or niche.
3. Don’t overwhelm your influencers. This should go without saying, but it’s one of those things I’ve run into a couple of times and heard other influencers complain about. Don’t micro-manage influencers or try to get them influence “your” way. They know their audience better than you do, so let them influence by whatever methods are natural and authentic for them and their audience.
SME: You are among the IBM Futurists which is essentially an influencer program. How do you make sure you are helpful to IBM without seeming like a shill? Or asked differently, what kinds of things does IBM do that makes it easier for you to maintain the integrity of your personal brand?
I was honored to be named an IBM futurist. It’s an exciting program, and the opportunities I’ve had to network, learn, and participate in through that program have been incredible. Many of the things incorporated into our employee advocacy and influencer program are a result of what I have learned from the IBM team and their experience.
If I had to pick the one thing that makes it easy to participate, it would be that the activities that I’m invited to engage in are a natural extension of the work I that I am already doing.
I’ve attended a couple of IBM events as a futurist over the past few years, and each one has been an incredible experience. It has provided me with amazing learning opportunities in fields like business technology, start-ups, marketing, and digital trends—all the things that our audience at Cox Business and CoxBlue.com (our content hub) has a strong interest in.
I’ve come away from each event with an incredible number of ideas, strategies, and tactics. They make it a win-win, so it’s a very natural fit. The role of an influencer does not feel forced, there are no requirements, and I am not being paid to attend the events or share content. Instead, I simply do the same things I’m already doing every day: learning, writing, sharing, networking with our audience, and striving to bring to them the latest news, trends, and information that will help them grow their businesses.
IBM does an incredible job of connecting the futurists to conference speakers, experts, and others at these events, making it a truly a one of a kind experience for a business-tech-content guy like myself.
SME: How helpful do you think it is to be an influencer yourself when orchestrating influencer programs for your company?
In my opinion, it’s critical to the success of the program. As an influencer (although it feels odd to call myself that) I think it’s probably a bit easier for me to connect with other influencers and bring them on board than someone without a strong social footprint or experience.
There’s a comfort level of trust that influencers want from a brand. Having a personal connection—and knowing that person “gets” your needs and challenges—goes a long way in achieving that.
There are some things I’ve experienced as an influencer that have shaped how I have built and administered our program. Looking at things through the eyes of both the brand and of the influencer has helped us create a strong, well-balanced program that serves both sides well.
SME: Do you think more companies will try to do influencer programs in 2017? Should they? Since these programs often take a couple of years to gain momentum, what should their expectations be?
Yes. I believe more companies can and should jump on the influencer marketing bandwagon in 2017, simply because of the trends we’re seeing in organic reach.
While organic reach across most social networks continues to decline for brands, it has not declined for individuals. In 2017 and beyond it will become increasing important for brands to leverage both influencers and employee advocates if they hope to organically reach an audience.
Additionally, an influencer’s reach is going to be much different than that of a brand. The influencer will attract new consumers that the brand may not have reached through any other method. Better still, they’re coming via a referral from someone the consumer already trusts.
Like most successful marketing programs, building a strong influencer program does take time. An influencer’s primary objective is not to sell products, but to build or shape the perception of your brand in the mind of their audience. So while they will help drive traffic to your site or app, you can’t expect an immediate jump in sales. Think of your influencer program as an introduction to a new audience. It’s up to the brand to build the relationship from there, and that’s a process that takes time and nurturing.
Behind the Scenes with Hamilton & BNY Mellon
As a marketer, it’s not often that you meet upon perfectly aligned opportunities. The ones in which you can directly connect your brand story to something that is trending in the world, something that is relevant and of interest to your audience. The first step is identifying this moment; the second, and trickier of the two, is knowing how to use this to propel your brand. Only the most skilled of marketers are able to accomplish this feat, and one such person is Aniko Delaney, Global Head of Corporate Marketing at BNY Mellon. I spoke with Aniko to hear how she and her team successfully jumped on the opportunity of a lifetime when the bank’s founder, Alexander Hamilton, was thrust back into the limelight with the release of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s musical. I also learned how Aniko and the BNY Mellon marketing team use new technology, social media, and their agency partner to keep their 232-year-old company current. (By the way, if you’d like to hear Aniko cover this program in more detail, join us at the Incite Group Marketing Summit October 27-28 at the Brooklyn Marriott.)
Drew: When did you become the Head of Corporate Marketing?
Aniko: Two years ago. It was a wonderful opportunity because I have a broad view of BNY Mellon, having been the head of marketing for six of our different businesses. It really gave me the chance to dig deeper into the businesses and get to know our clients and target markets. And again, now in this corporate role, it affords me a very unique perspective. So it’s been fun to have that.
Drew: Tell me about the campaign that has been nicknamed the “Hamilton” campaign.
Aniko: We affectionately call it the Hamilton campaign, but we officially call it our ‘Invested In Our Legacy’ campaign. As long as I’ve been at the company, we’ve always celebrated our founder Alexander Hamilton and his pioneering and innovative spirit. What’s been amazing is to see how Ron Chernow’s impressive book, Hamilton, inspired Lin-Manuel Miranda’s phenomenal Broadway show that has now led to a celebration of one of the lesser known founding fathers of our nation and the founder of The Bank of New York.
Drew: From a strategy standpoint, was it opportunistic that this show came along? Were you able to hop on this crescendo of interest or were there other aspects that helped to expand the perceptions of the bank?
Aniko: We continue to build upon our strong brand, as a respected and trusted organization. But what we’ve been trying to do over the past several years is modernize our brandaSo it’s been a great chance to leverage the Hamilton phenomenon and evolve our message in a much more relatable way that is also digital and social media friendly. It has been this amazing opportunity to really use fun creative, create ‘snackable’ content and develop a multimedia campaign.
Drew: How do you make something that is old – 232 years old – fresh and current?
Aniko: We have had some great times working with our wonderfully creative agencies to really bring our story to life. What we’ve done is celebrate our 232 years of innovative and pioneering spirit with a multimedia campaign.. So for instance, in our archives we have beautiful handwritten ledgers with client names in it like Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr. Some of the client’s names are memorialised on street signs across Manhattan. However, today, the discussion that we have in some of our innovation centers is around Blockchain, which is a distributed ledger. It’s all about the new technology and exploring its potential for our industry.
Drew: How did you use digital and social to be more engaging and fun, which is very unusual for a bank?
Aniko: In imagining what our social campaign could be, we’re trying to have a lot of great educational content and activate it in creative ways. For example, in 1789, we were the first to make a loan to the U.S. government. Today, we service and offer investment management capabilities to 80 percent of the Fortune 500 companies. We can take these short messages and package them for use in the social media arena. We kicked off our campaign back on June 9th when we celebrated our 232nd anniversary with unique LinkedIn and Facebook posts We rang the bell at the New York Stock Exchange and tweeted the video and shared that we were the first stock to be traded on the exchange.That was followed just a week later with animated gifs during the Tony Awards, then more on Father’s Day to celebrate our founding father. We were able to enter conversations that we normally wouldn’t have before
Drew: How exciting was it when Hamilton practically swept the Tony’s? That must have been a wonderful moment.
Aniko: Our whole team has been just amazed with this great opportunity to celebrate Hamilton – the man, the book, the show. We had a lot of fun working with our agencies to come up with some very creative social media content. My favorite was: “Lin-Manuel gets a Tony for Best Book! Much-deserved, tho at a mere 20,000 words, I call it a pamphlet. A.Hamilton” Hamilton was such a prolific writer, so can you imagine him trying to tweet?
Drew: Your CEO might look at Twitter and say, “My Fortune 1000 customers are not exactly looking at our Twitter stream. Why is it important as 232-year-old bank for you to be on these social channels?”
Aniko: I think social media is incredibly important for raising our brand visibility in the digital arena. Gerald Hassell, our chairman and CEO, is an Influencer on LinkedIn, so he really has set the bar very high for our company. It’s very important to reach out to our diverse constituents in channels that they use.
Drew: Can you tell me a bit about some of the other campaign components?
Aniko: One of the things we’re really excited about is our sponsorship of PBS/WNET’s documentary – ‘Hamilton’s America.’ It explores the making of the Broadway show and includes footage of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s show, as well as a variety of interviews. It really brings to life not only the story of the show, but also the story of Alexander Hamilton.. We have two TV spots that bookend the documentary and use fantastic creative to tell our story in just 15 seconds each, as well as a series of videos for our website and social media channels.
Drew: How do you measure the impact of an integrated campaign such as this one?
Aniko: We have our standard KPIs, and are zoning in on the analytics and really use the insights to adjust the campaign after seeing what content is resonating. And we’ve seen double and triple digit increases in engagement and awareness on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook!.
Drew: Can you give us a preview of the kinds of things we might expect to see in 2017?
Aniko: The marketing teams have really rallied behind this concept. What we’re trying to do is think of new ways to activate it in the digital arena. We’re even exploring augmented reality. We set the year-long campaign so that we have a really good yardstick to measure against. But again, this is a theme we’ve been using as long as I’ve been with the company. Now, we’re just able to tell the story in a much more engaging way.
Drew: If you were speaking to CMOs or aspiring CMOs, what would you say were some of the key lessons learned in terms of managing a campaign like this?
Aniko: I think it’s important to have a unique and authentic story that represents your brand. More and more, especially with social media channels, we have to be really careful to make sure the content is educational and meaningful, but then have some fun with the creative. The other thing is to think outside the box, think about unexpected conversations to join and make your brand relevant in unexpected and delightful ways.
Drew: We do a lot of content marketing programs here at Renegade and our emphasis is always on quality versus quantity because there is so much content out there. Certainly, Hamilton created a unique opportunity for you, but I applaud you for taking it a few steps further with help from TBWA Chiat/Day.
Aniko: I have to give credit to our agencies. We gave them creative license by saying, “Look, we have this great opportunity, let’s share our brand in unique and special ways.” It’s been just an incredible chance to make a difference for the brand and really bring it to life in ways that we would not have only acouple of years ago.
Drew: What was the biggest surprise you encountered in carrying out this campaign?
Aniko: I have to say the biggest surprises were the engagement rates, both internally and externally. The content resonated and I think it’s more than just how cool Hamilton has become, but it’s the person he was. He was truly insightful and innovative, but he also got things done. He was an implementer. I think he’s been so inspiring to many and having that special connection has inspired our employees, clients, and other constituents to be really proud of the company that Hamilton founded
Drew: Oftentimes marketing is just thought of as an external activity, but it does really need to permeate the organization. How do you make sure your marketing is external as well as internal?
Aniko: We work with our internal communications team, and we’re able to really bring the story to life internally. The key goal is to inspire pride among our 50,000 employees. Each one of us should be an avid brand ambassador and share how we are continuing to drive the pioneering spirit of our founder, Alexander Hamilton.
Battling Goliath: How to Win as the Underdog
As my daughter was heading off to Copenhagen for a semester abroad five years ago, my “cheap dad” instincts went into high gear. With visions of thousands of dollars of long-distance cellular calls on my horizon, I suggested to her that we use a free messaging app that one of our client’s at the time had introduced. Her lightning response via SMS was, “Don’t worry dad, when all my friends went overseas they used WhatsApp and I’ve already installed it.” Of course, that settled the issue. We did use WhatsApp, helping her get through a long dark Scandinavian winter and saving me a kingdom of Krone.
That first hand encounter with messaging apps also shed light on what we could call the “community effect.” The adoption of mobile messaging apps typically happens in waves of users, community by community. And scale within a community matters since their value increases with the number of friends and family that also use the same app. This helps explain why one app could be very popular in one country and almost nonexistent in another. Most of these apps grew by word of mouth, spreading from friend to friend and in some cases, daughter to father.
The “community effect” creates a remarkable marketing challenge. How do you generate community versus one by one adoption? Can you accelerate word of mouth with a burst of advertising? And how do you do all of that in the face of ginormous competitors like WeChat, Messenger and WhatsApp? Well enough of the hypothetical questions, join me as I interview Scott Nelson, the North American head of Viber, a five-year-old messaging app with over 750 million users worldwide. As you will soon see, Scott learned a lot from his recent campaign that included a unique blend of traditional media, digital ads, content and influencer marketing and he was kind enough to share it to good effect with this community.
Drew: I read that Viber launched a marketing campaign in late 2015. Can you tell me what prompted this effort?
Scott: Up until probably a few years ago we had no marketing department. As we grew our base very quickly and learned more about our users, we realized that there was a very emotional connection with our product. Our first real campaign specifically here in the US was mainly to increase awareness around Viber. We have a really good global footprint, with users all around the world, but in the US people are not as familiar with the brand. So, number one was to increase US awareness around Viber. Then, number two was what I called a reappraisal for those people that knew of Viber but didn’t know that we had several different elements in the platform. We wanted to bring them up to speed on the services we offered.
Drew: Can you say a little more about the structure of your 2015 campaign?
Scott: We launched an outdoor advertising campaign that included the more traditional marketing and then we went deeper with a digital partnership, bringing in several different influencers to help our overall public chat platform. We aligned ourselves with well-known artists, and the likes of the Barclays Center to create live experiences within the app. We did several different things from traditional advertising elements to deeply social campaigns, so it was a pretty robust effort from September into December of 2015.
Drew: Let’s talk about metrics. Did you have a tracking study in place for awareness?
Scott: We conducted a brand connectivity study with our Spotified partnership, so we were able to get tracking information. We worked with performance media so we had a couple of different forms of brand tracking involved.
Drew: What were some of your findings?
Scott: There are a couple of different kinds of things that we looked at like how number of downloads related to awareness of the brand. When we looked at average yearly growth, we saw that our downloads had doubled, meaning we did really well when it came to actually getting people interested in downloading the app. Next, we looked at the daily active users and the monthly active users, which we call our DAU-MAU. A lot of the content that we created, and a lot of the efforts of the campaign were meant to get people coming back to the app on a daily basis. We did well on that front also.
Drew: Did you look at social media in your metric analysis?
Scott: Yes, we found that we had increases to 700% in overall brand mentions of the Viber name throughout all of social media. We saw a 20% increase in overall positive brand sentiments around Viber. We also focused heavily social media which did many things for our brand, and it was a really good learning experience since we hadn’t done much in the social media space before this campaign.
Drew: What are some of the bigger lessons you learned from this campaign?
Scott: One of the things that we’ve learned is the importance of focus. We decided it was best to narrow down to two things and do them very well, as opposed to working at five or six different goals. Then, number two is creating the right content. You’re trying to get people to come back to the service on a daily basis so you have to figure out what that right content is. Then, you have to realize that the right content for the messaging app space is different than what you create for social media or offline partnerships. Understanding the category and helping our partners create the right content that again is relevant to our user in each space is crucial.
Drew: So after getting people to download and use your app, the next step is to monetization. How is this done over at Viber?
Scott: We have two forms of monetization. One is for our Sticker Market. So you know, we have a very large sticker marketplace, and some of these are paid stickers, which is one form of monetization. Number two is Viber Out, which is a calling feature where if you have Viber and you’re calling someone with a landline, you’re charged a reduced rate.
Drew: I’m guessing more than 90% of that base is international. Even though you were focused on the US, was there any ripple effect on a global basis?
Scott: Yes, definitely. We’ve been working to create programs here in the US that will have a ripple effect into some of our larger regions around the world, namely Russia, South East Asia, India, etc.
Drew: How does Facebook’s acquisition of WhatsApp inform your marketing strategy?
Scott: Again, the category is rapidly growing. It’s the hot sexy category to be in right now, and I’m thankful to be a part of it. WhatsApp is gigantic, Messenger is gigantic, WeChat in China is gigantic. For a US-based service like us, we don’t have as deep a penetration as an app like Messenger or WhatsApp. So then we have to consider, “What do we do and how do we act, and what do we bring to market that might be different and useful for our consumer?” Anyhow, we are constantly brainstorming how we can be better than our competition. But at the same time, it’s all about what Viber is doing, and how we can improve our service.
Drew: You mentioned earlier that your team incorporated influencer programs into your marketing strategy; these are often very challenging for marketers to implement. Can you tell me how influencers were integrated into Viber’s wider marketing initiatives?
Scott: I’ve been working with influencer programs throughout my career, and I think ecommerce is probably one of the best blueprints of how to work with an influencer in the most authentic way. During my time at Converse, I learned how to create the right influencer program there, and have kept those lessons with me throughout my career. For me, it’s all about authenticity. Finding the right people that are authentic to whatever you’re working on, your brand, your company, etc. Our influencers came to us because they saw it as a platform where they could develop their own brand globally within the mobile messaging app space. The next step was to determine how relevant they were in popular culture. If they’re not relevant, then we don’t want them on our platform. We are more interested in people who are up-and-coming. Thirdly, our influencers needed to have large groups following their lead. That doesn’t mean they have millions of followers on Instagram, but more that they have a rabid kind of audience that paying attention to what they do.
Drew: Is there any individual that you would point to as a success story or prototype for Viber’s influencer program?
Scott: Yeah, absolutely. YesJulz is an entertainer down in Miami, South Beach. She came onto the scene probably two years ago because she started to do some really interesting things on Snapchat. She then became known as the Snapchat darling in South Florida, eventually making a name for herself in New York and LA. She was clearly very tech savvy so we got in talks with her about Viber. At the end, she understood the platform and really loved it. She then started her public chat, and now has well over 1.2 million followers. So, we basically took her from more of a local, US influencer to someone who is now getting calls from Berlin, Tokyo, Tel Aviv, and Rio. So, YesJulz is a great example of how utilizing the Viber platform in the right way can really enhance your personal brand.