The to visual marketing Presented By
CONTENTS Introduction The Effectiveness of Visuals For Content For Insights Visual Marketing s Big Challenges Lack of Time or Resources Expensive to Create Timeliness and Relevance Conclusion About Chute 1 3 3 5 7 7 11 13 15 16
INTRODUCTION Being a marketer has never been as hard or as hands-on than it is today. Marketers aren t expected to just produce a commercial and a few ads. No, today, they are expected to constantly be creating everything from videos to Instagram photos to Pinterest-optimized photos to SnapChatting their communities to developing a Youtube series on top of television ads and billboards. To keep up with the content demand, what do marketers need a constant stream of most? Visuals. While visual marketing has seemingly been around for as long as marketing has been around, it wasn t until very recently that it took on a life of its own - where the demand and need for it has outpaced the ability to effectively create it. When I joined MRY, there were two hires I needed to make, both of whom share time between my marketing department and the creative and production teams: a graphic designer and a video producer, David Berkowitz, CMO, MRY said. So much of what we do for MRY s own marketing requires powerful visuals, from our auto industry study last year (www.mry.com/auto) to our fun video this May where we asked our own team s moms to try to explain what their kids do in advertising. I like to think MRY s leading by example, or following others examples. Ultimately, we re doing what works for us, and I don t think we re alone making those kinds of moves. We worked with Digiday to take a deeper look at the state of visual marketing: Who s using it? What s effective? And what s not effective? 1 This guide will take you through the results of that research along with examples and advice from key experts. 1
THE EFFECTIVENESS OF VISUALS The problem, as we ll show later, is that content creation is time and resource-consuming. However, according to respondents stock takes the least amount of effort. So marketers may be turning to stock as a reaction to the challenges that modern visual marketing creates. Stock is the Most Used on Paid Channels VISUAL FOR CONTENT How effective are visuals? 72% of marketers see them as more effective than text, and that percent bumps up to 76% when observing just brands with $5 million+ marketing budgets. 60 58 54 51 21 Stock Professional UGC (Of 200 Marketers asked, % who use channel) Original Designs Other Video Stock Takes The Least Amount of Effort 43 12 55 % % % % % 12 22 45 39 20 55 62 20 35 54 12 38 How much more effective are teams reporting visuals perform? 4.4x more effective. Stock Professional UGC No - Not Much Effort Some Effort Much - Very Much Effort Original Designs Other Video ( Of 200 Marketers asked, % who agree ) TEXT When it comes to paid channels, marketers are turning to stock most out of any other form of visual media. However, stock was also listed as the worst performing form of visual content. What could possibly be causing marketers to continue investing and putting paid dollars behind a form of marketing they know isn t very effective? 3 Stock Was Ranked Least Effective % of marketers who answered: Desktop Mobile We asked marketers Which of the following types of visual assets perform best in your marketing on desktop and mobile? 55 59 49 48 42 Professional Original Designs 38 UGC 31 31 23 23 Other Video Stock
[Consumers are] constantly looking for what s new and what s different, Chris Brandt, CMO, Taco Bell said. I think that that s a hard challenge, to always be new and different and innovative. It puts a lot of pressure on the innovation piece from a product standpoint. It also puts a lot of pressure on, are you doing the right thing in the different channels that you re on? We call it being endemic to the platform, right? Does it feel natural there? 2 FOR INSIGHTS Can visuals also be effective outside of content? Yes! Looking specifically at user-generated visuals, 80% of marketers who had used this content for insights said it was helpful. 80% of marketers who use user-generated visuals say its helpful However, less than 50% currently use UGC in that manner. Why? We asked marketers what has prevented them from using UGC on social media to uncover consumer/market data A mix of technology and education are factors here. The technology has to make it stupid simple for marketers to quickly scan a report and understand what s going on. As with other kinds of reporting, there needs to be that shift from data to insights. And then as such tools exist and are rapidly improving, agencies and brands need to know about them and how to use them. - David Berkowitz, CMO, MRY? 32 27 24 6 11 Process is manual/labor intensive % % % % % Lack of software or technology Too much noise on social media Social not good indicator of market data ( Of 200 marketers asked, % who answered in each category ) Other Overall, it all boils down to difficulty. This is especially true for brands, with almost 55% saying the process is too manual and labor intensive. Agencies, however, said it was the amount of noise and lack of technology or software that stopped them from tapping into visuals for insights. Manual processes and lack of technology prevent m a r keters from using UGC to guide their visual s t rategy 5
VISUAL MARKETING S BIG CHALLENGES 1 Mining Consumer Insights 56% 2 3 Content Creation 49% Performance Measurement 45% Despite being of such huge importance to marketing, visuals also provide some equally big challenges. As shown earlier, both owned and earned visual media is important for brands, but there are roadblocks preventing marketers from utilizing visuals to their fullest potential. These three tasks are the ones that are putting the most pressure on marketers shoulders and are also potentially the most important parts of their jobs. Insights leads content strategy and performance measurement shows them what was and wasn t successful to guide future planning. The Top 3 Are: Mining Consumer Insights 65 65% of marketers say they lack the time and resources to be effective at visual marketing 57 57% of marketers say high cost is a major challenge in creating compelling visuals 36 36% of marketers say maintaining timeliness and relevance is a major roadblock For us, the key focus is to understand the trends, Raja Rajamannar, CMO, MasterCard said. What is being talked about right now? What are people interested in? What are people responding to? These are the kinds of things we re trying to learn from a marketing perspective. 3 1. LACK OF TIME AND RESOURCES Marketers want (and need) to understand their consumer better - but pulling together a story and discovering the key insights from the immense amount of data at their fingertips is overwhelming. Already, the majority of marketers spend at least a quarter of their day-today work on the various aspects of visual marketing - from creation to distribution. The traditional thought process is to turn data into insights, which is part of the problem. As we stated previously, one resource for generating insights-first research is user-generated visual media which is still largely untapped. The benefit of visual insights tools is twofold. With time being such an incredibly limited and valued resource, there are multiple tasks from their job that marketers wish could be automated to save time. The top 3 are: 7
1 2 First, there's a layer of context - you get to see the photos and the content creators, which immediately inspires ideas and makes connections versus charts and graphs alone. Second, visual communication is how your customers are sharing the topics they re most passionate about and how the most influential content is being circulated. It's important to know what people are sharing, but almost even more important is understanding the meaning behind the content. Content needs to be given characteristics in order to be meaningful. Nothing lets you define your consumer profile better or provides the ability to fine tune and customize your communication based on a detailed consumer profile better than the photos they share. Visual insights tools look at a variety of factors like keywords and engagement to qualify the content shared. At an agency, there s always pressure to be more efficient in what we do, Berkowitz said. But I wouldn t say streamlining is the overarching, most important goal. We re still working on figuring out what works best, and we re constantly adapting to new platforms and channels. We want to be able to try better methods and see what works for our clients goals. Streamlining can lead to missed opportunities this early on. Performance Measurement Measuring performance is a tricky task because signs of success fluctuate from company to company - and even from person to person. The best way to streamline this task is to agree to KPIs early and to get buy in from everyone involved - from creatives to the CEO. However, on top of agreeing to KPIs, is the question of how to actually measure them at all since visuals are often part of a greater effort. 9 Content Creation 48% said that content creation processes needed to be more automated, and 58% said achieving a more streamlined approach was a high priority for 2015. However, according to Berkowitz, the real goal is being able to experiment and adapt. If I had the silver bullet, I d be yacht shopping right now and leaving early for the Cannes Lions, Berkowitz said. Marketers have gotten much better at tying any kind of social media marketing into their overall business goals, but it s still early there. Some visual media is used for branding purposes, and there isn t always enough scale to measure any of it for brand effectiveness. Meanwhile, visual media can be used to support direct marketing channels, such as when sourcing powerful imagery to use in posts that are then promoted on Facebook, Pinterest, or elsewhere, and the ROI can be tracked. The ROI s on the overall campaign, not just the visual, but the visual can make or break it. I don t even know how obvious this is to say, but the important takeaway there is that visual media isn t entirely for branding.
2. EXPENSIVE TO CREATE Marketers are planning to spend 1/3 of their 2016 marketing budgets on visual marketing. However, while budgets for visual marketing are growing, so is the demand for more and more content. This means marketers will continue to need to stretch a dollar and allocate wisely. 16 20 $$$$$$$$$$ That brings us to our second tip: embrace the magic that is co-creation. Whether you re working with everyday consumers or prolific influencers, co-creation can often be a way to not only cut down on production costs but also get some of the most passion-fueled content possible. Take, for example, Benefit Cosmetics, who uses a mix of owned, influencer, and authentic earned content to fill their social channels. One surprising takeaway - the earned media often far out-performed the owned or influencer content. 1/3 of 2016 marketing budgets will go to visual marketing First, plan to leave some of your allocated budget untouched, so your team can remain incredibly agile and responsive to your customers. Once, marketing teams would have been fine to distribute all their dollars near the beginning of the year for specific campaigns to air at specific times. However, modern marketers know that the marketing cycle doesn t quite work like that anymore. Planning for spontaneity means that when you find yourself discovering a new video trend in the middle of July, your team has the budget to test out the format. 11 Owned - 1,698 likes Influencer - 2,502 likes Earned - 11,539 likes Another example comes from a recent 3-part series created by YouTube creator JacksGap for Marriott. Jack reached out to Marriott with the idea of creating 3 short films about spending 24 hours in 3 different cities. Videos were filmed and edited by Jack using a camera rig he also made himself. So far, 2 of the 3 videos have been released, and in less than a month hundreds of thousands of viewers have been reached on YouTube alone.
3. TIMELINESS AND RELEVANCE Overall, 78% of marketers see the content people encounter from entertainment to social media as a serious threat to their relevance. Brands, especially, were the most concerned, with 88% calling it a threat. As an example, they launched Priceless Surprises last year where they took the time to create hundreds of thousands of surprise moments to delight their customers - from something small like a free digital download to the truly outrageous like spending the day playing putt putt golf with Justin Timberlake. We asked marketers how serious of threat they considered this content to be. ( Of 200 marketers asked, % who answered in each category ) Very Serious Serious Somewhat Serious Not Too Serious Not Serious At All 14 32 32 18 3 Today you have an unprecedented opportunity to reach consumers through social media you can literally reach millions of people in a heartbeat, Rajamannar said. But if you look at the other side of the equation, it s exceptionally difficult to engage them. # @ # look at me! @ # # How does MasterCard tackle this problem? By creating real moments with real customers. We are trying to create marketing platforms that look at me! will deliver extraordinary experiences in real time to consumers, Rajamannar said. The result? It s increasing affection for our brand among consumers, he said. There s a perceptible shift happening. 13
CONCLUSION Visual marketing is 100% about the consumer. It is defined by marketing teams creating content that s easier to consume, grabs attention, feels personal and authentic, and is relevant to consumers lives. Achieving this can be unbelievably hard for many teams leading to the use of less-than-stellar forms of content in order to try and keep up. However, the teams that invest in technology and are willing to be agile are reaping the benefits of a consumer base that s not just aware of their existence but engaged. ABOUT CHUTE Chute gives brands mastery over the world s visual media - from discovering audience content and key influencers to the ideation, production, and amplification of compelling visuals through its visual marketing automation platform. SOME BRANDS WE WORK WITH: SOURCES: 1. State Of The Industry. Visual Marketing: Scale To Win 2. The CMO.com Interview: Chris Brandt, CMO, Taco Bell 3. The CMO Interview: Raja Rajamannar, CMO, MasterCard 15 www.getchute.com @getchute