April 30th 2010
Branded platforms have been the buzzword ever since the success of Nike+. Unfortunately, as is often the case with buzzwords, not many people understand how or why branded platforms work.
Here at Stonewall we’ve done research into these platforms to find the recipe for success and to distill the core essence of theoretic platform building.
Firstly, platforms are built around a brand truth. These brand truths are identified using the general brand positioning. The various brand truths (for example in the case of Nike+ the brand truth identified is that Nikes assist you in running) identified are listed as potential cores for the platform ideas.
The next step is to identify consumer truths out of these brand truths; as consumer truths are the natural extension of the brand truth showing the consumer perception and interest in the brand truth.
Thirdly, platform concepts are then discerned from the consumer truths. These are specifically fleshed out in relation to central universal touch points that can be used in various formats. The central platform concept needs to be standalone with either utility or long term entertainment value. The platform concept should also be of such a nature that it can run independently without any activation or force fed marketing.
Once the platform concept is up and running, it is always helpful to organise decentralized targeted activation points around it. These still need to tie back into the central platform concept but can have specific twists to allow for unique consumer segmented insights for further relevance. Secondary core insights or sub concepts can also be tied into the various activation elements. These are normally relating to CSI or other specific elements.
And there you have it, branded platforms in a few easy steps.
September 22nd 2009
Overview
Estée Lauder’s Advanced Night Repair Serum first launched 28 years ago and it’s been a best seller ever since. Designed to repair, treat and help fight the signs of ageing all while you sleep, it had millions of women worldwide wishing for bedtime.
Estée Lauder has now launched the new reformulated Advance Night Repair Synchronized Recovery Complex that promises to leave your skin looking even healthier and younger. The new formula is designed to do everything the original serum did plus more.
Aim of Campaign
To launch Estée Lauder’s latest skin care product, New Advanced Night Repair to the South African online female cosmetic market
Challenges
• To position Estée Lauder within a digital landscape fraught with limited marketing opportunities and distinguish them from their competitors
Tactics
• A combination of interactive content, ad format technology and delivery processes were used in order to create a richer, higher impact campaign in a competitive digital media environment
• A large percentage of Women24.com’s inventory was bought out in order to increase ad view frequency and ultimately enhance the brand’s presence.
• Roadblocks were used on MSN’s Homepage to generate a large share of advertising voice (SOV), using exclusive placements displayed on the portal’s Homepage for a full day.
• Dynamic rich media creative was then incorporated from Estée Lauder’s global office based in New York and due to broadband’s growing popularity in South Africa, video banners were also used.
Outcome
The interactive video banners provided a platform for user and brand engagement resulting in excellent click through rates allowing Stonewall + Media to track user interaction rates with the banners, rather than relying solely on click throughs to the website as a measurement of success.
August 25th 2009
Overview
The V Festival was set to come to Cape Town and Johannesburg in December 2008, playing 12 hours of music to 60 000 fans. 18 bands including Snoop Dog, Eddy Grant and One Republic were scheduled to perform. After much marketing, promotion and outstanding ticket sales, the festival was postponed.
The V Festival originally gained its popularity in the UK with the first festival being played in 1996. The V Festival is still one of the largest and most popular in the UK held annually at two major venues. It attracted over 180 000 fans in 2008 alone. The ‘V’ represents the Virgin Group and began as another means for promoting Richard Branson’s companies.
Aim of Campaign
• To establish and build the Virgin Festival brand in South Africa
• To sell 55 000 tickets (35 000 Johannesburg, 20 000 Cape Town)
Target Market:
• Young urbanites aged 18-35 and the young at heart urbanites aged 30-40
Challenges
• The main challenge here was driving ROI for this campaign. While generating large amounts of traffic to the Virgin Festival Microsite was important, the ultimate goal of the campaign was to sell tickets.
• Unfortunately, the concert was cancelled which meant that tickets sales were excluded from the final KPIs (Key performance indicators).
Tactics
Used a combination of music, entertainment and social networking sites including:
• Channel24.co.za (Media 24 Entertainment)
• iafrica Entertainment
• MSN.com
• Thunda.com
• Facebook.com
Outcome
• The campaign delivered over one million impressions in just two weeks.
• The average response rate for all sites combined was 0.56%, which exceeded the industry average for online marketing.
• Individual site placements performed even better with response rates as high as 0.68%.
• Because the concert was cancelled, the campaign was more a branding exercise for future Virgin Festivals
August 18th 2009
OVERVIEW
Lexus is the world’s answer to sustainable transport that while as a hybrid vehicle it’s both environmentally and economically friendly it does not compromise performance and luxury attributes sought after by Lexus customers worldwide.
AIM OF CAMPAIGN
To manage the digital component of the New Generation Lexus RX350 and RX450h launch to the South African market in July this year.
TARGET MARKET
• Free spirited, budget conscious and adventurous consumers, relatively unaware of Lexus as a brand
• 60 % male and 40% female
• 80% English speaking between the ages of 30 and 55 years old, with an income of R45k a month
CHALLENGES
• Position Lexus online as the brand at the forefront of sustainable motor vehicle technology in South Africa and capture information on users who were interested in booking a test drive on Lexus.co.za. Finding the balance between website branding and direct response through booking the test drives was the key to the campaign succeeding.
• Finding innovative ways to apply award-winning creative in key publishing environments that would distinguish Lexus within the digital landscape already overloaded with competing automotive brands.
• Balancing online measurements with offline leads
• Applying the appropriate digital tools that would not only measure direct response activities such as impression delivery, reach and frequency and composition metrics, but also measure brand awareness, favourability and other attitudinal variables.
TACTICS
• Stonewall + Media applied engaging and interactive Rich Media ads making use of interactive expandable banners where users could view different features of the cars thus providing a platform for brand engagement.
• To ensure users were signing up for the Lexus test drives, ‘call to action’ messages prompting users to ‘book a test drive’ appeared regularly while they were interacting with the banners.
• A homepage takeover was initiated, making it the first of its kind done in South Africa, requiring a relatively large budget, stellar coordination between brand, agency and publisher, and creative worth talking about.
OUTCOME
• The campaign has seen excellent results in terms of click through performance, generating large amounts of web traffic to the Lexus website. In addition, results show that users interacted with the Rich Media banners for an average of 20 seconds and considering a TV ad runs for 30 seconds and doesn’t offer the viewer the choice to interact with it.
• Not only did we send loads of traffic to the website, but we turned that traffic into conversions (users who booked a test drive on the website). Thus achieving a ‘hot lead’ conversion rate of around 3% of all traffic sent to website.
June 5th 2009
MXit was first launched in 2005 as a mobile games developer but quickly evolved its product into a next generation Mobile Instant Messenger allowing its users to send and receive one-on-one text and multimedia messages to and from other users, as well as in general chat rooms free of charge. MXit is now the biggest internet and mobile software application used in South Africa, with over 11 million members
Aim of Campaign
Position MXit as the preferred IM platform in Indonesia, Kenya, Uganda and Mexico.
Target Market
- Primary: Males and Females 16 – 25
- Secondary: Males and Females 26 – 35
- Both are urban, socially and digitally connected, aware of IM’s and are looking for affordable, easy and safe ways to communicate with their friends
Challenges
- Establish the digital behaviour and preferences of each region’s particular target markets taking into account the time spent on a homepage and if they prefer reading articles or watching videos.
- Building relationships with media owners in each region considering their varied media and advertising structures and formats.
- Foreign languages, taking into account MXit’s application is in English.
- Accurately tracking and optimizing the campaigns in four different regions in real-time on both online and mobile platforms
Tactics
- Numerous ad variations were developed specifically for each region by incorporating features such as call to action, primary image and colour to help establish digital behaviour and preference as well as taking the different languages into account. Ad execution was then tested in real-time optimized to best serve each site.
- In order to build relationships with foreign media owners as well as track and optimize campaigns our dynamic ad serving system allowed us to aggregate all the data collected from each region on one central platform. Performance data from all the different countries, languages, sites, placements, platforms (mobile & online) were then evaluated to measure the success metrics of the campaign. By knowing which elements in the ad contributed to people clicking on it as well as the combinations that were the most effective, gave us the ability to make informed optimization decisions
Outcome
- In one month, the campaign served in excess of 40 million online impressions to a global audience generating 40 000 clicks through to the landing page allowing users to sign up to the MXit IM network.
- And served almost 50 million mobile impressions to a global audience generating more than one million clicks through to MXit’s WAP site.
