Except that, in the end, the next world is one of NFTs, metavers and diving masks made in Apple. All things that haven't changed much, I'm sure you'll agree. Which brings us to the next question: aren't we focusing a little too much on the things that have changed, and not enough on the things that haven't?
And it's a theme we're going to explore by applying it to something that's taken up a tiny bit of space in our businesses (and our lives): digital and social networks.
DISCLAIMER
Yes, I've just implied that digital hasn't potentially changed everything, and we'll even come to the conclusion that digital hasn't revolutionized the way we do marketing.
The words are strong. You are shocked. You share this article.
It's clear, however, that the Internet has changed our habits, our way of communicating... But here we're going to talk about the way we think about branding and marketing.
DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY DRIVES SHORT-TERM THINKING
If social networks have given brands the opportunity to speak to the whole world, they have above all given them the ability to measure everything: number of subscribers, number of clicks, engagement rate, reach, organic impressions, paid impressions...
This leads to two biases:
We measure too much. Too often. Every micro-growth, from one quarter to the next, when we know full well that a brand is built over time (we know this so well, we talked about it right here). And this has a lot to do with the results injunction that goes with being in a company: those +0.7% engagement rates in Q4 are something you can tell your boss.
We measure too much. Too many things. We have to measure everything. But do we know the correlation between engagement rate and purchase intentions, brand awareness? Spoiler: yes. Re-spoiler: the correlation is less than 1%. Engagement rate has almost no effect on sales, and is therefore not a really relevant metric for a brand.
We're talking about engagement rates here, but the truth is that it's very complicated to link social media metrics with business consequences. As a result, we have to focus on reach, with a purely advertising logic, which consists in exposing our brand to as many people as possible, gaining notoriety, and mechanically capturing an ever-growing audience.
DIGITAL DRIVES FOCUS ON THE BOTTOM OF THE FUNNEL
This view of social networks is tantamount to seeing them as advertising spaces, where you pay to reach as many people as possible. This would be to overlook a specific feature of the digital world: data, and the ability to target audiences very precisely.
Nevertheless: being very specific about a certain audience is often a way of generating sales quickly. It works in the short term, but less so in the long term. Once again, we refer you to this article (it's the same as above), but the important thing to remember is that it's more interesting in the long term to think about the long term too.
In short, it's like handing out advertising for a restaurant in the queue in front of it: yes, these are easily-converted prospects, but at some point you also have to try to attract people in front of the restaurant.
BRANDING ON SOCIAL NETWORKS
To reach as many people as possible, we need to think of social networks as mass media.
On the media side, this means betting on media buying with a reach objective.
On the creative side, it's creativity that makes you memorable. We leave you with a few examples that we like, not least because they show that you can make big brand films on digital, and because they show that you don't have to make ads that look like Tiktok to make them work on Tiktok.
At Kazam! we're here to help brands achieve their business objectives. Don't hesitate to contact us if you need a complete communications ecosystem, and we'll be happy to make you a great TV movie and memorable activations, or something more clever to fit your budget.
And don't hesitate to subscribe/follow us on social networks so you don't miss any of our upcoming strat tips!
Gabriel, strategic planner at Kazam!
