There have been various innovations in digital advertising that have changed how campaigns are run. Some have been quite innovative but haven’t fully caught on yet. The three that I am going to explore today blew me away in terms of customer engagement.
Video responses
Video responses have been rarely used by companies as a way to respond to a query from the consumer. In South Africa video responses are usually done when another company ‘challenges’ your company. This is referring to the Cell C – Nandos ‘tiff’ which brought much entertainment. Back to companies responding to customer’s via video methods. Old Spice has been the best brand so far using YouTube videos to respond to its customers. This began with their new campaign with Isaiah Mustafa with the whole “Smell like a man, man” adverts. Mustafa would respond to individuals with each video. This makes the interaction more personal by having the current spokesperson dealing with the brands customers. More than a 100 videos were produced of Mustafa responding to queries. These videos have now also become adverts as some of them have garnered more than 100 000 views. These responses were not limited to the ones sent via Twitter. Mentions in blogs or television shows were also noted and responded to.
New advertising space
In reality there is a saying that I’m sure many of us have heard before “location, location, location”. This is true for advertisers when it comes to space on websites. Consumers have become weary of banners and pop up adverts. I know that I have stopped noticing most banners on a website. This is where the next innovation comes to play. This was thought of by Solve Media, that instead of having the CAPTCHA (an acronym for “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart”) section having random letters and numbers a brand statement would be typed in. I like this idea because it gets rid of the time that I have to spend deciphering the code. This uses the concept that all space can be used for advertising and location is important. According to Solve Media having the consumer type in the message it is more likely that there will be retention of the brand and follow up.
“On average, on a relative basis, we found that TYPE-IN™ ads increased brand recall 111% and message recall by a factor of 12 compared to the exact same creatives displayed as non-interactive static advertisements.”
Interactive videos
The last innovation is different and can’t necessarily be used by everyone. But it makes the consumer feel like they are part of the video. These videos are from the Chrome Experiment powered by Google. The latest offering from them is a video by the band OkGo with their song All is not lost. At the beginning you are asked to type in a message which then appears at the end of the video. The Chrome Experiment has various offerings which doesn’t limit this to musicians. It provides the viewer some time to escape into another world. And it provides the consumer with an option to share their message to the world and also provides a link so it can be posted on Facebook or Twitter. It gives the consumer a sense of ownership of the final product.
If you want to see the video with the Heavy Chef message at the end follow the link. Remember this must be played on Chrome.
