Church & Dwight Taps Razorfish, iCrossing for Digital Creative
Church & Dwight has split digital creative and social media responsibilities for nine of its brands, such as Trojan and Orajel, between Razorfish and iCrossingfollowing a competitive review.
Publicis' Razorfish was awarded lead digital responsibilities, including creative, strategy, data and consumer insights, search and social media for Trojan, First Response, Batiste Dry Shampoo, RePhresh and Replens brands. Hearst-owned iCrossing will focus on digital marketing, including creative, strategic planning, technology and content marketing for OxiClean, Oragel, Nair and Vitafusion.
A Designer Created a Service to Help Brands Figure Out If Their Logos Look Like Genitals
It's satirical, but probably still needed By David Griner
Ready to release your new logo to the world? Hold up a tick. Are you 100 percent sure it doesn't look like ladybits or man berries?
Truly embracing the tenets of due diligence and risk mitigation, graphic designer Josh Mishell this week launched GenitalsOrNot.com, a satirical service that offers to spot the (hopefully) unintentional genitals in logos before they go pubic. Er, public.
What Appleâs new iMessage store means for brands.
Tanya Dua @tanyadua @digiday
Today Apple will be rolling out its iOS 10 update, and, with it, comes a shot across Facebookâs bow: Apple will be opening a dedicated app store for iMessage, its messaging service. Apple has not revealed plans for chatbots, but its iMessage store will have virtual stickers and new animated features.
And brands smell an opportunity: Disney, Burger King, Mario Bros., Toyota and Betty Boop will all be launching their own branded stickers on Apple iMessage.
Appleâs entering the branded messaging space is a testament to the popularity of messaging apps, said Evan Wray, founder and CEO at Swyft Media, a messaging technology company that makes branded stickers and emojis for brands across different messaging apps, including the iMessage store.
âIt is the first time Apple is conceding that messaging is here to stay,â Wray said, adding that he was working with brand partners including Virginia Tech, Betty Boop and Popeye on their own iMessage stickers. âGiven the popularity of iMessage in the U.S., it will attract new brands as well as old ones, who will use it as yet another distribution channel.â
With this update, Apple is squarely setting its sights on owning the messaging space. Messaging apps are seeing at least 1.4 billion monthly users collectively worldwide. In the U.S. alone, half of the mobile phone users will be using mobile messaging by the end of 2016, with the top four messaging apps currently sharing 3 billion users.
Increasingly, brands have seen in apps like WhatsApp, Kik, WeChat and Line an attractive opportunity to engage with their audiences on a one-on-one level. Mentos, Ikea, Burger King, Comedy Central and Dove are among several brands that have created their own branded emojis and stickers in partnership with platforms like Swyft Media and Snaps.
Stickers in particular have been very lucrative, with messaging app Line generating over $270 million a year through in-app sticker sales. The new iMessage store presents an opportunity not just for Apple but also for brands to generate a new revenue stream through sticker sales.
Burger Kingâs stickers, for example, represent different flavors of its chicken fries, like its Cheetos chicken fries. Disneyâs stickers were used by Apple during its Worldwide Developers Conference back in June to demonstrate how brands could easily make their own. Toyota, meanwhile, is extending its football-themed emoji app called FanMojis to iMessage, to âallow fans to visually express their feelings at peak passion moments of the game in the native iMessage app,â according to Florence Drakton, the brandâs social media strategy manager.
âOne of the real benefits of stickers in the iOS app store is that there is a true attribution model attached,â said Jarrod Bull, head of account management at agency iCrossing. âThe path to clear monetization will be a key factor in brands wanting to engage with it.â
But even then, brands that choose to insert themselves in the space must remember to steer clear of hamfisted brand messaging, warned Bull. Brands without valuable intellectual property that forcefully insert themselves into a space theyâre not inherently welcome in can turn off audiences.
âThe cultural acceptance is there, the audience is there and the engagement is there,â he said. âBrands just need to avoid pushing their brand message into the mix.â
As sensors collect data through a rapidly expanding network of the Internet of Things, itâs generating unprecedented amounts of data that could be applied for marketing and personalized experiences.
I sat in on two different conferences last week â one for media people and another for entrepreneurs â that came to a similar conclusion: Collecting the data doesnât mean marketers have the resources to work with it effectively.
Whatâs more, itâs not the data, itâs the motivation behind the data that can offer the real breakthrough insights and opportunity for the right messaging at the right time.
Speaking on a panel at MediaPostâs IOT Marketing Forum in New York, Sara Bamossy, chief strategy officer for Pitch, emphasized the importance of getting at motivation.
If your washing machine knows you launder clothes every Thursday, does that mean you should get a delivery before every Thursday? Not necessarily, she noted. If an ATM vestibule lets you use your phone for entry and does not require you to remove your wallet, that could tap into a consumer motivation for security. Smart doorbells let you know who is at your door and let them in. But big data analysis wouldnât tell you that a surge of calls at 4 p.m. is kids making the after-school call to their parents letting them know they arrived home safely.
Greg Boullin, strategy director for Sapient Nitro, says knowing when the consumer is ready to engage with you remains the holy grail. Brands are still figuring out how to identify and engage during âdowntiming,â say, at an airport.
Or what about behavior? Do you travel by bike, do you walk, are you in a car? Just as youâre in different mindsets depending on the device youâre using, your state of mind can be different depending on where you are and what time of day it is.
You might be receptive to a certain message when youâre riding the bus and able to focus on your smartphone. That kind of personalization â giving you a message when youâre most receptive â seems to hold the most promise.
One individualâs personalized message is anotherâs creepy invasion. And everyone disdains retargeting that keeps selling them things theyâve already purchased based on a visit to a Web site.
Over in Montclair, N.J., at an event on innovation hosted by the Montclair State University Feliciano School of Business, Michael Liguori, co-founder of Vognition, predicted government oversight of who can and canât use oneâs data is inevitable.
He emphasized to a roomful of entrepreneurs that all applications should stem from a customer need, not just because it can happen. Vognition provides a voice portal connection to all parts of the home.
âWhat weâre seeing is a privacy personalization paradox,â he added. âWeâre seeing more and more people are willing to give up their privacy if theyâre giving it up for something that is customized.â
Who has the best data? Google and Facebook. But making efficient use of it is something else.
Jarrod Bull, head of account management for Hearst-owned iCrossing, is also an entrepreneur building a brand with his wife. Â He said Facebook is the hands-down place that has it all. The question is whether you can marry the richness of what Facebook offers back into the infrastructure of your marketing system. You must build the programs where you test and learn from it, then drive back and capture the data generated.
The luxury market has the best opportunity to deliver personalized service based on what they know about their customers. Take hotels, said Bamossy.
Do you like to sleep in? Are you active? Build in anticipatory service. When do you want a human touch? When do you want to be left alone? She envisions using the smart TV, iPads in the room and smartphones.
âIt will be interesting to see what they do first and how it translates into homes,â Bamossy said. âItâs super expensive.â
Thereâs a tendency among digital marketers â and digital marketing publications â to talk about the Internet of Things, or IoT, as if widespread adoption is inevitable. And, to be fair, this may very well be the case. We could certainly be looking at a future in which we put on connected clothes in our connected homes and drive connected cars to connected jobs and monitor our connected children, pets and refrigerators from afar.
Thereâs a tendency among digital marketers â and digital marketing publications â to talk about the Internet of Things, or IoT, as if widespread adoption is inevitable.
It has been a summer spent visiting ad agencies⊠Since May, I have invested my time getting reacquainted with the agency marketplace.
Alongside clients & without, we spent time with over 50 different US groups â of all sizes, shapes, & breeds â coast to coast, and several in the middle. Â Trust me, it was a lot. But it was the absolute best use of time I could imagine.
Who's the next great fashion designer? We're on the lookout for the lesser-known or up-and-coming stars who are creating collections and careers wort...
Google Street View has extended its reach to the abandoned island of Hashima, Japan, which served as the setting for Raoul Silva's "Dead City" retreat in 007: Skyfall, the latest James Bond movie....
The New Navel of the Moon. Itâs so poetic, isnât it? (And sure, maybe a bit anatomically confusing.) Thatâs the real meaning behind the state name New Mexico, and itâs one of many etymological gems uncovered by cartographers Stephan Hormes and Silke Peust while they were creating this U.S. map depicting the original, literal meanings behind the states and cities we know today.âThe inspiration was my interest in etymology and my profession as a cartographer," Hormes tells Co.Design. "I started to exchange real names for rue names and the world became a strange romantic continent.
