🍱 Data v. Creativity; Marketers will hack your brain; Journalists will help your SEO preview
🍱 Data v. Creativity; Marketers will hack your brain; Journalists will help your SEO preview
A little bit of this, a little bit of that
Hello, and welcome back to The Marketing Kable. Every week we wade through the wasteland of the Internet to bring you ideas, voices and campaigns to inspire your marketing.
something to read
what data don't see. Today's read is from Brandingmag, and it seems to say the obvious: data isn't everything. I mean, data IS everything because it tells us stories on a scale we can't possibly perceive without its help, but it's not everything.
Paul Anderson, a creative copywriter, reminds us how an overdependence on data can be a double-edged sword for marketers. It can lead to a distorted understanding of intricate societal and cultural nuances, resulting in brands that fall flat, irritate, or even alienate the very audience they want to impact.
"A data firm may be able to map the flavour profile of the beer I prefer to drink down to the hop, based on what I buy and when, but it will never understand that I like New Belgium because it’s the first craft beer I ever tried on a rare chilly California night on a balcony in college. Why not? Because it was handed to me by a friend. I’m not the one who bought it", Paul writes.
While demographic and behavioural data can provide valuable insights, it falls short of fully grasping the complexities and subtleties of an individual's life experiences. And therein lies the power of creativity and the need to take risks. So dive in headfirst.
something to watch
your brain is kinda transparent. One of the best things about YouTube (apart from the infinite number of videos of cats jumping up in shock or licking themselves) is that reliable and reputed media organisations are prolifically creating video content, both long- and short-form, on a wide range of relevant topics for us to watch and learn from.
Deutsche Welle, a respected German media house, makes several mid-length documentary-style videos, one of which I will recommend today.
In, Neuromarketing: How brands are getting your brain to buy more stuff, DW journalists interview academics, marketers and other experts to understand how companies are investing in researching the human brain to devise campaign strategies and branding ideas.
It's a fascinating exploration of this rising trend, which is a well-kept secret hiding in plain sight. It's only 11 minutes long, so take a look.
something to listen to
gender is in danger. I'm keeping it short and sweet with a succinct episode from the History of Advertising podcast.
Provocatively titled 'How nice, you've noticed my breasts', it features Rosie Arnold, a British creative who has played with ideas of sex and gender in a number of commercial campaigns.
Arnold reflects on how she tried to evoke conversations on these topics through her campaigns (one of her most successful campaigns for Maltesers featured a wheelchair-bound woman describing an experience where she had a spasm in the bedroom, and her partner mistook it for something else entirely), and how they played out in the complex landscape of advertising today.
She also talks about using tools like Braille to make her campaigns more accessible. Tune in for some great insights with a smattering of classic British humour.
Everyone needs a little marketing inspiration in their lives. Recommend The Marketing Kable to a friend.
something to inspire
dissolve and absolve. I'll confess a dirty secret: my shower rack is filled (and I mean FILLED) with empty shampoo, conditioner, and body wash bottles.
I've been meaning to throw them away for months and months, but I just haven't gotten around to it.
It has something to do with procrastination (mostly). But it also has something to do with my unease about dumping all that plastic into the bin all at once.
Every time I take a shower, I cook up elaborate plans of finding organisations that recycle plastic waste and donate all those bottles to them, but then the hot water runs out, and I'm back to the real world.
What if the bottles would just disappear once we're done using the shampoo? Oh wait... that's a shampoo bar. And today's inspiration.
BBDO's Filipino branch in Guerrero created a new type of shampoo that isn't sold in plastic packaging. Marketed as The Dissolving Bottle, it can be used by anyone and has a special type of writing on the package that disappears as the shampoo is used.
The shampoo bar comes in a shape that looks like a traditional shampoo bottle, which makes the idea of being eco-friendly more relatable to the audience. The message about being eco-friendly remains as the shampoo bar gets smaller.
The campaign video uses stop motion animation, vibrant colours, no-nonsense copy and a bold typeface to draw attention to itself. And it works great.
something to learn
seo like a pro. Today's recommendation is yet another gem from our Harsha. He's pointing us to Backlinko, a platform that offers in-depth, technical and practical strategies for acing your SEO game.
You could spend hours reading articles and how-to guides, which are almost always accompanied by clear examples and approaches that have actually worked (woohoo!).
Here's a little taste for you:
How I Built 5,660 Backlinks in 30 Days by Brian Dean
In this article, Dean discusses a strategy called "reverse outreach", which involves reaching out to websites that have linked to a competitor's content in order to get them to link to your content as well.
He explains that this approach can be effective because these websites have already shown an interest in the topic by linking to a competitor's content.
I've got the basic steps outlined here just for you:
Step 1: Identify a "Journalist Keyword". This is a term or phrase that journalists commonly use when conducting research or composing an article.
Step 2: Conceptualise content around this keyword - the kind that journalists will want to link to. Your goal is to get backlinks from authority sites.
Tip: Seek out trending topics that are currently gaining attention and focus on those that lack readily available information. By doing so, you can position yourself as a leading authority on the topic by providing data that is difficult to come by.
Step 3: Make a plan for your article. Think about what journalists want to know about the topic and write about it. Don't resort to the usual ways of finding keywords.
Instead, think about what kind of information someone would need when writing an article about that topic.
Tip: Journalists are often looking for statistics to include in their articles. Create posts with accurate statistics which journalists can link back to.
Step 4: Optimize your statistics page. How? With subheadings that are aligned with keywords journalists will be interested in. You could use a Question/Answer format because this helps the information to be easily digestible.
Tip: Include charts, tables and other visual aids that journalists can refer to and link back to. Make it rain.
Step 5: Watch the magic happen, slow and steady. It may take some time for your statistics page to gain popularity, depending on your content, the keywords you targeted, and your Domain Rank. But be patient and let it do its thing.
That's it for this edition of The Marketing Kable. If you received this newsletter as a forward, do consider signing up. It's forever free and just for you.
 | A guest post by
|