Content Marketing – Does Your (company’s) Shoe Fit?

By Dylan Morley

In recent years, we have seen a shift away from traditional marketing and toward digital marketing. There are many new marketing techniques, with content marketing (CM) becoming one of the most important. CM is starting to replace traditional marketing, as customers become more and more aware of traditional advertising and expect new approaches from businesses to catch their attention and entice them to purchase.

According to the Content Marketing Institute: “CM is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.” 

Within the context of digital marketing, CM refers to the creation of entertaining and/or informative content that does not explicitly advertise a company’s products or services. When we talk about CM, we can refer to anything from a simple video, blog or article to larger content such as webinars. With this type of content, educational value is also important to consider.

Given that it is free, this information service differs from traditional information institutions or settings. This is because it occurs online and online content consumers expect information to be free – this is the internet’s central allure for many. When you walk into a store and choose a product to buy, the only information often available to us is located on the product/packaging or, if we’re lucky, an employee who can provide us with further information. However, these specifics may only include information such as the price, technical specifications and so on. What content marketing allows companies to do, is to provide additional information like how to use the product, where to use it, etc.

One company that provides entertaining content marketing to its customers is Footaslyum. The UK high-street retailer specialises in sports trainers and apparel for men, women and children. However, their target audience is young people, especially men, between 18 and 25. Footasylum targeted this audience by creating content with social media influencers ‘Chunkz’ and ‘Young Filly’ who are hugely popular figures among their core demographic. 

The content marketing strategy was simple; a 10-15 min YouTube show starring Chunkz and Young Filly called ‘Does The Shoe Fit?’. The premise of the show is that the duo would go on a series of speed dates with attractive women that would often lead to humorous outcomes. However, while on these dates, the other show presenters can watch live and commentate on their co-hosts dating performance. Guests also formed a major part of the show as Chunkz and Young Filly would often be joined by other high profile influencers including former Love Island contestants. 

Footasylum’s content marketing strategy was a major success with some episodes of the show racking up over 7 million views on YouTube. The online show went on for five seasons and while it came to end in late 2021, funny snippets still appear across social media feeds especially on TikTok, giving the content even further marketing longevity. 

The success of ‘Does The Shoe Fit?’ is a lesson to brands and companies that audiences are tired of the hard sell. Nowadays, marketing should and can be about more than just your product or service. If content marketing is not currently part of your marketing strategy, then you are almost certainly missing out.

Dylan Morley is an Account Executive at Fuzion Communications, full service marketing and PR agency, with offices in Cork and Dublin.

Google wants its AI to take over your marketing

For anyone who is running any Google Ad campaigns you will probably have seen the big shift in Google behaviour over the last couple of years.

Basically, they are encouraging you the customer, the marketer to get out of the way and let their AI take over!!

We’ll allocate your budget for you..

We’ll choose the copy for your adverts..

We’ll come review what you are doing, make recommendations for change and then to make life easy, we will even implement them automatically!

All of this is “cloaked” in a “your campaign results will improve“

This was the message I received today for one client campaign:

Unlock your account’s full potential
Opt in to automatically apply recommendations to help you reach your goals by applying the right recommendations at the right time.

We’re here to help you reach more of your marketing objectives
Our Google Ads team understands the dedication it takes for businesses like yours to succeed. That’s why you can automatically apply recommendations – which makes sure that you’ll never miss an opportunity to reach potential customers by regularly applying tailored recommendations to your account.

They understand the “dedication” it takes for businesses like yours to succeed – really??!!

and…that’s why you can automatically apply recommendations….I love the logic!!!!

Press “yes” at your peril, because before you know it, you won’t know whether you are coming or going, your adverts will be applied randomly and the only certain thing will be the amount you are spending, and certainly not how you are spending it.

Our advice is

• understand your objectives
• understand how each of the Google features work
• carefully apply these, in full knowledge of what you are doing and why
• stay in total control of your messages and budgets
• review your results carefully and adjust campaigns accordingly

Along with your SEO work, Google Ads are a brilliant, powerful way to generate excellent leads for your business, but please please stay in control.

We don’t want to hand even more control to Mr. Google!

If you need us to help you, you know where we are…

Greg

Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion Communications and he heads up the digital department, providing web optimisation and Google Ads services to clients.

Stout talk and “target audiences”

I do love my pint of stout and as someone who has worked for Guinness and for a subsidiary of Heineken, who produce both Murphy’s and Beamish in Cork I think I am in a position to chat about it!

During lockdown I think enjoying a creamy point of stout in a pub with friends was quite possibly the thing that I missed most of all and was most grateful when we were able to return to our favourite local.

Where I live in Ballincollig in Cork I am blessed to have the White Horse Bar, Restaurant and Music Venue just down the road from me and a little further away, and on a tricky narrow road we have a wonderful “old man” pub called the Inniscarra Bar.

To stay Covid extra safe Kay, the very lovely proprietor of the Inniscarra Bar tried her very best to keep serving outdoors as long as possible complete with a little canopy and an outside fire, and even outdoors the regulars quickly had their regular seats, just as they would have had inside.

On one particular Thursday night I slipped down there with my fantastic neighbour, Brian for a couple of pints and we sat on a bench outside,

I asked for my pint of choice ‘Murphys’ to be advised against it by Kay who warned that it wasn’t pouring too well and I would be better off with either a Guinness or a Beamish. Two of the regulars overheard our conversation and remarked that the demise of Murphy’s was a sad state of affairs as it was always known as a “Murphy’s House”.

For me, it’s crazy that this could happen in any pub in Cork, but I wasn’t surprised as I hadn’t noticed any activity around this brand in quite a while.

A few days later while doing my grocery shopping in Dunnes Stores I noticed Murphy’s Stout cans on the shelf with new horrible (at least to me) purple and pink branding.

“What in the name of god are they doing with that fantastic brand” I thought to myself and I wondered what the logic was behind this garish change.

That weekend I was chatting with my soon to be son in law, Mark and the conversation turned towards the new Murphy’s can. It turns out it wasn’t just me felt this way and this young man also hated the new branding – the beauty of the old brand is that it carried weight and some class and was confident, self assured and rooted in tradition, but this?!

Our first world problems!

A few days later while in town getting my hair chopped I happened to bump into an old buddy of mine who works for Heineken in Cork. I hadn’t seen him for an age so we had a great chat and before he left I had the opportunity of asking him what the hell was going on with Murphy’s!

I told him about the Inniscarra Bar experience and gave him my feedback about the new branding on the cans and after a while he turned around to me and said..

“Ah….you are not our target audience!“

That put me right in my place and we finished up our conversation and on my way home I reflected on what he had said to me and the sad fact that I was now 56 and thought yes, I was probably no longer the target audience, possibly no one’s target audience!

I thought some more and it started to bother me.

While you might make changes to your brand to appeal to a “new” audience, maybe you should first consider the fools who actually do ask for it and figure out what they like about it, as there might just be some valuable nuggets worth holding onto and the build from these.

Target audience my arse…!

Greg

Greg Canty is a Partner of Fuzion Communications who offer Marketing, PR, Graphic Design Podcast Production and Digital Marketing services from our offices in Dublin and Cork, Ireland

Buy a Newspaper..

I was delighted to get a call from my local newspaper recently to let me know they had returned from their Covid 19 closure, and asking me if I had any stories for their next issue.

The local paper has always been the ultimate in county pride – getting the graduation picture in the local rag was bragging gold dust for many’s a mammy and daddy!

Regional media is the community cornerstone, the pulse of the town but Covid 19 has changed the media landscape forever.

It was the final nail in the coffin for many local and regional newspapers that were already just barely surviving. Many were forced to close, simply because there was no advertising and zero revenue. It left many journalists unemployed.

It is fantastic to see some return, but devastating to know that several never will. What a gaping hole those well-loved local newspapers leave.

The local newspaper is one of the most valuable media outlets, as well as one of the most credible. It tells the story of a local audience from an insiders perspective.

No Facebook, Instagram or Twitter will ever be able to do this.

The role it plays is essential to our society, our culture, and our democratic reporting. The free press are the gatekeepers for our democracy. With the rise in fake news, the press has never been more important.

But, we must also remember the reality that local newspapers are also businesses.

They must make a profit to stay alive. And they won’t make a profit if their value is not seen, including their advertising value. Advertisers won’t see their value if the public and the local audience don’t read the paper.

Buy a newspaper. Our democracy depends on it.

Ciara

Ciara Jordan is an Account Director with Fuzion Communications, a full service Marketing, PR, Graphic Design and Digital Marketing Agency with offices in Dublin and Cork, Ireland.

Twitter Advertising?

I’ve just received some “useful advice” from Twitter about an ad campaign we kicked off last week for a client as well as some performance data.

 

It kindly suggested that we should be running more variations of the creative and also that we should consider adding video as an option.

All great advice Twitter… thank you.

Now Twitter some advice back at you..

We took an hour and a half to run a simple advert on your social media channel that broke our hearts. It is clunky, inefficient and wasn’t working and for no good reason.

It worked in the end … not because we did anything different, but we kept doing what we were supposed to be doing in the first place and it eventually worked.

Considering the budget we were spending on a mini “test campaign” our time spent on it was definitely not worth it and the very painful experience left two of us very frustrated and vowing… never again!

More creatives, add video.?.. as I said, great advice, but we didn’t have a whole day to run a simple advert!    

If your target audience is on Twitter, think long and hard about alternative ways of reaching them and if you do go ahead give yourself an age to create your campaign.

I had no intention of writing this piece but the helpful advice was a straw too many..

Phew..

Greg

Greg Canty is a Partner of Fuzion Communications, a full service PR, Graphic Design and Digital Marketing agency with offices in Dublin and Cork, Ireland

 

 

How PR and Advertising Work Better Together

For many years we have seen brands and agencies focusing on one discipline as part of their marketing strategy, thinking PR alone will encourage sales with no advertising (be that digital or traditional) or vice versa. But with the rise of the internet and social media, brands and companies are now realising that they need to use PR and Advertising together to be more strategic when it comes to their marketing approach.

There is no longer a one-way channel between brands and consumers.

Advertising no longer controls the distribution of your message and PR is not the only channel telling your brand’s story. Consumers have more power than ever and are somewhat in control of the message your brand tells.

The general public can get a message out about your brand or company in a matter of seconds or tune in to your marketing messages on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn,YouTube, or other online forums. The list is endless.

This is why it is now more important than ever to ensure your PR and Advertising are working cohesively together.

Paid for advertising needs to promote and reach the people most willing to pay for a company’s products or services and entice them to buy. PR helps to make this advertising more effective as it cultivates a positive reputation with the public through various unpaid or earned communications, including traditional media, social media, and in-person engagements. By using them strategically together you hopefully create both awareness and trust with your target audience.

A great example of a brand using PR and advertising together is Paddy Power.

Whether you love them or hate them, you can’t deny they are forever in the media for something they have done. Not only do their marketing stunts get them noticed by their target audience, but they are also often the topic of conversation among other audiences too, spreading their message far and wide.

Not only does this PR activity keep them top of mind with the public, but it is enhanced by their paid for ads ensuring that they are forever being seen by the people most likely to place a bet. This strategy has transformed them from local betting shop business to global betting giant.

By allowing PR and Advertising to work together you create one consistent message and a synergy effect, so customers see one brand whether they see you on the TV, radio, in print, or online.

Whether you are working in an Insurance company or working on ‘the next big thing’ you have an opportunity to maximize your brand through great cohesive brand building and ensure you are always moving with the times.

At Fuzion Communications we love fully integrated campaigns because we know these achieve the best results and we encourage this with all our clients.

If you would like to find out more about what we can offer, please contact us at info@fuzion.ie or visit our website www.fuzion.ie

Michelle

Michelle Harrison is part of PR team at Fuzion Communications, working from our Dublin office

 

2020 – Time to get Experiential !

When it comes to trends in Marketing to look out for in 2020 and beyond I think it will be all about ‘Experiential’ getting closer to the customer allowing them to touch and feel the products and services and to meet the people behind them.

We see ourselves that the noisy, over crowded, algorithm choked social media space, which not so long ago provided a fantastic opportunity to “get close” to customers is proving very challenging without substantial advertising budgets.

The social media “influencers” in the main who had a short moment in the sun, over cooked the magic by quickly switching from being genuinely passionate about their sectors to being “show me the money” merchants.

The cynical and very savvy consumer is seeing through all of this “BS” and is slowing returning to more trusted and reliable traditional media, which is really interesting as they are craving something authentic, something that does not leave them cold.

An interesting medium that we see doing well is podcasts, which if executed carefully is a very special way for your customer to get to know you better while they are commuting or in the gym.

I was judging the podcast category again this year for the Digital Marketing Awards and I could see some really great examples of companies using the medium to great effect.

I noticed with interest last November, Amazon the leaders in online retail, promoting their ‘Black Friday‘ sale with full page adverts in the national newspapers, billboards around the city and even customer events.

For the third year running in London they had a free four day “pop-up” event, ‘The Home of Black Friday‘ whereby customers were treated to all sorts of entertainment and demonstrations as well as being able to ‘touch and feel’ some of the special Black Friday deals.

As well as checking out the huge range of epic deals on offer throughout Black Friday and Cyber Monday, visitors to the Home of Black Friday had the chance to try out the latest must-have products from beauty to tech and preview the latest screenings from Prime Video.

They ticked the boxes on all of the customer demographics with complimentary workshops and experiences including, DJs, Rappers, yoga, cocktail masterclasses, beauty makeovers and Christmas workshops.

It turns out that clicking on images of items on our screens isn’t the “be-all and end-all” after all!

We witnessed it ourselves before Christmas with the weekend events that we ran for Dunnes Stores in some of their leading stores in Cork, Dublin, Galway and Limerick, whereby customers could meet the food producers, taste the food, meet the designers and see the fashion on models and watch some demonstrations by experts.

I am now buying the Ardsallagh Cranberry Roulade Goat Cheese and Himalayan Salt Aged Beef on a regular basis after chatting with the cheese maker and the butcher from James Whelan Butchers, I’m wearing SPF skin cream protection for the first time after meeting Darren Kennedy and I am wearing a cashmere jumper from Paul Costelloe!

I also, as well as having more belief in the wine selection at Dunnes Stores, I have some new favourite wine brands after listening to the wine buyer talking about his favourite wines and the vineyards they come from.

In truth, no advert or social media posts would have had the same habit changing effect on me and there is a lot of money in our habits!

So for 2020 and beyond, I can see us all working really hard to create those new opportunities to get closer to the customer through real life experiences.

Greg

Greg Canty is a Partner of Fuzion Communications, a full service Marketing, PR, Graphic Design and Digital Marketing agency with offices in Dublin and Cork, Ireland

It’s all about integration!

A big shift has happened with media in the last 10 years.

I remember 10 years ago when the wheels well and truly fell off the economy, we had a thing called social media, which effectively had become a “free” (except for your time and effort of course) way to promote you and your business.

At Fuzion we were quick out of the traps offering people training on the various social media platforms and when it came to our own clients we were doing our very best to get them up and running and fully embracing this new and exciting medium.

I remember at that time when we devised marketing plans for prospects, complete with a range of different tactics to achieve their objectives, we would always have social media as one of the first tactics to discuss. After all it was free, it was new and it provided another great way to reach their target audiences but in a special and unique way demonstrating the personality of the organisation and those working there.

We discovered very quickly that we shouldn’t have social media as one of the first tactics because with many people we presented to you could visibly see the “shutters coming down” and we would lose their attention.

Quite simply they didn’t want to hear about this ‘new fangled’ thing called social media.

As usual there were a few who broke from the pack and made it work really well for them and bit by bit the word spread that social media could be great for business.

We find ourselves 10 years down the road and with many people, the whole thing with social media has flipped.

In many cases now, prospects call and their request is for Digital Marketing and they don’t want to hear anything about other forms of, let us call it ‘Traditional Marketing’ … the way it used be in the old days!!

So, where are we and where should we be on this Digital to Traditional spectrum?

While digital is great and on the face of it, very measurable, the truth is the social media platforms are overloaded with low quality content, the algorithms have squeezed the life out of “organic” (non paid for posts) and to reach your audiences you must invest in advertising, which is increasing in cost all the time.

The resulting problem that we face is that your social media post, that you have had to resort to putting budget behind now appears as a “sponsored” or “promoted” post and has effectively just become an advert of sorts.

However, social media is very powerful as it allows you demonstrate your personality in a way that other media can’t, it allows you to interact with other users and when you are advertising, it does allow you to target very precisely, depending on the type of audience you need to reach and the social media platform that you are using.

When we talk about Traditional media I am talking about PR, print and outdoor advertising, direct marketing, events, sponsorship and I even include email marketing in this boat.

All of these methods for reaching your audience can be really effective and depending on your objective they can be powerful ways of generating brand awareness or generating leads.

And we have PR sitting in the middle of all of this activity, that art and craft of getting your organisation covered positively in the media, which can be in print or online – at this stage it really doesn’t matter which, as long as you are able to reach your target audience. PR kicks in as well, where the objective might be to try to keep an organisation out of the media or to navigate it through a time where there might be a situation, which could potentially damage their reputation and business.

Trying to cope with all of this can be very difficult, so it’s very important to know your audience and figure out how you can reach them – rarely is this a silver bullet situation with one audience and one perfect method of reaching them.

For example attracting the attention of talent could be just as important to the organisation as selling goods and services to customers.

All paid for media (advertising) comes from the organisation and our savvy consumers know this and as a result may not believe the “sales pitch”.

The sales pitch becomes much more believable when there is some form of 3rd Party verification, which could be an article by a journalist or a review by a customer.

In effect, PR can be the valuable trigger in the middle that increases the return from both advertising and other forms of promotional activity, social media and other online activity, because the customer is more convinced because of this third party verification that we referred to.

So … what’s the magic formula for success?

It’s knowing your audience, figuring out how to target them, choosing that mix of Digital and Traditional tactics to reach them effectively and then carefully monitoring the results to figure out what worked and what didn’t.

While digital marketing can provide great analytics and stats, be careful that you don’t avoid traditional activity just because it’s not as easy to measure.

As a full service agency it is our role to create fully integrated campaigns with that special mix that we believe will deliver optimum results for our clients.

By carefully planning, coordinating, weaving and executing all of these elements together, we believe clients will get an exponential return on their investment. So can you !

If we can help you let us know!

The very best of luck!….

Greg

Greg Canty is a Partner of Fuzion Communications, a full service Marketing, PR, Graphic Design and Digital Marketing agency with offices in Dublin and Cork, Ireland

PR Stunt – “Dove Real Beauty Sketches”.

The company Dove is legendary when it comes to creating world renowned publicity stunts and one of my favourites has to be the short film they created in 2013 titled, “Dove Real Beauty Sketches”.

Throughout the short film , Dove investigates further into female self-loathing and hatred. It is safe to say that women in this modern era lack a great deal of self-esteem.

This self-hatred stems from the likes of social media, beauty magazines and gorgeous celebrity models. Women are forced to compare themselves to an image that is most arguably face-tuned and photo-shopped.

Dove believe that women undervalue their true selves and that women are “their own worst critics”. However, in order to battle this phenomenon of self-critique, Dove invited a number of women to describe their face to a sketch artist.

The comments made by these women in the video are extremely disheartening.

One of the most shocking remarks was from a woman who immediately stated that she had a “fat, rounded face” when asked what was her most prominent feature. This proves that most women immediately focus on the negative aspects of themselves and see it as their most prominent feature instead of a positive aspect, such as their eyes or smile.

Thankfully the video includes a surprising turn of events in which each woman had to chat with a stranger after describing their appearance.

After a long chat, this new acquaintance was asked to describe the face of the women they were just talking to.

Finally, the film concludes with each woman examining two pictures of themselves, one drawn with the details they had given and the other with the details given by the stranger. What is completely unbelievable is that the two images are strikingly different.

The image described by the stranger is clearly more flattering and complimentary of the woman. This image is also a lot more similar to the women’s actual appearance. The images described by the women themselves seem to be more depressed, older and fatter than the other picture.

This short film is revolutionary in my opinion as it reminds women that what we see every day in the media is not real and most importantly extremely unattainable.

I find myself looking at bloggers and celebrities on Instagram and comparing myself to them and discovering faults in my own appearance. However according to Dove I must realise that I am more beautiful than I think.

I hope every woman watches this film and gains a sense of confidence and comfort in their own skin. I also believe that the media has a moral obligation to promote real beauty and beauty diversity rather than an unrealistic photo-shopped image.

This in turn could demolish this common self-hatred among women.

Eimear

Eimear McKenna wrote this blog post when she was on a week’s work experience with Fuzion Communications, a PR, Marketing, Graphic Design and Digital Marketing Agency in Ireland with offices in Dublin and Cork

About Eimear (in her own words!)

“I am 19 and currently studying English, History and Classics in UCD. This course has unleashed a true desire within me to write and elaborate stories. I am also a fully qualified associate teacher in Speech and Drama.

As a Drama teacher I meet many people every day and organise events such as the Feis and musicals/plays. It is a combination of these interests that has created an aspiration of mine to fulfill a career in PR. As a teenager I also love to follow many different influencers and fashion bloggers on Instagram, which has also added to my interest in PR as I would hopefully be working with these influencers every day”

What is the cost of being “influenced”?

I unlocked my phone, and my finger (without thinking) automatically clicked onto the Instagram app.

The first thing I saw was a stunningly beautiful girl in a bikini with an amazing figure, on a picturesque beach in some dreamy location, holding a bottle of sunscreen.

How random? Well actually, it’s not. The brand of sunscreen that this beautiful influencer is holding, paid her (quite a lot of money) to post a picture of herself with their product.

We like to think that we are clever and that we don’t buy into what these influencers are selling, but we do.

We love to follow them and we do seem to value their opinion. We know that these people are paid to promote products but once they say that they “love” them, we try to resist their “influence”, but more often than not, we will purchase the latest product off the back of our favourite influencer’s recommendation.

It is a guilty pleasure of mine that I love to follow some fabulous, Irish influencers.

However, when I scroll through their Instagram feed for some outfit inspiration for an upcoming event, I can’t help but notice the #AD #SP #AF at the end of a large number of their posts.

Okay, yes, they are acknowledging that their post is an AD or Sponsored but not everybody is aware of what these hashtags mean.

The Advertising Standards Authority of Ireland (ASAI) have enforced rules, which influencers MUST comply with when posting content which has been paid for by another brand/ company.

For a long time, influencers have been getting away with posting content and hiding the fact that they have been paid for it. With the rise of online influencing, the ASAI has been keeping a much closer eye on these posts and making sure that the “paid for” content is clearly marked and not misleading to the influencer’s followers.

It is quite clear that ITV’s, Love Island has been the most watched and talked about TV show of 2019, with over 3.4 million viewers per night, and the show takes over Twitter’s Trending and Moments sections every night.

Many of the contestants social media following has jumped from just a couple of hundreds or thousands to nearly hitting the million mark in just under eight weeks. So it is without a doubt that the Love Island contestants are set for “influencer-dom” and are guaranteed multiple sponsorship deals the moment they get out of the villa.

The ASA in the UK has partnered up with ITV to supply the contestants with a workshop and a “social media advertising” survival kit for when they leave the villa. This is to ensure that the contestants comply with all of the advertising rules and clearly mark that their posts are sponsored or an Ad.

It is quite difficult now to work with influencers and negotiate their job without having to go through their agents.

Many people wonder if it is worth paying Instagram/ Social Media Influencers such large amounts of money for one static post on their feed and three frames on their story (30 seconds)?

However, in my opinion, yes it is worth it (product dependant obviously) as long as this person is genuine about the product they are endorsing and is not there ‘just’ for the money.

Influencer’s are still able to “influence” their followers to purchase the product that they are paid to promote even with or without the #AD at the end of the post!

Abigail 

Abigail Shaw is a PR Executive with Fuzion Communications, a Marketing, PR, Graphic Design and Digital Marketing agency with offices in Dublin and Cork, Ireland