Happy New Year and welcome to the first Weekly Round-Up of 2019! Back with a bang, this week we are focusing on the January advertising and health industries, robotic predictions for the year ahead, and brushing up on our industry Ps and Qs.
Tooth sweet
Source – Change4Life
By now we are accustomed to the shift in advertising from the end of the year to the beginning. Messages of peace, joy, and indulgence are sharply replaced with ones that incite guilt and ultimately set about to shame audiences for the festive months previous. Though it can be a bitter pill to swallow, in moderation, these guilt-inducing messages can be extremely engaging. Case in point, Public Health England’s latest Change4Life campaign, which focuses on sugar consumption in children.
In an animated short, starring a small but mighty sugar cube army, Change4Life details some unsettling facts about the issue, from the average child consuming up to 2,800 cubes a year, to an average of one child having a tooth removed every 10 minutes in the UK. Frightening stuff, and that’s before they get to crippling diabetes and cancer risks. Though it is definitely not sweet, the ad is short and knows the parameters of its 46-second slot. Rather than trying to solve a mammoth health problem in under a minute (as many of our January ads tend to do) it ends with a CTA urging viewers to go online and find out how they can help their kids cut back on sugar and the tagline – “make a swap when you next shop.”
Content is (still) King
Source - Floret Media
That’s according to Social Media Today, who is telling marketers that they need to get serious with their content in 2019 as it is “at the core of our digital and social, always on, always connected and always learning, mobile world of communication.” To ensure that we are well equipped for this content-first world, Social Media Today have shared the top trends to take note of in the coming year.
Among them is the urge for marketers to create customer-centric content as opposed to ‘Click-Bait’. Citing Marketing Insider Group, the article states that “78% of consumers say that personally-relevant content increases their purchase intent.” This indicates two very important things to marketers. Firstly, the undeniable importance of content marketing to a business’s bottom line. And secondly, content marketing is not simply posting the odd, generic blog or social post. We made a similar prediction in our 2018 Year in Review, discussing the micro-moments that marketers need to focus on if they want to really reach audiences in the coming year.
To read more of what’s coming in 2019 and our dissection of 2018, check out our blog here.
It’s good to be good
Source - Charlotte Anabar
Life, a Birmingham based integrated agency, has vowed to do good throughout 2019 with their year-long campaign #365daysofgood. Life has maintained a successful reputation over the years, creating work for a mix of brands that not only have a positive effect commercially but also serve in a community sense too. In 2019, through carefully curated content via their social channels, Life will demonstrate how brands can be beneficial to the world outside the confinements of consumerism. The campaign comes off of the back of the results of recent studies from the likes of Gallup and Edelman, which demonstrated unrest in the global population.
In a sobering statement, the Gallup World Poll revealed that “global negative experiences are the worst they’ve been for a decade.” And, to add fuel to the fire, in a more industry-specific stat, the Edelman Trust Barometer study found that “20 of 28 global markets are currently dominated by distrust, up from last year.” This is not great news for brands and marketers alike, so naturally, we support Life in their pursuit over the next 365 days because, even though one campaign cannot cure a decade of global negativity, it is a good place to start.
They’re here...
Source - Hanna Barbera
The robots we mean, but you already knew that. Though things (thankfully) haven’t reached The Terminator territory, we are becoming more and more accustomed to the company of bots. So what’s next for these artificial acquaintances? Forbes looks ahead to the coming year and shares its predictions.
First on the list is the increase of soft robotics. For those not in the know, soft robotics are bots constructed to imitate living organisms. Their life-like features make soft robotics easier for us to interact with and will help us to more readily accept them into varying roles. “For example, soft robotic companions can be used in healthcare to assist with repetitive tasks such as medication intake, bathing, etc.”
Following that comes what has been dubbed as the Darwinism of Smart Homes, where home devices that are not equipped to adapt to the likes of Alexa or Google Home will slowly be replaced or become extinct.
Finally, it is time to rejoice as our lives are set to become a lot more efficient. As bots like Alexa and Google Home become more ‘thoughtful’ and ‘considerate’ of our needs, they are more capable of organising and facilitating everyday tasks.
A is for...
Source - Wikipedia
AI, don’t you know, and as mentioned in the piece above, you probably do know. B is for... – well we’ll let you go through The Drum’s A Bad Marketer’s Glossary 2019 in your own time. Not that we are calling you a bad marketer, nor is The Drum. Instead, they are simply pointing out, in a rather tongue-in-cheek way, the words and phrases you need to know to survive the industry in 2019 and beyond.
Some of them you will (hopefully) know, like KPI and ROI. Some of them you will definitely not know. Quixotic, anyone? And, though some of them will seem to have absolutely no business in being there, together they are all sure to give you a giggle and get you ready of another exciting year in the industry.
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