TORONTO – The best case studies, in my view, extract practical methods for dealing with wicked real world problems and at NextMedia, held last week in Toronto, Corus Entertainment showcased a successful linear and digital integrated media strategy in action.
The Corus focus was their 2015 McCain Superfries campaign that included YouTube creators as well as both linear and non-linear marketing strategies.
But to prime your appetitive, here are some of their results. Online, they had over 43,000 unique visits and 58,000 entries to their fun, "modi-fry" recipe contest. In addition, the overall campaign had a positivity rating of 91% and produced 11.3 million TV impressions. (pictured is a behind-the-scenes shot with Sara Lynn Cauchon, aka The Domestic Geek, from the Kin Community, in the “modi-fry” campaign.)
What might not be in the Corus presentation video was that McCain Foods Canada and the online creator (Kin Community) began the process with very different production values and styles.
For Kin, it’s clear that social media is allergic to a conventional call to action "sales" approach, based on reaching the most eyeballs. For them (an online force with 42 million subscribers to its collective YouTube channels and 435 million monthly views) it’s about creating "community" first.
Plus, and most importantly, the collaboration with Kin had to acknowledge that the online already creator had a brand of her own.
Luckily, McCain had just done a re-branding in 2014, and was quite open to the idea of expanding that exercise. So the Kin-McCain brand-fit worked out nicely; and what began as a challenge quickly morphed into a natural partnership.
As a result, both parties learned that running contests online (in this case, new "modi-fry" recipes re-interpreting french fries with novel ingredients/presentation) works well, especially if you employ a micro-site.
They also came away from the campaign encouraged that it's possible to succeed with the broad (and rare) 18-54 demographic by employing a multi-platform approach across (in this case) YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, W Channel, other Corus properties, and McCains' own assets.
What’s also noteworthy, is that within this multi-platform approach, mobile is becoming increasingly important since one-third of digital consumption today happens on mobile devices, despite the fact that the ad spend on mobile is still less than 20%.
However, the reality is that, for anyone over 12 years of age, mobile is now their first screen – so that gap is closing quickly.
A helpful example is that Campbell's (the soup folks) recently placed 50% of their corporate ad spend into mobile ads and video.
The overall take-away from this is there will be increasing pressure on applications developers to perfect location marketing on mobile. Put another way, it will create an opportunity for entrepreneurs and creators to develop content that seamlessly flips platforms from location to location, platform to platform.
To do a bit more digital archeology, it's not a deep dig to see gaming and virtual reality coming into play sooner rather than later.
In 2016, mobile devices are expected to emerge as the overall platform of preference and, according to NextMedia data, 60% of millennials claim that next year, they plan to make some kind of virtual reality purchase.
Key indicators are that a) Facebook has invested in virtual reality (search Oculus Rift, the company it bought for $2 billion), and b) new applications for VR and artificial reality are already beginning to re-shape how millennials view tourism.
Mash that with gaming, which is currently an $82 billion business in the U.S., and the appeal of interactive entertainment (or online McCains-style community-building), and we’re seeing massive shifts in consumption and placement of marketing dollars.
One presenter, Tracey Jennings, Partner, Canadian Technology Information Communication and Entertainment Leader at Pricewaterhouse Coopers, went so far as to assert that video games have emerged as one of the top three businesses and look to have a market of $93 billion US by 2019.
Combine all of the above with YouTube being the most popular video platform in the world, with 1 billion estimated unique monthly visitors, and second in searches only to Google, which owns YouTube… and you get can also get a little shiver about who the heck is going to end up controlling all this?
It would be nice to think that the "webiverse" will continue to be about the democratization of creation and distribution and that all kinds of weird and wonderful things will continue to be explored, like games becoming theatrical films as in Angry Birds and Assassins Creed and vice versa.
But is that what's trending now?
Hey, Amber Mac, maybe that's a case study topic for NextMedia 2016?
Note: If Cartt.ca readers can request a copy of the presentation video by contacting Danielle Sefton at danielle.sefton@corusent.com.
