Our Thoughts
Young & Shand is a Digital Marketing Agency based in Auckland, New Zealand. Founded by Ben Young & Duncan Shand we create and deliver remarkable marketing campaigns. With a word of mouth focus, we digitally leverage your marketing strategy to deliver customer engagement and business growth. Everything starts with a story so read ours.
Digital Marketer Interviews: Sarah Robb O’Hagan of Gatorade
May 15, 2012 by Marian Schembari
Welcome to Digital Interviews – where we talk to people we admire about what’s hot in the world of digital marketing.
We could not be more honored to welcome Sarah Robb O’Hagan to the stage today. Yeah, that Sarah Robb O’Hagan. President of Gatorade. No big deal.
Sarah is not only La Presidente, she’s also a Kiwi! And she has some incredible things to share about digital and where it’s going. Enjoy folks.
What digital changes this year have you really loved?
Facebook timeline feels like a real game changer – not just in the here and now, but for future generations. When you consider it with a long term lens, it’s an incredibly powerful way to document the human experience and leave something tangible that helps tell your story. I recently started mine and would love to take a week off work to build it out, upload old photos and fill it out for my parents’ lives too. It will allow my kids an easy way to see these stories for themselves.
Secondly, the introduction of Spotify into the United States is the biggest innovation to hit the music business since iTunes. It totally changes the way you consume music and where you get recommendations. What’s interesting is how it dips into the past in a fresh way by bringing back the era of the album. With Spotify, younger generations can move past single hits on play lists into albums in their entirety. They’ll discover music in the depth their parents once did, but in a way of their own choosing. That’s exciting stuff!
What new tools do you think won’t catch on?
It may be too early to say certain things won’t catch on, but there are a number of niche social media services that I think are still settling in to their “space”. Eg I am currently experimenting with Pinterest and Path to try and see if they will fit seamlessly into my digital lifestyle.
What’s the biggest challenge for people (both consumers and agencies) to embrace digital marketing?
One of the biggest challenges is a really easy one to solve. A lot of people are reluctant to jump in and try new services. Nothing shocks me more than when I meet interns looking for an entry level position in marketing and find out that they’re not active on Twitter. What they don’t realize is the simple act of learning to get “followers” on Twitter helps you understand what it takes to convey ideas both as a brand and as a person in this new world.
Curiosity is the key, especially for marketers. You HAVE to jump in and try new things.
Related to this, there is still a problem with the “us and them” mentality between what some people still call “digital” and “traditional” marketing. That mentality shouldn’t exist anymore. Success is about meeting your consumer where they are and communicating with them in a meaningful way. Game changing brands and businesses have mastered seamless integration across marketing functions to give a powerful experience to the consumer.
My favorite recent example of this was something I experienced on my holiday vacation. Vail Resorts made their ski lift passes totally digital and intelligent. Skiers can “check in” on all of their progress on the mountain which can then be shared immediately through social networks. They never have to actually stop and do it themselves. Vail Resorts also uses Twitter and Facebook in a very smart way. For example, a skier can tweet real time while getting real time tweeted reports from other skiers. It’s a great example of seamless digital tools that really improve a real world experience.
What’s your favorite digital campaign at the moment and why do you think it’s a success?
Gatorade #WinFromWithin, of course! We launched the new brand campaign over the New Year’s holiday and I believe we are the first major brand in the U.S. to launch an entirely new positioning and tag line with a Twitter hash tag.
Our approach goes back to the idea of having no walls between the “digital” and “traditional” marketing tools. In the launch of this campaign, all our resources worked together to make a brand statement, explain it, drive buzz and engage athletes in conversation. We’re early in the campaign, but response so far has been phenomenal. People are truly engaging with our brand, our athletes, and their peers around this concept of what it takes to win from within.
Through this engagement, we’re getting our athletic consumers to think about our brand and its role in improving their performance in a different way. That’s huge for us and not necessarily something I think we could have achieved through more traditional communications alone. We plan to pull every lever to build that momentum throughout 2012.
To keep up to date, follow Sarah on Twitter.
Read full article | (0) Comments
Marian Schembari
Marian is a Digital Account Manager at Young & Shand. Connect with me on Google+.
Mobile: 022 063 3996 Email: marian.schembari@youngshand.com
This Week In Digital Marketing 23-27 Apr: Google’s Latest Update, Brand Page Prof Pictures Increase In Size and YouTube Advertising Options
April 27, 2012 by Sean Lewis
This week in digital marketing Google releases it’s latest major algorithm update, we discover YouTube’s varying advertising options, Facebook brand profile pictures to increase in size and Google engineer, Matt Cutts, praises white hat search engine optimisation.
Google’s Latest Major Algortithm Update
Google has unveiled it’s latest attempt to counter web spam with a new algorithm update, dubbed ‘Penguin’. Google periodically makes major update changes to their algorithm, each usually targeting a number of different web spam techniques. The ‘Penguin’ update is aimed at keyword stuffing, link schemes, sneaky redirects and purposeful duplicate content. These ‘black-hat’ techniques push sites with, often, low quality content to the top of the rankings in turn hurting legitimate businesses. Google estimates that around 3.1% of english search queries will be affected by the change. Read the full article at Search Engine Land.
Facebook Brand Page Profile Pictures To Increase In Size
Facebook will be implementing an increase in the profile picture size for brand pages, from the current 125×125 pixels to a much larger 160×160. For many of these pages this will mean a redesign of the cover photo and profile picture. A strange move from Facebook less than a month after the launch of Timeline and an annoyance for page admistrators. Read all the details here.
A Look At YouTube Advertising
Search Engine Watch has created a comprehensive guide on the differing advertising options available on YouTube. The options available extend from $300,000 24 hour homepage placements, to simply targeting YouTube in the Google Display Network with CPC ads. The TrueView in-stream ads allow you to place a pre-roll video advertising before targeted videos, great for brands that have a TV spot in their campaign. As the second largest search engine, TrueView in-search ads can achieve great exposure. These ads place your video at the top of the search results for your chosen keywords. Lastly, the Display Content Network allows you to target videos related to your keywords with a simple PPC scheme.
Matt Cutts Praises White Hat SEO
Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts, has made a post on the google webmaster blog praising those who are practicing white hat SEO techniques. Cutts says that white hat SEO can; “improve the usability of a site, help create great content, or make sites faster”, a benefit for both consumers and search engines. He goes on to say that not only are their algorithms targeted at harming black hat SEO, they also aim to reward best practice white hat. Read the full blog post here.
Google Relaxing Phrase And Exact Match Keywords
On A Lighter Note…
A video confronting the stereotype portrayed by Hollywood of african men has gone viral this week. Sick of sensationalised stereotypes the producers of the film set out to mock Hollywood in a ‘fun’ way.
Read full article | (0) Comments
Sean Lewis
Sean is a Digital Account Executive at Young & Shand.
Phone: +64 9 282 4680 Mobile: 021 029 35410 Email: sean.lewis@youngshand.com
This Week In Digital Marketing 26-30 Mar: 25% of Paid Search Share To Be From Mobile Devices, 25 Ways To Grow An Email Database, McDonalds Second Attempt At A Trending Hashtag
March 29, 2012 by Sean Lewis
This week in digital marketing a report from Marin software forecasts 25% of paid search share to come from mobile devices. McDonalds has a second attempt at creating a trending tweet after a failure in January. Reports of Google developing a comment plug-in to compete with Facebook’s popular comment plug-in. Google de-indexes the majority of pages on the BuildMyRank.com paid link network, and 25 ways to grow email databases.
25% Of Paid Search Will Come From Mobile By December 2012
A report from Marin software named, “The state of mobile advertising”, analyses the link between paid-search markets and mobile devices. The report details an expected growth in the share of mobile’s share of clicks from 12.3% in Dec 2011 to 25% in Dec 2012. At the end of last year tablets were responsible for 38% of all clicks with a 7% rise predicted by the end of 2012. An excerpt from the report states how mobile conversions are often hard to track as users are likely to convert through calling and visiting a physical store once they have found the information on the website. Click here to read the article and download the full report.
McDonalds Has Second Attempt At Creating Trending Hashtag
After a failed attempt at creating a trending hashtag in January, McDonald’s came back with the hashtag #Shamrocking to promote their new lime milkshake. The previous hashtag attempt, #McDStories, ended badly when users began to apply their McDonalds horror stories in their tweets. McDonalds pulled the failed promoted tweet down, but it was too late as the tag had begun trending. The #Shamrocking promoted tweet tells users to post a picture of them holding the new product with them doing a ‘jig-like stance’. This time the response was better, marred only by a hashtag hijack attempt from PETA. Read the case study at Ad Age here.
Reports Of Google Developing Facebook Comments Competitor
A blogger from Saudi Arabia reports that Google will be releasing a comment plug-in as direct competition with Facebook’s popular plug-in. The announcement came at the G Saudi Arabia conference and has yet to be confirmed from Google. The Facebook comment plug-in is now deeply entrenched on the web as a go-to comment plug in along with disqus. Market penetration won’t be easy and the plug in will need to have some outstanding features for webmasters to swap. Read more at the AllFacebook blog.
Google Eliminates Major Paid Link Network
Google has deindexed an “overwhelming majority” of pages on one of the biggest paid link networks on the web, buildmyrank.com. The announcement comes from BuildMyRank who stated they will be “shutting down their services in the current form”. They’re making a graceful exit, with guaranteed payments for customers and affiliate partners, preventing a potential PR disaster. This is just another one of many indications Google will be cracking down hard on paid links and ‘search spam’. You can read the article here and the announcement from BuildMyRank here.
25 Clever Ways To Grow Your Email Marketing List
On A Lighter Note…
Google has rebranded a number of it’s services under the name ‘Google Play’. The merger includes Google Movies, Music, Apps and Books.
Read full article | (0) Comments
Sean Lewis
Sean is a Digital Account Executive at Young & Shand.
Phone: +64 9 282 4680 Mobile: 021 029 35410 Email: sean.lewis@youngshand.com
Search
Categories
Archive
- May 2012
- April 2012
- March 2012
- February 2012
- January 2012
- December 2011
- November 2011
- October 2011
- September 2011
- August 2011
- July 2011
- June 2011
- May 2011
- April 2011
- March 2011
- February 2011
- January 2011
- December 2010
- November 2010
- October 2010
- September 2010
- August 2010
- July 2010
- June 2010
- May 2010
- April 2010
- March 2010
- February 2010
