digital marketing
Bringing Humor to Digital Advertising
Everyone enjoys a great laugh once in a while, especially when it comes from a place you least expect. Usually businesses focus on promoting the unique selling points of their products and services, and forget to add a human element that keeps them real. Consumers love it when businesses make fun of themselves. It makes a brand more likable, more human. There is no formula for adding humor to advertising, and it can be done in various ways depending on your product or service. Here are some examples of my favorite digital ads that have gone outside the box of conventional marketing messaging and added humor to their marketing efforts:
- Dollar Shave Club – This startup created a witty video ad, similar in tone to the Old Spice campaign, that went viral earning over 4 million video views on YouTube and helping raise over $1 million in funding.
- LG Ultra Slim LED TV – LG created a video ad showcasing how easy it is to steal one of their ultra thin TVs. The campaign became viral, generating over 4 million views.
- Thor - the Marvel blockbuster film created a video campaign to promote the release of the new film by mimicking Volkswagen’s highly successful viral video The Force. The original video by Volkswagen garnered over 48 million video views, while Little Thor only reached 3 million views; however, in the viral video world that is still considered a significant success.
Hopefully these videos inspire you to consider using humor in your digital marketing! Which video was your favorite? Do you have other examples? We would love to hear about them.
Maryam Mehrtash
@socialmaryam
Tags: comedy, digital marketing, funny, humor, Social Media, Twitter, youtube
What If You Made a Decision Based on Incomplete Information?
Some people love it and others hate it – making decisions.
As a digital marketing strategist, making decisions is a core part of the job. After all, the creation and implementation of a marketing strategy is really a series of decisions.
In a perfect world all the information required to make the correct decision would be available. However, in real life, decisions are most often made based on incomplete information.
Information may be incomplete because of:
- limited time
- limited money
- uncontrollable factors such as the environment, industry, or economy
- inaccurate data
Limited Time and Money
Because we all have to deal with limited resources, the cost of acquiring more information to make a decision may reach a point where the added value is less than the cost of acquiring it. This is the point of diminishing returns on information. Consider what the likelihood is of making a better decision by spending another X amount of time or money.
Predicting the Future
Because we can’t accurately predict the future (if you can, please post the lottery numbers in the comments), many external factors may influence the outcome of a decision. These uncontrollable factors pose a great risk to any decision. Consider contingency plans in case an external factor is realized.
Inaccurate Information
Because we rely so much on information to make decisions, you must critically analyze the validity of the information you have. Especially in the online environment, there are many new monitoring and analytics tools being launched regularly. Before relying on any given tool, consider what is actually being measured and what that information means. If a tool is reporting 50% of the information inaccurately, your decision may be little more than a crap shoot.
Victor Chan
Digital Strategist
Photo Credit: Sarah G…
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Tags: decision, digital marketing, information, strategist, strategy
