Advertising

Egg On Their Face

Egg On Their Face

Outdoor clothing brand The North Face fell afoul of the digisphere after manipulating the images on Wikipedia pages of famous outdoor landmarks to feature its products.

Originally featured in the June 16th 2019 issue of Campaign Middle East magazine

What seemed like a clever ‘hack’ on the face of things has turned into a PR blunder for the Californian outdoor clothing brand who learned a valuable lesson on what happens when you mess with a beloved crowdsourced platform like Wikipedia. In an attempt at a form of digital ambient marketing, the brand’s Brazilian arm took pictures of trekkers wearing their products at famous locations around the world, including Brazil’s Guarita State Park, Cuillin in Scotland and Peru’s Huayna Picchu. They then updated the images on the Wikipedia pages for those locations so that the brand would appear in the top of Google image search results when visitors researched any of those locations. The new photos featured the company’s products, such as a backpack, hiking gear and camping tents.

The hack worked, at least for a while, with the brand’s images appearing in the top of search results for some of the target locations. But a slick video promoting the stunt brought the campaign to the public’s attention and prompted an immediate backlash online. “We hacked the results to reach one of the most difficult places: the top of the world’s largest search engine,” bragged the brand, outlining their ‘Top of Images’ project. “We did what no one has done before… paying absolutely nothing”.

The Wikipedia community were having none of it, and volunteer editors were quick to remove the branded photos noting that the effort breached the site’s user terms for paid advocacy (there is no advertising on Wikipedia). The brand claimed to have “collaborated” with Wikipedia on the campaign, but the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that hosts Wikipedia, denied this and slammed the North Face and its agency, Leo Burnett Tailor Made, for “unethically” manipulating the site. Liam Wyatt, a representative from the Wikimedia Foundation, Tweeted – “Thanks to this braggadocio video and your article we’ve now removed the product-placement from all articles. The user accounts behind the edits have been reported for breaching the Terms of User for undisclosed paid advocacy. For shame.” The brand was quick to row back, issuing an apology: “We believe deeply in Wikipedia’s mission and apologize for engaging in activity inconsistent with those principles. Effective immediately, we have ended the campaign and moving forward, we’ll commit to ensuring that our teams and vendors are better trained on the site policies.”

It was the deceitful nature of the project that left a bad taste. According to the agency behind the campaign, Leo Burnett Tailor Made, the biggest obstacle was updating the photos without attracting the attention of Wikipedia moderators, as site editors could remove the images at any time. What makes the stunt even more disingenuous is the way in which the brand seemed to take pride in gaming the system. Although ‘the system’ in this case was one of the most beloved and valuable crowdsourced hubs of knowledge on the planet. The arrogant way in which they promoted the stunt afterwards didn’t help. In cases like this, the ensuing controversy and attention can be part of the overall campaign goal. Although that’s unlikely in this instance as such trickery doesn’t fit well with the wholesome brand image of The North Face.

In a digital media landscape where users are slowly learning to think twice about trusting what they read, this highlights the responsibility that brands have in maintaining ethical practices when communicating online. Brands are always looking for clever ways to leverage consumer behaviour, but The North Face has found out the hard way that there are some lines that you must not cross, and attempting to manipulate a platform that users trust is one of them. The term ‘fake news’ gets thrown around a lot these days, and the last thing you want is for your brand to be associated with this kind of misinformation. In its statement, Wikipedia compared the campaign to defacing public property: “When The North Face exploits the trust you have in Wikipedia to sell you more clothes, you should be angry. Adding content that is solely for commercial promotion goes directly against the policies, purpose and mission of Wikipedia to provide neutral, fact-based knowledge to the world… They have risked your trust in our mission for a short-lived marketing stunt”. Maybe next time The North Face might not be so adventurous.

Posted by Rob in Advertising
A Jungle In The Desert

A Jungle In The Desert

Can Amazon shake up the digital ad industry in the Middle East like it has done in the US?

Originally featured in the March 10th 2019 issue of Campaign Middle East magazine

What comes to mind when you think of Amazon? Maybe the world’s biggest online retail platform – the ‘everything store’. Or perhaps it’s consumer products like the Alexa-enabled smart speaker and Kindle e-Reader, or an army of delivery drones and warehouse robots that are revolutionizing retail logistics. Or maybe even as one of the world’s biggest cloud hosting platforms. Truth is, Amazon is a lot of different things to a lot of different users. While its online marketplace might be what the company is best known for, Amazon makes money in a lot more ways than just taking a cut off products sold on its site.

One such way is its burgeoning digital ad business, a platform that is beginning to mount a serious challenge to the current duopoly of Google and Facebook. Amazon is gaining traction charging companies to promote their products on both the Amazon website and a growing display network across the web. Brands can pay to feature their products prominently in product searches, on individual product pages, and also as regular display ads for products for sale on Amazon itself and even on third-party sites.

In 2018, Amazon made $10 billion from its ad platform, a massive jump from $2.8 billion in 2017, making it the third-biggest player in the space, behind only Google and Facebook. To put it in perspective, Amazon’s $10 billion in ad revenue still considerably trails Facebook ($56 billion in 2018) and Google (a whopping $137 billion in 2018), although the fact that this vertical has grown so quickly over the last couple of years is a hugely impressive.

While these two Goliaths are far bigger currently, the advantage that Amazon has over them is that users actually shop on Amazon rather than just search the web as on Google, or browse social media as on Facebook. As such, their ads are seen in places where the user is in an active buying mindset. And while other platforms know what users are searching for or looking at, Amazon knows what they ultimately end up buying. Such information can be incredibly valuable to brands willing to pay for the right placement. Another trend that’s working in Amazon’s favour is that consumers are increasingly starting online product searches directly on Amazon instead of Google. This increased search traffic is attracting third-party sellers and the ad placements available give them a unique opportunity to usurp rivals at the point of sale, even when a customer searches directly for a competitor.

While Amazon’s ad platform is still less sophisticated than its rivals, it is constantly improving and recent months have seen a slew of new features that make the platform more robust and easier for advertisers to use. The company has been expanding a self-service option for ad agencies and brands to take advantage of its data on shoppers, which includes hundreds of automated audience segments, as well as targeting based on shopping behavior and customer demographics. To make it less confusing to brands, all advertising features have recently been folded under the Amazon Advertising umbrella, echoing a similar move by Google last year. Through its dominance in e-commerce in the US, Amazon has become integral to the advertising industry there. Brands are threatened by its power, but also know that they have to maintain a presence on the site or risk being marginalized, and one of the best ways to get seen now on Amazon is to buy ads.

Since acquiring Souq.com for a rumoured $580 million in 2017, Amazon has been relatively hands-off, at least from a consumer perspective. All that looks set to change, however, as the company gets ready to shutter the Souq.com site and rebrand as Amazon.ae in the UAE, later doing the same in Saudi Arabia. The revamped site would look similar to Amazon’s other international websites, like Amazon UK or Amazon Germany, giving it a more unified appearance and brand in the region. The new platform will also be better-integrated with the same logistics and seller back-end system as the US, which will presumably include integration with the growing ad network too. The Middle East e-commerce sector is growing at a rapid pace with online sales expected to double to $48.8 billion by 2021 according to a report by Fitch Solutions Macro Research. With more people shopping online, and starting the product search directly on these large e-commerce channels too, brands will need to maintain their presence there if they want to be seen. Assuming that these capabilities will soon be available in the Middle East, this presents an opportunity for forward-thinking advertisers in the region who are willing to try something new.

Posted by Rob in Advertising, Amazon, Campaign Magazine, Dubai, e-Commerce
The Year Ahead For… Social Media

The Year Ahead For… Social Media

This article was originally featured in the Predictions 2019 issue of Campaign Middle East magazine on 13th Jan 2019.

It’s that time of year again, and while it’s usually a bit of a folly to try and predict the cycle of  broad consumer trends based on the layout of the Gregorian calendar, it doesn’t hurt to look at how some trends might continue to evolve over the coming months. While many yearly predictions can end up turning into a game of buzzword bingo (I’m looking at you Blockchain, AI, AR etc.), instead, the below focuses more on what the average user might experience on social media moving into 2019, and thus what advertisers should take note of. This is not an exhaustive list for sure, but it might help you make sense of the social media landscape over the coming months.

STORIES, STORIES EVERYWHERE

In the not-too-distant past, the News Feed was the centre of all life on social media, but in the last two years, much of this usage has shifted to Stories. People just can’t get enough of the ephemeral vertical video format. The incredible popularity of Stories has been one of the most noticeable trends in social media over the last 12 months, with every platform seemingly adopting the format. Today, more than 1.2 billion users around the world share Stories each day across Instagram (400m+), Facebook / Messenger (300m+), WhatsApp (450m+) and Snapchat (150m+). Facebook’s chief product officer Chris Cox has predicted that, in 2019, Stories will surpass feed posts as the top way to share on its channels.

At the same time, other platforms like YouTube, Netflix and even LinkedIn have introduced Stories-style video over the last few months and will undoubtedly aim to utilize this format in the coming year. With this in mind, expect to see vertical video continue to become even more ubiquitous across the board, giving advertisers more of an incentive to create custom creative for the format rather than just adapting current assets.

AD OVERLOAD

Ironically, despite the recent growth in popularity of Stories, advertisers have been slow to fully embrace the format. Expect this to change in 2019. With the feed having been saturated with ads for some years now, the Stories feature is prime real-estate for growth, so expect to see more and more ads there in 2019. While revenue and user growth is slowing on Facebook, Instagram is booming. As such, expect to see an even bigger push for ads on Instagram as Facebook looks to offset this slowing ad growth. The Instagram feed will inevitably continue to become even more clogged with ads, while advertising will also start rolling out on WhatsApp too. As these platforms struggle to meet revenue targets, the once-sacred ideal of user experience will continue taking a back seat to cold hard cash.

With more and more ads getting in the way of regular content, and users becoming more aware of, and resistant to, the concept of targeted advertising, at what point will they start pushing back? Ad blockers are becoming an ever-popular way of dodging this onslaught, and brands must tread carefully so as not to alienate their audience.

INFLUENCER MARKETING MATURES

With it becoming ever harder to make an impact on users with traditional digital ads, brands are looking for more left-field ways of spending their budget on social media. Influencer marketing might have been considered a gimmicky and somewhat contentious approach in some circles up until recently, but this is an area that is maturing each year. With new regulation being introduced in the UAE in 2018, brands can be more confident that their budget is being spent legitimately. But with more money at stake, it’s increasingly important to choose creators that are a good fit with your brand, and to carefully consider what type of content you want them to create for you.

There is a huge opportunity for creating impactful content via influencers, but brands must be willing to budget accordingly. As the old saying goes, you get what you pay for. Social media marketing in general was initially seen as a fluffy channel where marketers could get free distribution until organic reach evaporated in 2014. Since then, marketers have been forced to re-evaluate this belief and consider it as they would any other paid channel; one that requires a dedicated budget and a well thought-out strategy. The same is now true for influencer marketing.

CLEANING OUT THE CLOSET

2018 was a watershed year for social media as most platforms faced increasing pressure from both users and the media over how they regulate content and manage user data. This will likely intensify in 2019. From concerns over user privacy and ‘fake news’ on Facebook, to trolling on Twitter and bot accounts on Instagram, many users are getting fed-up and these platforms are aware of the threat that this could pose to their sustainability in the long run. As users become more knowledgeable about how digital platforms make money from their presence, the platforms are being held to a higher standard and pressured into becoming more transparent. Expect to see more moves to appease these concerns over the coming months.

Posted by Rob in Advertising, Campaign Magazine, Facebook, Links of the Week, Social Media
What next for Instagram?

What next for Instagram?

With Instagram’s co-founders both quitting Facebook, are we about to see a more aggressive pursuit of ad dollars on the platform?

Originally featured in the October 21st 2018 issue of Campaign Middle East magazine

Seemingly out of the blue on Monday, September 24, Instagram’s two co-founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, who had both remained with the company since being acquired by Facebook in 2012, both abruptly resigned from the social media giant. The reason seems to be that Mark Zuckerberg had become overbearing in his control of the company, wanting to take the app in a direction that the founders disagreed with.

While this is a bombshell in-and-of itself, the fact that it comes hot on the heels of the two WhatsApp co-founders, Jan Koum and Brian Acton also quitting Facebook back in April for similar reasons, points to a broader movement. Despite Zuckerberg being traditionally quite facilitating to the founders of the companies that have been acquired by Facebook over the years, it seems that he is gradually starting to exert his influence and take a more active role in the business side of things with these companies.

So what has changed?

While Instagram initially relied on Facebook to help launch and scale its advertising offering, now it is Facebook that relies on Instagram for future growth. While revenue and user growth on Facebook is flagging, Instagram is booming. In the latest earnings call in July, the company forecast a continued slowdown in revenue growth and a slimming of profit margins, but disclosed that the growing number of ads on Instagram is an increasingly significant contributor to Facebook’s overall revenue. They also emphasised an intent to secure more ad dollars from Instagram going forward. It is this fixation on perpetual growth that is worrying for Instagram users. As Instagram becomes more-and-more important to Facebook’s bottom line, there is a continued risk that we will see the platform being overly commercialised.

Users have been drifting away from Facebook recently, not just because of ‘fake news’ or privacy breaches, but also because much of the recent growth in ad revenue has come from smaller companies that have clogged the Newsfeed with spammier content. While early corporate advertisers tend to be big brands or smart startups with relatively high quality ads, over time that quality tends to dip. As a platform matures, there is a clear trade-off between making it more accessible to smaller advertisers, and maintaining the quality of ads, a compromise that can affect the aesthetics of the platform in general.

The worry for Instagram is that something similar could happen to it too, and that this could be more strongly felt as lower quality ads could jolt the user out of the polished, picture perfect world of the Instagram feed. We are already starting to see this in effect in Dubai, with ads for massage parlours and furniture-moving companies that look like they were created by an eight-year old on Microsoft Paint. Not to mention the raft of wannabe influencers that pay to promote their own posts in a bid to grow their following, and subsequently, their ‘influence’.

Interestingly, the Stories format is relatively untapped from a monetisation point of view so far. In fact, Facebook has attributed some of the company’s slowing revenue growth to increased Instagram Stories usage. That is, more and more users are watching Stories at the expense of scrolling through the feed. But you can be sure that Facebook are eyeing this up as prime real estate for growth, and have recently launched an initiative to encourage SMEs to run ads there. Expect to see your local dog walker or handy man popping-up in an Instagram Stories ad in the not-too-distant future.

Ultimately, an increase in ads combined with a reduction in the quality of these ads affects the user experience and the overall quality of the platform. If Instagram too becomes chock-full of trashy ads, the people that moved from Facebook to Instagram to get away from the bombardment might just move on to somewhere else again in time. Generally speaking, this has been one of the more successful acquisitions in tech history, with Facebook playing it excellently so far, waiting for just the right moment to introduce ads to Instagram. It’s only been three years since Instagram opened up their self-service ad platform to a broader market in September 2015. While this certainly is not a long time in the grand scheme of things, they still have to play it carefully or risk turning Instagram into an inhospitable wasteland.

Posted by Rob in Advertising, Campaign Magazine, Facebook, Mobile, Snapchat
The Louvre Abu Dhabi “Highway Gallery” wins at Cannes

The Louvre Abu Dhabi “Highway Gallery” wins at Cannes

This was one of my favourite campaigns in the region over the last year so it was great to see it flying the flag for the Middle East at Cannes last week picking up a Gold Lion in Outdoor and a Bronze in Radio & Audio.

The campaign by TBWA/RAAD Dubai placed 10 billboards showcasing some of  the masterpieces on display at The Louvre Abu Dhabi along the 100km road between Dubai and Abu Dhabi, syncing them up with local radio stations so that drivers could hear stories about each masterpiece as they drove by. An excellent use of multiple mediums.

Posted by Rob in Advertising, Location, Tech