Recently, Instagram debuted IGTV, its long-form video hub, which many are saying challenges YouTube. As with any major feature launch, brands and influencers are still navigating how to leverage the new tool — but as they become more adept, we’ll start to see the incremental layers of additional brand-influencer partnerships making their way onto the channel. 

The best influencer marketing programs should leverage creators across multiple platforms, wherever they have proven the ability to create compelling content and built significant audiences. Let’s take a look at how to take advantage of Instagram’s latest feature and how it compares to YouTube. 

Long-form content: IGTV vs. YouTube

The first thing users will notice when comparing the two platforms is screen orientation. IGTV uses a vertical layout, a stark contrast to YouTube’s widescreen approach. The vertical layout is mobile-oriented, and challenges the concept that you need a digital single-lens reflex camera to create high-quality video content. 

This may lead to less pressure to create “professional-grade” video content — pressure that has created a barrier for YouTube in the creator community, though YouTube has made strides to support creators in this regard. 

This more casual element of IGTV provides a unique opportunity for brands to interact with consumers on the platform without looking overly promotional. 

For example, one influencer said she sees IGTV as a “place to capture [herself] in an unedited, candid fashion.” She also tells us it provides a nice contrast to her main Instagram page, as these kinds of raw clips balance out the beautifully edited videos, pictures and content she’s always sharing. 

Balancing two video platforms

Brands and influencers can use YouTube and IGTV in a complementary fashion. For historical YouTube content creators, IGTV may be a great platform for shorter versions of longer vlog content, which may be a better fit on an established YouTube channel. 

IGTV is also a great place for casual content like unboxings or quick demo videos, as well as longer on-the-go videos taken directly from a phone. While Instagram has the benefit of offering these easy-to-use mobile filming options, YouTube still wins out when it comes to high-definition videos, strong long-term SEO value, metrics and community commenting — benefits not easily replicated on IGTV. 

How IGTV can fit into your feed

Nearly every current influencer collaboration is leveraging Instagram for content creation. With this new offering, it’s essential that brands and influencers integrate IGTV along with static posts, stories, highlights, etc. Users can utilize static posts to announce new IGTV videos, or stories to provide a 15-second tease. IGTV videos also create a new Highlight appearing under the user’s bio, providing another way to promote the video inside the platform. 

Content creators are already jumping to take advantage of the creative possibilities IGTV provides, and by leveraging it in conjunction with platforms like YouTube, influencers and marketers can engage a wider audience with long-form video content.  

It’s an ongoing endeavor to tailor messages and content in new ways that keep audiences interested -- and if that interest wanes, the first rule of thumb is to create more personalized experiences for each user.

Building that experience, however, is challenging when the target audience does not yield enough data. For companies with a global reach, this becomes particularly problematic in developing economies or underserved areas where large percentages of people don’t have access to the types of technologies and services that deliver well-defined data.

Here are a few marketing lessons I’ve learned from years of addressing the unaddressable market.

Cultivate context

Context -- what people are doing and where they are -- can illuminate data on hand, but also offers important clues for data that does not exist and can be used in a myriad of ways. Think of context as intent.

In my day-to-day work, our customer base is largely in emerging economies and has been historically anonymous. We reach these users directly by understanding that their moment of need might come at home, late on a Friday night, when their mobile phone is about to run out of service. It’s in that moment we connect to offer a simple top-up option, helping them avoid the hassle or wait to get to a store and enabling them to keep their phone in use.

The moment of need might be different for your customer, but the same principles remain. It’s about understanding intent to find and connect with the individual in a meaningful way, in the anticipatory moment, and provide what they need without putting a requirement or expectation on it.

Trust your customer

We talk all the time about how to get consumers to trust our brand. But do we trust our consumers? This is standard procedure for most companies, but over the past few years, I’ve recently come to discover a more effective model.

One of the most common transactions for the underbanked consumers we represent are prepaid top-ups. In order to offer our services we have to offer financial airtime credit extensions, in the moment needed, to everyone. We do this without prequalifying the individual or having a certainty of their ability to pay. Instead we extend a trust to them and provide incentive to pay the extension back. 

It’s a remarkable shift that shouldn’t work, but does. We see consistent payback rates between 97%-98% and customer churn is all but eradicated. While your business may not trade in financial credits, the lesson can be learned that extending trust to every user, not just a privileged few, yields measurable success.

Build user identities

Context and establishing trust sets the stage for building purposeful user identities. Once we tune in to what our users need, and rely on our loyal relationships, audience data expands. From there we must ask, what data is most meaningful when building pathways to repeat app usage?

In my own work, we determine this by cultivating a deep, data-driven, identity-based relationship. We build trust with users gradually, at different stages of their own journeys -- in and outside the app. I’m privileged to watch as unbanked users are empowered to create financial identities and access fair financial services for the first time. The possibilities don’t end at airtime credit extensions, and identities based on context and trust are opening doors for the first time to other innovative services such as smartphone financing.

By applying the context you’ve discovered and the trust you’ve developed toward creating user identities, you can better deliver personalized, progressive experiences for users that keep them engaged and allow them to progress. In today’s world, there is no reason anonymous should mean unreachable.

“The New Customer Journeys and the Retailization of Healthcare Advertising”

Moderator Jordan Greene, partner/mobile media, Mella Media

Panelists
Nikzad Allahverdi, senior digital manager, Five Star Quality Care
Jon Kagan, senior director of search and biddable media, Cogniscient Media
Ted Lawson, senior director of marketing, Endo Pharamaceuticals

Jordan: Commonality that consumers don’t need you until they need you. Is search at top of funnel?

Jon: Search is both top and bottom. Targeting you by symptoms, change out ad copy, web domain, pull you through the patient journey. 

Ted: Search is our first go-to. Patient journey research in bariatric space. Can’t absorb B12 naturally. They start researching their surgery maybe years before procedure. Search is important as they’re looking early. Nutrition options. Every patient is going to need to be on B12 therapy for life.

Nikzad: Senior living is sought when there is a need for it. Rely on search. Once they do come in to the site, most of what we do is like holding their hand down the sales funnel. How to have tough conversations, tough decisions. Very overwhelming time when a person has to look for a place to put their relative. We work on organic side but also email campaigns. 

Jordan: Where does mobile fall into overall search?

Ted: Mobile device is the first place they go. We’re retooling our websites because they weren’t mobile friendly. This week, went through legal process, watered them down and approved them. Optimized for mobile in 2019.

Jon: We’ve discovered mobile is our highest source, depends on demo. Mobile has a sense of immediacy. Shorter tail, broader search, higher up the funnel. Research done on tablet, desk top. 

Nikzad: When you search senior living, not a single search. You might make decision across 4 - 7 sessions. A lot of time because there is so much thought going into it, research on tablet. If there’s an event that snaps into focus a search for something now. Middling success with geofencing, targeting them in hospital waiting room. Top of mind. Optimize across the board. 

Jordan: Multiple touch points across multiple platforms. That’s a lot. Do you have to be an expert on Day One?

Ted: We partnered with CMI Media, we’re a smaller plan, game share program. Not an expert in all digital. To partner with a company that is expert. Tremendous amount of success this year. Not just fee for service, set up test and control group, target test group and leave control group agnostic, measure upside each quarter, split the upside. They took up cost of delivery, etc.

Jon: Brand side, agency side, you can learn along the way but then you’re an afterthought. The most important thing to have in any digital operation is people with talent, good multitouch attribution model. If you can’t find someone, then you go outsource. If you’re not in a major metro, Austin, Boston, New York, you throw out the right money, money talks. If you insist on inhouse, have someone smart enough to interpret data. 

Nikzad: We farm it out. Made a shift to a more sales centered culture. It was a lot of local commercials on local news channels. We can do a paid search campaign for you. A lot of the things we assumed as givens about senior living we had shift. We hadn’t done paid targeting. New approaches is trying to get your footing. But in terms of Facebook, we’re finding that it’s in our interests to have team members of the community run their own Facebook pages. Makes a big difference in making people feel secure.

We have independent living, lowest level of care, glorified condo, with peers. Sales process can be two, three years. But if you’re in any other lines of service, assisted living, Alzheimer’s care, usually the adult daughter is the decision maker. We found that there’s an immediate judgment in people’s minds. Say they’re 75 or so, poking around, see an ad somewhere. If we show them somebody the same age as them, visceral reaction, I’m not that old! We have to find people 15 years younger than our average age. 

Jordan: Putting together audiences, how develop who audiences are?

Ted: Bariatric side, very specific. Nice thing is that it’s a niche, we fit very well there. Patients have to be on a host vitamins, iron. In process of having surgery, we identify where in that process is best place to introduce our program. Not a one size fits all, depends on how office processes the patient. Normally, it‘s the dietician. Our sales force is nimble, atrend pre-op meetings, present program there. Most successful but not most efficient. 

Jon: Pull demo data back in analytics, go to brand, Medicare client, age of person researching, join these together, take some liberty, individual into sports, marrying stuff together. Hit XYZ criteria. Do control, tailored messages to see which pushes forward. We’ve discovered what separates digital is we might not reach as many eyes but we’ll hit more qualified eyes. 

Traditional still feeds down into digital media. You can do cross find of both, work symbiotically. Helps influence our decisions later. Hard to get them to deviate some of their dollars. 

Nikzad: Looking at different sorts of media. TV, radio. Chevy campaign, pay it forward, a YouTube personality took opportunity to take money to one of our facilities and created a video where people mame a sound with their mouths, spliced into a song. Video with residents, it had a lot of success. We partnered with him to do a series of videos for us for holidays. “Older and Wiser” campaign, had residents give life advice, working that into pre-roll, Facebook ads. It’s more like brand level. Hard to attribute a conversion, keep faith in people that we know what we’re doing. Nice to see move to cutting edge side.

Jordan: Errors done by clients, competitors. Aleve ran a just short of horrible campaign with Fandango. What mistakes have you made?

Ted: Trying to put too much in to one space. We’re so regulated, we have to water down a lot of what we say. 

Jon: Haven’t had a catastrophe, worst we’ve had to execute on was a Snapchat thing for a healthcare company. Biggest way to deal with problems before they happen is to educate them. 

Nikzad: Finding our footing, with nature of sales cycle as fragmented as it is, try to make information available, optimized so they can read and understand. 

Ted: We’re doing it all, multifaceted. The one critical factor for me is we have to pick and choose where we’re going to have capabilities inhouse. Most important is our analytics team. Traded off digital capability for insights capability. We can take those insights and determine where to put banners, emails, direct mail, etc. Ability to touch people wherever they are.

Jon: Urgent clinics are one and done. Mobile quickly, track to clinic. One pharma client goal to prevent overdoses. Peanut allergy medication, 10 to 12 touch points before they come in. At least 5 touch points.

Jordan: Why aren’t we seeing more aggressive moves?

Ted: It comes to our regulatory environment. Care giver decision, a Facebook page is perfect opportunity to reach out to that community but we can’t do it. All the opportunities in the digital space, regulatory hurdles keep us from getting there quickly. The nature of pharma and where we’ve been. Risk is something greater than the reward of doing something new and exciting.

Jon: Difficult to proactively advertise this without invading someone’s privacy. Huge privacy scenario. Sometimes appropriate and often it’s not. Yes, we’ve overtly cautious but someone’s got to protect you as well.

Video from this session will be available here tomorrow.

While the dust s ettles over at Instagram, Facebook is encouraging advertisers to consider new opportunities on its other apps.

Specifically, the tech titan is officially inviting advertisers worldwide to buy placements in Facebook and Messenger Stories. 

Facebook opened Instagram Stories up to advertising last year, and the response from users has been promising.

A majority (62%) of survey respondents said they became more interested in a brand or product after seeing it featured in a Story, according to an Ipsos survey commissioned by Faecbook.

Big brands already testing ads in Facebook Stories include iHeartRadio, Kettle Chips and KFC.

While it remains a niche activity relative to Facebook's other features, Stories continues to grow in popularity. At present, more than 300 million people use Facebook Stories and Messenger Stories on a day-to-day basis, according to internal data.

The Ipsos survey found that 68% of people say they use Stories on at least three apps regularly, while 63% plan to use Stories more in the future.

Among other benefits, Stories ad placements can be presented in a full-screen format, while the Stories viewing experience closely mirrors that of programmed TV.

Like Instagram Stories ads, Facebook Stories ads will support a range of branding objectives — from reach to awareness, video views to app installs, conversions to lead generation.

Speaking directly to performance marketers, Facebook insists Stories ads can convince consumers to take action.

More than half of the people surveyed said they’re making more online purchases as a result of seeing stories, the Ipsos survey found.

Also, 38% of people said that after seeing a product or service in a Story, they talked to someone about it. Some 34% said they went to a store to seek it out.

One of the major constituents of modern consumers’ picture of healthy living is their mental health and wellness, a hot topic of discussion that is becoming increasingly mainstream. More people are reaching out for support than ever before, expressing a growing demand in the space as well as an opportunity for brands to supply new forms of aid, as outlined in PSFK’s Retail Health & Wellness Debrief.

Healthcare providers like therapists or counselors can be costly, and aren’t available to all consumers. Furthermore, some seeking support may feel intimidated by the therapist couch setting, or simply have trouble finding time to schedule appointments. Accordingly, retailers are focusing on marshaling technological advances to fill this gap, empowering consumers with resources like virtual therapy sessions, chatbot coaches and mindfulness meditation apps that marry support with on-demand convenience. Here’s how three brands are bringing mental health aid to consumers’ fingertips:

X2AI
X2AI made mental health care affordable and accessible through Tess, a chatbot who coaches people through common challenges, such as depression or anxiety.

Talkspace
Talkspace offers affordable, convenient online therapy sessions with licensed therapists.

Woebot
Woebot is a therapy chatbot that uses the principles of cognitive behavioral therapy to treat depression, through an approachable, conversational interface.

Headspace
Headspace makes meditation mainstream through its user-friendly app design and decidedly non-hippy branding.

71% of millennials abide by the belief that mental and physical health are intertwined, and brands are responding accordingly by empowering consumers to take charge of their mental wellbeing with greater convenience and on-demand assistance. For more information on how retailers are servicing modern health needs, see PSFK’s report the Retail Health & Wellness Debrief.

Lead Image: Mental Health board image By Rawpixel.com from Shutterstock

Office workers spend the vast majority of their lives inside—a fact that businesses are attempting to change by bringing the outdoors to the workspace. Known as biophilic design, incorporating natural elements such as sunlight and greenery into offices is a way that employers are promoting the mental and physical well-being of their teams.

Subjects in offices exposed to real nature like plants or even outside views showed improved health and productivity outcomes over subjects who sat in environments with no exposure to nature. Accordingly, corporations are taking the importance of natural elements seriously, building everything from full-blown urban botanical gardens to offer employees respite during their breaks to constructing indoor gardens and plant walls that offer not only pleasant aesthetics but also even help purify the air.

Amazon
E-commerce giant Amazon created an urban botanical garden at its Seattle headquarters. The Seattle Spheres are large, multi-story glass domes filled with 40,000 plants from cloud forests around the world. Each level contains different types of seating, from communal to semi-private, allowing Amazon employees to completely immerse themselves in the natural world.

Delos
Real estate and technology firm Delos created a set of building guidelines that focuses on human health and wellness. The WELL Building Standard is supported by medical and scientific research to develop a set of best practices for design and construction in order to support human health and well-being. Delos’ new headquarters in New York City is a showroom for the standard. Its wellness-focused design includes indoor plant walls to clean the air and circadian-based lighting systems to mimic natural light.

Field Office
Field Office, a creative urban office campus in Portland, Oregon, includes ground floor gardens, living walls and outdoor working spaces with 78 species of native plants in an attempt to blur the line between indoors and outdoors.

These strategies for boosting quality of life and work for employees using the power of nature are just a few of the inspiring examples PSFK has identified—for more information, see PSFK’s full report, The Office As Service Experience.

I don't know about you, but I'm continually searching for information during the holiday season to find the perfect gift for the best price. RetailMeNot survey data released this week suggests that consumers plan to spend an average of $803 during the Black Friday to Cyber Monday weekend, up from $743 last year

Some 87% of consumers will search for personal deals when shopping for holiday gifts, and 60% plan to hit the stores for holiday purchases long before Black Friday.

The top six November shopping days in 2018 include November 22 through November 27, but they will be looking for all sorts of deals. Sixty-one percent of online shoppers say they will not complete a purchase during the holiday season without free shipping.

The 2018 Holiday Insight Guide includes new data showing that 60% of retailers expect a better holiday season, but 86% feel pressure to compete with Amazon and other competitors.

Millennials are 42% more likely than Gen X, at 34%, and Boomers, at 22%, to visit brick-and-mortar stores on Thanksgiving Day. This generation wants to prepare early, with 89% of millennials admitting they would like to have gift purchases in hand as soon as possible.

Some 72% of millennials say it is important to them that retailers personalize their shopping experience. In fact 36% said they are more likely to spend additional money with a retailer known for great customer service, compared with Gen X at 27% and Boomers at 30%.

Nearly all retailers, at 95%, agree that deals and discounts are more effective at driving purchases during the holiday season. Some 81% said they will offer more discounts this holiday season, compared with last year. About 74% said they will begin marketing earlier this year, and 71% said they will offer deeper discounts.  

For the 2018 holiday season, retailers plan to increase their investments in mobile by 72% and social media by 69%, as well as 74% say they will begin marketing efforts earlier in the year, compared with 2017.

For those using social, 90% of marketers plan to reach consumers through Facebook, 76% through Instagram, 53% through Pinterest, 50% through Snapchat, 45% through fashion and beauty influencers, 39% through vloggers and 29% through celebrity influencers.

The top three places where consumers will look for gifts are department stores at 67%, online only retailers at 60%, and big box stores at 47%.

Some 67% of consumers admit to spending more money with a brand or retailer this holiday season if it has the lowest price on the gift, which means brand loyalty isn’t a consideration.

Location might even trump brand loyalty when shopping in a physical store. A recent Uberall survey found more than 80% of people typically conduct a “near me” mobile search. Some are going to the retailer’s website for direction. When asked how likely the respondents were to use a store finder on a retailer or brand’s website, 42% said they were “very likely.”

Accenture Interactive's MXM is appointing Eva Neveau as executive creative director to re-team with her former Publicis.Sapient colleague Roald van Wyk. who joined the digital agency last year.

Neveau’s responsibilities will include building a creative vision for clients, ensuring the delivery of best-in-class work and expanding the creative talent for MXM’s West Coast team.   

Neveau spent six years as Group Creative Director at Publicis.Sapient, first in Chicago, IL, working with clients including Children’s Hospital Colorado, Discount Tire, Kellogg’s Special K, Kraft Lunchables and Vera Bradley.

Then, Neveau relocated to lead creative efforts for the Austin, Texas, office, where she worked with clients that included Entergy, Patrón Tequila and T-Mobile.

She replaces Lisa Charlebois, who headed to the client side as the global creative director, digital experience and marketing innovation, HP.

Domino’s Pizza has added a dinner bell function to its mobile app, so friends and family can be automatically notified when pizza is on the way or has arrived.

Customers with the Domino’s mobile app can invite friend and family to join their dinner bell group. When the group leader places an order, they can ring the bell to notify their family or friends that the order has been placed.

When the Domino’s Tracker determines the order is out for delivery, it will automatically ring the bell to remind people that the pizza is on the way.

“Let's face it, sometimes yelling at everyone that pizza is here just doesn't work," stated Dennis Maloney, Domino's chief digital officer. "Domino's virtual dinner bell makes that job easier, as it rings right on everyone's phones, no matter where they are, so that everyone is ready to enjoy their piping-hot pizza together."

One of the more practical effects of the Internet of Things is the ability to get shoppers out of stores more quickly.

The most visible of the easy-shopping experiences is Amazon Go, the store with cameras and sensors where consumers can skip the cashier and have their Amazon account charged after they leave the store.

Others are now getting into the act. For example, Standard Market in San Francisco uses overhead cameras to  track shoppers and products, and shoppers are charged via the Standard checkout app after they leave the store, as demonstrated in a company video.

Another retailer, Ricker’s, is rolling out a hybrid of mobile pay and Amazon Go in 58 of its convenience stores in Indiana. In this case, Ricker’s is using Skip, the maker of a mobile self-checkout app, but the result is the same: the consumer bypasses a checkout line.

Now Zebra Technologies has created a personal shopping tool, so shoppers can scan items as they go and then skip the checkout line. Shopping lists also can be downloaded to the app.

From a consumer’s perspective, the technologies appear seamless, but there’s much going on behind the scenes.

In Amazon Go stores, for example, sensors are tracking products on shelves, cameras are tracking people, and all of this is technologically glued together.

For the Zebra system, called PS20, the location technology uses proximity sensors and Visible Light Communication (VLC), where a phone’s front-facing camera detects LEDs and in-store lighting to fuel machine learning algorithms for retailers to better understand consumer movements throughout their stores. This is leading edge.

The more IoT technology advances, the more seamless it starts to appear. What does become visible to consumers are the results. Many consumers may not notice the advances in IoT technology, but they may greatly appreciate the ease of ending their shopping trip.