It is no secret that I am a massive fan of Marketing, Advertising and Social Media. I am not into shameless brand or personal promotion, selfies and cheap marketing or click bait, however I don’t judge those who are; I simply feel it is important to realise that this world is here to stay and I like to play devils advocate in highlighting the positive side of this world…

Over the last few months I have had the privilege of meeting with Advertising, PR and Creative agencies around the world educating them on our video messaging platform, kwickie. An app, originally designed to connect fans to influencers, has evolved into something much larger; something with more heart and greater potential for good than we could have ever imagined.

It has humbled and delighted me that meeting after meeting my clients talk about creating communities, connecting their clients audience to a message and people who will add value to them, not just try to sell to them. The most common applications we explore are cause awareness, creating communities and inspiring people.

You can’t imagine the pride I feel when brainstorming about campaigns for positive causes and using Social Media to fuel powerful conversations. More and more we are seeing Marketing, Advertising and Social Media used to start conversations, inspire and influence positive change; communicate positive messages. It has been a shaky year which has left many of us in brace position wondering what shocking division will come next. In a hope to look at the flip side and focus on the positive, I wanted to highlight some of my favourite campaigns in 2016:

I’ve said it before and I will say it again. All platforms can be used for good. We can create movements, communities, awareness and engagement. If brands are promoting good do we care that they are also subtly appealing to our morals and influencing our purchasing decisions? I think not… What a great world we live in that brands now need to be accountable; we expect certain standards on how they support the community; give back to the world and we will give them loyalty if they take steps to look out for us. How can that be a bad thing?

This audience is wise, our purchasing power is based on how brands align to our values. That may be awesome cat videos or it may be creating a movement that helps to benefit the world. Either way I am all for it!

Social for Social Good was originally published in kwickie on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The kwickie team just presented to an ad agency on Madison Avenue in New York. Madison Avenue was the scene of the golden era of the advertising yesteryear. It’s where the series Madmen is based and Madmen is great watch. Apart from the blatant sexism and drunk-by-noon flavour of each episode, it’s a classic recreation of the golden days that led to the marketing and media industries of today.

Thankfully, things have changed, and arguably we still have some way to come in regards to equal opportunity in the ad & media industries. The thing that bugs me is shitty marketing and lazy marketers. It’s 2016, so why are we still using the same tactics of targeting consumers by location rather than via emotion or experience?

Let’s look at classic advertising for a moment: outdoor, press, print, TV, radio. Essentially we knew where people’s attention was and we just placed ads around it. That was pretty smart, we didn’t know what that audience was thinking but we took a stab as to who they were and why they were reading, watching, driving past or listening to the content we bought ads around.

Now almost all consumers are online, using mobile, active on social media or using streaming services such as Netflix, Hulu or Spotify. The rivers of data that come from these platforms offer us incredible insight into what these consumers are thinking, feeling and consuming. Why are we largely still placing media like we did back in the Madmen days? Yawn. Data, matched with hot creativity, is a powerful mix.

Any savvy marketer knows targeting by emotion rather than location is largely going to garner a better response. We have all the data and tools at our disposal to do this but we still place ads like it’s 1959. Double Yawn.

Let’s all be engaging and try to make true connections with our target audience, not piss them off with ad bombardment.

There’s a lot of talent in the advertising, marketing and media industries — let it shine through.

Lazy marketers are killing our industry was originally published in kwickie on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Raising the topic of Social Media can ensue a hot debate these days. There are more and more platforms popping up and it seems as though, as a user, you are either for these tools or very much against. Even as a marketer you love or hate them. Not a week goes by where I do not enter a debate on this topic with my optimistic heart set on converting any naysayers over to understanding the positive impacts of these platforms.

In a Lyft last week one such debate occurred. After some friendly chit chat my driver asked me what I did for work, following my response he promptly replied that he believes social media is the root of all evil and can be blamed for all that is wrong in this world… This is not an uncommon view, perhaps a little rash but I can admit it looks bad when all you see are people on phones; but have you stopped to wonder what they’re doing with them?

Every platform can be used for good or bad. This is obvious. You can use a car to get you from A to B or you could use it to run someone down, dramatic example but hopefully you get my point. These are tools, there are no rules forcing you to use them in a certain way. Their beauty is in their fluidity; it is like a blank canvas that gradually becomes more and more aligned to us. It is our personality extended, it is our brand.

It might sound clinical to think of yourself as a brand but think of how that empowers you. Do you have a message you want to communicate, a cause you want to champion, a great idea you want to spread? Social media allows you to bypass the gatekeeper and go straight to the publisher to spread your message. We now control the production as well as consumption of our technology. We choose what we want to consume and how we want to be influenced.

This is the first time in history where you do not need permission to have a voice! We may be bewitched by our phones but we are connecting; we are communicating.

We have platforms like YouTube to share video, to educate each other; Instagram where you can show you highlight reel, turn your life, lunch and passions into artwork; Twitter, to voice your opinions; and new video Q&A platforms like Kwickie where you can ask questions of thought leaders, friends or fans.

In the connection economy this is our tool to connect everyday people to each other and thought leaders to their audience.

Social Media empowers us to influence and amplify our collective voice.

Weighing in on social… was originally published in kwickie on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Cross device access has made user generated content one of the fast-growing sectors available to marketers. Brands need to find sharable, profitable video options that won’t break the budget.

Video content is tipped to account for around 80% of all internet traffic by 2019 and according to Mark Zuckerberg 90% of Facebook’s content will be video by 2018. Marketers the world over let out a collective ‘oh dear’.

t’s tough work being a marketer today. It’s all data insights and platform nuances and far less media owner-funded junkets and long lunches.

Marketers today have the most rapidly evolving landscape of all time and often we feel we are just chasing audiences around trying to appear for a quick view here, or a engagement there on a myriad of platforms and channels.

We’re desperately seeking our audience’s undivided attention and it seems each day a new report comes out telling us that attention has shifted somewhere different.

A constant theme of the past 12–18 months has been talk about video and how it’s about to crush almost every other bit of content on the internet over the next four years.

It’s this that’s got a lot of brands and marketers worried because it’s the most expensive and time consuming format to create. As Bauer Media just found out, simply creating video to get you into the party doesn’t mean people will want to engage with you.

Video can make a marketer’s eyes water because it usually means a video guy, some assistants, an editor, a sound chick, catering, a location or set and talent. Video is significantly more expensive to produce than it is to hire some junior journalists to bash out content pieces all day. It’s even cheaper to find content writers if you’re happy to use contributors in India. Mamamia! What is a marketer to do?!

User-generated content, or UGC as us cool media people refer to it, has been used well in the past by a select few major brands. The best part about UGC used to be that it engaged your audience and firmed up a brand’s ‘tribe’. But in the days of expensive video content creation UGC might just be a saviour of the massive cost of constant video production.

The Brands That Got UGC Right

Coke’s ‘Share a Coke’ campaign was a mega success for the brand in Australia seeing not just an uplift in sales and brand salience in Australia but it was successful in another 80 countries. Coke engaged its audience so well that consumers were seeking out their individual names in stores and sharing these images madly to their friends and followers.

The Starbucks ‘white cup contest’ tapped into the creative and talented customer base and provided the brand with unique and engaging social media fodder for weeks as customers sent in their painstaking designs all for the love of art.

Apple’s recent ‘Shot on an iPhone’ campaign and GoPro’s al-round epic content creation tools allow these brands to galvanise their audience but more importantly, create epic content that their audience will love, because it’s the audience that filmed, edited and produced it. Sure, some of these campaigns had significant media budgets to amplify them but the production cost lied mostly with the user.

At the other end of the scale, without large budgets for amplification look at brands like Happy Socks who almost solely rely on UGC to fill their social media feeds. It resonates the best too because it’s exactly what the fans of the brand want to see. Without briefs, the audience create the perfect content.

The principle for UGC in the digital video era remains the same: allow a platform for creation and amplification and empower the tribe.

Almost everyone consuming a brand’s digital video content will almost certainly have the power to create their own on the exact device they’re watching it on.

Video Content Doesn’t Need to Haunt Marketers

Facebook Live and Periscope are great examples of new video channels that are accessible to brands large and small and they don’t need budget to be done well. This recent live segment from ASOS was a creative way in which a brand can create compelling video content free of charge.

New creative content creation platform Kwickie, produces UGC between fans and celebrities that appears ‘live.’

It was built from the insight that brands need engaging video content and fans want to engage with well-known brand ambassadors and celebs. Brands can manage and then share this UGC on their own social channels — a seamless video made in seconds and ready for distribution to the masses.

Roving Kwickie had a Kwickie with Ben Dixon

Under Armour and the Fox 8’s ‘The Recruit’ are already dipping their toes into the water on the platform.

Boomerang — Plugging straight into Instagram this is a creative tool that allows fans to animate a moment in time they might be happening to share with a brand. The sheer nature of the looping videos turns the average follower into a quirky creative video producer. Made in seconds, the content is snackable and memorable. It’s easy to create and brands can share it outside of Instagram too.

Musical.ly burst onto the seen recently trading places with Snapchat at times as the most downloaded app. Users become the star of their own music video lip syncing their way through a chosen song better than Britney Spears ever did. The video content created in seconds is memorable, humorous and sticky content.

A good marketer today is a practitioner. Trial and learning happens on the fly and although the landscape is fast moving, video is going to be a constant.

If marketers can tap into the creation power of their audience they’ll end up with arguably better and more relatable content and it not a dollar needs to be spent on production. Think like Uber did and empower the resources that already exist — and let’s sit back and enjoy the show.

—James

Digital video arms race: why user generated content strategies will be a marketer’s saviour was originally published in kwickie on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.