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Tag: target marketing

How Brands Get the Ha-Has

How Brands Get the Ha-Has

November 6, 2020January 31, 2023 Clairemont InternBlog, Marketing, Wonderfully Randomcomedy, humor, Marketing, target marketing, Twitter

The way to a consumer’s heart might just be through his or her funny bone. Using humor in marketing breaks down walls and showcases a brand’s one-of-a-kind personality. When it comes to captivating comedy, what brands have landed the laughs with their target audience?

All About Brand Awareness

The driving motivation behind advertising efforts is to generate brand awareness with memorable campaigns that ultimately drive sales, of course. While some might say doing business leaves little room for humor, integrating a splash of silliness is proven to foster meaningful connections between consumers and a brand. The use of comedy not only serves to build brand identity, but humor marketing also gives a brand its own personality and air of authenticity. 

Which Brands Have Struck Their Audience’s Funny Bone? 

When a brand successfully leverages comedy to resonate with an audience, people take notice. In 2010, Old Spice made a bold decision that saved its brand during the Superbowl commercial break. A men’s grooming products brand, Old Spice advertised to the female partners of the men that would be the purchasers of Old Spice products. The viral marketing campaign, “the man your man could smell like,” garnered 220,000 YouTube views in a matter of hours after launching. 

The marketing genius behind this madness?

Humor, audience engagement and tons of quality content. Old Spice invited social media users on various platforms to submit questions to ask the “Old Spice Man” that would go live in an ad. People loved it, and the ads garnered attention, excitement and interest without relatively low cost and effort. Positive exposure for a brand because of a man cracking cool comments in front of a shower? That’s the beauty of humor marketing. 

What other brands have successfully dabbled in comedy? 

State Farm’s beloved Jake from State Farm, the quirky, potty-humored ads from the Dollar Shave Club and Clorox’s jokes about situations where you might need a Clorox wipe are all fantastic examples of the potential of humor marketing. 

Sarcasm Status: Trending

Twitter has normalized a casual, sarcastic tone for its users, giving brands an opportunity to capitalize on a casual marketing medium while showcasing a different part of their brands’ voices and personas. 

Wendy’s has earned a reputation on Twitter for being sassy, sarcastic and downright hilarious. While Wendy’s television and print advertising tactics might blend in with any other fast food joint, Wendy’s Twitter account has earned the brand a whole new level of awareness. From Tweets like, “Hey @McDonald’s, roast us.” to sassy exchanges with the Burger King Twitter account, Wendy’s has amassed a huge following, all because of its form of humor. 

Wendy’s isn’t the only brand to recognize the beauty of Twitter’s casual essence. Moon Pie has perfected the art of offhand hilarity with its tweets. This strategy has worked so well for its brand recognition that people who don’t even eat Moon Pies still give them a follow, including me!

The Impact of Empathy

Especially amidst a pandemic, humor in marketing can both boost a brand and serve as a much needed breath of fresh air. According to an excerpt from a Marketing Week article, “There’s an old Vaudeville expression that laughter is the shortest distance between two people.”

One of the main goals of marketing is to connect with an audience and to empathize with them. Humor can accomplish this, bridging the gap between a brand and its audience. Author Andrew Tarvin once said, “Both humor and marketing are about communication … If you get a consumer to laugh, you get them to listen. If you get them to listen, you get them to learn, and ultimately act.” 

If a brand can make an emotional connection by mixing compassion and humor together, it will establish itself positively in the mind of its audience. Here are a few brands that have managed to create content that does just that. 

Want to know more about marketing methods? Look at our blog about the magic of memes!

By Clairemont intern Anna Beth Adcock, a senior at NC State.

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“Don’t Make Me Think” Marketing

“Don’t Make Me Think” Marketing

May 17, 2017January 31, 2023 Cherith AndesBlog, Marketing, Public Relationschoice overload, easy customer experience, how to choose, target marketing

Variety. Something for everyone. Endless options. Find your fit here!

It’s a myth that more choices make happier customers. In fact, the opposite ensues when a customer is faced with more options that his or her brain can process on the spot. We feel overwhelmed and procrastinate for fear of choosing poorly. Fast Company describes this reaction as “hoarding our energy,” also known as “choice overload” or “analysis paralysis.”

In response, savvy marketers have honed strategies like target marketing or highly refined search results. But social media is spinning out this idea in other ways. Instead of encouraging purchases, social platforms are capitalizing on this psychology to direct the user’s experience. They provide one — just one — easily accessible suggestion that may lead users to try a new app or engage in online activity outside of their normal purview.

Latest Conversations on Facebook

Facebook thrives off of user engagement – whether comments, reactions or (cha-ching!) clicking an ad to purchase. But its online audience has developed a vocal culture that prefers to be led rather than forced into action. Hence, Facebook played it pretty smart with its recent feature.

“Latest Conversations” appears below the News section when you search for something, and it enables the user to peruse information by topic rather just by page or location. The feature suggests topics related to the user’s search, allowing you to see how many people at any given point across Facebook are discussing, oh, Mother’s Day, White House politics or gourmet cat food. You can even interact with Facebook users worldwide that are not your friends on the topic. Facebook didn’t advertise or force users to connect with new audiences. It simply provided the suggestion — one easy choice that piqued curiosity and invited exploration. And poof! Up goes Facebook engagement. New conversations with new friends and more reasons to stay on Facebook. Nice, Facebook.

Snap Codes

We’re so over QR codes, and we are never, ever getting back together. Please don’t make me take the time download a separate app to then scan a code that will then transport me to yet another website. Too much work … I just can’t even. That is until Snapchat leveraged QR codes as a way to add friends.

Then Snapchat upped the ante; it tweaked its platform to read QR codes that will open websites from inside of Snapchat. Snapchat now becomes a tool to access all sorts of activities — shopping, location guides, event data. You can see the biz goal here, right? Why navigate out of Snapchat when it provides all the functionalities you need? It simplified. It smoothed the path, removed user blocks and hence leveraged our “don’t make me think” mentality to boost its own popularity.

Extend the Invitation

Our “don’t make me think” mentality is an opportunity to continually evaluate our messaging strategies and user experiences. Are there blockers? At what point does the guest or customer become overwhelmed by options or challenges that trigger choice overload? Instead, simplify. Target based on smart research. Encourage customers to explore new options not by over advertising but by interest and invitation. It’s a “we think you like this. Want to explore?” approach.

Looking for your next steps? Check out our tips to target market with social media.

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Millennials and Targeted Advertising

Millennials and Targeted Advertising

April 24, 2017January 31, 2023 Clairemont InternBlog, Marketing, Raleigh PR Agencymarketing to millennials, millennial marketing, online marketing, target advertising, target marketing

As brands and businesses embrace social media advertising, advertisements are evolving into sophisticated, systematic machines. Targeted ads are becoming increasingly popular across social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat and Pinterest. However, how effective are they with millennials?

After conducting qualitative research – observations, interviews and a focus group – in a recent Ad/PR Research class at UNC-Chapel Hill, my team and I uncovered some surprising discoveries about millennials’ reactions to targeted advertising.

  1. Perceptions and Reactions
    Research revealed that participants had a negative or neutral perception of targeted advertising. Those who viewed targeted ads in a more negative light were mainly concerned about the privacy implications and companies combing their search history or tracking online behavior. In turn, these concerns lowered the consumers’ perception of a brand or company. On the other hand, many participants remained relatively neutral and simply scrolled past targeted ads on social media. Consumers’ opinions about brands and companies were not changed. They were not bothered by the presence of targeted advertisements but also did not pay them much attention.
  2. Privacy Concerns
    Although companies are not breaking any laws by how they target consumers, all participants were aware of the privacy concerns related to targeted advertising. Many felt as though everything on the internet is already public anyway, so they did not mind that companies were using their data to create ads. Overall, the millennials in our research felt as though the benefits and convenience of targeted advertising outweighed the privacy implications.
  3. Targeted Advertisements and the Likelihood of a Sale
    We expected to see a more direct relationship between targeted advertising and the likelihood of a sale, but our findings did not confirm our hunch. Instead, research suggested that targeted advertising is very effective in reminding millennials of a product they had previously viewed. In other words, targeted ads keep a product constantly in the viewer’s mind whether they decide to purchase it or not. The effectiveness of targeted ads greatly depends on consumers’ shopping habits. For those that regularly shop online, targeted ads effectively remind consumers of the product they had previously viewed, which could potentially expedite the buying cycle. However, for those that rarely online shop, targeted ads proved much less effective in getting their attention.

Alienate or Communicate?
Although millennials may have mixed reactions to targeted advertising, a few key findings can inform future ad campaign strategies. Our research suggested that there may be room to expedite the buying cycle for those that regularly shop online by providing reminders of previously viewed products. Additionally, since many consumers have privacy concerns with targeted advertising, companies should aim to be more transparent about how they are using a consumer’s information to target them.

Looking for more? Learn how to use coopetition to boost your marketing!

Written by Emily Deason, junior at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

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Have you heard about Meta’s newest social media Have you heard about Meta’s newest social media platform? It’s called Threads, and it’s being referred to as “the new Twitter.” Read everything you need to know about Threads in our latest blog post - link in bio!
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We are proud to represent Raleigh as a member of P We are proud to represent Raleigh as a member of Public Relations Consultants Group, allowing us to offer clients expertise and support across the country! Clairemont founder, Dana Phelps aka @blah2voila, recently attended the PRCG conference in Oklahoma City.
2022 has been a fantastic year for Clairemont Comm 2022 has been a fantastic year for Clairemont Communications! Visit our blog for the full 2022 year in review!
As communications professionals, we wear a variety As communications professionals, we wear a variety of hats to meet our clients’ needs.
 
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Check out our recent blog post to learn what @olivia.noles , account coordinator here at Clairemont, does on a weekly and monthly basis.
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This Friday, Clairemont’s Dana Phelps, @blah2voi This Friday, Clairemont’s Dana Phelps, @blah2voila , will be speaking at the 2022 @nc_prsa Strategic Communication & MarCom Conference! Phelps is a repeat presenter at this annual conference, and this year she is leading a session called Growing from Communication Technician to Strategic Counselor during which she will share three of her coined concepts: knowcasting, morecasting and collabolighthing. Visit our blog for the link to register for the conference!
@clairemontcommunications and @yellowdogcreative g @clairemontcommunications and @yellowdogcreative go together like the bacon and eggs! And speaking of bacon and eggs, have you been to @therainbowluncheonette yet? YUM!
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Visit our blog to see the @trianglebizjrnl coverage and read the full feature in the TBJ to learn more about Parkside.
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So you say it’s National Coffee Day? We say let So you say it’s National Coffee Day? We say let us tell you about our new favorite @drink321coffee ! If you are in Raleigh, go see Paul, the other Paul, Emma  or whichever smiling faces are working today. We LOVE this place and the coffee! ❤️❤️❤️
Our client @wendellfallsnc, one of the largest mas Our client @wendellfallsnc, one of the largest master-planned communities in the Triangle, closed on its first age-eligible rental community plan, Arden at Wendell Falls, that will offer 140 open-concept units and exclusive onsite amenities!
 
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It’s National Volunteer Month, and volunteers ar It’s National Volunteer Month, and volunteers are needed more than ever! Many organizations with scarce resources rely on volunteers and would not exist without them. Visit our recent blog post to read about the organizations Clairemont has supported and how you can make a difference in your community!
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We are so excited to share that Clairemont earned We are so excited to share that Clairemont earned eight awards, five gold🥇and three silver🥈, at this year's Sir Walter Raleigh Awards hosted by the Raleigh Public Relations Society!🎉 We are beyond grateful to work with so many amazing partners, clients and industry friends!
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