Everything is a remix. The challenge of future campaigns will be to create the process to continuously find relevant cultural pieces to build campaigns on that will resonate with your target audiences. Creative output is a remix of others’ pieces that created the foundation that we can grow on. The goal is not simply to trace what happens with the creative output, but also to be inspired by others and generate relevant key performance indicators. Therefore, stakeholders need to be able to identify the key events that were triggered by the communication as well as identify the author who started the conversation, the original source of the communication, and how it spread across media channels.
This article provides insights on how to evaluate, define and measure KPIs in a creative and publishing environment. It showcases how thjnk – one of Europe’s leading creative agencies uses Ubermetrics’s media intelligence tool in their creative processes to gain insights that matter.
Stage 1: Desk Research
Every minute, massive amounts of information is produced. Instead of using endless working hours trying to understand the market while only capturing a very small picture at a certain point in time, monitoring helps us to understand the bigger picture over a longer period of time. The first step when using a media intelligence tool is to define brand relevant filters, enabling the collection of high quality data from a variety of public information streams. The goal is to understand what the target audience is saying about the brand, what topics they currently talking about and to identify problems are they facing.
Case Study edding L.A.Q.U.E.
In 2015, one of Germany’s most well known brands for markers, office and art supplies – edding – entered a vertical that was completely new to them: Cosmetics. When the creative agency thjnk started working on a content strategy for eddings brand new nail polish “edding L.A.Q.U.E.”, the insights gained through collecting and analyzing conversational data about the nail polish market as a whole, as well as the competition edding was about to face, were extremely valuable. Consumers are not just looking for a beauty product, they also want to have long-lasting results and a personal fashion statement they can rely on, after a hard day’s work. Fortunately, long lasting, high quality colors are edding’s specialty.
Stage 2: Strategy
Based on the data gathered in Stage 1, the creative team has a great deal of valuable data from which to derive a differentiation strategy and find inspiration for creative springboards. Relevant questions to be answered in this stage of the creative process include: What is the current brand status? How is my target group communicating? What is my target group interested in?
Ubermetrics‘s monitoring product, Ubermetrics Delta, provides a range of analysis features that help to identify the golden nuggets. First of all, Ubermetrics‘s virality analysis can be used as a filter to rank mentions based on the interactions they received. Delta counts the number of links, comments, and retweets of a single mention to calculate a virality score – the more interactions a mention receives, the higher its virality score, and hence, the more relevant it is. By following these relevant conversations, the market needs and interests can be understood and used to develop ideas for future marketing and PR strategies. Finally, author analysis identifies experts and opinion leaders in topic areas. The sentiment analysis feature monitors changes in tonality and detects dissatisfaction among customers.
Stage 3: Channel & Communication planning
A great idea needs to get maximum attention from your target group. To win this you need to identify the most important communication channels. Additionally, you need to understand which channels your competitors are using. Next, analyze previous campaigns to understand past performance with respect to media coverage, reach, and target audience engagement. Two major analysis features in Delta provide insights to optimize the channel planning process: media segment analysis and author analysis.
With the help of media analysis, you can choose a project or search agent in your account and analyze the number of mentions for this topic on different channels. By identifying the channels that are used the most by your target group you can optimize your media mix and increase the reach and visibility of your campaign.
Next, prominent multiplier increase campaign efficiency. Not every influencer is a prominent multiplier on every channel. Author analysis provides the details needed to understand which author is a key influencer for a certain topic in a specific channel.
Case Study edding L.A.Q.U.E.
In preparation for the nationwide launch campaign in 2015, thjnk used Delta to identify influencers that would help spread the news of a new player in the nail polish segment. Based on their analysis of the most active and viral users talking about nail polish, thjnk identified several influencers, who were already well-known experts in the beauty segment and some of them even specialists just in nail polish. Additionally, they found out that not only Instagram but also Blogs were highly relevant to their target group. They combined these learnings to reach their target group, namely women who have both feet on the ground, who are limited in time when it comes to rituals and are longing for a quick, easy and long-lasting solution they can depend on. Finally, they started a hashtag challenge #POWERstattpüppchen (= “P.O.W.E.R not princess”), asking their target group what differentiated them from the stereotypical “princess”.
Stage 4: Implementation
Your campaign is ready to be launched. Once implemented it is important to track virality and sentiment and adapt your campaign if necessary. For example, take the results from the virality analysis to discover how well you chose your channels and whether or not you missed out on channels that seem to receive a high buzz from your target group.
Case Study edding L.A.Q.U.E.
Tracking the sentiment of all conversations about the product enabled the agency to appreciate the positive impact the challenge had on how people were talking about it and at the same time keep an eye on potential negative peaks.
Stage 5: Measure Success
Last but not least it’s time to prove success and measure performance. Features in Ubermetrics that help you answer these questions are mentions as time passed, most used media segments, and analysis of the most viral mentions and their spread over media segments. Take these insights as a learning for future campaigns and adapt your content and channel strategy accordingly.
Case Study edding L.A.Q.U.E.
Through a data-based creative strategy, the launch campaign for edding L.A.Q.U.E. proved to be a big success for a completely new, yet comparatively small, player in the market, reaching over 1 Million people within the target group over only a few weeks and building lasting relationships with influencers. Additionally, more influencers were now talking about edding L.A.Q.U.E. – who the agency can now easily identify and contact for their next campaign. And most importantly, the product delivered and the message stuck with the target group.
