As the number of potential advertising channels has increased in recent years, there has also been a marked shift in power from the brand to the consumer. Effectively engaging with consumers has become increasingly important but increasingly difficult, due to the sheer volume of advertising messages and background noise that brands must cut through, across multiple platforms, to ensure that their messages are heard.
We have reached the point of saturation and now consumers expect far more from advertisers, while the advertisers themselves strive for true engagement. So what is the answer? Well there’s no silver bullet, but brands have a much better chance of their messages getting through if they are able to build true emotional engagement with the consumer on a subconscious level.
Growth in branded content
Online display advertising spend surpassed £1 billion for the first time last year, according to the IAB, and as the level of investment increases, the days of seeing online just as a performance platform are over. Instead it is now much more about truly engaging with audiences to alter and enhance their perceptions of a brand. This is resulting in more and more of brands’ marketing budgets being focused on premium branded content to entice consumers into a relationship where they interact with the brand. When done well, interaction with branded content can create a value exchange that consumers and advertisers both benefit from.
However, this value exchange is not just created through any branded content. Like any other form of online marketing, marketers must ensure it is relevant and properly targeted to cut through the noise and really resonate with the consumer. The key is delivering both personalised and contextually relevant branded content to the right audience in meaningful numbers, and this is something Yahoo! has focused on since the launch of Yahoo! Studio last year, which provides a premium and holistic service inventing, creating and executing solutions for brands working with Yahoo!.
The ever-increasing speed of internet connections has also led to an explosion in online video – an increasingly popular vehicle for branded content. The added benefit of video to the advertiser is that it is a far more emotional medium allowing you to communicate much more than through other online formats.
Subconscious storytelling
So budgets may be shifting more towards branded content, but what successes are brands seeing as a result? To answer this, we need understand what value consumers derive from branded content, an area that has not really been explored from a digital perspective. Yahoo! investigated this in its recent Subconscious Storytelling research. A UK primary research study, Subconscious Storytelling looked at how online branded content is enabling marketing communications that go beyond rational understanding to lasting emotional meaning, and in doing so bringing consumers closer to brands.
From a brands’ perspective, to truly create emotional resonance with a consumer you need to deliver a message that impacts on the subconscious. By testing case studies of branded content from leading global brands including McCain and Shell, Yahoo!’s study measured both the conscious (or rational) and subconscious (or emotional) impact that can be derived through brand partnerships in digital, as well as the longer term impact brands can receive through truly integrated campaigns.
The research showed that digital branded content campaigns can cause shifts in subconscious brand values, with key findings including:
- Online branded content is 47% more likely to deliver consumer value than social media sites
- The greatest subconscious impact is a cross platform one – integrated branded content executions delivered 39% greater subconscious impact than offline campaigns
- There is a 79% uplift in ‘brand closeness’ for integrated online and offline campaigns, versus offline on its own
- Digital branded content is as good at driving awareness and consumer value as TV sponsorship
To ensure maximum effectiveness for a branded content strategy however, brands must also look to tell consumers a story through content, encompassing a variety of key attributes. The five chapters of digital storytelling were discovered from the consumer study, and can be of great use to marketers:
- A beginning, a middle and a never-ending – Unlike other platforms, digital branded content is unrestrained by time, it can run for months and be constantly available for any user to access at any time, which allows a deeper engagement with consumers
- Brand values and the moral of the story – Brands must ensure that the idea at the heart of their campaign will connect in some way with the shift in values that the campaign trying to create. This will be dependent on the strength of creative, content fit, and how persuasive the execution is
- Stories in context – There must be a natural fit for the brand and the content otherwise there is a risk of consumers finding the link tenuous and not engaging as a result. A recent example of a natural fit was Canon’s EOS Adventures campaign with Yahoo! across Europe that aimed to appeal to entry level DSLR camera users. However, an opportunity fit is also a potential context, with brands creating a link through an extending and powerful campaign, for example, Diet Coke’s association with fashion through its Style it Light campaign
- Collaborative storytelling – Integrated, multi-platform branded content will deliver a greater impact on target audiences as opposed to content through just one channel
- Long-form storytelling on the web – The overwhelming theme from Yahoo!’s Subconscious Storytelling research is that truly interactive, in-depth digital branded content is having a clear emotional impact and can be the key to engagement that advertisers are looking for
The future of branded content
Online branded content is enabling marketing communications that go beyond rational understanding, to lasting emotional meaning, and in doing so, is bringing consumers closer to brands. As a result, we’re seeing brands focusing more and more of their budgets on premium branded content. These campaigns tend to run for longer periods of time and aim to truly reinforce the brand messages in ways that resonate with their target audience.
So far however, we have only scratched the surface of emotional measurement and the industry as a whole needs to look seriously at the measurement of emotional engagement, as only then will it be able to completely understand the full value of digital.
