Why is this work relevant for Brand Experience & Activation?

“Branding and Marketing in the New Abnormal” is a thought leadership content-led campaign designed to address challenges and pain points faced by brand and marketing leaders in the wake of the global pandemic. This campaign showcases the outcome of marrying content and contact strategies that will advance the customer journey and contribution to shifting brand perceptions and relevance. It also reinforces key ingredients of B2B marketing campaign planning and execution: content relevance, currency, audience segmentation and buyer's journey.

Background

Situation and Brief The global pandemic has disrupted markets and consumers, leaving businesses to swiftly adapt to consumption shifts, innovate new ways to engage customers digitally and rethink their brand purpose and strategy in the new abnormal. In partnership with CampaignAsia, GfK launched a thought leadership campaign “Branding and Marketing in the New Abnormal” to uncover the impact on marketing priorities, KPIs and budgets for consumer brand and marketing leaders across Asia Pacific. Objectives 1. Drive awareness and preference for GfK brand and solutions 2. Drive new contact acquisition and generate demand for GfK’s marketing, consumer and brand intelligence solutions

Describe the creative idea (20% of vote)

The campaign is build upon the core idea of the impact on marketing priorities, KPIs and budgets for consumer brand and marketing leaders across Asia Pacific. To reach our target audience and personas, we selected to partner with CampaignAsia, a leading media publisher across Asia Pacific, based on their subscriber base, editorial strength and market presence. Taking a content-led approach, we devised a research study to find answers around four areas: 1. What are marketers’ priorities 2. How is marketing effectiveness being measured 3. How have budgets shifted during COVID-19 4. How has COVID-19 changed the way marketers engage with consumers The underlying hypothesis was that B2C organizations that were more sophisticated and advanced in marketing measurement could swiftly adapt and pivot their investments effectively with impact amid the disruptions caused by pandemic. This includes reduction of budgets and shifting priorities such as short-term sales vs long term brand building.

Describe the strategy (20% of vote)

The target audience is marketing and brand leaders in B2C organization across varied industries in Asia Pacific. We built a comprehensive content and contact strategy to drive our 360 activation over 4 months (September to December 2020). Our content strategy is designed around the target personas and buyer’s journey of GfK market research and intelligence solutions. In this campaign, the three target personas were (1) Marketing, (2) Brand and (3) PR and Advertising. With this in mind, we designed content topics in varied formats that are mapped to the buyer’s journey so as to engage and nurture their interest. Example of Content Topics: Branding and Marketing in the New Abnormal *report launch Maximizing marketing investments in uncertain times Navigate shifting priorities in the new abnormal Rethinking brand purpose: lessons from the crisis for the future Finding the thin line between overspend and underspend Visit site https://www.gfk.com/branding-and-marketing-in-the-new-abnormal-in-asia

Describe the execution (30% of vote)

Implementation and Timeline: 4 months from Sep to December 2020 across Asia Activation includes a dedicated microsite, 3rd party contact base email campaigns, Google SEM and Paid Linkedin Targeting Content Formats: Blogs, Infographics, Webinars, Whitepaper Aided by our in-house marketing automation system, a series of automated email workflows were configured to send targeted emails with call-to-actions to new contacts based on their engagement and interest of the content to advance them through the buyer’s journey. A progressive digital campaign for awareness and conversion (new contact acquisition) was also activated and managed in-house. This includes Google SEM focused on English markets and Linkedin Paid Targeting advertising covering English as well as China, Japan and Korea.

List the results (30% of vote)

Results – Achievement vs Goal Engaged 5.5K existing contacts Acquired 918 new contacts vs 900 Target Doubled marketing qualified leads with 750 vs 350 Target Achieved 78% of target personas profile from new contacts acquired Email response rate average over 30% in open rate, between 16 – 20% CTR Total of 600K impressions from combination of Google SEM and Paid Linkedin Outperformed internal benchmarks on email response and paid targeting efforts In addition to exceeding marketing goals, the campaign generated positive vibes internally and focus during times of crisis and uncertainty. As the first ever 360 region-wide campaign of this scale and design in GfK, it won praises and has been referenced as a global best practice internally within GfK marketing based on its content relevance, thoughtfulness and sophistication in activation.