Brandcasting™ is the development of rich-branded experiential content that can be captured, produced and employed by brands across both traditional and Free Media/Social Media landscapes for the purpose of increasing their relevancy and impacting targeted consumer and/or business-to-business marketplaces. When broken down further, brandcasting™ can be translated as the use of online media to broadcast and extend the impact of offline experiential content. This broadcast often results in the generation of a viral buzz across online social networks and digital mediums.

Today, successful brandcasting™ is both defined and controlled by the consumer, who elects which media he or she wants to view, share, and/or participate in. To increase your impact within the consumer marketplace, give your audience what they crave: rich entertainment and personal relevancy. What you bring to the table must be both exciting and pertinent to your audience if you want to get that foot in the door! Why should they pay attention to or even consider purchasing your product?

One of our leading fast food clients wanted to make a big splash in the consumer marketplace in order to increase brand awareness. MME crafted an innovative brandcasting™ initiative for our client, which involved the creation of a branded “Twitter Truck Tour” that traveled all over the country giving out free product samples. Audiences were drawn to the tour because they were given the ability to make direct requests for the tour to make a stop at their house, party, or event with free samples. The tour spread virally as the truck’s followers re-tweeted posts to more than a half-million of their own followers, expanding the brand’s reach exponentially.

Once you have lured potential buyers in by breeding genuine interest, you can weave in your brand’s messages and finally achieve those positive metrics and the bottom line ROI you’ve always dreamed of.

Now we want to hear from you. How have you used brandcasting™ to improve your brand’s relevancy?

With the media landscape in a constant state of change, it is time for you to change things up by revolutionalizing your company’s marketing model. The traditional model has become passé to consumers and NOW is the time to take on a new direction. In the past, marketing was simply about getting the product into the hands of the consumer. With today’s buyers being bombarded by hundreds of messages and products a day, they have begun to opt out and disengage from conventional marketing tactics. This new generation of individuals has marketers working infinitely harder to engage them in conversations about new products.

The key to staying ahead of the game is identifying and leveraging the ways that people want to be reached in the current marketplace. One of our clients had their sights set on increasing brand awareness and foot traffic in their plethora of stores. Given the evolution of digital technology, we encouraged this client to “change their game” and redirect focus to driving website purchases by increasing their use of technology at events and activations. This use of technology drove an increase in online purchases that generated over one million dollars in content sales during a single summer tour sponsorship.

Be innovative and stay ahead of your competition by generating tactics that target consumers in a whole new way. With the use of free and social media gaining popularity, consider incorporating the use of platforms like Facebook and LinkedIN into your marketing plans. The exploration of these new mediums will allow you to further the integration of your marketing strategies. Who knows, you may shock yourself and generate real interest from clients or consumers that you may not have otherwise reached.

What changes have you noticed in your consumers as the media landscape evolves? How have you changed your game to boost your brand? Share your case studies with us!

NOW is the time to rethink the landscape of marketing metrics. Reset your focus and discover that the realm of performance measurement can be extended far beyond the time-honored impression. Rebuild your metrics system using more measurable and tangible currencies that are relevant to your company’s bottom line. Where does your business place value? Instead of simply focusing on the number of people who are exposed to a message, concentrate on currencies more pertinent to your business such as DOLLARS earned, new customers acquired, data points collected, and qualified leads generated.

The key to success is to prioritize your currencies and target them accordingly. One of our leading sporting goods retailers was able to increase sales by identifying and targeting their top currency: on-site transactions. After activating some of our innovative strategies for this company, such as hosting an on-site, experiential “try then buy” campaign, MME was able to assist our client in generating over three million dollars in same day sales!

Start realigning your marketing strategies in accordance with this new system. Set performance goals based on these newly prioritized currencies and begin embedding your messages and triggers into tactics and strategies that will help your brand succeed.

What is your number one currency for your business? How do you measure this currency?

The dramatic nature of change in the media landscape, now clearly felt on both sides of the fence (Media vs. Advertisers), poses problems and challenges that don’t match up easily for either side.  Traditional agencies and media planners have been thrust straight into the CMO’s – ROI centric world.  Gone are the days when plans and submittals consisted simply of GRP’s and CPP’s.   The new ‘Measurement Currency’ that CMO’s jobs are now dependent upon are Sales Lift, Sales Velocity, Customer Acquisitions, etc.

The fact is, Marketing and Media investments are just that, ‘investments’, and they need to perform like any other line item on a Corporate Ledger.  Experiential Media makes this possible. 

Learn how you can apply and acquire Integrated Experiential Media (a measurable form of Direct Response Marketing) to deliver proven ROI in your media plans with a copy of MME’s latest Experiential Marketing White Paper entitled: 

A Media Director’s & Advertiser’s Guide to: The Experiential Medium – A LIVE form of Direct Response Marketing

To receive a free copy of this report, email Marc Seto via mseto@mobilemarketing.com

So how do we continue to deliver exceptional results without the same level of resource support?  Here are a couple lessons the economy is teaching us:

Integration. In a recent client meeting, we were asked to demonstrate how our agency is aligning our internal human resources and expertise to benefit their overall brand objectives.  Similarly, we needed to ensure that more of their integrated business units were involved in our solutions to support a broader portfolio of their products and services.  The benefits of this focused effort were many, including exposure to incremental business opportunities in other sectors of the organization and streamlining our own internal communications.  From a client perspective, it was clear that combining offerings in a peanut butter and jelly scenario led us to deliver richer, more robust experiences, while our clients achieved tighter internal controls and cost containment.

Expanding Networks and Outsourcing. Many companies are reducing headcount and simply don’t have the capability, experience and internal resources they previously enjoyed.  We believe you should view outsourcing in terms of what you can add, not subtract.  Outsourcing allows a company to create synergies, reduce liability and risk, improve communication and delivery, control costs and ultimately deliver a more significant return on your investment.  Moreover, outsourcing enables companies to be more efficient with their time, allowing them to channel their efforts on the core business competencies and objectives.

These are just a couple ways the economy is broadening our capabilities and strengthening our ability to drive your ROI.  Curious? What is the economy teaching you? How will you rise to the top in a down economy?

With that being said, experiential agencies and their brand customers often fall prey to accepting UNQUALIFIED Data acquisition.  In a romantic sense, we can use an analogy of love relationships to best tell this story.  In the best of cases, the Sponsorship and Events Group at Brand X have this great romance going on with the Sales Department as the Sponsorship/Event Group delivers bundles of Qualified Leads captured out of the weekly sponsorship/event activations.  The Sales Group dances through the halls as these Qualified Leads generate New Business Sales on a routine basis and all is fine in the relationship.  MME’s recent experience included the delivery of Qualified ‘Hand Raisers’ (consumers who visited MME’s Portable Auto Showroom installed at Marathons and other Community Events) in 5 Midwest Cities across much of 2008 for an unidentified Auto Maker.  As MME delivered bundled leads to local Dealer Groups, you could say the love affair was poignant, especially when you consider that these Qualified Leads have lead to a staggering 463 Auto Sales (and still counting…) and thereby generated over $15 million in sales for the struggling U.S. automaker.  This is real love and what we call Real ROI.

Conversely, having recently visited a NASCAR Race to review an Experiential Activation of an unknown Brand Y, I surveyed a relatively solid Consumer Experience that attracted a solid flow of consumers through the Brand Experience.  While the display was attractive and included some fun experiences, the lack of relevancy to the Brand was pretty obvious and more to the point, the data capture mechanism, was reliant upon Contest Entry.  This is what we refer to as highly Unqualified Data — the kind of data the Sales Department learns to accept, only to push this to the side, as they quickly learn that the data is generally worthless.  Consumer are less interested in the product, more interested in the prize.  Data that in general leads to a less than romantic relationship and is not likely to be sustainable.  While I have no quantitative results to reinforce my POV on this, my gut is that Contesting Data acquisition lists might be on par with what the Sales Department could acquire from a Data List broker.

As a close to the story, MME did present a solution to the Brand Y and is still in discussions and hopes to be serving Brand Y and enhancing the Romance.

What bracket does your Acquired Data fall under?  Is it real love…or was somebody just giving you fake digits?

OK, so how do we leverage experiential media to get us there?

Start with the consumer and work back to the brand experience. How (and how often) does your audience consume certain types of media? Which emotions do they generally seek out through certain channels of experience (i.e. sporting events = excitement, humor)?

When you can converge where you reach them physically with what they WANT to feel emotionally, then the question is: How do you put your brand in the middle of it and ask them to be your customer in a relevant way? Apply this thinking across multiple channels of experience and soon they will realize it’s not just the experience you are relevant to, it’s their lifestyle.