TEN DIGITAL TRENDS FOR 2020
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TEN DIGITAL TRENDS FOR 2020 STANDING OUT IN THE AGE OF MULTIMEDIA TSUNDOKU 4 BY MALLORIE RODAK SOUND TEST: WHY PODCASTS ARE RIPE FOR EXPERIMENTATION 12 BY PATRICK O’NEILL AND KYLE DAVIS THE MARKETPLACE ABHORS A VACUUM 18 BY SARAH WALKER-HALL AND KELLY PILAND TIPTOEING THROUGH THE POLITICAL TIDAL WAVE 22 BY LUKE DAMOMMIO COLLAB FATIGUE IS COMING – HERE’S WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT 31 BY TREY GREEN AND HELINA SEYOUM BLURRING LINES: CONTENT AND COMMERCE CONVERGE 36 BY LAKEN FACCIO A NEW SOCIAL ORDER 42 BY AUBRI ELLIOTT DEEPFAKES: THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE MURKY 46 BY JAYR SOTELO UNPACKING THE BLACK BOX: GOOGLE AND FACEBOOK’S 49 MOVE TOWARD AUTOMATION BY CONOR MACDOWELL AND ANN PETER THE ANTI-AESTHETIC 54 BY LAUREN KAINDL
BY BENNIE REED, COREY AUSTIN, AND CORY O’BRIEN
TEN DIGITAL TRENDS 2020
“How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked.
“Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually and then suddenly.”
– The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway
As you read our Ten Digital Trends for 2020, pay attention to the language. You will
undoubtedly notice words like culture, responsibility, authenticity, sincerity, and influence splashed
throughout these pages. This may be jarring if you are familiar with our nine previous annual
projections. You would likely have expected to be inundated with figures about adoption, growth,
social, mobile, or any number of breakthroughs in new technology, platforms, or user behavior.
It is no accident that the most influential factors in digital for 2020 are as much about
cultural reaction as technological advancements. As digital has become more pervasive
and intrinsically influential in American life, it has rightly been scrutinized to a greater extent
than ever before. The debate about digital has shifted from the realm of “what is possible?”
toward “what is right?” Technological breakthroughs are still just as common, but they are
shifting from novelty to reality – change happens slowly, then all at once.
The expansion of machine learning into ever more significant functions will continue, along
with questions about bias and shifting patterns of work as artificial intelligence and
machine learning augment job roles. Privacy, accountability, and responsibility will continue
to dominate conversation in governments and boardrooms alike. Consumer control and
expectations for products, services, and platforms will continue to rise, and experimentation
at the edge of these experiences will continue to accelerate.
Apart from the inevitable disruption that this ongoing shift will bring to the core of their
businesses, brands need to have a clear understanding of how these themes will
influence opportunities across all touchpoints and audiences to appropriately plan their
digital investments.
One factor will have the most immediate impact on brands’ prospects for taking advantage
of digital in 2020: attention. From the collapse of the attention economy making it far more
difficult to captivate audiences at scale to paying deep enough attention to the shifts major
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communications platforms are making behind the scenes, attention will define the brand
landscape in 2020.
To stay ahead, dive into analysis of how to engineer attention amid an overwhelmed and
distracted population, find new audiences by experimenting within the second podcast
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boom, build strong and differentiated brand narratives with a shelf-out e-commerce strategy,
or discover how brands can safely navigate the fraught waters of the 2020 election cycle.
While planning investments for 2020, pay attention to the underlying platform strategies from
the duopoly as they shift to less transparent campaign tools, attempt to satisfy greater scrutiny
by building a more nuanced one-to-one-focused social ecosystem, and rise to the enormous
challenge posed by deepfakes.
As always, the thinking in this year’s report is fueled by a wide range of digital experts –
digital strategists, brand planners, media planners, creatives, and brand managers.
“We hope these trends will be insightful and
instructive as you plan your brand-building
strategies for 2020 and beyond. Let’s go have fun.”
– Stan Richards, Brand Creative Leader
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STANDING OUT IN THE AGE OF
MULTIMEDIA TSUNDOKU
Tsundoku (Japanese: ) is a Japanese slang term that originated in the Meiji era (1868-1912). It’s the
idea of acquiring reading materials but letting them pile up in one’s home without reading them. The piling of
unread books.
MALLORIE RODAK
Brand Planning Director
Source: thedailystar.net
These days, your pile of unread books may be only a couple of titles deep. But turn your attention from your bookshelf to your laptop,
phone, or TV. Consider your unread emails, bookmarked articles, social media notifications, podcast queue, Steam library, Hulu watchlist,
Spotify playlists, and, if you’re over 40, your DVR. The tsundoku of today isn’t made up of paper and ink but bytes and code.
When memes joke about the stress of your never-ending Netflix queue, your overwhelming amount of notifications, or your RAM-defying
number of unread Chrome tabs, it’s easy to see that we are living in the age of multimedia tsundoku.
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STANDING OUT IN THE AGE OF MULTIMEDIA TSUNDOKU
STANDING OUT AMONG THE ZETTABYTES
When you consider that 90 percent of the world’s data was created in the past two years, the staggering reality of our modern-day
multimedia tsundoku begins to set in.
The number of books published worldwide has sextupled in the past 30 years, with more than three million new titles annually. The number
of original scripted TV shows and movies has gone up by a factor of six since the 1980s in the U.S. alone. Half a billion photos are
posted each day on Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat. One million hours of video are uploaded daily to YouTube. Tens of millions of
songs are available to stream, along with hundreds of thousands of podcasts and video games.
How have we responded to this exponential growth of content? On one hand, it’s our natural tendency to try and meet the demand,
which is why our time spent on the Internet has grown globally to more than six and half hours a day on average, or more than 100 days
of online time a year. To extend that average across all 4.4 billion Internet users, humanity will spend a collective total of more than 1.2
billion years online in 2019.
Source: hubspot.com
During those six and a half hours each day, we try and maximize our time engaging with content. Skim reading is the new normal.
Podcasting is becoming podfasting (listening to podcasts at an accelerated speed), and podfasting has become the “gateway drug” to
all types of sped-up media consumption.
Podfasting, or whatever fasting, gives me an opportunity to…set my anxieties aside and indulge in my wildest fantasy: to manipulate
time, indefinitely, whenever the temptation strikes. So that I can read more books, watch more movies, blow through more TV shows,
and listen to more podcasts – while still having time to hit the gym, hang out with friends, get enough sleep, and, you know, show up
for my job every day. – Lindsey Lanquist
But on the other hand, in a content-rich, time-poor age, we are overwhelmed by the rate of consumption relative to the time we have
available. The concept of timeboxing, or assigning scheduled time to a certain task, has leapt from the handbooks of Agile planning
to self-help articles on time management. Some people are timeboxing the amount of their day that they consume content to limit their
exposure. Brands are even timeboxing content by providing estimates of how long it will take to read their story or watch their video.
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STANDING OUT IN THE AGE OF MULTIMEDIA TSUNDOKU
It’s no surprise that in 2020, the sum of human attention is simply not sufficient to consume the content that’s being created. Mark Shaefer
coined this epoch content shock, where “exponentially increasing volumes of content intersect with our limited human capacity to consume it.”
As an advertiser, it all sounds fairly depressing. The battle for attention continues to grow harder with more content, more channels of
exposure, more publishers, and shorter attention spans. Content creators are “the speed daters of storytelling,” continually challenged to
break through with “snackable content” in shorter amounts of time.
When short becomes not short enough, and content becomes too much to take it all in, how can brands stand out in 2020? In this age of
multimedia tsundoku, how can we avoid gathering dust on the proverbial bookshelf of the Internet?
“ARCHITECTS OF FAMILIAR SURPRISES”
Unfortunately, there is no formula for success for breaking out on the Internet. But according to Derek Thompson, author of Hit Makers,
there are some fundamental elements involved in making a hit. It starts with a central thesis: We, as consumers, are simultaneously
neophobic (dislike anything too unfamiliar) and neophilic (love trying new things).
Throughout time, we’ve been programmed to fear the unfamiliar as an evolutionary response to stay alive. In all organisms, exposure to
a novel stimulus initially elicits fear and avoidance. The more that we’re exposed to a novel stimulus, the less we fear and avoid it. This is
known as the mere exposure effect.
Does the mere exposure effect mean the answer is spending more money on more advertising to expose more people to our message
more often? That’s not a sustainable solution, and in some studies, higher levels of exposure have proven damaging to company reputation.
It means we, as consumers, like the familiar because it’s easier and faster to process.
Have you ever heard someone say “this is hurting my brain?” There’s a psychological principle behind that feeling called perceptual
fluency, or the ease with which a stimulus can be processed. We love the feeling of quick and easy thinking, content that we can instantly
understand. And there’s even a name for that moment when the unfamiliar becomes familiar, when everything clicks in our heads: the
aesthetic aha. But the pleasure of the thought doesn’t always equal the quality of an idea. Thompson argues that this familiar idea should
also be advanced in nature, meaning it pushes the boundaries of what we find acceptable or “normal.”
It is not merely the feeling that something is familiar. It is one step beyond that. It is something new, challenging, or surprising that
opens a door into a feeling of comfort, meaning, or familiarity. It is called an aesthetic aha.
Being familiar isn’t enough to stand out on the Internet. But neither
is being brand-new. In today’s culture of worshipping the new, we
might think that to stand out on the Internet, we have to be totally
unique or post something that’s completely different than what others
have posted before us.
But, in fact, the real power comes from “well-disguised familiarity.”
The new ideas that inevitably remind us of old ideas. We, as
advertisers, have to be “architects of familiar surprises.”
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STANDING OUT IN THE AGE OF MULTIMEDIA TSUNDOKU
THE INTERNET’S ULTIMATE “FAMILIAR SURPRISE”
There’s no more prolific example of a familiar surprise on the Internet than memes: remixes, parodies, mashups, variants, and/or imitations
in popular culture. Today, memes are more popular on the Internet than Jesus in terms of Google searches. Memes are the cultural
language of our generation, a “system of shorthand” for expressing broadly familiar yet incredibly specific scenarios.
The word “meme” was coined by Richard Dawkins in 1976, and it comes from the Greek “mimema,” meaning “imitated.” Dawkins
shortened this to rhyme with “gene” because he felt that ideas in popular culture reproduced in a process analogous to the way genes
spread. Today’s Internet meme researchers echo Dawkin’s premise. In an analysis of over 100 million Internet memes, researchers
described the “offspring” of a meme. Just as genes pass on a playbook of traits to their offspring, memes pass on elements of familiarity to
their variants.
Indeed, a meme is the Internet’s architecture of a familiar surprise.
The format, the visuals, the scenario feel recognizable or relatable,
and the combination of elements comes together in a surprising
and often humorous way.
The most popular memes that are shared most often are the ones
that employ Raymond Loewy’s MAYA principle of being the Most
Advanced Yet Acceptable. The funniest yet most relatable. Memes
that push the boundary of the zone of normalcy at the edge of
experimentation.
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STANDING OUT IN THE AGE OF MULTIMEDIA TSUNDOKU
THE MAYA PRINCIPLE
Long ago, before the Internet and proliferation of content, there was
an industrial designer named Raymond Loewy who understood the
importance of a familiar surprise. It was this knowledge that propelled him
to create some of the most iconic designs: the classic Coca-Cola bottle,
the Shell Oil logo, and the Greyhound logo.
Loewy (1893-1986) was a designer famous for pushing the boundaries
of expectation. His designs all followed one simple rule that he called the
“MAYA” principle: Most Advanced Yet Acceptable. It meant that Loewy
gave users the most advanced possible design but not beyond what they
were able to accept and embrace.
Source: interaction-design.org
Modern theorists agree that edgy aesthetics have value on the Internet.
Somewhere between the zone of normalcy and the zone of experimentation there’s a sweet spot: what’s Most Advanced Yet Acceptable.
Source: subpixel.space
“When Weiden Kennedy says they want to capture “lightning in a bottle” this is what they mean: to take something just outside
of mainstream culture, aestheticize it, and turn it into marketing for a consumer product.” – Toby Shorin
THE MAYA PRINCIPLE TO HELP STAND OUT IN TODAY’S MULTIMEDIA TSUNDOKU
Are memes the future of digital advertising in 2020? Not quite, but MAYA ideas are. In 2020, more brands will realize that it’s a losing
game to try and stand out on the Internet by constantly trying to be new or novel. Just as we think of what’s unique about our creative
ideas, we also need to evaluate what’s familiar about them, because it’s these bold yet instantly comprehensible ideas that are the ones
that stand out on the Internet.
Lately, some standout branded ideas have broken through the multimedia tsundoku. Whether MAYA is a fundamental characteristic of the
brand or a strategy employed on a campaign level, these brands won the Internet with surprising takes on the familiar.
It’s a Tide Ad
Tide’s Super Bowl ads took the familiarity of notable moments from commercials and the surprising revelation that the ad was for Tide.
#TideAd became the second biggest trending topic on social media behind #SuperBowl, with #TideAd used over 45,000 times. The
campaign’s creators acknowledge the importance of the familiar
nature of the spots, and the surprising twist at the end.
It plays a little bit with your mind, in a good way.
You are watching, and you think, “Oh, I know this ad,”
and these ads were really big. Mr. Clean was huge
last year. Old Spice was huge years ago. So you
connect with that immediately and maybe feel the
emotions connected to those ads. And then you have
the reveal that, no, you’re actually in a Tide ad.
– Javier Campopiano, chief creative officer of Saatchi
& Saatchi New York
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STANDING OUT IN THE AGE OF MULTIMEDIA TSUNDOKU
Purple Mattress
Purple Mattress has consistently disrupted the familiar through a strategy that’s been hailed as “differentiated” and “breakout.” All of their
videos (over 736 million video views) capitalize on familiar narratives, themes, constructs, and characters like Goldilocks, superheroes,
Sasquatch, Star Wars, and mummies. The videos play into the types of content that users might expect to get on YouTube or the Internet,
with a quirky Purple twist.
Cards Against Humanity Prongles
One day, a familiar-sounding brand appeared on the toy aisle of Target: Prongles, with the tagline “once you pop…that’s great.” The chips
instantly sold out, but the media was baffled about where this product came from. Turns out, it was a Black Friday campaign for the card
game Cards Against Humanity, who used a familiar product in a totally surprising way.
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STANDING OUT IN THE AGE OF MULTIMEDIA TSUNDOKU
Burger King Whopper Detour
Burger King took a familiar habit – stopping by McDonald’s, the world’s second-largest restaurant chain – and turned it into something
incredibly surprising (and rewarding).
Geico
Geico is a classic example of a brand that’s employed familiar surprises in their advertising for over 25 years. Their MAYA strategy? “Be
funny but not too funny.” Geico walks the line at the edge of experimentation with their parody ads that feature recognizable characters
and scenarios. Here’s one of their most recent ads that exemplifies their approach.
ALIGNING ON YOUR MAYA STRATEGY IN 2020
In 2020, brands are finally realizing they can break out of the multimedia tsundoku by capitalizing on familiar surprises. They’ll take
recognizable constructs, themes, characters, and ideas, and make them their own. They’ll push the boundaries of what’s acceptable to
their target audience to help stand out on the Internet.
How can you create a strategy for standing out in 2020? By better understanding what’s familiar or surprising to your audience.
Phase One: Familiarity Exploration
To get people to pay attention, we have to pay attention to them first. In this phase, use research tools to better understand what’s familiar
to your target audience. Databases like Google Audience Explorer, MRI/Simmons, and/or consumer data lakes allow for advertisers to get
a broad swath of media, behaviors, brands, and attitudes about their target audience. Narrow down these data points to ones that are
adjacent to the consumer decision journey or most relevant to your product/service. Share this “day in the life” of your target audience with
your creative teams to help them better understand what’s truly familiar to their audience, so they can prepare to disrupt the familiar.
10STANDING OUT IN THE AGE OF MULTIMEDIA TSUNDOKU
Phase Two: Idea Development
Now that we’ve identified the familiar, how do we create a surprise? In this phase, consider creative brainstorm formats that shake up
traditional thinking, like starbursting, where a familiar idea is presented and questions are generated iteratively off of this familiar idea, or
mind-mapping, where associations are created from an original idea. Brainstorm contradictory concepts to the familiar ones you explored
in Phase One. Challenge the assumptions of each familiar idea. Assign creative teams two random familiar ideas and force a connection
between the ideas to see if you can create the unexpected through the familiar.
Phase Three: MAYA Testing
During the creative process, talk about the furthest you could push an idea before it became unacceptable to your target audience.
Consider research that helps you understand where the point of diminishing appeal might be for a design or message, or how familiar,
surprising, and perceptually fluent your ideas are through the lens of your target audience. Neuroscientists at the University of Southern
California have developed a formal Bayesian definition of surprise measuring the posterior and prior beliefs of observers that could be
used as a method to better understand how familiar and/or surprising your ideas may be to your audience.
The future of hits on the Internet will be democratic chaos, with millions competing for attention. Even with massive budgets, brands can
still fade into the background, like a forgotten book on the Internet’s collective bookshelf. What do brands need to consider to stand out in
2020? What’s Most Advanced Yet Acceptable about your brand’s messages.
Are familiar surprises the ultimate key to breakthrough content in 2020? It’s a variable but certainly not the answer. Much also depends on
emotional resonance, relevance, distribution, and marketing. But as brands think about crafting breakthrough products and messages in
2020, it’s important to remember: It’s not just about standing out among the multimedia tsundoku, it’s also about fitting in, surprisingly.
Author’s Note: Special thanks to Derek Thompson, as this article relies heavily on his book, Hit Makers: The Science of Popularity in an Age
of Distraction.
Mallorie Rodak
You’ve heard of those folks around the office who wear lots of different hats? In Mallorie’s case, those hats
have included media buying, mobile marketing strategy, digital strategy, account management–and, these
days, pairing sociology with business savvy to find strategic insights as a senior brand planner.
That’s a lot of hats. But there are more: Mallorie’s also worn the “Published Author” hat for her contributions
to the book Shaping International Public Opinion, the “Highly Regarded Ad Pro” hat for being named one MALLORIE RODAK
of AAF Dallas’s 32 Under 32, and even the “Galactic Secret Agent” and “Battle Nun” hats for her voiceover Brand Planning Director
work in anime and video games.
Not done yet. Mallorie also has the “Magna Cum Laude” hat (Drury University); the “Master’s Degree in
Advertising” hat (Southern Methodist University); and the “Current Planning Director” hat for brands like
Firehouse Subs, Keurig Dr Pepper, and On The Border.
We so want to find her a hat client.
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SOUND TEST: WHY PODCASTS ARE
RIPE FOR EXPERIMENTATION
In the first episode of podcast tour de force Serial, journalist and public radio personality Sarah Koenig
describes the homicide case that would be resurrected as the topic of her weekly show and would soon
live on in watercooler- and cocktail-talk infamy as one of the most intriguing podcasts ever to have been
produced. In Serial’s first episode, Koenig recalls reviewing the homicide case for the first time, describing it
as “a Shakespearean mashup: young lovers from different worlds thwarting their families, secret assignations,
jealousy, suspicion, and honor besmirched…” Just the kind of elaborate drama that’s captivated human interest
for centuries and had previously been reserved for the small and silver screens. But the astronomic success of PATRICK O’NEILL:
Serial was unignorable, and it became one of the first instances of Hollywood taking a legitimate interest in Digital Strategy
the emerging storytelling clout of the podcasting medium.
Since then, podcasts have become an increasingly viable breeding ground for not only new motion picture
franchises, but new storytelling opportunities, new content possibilities, and new ways for brands to inject
some authenticity into how they connect with audiences. They’re low-risk, low-cost, and ripe for testing new
ideas – they’re also seeing more adoption than ever before.
KYLE DAVIS:
THE SECOND PODCAST BOOM Digital Strategy
Podcasting isn’t really a very new phenomenon at all, but because of its simple production model and sprawling appeal, the number
of podcasts has grown exponentially, with some sources reporting a mind-boggling 1.5 million unique podcasts currently available for
listening. Consider if each of those shows released a half-hour episode every week for a year: That would be 39 million hours or just over
4,450 years of content. The format is experiencing a massive renaissance, to the point where 2018 saw the first instance of Google queries
related to “best podcasts” exceed those related to “best TV shows.” The sheer variety of podcasts is attracting listeners who may not have
considered the medium just a few years ago.
Google Trends: Search queries containing “best podcasts” or “best TV shows” since September 2014
12SOUND TEST: WHY PODCASTS ARE RIPE FOR EXPERIMENTATION
WHAT’S CAUSING THIS SECOND BOOM?
With 1.5 million shows to choose from, any new listeners have an unbelievably vast pool of content to explore: Podcasts about cereal
to an in-depth Star Wars analysis where every episode scrutinizes a single minute of each film in the franchise. Both of these are completely
real. For any micro-niche or interest you could think of, there’s probably a podcast about it, or at least an episode. The uniqueness of
many of these podcasts is turning casual listeners into devoted fans, with many podcasts/hosts becoming iconic cultural phenomena in
their own right.
To that end, TV has already staked a claim to podcasts like Homecoming (Amazon), 2 Dope Queens (HBO), Welcome to Night Vale (FX),
Lore (Amazon), and Dirty John (Bravo). And, of course, there’s Maron (IFC), which, while it may not be a true direct podcast-to-TV transition,
still owes a lot of its success to the titular comedian’s massively popular podcast, WTF With Marc Maron (the guy interviewed Obama, for
crying out loud). Adaptations like these are turning podcasts into something that looks like an incubator rather than just digital radio.
Google Trends: Search queries related to “podcast,” “NBC,” and “NPR” in the past 12 months
THINK OF IT AS A LAB, NOT A CHANNEL
The beauty of podcasting comes from a blend of intimacy with the listener and permission to talk about subjects that would be outright
taboos for traditional advertising.
For a medium that’s ostensibly so one-dimensional, podcasting offers a huge diversity of ways for brands to create, advertise, or test based
on their own internal objectives. On one hand, they can become flagship brand assets that create a space for users to engage with
topics they’re interested in. On the other hand, they can be a way to test ideas or leverage affiliations with niche creators to discover new
audience insights and potential ways to connect with an audience on a deeper, more authentic level.
AFFINITY-BASED ADVERTISING
The podcast space has morphed into something that caters to almost every niche interest and unique identity imaginable. Of course, “niche”
sort of implies a smaller audience, but what many of these audiences lack in size they make up for in dedication and authenticity. To that
end, brands might not reach the widest audience when partnering with a podcast, but it’s fantastic for connecting with individual listeners
in a way that’s unique, relevant, and contextual.
Just looking at sheer demographics, a partnership like BMW sponsoring The Daily (The New York Times’ daily briefing by journalist
Michael Barbaro) is a total match: Household income for the average owner of a new BMW is just over $124,000; household income
for the average New York Times reader is about $118,000. Still, there’s a deeper implied alignment with the time-deprived well-informed
and some on-the-go, sports-car-driving professional who doesn’t have time for long-winded conversations or lazy mornings over coffee and
a newspaper. Their life moves fast, and so should their news.
13SOUND TEST: WHY PODCASTS ARE RIPE FOR EXPERIMENTATION
Beyond demographics, brand/podcast partnerships can become a lot more nuanced and even in some instances hilariously playful.
My Favorite Murder is an immensely successful (currently #8 on iTunes) podcast that scrutinizes the lore and madness behind some
of the most and least well-known serial killers in history. It also features some of the most interesting (and completely appropriate) brand
partnerships we’ve seen among any shows in the space: surf-and-turf delivery company ButcherBox, cruelty-free hair care company Living
Proof, and modern jewelry designer Machete, just to name a few of the show’s most fitting advertisers based on its morbid subject matter.
It proves that something as simple as a podcast host reading an ad can punch quite a bit harder when paired with relevant content.
On the other hand, shows like The Weekly Planet are finding ingenious methods for integrating branded content into their programming,
like turning ad reads into opportunities for comedic improvisation.
For closed captioning, visit YouTube.
THE PODCAST PROMOTIONAL TROJAN HORSE
An ad read from a podcaster’s perspective functions as an invitation from a brand to the host saying, “Here are all the bullet points of
what to hit on; structure it to your show.” Oftentimes it works because of a clear brand-show connection between the service offered and
the content provided. However, like most brand integrations, the host reading an ad can be naturally abrasive to the ad-sensitive listener.
So how can you lean into the medium in a way that takes advantage of one of its most prominent tools?
If Guy Raz (TED Radio Hour), Malcolm Gladwell (Revisionist History), and Sarah Koenig (Serial) were all given the same open-ended ad
copy to read for, say, the Casper Mattress, would they all sound the same?
Not a new thought but necessary background: Podcast hosts have what marketers want, a captive audience that is there for every word.
Which lends itself well to advertising.
Sixty percent of listeners in an Adobe Analytics survey stated that they look up products or services they hear about through a podcast ad.
Why is that? It is within the very nature of podcasts, and it’s what makes them so special. A deep dive into a niche subject matter that is
delivered with humble authority disarms the listener and makes them more keen on trusting their recommendations. And it’s not just a host’s
charisma that sustains a listenership; in many cases, listeners are drawn to a host/brand’s subject matter expertise.
Take AT&T and Revisionist History, for example. In the latter half of the most recent season, Mo Katibeh, Chief Marketing Officer of AT&T,
and Malcolm Gladwell, the host, engaged in a conversation in lieu of a typical ad read. The conversation spans multiple episodes and
features the two exploring the capabilities of a 5G network from a business perspective as well as the technology’s ramifications for the
future. The beauty of this format is twofold: Firstly, humanizing and simplifying unfamiliar, complex topics is just the thing Gladwell’s
brand of journalism was built on; secondly, it blends into the format of the podcast, removing the abrasiveness of a typical spot that’s been
jammed into a show. In the end, AT&T spreads awareness and builds brand expertise by cloaking its ads in Gladwell’s characteristic
storytelling format. And it’s not just branded content in two- to three-minute increments: Brands with the most intense fanbases are grasping
user attention for hours.
14SOUND TEST: WHY PODCASTS ARE RIPE FOR EXPERIMENTATION
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WIELD AUTHORITY FOR MORE INTRIGUING CONTENT
The smartest brands are finding ways to parlay their innate industry expertise into fascinating looks into interesting worlds. 23andMe is
a longtime podcast devotee in many ways – they find ingenious partnerships with true-crime shows or even exceedingly strange shows
like The Last Podcast on the Left’s weird look into the history of eugenics. As of 2018, 23andMe began using the medium as a way to
reinforce their subject matter expertise through the original podcast Spit. The podcast features celebrity conversations on the topic of DNA
through the lenses of ethnicity, culture, and family.
For closed captioning, visit YouTube.
In a similar vein, brands can use the medium to explore a wide variety of tangential topics that they might still have authority to discuss.
The weirdly popular Inside Trader Joe’s podcast touches on everything from produce, to sustainability, to package design, to just why the
heck everyone there is so nice.
The beauty of podcasting comes from a blend of intimacy with the listener and permission to talk about subjects that would be outright
taboo for traditional advertising. Aside from the podcast obsession with serial killers and true crime (we don’t even have to source it; you
know it’s true), some brands have taken some equally astonishing risks in the content they’ve chosen to surface through podcasts. One
of the most shocking-yet-genuine examples just might come from John Deere in its podcast series titled Out of the Darkness, a special feature
from the brand’s long-running publication, The Furrow, which is a sort of story-centered trade publication aimed at the agricultural industry.
Out of the Darkness homed in on the topic of rural depression, specifically how it has led to disproportionately high suicide rates among
farmers. While the topic is more grim than what most brands would tolerate, John Deere leaned on its unique subject matter expertise
and deep audience commitment to justify such a harrowing investigation into a legitimate industry epidemic. At the same time, it used
existing content as a launchpad for an idea that could be reborn in an audio format.
15SOUND TEST: WHY PODCASTS ARE RIPE FOR EXPERIMENTATION
LONG-FORM STORYTELLING FOR PASSIONATE AUDIENCES
In an effort to turn passionate fandom into even more quality
time-spent-with-brand, Wizards of the Coast (proprietor of the
tabletop role-playing game Dungeons and Dragons and purveyor
of many things nerdy) is launching its new campaign module
with an original podcast arc. The module, Baldur’s Gate: Descent
into Avernus, will be played over the course of seven episodes
as Podcast into Avernus to tease gameplay and let users delight
in other players’ enjoyment of a new campaign.
This is the type of long-form, intensely niche branded storytelling
that thrives in podcast form. The convenience of an audio format
allows listeners to engage as passively or actively as they’d like
over the course of the three-hour campaign. With such a flexible
medium, it wouldn’t be surprising to see more brands with equally
passionate fans experimenting with extremely long-form content.
Illustration: Chris Rallis/Wizards of the Coast
RADIOLAB HAD IT RIGHT…
…definitely as far as the name’s concerned: Podcasts offer an insanely broad range of activation possibilities, but with each one advertisers
should always keep in mind that they’re intruding on a very intimate media experience between the listener and the programming. To best
integrate with audiences or programming, remember:
Affinity
The strength of podcasts comes from their specificity and resonance within a niche audience. Develop a complete understanding of what
types of content and culture your target surrounds themselves with, and devise ways that you can work your way into their podcasting
routine through popular shows within an interest. Consider My Favorite Murder’s killer partnerships with fitting advertisers like ButcherBox
and Living Proof.
Authenticity
Listeners constantly praise the intimacy fostered by podcasts, and brands should not treat that expectation lightly. Know that your message
will be an intrusion on a user’s connection with a podcast, and use that knowledge to explore ways to integrate your messaging more
naturally into the content. Malcolm Gladwell is a master of this on Revisionist History.
Adaptation
Think of how you can either repurpose or enhance existing content through podcasting. HBO does an amazing job of creating
podcasts for TV fandom to overflow into (e.g., Game of Thrones and Chernobyl). John Deere even goes so far as adapting stories from
its print publication for podcast episodes.
Authority
Focus on brand strengths when considering topics that the brand can justifiably remark on through podcasting. Once that’s been decided,
branch out to related topics to give your podcast longevity. Look at how 23andMe’s Spit teases topics like ethnicity, culture, and family out
of the subject of DNA; Inside Trader Joe’s talks about everything from package design to botany.
Anticipation
Think of ways you can service an existing content need in your audience or how you can set up a future possibility for podcasting.
Wizards of the Coast senses opportunity in the playtest podcasting format with its new Dungeons and Dragons module. Not to mention,
it’s a great chance for brands to come in and align with a hosting talent who might be one of podcasting’s next major influencers.
16SOUND TEST: WHY PODCASTS ARE RIPE FOR EXPERIMENTATION
Patrick O’Neill
A compulsive builder and permanently curious, Patrick is absolutely determined to figure out how things work.
Not long after he graduated from the University of North Texas, digital killed Patrick’s writing career–for the
better, of course.
Patrick earned his digital stripes in the fast-paced, super-cramped world of small agencies, where hours
PATRICK O’NEILL:
are many and multiple hats are a requirement. His preliminary work in search engine optimization led to a Digital Strategy
fascination with web design, which led to a knowledge of CRM integrations, which led to an understanding
of integrated campaigns–if it’s digital, Patrick is going to learn how the pieces work.
At The Richards Group, he applies the same hands-on philosophy to guide brands like the Mohawk
Industries, Scottish Rite for Children, Charles Schwab, and The Salvation Army.
Kyle Davis
Kyle likes variety. A lot of variety. He bakes, he hikes, he listens to hundreds of hours of podcasts a month.
Hundreds. In fact, it’s the podcasts that drew Kyle into the world of digital strategy. Originally a brand
planner, he saw how quickly stories could spread online – and thus embraced the power of sharing culture
through digital means.
Kyle’s wandering curiosity made him the perfect digital strategist, because he knows firsthand how trends
KYLE DAVIS:
and rabbit holes define the online world. Digital Strategy
In keeping with his love of variety, Kyle works on as many brands as possible at The Richards Group.
His clients include The Home Depot, 7UP, Circle K, Nature Nate’s, Cache Creek Casino Resort, and a
smattering of new business efforts.
171
THE MARKETPLACE
ABHORS A VACUUM
The Ethical Leadership of America: An examination of why corporations assumed the responsibility of acting
as the country’s moral compass.
Remember when brands didn’t take stands? When their open-armed “purpose” seemed to be to appeal to
as many people as possible while alienating as few as possible? Over the past decade, our industry
has witnessed a dramatic uptick in a different kind of purpose: purpose-driven advertising, or the act of
companies advertising their beliefs on social issues. Every day, we all come to work with an aim to help
SARAH WALKER-HALL:
our brands follow culture as closely, as tightly, as seamlessly as possible – but should we instead collectively Brand Planning Director
acknowledge that today our brands have the opportunity not to follow but to lead culture? After all,
“Femvertising,” or advertising that promotes female empowerment, preceded its cultural twin, #MeToo, by three
and a half years. Today, the brands we steward have the power to move not just products but people.
With great power, however, comes great responsibility – and, in this case, a concomitant and widespread
skepticism about the motives of brands taking a newfound stand. “Pink washing” (breast cancer) begat
“rainbow washing” (gay pride) and overall “woke washing,” which points a collective finger at advertisers
for (over) using issues for commercial gain. Whether the advertising itself is successful – does purpose-driven
advertising lead to more substantial revenue gains than product-driven advertising? – is not the topic we’ll KELLY PILAND:
Brand Planning Director
discuss here; that must be answered ad hoc on a case-by-case basis. Instead, the question of interest to
us is: “How did we get here?” How did we go from watching ads about new product formulations and extra
absorption to the rejection of toxic masculinity and the value of a girl’s education?
Why have so many corporations gone all-in on social issues, causes, and that squishiest of words: purpose? We believe it has to do
with who holds the responsibility of moral leadership. Historically in America this responsibility has rested squarely and safely on the
broad shoulders of three culturally expansive institutions – our government, the church, and academia. But today, trust in our president, our
preachers, and our professors is lower than it’s ever been. And while this fall from grace might be something that’s occurred incrementally
and that we now know intuitively, the data is staggering.
For example, Pew Research Center has asked the same question of consumers over the past 61 years and finds that “only 17 percent of
Americans today say they can trust the government in Washington to do what is right ‘just about always’ (3 percent) or ‘most of the time’
(14 percent).” Our belief that our government will do the right thing is historically low. In fact, with the exception of moments of national
crisis – such as the tragedy of 9/11 – trust in government has trended steadily downward since the 1960s.
Source: people-press.org
18THE MARKETPLACE ABHORS A VACUUM
Another institution that has historically acted as a moral compass for those living in America is the church. Recognizing that we now live in
a culture where it is more socially acceptable to do so, the percentage of people who claim no religion has risen consistently for nearly
three decades, and for the first time in history there are as many people in the United States who claim no religion (23 percent) as those
who claim to be Catholic (23 percent) or Evangelical (23 percent). From our viewpoint, what is most intriguing is that people are not
rejecting the spiritual component of faith – they are rejecting the cultural institution of religion. In 2017, 27 percent of Americans identified
as “spiritual but not religious,” a 42 percent increase from 2012.
Source: cnn.com
Academia is the third institution that has historically provided ethical and thought leadership. In 2018, for the first time the number of
Americans with a four-year degree topped 30 percent; it is inarguable that higher education is more need-to-have than ever before.
Ironically, the ubiquity that drives expectation might also be driving resentment. As with government, the percentage of Americans who
think our higher education system is headed in the right direction is the lowest it’s ever been. Much has been made of the partisan
divide on perceptions of academia – with those on the right of the ideological spectrum, ironically, most convinced of academia’s wrongs
– but there is bipartisan conviction that the system is troubled. More than half of both Republicans and Democrats agree that higher
education doesn’t provide students the skills they need to succeed. Pair that perception with sharp increases in tuition, and the result is
that a wide swath of the American public no longer trusts academia’s once-unassailable leadership position.
Source: pewsocialtrends.org
19THE MARKETPLACE ABHORS A VACUUM
Many people cite widely publicized scandals – with the Catholic Church, this summer’s widely mocked “Aunt Becky” higher education
fracas, and that pesky presidential impeachment inquiry, among countless others – as the causation for this cross-institutional trust erosion.
We would posit, however, that the well-lit publicity of these scandals is actually a result of confirmation bias; trust has been slipping for
decades, and these scandals confirmed and validated this newfound lack of respect. The widespread furor around these scandals weren’t
leading indicators – they were lagging indicators. Indicative, not causal, of a cultural lack of trust in these institutions.
So: If not on the shoulders of these three institutional giants, where then does the responsibility for modeling the moral compass of America lie?
As physics tells us, “Nature abhors a vacuum” – and evidently so does both culture and the marketplace itself. In the absence of
leadership, companies have stepped in to fill the void. The annual Business Roundtable with 200 CEOs of some of the country’s largest,
most staid corporations (JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, GM, Boeing) took place during the writing of this piece. In a proudly
capitalist country, the emergent headline was shocking. In pursuit of “redefining the purpose” – there’s that word again – of an organization,
the Roundtable declared that shareholder value is no longer the main objective. Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock, said, “fundamental
economic changes and the failure of the U.S. government to provide lasting solutions has forced society to look to companies for guidance
on social and economic issues, such as environmental safety and gender and racial equality.”
In 2015, Salesforce was among the most vocal companies protesting a proposed Indiana law that would permit discrimination against gay
people; their threat to halt corporate expansion in the state actually led to the softening of the 2015 Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
It was an epochal moment, and since then many brands have stepped in – and up. Marc Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce, puts it simply:
“We’re in a world where we need leaders to improve the state of the world, not just the state of the bottom line.”
From shareholder primacy to stakeholder advocacy? This potential shift is much more than semantic: It’s seismic.
As you might expect in a market economy, this evolution comes at the behest of consumers: According to the 2018 Cone/Porter Novelli
Purpose Study, “More than three-quarters (78 percent) of Americans today believe it is no longer acceptable for companies to just make
money, they expect companies to positively impact society as well.” Interestingly, this expectation of brands is borne of a belief in the
power of brands as cultural agents of change. Edelman’s Brand Trust Study found that more than half (53 percent) of consumers believe
brands can do more to solve social problems than governments, which leads us to conclude that there is an interconnected, perhaps
symbiotic, dynamic at play: The less I trust the government and other cultural institutions to provide leadership, the more I, out of necessity,
turn to other mechanisms to fill that gap. Brands, our nation turns its lonely eyes to you.
In a day and age when culture is more painfully cracked and riven than ever before – when trust in the traditional monoliths and pillars of
society is plumbing all-time depths – we still possess an innately human need for leadership. Where will it come from today? Who could –
and, more importantly perhaps, should – fill the vacuum nature so vehemently abhors?
So what happens now? Can we predict how successful (or unsuccessful) brands will be at filling this void over the next few years? How
will consumers respond? Will they be satisfied with companies filling this void in moral leadership? Will other moral leaders emerge? We
can certainly try.
Conservatively speaking, it’s likely that this leaning in of corporate America will continue. Consumers will come to expect – and reward –
vocal stances of moral leadership; those who abstain may be met with the worst fate consumers can disinterestedly lash upon brands:
irrelevance. These expectations and rewards – both a carrot and a stick – will encourage more brands to take part in the ethical dialogue.
Just as Femvertising presaged #MeToo, it’s possible that this increased moral awareness will lead to more actual engagement and actual
activism on the part of consumers, contributing to higher voter turnouts among younger groups who have typically eschewed it, as well
as an uptick in political candidates from the private sector. Howard Schultz, for example, told 60 Minutes’ Scott Pelley in January 2019,
“I am seriously thinking of running for president. I will run as a centrist independent, outside of the two-party system. We’re living at a most-
fragile time: Not only the fact that this president is not qualified to be the president, but the fact that both parties are consistently not doing
what’s necessary on behalf of the American people and are engaged, every single day, in revenge politics.” Underscoring the idea that
our government is failing and corporate America feels the need to step in. Schultz has since made clear that he will not make a run for the
2020 presidency.
Probabilistically, there will be a scandal or two that will force a cultural reckoning of the march toward brand-led ethics; can commercial
interests altruistically lead morality, or is that cultural double-helix fundamentally flawed? Consumers have already begun sleuthing, in
search of companies that don’t walk their ethical talk. Today, companies that have jumped on the gay pride bandwagon are regularly
vetted to inspect whether their political donations match their rainbow-washed packaging. Consumers will become more skeptical of
20THE MARKETPLACE ABHORS A VACUUM
the motives underpinning stances and will grow more adept at unearthing inconsistencies. When these are aired, consumer trust in the
motivations behind ethical leadership will be challenged.
Catastrophically, the ideological canyons that zag left to right throughout the country may prove too deep and too wide for brands
to bridge. Advocacy of one position will engender stiff-armed, clenched-fist resistance from the other side; “every action has an equal
and opposite reaction” might prove bigger than physics, and brands could get caught in the cultural whipsaw. We already see evidence
that support of certain divisive issues can lead to right-left bifurcation within a category; whether you wear Nike or Under Armour, eat at
Chick-fil-A or Starbucks, or shop at Target or Walmart could be more a statement of values than your aesthetics or sandwich preference.
In this scenario, good intentions on the part of brands – Stand up! Speak truth to power! – could exacerbate the divisions that are, by many
counts, worse than they’ve ever been.
Regardless of how it plays out, we are grateful for the risks America’s corporate leadership is willing to take for the good of society and
for the responsibility of moral leadership they’ve assumed.
Sarah Walker-Hall
Norwegian language instructor. Geographic wanderer. Bassist in an all-girl punk band, baseball umpire,
bartender. If curiosity is a brand planner’s greatest asset, Sarah was born for this job.
Sarah’s career began with a stint at TBWA\Chiat\Day Los Angeles on the famous “Yo quiero Taco Bell”
campaign. There, she fell in love with the intricacies of advertising, consumer insights, and messaging
strategy. She returned home to Dallas in 2003 and joined The Richards Group, heading up planning efforts SARAH WALKER-HALL:
for Amstel Light, Kiwi shoe polish, Thomasville, and Atlantis. A stint as strategic planning director at Brand Planning Director
TBWA\Chiat\Day San Francisco saw Sarah oversee planning efforts for Jeep, Levi’s, and NVIDIA; then
came Publicis West and work on T-Mobile and Aflac. Sarah returned to The Richards Group in 2018
and continues to push boundaries–and grow business–as a senior strategic leader.
A Dartmouth College honors grad in history with a concentration in women’s studies, Sarah has served as
an adjunct professor at both Southern Methodist University and Miami Ad School in San Francisco. She
is a two-time winner of the 4A’s Jay Chiat Award for Excellence in Planning.
Kelly Piland
On the surface, she sounds like she could be the heroine of a 1940s movie that we’d call Kelly Piland,
All-American. Youngest of three girls in a happy suburban family. Captain of the cheerleading squad at
ivy-walled Southern Methodist University (putting on a brave face and, in a comedic turn, cheering for the
worst football team in the land).
KELLY PILAND:
Married to her high-school sweetheart and mom to two girls. Considers her parents to be her best friends. Brand Planning Director
Nice.
Look a little deeper, though, and you find that Kelly, though still unswervingly nice, has definite 21st-century
facets to her story. After earning her advertising degree in the creative track at SMU, she followed her interest
in the advertising business not into a copywriting or art direction career but into a study of human nature and
consumer behavior, earning her master’s in account planning and sociology at the University of Texas at Austin.
Since becoming a Grouper in 2007, the Plano, Texas, native has delved into the psyche of the marketplace
and crafted strategies for clients that include AAA, AMC’s Mad Men, Auntie Anne’s Pretzels, CitySquare Dallas,
Famous Footwear, H-E-B, The Home Depot, MetroPCS, Tastykake, Texas Scottish Rite Hospital for Children,
and Wonder bread.
As her client list suggests, she’s passionate about nonprofit causes and (making her an ideal member of the
Home Depot team) about home design and remodeling. She finds particular fascination in learning the
history of old homes–the kind of homes, in fact, that might make a good setting for a movie called Kelly Piland,
All-American.
211
TIPTOEING THROUGH THE
POLITICAL TIDAL WAVE
Practical guidance for brands navigating the inescapable political context of the 2020 media landscape.
It’s been almost four years since the 2016 election, and we are gearing up for another 365 days of polls, pundits,
and politics. We are all going to witness one of the most polarizing elections in recent memory – and the big
question for brands looms – should we get involved? Or maybe a better question – what do we do if we get
pulled into getting involved?
LUKE DAMOMMIO:
Brand Management
PART I: WHY BOTHER?
Contextual Targeting: Targeting content that deals with specific topics, as determined by a contextual scanning technology.
Whether or not a brand wants to get involved, their advertising will very likely be adjacent to or a simple click away from a political ad or
commentary. To put a few numbers to the immense social media conversation that currently is happening and will only grow louder as we
near the 2020 election, I like to look at the Axios-NewsWhip 2020 attention tracker.
At the time I am writing this – 14 months prior to the 2020 election – last week alone, candidates still seeking their party’s nomination
excluding the President generated more than 15 million social engagements (likes, comments, shares, retweets), in what was from a
political news perspective just an average week. Assuming a conservative 3 percent social engagement rate, it would have required just over
500 million social impressions to generate this quantity of social reaction in just one week. Political conversation, reaction, and coverage
are as inescapable online as they are offline.
So inescapable, in fact, that Twitter is actually banning all political advertising starting in November 2019 – the opposite stance that
Facebook has landed on in recent weeks. These changes to Twitter policy will also impact “issue ads.” In what seems to be an impossible
goal to police the validity of political advertising, which Facebook seems to believe is not their problem, Twitter is removing themselves
from any contention.
If you combine projected political ad spending ($10 billion for 2020, roughly equivalent to the measured media spend of the 11 highest-
spending brands combined) and the aforementioned social conversation, it’s easy to see that our screens are already being inundated
with political conversation, with no signs of slowing. So, to say that Americans’ screens are going to be flooded with this commentary in
2020 is likely an understatement.
But why does that matter for advertisers?
It matters because being contextually relevant with content online is important (rightfully so) to brands.
Which targeting strategy is “best” can be debated for different brands and their objectives – but with advancements and restrictions in
how data can be used to target consumers, contextual targeting offers a way for brands to operate within privacy-friendly practices and
to reach consumers at a time and place when they will be more receptive to the message. Brands still very much care about reaching
their audience, but the days of blindly following your audience around the Internet wherever they go are coming to an end (if they haven’t
already), as the sensitivity around the use of consumer data and the desire to only have ads placed on sites that will not be harmful to
your brand are on the rise.
And in 2020, we already know what a massive amount of the context will be centered around, so creating content that is contextually
relevant can be predicted, and brands can prepare to actually insert themselves into the conversation in a very natural way if done properly.
Not to mention, consumers want brands to take a stand.
Consumers Want Brands to Participate
Not only do brands have the ability to predict contextually relevant content, but consumers want you to create this kind of contextually
relevant content.
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