There was a time when it was considered revolutionary to have a touch-screen in a shopping mall with your brand all over it. At the time, it was a terrific way to excite interaction between your potential clients while creating that all-important mind-brand connection.
But, those days, alas, are no more, and now, as business owners and entrepreneurs, the only limits to designing the perfect ad campaign are our imaginations. If you can dream it, there’s a marketing and advertising team that’s just aching to make it happen.
From employing fascinatingly subliminal one-liners (Just do it) to making use of software that can give you real-time information on the emotional state of your customers when they use your product (yep), there is a whole new world of possibilities out there – and it’s only going to get more exciting.
The prime objective of any advertising campaign is ultimately to achieve the best possible profit extraction from that campaign. But, as secondary and tertiary motives go, you also want to find out as much information about your customers and how they interact with your product.
It used to be that the former outcome was pretty simple to achieve. Still, as the advertising landscape has changed with ever more remarkable advances in technology and an increasingly tech-savvy consumer base, the latter goals have become exciting pursuits providing unrivaled access to data.
THE ONGOING EVOLUTION
One of the biggest concerns of this new technology-inspired advertising world has been ensuring that the all-important emotional connection between brand and consumer is not lost. If you cast your mind back to the days of billboard and bus stop adverts, advertisers had to rely on emotive imagery and striking themes that were current of the times or throwbacks to nostalgia to get that bond made.
Even then, it was nearly impossible to gauge just how successful the ad had been outside of sales figures and profit margins.
But now, that’s all changed. Take a look at this ad by Samsung, Turkey. They launched a new interactive service that allows deaf or hearing-challenged consumers to video call into their contact center, where specially trained staff have been educated in sign language, instantly raising their profile.
REAL-LIFE INTERACTIONS
Volkswagen kicked it up a gear when they hid an actual VW Passat Alltrack deep in the North of Sweden and left clues in their advertising campaigns, starting a nationwide scavenger hunt – if you found the car first, you could keep it. They teamed up with the Swedish National Ski Team to gain serious credibility and forge that incredible emotional connection.
IS TELEVISION STILL A THING? (Yes, it is)
Don’t think for one second that TV is out of the advertising evolution. Your creative team has near-endless opportunities to create engaging, interactive, and real-time campaigns. You will have to decide between OTT vs. CTV, and when you work in mobile telephone campaigns and “instant feedback” platforms, things get very exciting.
So when you’re launching your startup, or even if you just need to give your business a boost, there is more than one way to skin the advertising cat.
And all of this? Just the tip of the iceberg.