Welcome to the latest issue of Cuppa, a quick-fire newsletter for internet-first brand builders. Filled with analysis on the art, science and culture of building breakout brands in a digital age, it's quick enough to read over a cuppa. (Or something stronger if you need it...no judgement!). To get it direct to your inbox every other Wednesday, subscribe here.
ART
For all my brand strategy nerds, the Concept Bureau is my new favourite resource to prompt strategic thinking. I've binged almost every article on their blog (they're all stellar), but I think their most recent post really echoes the challenges emerging digital brands are trying to navigate right now: longevity and differentiation.
All Cannes Lion's cases for free
Typically you have to pay for a subscription to see the archive of Lion-winning campaigns, but the legends at LoveTheWorkMore, have made it simpler (and free!) with a not-so-microsite that compiles and constantly updates all Lions-winning creative works, spanning across Cannes Lion’s entire history! So pass this link on to your creative team so that they can soak up all the juicy insights and inspiration.
The ultimate visual inspiration tool
Finding good reference imagery that accurately brings to life your creative vision can sometimes take way too long - that was until I discovered Eyecandy, the ultimate visual technique library. If you're briefing content agencies or videographers, it will also help you to speak the same language as it provides all the film technique names too!
You're measuring influencers wrong
Introducing our new Cuppa video series - bite-sized growth insights from the CO vault.💡 This week, Sasha digs into why so many brands fall victim to undervaluing Influencers as a powerful growth lever.👇
SCIENCE
How brands are YouTubing their way to the top
Ever wondered how you can reach more than half a million potential consumers a week for less than the price of a month's rent in London? Well YT might just be the answer.
- Often a channel overlooked because it fails to make a positive ROI on direct attributed purchases.
- However, as an upper-funnel marketing tool, primarily impacting consumers at the awareness and consideration stage of the funnel, the sales impact primarily is felt through organic channels (organic search, referrals, direct).
The Data:
- In the health and fitness space, one of our clients is generating nearly 3/4 million impressions a week for less than £700, generating a CPM ~ a quarter of paid social prospecting CPM.
- In the supplement space, one of our clients is generating nearly 1/2 million impressions a week for just over £1k, giving a CPM < 50% of paid social prospecting CPM. This same brand when utilising COmpass (our cutting edge attribution modelling tool) has discovered that YT drives a much more efficient CPA than more classically considered channels:
- YT CPA is 55% of affiliates.
- YT CPA is 25% of Facebook prospecting.
100+ new Shopify product updates
Shopify's Summer's Editions ‘23 is now live! There are a lot of features our team have our eyes on to help improve the performance of our clients, but we're particularly excited about the new Subscriptions App and the AI functionalities.
TikTok has an ad library - finally!
TikTok has recently released an updated version of its Ad Library in the EU, which provides searchable insights into all of the ad campaigns running in the app. Main takeaways are:
- We're now able to gain insight in to things like ad targeting, regional reach, and who paid for it, etc.
- It's fairly similar in look and feel to Meta’s Ad Library and is likely to be a valuable resource for businesses looking for inspiration and creative best practice.
COmpass Insight
From beauty and health to pet-care and luxury fashion, COmpass is being implemented across industry verticals, helping brands to understand where to invest for profitable growth. Here are 4 key growth trends COmpass has recently revealed for our clients:
- Helping brands understand the value of upper funnel support to help drive conversion campaign performance. TV campaigns improve paid search performance by up to 23%.
- Helping brands to understand WHY influencers campaigns are working is just as crucial as understanding HOW they are performing. COmpass lets us break down influencer contribution to revenue to specific influencer types, with targeted influencer types (eg Fitness and Foodies) performing up to 4.5x better than wider reach Lifestyle influencers.
- Seeing strong incrementality from Meta ASC campaigns, with a blend of prospecting and retargeting we had concerns about potential incrementality of ASC campaigns (similar to Pmax performance unless you exclude brand keywords), but we continue to see incrementality in line with prospecting campaigns along with strong in platform performance.
- We also continue to help brands understand the value of non paid channels, with PR activity continuing to show strong revenue contribution particularly when focused on promotions or new product development.
If you need help navigating your attribution, book a call with our Chief Data Officer, Dan, and he'll chat you through how COmpass works and how it can help improve your brand's marketing performance.
