Christmas is widely recognised as an opportunity for us to put our mobile phones down for more than 15 minutes and feel truly at ease in the offline world. To explain why that would be a bad mistake, here’s December’s edition of SEO News.

Left out in the cold

This column has often spoken about Google’s vision of an omnipresent machine that provides information, solutions, and comfort.  Measuring the world in entities, to provide the basis for a real-time classification of all individual sensibilities, is a project whose scope could hardly be larger. In order to be able to know and serve the needs of each and every individual, however, as a company you have to get pretty close to people.

As humankind’s entirely natural digital partner, the Search channel is virtually predestined for such a venture. A large number of us think nothing of trusting the input field of a search engine with our most intimate secrets, greatest fears, and most hidden passions.  For companies, webmasters, and SEOs, though, the challenge of generating genuine value from this social potential is growing ever greater. Paid ads, answer boxes as featured snippets, and the beloved “People Also Ask” questions – each of these is displacing the classic, organic click result from the top spots on the search results page. This is the other side of Google’s metamorphosis from a gateway to a portal for all of life’s questions and situations.

The prospects of local search

A golden exception to these current developments is local search. Freshly fortified with an algorithm update for better recognition of local queries, and thanks to its prominent display featuring area maps, a route planner, and user reviews, the so-called “Local Pack” is evolving into the most important piece of inventory that the search engine from Mountain View has to offer stationary trading so far. As an electronic business card, however, the Local Pack has much more to offer besides. Branch operators have the option of chatting directly with potential customers, submitting individual questions and answers, and publishing upcoming events and company news as so-called “posts”. The “Mybusiness” service continues to provide the interface for this. As time goes on, however, local interactions with real people are set to become more important for rankings, as even in local searches, spam isn’t uncommon.

A recent patent shows that, in addition to online check-ins and reviews, Google also wants to incorporate offline user behaviour into its quality evaluation of local companies. According to the document, movement patterns of individual users or EXIF data from uploaded photos are to allow conclusions to be drawn about the quality and relevance of local listings. This leaves a lot of room for imagination as to how conventional SEO work at the computer may also shift into the real world in years to come. In addition to optimising website technology, structure, and content, clever strategies for obtaining good signals from offline searches are now set to be in demand as well. Before long, the free cup of coffee offered in exchange for a longer stay at the corner shop may very likely count among the modern search engine optimiser’s trusted tools.

A special look

To be sure of ending the year with one more compelling overview, let’s round off the last SEO News of 2019 with a detailed look at the newest mobile phone camera to hit the market. Here we encounter a cold, electronic eye; behind it, no didactic supercomputer like the HAL 9000 of Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey”, but instead the new addition of a search engine.   Already integrated into the current generation of Android mobile phones and driven by such enterprises as Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Pinterest, in the coming year we’ll see that the fastest connection between the user’s brain and their wallet isn’t the ear or mouth, but the eye.

The proliferation of technologies that enable open searching with the help of visual information is now also underway in Europe and North America, several years after Chinese search machines like Alibaba and Baidu first made important pioneering achievements in this area. Through advancement in the development of artificial intelligence and the gathering of ever more extensive volumes of data, it’s becoming increasingly easy for users to perform search queries that would be difficult to express assisted only by text or even speech.

The most important driver for visual search, however, will turn out to be that optimal searching is the ideal partner to e-commerce. With the launch of its visual search tool, US fashion chain Forever 21 has succeeded in increasing its average shopping cart value by approximately 20%. Inspiration portal Pinterest recently announced that around 80% of its users begin their shopping session with a visual search. The shortening of the customer journey in the young target group of 18 to 34 years is a powerful factor in the battle for online sales. Soon enough, the path from “I want” to “I have” will be just a camera click away.

From the point of view of search engine optimisation, this means it would be advisable to extend content strategies by a visual dimension, and to optimise technical deployment of picture and video files within digital assets. 2020 will not only see us experience the proliferation of visual searches, however, but also witness the first steps on the road to a multimodal search matrix consisting of text, speech, camera input, and (offline) context.  That’s why we advise you to stay on the ball, keep reading our little column, and, most importantly,  have an excellent start to the new year.

Possible roles for artificial creativity in marketing

Artificial intelligence is presently used in marketing primarily to forecast consumer behaviour and increase the efficiency of brand communication. As everybody knows, however, analysis and control are only one side of marketing; creativity is at least as important, because creativity is ultimately the only means for brands to set themselves apart from one another in a lasting way. With this in mind, in what follows we investigate the question of what role(s) machine learning and/or computational creativity could play in the marketing of the future.

1. Artificial intelligence as a driver of the digital transformation

Whilst the first phase of the digital revolution around the turn of the millennium was focused on the construction of digital infrastructure and the digitalisation of products and services, the years that followed were primarily about conceptualising, designing and establishing digital distribution channels and building sustainable digital business models. Now that a lot of companies have negotiated this phase, it’s presently the development of artificial intelligence that is characterising the digital transformation and driving it forward. Assisted by increasingly powerful processors, increasingly capacious data volumes, and increasingly sophisticated algorithms, recent years have seen machines begin to learn:  artificial intelligence is here, and it’s evolving. This has set a phase of development in motion that is now unstoppable, and which may well represent a turning point for a large number of sectors and industries. AI is currently revolutionising medical diagnostics, making autonomous driving possible, using predictive analyses to plan production capacities, assisting the early detection of attempted scams and supporting investors in the form of so-called “robo-advisors”.  Even though many of the accompanying ethical and legal questions have yet to be answered, increasing numbers of people are talking to Siri, asking Alexa, conversing with Cortana, and chatting with bots.  AI is establishing itself in our everyday lives, changing the rules of the game in many areas of the economy and, in the course of these developments, inevitably transforming marketing as well.

2. Artificial intelligence in Marketing

Artificial intelligence is presently being used in marketing primarily to minimise waste coverage and to make marketing communication faster and more efficient. Everybody knows, though, that analysis, control and management are only one side of marketing; creativity is at least as important, because strictly speaking, creativity is the only means for brands to set themselves apart from one another in a lasting way. This assessment takes on a greater significance still when it is borne in mind that all market participants will be making use of the aforementioned possibilities of AI in the medium term and that this will serve to level out the differences resulting from its effects.  

3. Artificial or Computional Creativity

A large part of the creative economy shares one thing in common: creativity is the final human bastion that artificial intelligence is unable to penetrate.  Even if this view appears plausible at first, however, we’re likely mistaken in the belief that machines can only analyse what exists and are incapable of creating anything new. Today, computational creativity stands alone as a field of research where scientists and artists are working together to fathom how creative computers are capable of being. A glance at where and how artificial intelligence is already finding applications in various creative disciplines in the present day reveals some astounding and unexpected examples. After just 20 minutes of “training” with a real human voice, for example, the audio encoding program Voco from Adobe is able to synthesise and copy it 1:1.

4. Artificial intelligence and campaign creation

Fundamentally, the creative process can be divided into divergent and convergent thinking: Whilst divergent thinking is about generating as many completely different, ideally unprecedented and sometimes crazy ideas as possible, convergent thinking aims to identify and pick out the idea with the greatest potential in order to optimise and further develop it.

Both in divergent and in convergent thinking, there are tasks that artificial intelligence can take on. Based on current developments in computational creativity, there are essentially five different possible roles for AI in the creative process – although these are far from easy to delineate from one another.

  • AI as muse

AI can memorise an enormous number of a company’s own campaigns and those of its competitors, and so knows what has worked well in the past. Based on these, it can develop ideas and suggestions that have the potential to open up unexpected new ways of looking at things.

  • AI as a creator

Assisted by deep learning models, AI systems are capable of independently developing a multitude of distinctive campaign ideas, images and promotional material.  Following this, AI is then also able to evaluate and implement those candidates that best meet the originally defined specifications.

  • KI as a tool

In just the same way as a pen, a movie camera or a musical instrument, AI can be used and operated by people to create campaign images, ads or jingles – to name just a few examples.

  • KI as an assistent

Working as a helper and support worker, AI can independently carry out such preliminary working steps as preparing text, picture or layout options.

  • KI as a gatekeeper

At the end of the creative process, AI can ensure that the drafts and proposals prepared fall within previously determined constraints, such as CI guidelines.

It’s not yet possible to say which of the five paradigmatic AI roles described here will play a part in the future creative process, and in what way. That’s why it will be important in the coming years to devote the necessary time and resources to testing out these different roles, gathering relevant experience and further developing the technology. It’s especially important to be prepared for the likelihood of it remaining uncertain for some time what works and just where the journey is headed. The only certainty for now is that the question is no longer whether AI will radically alter marketing’s creative process but how it will.

Many website owners were shocked by the news earlier this week (perhaps reading this article) revealing that Google was “planning its biggest algorithm update in five years”. According to the information provided, a new technology called BERT (which stands for “Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers”) is set to provide better recognition of search queries.

With horror we remember that in 2015 the search engine released its mobile index, which was dubbed “mobilegeddon”, and which was dragged by the press. Just a few months later, hardly anyone remembered this paradigm shift on Google and the effects of the update were, thanks to diligent search engine optimisers, barely noticeable. A similar situation is expected when it comes to BERT.

It has been several years now since modern SEO work has been focused purely on keyword optimisation. The focus has rather shifted to the coordination of search intention with digital offers. The new BERT algorithm enables Google to more reliably identify different intentions in a search query based on language constructions and changing contexts, and associate them with the most relevant results. When it comes to artificial intelligence competition, this is a big step for Google. Website operators, on the other hand, do not have to respond immediately to the announcement from Mountain View. The creation and optimisation of relevant content for human users should continue to be a top priority in order to build authority and trust for generic searches in key target groups with their own offerings. This content should provide appropriate results for high-volume search queries for maximum relevance and engagement. For websites that primarily benefit from brand searches, the BERT update is unlikely to have a significant impact. What’s more, the company also states that the new algorithm will initially only be rolled out for the English language. A date for its launch on the German market has not yet been announced.

In any case, it is a good idea to regularly monitor your organic traffic when a search engine update like BERT has been rolled out to detect mid and long-term changes. However, there is no need to blindly take action, as Google usually extensively tests its updates, rolls them out slowly, and regularly re-calibrates them after they’ve gone live.

We’re calling it the Serviceplan Group Middle East Diary: Every week, one of our team members will be sharing what’s currently going on in her or his life at Serviceplan Middle East.

There’s one thing we can all agree on –  management in a time of VUCA is an arduous task. So, there is a great temptation to be too eager to reach for the latest “hammer” (i.e. the latest management methods) in the naive assumption that every problem is a nail to be hit. And because managers are taking less and less time to think about things, they are morphed into agitated actors, naively hoping they will achieve their goal more quickly. It would be much better, however, to have some practical and user-friendly differentiation tools at hand to avoid falling into these traps. So, if you want to use your time and energy wisely, it is a good idea to know the difference between “blue” and “red”. Curtain up on the colour theory of transformation.

New colour theory

Colours have always been good orientation aids. Red and green traffic lights are not just for road traffic. Some companies have literally appropriated a colour for their brand so they can burn themselves into the customers’ memories. Think about German Telekom’s magenta or the Nivea blue. In the area of organisational development, too, there are colour codes that help to differentiate initial situations so that the most suitable and effective option for action can be selected.

We owe the categorization according to blue and red to the systems theorist Gerhard Wohland. He has thus described two very different problem categories, the differentiation of which is becoming increasingly important in the VUCA and transformation age. Because in fact, the world isn’t just about nails.

Blue stands for the world we are familiar with. Under this heading you can find everything that has a linear causality: Action A leads to result B – even the tenth time it is repeated. Blue challenges are relatively stable and at the same time quite complicated – think of a faulty movement, a technical problem or an upcoming tax audit.

Conversely, red stands for everything that is highly dynamic and complex. In the red world there are no predictable causalities, so action A sometimes leads to result B, but sometimes to result C or D. Red problems are also subject to constant change. Anyone who has ever dealt with an angry customer or the introduction of a transformation project knows what I mean.

Hammers and screwdrivers

The two colours do not just define different starting situations or problems. They also distinguish the tools of the trade that are the most useful for dealing with these scenarios.

Very few of us would think of tightening a loose screw with a hammer, yet in 2019, it is common for managers to work on red problems using blue tools. This is why so many transformation projects hit their limits and produce sub-optimal results and lots of frustration. Increasingly, we observe just the reverse, namely that blue problems are being tackled with red tools (“We’re working agile now!”). Then we wonder why the so-called promise of salvation in New Work doesn’t work out and instead, we are just becoming more and more inefficient.

The difference between skill and knowledge

The blue tools include above all knowledge. Without sound knowledge, no movement can be repaired, no technical problem solved and no tax audit carried out. You analyse, then you fall back on tried and tested methods. Solutions flow into processes, checklists, regulations and manuals. Project planning, stable structures and hierarchies enhance efficiency. The question now is: how does that work? So the expert is the king and knowledge makes all the difference.

In contrast, the red tools are mainly about ability, a mixture of creativity, intuition (a good feel for the situation), talent and a high level of dialoguing skills. This is what is needed when new, previously unimagined quantum leap solutions are on the agenda in a highly dynamic context. Instead of standardised processes, agile methods come into play, testing and observing in iterative cycles. Instead of rules, principles, i.e. attitudes made visible, come into play. Because there is no operating manual for solving the exceptional problems.

Rigid hierarchical models hit their limits and are replaced by more agile decision-making systems and organisational designs. Leadership occurs in the sense of social legitimation and ‘followership’: It drives forward the person that the others want to follow. Decisions and the resulting actions take place under ignorance, i.e. the precise consequences of an action cannot be predicted. The key question is: Who can handle it well? And so, the interdisciplinary team of experts becomes the king and the human being makes the difference.

Fatal errors and their ramifications

In fact, reality is usually much more complex than theory. There are many situations that involve both blue and red components, such as the global launch of powerful standard software by a customer. On the one hand, a demanding consulting project requires a great deal of standardised specialist knowledge (blue problem) and, on the other hand, a highly dynamic mix of reactances, power games, personal sensitivities and interdependencies with other transformation projects is high on the agenda (red problem).

In situations such as these, it is all the more important to differentiate very precisely and to use your blue and red tools in the right place, because if blue and red tools are exchanged due to ignorance or carelessness, this is what happens: For the blue portion, the result is a mediocre solution, because everyone has a say regardless of their level of expertise – and true experts are not usually the most extroverted speakers. At the same time, there is increased frustration at wasting time and energy, because there is unnecessary discussion about the “right” solution, even though “good practice” already exists. Meanwhile, the red part of the challenge blows up in the faces of the implementation team, because they are trying to manage complex dynamics with plans and insisting on rules and standard processes, so they inevitably fall flat on their faces.

A specific practical example:

Would you like to know how the colour theory of transformation is successfully applied in practice? Let’s take a look at Allsafe a Baden-Württemberg-based manufacturer of load securing systems for lorries and aircraft. Detlef Lohmann, the managing partner of the medium-sized company, already started over ten years ago to very systematically and successfully eliminate mechanisms that prevent value creation – and resisted the temptation to use the same tool to develop the optimal organisational setup. Instead, he made very careful observations, analysed the particular context and made repeated adjustments.

Two concrete examples that illustrate this: Today the organisational design for the sales process, which is primarily dominated by red, is strongly oriented towards the concept of networking and the principle of self-organisation. There is no sales manager and the team is responsible for defining its own annual targets. At Allsafe, the production process, on the other hand, has considerably more blue aspects. Consequently, the organisation relies on clearer structures and more hierarchical elements and chooses a lower degree of self-organisation (even though this is significantly higher than in some very conservatively-run organisations because the staff organise their own shifts). As well as this, there is great importance attached to systematically building up knowledge using a skill matrix, in order to ensure that there is a high degree of flexibility in terms of production.

Conclusion: each area has found its optimal setup and both solutions operate equally side by side. Their success has proven them right. The company has already been awarded top employer status four times and its profits are consistently on the rise.

Farewell to Aristotle

We are living in a time when the red parts of the world are increasing significantly. But the blue parts won’t all disappear overnight. Therefore, the ability to differentiate between red and blue value creation domains is a skill of elementary importance that is a challenge for us all: We are called upon to become bilingual and to alternate between the blue and red options for action, based on our needs. We must always be mindful that blue tools are not automatically bad and red is not automatically good. In other words: The screwdriver is not inherently better than the hammer.

The colour theory of transformation teaches us to detach ourselves from Aristotelian thinking in the sense of either-or, and instead to familiarize ourselves with thinking both ways. This is an attitude that can benefit us in many other situations. Let’s get started right now.

 

 

Kristina Kipp is Content Marketing Consultant and Mario Dorozalla Content Marketing Manager at Serviceplan PR & Content in Berlin. Their job is to use smart storytelling to bring a product or service to the attention of consumers. The interesting thing about this is that the target group might not even be aware of it today. But they will be tomorrow.

With a professional user experience strategy, established findings regarding user expectations, perception and behaviour can be channelled into ensuring smooth and therefore satisfying experiences that encourage users to come back for more. We probed our expert – Mathias Becker, Director Experience Strategy at Plan.Net UX – extensively about this topic.

Value creation is destroyed by communication. Admittedly, this is a bold suggestion. Especially as it comes from the pen of a representative of the communications industry. But while it might sound daring at first, the idea can easily be explained.

I do not want to bother with the superficially obvious examples of communication between companies and customers. We all know that this can sometimes backfire, simply because someone neglects to master their tools, or forgets to give the customer their glasses. Camel’s bungled brand management or Nestlé’s Kitkat PR disaster are just a couple of examples.

Instead, I want to focus on three different kinds of communication that are much less well known. And they also have a significant – but greatly underestimated – impact on a company’s value creation power.

1. When two parties meet and communicate with each other…

First, let us consider the interpersonal level, communication between two people. This might at first seem banal. But it is not! Thanks to ideas such as Schulz von Thun’s “four-sides model” of communication (the quality of communication is influenced by factual information, self-revelation, relationship and appeal) and Paul Watzlawick’s “constructed reality” (we perceive the world like a picture puzzle), we know that interpersonal communication is a highly complex process. A complex process that often goes wrong – and destroys value creation on a grand scale.

Steven R. Covey recognised this connection in the 1980s in his best-selling “7 Habits of Highly Effective People” and therefore attached great importance to interpersonal communication: three of his seven effectiveness habits are dedicated to it. For example, rule # 5 reads: “Seek first to understand, then to be understood”.

We talk more, but communicate less

Active listening as part of an effective interpersonal communication strategy is becoming harder for us collectively. Although we are constantly talking and posting online, we are rarely able to truly communicate meaningfully.

And so it is not surprising that many New Work approaches aim to add value to interpersonal communication in the VUCA age. To name just two examples: the Tactical Meeting format is a highly efficient way to run weekly team jour fixes. And the retrospective (part of the Scrum rules) aims to identify factors which limit value creation in the process and to counteract them accordingly in the team.

Smart corporate leaders are understanding the importance of ensuring that the level of interpersonal communication skills is high throughout their organisations. And they inspire the entire team to look critically at their meeting formats to eliminate factors which destroy value creation early on.

2. When two parties meet and communicate with each other

That’s right, this title is the same as in point 1. Because it might seem that everything stays the same when you add the “organisation” dimension. But this is far from the truth.
Now new forces come into play, and their effectiveness is underestimated, since they are invisible at first glance. This realisation is only very slowly gaining traction in top-level management. Niklas Luhmann’s systems theory offers a helpful explanatory model: a social system is a closed system with a life of its own that exerts influence on the individual people in the system (in systems theory they are considered environmental). Thus, an organisation consists of people only at first glance. In the system-theoretical sense, it is actually based on communication.

A popular metaphor for illustrating Luhmann’s systems theory is the board game. Without the players (i.e. co-workers) the game cannot be played, but the players follow the rules of the game, which means the game (for which read: the organisation) makes the rules. The organisation’s rules of the game include the many explicit, and the even more numerous implicit rules, cultural norms, and beliefs that have accumulated since the company’s founding. They are the guardrails within which the possible is reduced to the probable.

Employees come and go, but the influential system remains

And now comes the really exciting part, because it shows the effectiveness of this explanatory model: If you lose one employee and replace them with a new one, I could almost guarantee that in virtually every case you will observe similar patterns of behaviour as before, and the bigger the company, the more likely this is. This is quite simply because only the environment has been changed, and not the influencing system.

When it comes to adding value, the system-theoretical approach helps by allowing a differentiated view of cause and effect. And it reminds us that there is little point in attempting to treat the symptoms (that is, the behaviour of employees). Rather, it is better to work out the causes (the rules of the game that produce the symptoms). This means working ON the system instead of IN the system.

Work ON the system – and not IN the system

If you ignore these interconnections, you can talk all you like, initiate every change programme you can think of, or change up all the central managers, you still won’t get the change you want. And you must have noticed the recent trend for “letters of admonition”, in which board members, for example, publicly blame the employees for behaviours that destroy value creation. This practice really achieves nothing (what it damages is another matter). Instead of trying to find choice phrases to describe alleged causes, this time and energy would be better spent exploring the cause behind the cause.

3. When two parties meet within myself and communicate with each other

Yes, you read that right. We shall now turn to the intrapersonal level: communication with ourselves. Do not be alarmed: this is not an esoteric approach, but a true value creation factor.
The question “Who Am I? And If So, How Many?” is not only a best-selling book by the philosopher Richard David Precht, but also very strikingly describes the concept of multiplicity of personality: In addition to a leading ‘self’ we also contain – often unconsciously – various different personalities within ourselves, whose feelings, beliefs and memories are firmly anchored in our brains.

Even if these different personalities are not (yet) known to us, they are constantly at work within us, busily engaging in dialogue with one another and sometimes, depending on external circumstances, they get the upper hand. We have all had the experience of witnessing a generally meek and quiet person suddenly exploding in rage. This was not the person we thought we knew as an adult, but the injured inner child or the inner rebel who briefly took the reigns, because an external impulse challenged that part of their personality.

Managing these different aspects of inner personalities is important

Another example: our internal movie gets hijacked by some destructive part of our brain and starts playing negative thoughts and painful memories on a continuous loop, over which we seem to have no control. This has profound negative consequences for our own energy levels and how we choose to act. It also has a significant effect on our personal contribution to value creation within the company.

The successful management of these inner personalities, including awareness and professional handling of them, is hugely important for value creation. I would even say: due to its leveraging effect, it is one of the most significant factors in value creation, because it significantly influences all three previously mentioned communication levels.

And in the age of VUCA and NEW WORK – when the traditional corset of familiar routines and standards as well as the guardrails of pre-existing chains of command are being eliminated, our inner personalities are challenged more than ever. The result is that even this level of communication will increasingly enjoy more attention from top-level management, simply due to a vested interest in a robust “bottom line”.

Let us return to the initial thesis: is communication fundamentally destructive for value creation, or is it a significant leverage factor in value creation – that is the question here. The answer depends largely on factors such as the level of self-reflection of all corporate stakeholders, and what significance the four levels of communication have in the top levels of management.

Enlightened business leaders have long since recognised the relationships described and used them for their own competitive advantage. Outstanding value creation has been the reward for their courage.

Media Planners are the specialits to bring advertising into the media by choosing exactly the right format and media to make the biggest impact possible. Get to know our our colleagues Kai Löser and Kerstin Weiß from Mediaplus in part six of our Jobtitles Bingo series.

In the series The inside story x 3, experts from the Plan.Net group regularly explain a current topic from the digital world from different perspectives. What does it mean for Granny, and for an agency colleague? And what does the customer – in other words, a company – get out of it?

What will we remember in a few years’ time when we look back on the internet of the late 2010s? Snapchat should be one of the first things that comes to mind. The quirky messaging app with the cute ghost, the user-friendliness of an ordinary SAP installation and the innovative augmented-reality lenses, which have convinced millions of adults that selfies with dog and cat faces are socially acceptable, even for those in their mid twenties.

However, the true legacy of Snapchat will surely be the invention of the story function. Stories, the sequences of photos and short video snippets with funny stickers, location information or drawings, have proven themselves an unparalleled online triumph. Stories are now common features on Facebook and Instagram, while Google has YouTube and now even an online search function for stories.

Granny’s holiday stories: The digital slideshow

For users, stories, on Facebook or Instagram for example, are an excellent way to share everyday experiences in a creative way with family, friends and acquaintances. Instead of the postcard and the obligatory slideshow evening afterwards, my Granny can post her images online while on holiday. Another nice feature is that stories can be deleted automatically after 24 hours, especially for snapshots that you do not want to share forever on your profile.

Creative minds have many possibilities. Through the simple combination of videos, photos, stickers, drawings and music, even technically inexperienced users can create and share appealing content in a short time.

Google’s integration of stories into search results is an exciting step. Standardising the format as a further development of the Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) project allows users to quickly and easily access news stories and visual content related to their desired search term or topic.

Stories as a media environment: Unlimited motion picture inventory

In addition to Snapchat, Instagram and YouTube, after several months of testing, Facebook is now also providing the complete story inventory as an advertising environment for moving images. Adverts appear between individual story elements or between two different stories. However, one should not be dazzled by the potentially high range; for various reasons, the advertising environment is only relatively comparable with other InStream placements such as broadcaster media libraries or the classic YouTube.

         

Stories have a clear mobile format, and the content is used vertically. Therefore, it does not make sense to use classic TV adverts in 16:9 format as interruptive advertising. The usage situation is also subject to mobile rules: en route during situations involving waiting, with a high distraction potential and not reliant on headphone use. Ads for the story feed should therefore be adapted to these conditions; in this case, the same rules apply as for social feeds in general. Subtitles, short (five rather than fifteen seconds) and to the point with an obvious sender, instead of lengthy told stories with suspense and a final resolution. Unfortunately, there have not been many investigations into the advertising impact of ads in stories, but the effect is likely to be comparable to ads in the Facebook News Feed.

Brand stories: The perfect field for experimentation

Stories on Instagram, Facebook and other social platforms are an excellent field of experimentation for brand communication. There are diverse creative possibilities, from adverts in story format (such as for the new BMW 8 Series) to behind-the-scenes videos from events (such as Media Markt at Gamescom), Q&A formats and polls – stories make it possible for companies to stage their brand content in the style of the respective platform and to integrate organically into the user’s content experience.

Nevertheless, it is important to consider a few basic rules. Obviously, yet still often overlooked is the fact that if the content is not relevant, users will quickly move on. A high rate of scene changes and generally short stories fit better with smartphone usage, which means it goes without saying that 16:9 TV assets should not simply be recycled in a vertical video format. If you follow these rules, stories can also achieve good results: a survey commissioned by Facebook of just under 10,000 regular users of stories on Instagram in the UK, USA, Brazil and Indonesia showed that for 39 percent of users brand/product interest was increased through exposure to brands and products in stories.

And for those who uphold the sacred CI branding guidelines, there is perhaps a reassuring message: the same research has shown that users of stories expect authentic, playful and unfiltered images. As a brand, you do not have to demonstrate the same perfectionism in your creation as in print advertisements for news magazines.

About the author: Alex Turtschan has been a passionate nerd since childhood and has been working in the Serviceplan Group for more than ten years on consumer, market and technology trends and their effects on digital marketing. Currently Director Digital Strategy at Plan.Net Media.