We could say digital marketing is a novice in the advertising world, because digital marketing is growing in the field since year 2012.
From the articles we can see that digital marketing brings many positives as increase the brand awareness, brand engagement and word of mouth, if it is done well, carefully and the company has the control over the campaign and sharply keep up with the latest trends of internet and social media
While doing my research article The Top 7 Online Marketing Trends That Will Dominate 2014 got my attention because I agree that those are trends of 2014:
- Content Marketing Will be Bigger Than Ever
- Social Media Marketing Will Require More Diversity
- Image-Centric Content Will Rule – example Instagram reaching a spot in top 5. Social media platforms
- Less Will be More – simplicity reached by Pinterest
- Mobile-Friendly Content Will Be Necessary
- Ad Retargeting Will Grow in Effectiveness
- SEO and Social Signals Will Become Even More Intertwined
Search engine optimization and social sharing leads us to Danone introducing a first world wide campaign for Activia. Activia invited Shakira into the campaign and the plot was easy – Activia sponsored, Shakira made a music video for World Championship in Brazil and together they support World Food Programme and its School Meals initiative. In July a message spread through marketing news that Activia beats Volkswagen for most shared ad of all time. Activia has reached in August 2014 5,409,192 views (340,064,032 views in September 2014) on Youtube. However the “advertisement” which claims to reach the views is a Shakira (Brazil 2014) – La La La music video which says Shakira and Activia at the beginning of the video. If you type into search Activia advertisement a video with “only” 989,705 views shows.
According to first-half a year revenue predictions Danone has decreasing revenue and the awareness of the brand did not change. This could have been caused by contamination affair of Danone products in Asia, which happened at the end of 2013. Maybe Danone should have given up their world campaign and concentrate on the Asian market to gain peoples trust and fix company reputation.
Second case links to the Think apps not ads article and it is Jay-Z partnering with Samsung to create an application though which Samsung Galaxy owners could listen for free to Jay-Z new album. 1 million people downloaded this application within first 3 days however the application didn’t work due to the traffic of the users. The album release was completely overshined by the negative feedback.
I have chose two negative examples on purpose, because it shows us the opposite side of marketing. Even if companies such are those two have the facility to come up with the best campaigns and invite big sounding name, it does not always bring a success. Seeing those two cases we can see that those companies still little bit strive the understanding of how to use certain channels to reach the desired outcomes such as brand awareness.
Do you agree with those trends predictions for 2014? What do you think about the Activia campaign – is it clear from the video that you should connect it with Activia?
References:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jaysondemers/2013/09/17/the-top-7-online-marketing-trends-that-will-dominate-2014/
http://www.rttnews.com/2356339/danone-first-half-earnings-decline-backs-full-year-view.aspx
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-07-25/danone-revenue-advances-less-than-analysts-had-expected.html
