If you’re been in the marketing industry for some time, you would have come across the traditional print ad with a coupon cutout. This was a simple way for advertisers to drive eyeballs from their advertisements to action in the store.
Unfortunately, the user journey has become much more complex with an increase in noise from other advertisers, and low barrier to entry in the digital advertising space. Think about how simple it is to create a Facebook ad.
Traditional media is still as highly penetrated today as it was years ago. There is just that wedge in between eyeball and action which is the 21st-century customer going online first to research before they make their purchase decision.
Today we’ll explore some methods of bridging your very expensive offline media to actions online.
If you are running a TVC that requires your user to go online, simply slapping your website URL onto the creative is as obvious as it can get. For brands with simple or catchy websites, this can work, but if your brand has a complex website, or if you want your viewer to land on a specific page then we do not recommend this.
At the same time, it can come off as very old school to a millennial audience, so be sure to consider your audience before using this method.
Humans are curious. Leave them with a question at the back of their minds and they will be sure to Google for the answer, or in this case interact with your media. Once of the pitfalls we tend to fall into when creating an offline ad is telling everything there is to know in it, which can result in a very heavy message.
In Japan Disney Park’s example, they had the difficulty of providing a lot of information about their new park before it opened. Instead of making the tired infographic, they chose to leverage on their most recognisable assets, and turn them into QR codes that viewers could scan to find out the information Disney intended them to.
Why was Mickey a QR code? Japanese viewers had to scan to find out.
What if the call-to-action was not to buy your product? Instead, it was to take action online, which would improve your brand perception and eventually resulting in sales. Value driven communications or caused based marketing is one of the growing trends of this decade and brands continue to invest in it.
While action for these campaigns often happen online, brands still need to raise awareness of them through offline media. Take this example of a Superbowl advertisement run by Olay that had the call-to-action to Tweet which would in turn result in donations. There was no need to directly tell your consumer to buy your product. The Tweet as a result of your offline advertisement would have had a ripple effect that drove your sales.
The most challenging method of driving offline to online media - The Subtle involves creating a piece of offline media that is so compelling, it sparks an online conversation. Many brands try to create this but fail, or it backfires.
An example comes from Gilette’s The Best a Man Can Be which implored men to be better versions of themselves. There was not much selling of the product in the advertisement, or the cause other than a simple website link at the end - yet many media websites picked it up due to the controversial nature.
The Subtle method leverages the huge viewer base of offline media to generate buzz about your brand online, which is the hardest yet potentially most rewarding.
If you would like to explore and create offline to online media with us, please leave your contact in the form below and we’ll be in touch.
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