Part 2: Curated creative and perfect placement

B2B marketing doesn’t always have to be boring. B2B clients often demand highly targeted campaigns focusing on specific groups of professionals. Below are two examples of how Spotify and The Insights Group used integrated marketing campaigns to influence small but incredibly valuable audiences.

Integrated campaigns, and people for that matter, are not an exact science. While new digital tools might give us the illusion of control, there remain innumerable factors that are out of our control. Political events, economics, and new technology all play a role in influencing how audiences view and interact with our campaigns, so we can only do our best to go with the flow.

Consider how the stars were aligned this Valentines day:
– History, tradition, and sappy advertising demand we think about love.
– 38% of Americans who describe themselves as single and ready to mingle have used an online-­dating site.
– Same sex couples are more than twice as likely to meet online than through friends.
– Dating apps like Tinder are part of a $2.4 billion online dating industry.
– What can we do to tap into that?

Thanks for the great research Aziz!

Last year, on Valentine’s Day, Spotify launched their Musical Matchmaker web app and targeted this interactive digital experience to media professionals in Europe. This year, Spotify included American media buyers (like me) in their campaign. To prove that ad formats like “Sponsored Sessions” and “Branded Playlists” can help audiences fall in love with advertiser’s brands, Spotify set out to help us media professionals find love ourselves.

Using workplace posters, Facebook, and interactive emails, Spotify promoted their “dating app” to people who had bought Spotify ads or subscribed to their marketing newsletter. There, people could sign in through Spotify and answer questions about where they lived, what company they worked for, and which bands they liked and didn’t like. The app then analyzed the data and identified other people with similar musical tastes.

4,000 professionals in 13 countries received their matches via email on February 12th. We can’t be sure how many of these professionals found love, but in the end, Spotify proved to thousands of media buyers worldwide how personal and engaging their promotions can be.

Tilted Chair Faced a Similar Marketing Challenge Last Spring

Our client, Insights Group, describes themselves as “a global people development company.” Basically they assist organizations in creating and maintaining an empathetic culture by teaching individuals more about themselves and how they relate to others. Insights’ ideal clientele are companies with more than 1000 employees, and like many B2B brands, they rely on connecting with these companies at conferences.

Insights was on a mission to take advantage of their keynote sponsorship at the 2015 ATD (Association for Talent Development) International Conference and Exposition. The conference focuses exclusively on innovations in talent development, and presented an opportunity for Insights to generate leads with a niche executive audience interested in learning more about developing their people and culture.

The Insights Discovery test assigns colors (Fiery Red, Cool Blue, Sunshine Yellow, and Earth Green) to social tendencies and identifies an individual’s unique blend of color preferences. Insight’s Discovery is the company’s most popular product, but it doubles as a sales tool. The objective was to introduce members of the audience to Insights’ premiere product by introducing potential clients to an Insights sales manager via an online form. Our campaign utilized elements of the Discovery test itself, teaching our audience a little bit more about themselves each step of the way.

The idea was to frame the promotional experience as a social experiment. We placed a mysterious black box on each seat at the keynote presentation, and implemented a little reverse psychology to get people to open it.

Those daring individuals who ignored our instructions and opened the box discovered a branded bag of a jelly beans and the line “So, you’re a box opener. Now we know. But what else makes you, you?” The box asked our audience to choose what color they identified with most, and to text this color “energy” to 31996. In return, they received curated advice and insights for interacting with someone such as themselves depending on what color they chose. They were also texted a link to the landing page where they could sign up to receive Insights Discovery for free.

By the end of the conference, 56 people signed up for our text campaign and 14 people filled out the form. Considering one client is worth tens of thousands of dollars, Insights was more than satisfied with the results. Sometimes it pays to think inside the box.