Campaign Objective

Following Innovid’s acquisition of Herolens in Fall 2019, the Innovid marketing team had a big job ahead of us. Well-known for video, we needed to educate our customers and the broader market about our expanded omni-channel data-driven personalization solutions. 

To accomplish this, I, alongside Simeon Powers, our Director of Ad Management, and our content and comms leads, needed to develop a marketing campaign that we could build on through 2020. But 2020, if you can remember it, was an unsettling time for many marketers - global uncertainty was leading to volatile budget changes, and many advertisers were considering cutting their advertising altogether. Thus, our campaign had to lead with empathy - understanding where marketers were while explaining to them how to get through it. 

Market Trends

  • Sweeping budget cuts drive the need to make every dollar work harder: Experts are predicting US CMO budgets will lose $222 billion (even with a late-2020 recovery)

  • Staying relevant is now a daily battle: With over 90% of advertisers swapping creatives - the fight to battle message fatigue requires an agile approach. 

  • The new ad-supported media landscape demands a new approach: All signs point to a future of fewer live events and less TV inventory, driving the need for marketer’s to invest more strategically.

  • Consumer expectations have evolved - yet again: Consumers NOW expect brands to actively support/get involved in what they care about.  

  • CTV takes over as the device of choice: TV viewing is up with more people at home.  However, rising unemployment and a lack of live sports has accelerated the shift to CTV.

Now Consumer [nau̇ kən-ˈsü-mər] Noun

A person who continuously develops new interests, habits, and attitudes that directly influence what kinds of media, products, or services they consume.

Campaign Narrative 

Navigating the Now Consumer Your customer has evolved, has your strategy? 

If 2020 has taught us anything, it’s that an advertiser’s ability to be agile and relevant has become a tipping point for advertisers. As a result, the way in which brands adapt to the "now" consumer is paramount, as people continue to build new habits for how they socialize, shop, work, and more to the point, respond to advertising. To accomplish this, marketers need to approach personalization with a mindset that matches the time in strategy, tone, creative, device, and more.

Campaign Key Messages

Don’t just go where your customers are, go where they engage. Consumer behavior has evolved - CTV and social are critical to engagement now. 

Current Marketer Mindset

  • Linear TV is #1 for driving reach

  • Data is key for reaching the right customers through addressable targeting

  • I need to drive reach for a message across channels and devices.

  • There are too many different metrics to measure success across channels

Evolved Marketer Mindset 

  • CTV is necessary to capture reach potential

  • Reach is not enough without resonance - I need to apply data to targeting and messaging

  • I need to deliver a connected and compelling story to my audience across channels and devices.

  • Impressions are the new standard for omni-channel measurement.

New media means every channel can support any goal. Emerging behaviors and capabilities mean every media channel should support brand and performance objectives.

 Current Marketer Mindset

  • Display drives direct response, video drives brand awareness

  • My performance campaigns are managed and optimized to ROI

Evolved Marketer Mindset 

  • Personalized and interactive ads can make any format - even video - drive performance.

  • My definition of performance should encompass reach / awareness, ROI and LTV. 

Simplicity is key. You can do more with less. Dynamic creative allows for maximum flexibility, reducing production time and costs while making your messaging work harder.

 Current Marketer Mindset

  • I don’t have data to support a personalized strategy

  • I don’t have the resources, time or money to invest in personalized content right now

  • Personalization is a massive shift for the organization

  • It’s too hard to integrate another partner into my existing tech stack, including verification, measurement, DMP vendors

Evolved Marketer Mindset 

  • I have data to do this and can use 3rd party data to enrich targeting/messaging 

  • DCO allows me to generate more ads at lower productions costs, faster

  • It’s best to test and learn our way into a robust personalization strategy - starting now

  • Integrating DCO capabilities can be a seamless experience

Campaign Tactics

Once the campaign narrative and core messages were established, the team set off to create a compelling 360 marketing campaign that utilized branded content, proprietary commissioned research, educational videos and numerous sales enablement materials.

Read

The product marketing team and the content team came together to produce A Brand Marketers Guide to Personalization, alongside a Plug and Play guide for those who wanted pre-built dynamic strategies to get started.

Learn

To better understand the current consumer mindset and personalization preferences, Innovid commissioned a study of over 1,000 U.S. adults in July 2020. We shared the findings in an interactive Infographic, and made it available for people to download in PDF form.

Watch

Innovid’s CMO, Stephanie Geno, hosted a three-part series discussing personalization in 2020.

In tandem, Simeon Powers worked tirelessly to produce two detailed product solution videos explaining the power and ease of personalization with Innovid. An Integrated Approach to Omni-Channel Personalization and Agile Tools for Personalized Messaging.

Innovid Named a Leader 

Most impressively, while executing this campaign, the product marketing team directed an extensive evaluation by the independent research firm, Forrester. This included precisely answering a detailed RFI and required multiple presentations and product demos. Forrester evaluated nine companies based across 37 criteria in three categories: current offering, strategy and market presence. Innovid earned the highest possible score across 25 criteria including company vision, product roadmap and vision, ad-serving, reporting and insights, desktop and mobile video, OTT/CTV, creative strategy and visualization, and identity.