Author: Dan Hojnik

Influencer marketing faces a reckoning as regulation catches up – and an election looms

Posted on December 7, 2021 by - General News, Homepage

Influencer pic

By Dan Hojnik, Head of Strategy & Planning, Involved Media

Regulation is finally catching up with influencer marketing, reckons Involved Media’s Head of Strategy and Planning, Dan Hojnik. There are $10 million fines on the line for brands and he warns the looming election would be a perfect opportunity for regulators – and politicians – to make a loud and public example of non-compliance.

The rules of influencer marketing are changing

The influencer marketing industry has been predicted to plateau for years now. Yet, every year, this evolving industry proves traditional marketers and cynics wrong. From Instagram’s consistent updates and then the rise of TikTok, it’s an industry that now represents around $14 billion marketing spend globally, and its growth is not slowing.

Not surprisingly, as the channel becomes a bigger player in campaign budgets, the regulatory bodies cannot help but take notice. The laws are catching up with undisclosed content that previously slipped under the radar. Now more than ever, marketers and businesses need to understand the rules and regulations of what was once – and perhaps still is – a kind of wild west.

We all understand influencers and get their purpose. Each of us has experienced some form of social media influence, whether the person doing it is a self-prescribed “influencer” or not. When used right, these endorsements are very powerful selling tools. Each influencer represents an interactive billboard localised to every mobile device – all within a market where inventory can be scarce.

Although global e-commerce powerhouses such as ASOS and many of its online fashion competitors were built on influencer marketing, the space has remained the cowboy of the advertising world for some time now. Applying regulation to the channel has been a slow task, but it looks like it’s catching up.

The message is clear: anyone not abundantly aware of the new AANA Code of Ethics introduced in February this year may suffer the consequences of the new regulations. And they are significant consequences.

But how enforceable are the regulations – and will they be enforced? If digital regulation in general is anything to go by, many smaller influencers (purely on follower count) are likely to fall through the cracks and not be punished for breaching the regulations. But if the regulators take a hard and consistent line – and have enough resources – a lot of influencers and the brands using them are heading for trouble.

At times, brands and influencers avoid disclosing their paid content to make their partnerships seem more candid. It might look more authentic, but it is the exact opposite. The stakes are high here. Brands face up to $10 million in fines from the ACCC for non-compliance and individuals facing fines of up to $500,000.

Educating on Ad Standards

Disclosure is important. It always has been for all forms of advertising that blur the line between editorial and paid media. This needs to be a tight and refined process. No more forgetting to hashtag paid posts, then addressing it when called out (or sometimes deleting comments). #ad #advert #paidpartnership and #spon are all sufficient for disclosure, and a small price to play given the growth of the industry – and the risks at hand.

What does the future hold for influencer marketing in Australia?

  1. Many influencer agencies may not be long for this world

Some will be forced to transform to make sure their work and content complies with regulation. They must be able to navigate the legal side with increasingly complex agreements between agents or directly with the talent. Those that struggle to understand the regulation and go about business as usual with their clients could face very real financial implications. Those that succeed will be the ones who develop their offering to be all encompassing. Fewer, larger, and more successful entities will emerge.

  1. Media agencies growing expertise
    Media agencies are expected to add more robust influencer strings to their bow. But many of the challenges influencer marketing faces have ready-made solutions media agencies have experience with. Rules and regulation, brand safety, viewability, cost and budgeting are nothing new. Likewise, there are benefits to media synergy and end-to-end communications. Although many media agencies currently lack deep influencer marketing expertise, it is likely that it will be brought in through acquisitions of successful influencer agencies and talent.
  2. Influencers and the political game

With a federal election on the horizon in 2022, there is an expectation that major parties will lean on influencer marketing to get their message across to Australian voters. Why? To reach new audiences and younger voters (most of Gen Z are no longer in their teens) and to appear more progressive. Should more political money come into play (it already is – thanks, Clive Palmer), Ad Standards and the ACCC will be watching this content closely. It is a perfect opportunity to make an example for non-compliers. Looking to the USA, where both major presidential candidates invested heavily in influencer marketing. It will be interesting to see whether Scomo or Albo decide to follow suit to convince the public of their policies.

Marketers cannot shy away from influencer marketing and regulation. Even when something is posted and forgotten about, it can resurface in a less flattering light. Striving for education and compliance with agency partners is the safest way forward for any brand. And it is worth getting on the front foot now. It’s a $14 billion industry that is rapidly growing, but there are real consequences – immediate or in the future – for getting it wrong.

AdWeek NYC Learnings: Collapsing the customer journey

Posted on November 24, 2021 by - General News, Insights

We have moved beyond marketing funnels

Today’s customer journey tends to be complex – researching products, looking at competitors, and then the actual buying experience. Yet, many ad campaigns are designed with only one stage of the funnel in mind.

There has been movement in implementing Performance Branding strategies bringing audience building & sales together, to elevate the customer experience & drive return on ad spend. But consumer buying pathways and habits have changed in pandemic.  One key outcome?  The collapse of the traditional funnel.

Pre-Covid the focus was on bottom of the funnel via DR media to drive performance / sales.  But as consumers generated enormous demand globally throughout Covid, it seems all brands have had to do is buy awareness media and provide an immediate frictionless check out experience.

Increased demand has meant strained supply chains

This has meant a considerable shift for retailers and their supply agencies.  Marrying consumer demand to where inventory is available.  The distribution chain has become an enormous issue: what happens when a consumer gets a brand message exposure, moves to shopping cart destination but then there’s no supply?  A competitor goes into the shopping cart.

The pressure on retailers to provide agencies and solution providers with all the data to understand the real time consumer experience and the insights that can in turn deliver the right experience back to the consumer and deliver ROAS has increased exponentially.

Global supply chains must be built to deliver to consumer right now, thus being able to optimise in real time is critical yet in many cases advertisers find that attribution remains too far behind to be truly effective.

A new era of effectiveness is emerging

The return to post-covid normality means brand advertising is essential, as is reviewing what metrics are illustrating what is actually working.  Advertisers are questioning what is predictive and what isn’t EG: Viewability / Brand Safety / VCR.  Are they really driving outcomes? When it’s estimated that consumers (on average) are exposed to 4,000 to 10,000 advertising messages a day, media’s digitalization has accelerated the fragmentation of consumers’ attention, resulting in time spent with an advertisement to be a truly sacred commodity. New metrics are needed to drive optimisation for buying and to deliver guarantees.  One area of development is that in the attention space.

As the cookie-less world looms, it is essential to have multiple data sources to get omnichannel viewpoints including CRM databases, ecommerce behaviour / psychographic / demographic profiling data,  digital / social jvp agreements / credit card POS data for full consumer journey attribution and then understand the balance between niche targeting and brand awareness to drive best ROAS.

How to navigate the collapsed customer journey:

At Involved Media we have developed a number of consumer-centric data resources that offer the opportunity to build bespoke attribution platforms and insights.  A couple of examples are:

  1. The Involved Insights Panel: offers brands survey access to a nationally representative panel of 250,000 people across three survey sample sizes: 300 / 500 or 1,000 and each survey caters to 10 questions.  Ideal for exploring the influence of channel strategies and communications, seeking to establish benchmarks for brand and competitor awareness levels, uncovering usage, attitudes, purchase intent, media consumption.  Results are returned in hours, not months.
  1. The Involved Planning Hub: addresses the key issue of actionable attribution insights, the involved Planning Hub sits within Datorama and delivers a single view of truth across consumer, category, media and performance data.  Allowing for agile optimisations, delivering a minimum 4x time efficiency uplift, the Planning Hub gives brands unfiltered access to work with their media comms team to ensure that agreed upon KPIs are delivered and ROAS can be maximised.

AdWeek NYC Learnings: Consumer Attention – a scarce commodity

Posted on November 24, 2021 by - General News, Insights

A couple of common threads across the course of the NY Ad Week timetable of speakers and lectures were those of mental availability and current measurement metrics, with the latter increasingly perceived as failing to support advertisers in today’s highly accelerated digitised economy.  Given that consumer attention is fragmented across what is estimated to be up to 10,000 advertising messages a day, current device-based measures are not accounting for this considerable fragmentation, which leads to brands paying for ad viewability that is not an accurate measure of time spent with an ad, and time spent with an ad drives mental availability.

Why attention-based metrics are critical to successful media strategies.

Viewability is what is just served, not verified as looked at, in other words “Time-in-view versus active attention”.  Dr Karen Nelson-Field’s work in developing gaze tracking and facial recognition technology using intercept device cameras has discovered that attention to advertising is significantly and positively related to business outcomes, including brand choice, memory retention and mental availability. This was also correlated in a recent report by Peter Field and Rob Brittain which showed that campaigns that contributed to a brand mental availability (MA) had higher returns across a range of business metrics.

Is an “Attention CPM” the new metric norm?

Currencies take time to form, and it is too soon for an “Attention CPM”.

To quote Dr Nelson-Field “Attention CPM’s are not commensurate with performance of a platform and risks turning dirty data into a metric that will drive the industry to look for the lowest cost attention before it has genuine transparent value.  Understanding how to optimise at the placement level is important as every channel and format has a ceiling for optimized attention.  Gaining insight as to each platform’s performance is vital to leveraging working with what you have available.  Solving the current currency problem and value of one platform over another can’t yet be quantified”.

Looking for attention in 2022

As we emerge from, and come to understand the marketing impacts of Covid, understanding effectiveness has taken on an increased sense of urgency in the face of Apple’s tracking changes and the deprecation of cookies. Restriction of inventory looms large in the minds of marketers. Lack of transparency across the digital supply chain has resulted in ongoing frustration and loss of trust in the current metrics of brand safety, viewability, VCR/CPCV to measure consumer engagement.

The next step in Attention Economy is to understand how it can be applied for scaled use and application through the validation of the value of attention, and the subsequent quality and cost to overlay that value on each platform, and further – how attention plays into short term and long-term impact and most recently, mental availability. Driving successful brand growth demands both consistency and inventiveness. Engaging in consistent conversations on agile and optimized strategies and trading channels ensures bespoke solutions are delivered and continuously evolved.  An inherent part of that includes keeping abreast of the changes across the measurement metrics landscape and how these developments are impacting brands and their bottom lines.

Long live cinema: what the future holds for Australia’s first AV medium

Posted on August 11, 2021 by - Digital Media, General News

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As published in mumbrella Aug 11, 2021

The big screen experience is here to stay, argues Involved Media’s head of strategy and planning, Dan Hojnik.  

We have a tendency to oversensationalise things in advertising and media. Not that it’s always a bad thing, as it often comes with the job description, but sometimes it does more harm than good.

Our industry is so focused on preparing for the future and new up-and-coming formats, that we often forget to look back and see that things haven’t completely died… they’ve just evolved.

In reality, there isn’t a mainstream media channel that has completely died out. Our traditional media have evolved, and reach more people now than ever in the past.

Linear TV audiences have declined, yet screen agnostic AV reaches more people than ever (thanks VOZ)

Printed newspaper editions have less readership yet online news audiences are large and more engaged than ever before.

Ringing the death knell is dangerous rhetoric that can result in missed opportunity and comes at a real detriment to the client. I’ve noticed one channel, in particular, deserves a second look. It’s cinema, and it’s not dead, it is just evolving with the times.

The elephant on the screen: ‘Premier Access’ 

The on-again-off-again lockdowns that have hit Australia in the past year or so have really disrupted the cinema business. Often, films are going straight to streaming via one of the premier services, which comes at a cost.

Further to the $12.99 monthly Disney+ subscription, I paid an additional $35 to watch the latest Marvel film Black Widow during Melbourne lockdown 5.0. That is steep for our DINKs household, so I am also including my dog Johnny in the math to be kind to Disney’s Premier Access model. Here’s where I went wrong: I tried to replicate the cinema experience, only to fall flat. Short of having a large cinema room at home, the experience was nowhere near as immersive, or awe-inspiring as popping down to the local cinema.

Once out of lockdown (although short-lived), the first thing my wife did was book a cinema experience. Partly because it was a necessary dose of escapism from our own lounge, but also because it comes packaged as a whole experience: quasi-overpriced snacks, a cold dark hollow room, the inability to use your phone and booming bass. Hell, I really did miss it.

Watching a movie in your own home, regardless of if it is new or not, cannot replace the cinema experience and the escapism it delivers. I’ll say it again – cinema is not going anywhere, it’s just adapting to the pandemic.

What to expect next from cinema

Cinema to become the premier escapist experience for a COVID-19 affected Australia as it opens back up

Becoming a date night essential once again, people will turn to cinema as an easy and cheap way to escape. Pre-COVID, Roy Morgan research put cinema attendance at an average of four times per year for most Australians. Right now, there is a backlog of new release content, and as the country begins to see vaccination rates increase, the cinema will be ready to welcome back its patrons.

The rise of the cinema+ experience

LUX/Gold Class spend per head increased more than 30% as the nation started to come out of lockdown last year. People place a higher value on the experience cinema can deliver and therefore are willing to spend more on it. We saw the resurgence of the drive-in, moonlight open-air cinema during summer, and even the Mov’in Boat “floating experience.”’. Looking to the rest of the world, this is just the start of the cinema+ experience. We see trends such as Secret Cinema emerging, delivering so much more than just the experience on the screen with a cinema x interactive theatre hybrid. People crave more from the limited experiences they can have so it is only natural that we push the boundaries of what can be delivered with the medium.

Emotion combined with experience builds brands, so what better place than cinema?

Every exposure, impression or rating is not equal. There is something to be said in the emotional quality of advertising as well as reach, which powers growth for brands. In a world where people need the brands they use and subscribe to be an extension of themselves, more emotion driving media will be what delivers results and success for brands. Brands that align with the cinema experience will see significant emotional impact on their audiences and deliver long-term growth effects to their businesses. We must also acknowledge that cinema is one of the main media that doesn’t involve the distraction of mobile phones.

Cinema is not going out with a whimper; it is coming back with a bang

Pre-pandemic, global cinema attendance was at an all-time high. As Australia recovers with more of its population being vaccinated by the day, we can safely assume that cinema will pick up where it left off.

Looking at Australian cinema performance following every major global economic crisis over the past 40 years, we consistently see cinema delivering between 14% to 20% growth coming out of every crisis (source: MPDAA).

Like those before it (print, I’m looking at you) cinema won’t really die. In fact, its sensationalised death will only add to its appeal. The irony of the pandemic is that it has put a stop to cinema for now, but when it’s over, people will see the true value of the medium and the unmatchable experience it can deliver.

A road map to the right marketing combination

Posted on June 16, 2021 by - Digital Media, Homepage, Insights

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Brand and performance are more closely linked than many marketers care to admit. Dan Hojnik, head of strategy and planning at Involved Media, explains.. 

[Published by B&T Magazine]

I remember trying to explain the benefits of brand and performance marketing working together early on in my career only to have a strong-headed client cut me off and tell me “Everything’s brand, everything sells”. While I still do not believe this statement is quite right, I think it is closer to right than where we find ourselves today.

Brand and performance marketing have been segregated. Marketers and agencies have built specific teams for each, often giving them completely separate goal posts. The industry discentivised the idea of brand and performance working harmoniously.

But with the landscape more challenging than it has ever been for many companies, marketers and agencies are drastically reducing their chances of success – and, potentially, survival – if they don’t have their complete marketing efforts working towards a common goal.

Put simply, we must break down the walls between brand and performance marketing. We need to stop seeing them as separate things. They are, and always have been, inherently linked. Just like Yin and Yang, one cannot exist to its full potential without the other.

Balance and cohesion are essential for the survival of agencies and brands. They are certainly not easy things to achieve, but they should be the ambition of any marketer or planner.

Evolving to a more effective marketing structure means evolving the tools we use to demonstrate effectiveness. Take “the funnel” for example. I hate it. Just because it is easy to understand does not mean it should be used to structure agency or marketing departments.I am not saying the principles are not important, but we need to be better at connecting the dots between them.

Linear frameworks like the funnel have a defined beginning and end. It is a tool from a simpler time, a time when we had less choices, less products, less fulfilment options, and less channels competing for our attention. It is no longer fit to help people along today’s complex consumer journeys.

So, what can we do about it?

British academics Les Binet and Peter Field made famous the 60:40 rule about brand building versus performance marketing in their The Long and the Short of It paper, although their work is often oversimplified and misused. It can be a good guideline, but brands need help from their agencies and marketing departments to get more than just a 60:40 guideline. They need to set up a road map to optimal brand marketing while balancing the pressures of short-term performance. Here’s how to start creating that road map:

  1. Plan communications together across a consumer journey, not a funnel: Work to overcome any barriers people may have in engaging with your product or service. Doing this means that you can deliver tailored roles of communications and channels across the marketing ecosystem for the wider marketing/agency team to build together. Once you have planned across your consumer journey, it becomes easier to set clear KPIs for success.
  2. Ensure marketing and agency teams work towards a common goal: Brand and performance are not enemies, they are allies and will together create success. With your measurement framework built across your consumers’ journey, set clear KPIs for communications and manage expectations around timings for delivery of those KPIs. Where possible, look to include hard and fast indicators for historically longer-term metrics, such as “share of interest” or “share of search”.
  3. “Road map” your journey to the best combination: Use your understanding of your own business to deliver a practical roadmap to the optimal mix of brand and performance over time. Just because you aren’t spending 60% of your marketing on brand building tomorrow doesn’t mean you can’t trial doing slightly more, create a test case, test again, then adjust the spend in line with the results (or not). Make the theory practical and take the wider business stakeholders on the journey, so they understand why the shift in approach is essential for more effective marketing and better results.

Synergy between brand and performance should be the ambition for every marketer and agency. In a COVID-affected world, hopefully soon to be a post-COVID world, many brands need all the help they can get. We cannot afford to have marketing silos where performance marketers claim short-term success but ignore long-term growth ambition, or vice versa for brand marketers. We must have brand and performance working harmoniously to deliver returns greater than the sum of its parts.

Sometimes in life, to rebuild something you need to knock down the existing structure and start again. I truly believe that those who are not willing to break down their walls between brand and performance will ultimately be left behind.