After six years in a beautiful office in west midtown Atlanta, we finally decided we had outgrown the space. We witnessed a lot of growth and change on the west side. We loved the walkability of our neighborhood. We enjoyed having Octane coffee a block away, the Atlanta Humane Society across the street, our favorite TV editing company a stroll away, and more restaurants than we could possibly ever eat lunch at.
Two weeks in, the move has been great. It’s a time to recharge and design inspiring new creative spaces for our team and clients. We’re enjoying new neighborhoods and getting the synapses firing differently in our brains. Change is good. Always. It makes you see and do things differently. Years ago I remember thinking, after four-plus years at BBDO, that if I had to drive in circles up the parking ramp one more time I was going to go insane. Change is good.
We are now in the Poncey-Highland neighborhood on the east side of Atlanta. We’re a block from the famous Virgina-Highland neighborhood, a few blocks from Inman Park, Little Five Points and Old Fourth Ward neighborhoods. We can Bird scoot, Segway or bicycle to a million things including the Beltline, and Ponce City Market. We’ve gone a little more upscale than our old neighborhood, but our team deserves the improved quality of work life and we’re excited for the next chapter at Seed Factory. We hope that you’ll come check us out when you’re looking for assistance with a new project, or need a retainer agency. We promise to take you somewhere delicious for lunch. And of course, whenever our interior is up to our standards, we’ll invite you to the open house. Until then, enjoy our Agency Moving video. We had fun making it.
Since the Federal Trade Commission has been talking about “cracking down” on brands, ad agencies and PR firms in the social media space, I thought I’d take a better look at the FTC’s actual language.
In a nutshell, the FTC wants social media “influencers” to clearly attribute posts as being an ad, sponsorship or endorsement if they show or mention a product in which the influencer has had some engagement with the brand or its agency. Back in April, the FTC actually sent out letters to 90 celebrities they believe have been some of the “worst” offenders on social media. I think this move is starting to get attention now that the FTC is serious. The FTC has also taken action against a brand or two directly.
While I believe in truth-in-advertising principles, the FTC’s new rules, compared to the product placement rules in TV shows and movies, don’t seem fair to brands and agencies that rely heavily on brand ambassadors and influencers. Why? Mainly because the FTC wants influencers to “clearly disclose” a “material connection” in the first 3 lines of an Instagram post. Ugly, right? Have you ever seen a TV show put “#ProductPlacement” text directly on screen when a character or reality star is drinking a #paidplacement coffee or driving a #paidplacement car? No, you haven’t. But they want it to happen in social media.
The FTC has essentially given two options:
1. Use a hashtag like #Ad or #Sponsored in the beginning of your post, separate from the other hashtags at the end (and apparently #Partner is not good enough).
2. Use a disclosure like “Company X gave me this product to try…” or “Company X gave me [name of product], and I think it’s ______.” This is very similar to the FTC’s guidelines they developed for blogs, back in 2011.
I think option two is a fair enough solution by the FTC, especially for people like the Kardashians who literally speak like a brand’s paid actor on their social media channels. But what if an influencer didn’t plan on writing anything about the product in the post? Many influencers merely wear, or show, a product in their image and hashtag the brand (because it’s often harder to see logos on mobile’s small screens), which to me, is exactly the same as product placement in a TV show or movie. So what is the FTC’s position on product placement in TV or movies?
The FTC has expressed the opinion that under the FTC Act, product placement (merely showing products or brands in third-party entertainment content – as distinguished from sponsored content or disguised commercials) doesn’t require a disclosure that the advertiser paid for the placement.
Great. Let’s follow the stated FTC Act for social media then, right? Not so fast. Because this is how the FTC answers a make-believe influencer question on their official site:
Q: If I post a picture of myself to Instagram and tag the brand of dress I’m wearing, but don’t say anything about the brand in my description of the picture, is that an endorsement? And, even if it is an endorsement, wouldn’t my followers understand that I only tag the brands of my sponsors?
A: Tagging a brand you are wearing is an endorsement of the brand and, just like any other endorsement, could require a disclosure if you have a relationship with that brand.
Because the FTC uses the word “could”, I feel they have allowed an opening for interpretation and that everyone should follow the FTC Act on brands in third-party entertainment. After all, don’t we as consumers go to social media for entertainment and news? Why, in this respect, should social media be treated differently? And remember, these are the same social media platforms where political ads don’t have any disclosure mandatories. (But I’m no lawyer and my agency will defer to what our clients’ lawyers decide.)
No matter how you decide to treat social media influencers, it’s worth reading these two documents from the FTC. I would love to know your opinions on all of this.
Lastly, if you want a good laugh and you are not easily offended or mind the F-word, watch HBO’s John Oliver have a little fun mocking all of Starbuck’s paid placement this month:
As an account person who has worked with a large range of creative folks who have varying degrees of passion, I have learned that the best work comes from a creative team that cares. And by care, I mean a team that is inspired to produce the best work for the client. Sure, everyone wants to make work that they personally love, but wanting that AND having a client centric focus is the key to long-term success for both the agency and client.
As a client, you should be asking your agency how the creative team seeks inspiration and what motivates them. We often focus on day-to-day deliverables, budgets, scopes and deadlines. But at the end of the day, what separates one agency from another is the level of passion that the creative team has for your brand. An inspired team will create work that gets attention, gets talked about and gets remembered. An inspired agency team will lead to a stronger return on your investment. After all, you’re not investing all your time and budget for the sake of making your brand more wallpaper in the attention-deficit-disorder consumer’s mind.
Of course, inspiration can come from many places, and often times from some of the amazing work our peers do. Seed Factory recently hosted the British Arrows for the first time in Atlanta. After watching 75 minutes of the award winning, best of British TV commercials, I’m proud we brought this “short film festival of brands” to Atlanta. Hopefully it has helped spark creativity for agencies and brands alike.
Before this year, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis had been the only U.S. city showing these “brand film shorts”. In fact, this has been a Minneapolis tradition for over 30-years and has amassed an annual attendance of over 25,000. If you know your Advertising and Communications cities, you’ll also know Minneapolis is/was a hotbed of creativity for decades. British commercials are often strong on storylines and character development just like short films, making it pretty hard to leave the theater anything but inspired and excited to put that energy to good use (for our clients, of course).
We were happy to host the inaugural Atlanta British Arrows 2017 to inspire marketing directors, creative teams, strategists and agency account managers in our home of Atlanta. We also look forward to bringing it to Atlanta every year to come – to connect, laugh and be motivated by thoughtful and timeless story telling.
In the meantime, does your brand want to work with us and one of these fantastic British production companies? We have experience concepting award-winning work and collaborating with some of the best directors nationally and internationally.
If you Google “content strategy”, you’ll find more than 23,000 page results. It’s undoubtedly been a hot topic over the past few years and if you have a marketing role, you are probably asked continuously about the best content strategy and approach. For PR professionals, content strategy isn’t new, but instead another term for planning and executing a brand’s narrative.
There’s a lot of research and compelling reasons why content marketing is essential to the success of your marketing efforts. These benefits should help you understand the importance of a strong content marketing strategy, especially as you plan for 2018.
Build Once, Use Multiple Times: As internal teams get stretched and budgets tighten, marketing departments are constantly being asked to do more with less resources. With a strong content marketing strategy, you can build content that will not only live on your main point of communications (your website as an example), but can also be cross-promoted through other key marketing channels. For example, our kayak manufacturing client recently introduced a product that was cross-promoted using multiple touch points, utilizing consistent visuals and messaging: PR to secure editorial coverage, digital advertising, search, social, print and email marketing.
Ensures Consistency: By simply going through the motions of content planning, you’ll begin to ensure consistency in your communications. What I’ve found helpful is when my agency develops a master calendar that highlights the content strategy, social calendar, product introductions, and initiatives all in one central location. For this master document, we also highlight the overarching message and proof points that ensure consistency in these marketing activations.
Helps with SEO: A strong content marketing strategy goes hand in hand with improving SEO. After a company has developed positioning that defines what the brand stands for, what its unique differentiator is, what it wants to be known for and what its key messages are, a similar process can be taken with SEO. Identify the language (keywords, or more appropriately key phrases) that people use to research your company’s category, industry, products, services or competitors and then write content relevant to these. The more often you use these keywords on your site, the higher it’ll rank for SEO purposes. Google ranks sites with consistent keywords and fresh keyword content as more relevant sites for their users. Start mapping out your content strategy for the year and drive people to your site, based on these keywords.
Keeps the DiscussionGoing: Similar to the monthly approach we take to build content calendars for our brands’ social channels, we also broadly map times of year for specific topics to develop content around. If you manage a consumer brand, you can use seasonal moments in time to connect with audiences in relevant ways. If your company is B2B focused, map out the industry and customer events you’ll be participating in and drive the narrative to time with these key events. Remember, the content should be relevant and timely to engage consumers in a way that is appropriate to their current interests or needs.
Helps Target your Audience: In any given week, your team may be talking to a host of different stakeholders and influencers for your organization or brand. From customers to partners to media influencers and brand ambassadors, it’s important to tailor the message and tone to the appropriate person. A targeted content marketing strategy will help that approach and ensure you aren’t leaving anyone out of the conversations.
Builds Credibility and Influence: This may seem like the most obvious reason but it’s worth stating. When a company and/or brand shares their POV on applicable and timely topics, the larger following and credibility they will build. For B2B, focusing on quality, educationally driven content will help position your company as a thought leader or expert in the respective category. For example, we work with the largest ladder manufacturer in the world and we partner with them to consistently build a narrative around our agreed upon key message. From contributed articles to in-person training sessions to national initiatives, this key message is at the beginning, middle and end of every discussion. What makes us successful is the credibility this company has built in their industry and how they keep the conversation going. It’s become an ownable platform they want to be known for and that key attribute comes through in the messaging for the majority of their news coverage.
You’ve probably heard that YouTube and Facebook are selling six second ads with FOX, the first TV network to experiment with the format. So how should marketers think about this new format that will gain steam in 2018? For one, don’t think of it as new. Anyone remember print advertising? Anybody remember Vine? Yep, the platform that Twitter bought and shortly thereafter closed, is now the “new” format for advertisers to embrace. How long do brands have to catch the average consumer’s attention in print? Two seconds. Most of the media buys on YouTube allow users to skip your ad after five seconds of watching. And have you looked at your data analytics on those ads? Not many people continue to watch your commercial in its entirety unless it’s very relevant to the viewer. Maybe YouTube is actually giving advertisers an additional second with this format. Now you get six seconds instead of five! Hopefully the format will force advertisers to again be disciplined about messaging, ideas and storytelling.
Here are some ideas to help marketers think about the new six-second format:
Focus on a moment, not an entire story. There’s no time for a traditional set up, arc and resolution in six seconds. Show how your brand helps or relates to a situation, leaving viewers with a strong connection to a relatable moment.
Think of this new format as you would a great print ad. With only six seconds it can almost be thought of as print with motion. Of course, like with print, more value will need to be put on the simple, pure IDEA for it to get etched into consumers’ minds. If you think about some of the best visual-solution print ads or strong headlines coupled with amazing visuals, it tells a story quickly, succinctly and memorably. On average, consumers spend 2-3 seconds with print ads and decide if the ad is relevant to them within 0.3 seconds. Maybe smaller, independent agencies that were traditionally great at print ads, will shine with the new format.
Create a Brief specifically for this format. Or at least give it clear definition within a campaign brief. It’s not a :30 that’s cut down to a :15, that is now cut down to a :06. That won’t work here. The Creative Brief needs to clearly state the goal and mandatories of a six-second commercial. It needs to have real expectations on what can be communicated. It needs to be signed off on by all internal decision makers, otherwise you will do yourself, the brand and the agency a disservice.
Cut the clutter. The six-second commercial will be great for pure branding and for marketing messages related to a certain event or day of the year. Again like all great advertising, it will need to have one simple message and can’t be cluttered with too many mandatories, explanations or lengthy CTAs.
Contrary to what I say in point one, if you want to tell an entire story in six seconds you should consider using time lapse, hyper-lapse, stop-motion, jump-cuts and fast/slow speed video techniques to tell your story. Many brands are already successfully using these techniques in social media and these formats may not be that different from your social content efforts if you already take these storytelling approaches.
Of course, this format will be best used as part of a larger campaign. It will have definite messaging limitations and it should probably have budgets more on par with social content or print ad creation. In fact, as agencies and marketers begin to experiment with the format, you may realize it aligns more with your social media or print concept efforts but that doesn’t mean the brief and approval process should be handed of to an in-house social media coordinator.
If it doesn’t “give away” the idea, quickly show your logo at the opening of the video. Sony was brilliant with this on all of their Playstation commercials in the past. You can also consider as an option, watermarking your logo on a bottom corner of the video (like a station identifier), although we prefer the opening blip instead of a continued “distraction”. We also believe the blip creates better brand recall with viewers.
Have fun, think differently and be disciplined in your approach. It will take the expertise of creative agencies and disciplined marketers to do it well, but it’s exciting to think about and get ahead of the curve as it may become a part of your media plan in the near future.
We don’t know of many U.S. advertising and creative agencies that have Highlight Reels. In the U.K. they call them “Showreels”, but I don’t think that’s a familiar term on this side of the pond. Production and post production companies have been using highlight reels for as long as I can remember, but ad agencies seem to go the traditional route with Case Study videos. Sure those work. A case study video gives a potential client all the facts, figures, insights and behind the scenes thinking that factored into the end product. But who wants traditional? Who wants a PBS documentary when they can get an MTV music video!? Well, not Seed Factory. That’s why we just finished a highlight reel that’s a pretty fun watch. No, it doesn’t let you understand our big ideas, strategy and planning capabilities in-depth, but it gives you a feel for what we can produce for you. Maybe we need to start cranking out some traditional case study videos next, but until then let’s go with the rock n’ roll.
When people think about the Outdoor Sports Industry and which cities and states it thrives in, they usually don’t think of Georgia. What comes to your mind? California, Colorado, Washington, Oregon? Probably. But did you know that Georgia is only behind California, Florida and New York for outdoor recreation consumer spending? From what we can gather, that stat includes the Bicycling Industry, Boating Industry and Motorcycle industry, but not hunting, fishing or wildlife.
So perhaps if you’re a Marketing Director looking for an agency to help grow your brand, the fact that we’re located in Atlanta might be better than you think. In fact, we have a lot of great outdoor companies already based here, including Vibe Kayaks (a current client) and past clients — Wahoo Fitness, Olympia Outdoors and BlueWater Ropes. Then there are many others like Mizuno, Tifosi, Triumph Motorcycles, Yamaha Boats, Thomson Bikes and many others all based in Georgia. Nearby in TN, we have American Bicycle Group (Litespeed) and a few others.
Other than our smart thinking and great creative, what are some advantages of working with an Atlanta advertising, PR, design and social firm like Seed Factory? How about great locations for photography and video shoots. Or if you want to stretch the legs after a long client-agency collaboration, we have road bicycling on the Silver Comet trail and mountain biking at Sope Creek 20 minutes from our office. Go 45 minutes out of town and we have a couple of fantastic lakes for water sports, then there’s the Appalachian trail for hiking which is just 1-2 hours north of Atlanta, and the diverse outdoor town of Chattanooga for a great variety of scenic location backdrops and great climbing. As a bonus, the white sands and turquoise waters of the Caribbean are a short (5 hour) drive away for SUP, boating and other water sports photography and filming. There is also some of the best mountain biking in the country 3.5 hours away in Brevard, NC with Pisgah Forest and the Blue Ridge Parkway.
Bottom line is, we’re passionate about the Outdoor Industry and the Bicycling Industry. Maybe you should give our agency a visit and then take a ride, climb or paddle with us.
The ever entertaining and fun crew at Vintage thought it would be good for me to walk around as an “Athlete” for an electric bike co. Funny.
I’m back in Atlanta from Interbike and recovered by doing a real road ride and also a fun ride on Sunday. It was one of Atlanta’s “Streets Alive” days so I went out with the urban masses to celebrate human powered transportation in the ATL–biking and walking.
But back to Interbike.
Even though we used to have Wahoo Fitness as a client and designed some of their trade show graphics, along with packaging and advertising, I had never been to the greatest trade show on earth before this year! Turns out that some of the biggest brands decided not to attend this year. Specialized, Trek and Giant were no shows. It’s probably hard to justify the hundreds of thousands of dollars in expenses when they already have direct access to all of their dealers.
I don’t think I did a very good job at the show for the one day I was there. I didn’t get to half the booths I wanted to and I didn’t have a game plan. You need a game plan at this thing–it’s huge! The amount of companies there is overwhelming. The amount of amazing products is overwhelming too. Unfortunately, I also didn’t think Interbike did a good job with the map. The numbers on the map were absolutely tiny and to cross-reference the booth numbers to the companies in the long list below the map could have taken me 3 hours to create my own walking map. Maybe they’ll get to the point that they offer an interactive, customizable map online. Or maybe they did and I missed it.
Anyway, we picked up a bicycle client shortly before Interbike so I was glad to have already booked my trip there. It was nice meeting the clients in person and help with some of the media briefings. I think things went really well for them at the show. They have an amazing electric bike company and the team was so nice. They seam to be very hard workers, sweat the details and have a vision for the growth of the electric bike market. Check out their amazing bikes here – Vintage Electric Bikes.
Thomson is a local GA bike parts manufacturer who Seed Factory needs to reach out to. Honestly, I haven’t seen a more boring and visually underwhelming booth than theirs. I’m wondering if it’s part of their brand persona to be completely anti-flashy, but it seems a bit extreme and counter-productive to selling more of their beautiful bits. I’ve always believed that if you’ve created something beautiful, then you should present it beautifully to help create an aura and emotional connection to it.
Moving on, there were so many other booths to see. I literally got lost at one point when I was trying to get back to Vintage Electric’s booth. I loved Pivot’s bike line up, the Alchemy bikes, Industry Nine’s trick bits, the Bell helmets booth and tons of others. Renovo Hardwood Bicycles caught my eye as one of the most beautiful frames out there, but then again, I’m a sucker for anything well crafted from hardwoods.
Seed Factory would love to work with more of these companies in the bicycle industry. Of course we’re super stoked to be working with Vintage Electric Bikes as they’re poised to grow into a huge company. Others such as Kuat racks are beautiful and smartly designed. Being in MO, it’s close enough to our time zone to work together easily. Phil Wood has such trick bits and they supply the hubs for Vintage. Litespeed is just up the road from us in Chattanooga. 6D Helmets are really onto something with the shock-absorption layer. G-form’s protective equipment looks great. Crank Brothers, Stan’s NoTubes and the list goes on.
Helping build a brand based on a powerful insight is our favorite type of work we do here at the agency. We had the opportunity to partner with Navicent Health to build a new, simple, understandable brand. Developing a branding campaign around a central truth is a tactic that all marketers can leverage within their health care organization. To read more about this campaign, please see the AMA article here.
A few of us around here have finally gotten into our mountain bike groove this summer and it feels good. Atlanta has the good fortune of being situated 3 hours from a few of North Carolina’s best trails–the Pisgah/Brevard area and the Tsali/NOC area. I’ve been a huge fan of Tsali for about 16 years and it has been named a Bike Magazine top trail (or something like that) so we rode there 2 weeks ago and in Brevard 3 weeks ago. Let me say, for as long as I’ve been a proponent of Tsali, we rented some Santa Cruz full-suspension bikes from The Hub and had way more fun at Brevard. So I have to say it, after 16 years of being a Tsali, and a hard tail fan, I moved my riding allegiance to Brevard and I’m in the market for a full-suspension 650b. It doesn’t hurt the Brevard, NC has one of the coolest bike shops in The Hub. They have a tiny bar in the back of the shop that serves regional beers. That was two and three weeks ago. It was tough to admit that I’ve fallen out of love with Tsali, but after about 18 miles on the left and right loops, the thrill was gone. Perhaps I can blame it on too many tree roots from too many wheels traveling it over the past 16 years.
Last weekend we decided to travel only 1.5 hours to a spot near Dahlonega in N. Georgia. Guess what? After switching my allegiance to Brevard, I suddenly had a new favorite trail system that’s even closer to home! I’m not even going to say the name of this one because I like it so much. It’s anywhere from 12-26 miles of single track with some seriously fast and flowy sections, plus of course, a lot of good climbs. Yep, summer is on–3 weekends in a row of great rides with some mid-week local trails mixed in. And now I’m mid-flight to the Outdoor Retailer Summer Market and I’m sticking around to ride the chair-lift delivered tails and downhill of Park City on Saturday. Make that four weekends of epic rides!
And the “everything else” part of this blog post? Well NOC near Tsali has amazing white water kayaking and rafting. And Brevard, (Transylvania County, NC) has amazing waterfall hiking and a slick rock natural water slide for cooling off.
If you’re at a bike or bike components/accessories company and are looking for a new agency, please give us a ring. I promise we’ll take you to my favorite new, undisclosed trail system between meetings.
