To capture the hearts and minds of your customers, you need to tell them a story — one filled with valuable content, stunning visuals, and a strong call to action. A successful integrated marketing campaign combines these pieces into a cohesive, engaging story that is sure to capture and keep your customers’ attention.
Over the past year we had the opportunity to create a campaign for a corporate trends report. We were tasked with creating brand awareness for the report, engaging audiences in a discussion on the findings, and establishing a thought leadership position for our client.
The campaign highlights the Megatrends — socio-economic, demographic and technological trends — that will have a sustained and transformative impact on businesses, societies, economies, cultures and our lives over the next 15 to 20 years.
A picture’s worth…
Our first task was helping the client synthesize their findings into a concise, easy to grasp story arc that a broad audience would find both informative and engaging.
Combining visually-appealing imagery, charts and graphics, with interesting facts, stories and future day-in-the-life scenarios we were able to bring Megatrends to life in a presentation format.
Give it a stage…
Next step was to spice up the visual storytelling with additional motion graphics elements as we readied the content for executive keynote presentations at large conferences around the globe.
Often times when people think of executive keynotes, they shudder at the thought of a dark room with dreary slides full of text and data.
46% of respondents admit they’ve been distracted during a presentation (Source: Prezi)
Capturing and keeping your audience’s attention is vital to making sure your presentation message resonates. So for our Megatrends-centric presentation we added some attention-getting motion graphic animations to help demonstrate the massive amount of change occurring in the world and what our journey into the future would look like.
Make it move…
We wanted to bring the Megatrends story to life and have a compelling piece we could use across social and marketing channels to pique audience interest.
65% of those who view a video click through to visit the vendor website, 50% look for more information. (Source: Forbes)
When it came to telling the Megatrends story, video was a natural fit. Using a combination of motion graphics, custom voiceover, music and video footage, this is the first in a video series that paints a vision for where the world is heading and how businesses, educational institutions and entrepreneurs can use these trends for future technology and business planning.
Let’s get physical…
Don’t discount the significance of a print piece and the impact it can make on your audience. Creating a tangible piece is an effective way to establish your brand and extend the life of your message.
To broaden audience reach and go deeper on our message, we crafted a thought leadership article that was shared in print and digital format with customers, partners and employees around the globe. Providing a more in-depth look at Megatrends-key statistics, examples and recommendations-was key to creating a tangible piece with pass along potential.
Hey, let’s talk…
Rich content like the Megatrends research should be a conversation starter and enable executives to share and compare notes on their unique point of view with others.
Visual content is 40x more likely to get shared on social networks (Source: Buffer)
We were able to repurpose the content of our campaign to create rich media posts offering valuable and interesting content on social media. Using short clips from the video, slides from the presentation, visuals from the article and new graphics that highlighted findings, we engaged with audiences across brand and executive social channels.
Parting thoughts…
The Megatrends campaign was a fun one for our team because it allowed us to flex our content and creative muscles across mediums and marketing channels. Starting with crafting a strong and compelling story arc made it easy to find interesting ways to reimagine the messages, bring them to life and give them legs. Any great integrated campaign should have that common thread that keeps audiences engaged and reinforces your message at every touch point.
We would love to hear what your tips are for creating an effective integrated marketing campaign. Sound off in the comments below.
