Brand behaviour

With Christmas nearly upon us, the Cheeky diary starts to fill with year ahead planning meetings. For our clients within the leisure sector, this time of year offers little let up in terms of their marketing efforts. The review of the October half term success is underway, Christmas marketing campaigns are now in full swing and 2019 planning is high on the agenda. One of the most common conversations we find ourselves having with clients this time of year, is how to maximise the spend they invest in TV or film and extend this into great, engaging social content for the year ahead. The answer is fairly straightforward, it lies in creative integration, but this requires investment now of both time and budget.

Within the leisure and destination sector, we often find clients treat their TV and social projects as separate entities. TV and film briefs tend to be very information led i.e. “Visit our incredible attraction, it’s a great day out for all the family, find us just off the M25, we’re open 7 days a week” etc… Then separately they brief social and quite rightly; challenge agencies to develop highly engaging, sharable content for the next 6-12 months.

We believe there is a far more integrated way to approach these two channels. By joining the two at the briefing stage to develop a creative ‘big idea’ bridging TV and Social and economies of scale start to become far more feasible. The trick is to ensure the TV ad or film work has a brand led creative idea running through it, rather than simply information based.

TV and film is a significant investment, but if approached in a creative way, it can easily become the very basis to your social content strategy for the year ahead. This approach should create engaging, sharable social content that supports your TV or film work. It can be filmed at the same time and steadily released over the key months when you need it the most. Your messaging across these two key platforms then becomes far more consistent; which drives a joined up marketing approach.

Now we know this concept isn’t new, lets face it; we’re simply talking about creative integration. Most major consumer product brands have approached their marketing planning in this way for decades, with their efforts focusing on a central creative idea, set against a marketing objective and an integrated campaign then flows across all the usual channels, TV, Outdoor, Press, Social, Email. But why is it in the destination / leisure sector we still find many businesses aren’t taking this approach? We believe they are missing a trick.

In our view, leisure businesses could greatly benefit by behaving far more as consumer brands do. They also need to demand more integrated solutions from their agencies to maximise their precious marketing spend. If they’re not using an agency, then the in-house marketing team could start to take a more integrated approach for 2019 planning. We’ve seen it work many times before, leading to stronger creative, better planning and a smarter use of the budget.

When Cheeky tackle TV & social briefs; the process starts with one big campaign idea to address a business objective. Our creative team made up of advertisers, strategists, scriptwriters, filmmakers and social gurus, all work together to develop this big idea. Clients then benefit from a truly cost effective, integrated marketing approach which can last the whole year long and offer the point of difference you are seeking.

So what’s your big idea for 2019?