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Solo Stove Burns Marketing Team Over Snoop Campaign

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Solo Stove Burns Marketing Team Over Snoop Campaign

Last week, Solo Brands, the parent company of direct-to-consumer-brands Solo Stove and others, appointed Christopher T. Metz as its president, chief executive officer, and director of the board.

But that isn’t the interesting story.

The story is why Solo Brands switched their brand quarterback. The CFO said Solo’s unique marketing campaigns didn’t deliver the expected revenue, negatively impacting company results.

Look out. Here comes another bus to throw marketing under.

We turned to Robert Rose, CMI’s chief strategy advisor, for his take. Watch the video or read on for his insight:

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Snoop Dogg campaign leads to CEO exit

Rapper Snoop Dogg made the news again last week for a campaign he did last November for Solo Stove.

You may remember Snoop’s headline-making tweet: “After much consideration and conversation with my family, I’ve decided to give up smoke. Please respect my privacy at this time.”

It went viral across social media channels and through mainstream news coverage. It went viral because the only celebrity more associated with smoking weed than Snoop Dogg might be Willie Nelson. But was Snoop really quitting? Was he going to edibles only now?

No. The tweet was part of a brand awareness campaign for Solo Stove’s new smokeless stove. In a follow-up video, Snoop explains he’s tired of coughing and his clothes smelling bad. As the camera pans wider, it reveals Snoop sitting in front of a smokeless Solo Stove firepit.

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What an incredible influencer and brand awareness campaign, right? It amassed 30 million likes, comments, and shares on social media. Ad Age even ranked it 18th (registration required) in their 40 best ads of 2023.

What could possibly go wrong?

Well, Solo says it didn’t work and threw the marketing campaign under the bus for their slightly lower guidance on revenue — and seemingly replaced the CEO because of it.

In its new CEO announcement release, the interim CFO said, “While our unique marketing campaigns raised brand awareness of Solo Stove to an expanded and new audience of consumers, it did not lead to the sales lift that we had planned, which, combined with the increased marketing investments, negatively impacted our EBITDA.”

She continued, “We believe that there is a significant opportunity for us to build awareness and that these new campaigns will expand our reach and benefit our brands over the long term.”

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Blunder: Brand awareness with sales as a success metric

Solo said with a straight face that the brand awareness campaign started in November 2023 didn’t provide a revenue lift within six weeks. SIX. Weeks. They probably hadn’t even paid the agency’s bill yet. Let that sit there for the moment.

You should pay attention to and acknowledge two things from this situation.

First, it is a great example of something I frequently teach — apply the right business goals and objectives to the right part of the marketing journey. When the business and marketing goals don’t align, don’t be surprised when nobody meets any of them.

Solo conducted a brand awareness campaign. As a marketer, I can tell it was designed for pure brand awareness because of the social posts, TikTok videos, and, of course, the ad posted to its YouTube channel, which sits at 1.1M videos as we publish this. None of the content included a call to action other than a simple “learn more” at the end of the video ad that took viewers to Solo Stove’s website.

Brilliant content and wonderfully delivered. Solo created a perfect vehicle for generating more conversation and awareness about its brand. It did not build the content for conversions.

They said as much a month after the launch. In The Daily, a magazine for outdoor retailers, then CEO John Merris discussed bringing in Martin Agency to help create the campaign and clarified its purpose, “You certainly aren’t tracking it to revenue … You’re tracking it to things like unaided brand awareness.”

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I’m an outsider looking in, and the Solo team may have better insight. But if brand awareness was the business objective and all the marketing leaders agreed, failing the campaign because it didn’t reach revenue objectives is just plain wrong. The campaign wasn’t designed to lift revenue, not to mention it was given only six weeks to do it.

Blunder: Audience-building content without CTAs to retain audience

Now, I have challenges with their strategy of “building audiences” through the campaign. In my world, The Solo campaign would have had CTAs to build an audience. Why not invite the audience to become part of Snoop’s Smokeless World? They could generate their custom “smokeless plan,” download all the benefits of going smokeless, and have all kinds of interactive fun. Solo would have built an addressable audience.

That was the actual marketing fail — they didn’t connect the campaign to anything else. They had a brilliant concept for an amazing, differentiating story told by an exceptional influencer and connected it to zero part of their customer’s journey. All the links from their beautifully designed campaign? All go to Solo’s boring e-commerce storefront — greatly functional if you want to buy a stove but awful if you want to understand why you might buy a smokeless stove.

They could have continued the Snoop story into the demand-gen part of the journey, developing more interest in and shopping for the stoves. They could have used the goodwill and brand recall to get more people interested in smokeless stoves and fire pits.

In CMI and TCA’s first-party data workshop, we teach how to use engagement and interaction with content to learn how to serve the best next experience. Once marketers get someone’s attention, what’s the best next experience that person could have? Connect that to the content that got them in the theater and hold them there.

That’s integrating your content and marketing strategy.

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As you think about ways to launch that amazing, new, disruptive, viral content your creative team has discovered, just remember this story. Ask how you can connect that content to a larger, best next experience so your audience always has someplace to go deeper, learn more, and develop a relationship with you and your brand.

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Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute



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YouTube Ad Specs, Sizes, and Examples [2024 Update]

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YouTube Ad Specs, Sizes, and Examples

Introduction

With billions of users each month, YouTube is the world’s second largest search engine and top website for video content. This makes it a great place for advertising. To succeed, advertisers need to follow the correct YouTube ad specifications. These rules help your ad reach more viewers, increasing the chance of gaining new customers and boosting brand awareness.

Types of YouTube Ads

Video Ads

  • Description: These play before, during, or after a YouTube video on computers or mobile devices.
  • Types:
    • In-stream ads: Can be skippable or non-skippable.
    • Bumper ads: Non-skippable, short ads that play before, during, or after a video.

Display Ads

  • Description: These appear in different spots on YouTube and usually use text or static images.
  • Note: YouTube does not support display image ads directly on its app, but these can be targeted to YouTube.com through Google Display Network (GDN).

Companion Banners

  • Description: Appears to the right of the YouTube player on desktop.
  • Requirement: Must be purchased alongside In-stream ads, Bumper ads, or In-feed ads.

In-feed Ads

  • Description: Resemble videos with images, headlines, and text. They link to a public or unlisted YouTube video.

Outstream Ads

  • Description: Mobile-only video ads that play outside of YouTube, on websites and apps within the Google video partner network.

Masthead Ads

  • Description: Premium, high-visibility banner ads displayed at the top of the YouTube homepage for both desktop and mobile users.

YouTube Ad Specs by Type

Skippable In-stream Video Ads

  • Placement: Before, during, or after a YouTube video.
  • Resolution:
    • Horizontal: 1920 x 1080px
    • Vertical: 1080 x 1920px
    • Square: 1080 x 1080px
  • Aspect Ratio:
    • Horizontal: 16:9
    • Vertical: 9:16
    • Square: 1:1
  • Length:
    • Awareness: 15-20 seconds
    • Consideration: 2-3 minutes
    • Action: 15-20 seconds

Non-skippable In-stream Video Ads

  • Description: Must be watched completely before the main video.
  • Length: 15 seconds (or 20 seconds in certain markets).
  • Resolution:
    • Horizontal: 1920 x 1080px
    • Vertical: 1080 x 1920px
    • Square: 1080 x 1080px
  • Aspect Ratio:
    • Horizontal: 16:9
    • Vertical: 9:16
    • Square: 1:1

Bumper Ads

  • Length: Maximum 6 seconds.
  • File Format: MP4, Quicktime, AVI, ASF, Windows Media, or MPEG.
  • Resolution:
    • Horizontal: 640 x 360px
    • Vertical: 480 x 360px

In-feed Ads

  • Description: Show alongside YouTube content, like search results or the Home feed.
  • Resolution:
    • Horizontal: 1920 x 1080px
    • Vertical: 1080 x 1920px
    • Square: 1080 x 1080px
  • Aspect Ratio:
    • Horizontal: 16:9
    • Square: 1:1
  • Length:
    • Awareness: 15-20 seconds
    • Consideration: 2-3 minutes
  • Headline/Description:
    • Headline: Up to 2 lines, 40 characters per line
    • Description: Up to 2 lines, 35 characters per line

Display Ads

  • Description: Static images or animated media that appear on YouTube next to video suggestions, in search results, or on the homepage.
  • Image Size: 300×60 pixels.
  • File Type: GIF, JPG, PNG.
  • File Size: Max 150KB.
  • Max Animation Length: 30 seconds.

Outstream Ads

  • Description: Mobile-only video ads that appear on websites and apps within the Google video partner network, not on YouTube itself.
  • Logo Specs:
    • Square: 1:1 (200 x 200px).
    • File Type: JPG, GIF, PNG.
    • Max Size: 200KB.

Masthead Ads

  • Description: High-visibility ads at the top of the YouTube homepage.
  • Resolution: 1920 x 1080 or higher.
  • File Type: JPG or PNG (without transparency).

Conclusion

YouTube offers a variety of ad formats to reach audiences effectively in 2024. Whether you want to build brand awareness, drive conversions, or target specific demographics, YouTube provides a dynamic platform for your advertising needs. Always follow Google’s advertising policies and the technical ad specs to ensure your ads perform their best. Ready to start using YouTube ads? Contact us today to get started!

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Why We Are Always ‘Clicking to Buy’, According to Psychologists

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Why We Are Always 'Clicking to Buy', According to Psychologists

Amazon pillows.

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A deeper dive into data, personalization and Copilots

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A deeper dive into data, personalization and Copilots

Salesforce launched a collection of new, generative AI-related products at Connections in Chicago this week. They included new Einstein Copilots for marketers and merchants and Einstein Personalization.

To better understand, not only the potential impact of the new products, but the evolving Salesforce architecture, we sat down with Bobby Jania, CMO, Marketing Cloud.

Dig deeper: Salesforce piles on the Einstein Copilots

Salesforce’s evolving architecture

It’s hard to deny that Salesforce likes coming up with new names for platforms and products (what happened to Customer 360?) and this can sometimes make the observer wonder if something is brand new, or old but with a brand new name. In particular, what exactly is Einstein 1 and how is it related to Salesforce Data Cloud?

“Data Cloud is built on the Einstein 1 platform,” Jania explained. “The Einstein 1 platform is our entire Salesforce platform and that includes products like Sales Cloud, Service Cloud — that it includes the original idea of Salesforce not just being in the cloud, but being multi-tenancy.”

Data Cloud — not an acquisition, of course — was built natively on that platform. It was the first product built on Hyperforce, Salesforce’s new cloud infrastructure architecture. “Since Data Cloud was on what we now call the Einstein 1 platform from Day One, it has always natively connected to, and been able to read anything in Sales Cloud, Service Cloud [and so on]. On top of that, we can now bring in, not only structured but unstructured data.”

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That’s a significant progression from the position, several years ago, when Salesforce had stitched together a platform around various acquisitions (ExactTarget, for example) that didn’t necessarily talk to each other.

“At times, what we would do is have a kind of behind-the-scenes flow where data from one product could be moved into another product,” said Jania, “but in many of those cases the data would then be in both, whereas now the data is in Data Cloud. Tableau will run natively off Data Cloud; Commerce Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud — they’re all going to the same operational customer profile.” They’re not copying the data from Data Cloud, Jania confirmed.

Another thing to know is tit’s possible for Salesforce customers to import their own datasets into Data Cloud. “We wanted to create a federated data model,” said Jania. “If you’re using Snowflake, for example, we more or less virtually sit on your data lake. The value we add is that we will look at all your data and help you form these operational customer profiles.”

Let’s learn more about Einstein Copilot

“Copilot means that I have an assistant with me in the tool where I need to be working that contextually knows what I am trying to do and helps me at every step of the process,” Jania said.

For marketers, this might begin with a campaign brief developed with Copilot’s assistance, the identification of an audience based on the brief, and then the development of email or other content. “What’s really cool is the idea of Einstein Studio where our customers will create actions [for Copilot] that we hadn’t even thought about.”

Here’s a key insight (back to nomenclature). We reported on Copilot for markets, Copilot for merchants, Copilot for shoppers. It turns out, however, that there is just one Copilot, Einstein Copilot, and these are use cases. “There’s just one Copilot, we just add these for a little clarity; we’re going to talk about marketing use cases, about shoppers’ use cases. These are actions for the marketing use cases we built out of the box; you can build your own.”

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It’s surely going to take a little time for marketers to learn to work easily with Copilot. “There’s always time for adoption,” Jania agreed. “What is directly connected with this is, this is my ninth Connections and this one has the most hands-on training that I’ve seen since 2014 — and a lot of that is getting people using Data Cloud, using these tools rather than just being given a demo.”

What’s new about Einstein Personalization

Salesforce Einstein has been around since 2016 and many of the use cases seem to have involved personalization in various forms. What’s new?

“Einstein Personalization is a real-time decision engine and it’s going to choose next-best-action, next-best-offer. What is new is that it’s a service now that runs natively on top of Data Cloud.” A lot of real-time decision engines need their own set of data that might actually be a subset of data. “Einstein Personalization is going to look holistically at a customer and recommend a next-best-action that could be natively surfaced in Service Cloud, Sales Cloud or Marketing Cloud.”

Finally, trust

One feature of the presentations at Connections was the reassurance that, although public LLMs like ChatGPT could be selected for application to customer data, none of that data would be retained by the LLMs. Is this just a matter of written agreements? No, not just that, said Jania.

“In the Einstein Trust Layer, all of the data, when it connects to an LLM, runs through our gateway. If there was a prompt that had personally identifiable information — a credit card number, an email address — at a mimum, all that is stripped out. The LLMs do not store the output; we store the output for auditing back in Salesforce. Any output that comes back through our gateway is logged in our system; it runs through a toxicity model; and only at the end do we put PII data back into the answer. There are real pieces beyond a handshake that this data is safe.”

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