2640 Lyndale Ave S.Minneapolis Minnesota 55408

Always-on Digital Marketing: 7 Things We’ve LearnedChristian Erickson

Partner/Creative

Zeus Jones

We left the traditional advertising business because we had a belief about brands: they’re built on what they do, not what they say.

We built Zeus Jones around this belief.We combined strategy, design, creativity and digital expertise and set out to modernize marketing.

Consumer Insights

Strategy

Creative

Management

Production

Media

Analytics

When we started, most of marketing was driven by campaigns.And almost all roles, processes

and timelines - at both agencies

and clients - we’re designed

around annual advertising

pushes.

By this time digital had already turned mass communications models upside down.1. Mass media became fragmented/niche media

2. Communication became two-way

3. Search enabled people to learn anything they wanted to know about a brand

The campaign model wasn’t designed for the always-on digital world.The frameworks we used

didn’t help us find new and

interesting ways to engage

with people, and we often

ran out of things to say.

Digital isn’t a channel, it’s a way of thinking.We stopped dividing our marketing by traditional/digital and instead started talking about it in terms of campaigns and always-on.

Campaigns Always On“Push” marketing is focused on delivering our messages as broadly as possible to as many people as possible. The centerpiece of campaigns is usually advertising.

“Pull” marketing is focused on pulling together all the people who want to know more about our brand or participate with us in some way. The centerpiece of Always On is usually content.

Zeus Jones Proprietary and Confidential.  All rights reserved 2012.

CampaignsBuilt around messages.

Divide people into buckets to efficiently target them.

Operate on our schedule.

Control what is being said.

About being interruptive.

Exist in as many places as possible.

Always-OnBuilt around purpose.

Unite people around love/interest in the brand.

Operate “on demand”.

Curating/Responding to what people are saying.

About being useful and engaging, creating value.

Create a hub for everything we do.

We’ve worked very closely with some very forward-thinking brands.This is as much their journey as it is ours.

7 Things We’ve Learned.Along with some examples of how we’ve used these principles.

1. Start with purpose, not messaging.Having a purpose beyond just delivering a functional benefit is critical for modern brands.

Campaigns are built around saying one thing and saying it as cleverly and loudly as possible

– which doesn’t work when consumers are interacting with you every day.

The higher the purpose, the more ways to interact with culture.A good purpose should inspire lots and lots of ideas for how the brand goes to market.

“Support dogs and their owners on their personal journey toward Greatness.”

Purina ProPlan“Bring awesome things together to make them awesomer.”

Reese’s Puffs“Fuel the champion inside.”Wheaties

We focus our content and creative into “pursuits.”Categories of actions taken by the brand.

Fueling Champions with Nutrition Inspiring ChampionsChallenging Champions

2. Unite people, don’t divide them.Traditional targeting/media planning is about finding the largest

audiences - often based on broad demographics. Always-on requires

finding an audience with true passion for what the brand is about and

bringing them together in one place.

Cat People!Despite their many

differences, one thing cat

owners were all very

interested in is

understanding their pet’s

behavior.

The brand started by doing some new research and sharing it.In the form of a

documentary series that

follows an urban kitten

and an African Wildcat to

explain cat behaviors.

This helped us build a

community of curious cat

owners.

And the community has helped us sustain it for over a year.They provide content,

questions, discussion topics

and of course adorable cat

photos. All of which give the

brand fresh ways to use its

expertise.

3. Operate “on-demand”What were yearly planning cycles are now two-week planning cycles. But sometimes the best

opportunities present themselves in between planning meetings. We’ve learned that having

a small, empowered team that can create and respond quickly can have huge benefits.

For Wheaties, we had a three-person creative team.And we were planning and

creating small pieces of

content almost every day.

During one of our planning meetings, we came across this.Sam Gordon’s highlight reel

was going viral that day, and

within hours hatched a plot

to create a custom Wheaties

box for Sam Gordon and send

it to her.

Because of Sam’s instant celebrity, there was huge media interest.And within days we’d produced the box and it was given to her on Good Morning America.

4. Know where you want to go, but let the people lead you there.In the beginning we used to use social media to “test” ideas - meaning try out lots of

little things and see what grabs people. But we later discovered that you need a strong

sense of your overall goal, then you need to let your community lead you there.

Reese’s Puffs:

“Bring awesome things together to make them awesomer”

We knew we wanted to the brand to play in internet culture,

where new mash-ups and memes are happening every day.

We had what we thought was an AWESOME idea: let’s be an

expert on internet memes. Turns out, our biggest fans just

wanted us to be ourselves. And when we followed their lead,

they took us into places most brands can’t go - like Tumblr

and Reddit.

5. Make stuff that’s useful and engaging.A brand succeeds when people agree with it’s worldview. But some

views are harder to change than others. That’s when it becomes

necessary to prove your belief rather than just evangelize it.

2012 Westminster Champion

7th Consecutive Year

93/100 Top Show Dogsare Pro Plan-Fed

Banana JoePro Plan-Fed Champion

Pro Plan’s heritage is in show dogs.

But, it turns out lots of other amazing dogs eat it too.

Meet MoonRescue Pet

It’s hard to simply convince people their dog is capable of such feats.But Purina trainers were proving it with their own dogs.

We made their methods accessible to people.And created an app “P5”

that helps them find out

what their dog can really do.

6. Forge great partnerships for creative and content.As you’ve seen, always-on means creating lots of things all the time - not just one or two big things a year. A

traditional agency creative team on it’s own could never keep up. More and more we’re seeing the creative role

evolve to be more about curation, inspiration and partnership with other creative people.

DesignersWe engaged some top poster artists to create this series that celebrates Purina ONE’s sponsorship of Pitchfork.

ArtistsWe work with tons of illustrators on content for brands like Cheerios.

Bloggers / WritersWe challenged two hipster bloggers to run the Tough Mudder and write about it.

90,000 Tumblr Followers 20,000 Twitter Followers

PhotographersWe worked with Theron Humphrey on 2 projects for Purina

FilmmakersWe worked Michael Tyburski and Ben Nabors to create a series of documentaries about modern familes for Bettty Crocker.

We give these partners a ton of creative freedom.Unlike a traditional agency / production partner relationship, we typically give partners a

very broad brief and let them run with it.

7. Create a digital ecosystem that supports this way of working.We found we needed to create a single “hub” for publishing and social activity, then

have a process for both content creation and content distribution.

This ecosystem model helps us activate against all the other points I’ve discussed.

Content Creation Content Distribution

SOCIAL

VIDEOOWNED MEDIA

MAKERS

BANNERS

.COM

PAIDSEARCH

FB

BLOGGERS

OTHER

BRAND CONTENT

FB ADS

PUBLISH

Inspiration

Keeping an eye on blogs, artists, other sources.

Ideation around themes, ideas.

Co-creation

Partner with creators to develop original content.

Create our own.

FOUND CONTENT

FAN CONTENT

BUILD SHARE

Content Hub

Publish and aggregate content

to .com

Everything is shareable.

Owned and Earned

We start here first.

Create a media and measurement plan.

Scaling / Paid

Invest behind the best-performing

content.

TEST SCALE

ORGANIC SEARCH

Cheerios + Little Free LibrariesFollowing a small spark through the entire process.

Inspiration Found Element Brand Element

Create Publish Scale

7 Things We’ve Learned.

1. Start with purpose

2. Unite people

3. Operate on-demand

4. Let the people lead you

5. Make useful things

6. Forge great partnerships

7. Create an ecosystem

2640 Lyndale Ave S.Minneapolis Minnesota 55408

Thank You.Questions?