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W H I T E P A P E R | U N F O L D Y O U R B R A N D I N S P I R A T I O N F O R T R A N S M E D I A C A M P A I G N S

Today’s world is changing at breakneck pace: the media landscape is fragmented, young niche audiences have become unreachable through mass media and the real-time opportunities of digital require the ability to shift quickly. In today’s day and age, an integrated strategy is a necessity. In order to stay in control, we developed a 10-step method, called Unfold360. This model is based on the insight that content can only truly connect when it’s born from creativity and can unfold from the inside out. Communicating from the heart, unfolding, breeds’ strength and authenticity. And not just that: brands that take this path have the ability to become iconic and gain great cultural significance. After all, our challenge is to continuously fan the flames of our audience’s desire by means of innovation and attention, in order to prevent our loyal customers choosing a different, more exciting brand. In this white paper, we’d like to share our expertise to contribute in the fight against silo mentality. The cases show you the power of co-creation and synergy of the integration of owned-, paid-, earned- and shared media.

U N F O L D 3 6 0 THE ROADMAP

Awarene s s

Tar g e t ing

Rev i e ws

Ce l eb ra t e

Owned Media

Campaign S t ra t e g y

Con t en t

Plann ing

Idea t i on

Ins i gh t s

Audi t

C O N V E R S I O N

A T T R A C T

O P T I M I Z E

C R E A T E

O U T L I N E

A D V O C A C Y

I M A G I N E

E X P L O R E

R E F L E C T

V A L U A T E

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W H AT I S T R A N S M E D I A S TO RY T E L L I N G ?

A transmedia s tory is a s tory that unfolds over var ious media channels, with each channel making an individual contr ibut ion to the storyl ine as a whole, invi t ing fol lowers to part ic ipate or add their own sub-storyl ine. Although al l parts of the story can be fol lowed separately, a l l plat forms are connected and reinforce each other. This format a l lows anyone to part ic ipate in and inf luence the story with their own ideas and (re )act ions, whether they’re on their smartphone in a tram or a s tore, at home on the sofa with an iPad or watching TV, or browsing the internet on their computer. This provides an opportunity to look inside yoursel f. But this type of interact ion also increases involvement, as i t revolves around users rather than makers/senders, requir ing a completely di f ferent approach and a good amount of courage. Brands have to dare to let go, which is only possible i f you have a rock-sol id core to rely on. You have to trust that something beaut i ful wi l l grow from within, that your core wi l l connect the r ight people. Transmedia campaigns do require an anchor; appoint a s ingle person to guide the ent ire process, someone who understands a l l discipl ines and can head up a mult i funct ional team. That wi l l a l low you to cross boundaries and navigate obstacles, together.

C O N C E P T C R E A T I O N A C T I V A T I O NE V A L U A T I O N

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This initial phase is all about uncovering The Why. It’s about asking the right questions in order to bring out true motives, passion, and the real reason for doing what you do. Exploring your ultimate dream can stimulate creativity: It helps you find the most interesting approaches and locate a core idea for a layered campaign with great integrity. What’s the DNA that makes your products or services unique? And which people do you have in mind? How do you make life easier for them? In the case of collaboration, we believe it’s important to set expectations early and decide on a direction early on, for which formulating specific objectives is an absolute must.

The Why of Reebok: “Be More Human,” an integrated global campaign that celebrates ordinary people who use sports and fitness in their quest for personal fulfillment and to serve the greater good. It is about peoples’ ability to tackle life’s toughest challenges and demonstrating the individual’s ability to transform during the most rigorous of circumstances. #bemorehuman

1 R E F L E C T audi t

For a brand to be relevant, it must be connected to market developments at all times. What are the current social themes and trends? What developments are there in terms of communication and retail, and what are the most innovative new business models? Immerse yourself completely in the world of your (potential) customer and consider how you can provide the best service during their customer journey. Draw up personas and investigate their needs pre-purchase (awareness), during purchase (conversion) and post-purchase (loyalty/advocacy). Map all customer touchpoints in the purchase and usage process, both offline and online. Due to the increasing number of digital touchpoints, the customer journey has become more quantifiable, but qualitative research is essential in addition to data analysis if you want to gain insight into your customers’ emotions. This can help us decide what content to deploy at which phase and through which channels.

unu motors from Berlin, for example, made it to the centre of attention due to their vision on sustainability and their innovative online sales concept, which skips retail and has so-called ‘unu pioneers’. Major exposure was created for the brand by publications in tech and business magazines such as Adformatie, Marketingfuel, Bright, Sprout and Emerce, as well as considerable attention on Instagram, from influencers who borrowed the scooter for a day.

2E X P LO R E ins ights

When you’ve found your ‘why’ and have taken your inspiration from market insights, it’s time to come up with the idea behind the campaign, the foundation of a transmedia story. An ideation session is a great way to get there. UNFOLD prefers organising these with six open, creative minds, led by a facilitator charged with safeguarding the creative flow and focusing the group by means of a predefined set of questions.

Tip: involving influencers of your target audience in this early stage of the process will increase engagement and can make for innovative campaigns. A session is followed by the wrap-up: the art is coming up with the One Big idea, the #theme, as well as tactical ideas about how to convey the message.

I N F L U E N C E R C H A L L E N G E + C O L O U R T A L K E V E N T R E S I D E N C E

F A R R O W & B A L L

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I MAG I N E ideat ion

The output of the first three steps is combined into a single plan. It’s important to select the right ideas from the ideas session based on feasibility and newsworthiness, as well as making the right choices for the available time and budget. You then set up a PR content and activities calendar and draw up clear briefings for event or activation creators, such as influencers, photographers, stylists, video producers and copywriters. It’s important that they be provided with an up-to-date style guide that specifies the desired tone of voice and visual grammar, as well as SEO guidelines. You’ll also need an ‘outreach’ plan: select the right influencers and press contacts, the people who you want to contact during the campaign, so that they can tell your story for you. When selecting who to work with, pay attention to impact (number of followers), influence, engagement and, most importantly, their own style.

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F o r C h i n a A i r l i n e s , w e s e n t ‘ h a n d p i c k e d ’ c y c l i s t a n d n i c h e i n f l u e n c e r F r e e k G e u r t s ( 6 9 K ) , a n d m a c r o i n f l u e n c e r E e l c o R o o s ( 4 4 0 K ) t o T a i w a n t o c a p t u r e t h e b e a u t i f u l n a t u r e o f t h e c o u n t r y .

O U T L I N E planning

There are two ways to select influencers for campaigns:

Hand-picking: for long-term collaborations, we prefer approaching the most appropriate influencers directly or through their agents, presenting them with an interesting proposal. This is the only way to set up a campaign with macro influencers, but beginning niche/micro influencers also like it when you approach them directly. It’s best to involve influencers at an early stage, as this gives them the space to co-create.

Pitch: selection is also possible via the so called ‘Market place’ method. You write a campaign pitch and make a call to a few thousand affiliated influencers to draw up a proposal for you by a certain date, allowing you to select the best ideas for your campaign. You won’t find the most successful influencers here, as they don’t have the time to pitch, but you will end up with very motivated influencers.

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5Content is all-encompassing. Content is everything we experience: everything we see, hear, read, feel, taste and smell. Expressed in pictures, text, sounds and interaction. In this context, we understand the term ‘medium’, or information carrier, as all your audience touchpoints. This includes packaging, store interiors and website design, as well as surprising invitations or background music. Everything contributes to the story. Creating experiences and events is also content, especially when they are very well talked-about or ‘instagrammable’, carefully styled to the point that they become a unique moment suitable for Instagram. We prefer creating relevant content together with the influencers for the audience in question: journalists, photographers, vloggers, either the tastemakers.

Make sure to create a wide variety of different types of content, from hot news to storytelling. Look for different perspectives and adjust all content to various channels, ranging from short copy to long copy. Optimize the texts for SEO purposes and add the right names and tags to photo and video material.

C R E AT E content

It’s crucial that your content stems primarily from your own channels, such as your homepage, social media platforms, company blog, your app or your newsroom. If you create content in collaboration with influencers with the goal of enhancing your own website and social media channels, it’s best if you place this content on your own site first. Google will then consider you a ‘content owner’, which increases your findability.

Check whether all your channels are set up properly, whether the content is up to date and whether the right search terms have been used, to allow you to link to the right source and to share content quickly. An important reason to get all of this in order is that relevant content and good backlinks will improve your search rank. This is also the best time to perform a baseline measurement on your channels, so you can determine how much your community has grown after the campaign. Make sure to activate all analysis tools and store all data. Your fundamentals have to be in order, if you want to achieve maximum results.

O P T I M I Z E owned media

PRODUCT PLACEMENT: GIFTING TO INFLUENCERS @ASTOLDBYCHRISTI (SEAFOLLY) AND @DAELOSTYLO (SAINT TROPEZ)

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How do you introduce a new brand or product to your future customer, and how can you fan their desire? An obvious approach in our field is attracting attention by showcasing external beauty, but you can also pique people’s interests by keeping something secret, or by adding an element of surprise, such as in support stocking manufacturer Item M6’s campaign. They asked the bouncer of legendary nightclub Berghain to shoot the campaign to launch their new Black line for men.

Real-world experiences or encounters are a source of content. And it doesn’t always have to be grand. A one-on-one meeting with a designer in his own habitat, or an exclusive workout with a trainer can be plenty, giving an influencer or journalist the opportunity to right or post about their experience.

7AT T R AC T awareness

Brand activations are a great way for a brand to generate considerable (online) attention and publicity before, during and after the activation. Besides, this breeds sympathy and trust, especially if your story is told by an influential third party: the power of earned media. This process takes time and patience, as you’ll also have to take the long lead times of magazines into account. Nevertheless, it’s a valuable source of exposure, and every new publication is another item of content for your owned media channels. If you don’t have much time, want to be assured of exposure and want to stay in control so as to ensure that the right links are used, for example, you can speed up the process by reimbursing influencers for creating and placing content, which can set off a snowball effect. And if you’re very careful in your selection process, getting the influencers involved in the concept as co-creators or long-term collaborators, rewarding them is a logical step to take.

You can also create confusion by working with contradictions or ambiguity. At the Milan design week, for instance, furniture manufacturer Lensvelt’s ‘boring’ installation, developed by the architects of Space Encounters and drawn up in monotonous office greys, was the talk of the town. Throwing crumpled balls of paper ended up being a huge attraction, and an ultimate selfie opportunity: Lensvelt returned home with a coveted Milano Design Award. The jury didn’t just praise the clever concept, but also Lensvelt’s courage in making such an anti-design statement in the context of the Milan design week. This is a great example how creativity saw a relatively minor fish such as Lensvelt beat the two other nominees: Nike and Tom Dixon. They saw ample returns on their initial investment in terms of publicity gained.

After your story is picked up by the right opinion leaders, the goal is to convert the exposure into a ‘call to action’, which will introduce the consumer to your community, see them follow your social channels, and make them purchase the product or service so as to experience it themselves. When surfing the web, people leave a lot of usable data behind, such as their age, place of residence and interests. Based on these data, you can deploy highly target ads on Google and social media, reminding potential customers of your brand when it counts. It’s also possible to adjust ads so that they suggest the best choices, reducing the number of options and greatly increasing the chance of conversion. It’s key that you don’t annoy the customer in this process. Work closely with a real-time media buying expert, so that they can deploy current, personalised and creative messages. Otherwise, you might experience a counter-productive effect.

For GUESS Marciano, we organised an exclusive influencer dinner hosted by campaign model Rose Bertram. The values sexy, femininity and independence resonated throughout the entire entourage. We subtly introduced the logo in the midst of a sumptuous décor of roses. On the one hand, gorgeous publications in Vogue, Elle, Glamour, Marie-Claire and Grazia, as well as coverage on RTL Blvd and MTV increased awareness for this fashion label.

On the other hand, we also used the influencers for two conversion objectives: 1> increasing the community (number of followers) by means of the #marciano-hashtag 2> generating traffic to the web shop by highlighting dresses worn to the event by influencers such as Anna Nooshin, Monica Geuze, Bibi Breijman and Sanne de Kramer as must haves for the holiday season. This campaign saw complete integration of owned, paid, earned and shared media.

8CO N V E R S I O N target ing

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Since the emergency of social media, this phase can be used to generate considerably more exposure, especially if your product or service exceeds expectations. Keep in close touch with your brand fans and ambassadors, making them feel part of the community. Respond to their online reactions, and make sure that there’s a place for them to share their positive experiences, reviews and ratings.

9 D E L I G H T advocacy

Encourage this process by introducing a feedback loop, and ensure that sharing content is easy. Deal with complaints quickly and generously, as this can be another source of appreciation. Thank and reward your loyal customers for their involvement by informing them about new products before anyone else or involving them in a process of co-creation. You might invite them to previews or special workouts with their sporting hero (take the adidas – gym example) and favourite influencer. Never forget that today’s customers are easily seduced by other brands. Keep surprising, keep innovating.

After the activation, there comes a time for evaluation: analysing all clicks, likes, impressions, shares and comments. Which influencers and what type of content garnered the most/best backlinks, who or what generated engagement? How valuable was the campaign in terms of publicity, brand awareness and sales? Were the objectives met? What was the ROI?

10VA LUAT E ce l ibrate

R E E B O K L E S M I L L S L I V E A M S T E R D A M P R E - E V E N T : T H E G Y M I S E V E R Y W H E R E

Keep in mind that the effects of online activities on the awareness process are less quantifiable, but that they make a hugely valuable contribution to the campaign as a whole and to creating valuable content. Again, you should ask yourself which lessons can be drawn from the campaign process. How valuable are they for the organisation? Running a campaign can have excellent effects on team building, relationship building and generating positive energy. Don’t let go of the adrenaline, celebrate your successes together!

C R E AT I V E CO N T E N T + P R AG E N C Y

For over twenty years, creative content and PR agency UNFOLD / press only has been operating in the fields of fashion, design, sport, interior, beauty, art and hospitality. Our Unfold360 method gives brands insights, direction and a clear strategy in a world of transmedia campaigns.

Our customer portfolio includes global and local brands, as well as start-ups and upcoming designers, such as adidas, Guess, Marciano Los Angeles, Seafolly, Reebok, Farrow & Ball, Item M6, China Airlines, Lensvelt, unu motors, Jones Brothers Coffee, Hotel the Exchange and The School of Life.

U N F O L D / p r e s s o n l y

Wondering how UNFOLD / press only would set up a

campaign for your brand? Call or mail Sylvia Avontuur for a

free introductory meeting.

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