rockorange, Author at RockOrange

22 Jul 2016

Sticky Post By rockorange Posted in Blog Permalink

The ABT’s (Always Be Thinking) of Great Agency Marketing

Sticky Post By rockorange On July 22, 2016

The marketing landscape is evolving rapidly. The rise of the always-on, constantly connected consumer means that campaigns need to evolve and be dynamic. They must live where the consumer lives (which is mostly digital) and speak to an audience whose loyalty is built through a more personal social engagement versus the hard-sell mentality of more traditional advertising.

That’s why brand marketers are looking to step up their collaboration with agency partners. The complexity of what is required to design, execute, and report on multi-touch, multi-disciplinary marketing campaigns requires more resources and knowledge than ever before and those skill sets, and time to execute, often live outside of in-house capabilities.

As agency partners we have a commitment to our clients to help them not just stay on trend, but to keep one-step ahead of those trends, and to deliver campaigns that will help build brand loyalty with our clients’ target audiences. That’s why we need to know our ABT’s. We need to Always Be Thinking for and on behalf of our clients to ensure that we continue to demonstrate the value of the agency-client relationship.

Here are some ways we think you can do that.

Think in Real-Time

Recent years have seen the growth of real-time and responsive marketing as brands look to create shareable, relevant content that places the brand at the center of unfolding social conversations and viral trends. To do this successfully requires marketers to think on their feet. Response time is key and the benchmark was set by Oreo during Super Bowl XLVII when the lights in the stadium went out for 34 minutes, enough time for the brand to ideate and post it’s now infamous ‘dunk in the dark’ tweet.

Another more recent example of the value of this responsive marketing approach is how brands have quickly capitalized on the Pokémon GO craze. With more than 7.5 million downloads of the game in the U.S. in the first week alone and with users spending more time playing the game than on popular social apps including Snapchat, Twitter and even Facebook, creative (and quickly executed) campaigns like the ones in this Street Fight article from brands including Applebee’s and Virgin Mobile are driving huge amounts of foot traffic and conversions.

Leverage New Technologies

With a whopping 3,874 marketing technologies represented on a single slide, Scott Brinker’s Marketing Technology Landscape chart is the best visual representation of just how complex today’s marketing landscape has become.

As agency partners it’s our job to help our clients navigate these technologies, understanding what’s going to work best (and by work best I mean provide the best ROI) for the campaigns being designed.

It’s also our job as agencies to keep abreast of new technologies and leverage them to our client’s advantage. And I’m including social media in the bracket of technology. While Snapchat may be the social channel de jour (here are four great Snapchat marketing case studies from The Content Strategist,) there’s always a new social app or feature round the corner – you’ve just got to keep thinking outside the box with the application.

For example, before the official release of Facebook Live, RockOrange incepted and managed the first-ever Facebook Fashion show to promote the launch of our client Macy’s Hispanic-backed clothing line – Thalia Sodi for Macy’s. The show aired live on Thalia’s Facebook page to millions of fans around the world and RockOrange reached across social media platforms and promoted the hashtag #thaliaformacys, which became a top trending term during the event and in the hours that followed.

Beyond the immediate success of the show, our Facebook Live Streaming was a trendsetter for numerous other brands that would execute similar campaigns in the following year. The trend has been followed most recently by Versace, Kate Spade, IDENTITIES, organizers of London and New York Fashion Weeks, and, ahem, Crochet Empire’s jock strap fashion show, just to name a few.

Share Your Thoughts

Last but not least, don’t forget to share your thoughts and ideas with the client. Because if a great idea happens in an agency but no one tells the client did it really happen?

Nine times out of 10 the client may reject your idea for reasons including lack of budget or that they don’t feel it’s a good fit, but that one time they say, “go for it” gives the agency the chance to really prove added value and potentially get a new piece of business.

21 Jul 2016

Sticky Post By rockorange Posted in Blog Permalink

What Makes a Great Speech?

Sticky Post By rockorange On July 21, 2016

In the midst of a controversial Republican convention where speeches, good and bad, are not just being used to sway people’s divided vote but, in our digital age, providing the social universe with a slew of memes, gifs and trending topics on a scale never seen before in a U.S. political race, we took a step back this week to consider the power of great speeches and what makes them just so.

Click through to watch our video where we ask our RockStars – What Makes a Great Speech?

19 Jul 2016

Sticky Post By rockorange Posted in Blog Permalink

RockOrange welcomes its newest RockStar, Frances Ramos, to its award-winning agency

Sticky Post By rockorange On July 19, 2016

Frances is a seasoned publicist who specializes in media and influencer relationships that organically grow brand footprints in U.S. Hispanic and Latin America markets.

She comes to RO after five years of agency experience. She has worked with a slew of Fortune 500 clients, including McDonalds, Target and AT&T. While engaged with McDonalds, Frances helped create public relations and social media campaigns for the company’s education, food and music platforms.

Most recently, Frances helped MasterCard promote financial technology and electronic payments as a preferred method of payment in Latin America. Frances’ deep understanding of how to connect a brand’s values with Hispanic consumers makes her a valuable new member of the RO team.

A graduate of the University of Central Florida, Frances is an avid writer and part-time fashion blogger. Her blog, Mystylesnapshot.com, is a series of dispatches from Frances’ inner “fashionista,” where she details and documents trends in the fashion world.

“I want to bring some spunk to RO,” she said. “Everyone at RockOrange is really talented and motivated and I’m looking forward to growing with the team.”

14 Jul 2016

Sticky Post By rockorange Posted in Blog Permalink

How Can Brands Capitalize on Pokémon GO?

Sticky Post By rockorange On July 14, 2016

The Pokémon GO craze is real. So far around 7.5 million people in the U.S. have downloaded the app and players are already spending more time with the game than they are on Snapchat, Twitter and even Facebook.

But what’s the opportunity for brand marketers and how can they capitalize on those highly engaged users who just gotta catch ‘em all? We asked our RockStars to share their thoughts.

Oh, and if you know where a Pikachu is let us know!

07 Jul 2016

Sticky Post By rockorange Posted in Blog Permalink

Are Influencers Influencing?

Sticky Post By rockorange On July 7, 2016

Influencer marketing is one of the fastest growing marketing channels. In fact 84% of marketers surveyed by eMarketer said they were planning to launch an influencer campaign within 12 months. And, in general, that investment is paying off. Data from RhythmOne found that average earned media value from US influencer marketing programs was 1.4 times as high in H1 2015 as the average in all of 2014, at $9.60 for every $1 spent, vs. $6.85 the previous year.

However, influencers with the most followers don’t necessarily get the most likes which is why identifying the right influencers is cited as the biggest challenge when rolling out an influencer engagement strategy.

So with that in mind we asked our RockStars – Are Influencers Influencing?

05 Jul 2016

Sticky Post By rockorange Posted in Featured, Press Release Permalink

A Creative Force Joins The Fold

Sticky Post By rockorange On July 5, 2016

Innovation drives Sam Rodriguez, RockOrange’s new head of creative. The latest RockStar, Sam is a visual artist who has crafted nationally recognized campaigns through design, still images and motion pictures. A Miami native and a graduate of Miami’s Institute of Art and Design, Sam’s mastery of visual storytelling will help expand RockOrange as a creative force in marketing and communication. He joins us after more than a decade as creative director at kabookaboo in Coral Gables.

A self-taught photographer, composer and animator, Sam works rigorously to refine his craft every day. His meticulous attention to detail and desire to grow helped him turn his love for photography into marketing campaigns for large firms in the wine and sprits industry.

As a nationally recognized designer, Sam’s work has been the cornerstone of iconic projects here in South Florida and around the world. Throughout his career, he says he’s found it essential to understand every aspect of a project’s lifecycle – from idea, to creation, to execution.

Sam’s hire was noted in several South Florida media outlets, including the Miami Herald, Sun-Sentinel, AgencySpy and South Florida City Biz List.

As the leader of RockOrange’s burgeoning creative team, Sam will guide a group of talented, promising young designers as they continue to deliver the kind of beautiful, game-changing work that our clients have come to expect.

Along with his talent, Sam also brings a deep understanding of the agency world from both the employee and leadership points of view. Early in his career, he ran a successful creative business before ultimately selling. Fresh out of high school, Sam considered becoming an architect until he realized he could turn his love of art into a business unto itself. He found his passion in creating marketing campaigns that, as he describes it, “affect people’s psyches.” He loves to call out the differences in the brands he represents from the countless other choices consumers have.

And most of all, he’s not afraid of adversity—an important trait for a creative director.

“Challenges help you get out of your comfort zone and think differently about a particular project,” he said. “It can bring out the best and the worst in people. I always strive to bring out the best.”

30 Jun 2016

Sticky Post By rockorange Posted in Blog Permalink

You, Too, Can Own Your Platform. (And You Should!)

Sticky Post By rockorange On June 30, 2016

By David Naranjo
Indulge me for a moment in some “back in my day” reminiscing.

When I was coming up in the world of media and communications, leading a team of PR pros at Sony Music and later the Estefan Enterprises, we worked hard to gin up positive coverage for our artists. More coverage equaled more units sold, so these earned opportunities were golden. Those media gatekeepers could make or break a new album, a career, or a label itself.

Needless to say, things are different today. For musicians and entertainers the revolution kicked into high gear back in the mid-00s with the rise of MySpace as a proto-platform to own the messaging and imagery associated with your brand. With a little bit of HTML and a lot of elbow grease, you could bring your art to millions, where you once needed a label, a marketing team, and an interested media. The MySpace page became the new street team (not coincidentally around this time Sony and other record companies decommissioned their own networks of real street teams).

And we know the story from there: MySpace begat Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Instagram, and for artists more targeted apps like Soundcloud and Bandcamp integrated nicely. Cobbling together these pages with a centralized website and blog makes an effective, elegant platform for artists. Tend that social media garden well enough, and it becomes hard to remember why we ever needed media outlets so badly.

Of course, we love our friends in the press, and they always make our jobs easier. But the best brands today are leaving nothing to chance. Like those bands inhabiting the early MySpace, smart brands are creating their own platform for message management.

Our client Zappos recently engaged us for a back-to-school campaign. The deals were great, as was the apparel. And the brand is noteworthy in its own right—definitely not an unknown, frequently covered by mainstream press and trades. But this was a back-to-school campaign, straining its neck to be noticed in a sea of other back-to-school campaigns. Earned media coverage was incredibly unlikely without some kind of elevation.

We used the brand’s social media platforms to link out to guest bloggers whose influence made the campaign into actual coverage-worthy news. Now, it wasn’t just half off your second pair of sneakers. It was mommy bloggers bragging about the pairs of shoes they had gotten for their kids. Engaging with the influencers, we were able to rise above the commercial noise.

Sometimes the need to control the message speaks to the brand’s very existence. Consider a quick service restaurant client of ours who was facing a very difficult investigation in Europe into their locations. The sensational story gave short shrift to the facts and was bombastic in all the ways you hope to avoid for your clients.

So, rather than engage with the journalists in their forum, we marshaled the strength of the brand’s social media to publish facts about the situation, taking a crisis and turning it into a teaching moment. This kind of education would have been impossible on any platform other than the client’s own. The strategy was effective: the news magazine shelved a planned sequel to their report after our own messaging essentially defanged their reporting.

Here is a healthy exercise for anyone leading a brand’s communication efforts: imagine you have something incredibly important to say, something everyone needs to hear, and you have to do it right this moment. How would you do it? Would you be reliant on someone else to do it for you? Is your social media presence primed and active? Have you tended that garden? What shape are your lists in? When’s the last time someone organically signed up for your newsletter? Do you have a newsletter, if only to collect email addresses?

Media companies spend millions to refine their platforms. So should you. No one can tell your story better than you.

29 Jun 2016

Sticky Post By rockorange Posted in Blog Permalink

RockOrange Part of Team Recognized for Helping Broker Peace Between World’s Biggest Burger Chains

Sticky Post By rockorange On June 29, 2016

Last Tuesday, the prestigious Cannes Lion Awards, considered by many the gold standard for industry recognition in advertising, twice recognized the McWhopper campaign, ideated by Young & Rubicam New Zealand.

As part of RockOrange’s ongoing relationship with Burger King, our team was recognized for its work to deliver a robust issue management process just in case the call for peace didn’t go according to plan. RockOrange also worked closely with Burger King’s other agencies on marketing ideation and materials review.

The Grand Prix awards, won in the media and print & publishing categories, went for the revolutionary campaign that saw Burger King bring competitors to the table to put aside their petty differences and raise money for the cause of peace.

“I think our Grand Prix reflects so much of what it good about the industry,” said jury president Nick Waters, CEO of Dentsu Aegis Network Asia Pacific, in an interview with AdWeek. “This is a case of a big brand. And big brands sometimes find it difficult to move quickly. This is a case of a big brand taking on an even bigger competitor, moving quickly, being bold, acting within the brand, acting cheekily, reacting to events, bringing consumers in.”

The campaign began with an open letter to McDonalds CEO Steve Easterbrook, offering an olive branch in the form of a shared burger in honor of Peace Day. The burger would use ingredients from both McDonalds Quarter Pounder sandwich and Burger King’s Whopper sandwich. The chains would meet in Atlanta—a midway point between the brands’ respective headquarters in Illinois and Miami—and open a McWhopper pop-up, with proceeds going to Peace One Day, a non-profit organization dedicating to spreading peace.

And while archrival McDonalds refused Burger King’s overtures, other fast casual and quick service restaurant brands like Denny’s, Wayback Burger, Krystal and Giraffas all opted into the campaign, successfully creating the Peace Whopper.

This is far from the first recognition for RockOrange, which earned a nod for PR News’ ‘Facebook PR Campaign of the Year’ in April, and was named ‘New Agency of the Year’ by the Bulldog Reporter and The Holmes Report in 2014.

The Cannes Lion Grand Prix awards were accepted by Young & Rubicam New Zealand, who conceived the campaign. Agency partners Code & Theory, Alison Brod Public Relations and The David Agency were recognized as well.

29 Jun 2016

Sticky Post By rockorange Posted in Blog Permalink

Smart PR or Dumb Celeb? #conspiracytheory

Sticky Post By rockorange On June 29, 2016

Celebrity influencer posts are going viral for all the wrong reasons. Celebs including Scott Disick and Naomi Campbell appear to have “accidentally” copy and pasted a little more than they should when promoting branded goods – namely the notes on ‘how-to-post’ as provided by the brand PR.

However, those “mistakes” are making the posts go viral and amplifying brand recognition even further which makes us wonder (#conspiracytheory) if this trend is ‘Smart PR or Dumb Celeb?’

24 Jun 2016

Sticky Post By rockorange Posted in Blog Permalink

Summer’s Here. Time to Lighten Up Your Marketing.

Sticky Post By rockorange On June 24, 2016

Summer – a time to strip down, lighten up and have some fun. With the longer days and rising temperatures comes a sense of renewed energy and a tendency towards the whimsical. Heavy soups and stews are replaced by summer salads and outside BBQs, weekends spent binging on TV shows are replaced with trips to the beach; hemlines are on the rise and the possibility of a summer romance is around every corner.

A lesser-known summer side effect is that when the sun is out, people spend more. Research suggests that the sun makes us feel better and, in turn, according to these findings, shop more.

For marketers looking to capitalize on this sunshine-induced positive consumer attitude, lightening up their campaigns to match the season is a must. Here are three ways to do it.

Make it fun

Summer is all about having fun, and that should translate into summer-focused marketing campaigns. From using elements of gamification to spark competitiveness, to boosting engagement with loyalty programs, to viral marketing, making campaigns fun means making them engaging. That’s why Snapchat has overtaken Twitter in daily users. The fun factor is significantly higher with its array of filters and, like a summer romance, is non-committal by the nature of its time-limited posts.

A picture’s worth a thousand words

As Apple introduces its new emojification feature, where users will be offered up emoji’s as alternate suggestions to typed words, and Twitter announces the ability to target ads based on emoji’s, the power of the written word is diminishing. That means marketers need to be more visual than ever with their messages and campaigns. And if a picture is worth a thousand words, a video is worth 10-times as much. According to a report published by Forrester, including video in an email leads to a whopping 200-300 percent increase in click-through rate. And 45.4 percent of users viewed at least one video online over the course of a month according to ComScore.

Get mobile

This is the time of year marketers should be directing even more of their attention to mobile. As consumers head outside and away from home, marketers must reach them in the mobile-moment wherever they are – and mobile is the best channel to do that. But the key to mobile marketing is relevance – getting the right content to the right customer at the right time will drive action. The easiest way to be relevant is through location. Understanding where a customer is in relation to your product is the best way to understand where and when to target consumers. Remember, all that sunshine makes them want to spend more – so it’s just a matter of ensuring your brand is top of mind when they make that in-the-moment purchase.

This summer, make sure your marketing matches your customers’ season. Make it fun, make it visual and make it mobile. Just remember, summer may only be one season, but the memories last a lifetime. Make sure your marketing is memorable to match.

All posts by rockorange

What Makes a Great Speech?

A Creative Force Joins The Fold

RockOrange Part of Team Recognized for Helping Broker Peace Between World’s Biggest Burger Chains

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