Best Free Online Marketing Guide For Online Entrepreneur

The Drum looks at how UnionBank, the bank brand that has the vision of becoming one of the top three universal banks in the Philippines, is creating its marketing strategy differently - by being humorous, brave and non-traditional.    Dante’s ‘Divine Comedy’, one of the most well-known creative narratives to have come out of Italian literature, makes a comeback of sorts. This time in a reworked interpretation to tell the story of a bank brand in the Philippines establishing its credentials as a new age banker. That is UnionBank's story in a nutshell. Building a bank brand is a tough task amid all the loops of regulations. Conventional wisdom and traditional marketing say that there are few ways in which a bank brand can stand out among the plethora of similar brands. So how is the bank brand that has ambitions of being a formidable new-age bank in the Philippines, relooking at the way banking is done? Creating a differentiated bank playbook “One of...

Is it a pizza ad or is it a fashion ad? You might not recognize Papa John in its latest campaign. Leaning on satirical humour and references to gen Z street collaboration culture, the ad enters the pizza joint into the streetwear sector, all while promoting its new Cheddar pizza range. “Whenever we launch a fresh range of pizzas internationally we look for interesting cultural cues that can resonate with consumers across a wide range of markets,” explains Jo Blundell, vice-president, international marketing at Papa John’s, on the brand’s marked departure from previous work.  “Insight told us that streetwear, fashion and music have strong universal appeal to our core gen Z audience,” she explains. This led them to play around with the idea of ‘cheddar’ being the hottest, freshest new ingredient dropping this summer.  “It’s a tongue-in-cheek spoof on a fashion drop, which we think will really appeal to our customers,” Blundell adds.  The push included the first wor...

Vaccinations and a return to ‘a new normal’ might be happening at different speeds across the world but Humphrey Ho, managing director of Hylink Digital believes brands need to be ready for this change. In lieu of China initiating steps to create a vaccine passport while the rest of the world continues vaccinating, the rollout of the vaccine passport will have a tremendous impact on international travel resuming to some level of normalcy, because of this outbound Chinese travel and global travel will look much different in the latter half of 2021. Destination marketing organizations (DMOs) and National Tourism Organizations (NTOs) serving as a gateway to destinations will look different as well, as both tourism and travel brands having to adjust to the new ecosystem of a partially vaccinated world. As someone who works within the travel and tourism industry, a few things will become apparent as the rest of the year plays out. A vaccine passport given in countries is called an interna...

John Lewis has hired eBay’s Rosie Hanley as head of brand and marketing, the latest recruit to fill a gap left by a series of exits from its marketing team. Hanley has been with eBay for seven years, most recently serving as its head of brand marketing where she has led campaigns such as its ’More Ways to Win’ work from McCann, as well as a content partnership with News UK. Prior to eBay she was at Tesco data division Dunnhumby as product manager. She will join John Lewis in July, taking on responsibility for the retailer’s brand strategy. Her focus will likely be on talking up its digital offering, with John Lewis planning to spend £50m on overhauling and futureproofing the business in wake of Covid-19. The company logged losses of £517m in 2020 and has opted to permanently close a number of its physical stores as online sales rocketed 73%. Hanely’s appointment comes alongside the hire of Dunhelm’s digital director Steve Masterton, who will head up online trade, and Stephen Spe...

You’d think the virtual realms of Animal Crossing and League of Legends would be the last place to find the likes of Louis Vuitton, Valentino or Marc Jacobs. Yet there they are. Fashion houses traditionally catering to an elite minority are now donning their collections on millions of in-game avatars. Seemingly an odd pairing, high fashion’s migration to gaming is in fact a well-played move that will open them up to a whole new world of shoppers. Roblox is an online gaming platform where users can immerse themselves in any of the 18 million virtual worlds created by independent developers. In the first quarter of 2021, it had 42.1 million daily active users spanning 180 countries. Contrary to popular misconceptions, 44% of its base was female. And in Roblox’s many worlds, players can buy an array of items from an Avatar Shop using the game’s currency – a Robux. It’s in this space that Italian fashion house Gucci decided to mark its 100-year anniversary. It created the Gucci Garden, ...

Another week, another wave of account news, reviews, agency launches, rebrands and acquisitions. Check out our global round-up to see what business is on the move (and why it matters) below, then head over to our  Business on the Move  hub to read about more market maneuvers. Over the past seven days, we’ve seen fresh appointments, reviews and acquisitions at Oddbox, Shutterfly and NHS Resolution.  Looking for a new agency partner of your own? Check out  The Drum Recommends , where you can search for trusted partners and access expert industry knowledge that could help you make your selection.  If you’ve got a business on the move story for us, send it to  businessonthemove@thedrum.com  for consideration before next Thursday. Account wins Global consumer electronics manufacturer, LG Electronics (LG), has announced the renewal of its multi-million pound partnership with The FA. The two-year deal will span across Wembley Stadium...

The Drum’s 3 Actionable Insights series asks top industry leaders to share their thoughts about what actions our readers should take immediately. This week, we chat with Rob Schwartz, chair of the newly-formed TBWA New York Group and former chief executive of TBWA\Chiat\Day. He spells out the value of change, the power of effective storytelling and the magic that can come from a simple coffee date.  1. If you want to succeed, adapt If you want to survive and thrive in our business, you have to learn how to reinvent yourself. And you have to transform. You have to learn new skills. You have to learn new disciplines.  In going from chief creative officer to chief executive officer, the first new discipline I had to learn was the language of finance. As a chief creative officer, you spend very little time looking at the numbers. As a chief executive officer, you spend a whole lot of time on profit and loss. One of the first things I did when I transitioned to chief execut...

What does it even mean to be a ‘gamer’ when there’s supposedly 2 billion of them worldwide? As part of our deep dive into all things gaming , Luke Aldridge of Dentsu’s gaming division DGame argues that the industry needs to reach some kind of consensus on the term. He even offers up his own definition. As the marketing world gets to grips with the inexorable rise of gaming as a new and exciting marketing channel, we are slowly and quietly attempting to move away from a polarizing word (‘gamer’) that is a compliment to some, an insult to others and somewhat confusing to many. When people describe someone or themselves as a gamer, they mean someone who plays video games. This is a fair starting point, but lacks context. How often do they play? Is gaming their main passion or hobby? Have they built their own gaming PC? There are many factors that make it difficult to pin down exactly what being a gamer means in 2021.   Back in the ’90s and 2000s, the term wasn’t as problematic. It ...

The Drum’s social media executive Amy Houston explores what brands can learn from gaming’s best community managers as part of our deep dive into gaming . Gaming, at its core, is built on community and culture, and as social media networks continue to grow, this combination undoubtedly creates a winning team. In any community, the underlying feeling is a sense of belonging and acceptance, and the gaming world is no different. Growing up in the 90s, my favorite game was The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time on the N64, and still to this day when I meet fellow gamers from that era, I feel a sense of commonality and excitedly want to talk to them about it. This is the type of honest engagement and emotion that brands want to evoke when marketing their products, so taking inspiration from a community that thrives on it seems logical. This is where gaming community managers enter the conversation, and they didn’t come to play. Community managers take care of the most im...

In a rollout that could have a far-reaching impact on marketing in India, The Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) unveiled a comprehensive set of guidelines around influencer advertising on digital media. The new set of guidelines hope to bring much-needed transparency to the increasingly prolific influencer marketing. With the increased power that the influencers are exhibiting in impacting consumer behaviour in many categories, the consumers need to be informed of what content has been paid for by brands. Consumers today not only buy products and services endorsed by influencers, but they also buy into the brand stories they create. Never has it been more critical to bring out the difference between content and promotional ads, as it has become now with digital media becoming ubiquitous and omnipresent. Subhash Kamath, chairman of ASCI says: “After extensive discussions, we are now launching the final guidelines that balance the interests of consumers, influencers, age...

In 2021, Twitter users were commonly greeted with shiny new features threatening to change how they share what’s happening in the world. This represented a step-change for the social media company that once upon a time labored over making even the smallest change to its product, be it doubling the character limit or adapting the chronological feed. David Wilding, head of planning at Twitter, talks The Drum through a recent change of heart and surge of innovation. Twitter’s new features have been coming in thick and fast. After rebuilding its ad product in February, it started asking people to consider whether they did actually want to send harmful or offensive tweets. Conversation settings for ads soon came in, as did the opportunity to ‘Amplify’ in-demand video from some 300+ media partners with pre-roll. Meanwhile, acquisitions of media subscription service Scroll , and newsletter platform Revue (watch your back Substack) set the tone ahead of the launch of Tip Jar (like a tweet, ...

Over the past three years working on Admix, I’ve witnessed an interesting transition. Back in 2018/2019, gaming wasn’t a mainstream topic in brand and agency land. Some were excited about particular bespoke activations, but very few believed in gaming as a new media channel. This has changed over the past 18 months, though, as gaming has exploded as part of the culture, accelerated by the pandemic. With close to two billion daily players the attention and engagement given to gaming is second to none, not even social media. Gaming has reached unimaginable levels of scale and engagement. So matter what products they’re selling, brands are now thinking of gaming as the next vehicle to reach their audience. Therefore the conversation with advertisers has moved from ‘why should I invest in gaming’ to ‘how do i activate gaming as part of my strategy’. While the first question now answers itself, the second is on every agencies’ minds. In 2021 nearly every major agency group has launched a ...

I hope you are enjoying the first week of our  Gaming deep dive . I'll talk you through some our features and op-eds. We're one week into our  Gaming deep dive , which gives us lots to talk about in this week's newsletter. So put down your controller, turn off the Candy Crush and let's explore why the marketing industry needs to wake up to what is now the world's biggest entertainment medium. The Foundations of the Metaverse Gaming's just a stepping stone in the formation of the  metaverse . What's that you say? We knew you'd ask that. Chris Sutcliffe explored this new frontier, a brain-bending mix of gaming and social in the virtual, all the more tangible now we can hang NFT artwork we bought with digital currency in our pixel-homes. Your scepticism is founded, but just imagine what happens to the world of marketing when the digital world offers almost infinite reach and creative possibilities. This is what it's all leading to.  Learn more here....

Marek Wrobel vigilantly tracks emerging media tech for Havas Media Group. And once a month for The Drum, in the Media Innovation Round-Up, he explores ‘new and shiny’ tech and its role in the ever-evolving marketing mix. This month, it’s gaming that’s getting him excited. Game over for gaming stereotypes Female gamers are more likely to be found playing puzzle-based games on mobile. They represent around half of gamers in the ten largest gaming markets.  But sadly, many marketers still believe in a very outdated stereotype of a typical gamer. However, after a quick look at data from Ofcom, we can see that UK gamers are a diverse bunch, no matter how you look at this audience. Furthermore, there is no one type of gamer. Using a magical rule of three, we have power gamers, mainstream games and casual gamers. Not only do they play differently – whether it comes to time spent playing, platforms or type of games – but, more importantly, gaming plays a different role in th...

Industry bodies, including Nabs, the IPA and the Advertising Association, are calling on advertising and marketing leaders to address the rising tide of poor mental health among workers by implementing the newly launched Brilliant Creative Minds Code of Conduct.  The aim of the new code is to protect creativity by eradicating practices in procurement, commissioning and agency culture that compromise mental health and wellbeing, and comes with guidance on how the principles can be applied to real workplaces. Stephanie Drakes, managing partner of Social & Local – the agency that initiated, funds and manages Brilliant Creative Minds – says: “Poor mental wellbeing is the enemy of creativity in our industry and our goal is to eradicate practices that cause unnecessary and dangerous levels of stress in agency environments. “We’d like the industry to sign up to it and commit to embedding its principles within organizations to create an industry where negative workplace stress is re...

Why do we make content? The session began by asking attendees why they made content, and we were pleased to see answers corresponding to every stage of the marketing funnel. Engagement and storytelling ranked the highest, while other popular answers included education, selling products/generating sales, brand awareness, creating a dialogue, enhancing brand messaging, boosting SEO, making people feel like they belong, entertaining and creating a buzz. Then Niki asked whether some common content faux pas had occurred within our attendees’ companies, with 66% of people saying that they had been asked to upload a video taken on an iPhone to their brand’s social media account, and 54% saying that they had been rushed to publish content immediately for an imminent event. Each situation points to confusion about creating appropriate content for different stages of the funnel.   Loading... Content’s place in the user journey The classic content marketing funnel contains thre...