Master the stack: Amplifying brands in the digital din

The advertising space has never been more cluttered or competitive. Every day, the average consumer is exposed to about 4,000 commercial messages, and more.

Consumers have become digital-first, platform-hopping, intelligent individuals, who are more discerning about the content they consume. So, how do companies get consumers to hear what their brands are saying?

Kelvin Storie, Primedia’s broadcasting chief intelligence officer, shares his thoughts. 

For starters, it’s about finding the most effective moments in the ever-evolving attention economy

When attention is a currency, and agility is a must, advertisers need to harness the art of content stacking to create a message that will land with the audience. Companies need to learn to pick audience moments, and then use those moments to stack their reach. 

In defining audience moments, it’s like any conversation; brands have to know who they’re talking to, when they’re going to say it, what they’re going to say, and how they’re going to say it.

Because what might once have worked as one radio ad now has the potential to become a holistic campaign with an audience of 7-million people — when it’s stacked within a multiplatform ecosystem that embraces all mediums and discerns the most favourable trigger moments.

To find these moments to deliver content, we start by gleaning the mountains of data at our fingertips. In this “disinformation/ information,” age, advertisers should ask how they can take the data and distil it into simple pieces of brilliance.

Learning about the people you’re talking to

I like to call my team the “Swat Team”, because of the way they succinctly unpack the nature of the audience and interpret the data to map out a “a day in the life” of an individual. From the moment someone wakes up, what engagement are they looking for? What information do they need? Which devices are they using, and when? This enables brands to be part of the audience’s needs and their distinct content journeys across multiple touch points. 

If the audience is more discerning, then it’s the team’s job to get to know them better. It’s not enough to say, for instance, the company wants to target the search engine marketing to the 25-34 age group. 

Everyone has a different usage pattern and nuances to their behaviours. People see the world differently, and different mediums hold a different relevance for each person.

We’re in the age of “consumer-first”, and this is the kind of knowledge that informs not only the way companies stack their content, but also powers their stackable reach.

Distinguishing the human truth from mere observation

In all the years I’ve been in this industry, it’s been proven that simplicity works best. 

We must understand our audience and their nuances and behaviours. We must understand our brand and know whether it’s time to create awareness, educate or drive leads. But whatever it is, the message needs to be simple — because that’s when it leaves room for the creativity to be executed brilliantly.

This is where the Swat Team comes in again: they understand the specific brand’s challenges, and then find the human truth. If they’re working with an automobile brand, what is the human truth of hopping into the car and driving that model? Is it safety, functionality or durability? Or is it what it says about your personality?

If it’s a financial brand, instead of only looking at the product, the team delve deeper into the “finance moments” in someone’s life. Maybe you’ve got a new job or a house, starting a family or retiring. These are the triggers that drive human behaviour and needs — these are the human truths. 

In the right media stack, content remains king

Once the team has that human truth, impactful moments to intercept throughout the day, audience understanding, and the creative solutions, we start activating it through our ecosystem.

This is where the rubber hits the road; when we carve up the creative content and stack it to match the message to a time of day, mindset, device and platform.

In the audio business, this might look like starting with a recorded 30-second spot, or a live endorsement from a presenter. But what else can be done in the audio space to drive incremental content moments? Is the audience live streaming? Can you tap into YouTube or a podcast element? What kind of social media element is needed? And should it be organic, paid for, or both?

To paint “a day in the life”, let’s say someone wakes up to their favourite presenter talking about an amazing upcoming event. On their way to work in the car, they hear the sponsored promos and later see the desktop banners while booking tickets. They could plug into specifically tailored podcasts, attend the event, have a great night, then share it on social media. 

This way a brand becomes an experience and the content stays fresh. And what once could have reached 1.5-million people with a radio campaign can now potentially speak to an audience of 7-million through a multiplatform ecosystem that includes terrestrial radio like 947, live streaming, audio on demand, social media, newsletters and displays. This is the ultimate stackable reach.

Crunching the numbers

Budget. It always comes back to budget. An audience of 7-million people targeted with a distilled message in the right time and on the right combination of platforms could sound like more than stacking content and reach; it could easily sound like the budget’s stacking up too.

One ecosystem with multiple touch points often proves to be the most cost efficient, but it also goes further than that. When content pieces are adapted and activated on their respective platforms, the messaging is kept fresher for longer. And when we cast our nets into a wider ecosystem, we increase demographics and frequency. It’s the “whole table” analogy.

The ‘whole table’ analogy

The goal is to get the entire family’s attention. With everyone using different devices and platforms at different times, one table leg could be terrestrial radio, another could be YouTube and podcasts, another social media, and the other live events and activations.

When brands tap into that intelligently, they reach the tabletop; we become seen, heard, and tap into the complete family.

That is stackable reach. That is how we maximise content. And that is how we make our voices heard among the background noise of 4,000 competing messages.

This article was sponsored by Primedia Broadcasting, a proud sponsor of the MOST Awards, which celebrate the media industry’s leading players in services delivery, knowledge and innovation. 

The 2023 MOST Awards took place on September 14, click here for more information.