BOSTON, MA – July 22nd, 2016— AMP Agency, a full service integrated marketing agency specializing in digital and experiential activations, announced its final award acceptance for the Q1 2016 award show season. AMP Agency is honored to have been nominated for 1 MITX award for their work with the LifeStyles/ SKYN brand, and to have won 1 MITX award for their work with L’Oreal’s Garnier brand, as well as 2 Reggie awards, 1 EX award and 1 PRO award. In partnership with Lifestyles/ SKYN, AMP developed a 360 degree campaign designed specifically for Millennial men through a mix of digital, events, and partnerships. To get into the hearts and minds of the Millennial audience, AMP developed a custom, nationally distributed survey that served as the backbone for the campaign, driving everything from the places the brand showed up in, to the content served, to the time of day the audience saw the message, to the ambassadors who embraced the brand. Through gaining a deep understanding of the audience, SKYN and AMP were able to create a conversation with Millennials in a way that set the brand apart from the competition. Awards won for this work included: MITX Awards- Finalist- Best Marketing to Millennials Campaign “On behalf of the entire team at Ansell Healthcare, we are honored to be recognized by MITX for our work connecting with Millennials across both the SKYN and LifeStyles brands,” said Matt Jacobs, GM, AMP Agency. “We’re committed to engaging young people in conversations around sex and sexual wellness – and sometimes that just happens to take the form of a safe sexting emoji keyboard.” Together, Garnier and AMP executed a campaign with traditional experiential marketing at its core, targeting 18-24 year old Millennials. The campaign, #GarnierMusic, made a giant splash at the nation’s hottest music festivals, and focused on providing millennials with one of the things they want most during festival season: style. To do this, AMP created the Garnier Salon, a custom-built hair washing and styling activation that had influencer integrations and on-site sampling at five of the nation’s top music festivals. The #GarnierMusic program was named the most popular destination at all festivals it visited, and a “not to miss” by numerous notable blogs and publications, generating over 121M impression over the course of the summer. Awards won for the #GarnierMusic campaign included: Reggie Silver Award – Best Age-Specific Campaign Reggie Silver Award – Best Experiential Marketing Campaign (Budget Over $1M EX Gold Award – Best Sampling Campaign MITX Award – Winner, Best Marketing to Millennials Campaign PRO Award – Winner, Best Sampling Campaign “These announcements are especially humbling, as these awards are extremely competitive and this year’s competition was fierce,” says AMP’s CEO, Gary Colen. To learn more about the work, click here. ABOUT AMP AGENCY AMP Agency is a full service marketing agency with offices in Boston, Los Angeles and New York. At AMP, we believe in better ideas created a different way. It’s in our heritage. Through the years, we’ve morphed from a non-traditional marketing agency into a full-service shop. Today, we’re a 200+ team of intellectually curious individuals who are eager to solve your business challenges. We're proud to work with amazing clients including industry leaders like Maybelline New York, Hasbro and Ansell Healthcare. To learn more, visit https://www.ampagency.com ABOUT GARNIER For over 100 years, Garnier has created innovative, performance-driven products covering all types of beauty needs. Present in more than 65 countries, the brand draws its strength from its young and resolutely optimistic spirit. Garnier’s expertise has expanded to cover several areas in the beauty field with iconic and world renowned products in haircare, styling, hair coloration, skincare and more. At Garnier, we embrace individuality by creating must-have products that harness the power of nature and technology to help everyone look good and feel better every day. ABOUT LIFESTYLES LifeStyles® brand condoms have been a trusted product line on the market for over 30 years. LifeStyles was the first condom brand to target women, the first to advertise on MTV, and the first condom manufacturer with a website on the Internet. While the brand has evolved and changed over time, LifeStyles has always stood for safety and reliability, and we are committed to making safe sex fun by offering new and unique products to meet every need and desire. ABOUT THE REGGIE AWARDS Since 1983, the REGGIE Awards have been the premier industry awards program recognizing the best marketing campaigns activated by brands and agencies. The name – REGGIE – was originally chosen because it symbolizes results by "making the cash register ring” with consumers. The Super REGGIE recognizes the highest level of achievement and is awarded to the "best-in-class” from the Gold category winners. It is the most honored award in the Brand Activation industry, recognized as the crème de la crème in the marketing world. ABOUT THE EX AWARDS The EX Awards is the world’s largest recognition program for experiential marketing with 23 categories spanning every type of brand experience. ABOUT THE MITX AWARDS The MITX Awards show is the largest and most prestigious annual awards competition in the country for technology and digital innovation. The categories in this year’s program showcase the disruptive marketing, creative, and emerging technologies happening in New England. ABOUT THE PRO AWARDS Now, in its 26th year, The PRO Awards is the gold standard for excellence in promotional marketing. Recognizing outstanding promotion marketing campaigns—from events/experiential and multicultural, to entertainment and local.
How Understanding Your Shopper on Creative Social Media Outlets can Humanize Your Brand Millennial travelers are the target opportunity in the travel industry. Making up 27% of the US population and 25% of the labor force, millennials will account for half of the US labor force by 2020 (Skift). By 2030 they are predicted to outspend baby boomers. But where is all that spending power going? As work experience is gained and a steady income acquired, millennials will put that spending power behind their restless passions of wanderlust. Why Is This Important? Social media outlets serve as some of the most utilized mediums through which travel brands are able to connect with the millennial demographic. According to AdWeek, millennials spend on average 18 hours a day with media, with 71% checking social media at least once a day. Excelling in social media communication can be a difficult feat because of the disconnect between buyer and seller, therefore making the understanding of an audience a high priority. By using social media outlets to humanize a brand, understanding habits and connecting successfully with millennials will become simple and familiar through these personalized interactions. As users become more familiar with the brand's voice and creative presence, a sense of trust will be gained between brand and consumer as marketing goals are achieved. Mediums Brands Should Focus On There are a myriad of social media sites utilized by millennial travelers around the digital world. Pinterest, Twitter, and Instagram are three mediums utilized by millennial consumers of all sorts, traveler or otherwise. While specifically targeting travelers will directly affect current consumers, attracting a wider range of users across these social mediums boosts awareness and credibility. Expanding a brand's consumer demographic is important for awareness, but attempting to successfully target every millennial is impossible. By catering to a specific demographic, new followers can be gained, consisting of the specific millennial demographic as well as other interested millennials. Having the ability to reach all millennial audiences, while targeting a single millennial demographic, can be effective and conducive to a brand's social strategy. Demographics are tough to target. Millennials are even tougher. By focusing on an identified persona within a specified social medium instead of an entire widespread demographic, branding can become creatively diverse in a personalized and original way. Here are a few examples of social mediums through which brands should become familiar with their specified audiences: Pinterest, with followers who enjoy DIY projects, allows brands to engage with consumers on creative and conscious projects and ideas. Twitter allows brands and millennials to directly interact, enabling amplified activation and brand voice while gaining insight into consumer opinions and trends. Instagram gives brands the opportunity to visualize consumer mentalities and inspirations, opening an interesting window to reminisce and engage in a creative way. So What?? Utilizing these social media sites in order to individualize a brand's style and voice will help brands understand consumer habits and engage with their target demographics. This understanding of both the target and general millennial audience will then guide the brand strategy. Check-in next week on how understanding the rationale of the price-oriented millennial shopper on Pinterest can help humanize your branding. Learn more about our social media marketing service.
Hear the AMP Insights Lab perspective on why digital tools enhance experiential marketing efforts. Matt Rainone, Manager in our Integrated Marketing Group, discusses 4 helpful tools to integrate digital into your next experiential marketing campaign: 1) MoZeus (http://www.mozeus.com/) 2) Grandstand (http://getgrandstand.com/) 3) Aurasma (http://www.aurasma.com/) 4) Magisto (http://www.magisto.com/) AMP Agency presents Videos by the Insights Lab- a think tank dedicated to uncovering, understanding and leveraging the best way to connect brands with consumers via the latest technology.
If you look at my college degree it says that I am a print and multimedia journalist, but unlike a traditional reporter I don't subscribe to the Boston Globe, the New York Times or even the Washington Post. You may ask what type of journalist I am if I don't pick up a paper each morning but I'll tell you: I'm a journalist in the digital age. I turn to the web for my news as I watch things break on Twitter, go viral on Facebook and update on all of the major newspapers' websites. Television was normally the fastest way to broadcast news until the world's obsession with connectivity and the web took over. This is evidenced in the events that unfolded on the evening of Sunday, May 1, 2011. When the newscaster mentioned that the president would be speaking at 10:30 for an unknown reason, all it took was a refresh of my Twitter feed to know that Osama Bin Laden was dead. I was then able to confirm it on CNN.com and read an ever growing list of articles, reports and links to video on Twitter...all before the TV station finished its commercial break. As it turns out, the news of Bin Laden's death actually broke on Twitter, the first tweet reportedly coming from Keith Urbahn, Chief of Staff for the office of the former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. He tweeted, 'So I'm told by a reputable person they have killed Osama Bin Laden. Hot Buy cialis online damn.'? This was all it took to create and online media firestorm which resulted in a record-breaking tweets per hour. In a Mashable online poll, 31% of respondents heard the news first on Twitter with Facebook following close behind at 20%. These numbers show that social media is changing the way we get our news and it's easy to understand why since news spreads faster online. With television, in order to 'interrupt this program and take you live to the White House,'? they must organize the equipment and the team of people to use it, and hope that people are sitting near their TV's prepared to watch the broadcast. In contrast, it is estimated that by Christmas 2011 more phone users will have smartphones than any other type of phone, meaning nearly 142.8 million people will have access to the web at any given time. That's a lot of people who can get breaking news while at the bar, in a bowling alley or at their son's soccer game. They can see a single tweet that says 'Osama Bin Laden has been reported dead'? and retweet it faster than a newscaster can say 'good evening.'? Because of this shift in how people receive their information I've learned of all the major news that's broken in the past few years, from the internet. While there's something 'official'? about having a newscaster interrupt your program to bring you news, if you ask me, it's not official until it's a trending topic on Twitter.
I know I'm not the only one seeing these spreads in seemingly every magazine I pick up; the 'Magazines, the Power of Print'? campaign is aimed to reach over 110M readers a month. Leaders of five major publishing companies (Condé Nast, Hearst, Meredith Corp., Time, Inc., and Wenner Media) have united to 'promote the vitality of magazines as a medium'?. And I can't help but question them. The print industry has chosen to approach this predicament with a very defensive message. Copy from one of the pieces, in particular, has rubbed me the wrong way: ''?¦a new medium doesn't necessarily displace an existing one. Just as movies didn't kill radio. Just as TV didn't kill movies'?. I understand what they're getting at (digital is just the next phase in the evolution of media), but is this comparison even relevant? Television, film and radio didn't 'kill'? each other because each innovation broadcasted a new type of media. Alternatively, digital seeks to enhance and enliven existing, static print content. The two mediums can and should coexist'since users choose to consume digital and print in different contexts'but this aggressive approach to convince users to consume print is futile. I'm frustrated by the many un-truths rampant throughout this project. Cathie Black, president of Heart Magazines, states that 'this campaign supports the fact that there really is no better medium to advertise in than magazines. Magazines are the most cost effective and consistent medium at both ends of the purchase funnel'?. The adverts also claim that print media consumption has increased over the last five years and that the appeal of magazines is growing. I'm not going to try and argue these points since many already have. My main contention is that this is not the best way to encourage readership. Instead, offline publishers need to prove the value in print. For me, compared to digital, print is focused. It allows for a more relaxed, immersive experience; I'm able to soak in specific content and really let it saturate. Magazine editors are presenting detailed stories to the reader. We all know that an online experience is much different'the simultaneous skimming of copy, seeking of information, and searching for dynamic content. Both ironically and appropriately, these publishers do have a supporting digital component to the campaign in the works. Instead of speaking to the people who already have a magazine in their hands, they should be conversing with those who don't. Isn't the point to remind their ex-readers what they're missing? Beyond this campaign, the industry needs to research and recognize what mediums their audience is using'and start considering how they can truly transform and flex with them. Experimentation with new digital technologies, most notably the iPad, has the potential to reinvigorate failing publications. There's an apparent need to reinvent print content for new channels like these. From a brand's perspective, this should not be a print versus interactive decision. How can you cater to your consumers' desire for both specialized, developed print material and engaging, reciprocative digital content?
