“Simply put, brands are not spending enough in gaming.” That’s the word from Jonathon Troughton, CEO/founder of Frameplay. Panelists from the agency side largely concurred, acknowledging they need to get on the stick, pun intended. “The industry is still catching up to where consumers are,” said Sarah Stringer, SVP/head of innovation at Carat USA. “It’s similar to when we started moving into social media. Gaming at the moment has issues with people trying to force-fit old models into the new environment.” Stringer noted it’s key brands looking to message in-game, not create an interruptive experience. “People are passionate about games, so how do you create advertising that’s an additive to the experience?” While games are not currently part of clients’ media plans at Magnite, CTO Tom Kerhsaw said: “We want to change the way we approach the format… but none of the plumbing in advertising is set up for the gaming world so we end up defaulting to the formats that already exist.” Matt Roberts, business director at Publicis-Poke, assessed challenges, from the creative to brand safety. “Gaming is fragmented world… it’s tricky to help clients navigate.”

BRAND + COMMUNITY IN A SNAP

Snapchat reaches 90 percent of 13-24 year olds in the US, according to Lauryl Schraedly, head of global consumer insights at Snap Inc., who shared some new insights about the community.
* Snapchatters take social responsibility seriously. 82 percent believe they have a personal responsibility to the drive change they want to see
* They are 34 percent more likely to buy from brands that support their local communities
* Their friends are the biggest influencers in their lives. Their closest friends are more than 4X more influential than celebrities to influence purchasing decisions
* They celebrate what’s unique about each other
* They are deep into AR and engaging with brands through AR

DIY TO THE RESCUE

Discovery Networks’ Q2 ratings were among the highest in company history. Kathleen Finch, chief lifestyle brand officer, has a good idea why. “We had a team meeting on day one. We rallied the talent to get them engaged with their fans,” she said. The message was and is: “We are all going through this together, and we’re here to help. We had Ina Garten telling viewers to take a snapshot of what’s in your pantry and I’ll come up with a recipe. The Property Brothers saying, You want to build a home school or a home office? We’ll help you.” The company got camera equipment out to talent at home and ran tutorials about how to create content. The tutorials were mostly with their teenage kids, quipped Finch, who joked (or was she?) Guy Fieri’s kids are now among Discovery’s top producers.

Lockdown presented a unique situation for Discovery tent-pole programming event Shark Week. The network had 14 hours of content in the can in early March, and ended up with more than 30 hours. How? “Some of it was acquisition content we were able to bring in-house, some was bringing Josh Gates in to make an after-show all week long using Zoom, and some was content that presented itself because of what was going on in the world,” said Nancy Daniels, chief brand officer, Discovery & factual. “When boats went off the water, when human behavior changed, shark behavior changed. It was really interesting to follow.”

The US economy suffered a $16 trillion economic loss over 20 years due to racism in America, according to a new study by Citigroup. There’s no time like the present to move the needle forward with action and transparency. “We’re in an era of people wanting to see more action and less lip service for this work. The core aspects of DEI work—retention, development—are still very important, culture-building work still needs to take place,” said Jason Rosario, chief diversity, equity & inclusion officer at BBDO. “But what we’re starting to see is a move toward having to prove out why diversity matters to the business. And how we demonstrate that on a daily basis.” Despite the call to look at how DEI work is
driving external business impact, “Maybe unpopularly, I think at this moment the work is internal,” said Christena Pyle, chief equity officer at Dentsu. “When we look up and see 2 percent of Black representation across our entire industry, our work is internally focused. Then we can share openly, in a no-firewall space, and then we inform our clients. Then we can lead and not lag our clients.”

PRIVACY PARADOX

Mobile attribution company AppsFlyer is in the trenches with companies including Google, Twitter, Snap, Verizon and Apple, with which it’s working in areas including Apple’s IDFA attribution opt-out and the impact of iOS 14 to measurement and attribution. Brian Quinn, AppsFlyer’s US president/GM, asserted changes in privacy policies that occur in silos are bad for the customer experience. “If privacy is [changed] without the cooperation of the industry, the user experience is really going to suffer. That’s what brands and marketers need to understand. What’s at stake here is the user experience.” Apple, he noted, has changed course, slowed down and ultimately is moving the industry to a “better place. Apple is listening to feedback [about] the way they’re looking at implementing their own network for iOS. As big and influential as Apple is… if you want to effect real change, you need to do that with the industry. All the stakeholders have to be involved.”

“If you’re going to an influencer and expecting the same numbers they get all the time, then allow them to help the situation. They understand their audience better than you.” – Music and TikTok star Jason Derulo

“We like less words, simple… and a good chunk of the day is not that these days.” – actor/podcaster Dax Shepard on being home as a family during the pandemic

“I remember, back in April, I had a total of 19 Zoom meetings a day. I was so stressed and I couldn’t sleep. So you now look at the Zoom usage last December … there was almost 10 million meeting participants. Back in April, [there was] 30 times more. 300 million daily meetings. – Eric Yuan, founder/CEO of Zoom

“I wanted to try and give back. I wanted to try to help kids really believe in themselves and understand that anything is possible if you dream it and work it and believe it.” – Olympian Michael Phelps on launching his foundation

That’s a wrap on AWNY 2020. We hope you’ve enjoyed Cynopsis’ take on events throughout the week.

Cheers,
Cathy Applefeld Olson