The 2016 Summer Olympics are officially over. But for two weeks, billions of eyes from around the world watched athletes attempt to break records and bring home the gold. What a perfect opportunity for marketers, no?

Many brands jumped on the Olympics bandwagon, leveraging its popularity for their own campaigns. Some of these brands created particularly inspiring campaigns, both to viewers and marketers alike — whether for the emotion they elicit, or for the reminder of exactly how to execute a remarkable ad or marketing campaign.

We rounded up the ones that tugged at our heartstrings as viewers, or inspired us to be better marketers. (Sometimes both.) Check out this list of 11 of the best campaigns from the 2016 Summer Games and what made them so great.

11 of the Best Olympic Marketing Campaigns, Ads, Commercials & Promotions This Year

1) Under Armour: Rule Yourself

The Under Armour brand doesn’t just value the success that comes from hard work; it values the hard work and 24/7 dedication that leads to that success. Their emphasis is on self-improvement and self-reliance — which is why they acquired the fitness tracking platform MapMyFitness back in 2014.

Under Armour’s ad campaign for the 2016 Summer Olympics perfectly embodies these deep-seeded values. It focuses on the side of athletic achievement that no one sees. For Michael Phelps, that’s the ice baths, cupping therapy, and 12,500 calories he has to eat every day. For an ordinary person, it might be taking the stairs, getting a full night’s sleep, or tracking your meals using their MyFitnessPal app. But the message is the same, and it’s a powerful one: “It’s what you do in the dark that puts you in the light.”

2) Proctor & Gamble: “Thank You Mom”

For the 2012 Summer Olympics, Proctor & Gamble created a campaign called “Thank You, Mom” that showed flashbacks of Olympic athletes from all over the world growing up and practicing their sport with support from their mothers. That same campaign is back again this year, featuring athletes and their mothers from this summer’s Games.

This year’s campaign shows athletes’ mothers helping them through times of stress, cheering them along, and supporting them. Notice the clickable link they added to the video that takes viewers to a web page where they can send a personalized thank-you note to their own moms. Take a look … and maybe grab a tissue.

3) Panasonic UK: #Superfans

Cheering on your country is a lot easier when you’re the one hosting the Olympics, as Great Britain did in London in Summer 2012. With the Games in Brazil this year, Panasonic, a long-time official partner to the British Olympic Association, wanted to help Great Britain keep up the fan-fueled momentum. So in April 2016, they announced a crowdsourced campaign called #Superfans, which invited fans of Team GB to post pictures on social media using the hashtag to encourage engagement.

“It is a great opportunity for us to share our passion for the Olympics as a company and to connect with consumers on an emotional level,” said Managing Director of Panasonic UK Andrew Denham. “This is why Panasonic’s heritage as a global Olympic partner is so important to me – it adds some real spark and colour to the brand.”

All the fan photos posted with the hashtag #Superfans was posted on a dedicated web page on Team GB’s official site, and Panasonic UK offered extra incentives like Twitter contests.

Watching @TeamGB today? Make sure you send your support using #Superfans for a chance to win a TV! http://pic.twitter.com/KgpbVGuL4W

— Panasonic UK (@PanasonicUK)
August 13, 2016

Here’s a sampling of the fan-sourced content on Twitter:

#superfans assemble @_GBHockey @TeamGB GB ON 🔥🔥🔥 🏅🏅🏅 HERE WE GO!!! http://pic.twitter.com/KAioxrnhWV

— Thomas Mairs (@TomMairs)
August 19, 2016

@PanasonicUK @TeamGB #superfans Go team GB we are cheering you on all the way! http://pic.twitter.com/VDDJstevCx

— Mazaroo (@stringer_marion)
August 16, 2016

Even the U.K.’s premiere parachute display team got in on the action:

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No…It’s #Superfans!

Thanks @RedDevilsOnline for your incredible support! #Rio2016 http://pic.twitter.com/nnnWfmHvX7

— Panasonic UK (@PanasonicUK)
August 11, 2016

4) Apple: “The Human Family”

What makes the Olympic Games so special? The elite athletic competition, yes — but also the bringing together of people and cultures from all over the world. And it’s that second part that the folks at Apple chose to focus on in their Olympics commercial.

The ad showcases beautiful photos and videos of people all over the world taken using an iPhone, and it’s set to Maya Angelou reading excerpts from her poem, “Human Family.” What a beautiful message.

5) Coca-Cola: #ThatsGold

Not all of us can be Olympic athletes — but the folks at Coca-Cola make the case that even ordinary people like you and me can experience the feeling of winning gold. To do this, they launched the campaign #ThatsGold, which they first integrated into a TV ad (shown below) with the “Taste the Feeling” campaign they launched in January 2016.

The Olympics commercial tied to the campaign is all about drawing a parallel between the thrill and excitement of winning a gold medal at the Olympics and the thrill and excitement of having a good time with the people in your life. They did a great job of drawing those parallels with compelling quotes and visuals, and nailed the ending with the line, “Gold is a feeling anyone can taste.”

In addition to the commercial, they set up a fully operational “real-time marketing” global hub in Rio that monitored the #ThatsGold hashtag during the course of the Olympics and created content around key moments in real time on Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and more.

Chasing life and the podium side by side: #THATSGOLD. Congratulations to the Eatons! #Rio2016 http://pic.twitter.com/0lTwezQoH6

— Coca-Cola (@CocaCola)
August 19, 2016

6) Virgin Media: #BeTheFastest

Virgin Media is all about being fast, advertising their WiFi speed as “fast,” “superfast,” even “ultrafast.” So it comes to no surprise that they chose to pay tribute to Usain Bolt, the fastest man in the world, for their Olympics campaign this year.

Bolt set the World Record for the 100-meter sprint at 9.58 seconds at the 2009 Berlin World Championships in Athletics. To demonstrate what 9.58 seconds feels like, Virgin Media created an advertisement that strung together ten, 9.58-second vignettes that each cast light on a different part of Bolt’s life. The purpose? Both to celebrate Bolt’s spectacular accomplishment and to emphasize the importance of speed.

7) Airbnb: “Alternative Accommodations” Sponsorship

Back in March of this year, Airbnb became the first official “alternative accommodations” sponsor of the Olympics — the first time the Olympics has ever had an alternative accommodations sponsor, according to local Olympic officials. Why’d they do it? Mashable reports that when Rio won the Olympic bid in 2009, it had just half the 40,000 beds required for the games — so it was definitely a win for the city, the games, and Airbnb.

In exchange for an undisclosed amount to local Olympic organizers, Airbnb was included in the Rio 2016 Olympic Games’ ticketing platform by way of a specific landing page where customers were able to rent private homes and apartments in Rio. They also got a link to their site on the official Olympic website, along with calls-to-action encouraging people traveling to Rio for the Olympics to use the service for rentals.

Here they are in the first spot on the official Rio Olympics 2016 website’s homepage:

To help promote homes and apartments for rent in Rio, they created Rio-specific videos and content for their larger #StayWithMe campaign, which invites Airbnb hosts to post photos or short videos on social media to showcase their countries. Here’s one Airbnb published right before the Olympics started, in June 2016:

8) Chobani: #NoBadStuff

Goodness is a choice you make, claims Chobani with their Olympic-inspired campaign #NoBadStuff. From a literal standpoint, their campaign is about the good, healthy ingredients in Chobani yogurt; metaphorically, it’s all about having a positive attitude, working hard, treating others well, and properly fueling your body.

Their campaign has a few moving parts, starting with a page on their website where you can meet the U.S. athletes they’ve partnered with who embody the positive, hardworking attitude that defines their campaign. Each athlete’s story includes an interview about their biggest challenges, how they stay positive, their favorite meal growing up, and so on — along with, of course, a giant picture of them enjoying Chobani yogurt

Their campaign also includes a TV ad, content where U.S. athletes give advice on things like how to stay cool under stress, and — my personal favorite — a few limited-edition yogurt flavors inspired by Brazil.

9) Folger’s: “Coach”

“Olympic glory doesn’t just belong to athletes, and it doesn’t just happen every four years. It happens one morning at a time, and one cup at a time.” That’s the message coffee company Folger leaves us with in their commercial, “Coach.”

Instead of focusing on the athletes, the folks at Folgers used their ad time to focus on the coaches that help those athletes get to where they are. Specifically, it follows the relationship between a boy and the coach that helped him through every win, every loss, every injury, and every moment of glory before he was eventually chosen to represent Team USA.

10) NBC & BuzzFeed’s Olympic Parternship

NBC is known for doing a thorough job covering the Olympics, from its online live streams to its TV interviews with medalists. But their roots are deep in old-school media like cable, which isn’t the most well-used and attractive medium for the younger generation. That’s exactly why the folks at NBC decided to partner with BuzzFeed for the Olympics this summer, where they produced special Olympic features and posted them to Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Snapchat.

They sent “about a dozen” BuzzFeed staffers to Rio to create social media content, including a daily edition on Snapchat Discover, which is one reason this co-marketing partnership was a win-win for both brands. According to Steven Perlberg of Wall Street Journal, the President of NBC Olympics, Gary Zenkel, “wants to give BuzzFeed free rein to connect with Snapchat’s young audience.”

What kind of content did they produce? “The U.S. women’s gymnastics showed how friends have your back, like when they prevent you from texting your ex or have an extra hair tie,” wrote Perlberg. The women’s wrestling team destroyed watermelons. Swimmer Natalie Coughlin tested out waterproof makeup. The U.S. men’s gymnastics team took off their shirts, and readers were asked to guess the abs.”

Here’s a screenshot from a Snapchat Story featuring Olympic Swimmer Townley Haas, who showed off some tall people problems:

Image Credit: BuzzFeed/NBCU

11) Budweiser: “America is in Your Hands”

Nothing says “America” like a can of Budweiser — and I mean that literally, thanks to their campaign leading up to both the 2016 Summer Olympics and November’s U.S. presidential election. In May, Anheuser-Busch announced it would be replacing the Budweiser logo with “America” on its 12-oz. cans and bottles this summer. The temporary re-packaging was accompanied by their summer campaign, “America is in Your Hands.”

The campaign itself has had mixed reviews, with complaints mostly surrounding the brand tapping into the polarized political climate. But the campaign did help increase Budweiser’s ad awareness and purchase consideration, at least initially. A week after the campaign began, the company reached its highest purchase consideration level of 2016 (i.e., the number of shoppers 21 and older who said they’d consider Budweiser the next time they bought beer), although that numbers have dropped back down since.

Image Credit: STL Today

There you have it. We hope you found these examples inspiring. What other Olympics campaigns have inspired you, in 2016 or from previous Olympics? Share with us in the comments.

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in August 2012 and has been updated for accuracy and comprehensiveness.

My interest in smarketing best practices started when our Latin American sales team grew a ton in just a few weeks. Suddenly, communication between Sales and Marketing was much harder to get right. When we were a smaller team, I could meet 1:1 with each salesperson and talk about how we could help generate more (and better) leads … but that wasn’t scalable as we grew.

I needed help. To learn what other marketers were doing to work efficiently with their sales teams, I scheduled meetings with several members of our field and channel marketing team.

Turns out, each marketer I spoke with had great advice and processes to better work with Sales … but none of them had the same advice and process. To help share the information across our team and with anyone else new to sales and marketing alignment, I decided to compile everyone’s best practices into a blog post. 

So here it is: The best smarketing tips and tricks that my colleagues swear by.

10 Tried & True Smarketing Best Practices

1) Meet regularly.

Have an onboarding smarketing meeting with every new salesperson. 

In order to support Sales successfully, it is very important to share processes, resources, and best practices from the start. Use this time to get to know each other and share how Marketing will be supporting the sales team. If you have a large number of salespeople starting, hold a monthly meeting to set these expectations and field any questions new folks might have.

Attend sales weekly meetings. 

Attending weekly sales meetings allows marketers to know how Sales is doing with their quota and goals, and offer support when needed. Use this time to share the upcoming campaigns, content, and offers that Marketing will be promoting that week. Also ask for content ideas and recommendations for your future offers and blog posts.

Have a monthly meeting with sales managers. 

Marketing and sales managers should meet on a monthly basis to analyze results and evaluate their SLA. Important metrics to share are lead generation, MQLs, percent of leads worked, and lead-to-customer conversion rate. 

Attend events together.

Whether it’s an industry meetup group, happy hour in your office, or an organized conference — spend time together in a casual setting. Attending an event together provides you with a unique opportunity to get to know your Sales department outside of the traditional work environment. 

For the first time ever, we’re introducing a sales track at this year’s INBOUND event, making it the perfect opportunity for both departments to get out of the office for a few days.(Register now to receive a free Community Pass for your sales counterpart with the purchase of a All Access pass — or buy a VIP pass and get two free Community Passes.) 

2) Create a team email alias. 

Have an email alias that gets sent to both the sales and marketing teams. Use this strategically to share important information in both directions.

3) Have a content creation process in place.

Your sales reps are talking with prospects all the time and know what is getting them excited about your company. The problem is that a lot of times they don’t have time to write down this feedback. How can you help? Make sure to put together a process to gather this input.

Hold brainstorm sessions at weekly meetings.

Have a five-minute brainstorm session at a sales meeting to ask what content they would like to have to share with prospects or attract more leads.

Use a shared Google document to collect ideas and references.

Have a shared Google spreadsheet where Sales can add ideas or certain references for content creation.

4) Coordinate your content marketing campaigns with Sales. 

Marketers are constantly promoting new offers and content, so it’s important to keep the sales team up-to-date with these promotions so they know what recent offer their leads are receiving. 

Here are the basic steps for coordinating your offers with Sales:

a. Include your promotion on a shared calendar. 

Build a Google Calendar and add the date and time of your promotion (it might be an email, webinar, or social media campaign) along with the URL, the main talking points, and description of each offer. Make sure to invite your sales team to this calendar so they can see it on their personal accounts.

b. Email the offer to Sales.

Once your offer has been promoted and you start getting leads, you should email the sales team with the following information:

• Offer talking points. Include two to three bullets about the offer. Assume the salesperson hasn’t read the offer — what main concepts should they know when talking to prospects? Good talking points usually include: stats, business use cases, or “how to” advice.
• Lead views. Make sure to include the list of the leads your offer is generating so Sales can take action. If you have a CRM, you can easily generate views and share them with your sales team.
• A quote of the week. Similar to the talking points, including a more general quote that Sales can use on their calls can keep the conversations up-to-date. The best quotes are the ones that are data-driven and relevant, so try to include a recent industry trend or stat.

c. Build follow-up email templates for your promotions. 

Offers are a great way to generate new leads and re-engage old leads. Build email templates for your sales team to start a conversation. This email should be specific about the offer and how your company might help with the prospect’s interest. 

5) Help showcase your salesperson’s expertise.

Ghostwrite a blog post under your salesperson’s name.

Consider ghostwriting a post under your salesperson’s name. Interview them on the topic, transcribe your conversation, and turn that into a blog post. This can help the salesperson establish credibility and familiarity with their leads.

Get them to use social media.

If your salesperson is active on social media, then encourage them to share your company’s content. You can even write some lazy social media messages for them, so all they have to do is copy and paste them on their favorite networks. 

6) Make yourself (or another marketer) available for calls.

On calls, you can be very helpful by illustrating the business use of your product or service. So make sure you’re blocking off time every week — especially at the end of the month and the quarter — to jump on calls. 

7) Listen to calls.

Also take some time to sit next to your sales team and listen to their calls. This is a great learning experience that will help you get ideas for future content creation and how to build some of the follow-up emails of your offers.

8) Facilitate training if needed.

We all know our sales teams are experts in doing product demos, but sometimes there are specific use cases where they might feel they need assistance. Ask your team regularly if they have had some trouble with specific questions during their calls and facilitate training if necessary.

9) Organize sales enablement resources in one easy-to-access location.

Marketers work hard to create sales enablement resources such as brochures, company overviews, or presentations, but all that hard work goes to waste if your sales team can’t find (and use) them. 

So try to keep all your sales enablement resources in one shared place where Sales can easily access them. This location is a great place to host your campaign calendar, links to relevant offers, and specific content for a market or persona. 

10) Have fun and get to know each other.

Finally, some of the most important advice is to try to get to know each other as people. Organize lunches, outings, and celebrations, and just have fun. This helps build trust among team members and ensures that people feel comfortable leaning on each other for support.

Need help coming up with an outing idea? Check out this list of 17 fun ideas — from improv workshops to karaoke.

Purchase your INBOUND 2016 All Access pass today and get a free Community Pass (a $499 value) for your sales counterpart absolutely free. Or buy a VIP pass and get two free Community Passes. Register here. 

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in October 2015 and has been updated for accuracy and comprehensiveness.

Every marketing team is overworked. We’re all looking for ways to maximize the ROI on our efforts. For many organizations, using a marketing automation tool and workflows can provide a quantum leap forward in marketing results.

Of course, implementing a market automation system takes some money and know-how, which raises the question whether the investment makes sense for any given organization. It may well for your organization. Don’t buy into the overhead myth and assume higher marketing costs are a bad thing for your organization. The increased costs can be the best expense you make if they’re going to increase your membership and donations.

But not every organization’s marketing team is ready for automation. If you’re not already set up to take advantage of automation’s potential, that’s when you spending money and energy without getting the return. Your organization has important work to do with its funding. It’s no good spending it on marketing automation before you’re ready to make the most of it.

Here’s an overview of what marketing automation is really about, as well as a checklist you can run through to determine if you’re organization is ready or has some marketing gaps to fill in first.

What Marketing Automation is Really About

Most importantly, don’t think you can sit back and “set it and forget it.” That’s a big myth. Marketing automation doesn’t do your marketing for you. It amplifies the processes you already have in place. So if they’re good processes – terrific! If they’re not so good this checklist is a great starting place for your team to start building its own content marketing framework.

Creating a good framework means you’ve got a reliable system in place for publishing valuable inbound marketing content. Content that will attract and generate a strong, steady stream of leads you can nurture along to become members or donors. If your current challenge is generating traffic as well as leads using your content, focus initially on getting your system in place, and creating the desirable, valuable content your personas will want. 

Then when you’re steadily getting new leads, and your team becomes overwhelmed trying to respond to them, that’s the time to step up into your marketing automation system more completely. Turn on those lead nurturing and re-engagement campaigns. Start testing one lead nurturing email sequence against another. Tweak. Refine. Improve.

Marketing automation done well means leads won’t get ignored. The best of them will also automate the personalization of the content that you send. This is where marketing automation can take you a quantum leap forward.

Marketing automation is about scaling all the great marketing you’re already doing, so it’s executing the campaigns you design at a pace and volume that your team couldn’t possibly do manually. But you and your team need to still be at the heart of it all.

So Is Your Organization Ready?

Go through these questions with an objective eye to gauge whether your organization could benefit now by implementing a marketing automation tool.

1) Are you generating a constant stream of new, qualified leads?

To realize the benefits of marketing automation, your database needs to be a good size and constantly growing. Furthermore, the new leads coming in need to be good fits to convert into members and donors. If your database is too small, automation will just overwork the leads that are there. People will start to feel spammed and you may well see your list shrink rather than grow.

For more tips on this first crucial step, check our our introduction to inbound marketing and lead generation for nonprofits >>

2) Does your team feel overwhelmed by the number of leads pouring into your database?

If so, you may well benefit from marketing automation to make sure all these leads get their due attention.

3) What emails are you sending manually right now? Do you have email series that can be put into an automated workflow?

To reiterate the main point about what marketing can and cannot do, it can’t make a blah email series to re-engage dormant constituents, that only has middling results, into a success. What it can do, is take a string of your best performing nurturing emails and put them on autopilot for you. 

If you want to improve the efficiency and automate your lead nurturing campaigns, marketing automation can help with that. If you’re content to send one-off emails on a campaign-by-campaign basis, then marketing automation may not add much value  for you. 

4) Are you engaging with leads, members, and donors across multiple channels?

The more information your marketing automation system can gather about the people in your database, the more it can do for you. This means that marketing automation becomes more powerful the more you already engage with people through multiple channels. It’s easy to think of marketing automation only as email, but that’s selling it short. You can automate workflows that rely on other digital channels both to gather intel and push out content.

5) Do you already have manual “triggers” you use to push out relevant content to leads?

A lead who visits your donor page a certain number of times. Or a member who downloads your most recent annual report. A lead who watches a new video about the organization’s work. These can all be triggers. Do you know when your leads take relevant actions? If you do, do you have a plan that you execute that’s relevant to the action the person took 

These are all steps that marketing automation relies on. You can tell the automation system what triggers to identify and what to do with them once trigger conditions are met, but you need to know first.

6) Got the content needed to support personalizing and scaling up your marketing efforts?

The triggers and data collection intel are all about sending the right content to the right lead at the right time.  So you need the right content that speaks to different leads who are at different points in their journey. You don’t want to send a solicitation letter to join your highest donor circle level on someone’s first download. Maybe send an invitation to join your newsletter instead.

If you need sufficient input (leads) into the marketing automation machine to make it work, you also need sufficient output (relevant content). Your team needs to be producing and publishing content that’s mapped to a lead’s journey so they can be successfully nurtured further down the path.

Getting Your House in Order First

Content marketing is a continuous growth process. When you first start with inbound marketing, you learn along the way what messages and formats get your audience to respond at different points in their journey. As you refine your content and the donor’s journey, you start building workflows and criteria that make putting new campaigns and content together more efficiently

The next step in this process is marketing automation that moves your workflows from manual to automatic. The timing to move to automation makes sense when you have a steady stream of leads coming in, along with list segmentations, and lead nurturing campaigns that are getting good results.

If you’re not there yet, don’t worry. Start working on the steps on this checklist. You’ll start to see great advances in membership and donor amount drives every step of the way towards marketing automation. 

A whopping 66% of agencies have no plan in place to develop new business. And among those who say they do have a plan, their strategy might not be as comprehensive as it needs to be to keep the sales pipeline from drying up. 

In fact, it seems like many agencies are leaving their new business development largely to chance. Agencies surveyed for the Mirren-RSW/US 2016 New Business Tools Annual Report frequently cited “keeping our eyes open” as one of their top new business development tools. Simply staying on the lookout for new business is not a complete business development strategy. 

So what factors contribute to a poor business development strategy? And more importantly — what changes can you make to get your agency back on track?

Here we go over nine new business development mistakes that commonly plague agencies and what you can do to overcome them.

9 Common Business Development Mistakes 

1) You don’t make new business development anyone’s responsibility.

We’re not going to sugarcoat it: The process of prospecting, pitching, and closing on new business can easily evolve into a long, grueling, and energy-consuming process. And your time and resources are understandably precious. You want to focus primarily on the clients in front of you, not pour time into a prospect that may not even work out.

But when no one is held accountable for new business and everyone is expected to just help out when they can, it will never really get done right. If it isn’t someone’s real responsibility, there’s no reason for them put it up high on their long list of priorities, or above client work.

A significant majority of agencies don’t have a single employee dedicated to new business development, leaving a critical gap in their ability to acquire new clients: 

Data from The Agency Pricing & Financials Report

Even if you can’t afford to hire an employee devoted entirely to new business development, your team needs to set aside time and resources to seek out new clients. To start holding yourselves accountable, develop an annual new business plan with goals in alignment with your projected revenue and growth. Once you start to treat new business development as the responsibility it is, rather than a casual side project, you’ll begin to see better results. 

2) You don’t know who you’re marketing to.

Do you know your agency’s ideal client profile? If the answer is no, you’re probably not targeting the right people in your business development efforts.

Remember that a net cast too widely will almost always come up empty. If you try to market your agency without targeting a specific demographic, your efforts are going to fall flat. You need to know who exactly you’re looking for and tailor your efforts to attract these specific types of businesses.

To get started, take a look at your current clients and write down the characteristics that make them a good fit for your services. Make sure your list reflects your clients’ actual characteristics, not just characteristics you wish they had. This isn’t a wish list. It’s a profile for clients who can realistically bring actual revenue and value to your agency.

Once you have a good idea of what kind of client you’re in the market for, think about what channels have been most successful in tracking them down. Consider pursuing those spaces more seriously as part of your overall new business development program.

3) You don’t know who your competitors are.

Yes, you have competitors. Even if you don’t often find yourself aggressively competing for clients with another agency, it’s important to realize that other agencies are more likely than not dipping into the same client pool as you. And you can’t compete with them until you know who they are and what they offer.

You don’t need a private investigator — just start with a simple Google search. Pretend you’re a prospective client and try searching for some long-tail keywords they might use when searching for a new agency. See what other agencies pop up, and take a good look at what they offer. Ask yourself: How does your own presence measure up? Are you differentiating yourself enough to really stand out?

Another straightforward way to get the scoop on your competition is to ask your current clients what other agencies they considered, or who they worked with before coming to you. This will start to give you an idea of your competitors and what you need to do to make your agency’s brand and offerings unique.

4) You talk too much about yourself.

Time for a reality check: 79% of marketers think agencies talk too much about themselves in meetings.

It’s no secret that agency people like to talk, but when it comes to pitching a prospective client on the benefit of your services, your part should be succinct, brief, and focused intensely on how your agency can specifically benefit the client’s brand.

As an exercise, try condensing your entire pitch into a short paragraph. If any piece of information feels even slightly unnecessary or gratuitous, omit it. This will help you organize your thoughts and distill your presentation into a more digestible chunk of information.

During the pitch itself, refrain from launching unprompted into any case studies or an extended history of your agency’s core beliefs — this is all information they probably already have on you. Remember that this is the prospective client’s time to ask questions and see if the relationship is a good fit. 

5) You don’t fully understand your prospect’s context.

It’s not enough to simply understand a prospective client’s direct needs for a project — you also need to make an effort to get to know their unique business and industry. This will give your pitch some depth and show the prospect that you’re serious about doing business with them.

Before the pitch, take some time to thoroughly research the client’s brand. For a deeper look into their particular point of view, you could even consider setting up a meeting or call to interview your prospect.

Try to understand not only what their business functions are, but what the climate of their industry is like. What are other people in their industry working on? Who are they competing against? The more you understand, the more relevant your proposal will be.

6) You don’t use a CRM tool to manage new business.

As any agency professional will tell you, time management and efficiency are absolutely key when it comes to staying on top of prospecting. But many agencies are problematically behind the curve in terms of organizing their existing and prospective clients. 44% of agencies don’t use a CRM, and 30% of agencies still use Microsoft Excel as their main CRM.  

Why wouldn’t you want a tool that can help your team get organized and stay efficient with fewer resources? New business development is often the last thing an agency is able to devote time, people, and money to, but a CRM can help you do more with less. Consider starting off with free or inexpensive project management software, like HubSpot’s free CRM, to see if  it can help your team stay on top of your new business goals.  

7) You don’t figure out why a pitch was rejected.

Sometimes a pitch doesn’t go quite as planned and the prospect turns you down. It happens to the best of us. But the biggest mistake you can make after a rejected pitch is to not solicit critical feedback about what exactly went wrong.

It might seem awkward at first, but understanding why a proposal was rejected is a vital part of building your ongoing business development strategy. Ask the prospect to identify specific areas of the proposal that really turned them off, and see if they’re willing to suggest any changes or things they would have liked to see. You aren’t going to find a better source of proposal feedback than someone who you’ve pitched to directly.

8) You don’t plan your follow-up strategy in advance.

After a meeting or call with a prospective client, you should have a follow-up plan already in place to maintain a connection with your point of contact and continue the discussion. Follow up is just as important as the proposal in securing new business, but most agencies fail to close the loop, leaving their prospects wondering if they’re truly serious about their business. In fact, 53% of marketers say that agencies aren’t sufficiently aggressive in following up after a meeting.

Instead of resigning yourself to waiting around, inspire some extra confidence by reaching out after the initial meeting with a brief recap of your conversation and next steps. This will help the prospect keep your proposal fresh in their mind, and give them the opportunity to ask additional questions.

9) You don’t know your own deal breakers.

It can be hard to remember during the hustle of the proposal process, but you’re there to qualify the prospect just as much as they’re there to qualify you. You’re on the hunt for profitable clients who will add value to your portfolio, and if a prospect doesn’t seem like they’d be a good fit, you’re allowed to gracefully bow out.

Make sure you have a solid structure in place to weed out prospects who don’t fit your agency’s ideal profile. You want to make sure that a client’s project would be a worthy use of your time and expertise before you dive in, so consider asking some basic qualification questions before you devote time to a full-scale pitch.

With 46% of marketers reporting that photography is critical to their current marketing and storytelling strategies, it should come as no surprise that quality photos are in high demand.

Trouble is, most commercially available photos on the internet were taken to visualize broad overall concepts rather than concrete messages. That means they can be used in all sorts of campaigns … but also end up looking generic.

Think of all the photos of smiling receptionists and perfectly suited business leaders you’ve come across. These images may compete for attention, but often fail to register, simply because your customers can’t identify with them.

As a marketer, you can cut through the noise by using images that more closely relate to your audience. It’s what we call “real photography” here at EyeEm: Unique captures, delightful moments, and surprising perspectives. Images that are more concrete will resonate with audiences much more powerfully since they show real life rather than staged situations.

To visualize what we mean, we put together a handful of generic images alongside a ‘real’ counterpart sourced from our community of photographers. The proof is in the pictures, but we’ll let you see for yourself …

8 Examples of Authentic Imagery For Your Campaigns

1) Business

When it comes to business-related photos, there’s no shortage of clichés. Rather than deciding on an overly clean, generic image like the one below of the woman holding an “open” sign, dig deeper for something more authentic — something that tells a story.

You’ll notice that our suggestion ties in a more personal side of business by highlighting two people working together on a project. You can see the emotion in the woman’s face, as she uses her hands to explain something to her coworker in a seemingly authentic exchange. 

Do This:

Source: Sebastian Kopp via EyeEm

Not This:

Source: Pexels

2) Technology

Technology is notoriously hard to visualize, since a concept like “connectivity” is quite abstract. Old-school stock photography usually puts people next to the tech to achieve that connection, but the results are clumsy and constructed. Or worse, they add in a weird futuristic digital overlay like the image below.

Our suggestion is inspired by contemporary social media culture — and it’s more recognizable. It also features soft focus, natural lighting, and it shows a person truly interacting with the technology.

Do This:

Source: Moritz Otto via EyeEm

Not This:

Source: Thinkstock

3) Travel

Let’s be honest: When we the last time you went on vacation hoping to come home with a suitcase full of sand? In many cases, travel photos are just plain corny, and they lack the excitement and sense of wonder that comes with exploring new places.

These days, customers’ attention can much more effectively be captured by showing the actual experience of travel, as depicted by our suggestion below. The shot shows the view from a window on an airplane. It captures that thrilling feeling of embarking on a trip — a feeling that many people can easily relate to.

Do This:

Source: Dina Alfasi via EyeEm

Not This:

Souce: Thinkstock 

4) Happiness

According to one study, pictures with smiling faces can positively impact conversions. Trouble is, while picturing happiness with a simple smile might have worked in the past, it has long become a tired cliché.

While the image of the four people sharing smiles over coffee feels forced, our suggestion reads more natural, as it radiates a positive emotion while including an interesting element of movement. The image looks like a snapshot, taken in a genuine moment of fun and togetherness.

Do This:

Source: Sasha Dudkina via EyeEm

Not This:

Source: Thinkstock

5) Office

Representing an office by the tools one might (or might not) use there looks incredibly staged. It’s better to show context.

In this case, the image we suggested shows a creative space of a freelancer, with a pleasing color palette to underline the tranquility and focus of the workplace. 

Do This:

Source: @dersash via EyeEm

Not This:

Source: Pexels

6) Phone

Most images of phones show people awkwardly handling them, presenting their devices in a way nobody in real life would. Exhibit A: The image of the suited man awkwardly pointing to his device. It’s odd, staged, and a little confusing.

Now, notice how our suggestion sets the phone apart without making the pose seem unnatural. The person in the image is shown using the phone in a really natural way, and it’s easy to identify with — after all, who doesn’t love taking photos of their pets?

Do This:

Source: Markus Spiering via EyeEm

Not This:

Source: Thinkstock 

7) Productivity

Being productive isn’t about doing many things at once, as the photo on the left suggests — but about focus and a clear sense of what matters. (Check out this free guide for tips on how to be more productive.)

While the stock photo below is just plain creepy, our suggestion shows a woman at work, with her focus being underlined by the headphone she wears. It also uses much softer, natural light to remind the viewer how common this activity is.

Do This:

Source: @jedrzej via EyeEm

Not This:

Source: 123rf.com

8) Leadership

Leadership is all about building trust and establishing credibility. Unfortunately, leadership-inspired photos often miss the mark.

The photo below portrays an artificial and thereby very conventional idea of what leadership looks like. To combat that, we choose an image that while more loosely related to the idea, manages to demonstrate the emotive aspect of leading a team.

Do This:

Source: Inbal via EyeEm

Not This:

Source: 123rf.com

What are you best tips for unstocking your stock photography? Share them with us in the comments below.

Since 2006, inbound marketing has been helping businesses create more meaningful online experiences. In short: The inbound methodology focuses on pulling people toward your company and product rather than expecting them to come to you.

And in today’s highly-digital and ad-blocked world, your advertising strategy should be no exception. Combining the inbound methodology with your advertising means inviting people to engage with your brand, rather than interrupting their daily lives with your ads.

While using this strategy may sound like a no-brainer, it takes a lot of thought. You need to know your audience to be able to really connect with them. This is why HubSpot and Kissmetrics are joining forces to teach you How to Advertise Effectively in Today’s Digital World.

During this Google Hangout, you’ll learn:

• How to advertise in a way that aligns with inbound marketing.
• How to segment your audience and optimize your advertising strategy.
• Examples of companies advertising successfully today.
• Improving and measuring your advertising ROI.
• Common mistakes people are still making with their advertising efforts.
• Advertising on social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook.
• Much more about effectively advertising in today’s digital world.

Want to join us? Here are all the details:

• When: Wednesday August 31 @ 2 p.m. ET // 11 a.m. PT
• Where: Live Google Hangout
• RSVP: Click Here

When Snapchat first emerged on the scene back in 2011, it was excusable to dismiss the ephemeral photo-sharing platform as just another shiny piece of millennial bait.

But things have changed.

The once niche app has grown into one of the least ignorable social media forces in the industry, wooing marketers with its command of more daily active users than Twitter. But does any of that matter for agencies? 

For agencies looking to diversify their reach and prove their digital dexterity in a competitive field, Snapchat has proven to be an unexpectedly valuable tool. 

Here we’ll show you how eight marketing agencies are using Snapchat to grow their brands, recruit new talent, and connect with their audiences in a whole new way. 

8 of the Best Agency Snapchat Accounts 

1) Marcel Worldwide

Username: @marcelagency

When they’re not working on ad campaigns for Uber, Ray-Ban, and Instagram, this Paris-based ad agency can be found snapping up a storm. Their creative use of filters, emojis, and cameos from team members portray their daily office life as anything but dull. 

Marcel is perfect proof that running an agency Snapchat account doesn’t require a huge time commitment or tediously polished design. In fact, it’s the playful, behind-the-scenes vibe of their team’s snaps that make them come across as charming and genuine.  

2) Giant Spoon

Username: @giant_spoon

Recently named creative agency of the year by MediaPost, it’s no surprise that this marketing strategy team has been a quick and enthusiastic adopter of Snapchat. On their website, they invite fans to follow their account for an eclectic assortment of “intel, faves, trends, rants, and other surprises.” 

Since Snapchat’s content isn’t permanent past 24-hours, there’s no need to carefully curate a particular aesthetic. As Giant Spoon shows us, Snapchat is a chance to experiment with odds-and-ends content that might not fit well on any other channel. 

Here are a few screen shots of their intern giving a presentation called Millennials: A New Political Paradigm Shift. (Yes, we zoomed in a lot). 

3) RPA

Username: @rpa.advertising

RPA‘s Snapchat feed pulls back the curtain on a top marketing agency to reveal the heart and soul of the team behind the scenes.

Their feed lets followers experience the daily grind of the creative team — a low-investment way to show off their agency’s culture and generate interest from job-seekers.  

4) ClearPivot

Username: @clearpivot

ClearPivot, a Denver-based inbound marketing agency, takes a decidedly unique approach to Snapchat. Instead of merely sharing glimpses into their office life and culture, they treat the platform like a micro video blog, addressing their audience directly to discuss the latest marketing news and social media hot topics. It’s like having an inbound marketer in your pocket.

4) VaynerMedia

Username: @vaynermedia

This digital agency has made Snapchat central to their social recruiting strategy. They use the platform to highlight their unique culture and draw in potential employees with their commitment to transparency. 

“As a company, we’re constantly storytelling for our clients and we mirror that same approach on Snapchat by showcasing what individual employees’ days look like,” said Chief Heart Officer Claude Silver in an interview with Recruiting Social. 

Not only does the agency compose compelling snaps of daily life at VaynerMedia, they also directly respond to their followers’ questions for a more engaging experience.  

Image via Recruiting Social

5) Huge

Username: @hugesnaps

Digital agency Huge lets followers tag along for everything from high-profile events to the daily office grind at any of their 14 offices worldwide.

In contrast to the agency’s meticulously polished and curated Instagram presence, their Snapchat Stories feel like a backstage pass to the real action. Other digital agencies should take note: You can’t claim to fully understand a social platform until you’ve proven you can use it effectively yourself.  

6) FRED & FARID

Username: @fredfaridgroup

FRED & FARID, the marketing agency behind major campaigns for HP and Balmain, lets employees from their Paris, Shanghai, Beijing, and New York offices share vignettes of their creative endeavors.

Their Snapchat presence gives the big agency a personal touch, inviting followers to experience all the work that goes into an ad campaign first-hand.  

7) DigitasLBi

Username: @digitaslbi

How do you make an agency with 40 global offices seem less intimidating and more accessible? Start with a group selfie.

DigitasLBi has found success with their Snapchat account, sharing videos and pictures of daily life to show followers what it’s really like to work at the agency. An added bonus? Letting multiple offices participate in the platform can help boost moral and foster a sense of community. 

8) ExtrêmeSensio

Username: @extremesensio

As this French agency proves, you don’t have to be constantly attending events or rubbing shoulders with celebrities to produce an interesting and worthwhile Snapchat presence . Extrême Sensio‘s snaps offer simple, personal glimpses into the agency’s world.  

Is your agency on Snapchat? How do you use the social platform to engage your audience and highlight your company?

Most people think that the key to employee motivation is giving performance-based raises. People will work harder for an uptick in their monthly paycheck. 

But this common motivation tactic doesn’t actually do much, according to a Harvard Business Review article that detailed the findings of an analysis of 120 years of previous research. They found little correlation between pay and job satisfaction. One analysis cited found that incentives targeting extrinsic motivations actually had a negative impact on employees’ intrinsic motivation — and this was particularly true where job tasks are interesting rather than boring.

More money does not equal more motivation. Instead, intrinsic motivators are the keys to success and improved engagement in the workplace. 

So here are a few simple ways to motivate your employees when raises and rewards fail:

1) Create a Culture of Respect

Emily Post, who wrote the definitive guide on etiquette, once said, “Manners are a sensitive awareness of the feelings of others. If you have that awareness, you have good manners, no matter what fork you use.”

Studies have quantified the positive impact an atmosphere of consideration and respect has on stimulating creative output. Nothing saps energy or creativity like dreading having to work with someone who’s dismissive, short-tempered, or just plain mean.

It’s easy to get caught up in fast-approaching deadlines or in the breadth of details of a major campaign for a key client. Even so, your agency’s leadership team is responsible for maintaining a culture of personal respect.

We’re all adults, and sometimes difficult conversations must be held. But that’s not license to treat people badly. Think of all the mental health days you’ll save because none of your employees have those days where they just can’t bear going into the office and having to deal with so-and-so.

2) Give People Their Time Away

Having said that, your employees don’t exist solely in the agency environment. They’re people with lives outside of work. An important way to treat them with kindness and respect is to show them that their work-life balance matters to you. 

Keep an eye out for employees who never take their vacation time. Insist that they do so. Carrying our work on our phones has its advantages, but it keeps us tethered to the office as well. Enforce stricter boundaries between work and personal time. Do your employees really need to reply to emails sent at 10 p.m.? What’s the underlying lapse that resulted in a 10 p.m. email anyway? Address that instead of expecting employees to be on call 24/7.

When one agency owner re-interviewed his employees to learn more about them and what motivated them, he was struck how many of them are active in efforts meaningful to them outside of work, whether it was with some cause or helping their own families. And many articles on inspiring the intrinsic motivation of employees talk about finding a higher mission of the company as a motivator. But let’s be real. Very few companies are looking to cure disease and end social injustices. Even if you’re doing campaigns for the organizations that are, don’t make your agency shoulder the burden of helping your employees find meaning in their life. Just give them space and time to find and express their own personal vision of an examined life.

3) Mentor Them

Two years from now, few employees will want to keep doing the exact same work they’re doing now. Motivate employees by providing them unambiguous paths to grow professionally. Theoretical potential won’t do.

This means constructive feedback on current work, as well as consistent opportunities to take on new tasks and projects. In addition, set aside budget to pay for employees to attend formal training and conferences, both online and in-person.

Always promote from within wherever possible. If it’s not possible, that’s a big red flag that your staff isn’t getting the mentoring and growth opportunities they need. You need them to grow so your agency can continue to service ever higher quality clients, instead of having to react to high employee churn because they leave to find their opportunities elsewhere.

Leadership Matters

Implementing these motivation strategies requires a compatible agency culture. And culture starts with the agency leadership.

According to a recent Gallup study measuring the engagement of 27 million employees all over the world, managers account for 70% of the variation of employee engagement. Clearly, no single factor determines the level of employees’ motivation more than their managers. Everyone reports to someone. Don’t expect your leadership team to be the employee-motivating managers you need them to be if you’re not providing the same.

Work events are really hit or miss. Let’s be honest: How many times have you found yourself anxiously fidgeting with a paper napkin in the corner of a stuffy networking happy hour? 

That’s why I was not only relieved, but also surprised and delighted, when I attended a holiday party that featured a live, interactive version of an arcade game. An entire room had been curated to look like a video game setting, and people were dressed up as characters from it. There was a giant, real-life scoreboard, boppy electronic music, and best of all, there was no tedious small talk.

It wasn’t just another tired work event … it was an experience. And in our line of work, that sort of thing has a name: Experiential marketing.

While a surprising number of people haven’t heard of the concept, it’s kind of a big deal — there’s an entire three-day summit dedicated to it, and 65% of brands that use it say that it positively correlates with sales.

But what is it, exactly? And how has it been used effectively? We found seven of the coolest experiential marketing campaigns that really break down how it works, and how those lessons can be applied to marketers everywhere.

What Is Experiential Marketing?

According to Boston-based 451 Marketing, experiential marketing is the act of “creating unique, face-to-face branded experiences.” Instead of just sending a message to your audience — digitally or otherwise — you’re creating an opportunity to interact with your brand in person.

It might sound a bit like event marketing, which makes sense — experiential campaigns do tend to be event-centric. But there are also times when they have nothing to do with a specific event, as you’ll see from the examples we picked.

And when they are event-centric, they’re less dedicated to the type of event — like a concert, festival, conference, etc. — and focus more on interaction a specific brand. (If you already have an event in the works, you might want to check out this guide to adding experiential elements to it.)

These campaigns can take an integrated approach. The primary purpose is to experience a brand in a tangible, offline way, but you’ll still want an online dialogue around it. When you consider that 49% of folks create mobile video at branded events — 39% of which is shared on Twitter — it makes sense to incorporate a digital element. A branded hashtag, for example, can get people talking about the experience.

7 of the Coolest Experiential Marketing Campaigns We’ve Ever Seen

1) Lean Cuisine: #WeighThis

One night, when I was watching “The Bachelorette” (it’s okay — I judge myself, too) I started tallying how many commercials told women to change something about themselves. The result: I lost count after about two minutes.

That’s why it’s so refreshing to see brands like Lean Cuisine, whose marketing used to center solely on weight loss, stray from diet-centric messaging. And its #WeighThis campaign is a great example of just that.

As part of the campaign, Lean Cuisine curated a gallery of “scales” in New York’s Grand Central Station, and invited women to “weigh in.” But here’s the catch: The scales were actually small boards where women could write down how they really wanted to be weighed. And rather than focusing on their weight in pounds — or anything pertaining to body image — the women opted to be measured by things like being back in college at 55, caring for 200 homeless children each day, or being the sole provider to four sons.

What’s particularly cool about this experience is that none of the participants actually interact with a Lean Cuisine product. No one was interrupted, asked to sample something, or stopped to answer questions. In fact, no one was really asked to do anything — the display itself was enough to make people stop, observe, and then voluntarily interact.

Lean Cuisine figured out what message it wanted to send: “Sure, we make stuff that fits into a healthy lifestyle. But don’t forget about your accomplishments. That matters more than the number on the scale.” But instead of blatantly advertising that, it created an interactive experience around the message.

Still, the experience was clearly branded, to make sure people associated it with Lean Cuisine. The company’s Twitter handle and a branded hashtag were featured on the display in large text, which made it easy for people to share the experience on social media. And that definitely paid off — the entire #WeighThis campaign led to over 204 million total impressions.

Takeaways for marketers:

• Don’t interrupt — especially if you’re trying to grab someone’s attention in New York City, like Lean Cuisine was. If you create an experience that provides value to the people who pass by it, they’re more likely to participate.
• Figure out the message you really want to your brand to send — that may or may not be directly tied to an actual product, and it might be something that your brand hasn’t said before. Then, build an experience around it.

2) Google: “Building a Better Bay Area” 

Corporate philanthropy is definitely on the rise. Between 2012-2014, 56% of companies increased charitable giving, and Google is no exception. But when the search engine giant gave away $5.5 million to Bay Area nonprofits, it let the public decide where that money would go — in an unconventional, interactive way.

Google allowed people to cast their votes online, but they also wanted to involve the Bay Area community in a tangible way. So they installed large, interactive posters — in places like bus shelters, food trucks, and restaurants — that locals could use to vote for a cause.

Source: 72andSunny

In the video below, the narrator notes that this experience reaches “people when they had the time to make a difference.” That’s a big thing about experiential marketing: It allows people to interact with a brand when they have the time. Maybe that’s why 72% percent of consumers say they positively view brands that provide great experiences.

And that concept works in this experience, because it takes advantage of a “you’re-already-there” mentality. In San Francisco, finding people waiting for the bus or going to food trucks is pretty much a given. So while they were “already there,” Google set up a few opportunities:

1. To learn about and vote for local nonprofits
2. To interact with the brand in a way that doesn’t require using its products
3. To indirectly learn about Google’s community outreach

With the help of the online voting integration — and a branded hashtag: #GoogleImpactChallenge — the campaign ended up generating 400,000 votes over the course of about three and a half weeks.

Takeaways for marketers:

• Create a branded hashtag that participants can use to share the experience on social media. Then, make sure you’ve integrated an online element that allows people to participate when they learn about it this way.
• Keep it local! It’s always nice when a large corporation gives some love to its community — in fact, 72% of folks say that would tell friends and family about a business’s efforts like these.
• Remember the “you’re already there” approach. Find out where your audience is already hanging out and engage them there, instead of trying to get them to take action where they don’t usually spend their time.

3) Misereor: Charity Donation Billboard

When was the last time you used cash to pay for something?

Go ahead. I’ll wait.

Tough to remember, right? We’re kind of a species of “mindless swipers” — globally, an estimated 357 billion non-cash transactions are made each year. And knowing how often we whip out our cards, German relief NGO Miseror decided to put our bad habit to good use with its charitable giving billboard.

It was what they called a “social swipe”: Set up in aLOirports, these digital posters would display images of some problems that Miseror works to resolve — hunger was depicted with a loaf of bread, for example.

But the screen was equipped with a card reader, and when someone went to swipe a card — for a small fee of 2€ — the image moved to make it look like the card was cutting a slice of bread.

Even cooler? On the user’s bank statement, there would be a thank-you note from Miseror, with a link to turn their one-time 2€ donation into a monthly one.

Needless to say, this experience required a lot of coordination — with banks, airports, and a mobile payment platform. Because of that, the experience couldn’t just be a one-time occurrence. The people who interacted with were later reminded of it during a pretty common occurrence: receiving a bank statement.

Takeaways for marketers:

• Visually represent the impact of participating in the experience. People interacting with this display were shown exactly where their money was going — like slicing bread for a hungry family. (Infographics work nicely here, too — check out our templates.)
• Partner with another brand to create an even better experience. In this instance, Miseror worked with Stripe.com for the payment technology, and with financial institutions to get a branded message on users’ bank statements. (And stay tuned — we’ll talk more about the value of co-branding here later.)
• Don’t be afraid to nurture your leads. Even if you don’t use something like a branded hashtag to integrate the experience with an online element, find a way to remind someone that they participated.

4) Guinness: Guinness Class 

One of my favorite types of marketing is the “aspirational” kind — or as the Harvard Business Review defines it, marketing for brands that “fall into the upper-right quadrant.” Think: Luxury cars, haute couture, and private jets. Things we aspire to owning.

It’s that last one — private jets — that set apart the Guinness Class experience. For a few weeks, ambassadors dressed in Guinness-branded flight attendant uniforms entered bars across the U.K., where they surprised unsuspecting customers with a chance to win all kinds of prizes.

In order to participate, bar-goers had to order a pint of Guinness. After doing that, they would shake a prize-generating mobile tablet that displayed what they won. They could win everything from passport cases to keychains, but one player per night would get the ultimate prize: A free trip to Dublin — via private jet, of course — with four mates.

What we like about this experience was its ability to associate Guinness with something aspirational, like traveling by private jet. And according to Nick Britton, marketing manager for Guinness Western Europe, that held the brand up as one that doesn’t “settle for the ordinary.”

That’s important — and can be tricky — for a brand that’s nearly 257 years old: to maintain its authenticity, while also adapting to a changing landscape and audience. But Guinness didn’t have to change anything about its actual products in this case. Instead, it created an experience that addressed changing consumer preferences — for example, the fact that 78% of millennials would rather spend money on a memorable experience or event than buy desirable things. 

Takeaways for marketers:

• Think about the things your target audience might aspire to, and that you’d like to associate with your brand. Then, build an experience around that.
• If you do require a product purchase in order to participate in the experience, make it convenient. In this case, people had to buy a pint of Guinness to win a prize, but they were already in a bar that served it.
   
  

5) GE: Healthymagination

Think experiential marketing is just for B2C brands? Think again — 67% of B2B marketers say that events make for one of the most effective strategies they use.

That’s why it made sense for GE to invite industry professionals to experience its Healthymagination initiative. The point of the campaign was to promote global healthcare solutions, especially in developing parts of the world.

Source: agencyEA

To help people see the impact of this initiative, GE worked with agencyEA to create “movie sets” that represented different healthcare environments where Healthymagination work took place: a rural African clinic, an urban clinic, and an emergency room. The idea was that doctors would share their stories — live, in front of 700 attendees — that illustrated how GE’s healthcare technology played a major role in each setting.

When people measure the success of experiential marketing, one thing they measure is how much of a dialogue it prompted. And that makes sense — 71% of participants share these experiences. In GE’s case, the point ofHealthymagination was to get people talking about a pretty important, but uncomfortable issue: Access to healthcare in impoverished parts of the world.

But when you create a way for people to become physically immersed in the issue, it also allows them to acknowledge a topic that isn’t always easy to talk about. And that can have quite an impact — this particular campaign, in fact, won a Business Marketing Association Tower Award.

But fear not: That concept also works for not-so-serious, but equally uncomfortable discussion topics. Just look at how well it worked for Charmin.

Takeaways for marketers: 

• Experiential marketing does work for B2B brands. Think about who you’re selling to, and create an engagement that would not only attract that audience, but also present an opportunity for them to experience your product or service first-hand.
• Get uncomfortable. If your business centers around something that’s difficult or “taboo” to talk about, creating an experience around it can prompt a conversation. But make sure you keep it respectful — don’t make people so uncomfortable that they have nothing good to say about your brand.

6) Facebook: Facebook IQ Live

Facebook — who also owns Instagram — has always understood how much data it has on how people use these platforms. For that reason, it created the Facebook IQ Live experience.

For this experience, that data was used to curate live scenes that depicted the data. Among them was the IQ Mart: A “retail” setting that represented the online shopper’s conversion path when using social media for buying decisions. There was also a quintessential Instagram cafe, chock full of millennial-esque photo opportunities and people snapping them — latte art and all.

The campaign wasn’t just memorable. It also proved to be really helpful — 93% of attendees (and there were over 1500 of them) said that the experience provided them with valuable insights on how to use Facebook for business.

But what makes those insights so valuable? Momentum Worldwide, the agency behind Facebook IQ Live, puts it perfectly: “When we understand what matters to people … we can be what matters to them.” In other words, we can shape our messaging around the things that are important to our target audiences.

And by creating this experience, Facebook was able to accomplish that for its own brand. In creating this experience, it also created a positive brand perception for a few audiences — including, for example, the people who might have been unsure of how to use the platform for business.

Takeaways for marketers:

• Build an experience for people who aren’t sure about how they would use your product or service. Find ways for them to interact with your brand in a way that creatively spells out how it can benefit them.
• Bring your data to life. We love numbers, but creating a live installment that illustrates them can help people understand exactly what they mean. And since 65% of people think that live events help them understand a product, this setting is a great place to do it.

7) Zappos: “Google Cupcake Ambush”

To help promote its new photo app, Google took to the streets of Austin, Texas, with a cupcake truck in tow. But people didn’t pay for the cupcakes with dollars — instead, the only accepted currency was a photo taken with said app.

And really, what’s better than a free-ish cupcake? We’ll tell you what: A free-ish watch or pair of shoes.

That was the answer from Zappos, anyway. That’s why the brand playfully “ambushed” Google’s food truck experience with one of its own: A box-on-feet — strategically placed right next to Google’s setup, of course — that, when fed a cupcake, would dispense a container with one of the aforementioned goodies.

In order to reap the rewards of the Zappos box, people had to have a cupcake. So while only one brand came away from the experience with an epic sugar high, both got plenty of exposure. And since 74% of consumers say a branded experience makes them more likely to buy the products being promoted, Google and Zappos both stood to gain new customers from this crowd.

But what we really like about this example is how much it shows the value of experiential co-branding. Because Google and Zappos pursue two different lines of business, they weren’t sabotaging each other, but rather they were promoting each other (which is what happens when you pick the right co-marketer).

Takeaways for marketers:

• Use experiential marketing as a co-branding opportunity:
• Pick a partner with an audience that would be interested in your brand, but might otherwise be difficult to reach.
• Make sure your partner would benefit from your audience, too — you want the experience to be a win-win-win: for you, your co-brand, and the consumer.
• When you do pick a marketing partner, build an experience that requires an “exchange” of each brand’s product or service. That way, the audience is more likely to interact with both of you.

Clearly, taking some very calculated risks worked out pretty well for these brands. So when it comes to creating an experience with your brand, don’t be afraid to think outside of the box — and don’t be afraid to work together on it with someone else.

Invest some time into thinking about the ways people could interact with you, even if it seems a little nutty. If it’s aligned with what you do and executed thoughtfully, people will be talking — in the best way possible.

Have you seen a really great experiential marketing campaign? Share with us in the comments.

There’s a big difference between having a strong work ethic and being a workaholic.

When you have a strong work ethic, it means you have a strong sense of responsibility, you put in your best effort, and you care about the quality of your work — but you also cut yourself a break every once in a while to recharge. Workaholics, on the other time, have a hard time taking breaks, cutting themselves off from work, and relaxing.

But using your vacation time to relax and recharge is important for your physical and mental health and for your overall productivity at work. No one can operate on high all of the time without eventually burning out, and that’s neither good for you nor your team. 

So if you find yourself having trouble relaxing and not working when you go on vacation, take a look at the infographic below from OnlineHealth. It’ll walk you through how to prepare for your vacation so leaving work won’t be as stressful, how to avoid the temptation to work when you’re supposed to be relaxing, and how to settle back into work again afterward without feeling guilty.

Follow this advice and I’ll bet you’ll feel happier and healthier in your personal life, and happier, more productive, and more creative at work.