Insight Categories: Marketing

About three years ago, while preparing for a week-long camping trip with my son, I came across Icebreaker, a privately held outdoor and sport clothing designer. In the midst of a two-decade long love affair with Patagonia, I was initially skeptical of this new, smaller brand. However, those barriers quickly came down as Icebreaker pulled me through a perfectly executed “buyer’s journey,” driven by valuable content that subtly wove the firm’s unique brand differentiators (UBD) into every touchpoint.

Here’s how they hooked me:

STEP 1 OF THE BUYER’S JOURNEY: MAKE ME AWARE OF YOUR BRAND

Generating awareness for your brand starts with really understanding target audiences and knowing where to find them (or where they will most likely find you). I discovered Icebreaker while flipping through Backpacker magazine, which may not have the largest distribution in the market, but is an essential channel for reaching customers likely to purchase.

Rather than using recognizable, world-renowned athletes as its face, Icebreaker grabbed my attention through beautiful, custom photography of regular-looking people who are visibly passionate about the outdoors. The images depict a lifestyle I can actually relate to, helping to establish an emotional connection and sense of common purpose.

This striking and stylized photography is featured on Icebreaker’s Instagram feed, which is carefully curated to weave in elements of the brand story and differentiators. In the images, Icebreaker’s products aren’t even the focal point—they’re just part of the story.

Intrigued, I hit “follow” on their Instagram account and called it a day.

STEP 2 OF THE BUYER’S JOURNEY: SOLVE MY PROBLEM

Once a brand has captured attention, it’s crucial to provide value to target audiences via multiple channels and touchpoints.

Shortly after I heard about Icebreaker for the first time, YouTube recommended a video about open ocean swimming for me that looked interesting. This turned out to be part of Icebreaker’s “Adventures in Nature” series, and I watched several other videos on paddle boarding and slackline yoga before moving on to videos about Icebreaker’s backstory, how their clothing is made, and their design philosophy.

Icebreaker also uses its blog, Southern Chronicles, to nurture potential and existing customers through well-written and entertaining content. It maps to the underlying wants, needs, and desires of its target customer segments without hitting readers over the head with cheap marketing messages. Described as “Tales of people, purpose and the pursuit of possibilities, conceived and curated in the southernmost corner of the globe,” the blog includes these sections they describe as:

1. Features: Monthly short stories, photo essays, reviews and articles we find interesting and worth sharing.

2. Pioneers: Naive intelligence; tales told by the people who chase down purpose and possibilities.

3. Adventures: Stories on journeying, travel, culture and roaming the wide open world.

4. 5 Minutes: Short interviews with people about people, about art, about work and about life.

There are very few consumer brand blogs that offer enough value to be worth following—but for me, someone that fits into Icebreaker’s target market, Southern Chronicles could be a frequent stop on my evening browsing session as I look for guidance and inspiration to tackle my next outdoor adventure.

I typed in my email address and hit “subscribe.”

STEP 3 OF THE BUYER’S JOURNEY: CONVINCE ME TO PULL OUT MY WALLET

When marketing to leads at the “bottom of the funnel,” Icebreaker uses a carefully blended alchemy of brand-created and co-created content to help seal the deal when it comes to driving a purchase.

They do this by smartly leveraging user-generated content, including real customer stories and reviews—incredibly important to an online retailer—to create an authentic brand story. Instead of censoring reviews on their products, Icebreaker openly addresses them and leverages lessons learned in product development.

Much like Patagonia’s website, Icebreaker’s does a great job weaving content and storytelling into the mix at the product level. This is particularly critical as 58% of smartphone users visit a retailer’s site before buying something in-store (eMarketer). Icebreaker’s website provides technical details of how the product was manufactured as well as more of their stunning yet relatable imagery.

I was sold—it was time to add that merino wool shirt to my cart and check out.

Today, going from good to great as a brand requires a well-crafted strategy, a set of supporting tactics, and a commitment to creating content that is authentic to your brand. Understanding and tapping into this buyer’s journey has allowed Icebreaker to stand apart in a giant sea of sameness—and even sway loyal followers of competitor brands.

There is no secret sauce to this approach, but there are plenty of roadmaps. My favorite is “Storyscaping” by Gaston Legorburu and Darren McColl, which is a guide to great brand storytelling, exceptional user experience, and providing essential value in a hyper-competitive, omnichannel world. Getting this right isn’t easy; however, once you’ve figured it out you can drive down acquisition costs, increase customer retention, and differentiate yourself from the competition in a meaningful way almost impossible to copy.

If a colleague says they’re going to a scrum and your response is, “I didn’t know you played rugby,” then this blog is for you.

Over the past decade, the buzz phrase “Agile Scrum” has taken project management by storm in many industries. Here’s why it’s a perfect fit for Marketing and Advertising, too.

Agile is a set of principles perfect for projects lacking clear-cut solutions or requirements, as it allows you to course correct while navigating unexpected obstacles. This fluidity and flexibility helps you get to the best solution for complex projects with multiple possible solutions—precisely the types of projects creative agencies undertake for their clients.

To sustainably improve outcomes for our clients, Grafik has adopted an Agile framework on select projects, collaboratively leveraging our expertise across departments to test and retest different solutions until the best one—or as we call it, “The Right Idea”—wins.

Below are five examples of how Grafik is implementing Agile Scrum, plus the positive outcomes we’ve seen:

1. Include the whole team in early, critical meetings.
Ever play telephone? One person whispers a sentence to the next, and passes it on and on, until the last person is left with a garbled message that doesn’t sound remotely like the original sentence. That’s what often happens when team members aren’t at the meeting where ground rules are set and goals are hardened. By including the whole team from the get-go, everyone understands the key objectives and known roadblocks.

Result: Our team gets even more energized and excited about projects when we have the opportunity to hear directly from the client at a kick-off meeting. This results in more individual ownership of tasks and more collaboration with other SMEs.

2. Hold meaningful daily stand-ups with the whole team.
The purpose of stand-ups is to inspect daily progress against goals and to re-plan, mitigate risks, and make trade-offs. Train your team to frame their updates in terms of the end goal when they say what they worked on yesterday, what they will work on today, and what might stop them from working on those things. Clearly recognized interdependencies ensure that each person is accountable to the entire team.

Result: After a little practice, project stand-ups become faster, easier to run, and a way for teammates to self-organize and help one another. A mere 15-minute meeting each morning helps reduce miscues and wasted time during the rest of the day, and results in faster work increments between client-ready deliverables.

3. Collaborate more with the client.
Traditionally, creative agencies work in radio silence before presenting a Don Draper-style big reveal. The “WOW” factor is meant to elicit “oohs” and “aahs”… but what if the client is underwhelmed? How can we mitigate hours of work going to waste? To best leverage time, budget, and resources and ensure an end deliverable that will be enthusiastically welcomed, the Agile process builds in more frequent client reviews as part of the process. However, make sure the client understands that these reviews are of work-in-progress—feedback should be about general direction and avoiding land mines, not tweaks to the details.

Result: Sharing work-in-progress ensures direct alignment with client expectations. We don’t need to share the full-blown deliverable—sometimes it’s as simple as sending over a paragraph or two of copy, a section of a web template, a suggested brand color palette, or an example target persona to better set expectations. The final presentation of the refined deliverable still has “WOW” factor impact, with an increased level of certainty that the client will be happy with the work. The added benefit is that revisions are simpler and feedback rounds are lessened, saving time and resources and boosting morale.

4. Set time constraints.
This doesn’t refer to the number of hours allotted for a job, but rather breaking the overall project into what we call “sprints.” Sprints help us take an incremental approach, breaking up the full project deliverable into smaller chunks, with the team delivering a piece of the full project at the end of each time-boxed sprint.

Result: Focusing on a single increment means no one on the team becomes overwhelmed by the end deliverable (especially for large, deadline-driven, multi-channel campaigns). The client gets to see consistent, tangible progress, helping to build trust in the agency partnership.

5. Reflect, review, revise.
A big part of Agile is to surface problems quickly, find ways to fix them, and do it! Take the time to hold internal retrospective meetings—it’s a safe space for the entire team to discuss problems from the previous sprint, and find ways to take a different approach in the next sprint. We use a simple framework for each retrospective meeting: a table that outlines our “Likes,” “Lacks,” “Longed For,” and “Learned Experiences.”

Result: Growing and learning together strengthens morale, improves the work, and helps to keep both the agency and client happy.

Agile learning is a lifelong process. Any Agile trainer will tell you they come across companies who’ve used an Agile Scrum framework for years and are still improving. Committing to a few changes at a time will help transition your agency to a more Agile mindset.

Want more specifics about how Grafik uses Agile for client projects? Check out this recent post from our Chief Digital Officer about how “perpetual beta”—an approach that goes hand-in-hand with Agile—results in continuous value and higher performance for websites.

There have been numerous ads on how IBM’s Watson can help virtually every business from the automotive industry and insurance companies to tax preparation services, but have you heard how Watson can help you protect your identity?

Yes, our client, Identity Guard, is the first identity protection service to integrate Watson to help protect customers’ personal information. They have also leveraged Watson’s groundbreaking technology to better manage customers’ social media reputation (say goodbye to those regretful Facebook pictures from your buddy’s bachelor party!) and even join the fight against cyberbullying. Imagine a world where no child is ever harassed or threatened online again… now that’s “the right idea.”

This revolutionary partnership was unveiled at last month’s IBM InterConnect conference in Las Vegas and we here at Grafik have worked with Identity Guard on marketing some of their Watson integration work, including the production of this video that was showcased at the Vegas show.

We’re proud to have had the opportunity to spread the news on Identity Guard’s work with Watson and look forward to what “right ideas” this powerhouse partnership can come up with next.

Data is everywhere—and rather than simply using it to identify audiences and measure success (as we must), it can be the inspiration for wildly creative marketing executions.

One brand getting creative with data driven marketing is the music-streaming service Spotify, which rolled out its largest global advertising campaign yet last November. Instead of simply touting cold, dull figures (such as its 50 million paid subscribers or average daily listening time of 148 minutes per user), they chose to tell relevant, timely stories with their data. Large billboards showcased interesting, albeit bizarre, listening habits of local users with the message, “Thanks, 2016. It’s been weird.”

One UK billboard read: “Dear 3,749 people who streamed ‘It’s The End of the World as We Know It’ the day of the Brexit vote…Hang in there.”

Another one in Manhattan: “To the person in NoLIta who started listening to holiday music way back in June…You really jingle all the way, huh?”

And, my personal favorite: “Dear person who played ‘Sorry’ 42 times on Valentine’s Day…What did you do?”

Images by Spotify via Google

The campaign continued with an end-of-year e-mail to customers summarizing his or her Spotify usage statistics, along with a “Top 100 Songs of 2016” playlist based on his or her most frequently played songs. When I received my own “2016 In Music” e-mail of personalized quirky facts and figures, I immediately shared the stats with friends and family, eagerly pointing out how various figures related to important people/events in my life. My parents got a good laugh that my top played track was a Billy Joel tune—proof that their love for the Piano Man has been passed down to me after years of subliminal grooming—and Spotify got free word-of-mouth marketing.

These campaigns celebrate users’ individuality to generate buzz, with Spotify as the common denominator to every discussion. Spotify continues to build off this approach in 2017, shifting its focus to poke fun at the wacky names users create for playlists.

Images by Spotify via Google

Spotify also tapped into its celebrity rolodex to release video ads of artists reacting to the unusual names of playlists that feature their songs.

In one video ad, the band DNCE ponders the selection of their upbeat dance anthem “Body Moves” for a playlist named “Play this at my funeral.” “That’s a pretty messed up funeral,” muses lead singer Joe Jonas, as a tearful procession attempts to dance to the song while carrying a casket.

By celebrating the “weirdness” of its user base, Spotify is humanizing itself as a music brand, rather than a technology company—a goal it has been striving towards since rebranding in 2015. Other than prompting users to create playlists, the subtle call to action is for users to promote their own individuality and, in the process, Spotify. As one of our other posts on content marketing observed, “Content marketing makes your audience brand ambassadors without their even realizing it,” just as I did when I blasted my Spotify-branded “2016 In Music” stats to anyone that would listen.

Think of your own brand: are you leveraging data driven marketing? Or are your current marketing campaigns frenzied because they lack analytical insights that make them more relevant to your audience? Perhaps you’ve been sitting on a mountain of “useless” internal user data—could you reframe your big data in a fun, unique way to tell your brand’s story the way Spotify has?

Twitter’s acquisition of Periscope for slightly less than $100 million in March of 2015 should have been a signal to many analysts that the death of the platform has been greatly exaggerated. Twitter has a huge user base and a unique use case—you don’t use it in the same way you use Facebook, Instagram, or any other social media platform. It is the perfect global chat room where people get engaged in one-to-many conversations about topics they find interesting, whether it’s the global war on terrorism, the presidential election, or an NFL football game.

The NFL didn’t have to select Twitter when it bid out the rights to live stream 10 NFL Thursday Night games this season. It had many suitors, among them Amazon, Verizon, and Yahoo! While each could broadcast the content to millions, none have the same reach or capabilities as Twitter. If the goal is to drive fan or viewer engagement with the content, then Twitter is the natural platform, particularly given the recent and soon-to-be implemented changes Twitter has made from a user experience perspective.

For example, users watching the game will be able to attach media, such as images or videos, to their tweets without counting against the 140 characters used to describe the content. So when your favorite player completes a pass or gets a touchdown, you can have your break-the-internet gif ready, or a video of you giving that player a shoutout! Another thing to consider is that Twitter was designed as a mobile-first platform, whereas Amazon, Verizon, Yahoo!, or even Facebook weren’t. Although Twitter only has 320 million active users, it has a global audience reach of up to 800 million when you include users who visit the service but don’t sign-in. So if the NFL wants to increase its global brand reach, Twitter may be able to help them accomplish what they couldn’t through NFL Europe and traditional.

Twitter didn’t go into this deal without thinking through its potential to change the trajectory of the platform either. While user-generated content is great—and video is king among it—branded, licensed and syndicated content could be a big part of the platform’s future. People have been talking for a long time about the ability to interact with premium content, specifically “live chatting” with others while watching favorite shows like Game of Thrones, and while there have been lots of interesting provider experiments to facilitate that, it’s never really come to fruition, perhaps until now.

Another thing to consider is the potential for brands and advertising. While Twitter historically struggles with driving advertising dollars, this NFL experiment could be the answer. People have been engaging in conversations about NFL games on Twitter since platform launch. Twitter can leverage all those tweets to push out highly targeted ads for merchandise associated with your favorite team. The same model applies to other areas—ads for Hillary or Donald based on your election tweets, for example. The volume of contextual data at their disposal for targeting is amazing.

I don’t think this is a one-off experiment for Twitter; I think it’s the future of the platform.

Perhaps Twitter will be the Twitch for premium content in the future. The NFL is certainly aware of the shift in consumption patterns, and are thinking through their strategy for renegotiating rights—digital rights in particular—once their existing agreements with broadcasters expire in 2021. The NFL is a savvy organization; you can be certain that they’ve thought through this. Selecting Twitter was a very, very calculated decision, particularly given the fact that others bid substantially higher for the rights.

I’ve noticed a disturbing trend in my inbox—creepy sales emails. I’m sure plenty of you also receive these, and like you, I shake my head and hit the delete button. When an email comes in with a subject line “Should I stay or should I go,” I wonder—what was the thought process that went into crafting such a lead in? Even worse, when the follow up email comes through that has the opening line of “Don’t mean to be a bother, but haven’t heard back from you after my previous e-mail”—I seriously wonder which customer engagement playbook this person is reading. If you want to engage me, that is not the way to do it. And it is certainly no way to put your brand’s best foot forward and make a great first impression.

A few tips to those who send cold sales emails:

1. Be creative—not creepy: The goal is to persuade me to open your email, not hit the delete key. Craft subject lines that have a positive and professional tone. Also, be descriptive, not mysterious, as to the content of your email, as this will set the stage for why yours (out of the hundreds I receive) is worth reading.

2. Be respectful—not irritating: Sending increasingly aggressive notes about why I haven’t responded to you is irritating. It might be time to try a new approach, considering I have not yet engaged. Instead, find a way to engage in a respectful manner, or better yet, share helpful insights that might be of use. A great way to do this is to pass along interesting articles, video clips, and points of view you feel would be relevant to my world, and that also tie to your service/solution. I think HubSpot does a fantastic job of being a central hub of marketing automation knowledge and sharing this content to build a relationship with me. As Gary Vaynerchuk accurately advocates, “You have to constantly give value to others before asking them to buy your products and services.”

3. Be smart—not smarmy: Admit it, I don’t know you and you don’t know me. So don’t act like you are my new best friend. Instead, do your homework and engage me on a topic that I’m interested in (hint: look at my LinkedIn Groups). Granted, this will take a bit of effort, but it indicates you took the extra step to develop a smart, authentic approach to grab my attention. At the end of the day, you and the brand you represent must make a great first impression. When done well, it can set the stage for a meaningful and profitable engagement.

The Washington Post interviewed our Chief Digital Officer, Mikah Sellers, on digital marketing and the 2016 presidential election. Mikah weighs in on the rise of new platforms such as Facebook Live and Snapchat, and how technology has changed the way campaigns connect with voters. Watch the interview below:

With over 100 million daily active users watching more than 6 billion videos a day, Snapchat—the mobile photo messaging app—is one of the fastest-growing social networks around. Of its 26 million US users, 86 percent fall in the 13 to 34 age range. 77 percent of college students use Snapchat daily, and 58 percent say they would purchase a brand’s products or service if they received a coupon via Snapchat. It’s easy to see why you should be adding Snapchat to your marketing strategy, if you haven’t done so already.

Snapchat’s easy-to-use platform is a fun and creative way to surprise and delight your audience while growing brand awareness and loyalty. To get started, here are eight ways you can engage your Snapchat audience:

1. Bring Your Audience to Special Events

Give your audience direct access to a live event no matter where they are in the world. Whether it’s a grand opening, trade show, awards night, or charity dinner, invite your audience to attend alongside you and your team.

During the 2014 All-Star Game, the NBA launched its branded account on Snapchat. Fans could now get up close and personal with players behind the scenes and during the game. The NBA account was so popular that the MLB, NHL, and NFL followed suit.

2. Delight with Exclusive Content

What sets Snapchat apart is its ability to deliver private content that only exists for 24 hours before disappearing into thin (internet) air. The limited-time nature of these posts provides the recipient with a sense of exclusivity unmatched by other social platforms. Take advantage of this capability by offering your followers access to special content they might not see on other social platforms. Try teasing an upcoming product launch to generate buzz around your new offering by delivering it directly to a follower’s inbox.

A great example of this is DJ Khaled’s launch of his online store, wethebeststore.com. Before the launch, he generated significant chatter by sharing design comps and sample pieces with his followers. The pieces featured his signature Snapchat phrases and emojis.

3. Share Your Story

Snapchat’s videos are short and snappy, which make them easy to consume. Your followers can watch your Snap Story while waiting for their coffee, or for class, so they can stay engaged with your brand without realizing it. By creating short stories you can stay at the forefront of your audience’s mind.

Try micro-vlogging about your product or services. Make sure to keep it casual, fun, focus on brand awareness, and do not pitch.

4. Offer Incentives

Who doesn’t love a giveaway? Offer your Snapchat followers giveaways, promotions, and limited time sales. Remember, 58% of college students stated that they were more likely to buy from a company if they received a coupon via Snapchat.

Ask your audience to share photos of themselves with your products for access to exclusive sales. This way you get your followers to share your product with their followers. In the words of DJ Khaled this is a “Major Key to success.”

For inspiration, see how GrubHub, the restaurant delivery service, uses Snapchat to send users special offers, funny doodles, and even job offerings.

Source: Content by Skyword

5. Take Your Followers Behind the Scenes

With Snapchat, you can provide insider content to your community, capture birthday parties, Friday happy hours, or company trips. Showing off your great company culture will help you stand apart from your competitors and add a human element to your brand.

You can even rotate control of your Snapchat between a few trusted employees. Let a developer walk your audience through her day-to-day routine and then pass it on to your sales team or marketing team the next day.

6. Partner with Influencers

Partner with social media influencers to spread awareness to a demographic that’s hard to reach through traditional media. Find an influencer that aligns with your brand and use them to help grow your audience. This could be as simple as an influencer asking her audience to follow your account or it could involve a Snapchat takeover where she can teach mini-classes or create engaging content.

In 2014 Sour Patch Kids partnered with social media star Logan Paul for a “Real-life Sour Patch Kid” Snapchat campaign.

Source: SayDaily

Paul, who has over 700,000 Twitter followers, directed his social media followers to the Sour Patch Kids Snapchat account so they could see his wacky pranks throughout the week.

7. Your Brand – Filtered

Snapchat’s Geofilters are simple to use and easy to create. If you have a storefront, receive foot traffic, or host events, creating a custom geofilter is a great option for your brand. These filters are also fairly affordable and will do wonders for brand awareness.

Source: Delmondo

8. Have Fun and Snap On

Snapchat’s authentic platform can make an impact with your followers and strengthen your brand’s relationship with its audience. It’s important to keep in mind that your followers on Snapchat want to see your brand’s personality. Stay professional and on message but also keep your content “raw.” Encourage conversation amongst your team to come up with creative campaigns and get your team’s “Snap Artist” involved with doodles and drawings. Also, don’t forget to share your Snap Code on your current social media channels to get your existing audience engaged.

Many of our clients grapple with whether or not to restrict access to, or “gate,” online thought leadership assets and resources such as eBooks and whitepapers. They want to know: what qualifies a piece of content as form-worthy? Will gating content discourage engagement? What are we supposed to do with the information a lead supplies on a form? These are all valid questions. But the form game has changed.

While marketers may be using forms more than ever in the digital space to capture lead information, what they’re using them for has evolved. Traditionally, website forms were used to generate hulking databases of potential customers and cold call lists. But as user participation has emerged as a major force in digital marketing, leading brands are using forms to trigger automated, personalized touch points with audiences.

Although these personalized touchpoints can sometimes be creepy, they can also be really fun. Personalization gave us jib-jab dancing elf videos with our faces in them. It gave us #ShareACoke (more of a DIY take on personalization, but you get my drift). It gave us retargeting display ads—needy, omnipresent ghosts of our abandoned online shopping carts, maybe—but just pull the trigger and buy those rainbow tube socks, already!

And personalization works for brands. Businesses that personalize web experiences see an average 19% increase in sales (MarketingProfs), and personalized marketing emails receive 29% higher open rates and 41% higher click-through rates (Experian). Companies brilliantly using marketing automation—the nervous system spanning the customer lifecycle of awareness, retention and advocacy—really pack a punch via personalized lines of communication.

But you can’t have personalization without data. And many marketers, especially in the B2B space, are forced to collect user data not through trendy mobile app sensors or expensive behavioral datasets, but the old-school way—via user-provided website forms.

Marketers hate lead generation forms because Internet users hate them, and Internet users hate them because, well, why buy the cow (offer up my identity) when I can get the milk (content/information) for free (probably somewhere else online)?

Here’s why: because the most rewarding type of transaction is one in which both sides have gained something. A successful content strategy must include gated information so that both marketer and customer feel as if they’ve received value. 

For marketers, the value in using forms is obvious—being able to convert a user puts a face on an otherwise anonymous IP address, kicking off a string of engaging, personalized interactions and earning us unicorn-magic levels of brand love.

For leads, though, the value proposition is more complicated. They have to decide whether or not content is worth giving up personal information (we call this “information currency”), and often, the answer is “no.” Marketing pundit David Meerman Scott sees between 20 and 50 times more downloads on assets without any barriers; and long forms (more than 5 fields) in particular tend to kill conversion rates.

Often, however, what marketers lose in viewership volume after gating their content is regained in value—website visitors interested enough to fill out a form are hopefully more qualified, down-funnel leads than your average window shopper browsing the web.

So, which content assets should you restrict access to with a form?
Not all content is created equal, and as a marketer you should have a healthy mix of both gated and ungated content.

Some teams use a content pillar approach, which involves creating a variety of free, “snackable” content assets—such as blogs, infographics, and videos—to grab viewers’ attention and drive them towards a more substantial, “pillar” piece of content that is gated with a form. If you want to evaluate individual assets, though, this process flowchart from Hubspot is particularly helpful in showing which content deserves to be gated (as a rule, I don’t recommended ever gating infographics, press releases or blog posts).

You’ve gated your most valuable content—now what?
The worst thing a marketer can do with form submission data is nothing. Don’t ignore the information or preferences a customer has given you—that “information currency” deposit was a gift, remember?  In addition to providing immediate value through the content they’ve accessed, form submissions should trigger automated, personalized campaigns (or, the most relevant combination of email, social media, mobile, direct mail, etc. for your business). The lead has taken the first step to connect with your brand by filling out a form—the rest is up to you.

My body sits comfortably in an Aeron chair in suburban Maryland. But my eyes tell me I’m on a decrepit space station on the forgotten fringes of the galaxy, staring into the jaws of a 9-foot-tall alien. I instinctively turn away to remind myself that it’s only a game. But I still see space station, and a monstrous hand closing in on my face. Because in virtual reality, there is no looking away.

And there’s no looking away from VR’s ability to create visceral, immersive experiences. Formerly relegated to 1990s sci-fi films and motion sickness-inducing misfires like Nintendo’s Virtual Boy, the technology is finally catching up to the vision. Today, with the amount of competition in the industry, VR technology is more accessible than ever. There’s never been a better time for marketers with imagination to tap into its potential.

When done right, virtual reality creates a powerful feeling of “being there” that’s hard to describe until you’ve experienced it firsthand. HBO used it to masterful effect as part of a “Game of Thrones” traveling exhibition, in which guests strapped on an Oculus Rift and took a simulated ride up the 700-foot Wall at Castle Black. Adding surround sound, cold winds, and shaking floors, the illusion was convincing and unforgettable. You can see it at the 1:08 mark in this video:

But VR’s potential goes way beyond fun and games. Imagine you’re a builder, just beginning construction on a spectacular new development. How do you convince customers to buy something that won’t exist for another year? You could rely on a few static renderings and some flowery prose to sell them on your vision. Or let them explore an interactive 3D version, where they can play with the lights, look out the windows, and see themselves living there. And you might be more likely to see them signing a check.

It sounds futuristic, but this stuff is happening now. Architects are using it to preview new designs inside and out. And live broadcasts of concerts and even political debates give viewers a 360-degree view of the action. What could be next? Fashion displays that allow shoppers to “try on” outfits instantly. Government tourism boards offering previews of their country’s attractions from half a world away. Or schools that use VR to recruit students who aren’t able to tour the campus in person.

As virtual reality comes closer to actual reality, the potential for marketers to create engaging experiences is only going to grow. And that’s true whether you’re test-driving flying cars, selling tropical vacation homes, or dodging hungry aliens.

Language is evolving. Oxford Dictionaries just named ‘Face with Tears of Joy’  as 2015’s word of the year to a crowd of dismayed logophiles (who are all apparently more ), and ushered in what is, without a doubt, the age of the emoji. Yes, the Millennials have officially managed to ruin language; add that to the list next to art and rock n’ roll. But before you lose all faith in humanity and lock yourself in your underground apocalypse bunker, allow me to enlighten you about the linguistic powerhouse that are emoji.

The Age of the Emoji

Unpronounceable but never misunderstood, the emoji is a language barrier wrecking tour-de-force descending from design heaven to deliver us from miscommunicated emotions (), subtle sexual innuendo, and the hassle of typing out “Do you want to get tacos with me?” (). A searchable hashtag on both Tumblr and Instagram, emoji are the future communication style of choice for today’s Millennial consumer group. Data collected by Oxford Dictionaries shows that, though existing in the English language since 1997, the usage of the word emoji has more than tripled in 2015. A similar spike can be seen on Google Trends.

Obviously a phenomenon too spectacular to pass up, the question now is how to use this cultural trend in brand marketing while remaining authentic and without it feeling forced.  Let’s check out a few brands that have been doing it right.

DOMINO’S: SHOW ME THE 

Not only has Domino’s absolutely conquered every single mode of communication, they’ve also marked their territory with the pizza emoji, cementing it as a staple in their ever growing pizza arsenal.

From literally any communication device that can connect you to Domino’s, you can now use a single emoji to get a steaming hot dough disk smothered in sauce, cheese and toppings of your preference delivered straight to your door. What a time to be alive, and what a fantastic use of emoji. Dominos and their quick reaction helped them capitalize on an emoji that is now directly linked to their brand.

AD COUNCIL: A WATCHFUL 

The Ad Council is another brand to completely take ownership of an emoji, except this time they specifically had it made for their use. I Am A Witness anti-bullying campaign hired ad agency Goodbye Silverstein & Partners to develop the emoji that drives this new campaign to end bullying. The symbol, an eye inside of a speech bubble, empowers children to speak up about bullying they witness through the communication channel they are most familiar with: emoji. This symbol of good comes from a long line of other Ad Council mascots including Smokey the bear and McGruff the Crime Dog, a testament to how kid culture is changing with technology.

PEPSI: WILL YOU ?

For World Emoji Day (because yes, there’s a day for everything) Pepsi showed it’s emoji love with a whole new 35 character Pepsimoji keyboard. Taking it to the next level, Pepsi used these new emoji to help a couple get engaged.

“Over time, emoji have become the universally understood language of emotion,” says PepsiCo President Brad Jakeman. “The unique thing we’re doing with emojis is taking them out of the digital world and grounding them in the physical world and allowing consumers to have the kind of conversations they’d have with emojis when they’re actually together.”

TWITTER: # 

After making specialized emoji for popular hashtags like #LoveWins and #PopeInNYC, Twitter has finally started to cash in on specialized ad-moji hashtags. A current popular emoji hashtag is Coke’s #Shareacoke which includes two Coke bottles. Past favorites have included One Direction emoji for the AMAs and Star Wars characters for the upcoming movie release. A personalized emoji adds a spark of awesome to a hashtag, and in their current rare state, are a unique ad investment.

Your Brand + Emojis
When connecting with your target, or in this case millennials, ask yourself if there is an emoji your brand can own like Domino’s  before the competition claims it? Could you elevate your brand by making your own emoji communications like the Pepsimoji? Consider how your brand can champion it’s own unique message and purpose through the emoji trend to develop unique, meaningful dialogue with your target audience.