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2019 Reflection: Planet Fitness Awareness Campaign

Back in 2017, ruckus Digital successfully launched the Planet Fitness Canada social channels. While new locations are regularly opening across the nation, as a newer gym in Canada, there is still a level of education and brand awareness required for the Canadian audience.

December and January is a busy time for the fitness industry as Canadians look to join gyms and fulfill fitness New Year’s resolutions. To put Planet Fitness at the forefront of Canadian minds, we needed to create an awareness campaign that would tell social media users who Planet Fitness is and why they should join.

Since Planet Fitness’ brand voice is fun and sassy, we wanted to develop a campaign that not only boasted Planet Fitness membership perks and prices (which are extremely competitive), but that also stayed true to their unique tone. As an added challenge, we wanted to attribute as much of our budget as possible to paid social advertising to maximize reach, which meant we wanted to create assets without the use of production studio.

The result was a “Reactions” campaign – a series of overly and comically expressive stock models in Planet Fitness branded imagery with captions that spoke to Planet Fitness features in relatable, meme-like ways.

There was a moment during the ideation where I found myself feeling genuinely concerned we were going to have a hard time finding a winning idea – but when the idea came, it felt so natural and obvious, and one of those few times where you toot your own horn and think “genius!”

Once the base of the idea was created, the captions came easily, and it’s a campaign I’m very proud of.

The campaign ran from the end of December 2018 until early 2019 and resulted in over 1.75 million impressions and an average engagement rate of 12%, compared to an average engagement rate of 5% on always-on content.

A big takeaway I got from this project is realizing how a simple can idea can have a maximum effect. Despite brainstorming bigger ideas that would be more complex and harder to execute, the winning idea ended up being the one that was simplest to execute – meaning we could put those dollars directly back into media spend, which our team and the client team was very happy about.

Amanda Carreiro is the Senior Digital Content Manager at ruckus Digital.

Check out more 2019 highlights here!

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2019: Tasking YouTubers with an Interac $100 Challenge

Problem

Interac is a world-class debit payment system and one of Canada’s leading brands. On average, it is used 16 million times daily and is a market leader in payment technologies. With a concern that new technology platforms and often-enticing credit card reward-programs could encroach as the preferred method of payment for Millennials, the brand wanted to remind their key targets why Interac Flash is the safe, secure and convenient way to pay. 

Roughly 60 per cent of consumers were being influenced by social media, according to Collective Bias, the brand saw this as an opportunity to speak to their targets outside of traditional media. Based on eMarketer research, YouTube was the most used platform, with Canadian Millennials spending 8 hours a week on the platform, above watching live TV (4.1 hours), scrolling Facebook (7.3 hours) or binging Netflix (7.4). Millennials grew up with technology and were very aware of advertisements. They wanted control over their ads, with 69 per preferring “skippable” functions. To reach this audience and show savvy young shoppers that using Interac Debit is the best way to own their financial future, we knew we had to do it on the platforms they loved with the people they watched and trusted.

Solution

Developed in collaboration with KIN Community and APEX PR, we created a six-month content strategy, leveraging YouTube creators to increase consideration for Interac Flash as THE choice payment method among Millennials. We knew that Canadian Millennials were highly engaged with “challenge” content in the lifestyle space, so we created a challenge that would link all YouTuber content so viewers could continue engaging with the brand through multiple videos. To do this, each creator was challenged to complete a task with a $100 budget. Why $100 dollars? Because it aligns perfectly with Interac Flash, reminding people that for under $100 you can touch and go. Every week, this “travelling concept” leveraged the audiences of established creators across their different YouTube channels, and across their social. The creators rose to the challenge!  And they inspired their audiences to #owntheirworld…

Trends were studied each month and we worked with each creator to tailor their content to these trends to remain top of mind and relevant with our target audience. For example, November and December’s research showed that gift guides were in high demand. This was capitalized on and amplified a core value for Interac in the process, supporting local businesses. In a unique twist, the YouTubers and local media experts created local, curated gift guides across the country that showed their viewers their favourite stores and gift ideas. Fans loved it and begged for more local guides! Proving that the Interac content was providing real value and solving a consumer need. 

In addition to organic distribution, we implemented a paid media strategy to target Canadian Millennials with Interac messaging. We ran full-length videos, up to 18 minutes in length, as TrueView to ensure our audience was being exposed to the messaging in a format native to the audience. Knowing that Millennials often choose to skip ads served to them on YouTube, we optimized videos to reduce the odds that viewers would choose to skip through introductions and editing styles that we knew would catch the attention of Canadian Millennials.

Results

To drive video views and audience retention, this campaign leveraged YouTube and their TrueView In Stream Ads to highly target the home buying audience and ensure the right audience was receiving the right message affordably and quickly. in the past, media channels like TV made it a challenge to reach a specific demographic quickly and cost-effectively. Overall, the Interac $100 Challenge delivered 20 million impressions, 7.3 million video views and 124K engagements across YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest. Our colleagues at APEX PR delivered 11.3 million traditional media impressions across 46 stories from highly trusted outlets such as Breakfast Television Montreal, The Global Morning Show and CTV Morning Live Ottawa.

Katie Boland is an Account Director at ruckus digital.

Read more of our favorite work from 2019. Need help with your social media approach? Drop us a line.

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#SMWTO – Providing LEGS for Real Time Community Influencer Moments

Earlier this month, the ruckus team had an opportunity to attend Social Media Week Toronto, which brought several leading social media marketers, influencers and social media platforms together to outline what’s new and upcoming for social media marketing. We live-tweeted, laughed, cried, and learned from the best.

This piece highlights our key takeaways from the conference and what inspired us the most:

1. A Moment Like This

FOMO and inclusion are the two main drivers in why individuals join social media. There is a large fear of missing out with an equally large drive to be included and feel part of a movement. Various speakers touched on the fact that to understand social media is to understand your audience. Challenges such as the ice bucket challenge, planking, and the kiki challenge give your audience the ability to be “cool” by partaking in a trending topic. They can then share their “entry” and be part of something bigger— a specific moment in time.

2. Community is King

We’ve all heard that content is king, but during the course of the week, it was all about community reigning supreme. Posting content for content sake is not going to earn you much engagement or clout with your followers. A few speakers hypothesized that the best method of creating content comes from seeking out your community and asking what they want to see. Conduct searches to see what accounts are saying about your brand, not just those who tag you, but the individuals who hashtag your organization or just write it out. By engaging with your community, you give them a voice, make them feel heard, and increase the chances of them sharing. Word of mouth is just as important online as in person.

3. Does your content have LEGS?

Yes, you read that right, but no, we don’t mean will it walk away. Creating content for the ad-averse is a real day challenge, and in order to grab those eyeballs, content should include at least one of the following elements:

Laugh Out Loud – If your content incorporates humour, individuals are willing to overlook the fact that it’s an ad for the reward of a good laugh.
Edgy – Pushing boundaries sparks conversation.
Gripping – Does it grab and hold your attention?
Sexy – make it visually appealing.

If your content doesn’t have legs, it needs to offer personal value in the forms of being inspirational, educational, or thought-provoking.

4. Real-Time

The theme of time and trends was woven through presentations on Twitter, 5G, Pinterest, and TikTok. Audience users expect immediate results and interactions. Whether it be in conversing online or partaking in a TikTok trend (which on average lasts about a week), they expect immediate response and reaction. With the development of 5G phone networks, we’ll be able to download and process information in 3-second increments. With Pinterest’s new lens, you can point your phone at an object and find out exactly where it’s from and purchase it on the spot. This is going to mean content creators (and everyday individuals) will have to work quickly to produce timely content while the idea is still fresh. On the flip side, this also means we’ll need to pay closer attention to real-time analytics in order to pivot in the moment.

5. Nano Influencers

In the era of fake news and bots, a lot of brands and agencies are shying away from influencers with large followings for nano influencers with more authentic reach. Much like brands, audiences don’t like the feeling of being duped when a piece of content gets thousands of likes and thousands of the same comment within moments of a post going live. Nano influencers offer more niche targeting with a higher likelihood of your branded content resonating with audiences leading to engagement.

Abby Radovski is an Account Director at ruckus Digital. Need help with your social strategy? Drop us a line.

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Abby Radovski

Dear Abby, Tell Us About Yourself…

Abby Radovski joins ruckus as an account director, digital integration. Abby’s role will focus on senior client counsel and leadership on all digital aspects, and she will also support new business growth. Abby brings more than seven years of experience from numerous multi-national agencies, with a robust background in social media management, content creation and influencer relations.

1. How has your past work or volunteer experience helped you in your current position?

“I’ve been a member of Girl Guides of Canada for more than 20 years.  For the past decade, I’ve been a leader within the organization, mentoring girls of all ages to try new things, communicate effectively and believe in themselves.  My experiences as a guider have helped me hone my skills of group work, team leadership and exploring the unknown. The Girl Guides motto is to Be Prepared, and as a communicator, I can’t think of a better motto to apply to the PR world. While the media and digital landscapes constantly evolve, we research, anticipate, and prepare ourselves for the future. It also means I always have an extra phone charger, pen, paper, and band-aids in my purse.”

2. What are you most passionate about professionally? Personally?

“I’m a social butterfly by nature and this translates into my passion for all things social. If there is an event, festival or new social platform, I’m there! This passion is what drove me into becoming a dog and cider influencer. Managing two accounts, Instagram offered me the opportunity to flex my creativity, share photos and be part of an online community where I can be an over-enthusiastic dog mom and cider drinker. From a professional perspective, it also keeps me up to date on new features and what types of analytics are offered to influencers.”

3. What moment or accomplishment in your career are you most proud of?

“There are many milestones that I look back upon proudly. The first time I landed a media hit, introducing social media into a workplace and winning my first Silverleaf award all come to mind. That being said, it’s the relationships I’ve built over the past decade that I’m most proud of. From my classmates at Seneca’s corporate communications program, to individuals I interned with when I first entered the public relations world. Relationships are a key aspect of public relations both traditionally and digitally and I’m very proud to have maintained mine with people from all over the world.”

4. How do you stay up to date on industry trends and best practices?

“There are a variety of ways to stay up to date on industry trends. I subscribe to newsletters, attend conferences and conduct social media audits for my clients on a regular basis. However, I think the best way to keep your finger on the pulse is to actively use the tools and platforms and try the updates as they happen.”

5. Three interesting facts about yourself.

  • “I previously lived in Madrid, Spain for three years. During my time there I partook in all Spanish festivals from La Tomatina to Carnaval.
  • I initially studied criminology in university before switching to a double major in anthropology and sociology in my third year.
  • I’m a dog mom to a large Cane Corso rescue named Knight who I frequently dress up for holidays.”

Check out our other blogs and podcasts

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Crystal Ball 2019: Year of authentic and unfiltered social stories

With 2019 ramping up, expect new trends throughout the news, social media, technology and more. At APEX and ruckus digital we will be sharing our predictions on some of these trends that we think will define 2019 (or at least part of it).

Katie Boland, account manager at ruckus Digital, shares her view on the growth of social stories.

It’s time to move on from fake news, fake followers and fake photos. It’s time for us to start being real on social media. My crystal ball prediction for 2019 is that it’s the year of real, authentic social stories.

I believe you’ll see the rise of people sharing imperfect pictures and videos in a new way that is different from the traditional news feed sharing. I think pre-sets, filters and perfecting the picture Instagram picture will be the exceptions in 2019.

Stories started with the disruption of Snapchat as a new channel for audiences to share content privately. Then stories were adopted by Instagram, which brought audience growth and expanded features. Now in 2019 stories are rolling out to Facebook and YouTube.

Stories generally disappear after a day and are focused on more real-time sharing within the moment. These photos or videos fill the entire mobile screen in a vertical format and allow consumers to focus on the content in front of them, rather than scrolling through a social newsfeed.

Consumers are rapidly moving to the stories format with more than 300 million daily active users. Of those daily users, 47 per cent feel that the format helps them be more authentic with friends and family.

This new format has changed the average engagement from the standard “like” or “comment” engagement we’re used to on social platforms, to adding polls, questions and emoji ratings to allow individuals to feel more connected to each other, brands or celebrities.

In fact, it could be the year my mom uses Facebook Stories to share pictures of her cat rather than just keeping an eye on my social networking activity.

Katie Boland is an account manager at ruckus digital. Check out more of our Crystal Ball series to know what other trends to expect in 2019. Need help with your social strategy? Drop us a line. 

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Five takeaways from Social Media Week Toronto

From algorithm adjustments to the ever-changing video formats. Social media is constantly evolving, and as digital strategists it’s important we keep on top of these changes to better optimize our content for any platform.

The ruckus team had an opportunity to attend Social Media Week Toronto, which brought several leading social media marketers together to outline what’s new and upcoming for social media marketing. 

This piece highlights our key takeaways from the conference and what inspired us the most:

1. Select influencers that matter to your message

Brands often select influencers based on their reach with the goal of getting their content in front of a large audience. However, algorithms are customizing social feeds based on user behavior and the most relevant content users engage with and brands need to adapt. These four considerations are the key to selecting the right influencers for your brand:

  • Relevance: How often does the influencer talk about topics and information that are relevant to your brand?
  • Resonance: How well does the content resonate with the influencer’s audience? What is their engagement rate?
  • Reference: How big is their influence? Do other key influencers follow them as well?
  • Reach: Make no mistake, reach still matters, but the above considerations are far more important to maximize your campaign’s results.

2. Don’t count out other platforms

Facebook is a very cost-effective medium and it’s easy to funnel all your social marketing here. Especially if you’re a new brand or a new product, it’s a no-brainer to reach as many as 75 percent of Canadians. However, this platform might not be the only platform depending on the audience or marketing objectives that your brand could explore.

Platforms like Reddit and Pinterest were profiled as platforms to reconsider for your marketing strategies for these reasons:

  • Reddit has a community of strong opinions and could be a place to help drive traffic – however, beware of the content leveraged here and speak in Reddit-lingo to engage better with this audience.
  • Pinterest is full of lifestyle content with a strong base of users looking for wedding inspiration or meal prep ideas. Advertising on the platform has been getting easier and just as sophisticated as Facebook – they even launched a Toronto office!

3. Prepare for and embrace the chaos

To keep on top of the high volume of engagements during election night, CBC Toronto built a control room entirely for social, and an equipped team of social media producers to fill it. This amount of preparation and support benefited CBC as their team was able to:

  • Ensure that things ran smoothly.
  • Bring questions from online to their team of reporters, at the venues throughout the city to get answers from the candidates themselves.
  • Respond to each comment and reaction in real-time, which played a huge part in their live-coverage success as CBC’s Digital Producer, @vvalido explained, “it really helped to keep people interested.”

4.   Cannabis is here to stay – even if you can’t market it

At a session with Josh Lyon of Tokyo Smoke and Amanda Marino from Herb, we learned the background of marketing in cannabis (even though you pretty much can’t). To begin with, did you know that the word “cannabis” is politically correct – and that we shouldn’t use marijuana? Regardless, both agreed that education is the key for cannabis in the future, how they reach their audiences and promote their brand is done in a different way.

  • Tokyo Smoke – Working for a company that sells paraphernalia and cannabis products, they are unable to promote their brand on any social channel. They are not allowed to use images or videos that show people using their products – Tokyo Smoke can show their shops and pictures that may help people learn about cannabis, but none of their products. Since they can’t advertise, their social media and coffee shop methods are a great place to educate.
  • Herb –Their social media accounts are all about improving the image of cannabis and its users, while also being educational. They mainly play on YouTube, where they have both fun and educational videos – whether it is moms getting high and playing Fortnite, to learning about the history of 4/20. They try to use a lot of comedy as they say people always like to laugh. 

5. LinkedIn is In

LinkedIn is often thought of as a networking tool rather than a social platform with capabilities beyond job hunting and connecting with peers. After Goldie Chan’s Unpacking the LinkedIn Influencer session, we saw LinkedIn as a platform that can add value to any social campaign, especially in the B2B sector.

This is LinkedIn at a glance:

  • It currently has 565 million users worldwide, 40% of which are daily users
  • 57% of its traffic is mobile
  • 44% of LinkedIn users make more than $75K USD annually

LinkedIn users have a deep understanding of their industries and will engage with highly targeted and in-depth content, making it possible for brands to hyper-specialize their messaging to respective audiences.

Working with influencers on the platform has also proven successful. Consider partnering with LinkedIn influencers to build brand awareness for a B2B company, amplify a B2C product launch, or grow a company executive’s brand.

Finally, here are some individual profile LinkedIn tips from the session:

  • A professional headshot is a must
  •      Optimize your profile copy for SEO and include links to your other social accounts and websites
  • Post content that is specific to your industry
  • Include high-quality video in your strategy
  • Improve your SEO with strong written content
  • Add a personal note to your connection requests

Katie Boland, Amanda Carreiro, Vivian Kwong, Nicole Pomeroy, and Kevin Behar are all a part of the APEX/ruckus digital team. Need help with your social strategy? Drop us a line. 

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10 AI tools for communicators

Marketer, strategist and entrepreneur Ross Simmonds was the featured opening keynote at the Canadian Public Relations Society national conference in Charlottetown, PE May 27-29, 2018, to help answer the vital artificial intelligence (AI) question:

Will robots take over my job?

While robots such as Google Assistant can impersonate a human to make a hair appointment, the reality is that instead of replacing jobs outright, ‘artificial intelligence’ – or ‘augmented intelligence,’ as Simmonds prefers to say – will simply enhance the work we do.

So, no robots, will not replace you – but they can help to make you better.

To show how, Simmonds provided a list of current AI tools, to help make our jobs in communications easier.

  • Assistant | Get an AI assistant for your email
  • Clara Labs | Have interviews scheduled based on email discussions
  • Lumen 5 | Create a video from text in minutes
  • Captain Growth | Extract insights from your data
  • Press Hunt | Find a journalist who is talking about your topic
  • Articollo | Quick start writing an article
  • Persado | Determine language your audience cares about
  • Crystal | Get insights into personality/behaviour
  • Voila Norbert | Determine a likely email address for a contact (be aware of Canada Anti-Spam Legislation compliance however)
  • Dialpad Voice AI | Get real-time voice sentiment to know how a call is going

Need help making sense of how AI is impacting your business? Drop us a line. Diane Bégin is VP, social marketing & brand communications. Follow her @dibegin.

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What’s the story with Upstairs Amy?


RUCKUS DIGITAL AND APEX PR ARE COLLABORATING WITH WALMART CANADA AND INTERAC® FOR AN ORIGINAL DIGITAL SERIES, UPSTAIRS AMY, PRODUCED BY SHAFTESBURY

From the producers of global phenomenon Carmilla, Upstairs Amy is a scripted comedy that will also feature real-life digital influencers curated by APEX Public Relations.

The grass is always greener on the other side – or, in Amy Zhang’s case, on another floor.

 

Upstairs Amy follows the lives of three millennial moms on a journey through friendship, motherhood and self-discovery. When Amy’s apartment floods, she, her husband Dean, and their toddler are forced to move upstairs while the damages are repaired. There, Amy meets her captivating new neighbour Kaavya, the “it-girl” from the 26th floor. When a white lie turns into a new life, Amy and her best friend Veronica find themselves surrounded by Kaavya’s world of beauty, glamour, mystery and men – and so begins Amy’s transformation from average accountant into social media superstar “Upstairs Amy.”

 

ruckus Digital knows brands need storytelling and relatable characters that resonate with their target audiences. Before, commercials were the standard way of serving content to consumers. Now, consumers are in control – they decide when and how to interact with brands. This is why we are so excited to be working with Kin Community and their talented group of influencers, whose participation in-show will extend to their own channels and beyond. The influencers will be posting weekly content on their own channels relating to each week’s episode. ruckus Digital will lead the development on media buying and social content for the series.


The series is scheduled to launch in November 2017 on a dedicated Upstairs Amy YouTube channel.

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Drive engagement through Millennials ‘early onset nostalgia’

With fierce competition from other leading online and bricks and mortar retailers, the holiday shopping season is the most difficult time of the year to capture a customer’s attention. Walmart Canada needed a creative approach to break through the noise and entice Canadian shoppers to choose Walmart for their Black Friday (in-store and online), Cyber Monday (online) and Boxing Week (in-store and online) shopping.

According to Digiday, experts say that factors such as the coming of age during economic turmoil has meant millennials end up romanticizing simpler times – even times they weren’t around for – which the industry has diagnosed as millennials’ ‘early onset nostalgia.’ (As seen in Throwback Thursdays or Wayback Wednesdays online conversations.)

Building on this ‘early onset nostalgia,’ an IABC Silver Leaf award-winning illustration and animation series was developed with a nostalgic twist to get millennials ‘ready for their big shopping day’ through retro-styled workout stretches.

Industry best practices indicate short videos improve audience engagement. A more recent move has been to look at platform-specific variations to improve impressions. According to Mobile Marketer, consumers spend 98 per cent of their time using their phone in portrait mode. Square videos also perform better on certain platforms.

A 10-second square video animation series was created for Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, while vertical videos were pushed through Snapchat. YouTube videos were also added to the mix. The videos included exercises in retro gear with workouts such as squats (i.e. to lift your big-ticket in-store purchase) and finger stretches (i.e. to tap for your online purchases).

Since Black Friday and Boxing Day offered in-store shopping experiences, five in-family day-parted Snapchat geofilters were designed for each day for individuals to share their Walmart-inspired shopping experiences through a selfie.

The video campaign targeted millennial Twitter followers, Snapchat users, Instagram fans, Facebook fans and YouTube users.

The campaign allowed Walmart Canada to maintain its leadership position during these peak shopping days during the holiday season. The geofilters also ranked within the top worldwide on the platform – the only Canadian brand to do that in Q4 (even beating out the 2 US presidential candidates’ geofilters per capita).

Need help targeting Millennials through your social content? Drop us a line.

 

 

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How to add a fresh twist to your social media content

Have any of your married friends or those in committed relationships ever asked to play with someone else’s dating apps (just because they were curious)?

According to a Google Consumer Survey ruckus Digital commissioned in spring 2017, about a quarter of Canadian millennials know someone who has. This insight gave us the perfect opportunity to get fresh (groceries, that is) with our Walmart millennial audience.

Dinnder was a 10 to 15-second social media video ad series (throughout spring/summer 2017 long weekends, including Victoria Day, Canada Day and the Civic Holiday), created to improve Walmart’s quality perception and spread awareness about its new 100% Canadian AAA Angus Beef.  Delicious cuts of beef were paired with attractive sides made with Walmart’s fresh produce.

How: By drawing a connection between a dating app and the brand, we piqued consumer interest in a brand new way – cutting through the long weekend clutter in both English and French Canada – as people were stocking up for their long weekend get-togethers.

The vertical video series (to align with the vertical orientation for swiping on popular dating apps) ran on Facebook and Snapchat. The series was among the top pieces of social content for Walmart in summer 2017.

As marketers, we constantly have to rethink how we reach consumers/audiences and stand out in the crowd. Take a look at our Dinnder videos and let us know what you think!


Need help with your paid social media strategy and targeting? Drop us a line.

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