Global Brands Need Local Love Too

Nathan Labenz, CEO of Waymark shares best practices and predictions around local advertising for big brands.

Whether for a boutique or national household brand, local marketing is key, and video is often the most effective way to engage a local audience.  Studies like this one conducted by Street Fight prove that consumers respond more positively to a local experience. Experts also confirm local marketing campaigns that include video with location-specific content can achieve significant audience penetration and deliver tangible results when trying to raise brand awareness. A local tie-in is the best way to maximize advertising and marketing campaign benefits. And there’s ample proof that supports this argument.

BIA/Kelsey predicts that in the U.S. local advertising revenue as a whole will increase 5.2% in 2018 to $151.2 billion, the largest annual increase in five years. Of that, more than $2 billion is forecasted to be spent on local online video.

But, access to high-quality, easy-to-deploy video isn’t always easy, especially for brands with local franchises, agents or dealers. There are a few reasons for this. First, video is expensive Second, creating video content at scale that works cross-platform — for smartphones, tablets, Facebook / Twitter — is a technical challenge most companies have been unable to overcome.

Even so, local advertising is the future of brand marketing — here’s what we predict is going to happen in the industry:

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The availability of down-to-the-screen data will make hyper-local marketing a bigger focus for brands

Advancements in targeting technology have made addressable advertising — targeting individual households — increasingly possible. Though it is still challenging via connected TV, targeting capabilities on Facebook and other social platforms have long allowed for hyper-specific targeting. BIA/Kelsey forecasts $22.1 billion will be generated by sellers of location-targeted mobile ads this year. Multi-location brands are spending 25% of their budgets on location-based marketing and more than 50% are using location data to target customers, representing billions of dollars, according to a survey of 500 marketers by the Local Search Association.

Scaling quality creative will be the central challenge in a brand’s ability to really go local

Even if we lived in a world with a totally smooth targeting experience from a technology perspective, the challenge of creating an enormous number of creative assets differentiated by screen and location-specific content remains a big one. Most brands don’t have an easy or cost-effective way to produce out local marketing content at scale. It can be incredibly time-consuming and expensive - a professionally crafted video ad can range from $5K to well over $100K to produce - and often counter to the modus operandi of the ad industry, where many agencies are uninterested in creating content at the local level. In the case of brands with local franchises or agents who are the local representation, brand safety concerns are also present. Local operators often serve as representation without the ability of the team back at HQ to ensure creative standards are met.

Developments in creative production technology will power the local advertising revolution

Data strategies and networks are innovating to make the technology end of local advertising a better experience and more scalable strategy. Brands and third parties will also innovate to develop technologies to make quality creative at scale more feasible. The costs of creative will drop as brands figure out ways to scale the production of great creative — which is what will enable them to put local marketing front and center in their strategy. Local market managers who are not video specialists will also be empowered with technology tools to help them create an effective video quickly and easily.

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Local marketing will change the way people interact with global brands

Marketing is at its most powerful when it feels relevant to customers — and it’s difficult to think of a better way to create relevance than hyper-local personalization. Video ads specific to store, timing, even customer device will become the norm, and local marketing will expand to be a much bigger chunk of marketing budgets in the coming years.

We know local marketing has the potential to be a powerful play for big brands, and we’re approaching a world where their capability to take advantage of it will explode. Clorox is just one example of a household brand specifically targeting local markets and largely foregoing national campaigns. Their CMO stated at last year’s ANA Masters of Marketing conference in Orlando, Florida that “You could argue we almost never have a national campaign any more because a lot of our brands have strong regional SKUs.” Technological and creative capabilities are evolving to empower global brands to reach their customers at the local level, and to do it with great video.