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“Whole-Ass One Thing” Brands and Moral Licensing 

Have you ever done something you felt was really “good” like donate to charity or help out a friend, and then afterwards treated yourself to something you would normally consider “bad”, like eating a huge chocolate bar or buying something expensive? This is actually a really common behaviour that is known as Moral Licensing.

If you’re unfamiliar with the concept, it is basically the theory that doing a “good” thing or being “good” in some way allows us to justify “bad” behaviour later.  In other words, we use examples of our own good behaviour to make us feel better when we do something morally dubious or problematic.

Examples of moral licensing range from the small-scale and relatively harmless (“I went to the gym yesterday therefore I can eat this McDonald’s”) to the more insidious and harmful (“I’ve spoken out against racism before therefore I am incapable of being racist myself”). Self-licensing of the larger scale is often unconscious but I think many of us will recognise some of those smaller behaviours ourselves- most commonly when we think we have “deserved a treat” of some kind because we have worked hard or been good in some way.  

At first, this concept seems instinctively counter-intuitive, we want to believe that doing a good and virtuous thing sets us on a path of doing more good and virtuous things, but in fact, the opposite is more often true. There have been loads of interesting studies on this (worth a longer google when you have time) that prove the point. One of my favourites was carried out at the University of Toronto, where Nina Mazar and Chen-Bo Zhong found out that students who were instructed to buy things from an eco-friendly shop were more likely to cheat and be dishonest when later asked to take part in a money-splitting task. Because they had done something “virtuous” by shopping in a more environmentally friendly way, they gave themselves tacit permission to then behave less virtuously.

This is most obviously of interest to brands in terms of targeting. If we know that people are more likely to want to treat themselves after they’ve done something “good”, then there’s a whole host of contexts that “treat” brands should be playing into. For example, should luxury handbags be advertised in gyms instead of deodorants? Should fast food be advertised on charitable giving sites?

However, personally I’m more interested in looking at brands and moral licensing from a different angle. Rather than thinking about moral licensing in terms of human behaviour, I think it’s actually more important to think about the way brands often engage in moral licensing themselves.

Moral licensing is a psychological theory yes, so not something we could normally attribute to brand behaviour. However, brands choose to behave like humans in many different ways; additionally, our current advertising culture teaches and encourages us to assign personality traits to brands and thus think of them in human terms. Because of this, I don’t think it’s huge a jump to associate psychological theory to brand behaviour – which is exactly what I’m about to do.  

If we argue that based on their behaviour and attributes, brands are viewed as personalities then it is fair to say that these personalities are as guilty as any human of moral licensing. In fact, I would go as far to say they are some of the worst offenders.

In today’s world, social justice and politics is creeping further into media and the world of brands. Advertisers are fighting to be a legitimate part of the conversation. Whether they are aligning with pop-feminism or shouting about charitable donations, it seems like they are desperate to prove their “goodness” to the world. But what often happens is that they feel like shouting loudly once is enough and then they don’t follow these claims or actions through the rest of their business.

While people may be forgiving of their own self-licensing, this is something they will not accept from a brand. From a consumer perspective, it is very obvious when brands engage in moral licensing and we just don’t buy it.

One example of this that stands out to me is Dove, famous for their Real Beauty campaign that has been hugely successful for them and is something they have stuck with for over a decade. However, the downside of politics and feminism being more accessible is that people have got smart about what these concepts actually mean. So, in recent years people have realised that the same people telling them to love their flaws with Dove are the ones releasing old-fashioned and objectifying deodorant ads for Lynx (both being Unilever companies.) Realisations like this have meant that people distrust social justice and moral standpoints from brands, so it is even more critical that when we do approach these subjects it is done well.

So what’s the answer here? I think it’s simple. Firstly, don’t underestimate your audience because they will see through any falseness. Secondly, if you want to stand for something then you have to go all in. Every aspect of your business and communications needs to align. Pick something your brand genuinely cares about and embrace it. Otherwise, your consumer will lose respect for your brand.

An example of a brand who is doing this well is Procter and Gamble, the creators of the Cannes Lions winning Always #LikeAGirl campaign. This commitment to address gender inequality is expressed across their brands, for example Ariel who in India released an ad called #SharetheLoad, tackling the disparity in household chores between men and women as asking “Why is laundry only a mother’s job?” They have also vocally supported International Women’s Day and the Women’s March.

To conclude, I want to end with the words of Parks and Recreation’s Ron Swanson who I think sums up how should tackle moral platforms with our clients: “Never half-ass two things. Whole-ass one thing.”

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Cool For Hannah - Lidl's Christmas Crowdsourcing 

  In an ‘industry first’, Lidl launched a Twitter initiative that will allow customers to crowdsource the value of selected products every Wednesday for three weeks. The ‘Social Price Drop’ will see the price of the chosen item lower, the more it is tweeted about across two days. This week saw Lobster go from £5.99 to just £2.99 (available in stores from Saturday FYI).   Lidl’s strategy of giving their consumers’ control over pricing in the run-up to Christmas comes amid a volatile period for supermarket customers. Last week Tesco’s chief executive, Dave Lewis, spoke of how global companies do not have to artificially raise prices because of the weak pound following Brexit. Such a move could look appealing as a Mintel report (November, 2015) found that 77% of grocery shoppers preferred low prices to promotions. Over the last two years this demand has been supplied following the grocery industry’s continued deflation across the price of food and drink (Mintel, 2016). However, I’m sure everyone can remember last month’s outrage over Marmite’s momentarily increased price, highlighting how aware customers are of the issue.

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Aloha! Holiday Planning via Webcams Could your facial expressions help plan your next holiday? A new partnership between the Hawaii Tourism Authority and Expedia Media Solutions has resulted in an exciting new campaign that uses Webcam technology to read the facial expressions of people watching specially created content to offer them a personalised travel package. It works by drawing consumers to the “Discover your Aloha” microsite (LINK) where they are asked to opt in to the webcam experience in order to be paired with a Hawaiian guide that best matches their personality.  The facial recognition software uses 76 facial points, e/g the tip of a nose or the edge of a mouth which then determines which parts of the video resonate the most. This information, is then used to offer a customised holiday package through Expedia.

This campaign effectively ties in to the wider trend for personalisation which is growing across all categories, particularly for young consumers of luxury goods with 38% of 18-24 year olds defining luxury as having the option to customise. 23% of Millennials also said that brands offering customised solutions will influence their purchasing decisions. (LINK)

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Keepin’ it Real – The Gogglebox Effect in Advertising Social realism is a trend that has recently gained popularity across our television screens, as millions of us tune in each week to watch real people in their everyday life on shows like Gogglebox. Recently, brands have started to apply this trend to their own advertising. Iceland, McCain, Aviva and TalkTalk are all brands that are moving away from celebrities and actors to ads depicting life in hyper-realism.  One of these brands, TalkTalk, have recently announced that moving forward they will be distancing themselves from their previous “gimmicky advertising” and will focus more on real, existing customers and their stories, in an attempt to gain back trust following last year’s hacking scandal. This move has resulted in their most recent campaign “This Stuff Matters” (LINK) which documents real families and the effect that TalkTalk���s connectivity influences their lives. One of the reasons that could be related to this wider change is the ever-growing popularity of realistic television shows like Gogglebox and First Dates which have given audiences a taste for real-life stories. Similarly, the continued popularity of YouTubers confirms the current appetite for more relatable voices in media. Brands are tapping into this popularity by ditching the slick production values and celebrity endorsements of the past in the hope that their audiences will engage with them on a more emotional level.  Another possible reason for this shift could be the overall economic decline for most households across the country, with the Resolution Foundation claiming that more than half of household have seen falling or flat living standards since the early 2000s. These factors mean that aspirational and flashy marketing seems distant and unattainable from everyday life, particularly in post-Brexit, an event that proved much of the population are feeling ignored by mass media. 

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Who are Hashtag’d?

To state it in simple terms, hashtag’d allows brands to harness their audience’s content.

Over the last decade, technology has grown ever more powerful and capable of new things, particularly when it comes to the devices that we carry in our pockets. For the consumer, this means we are capable of creating high-quality content with our phones that was previously only possible with expensive equipment. As so much of this UGC is high quality and extremely creative, it doesn’t make sense for a brand to let this opportunity pass them by. Instead they should be harnessing the self-expression of their audience, and this is where hashtag’d comes in.

Hashtag’d is a platform that can curate and manage audience’s content, and can either be accessed by us or by the brand directly with the additional possibility of it being a managed service from hashtag’d themselves. To start curating content, all you need to do is select a campaign hashtag to track and set parameters for timings and content type. The hashtag’d platform then curates social content from across platforms ahead of the moderation of content by either us or them. Then you’re ready to go! Brands then have a catalogue of audience content to pick and choose from for their campaigns. Whereas before, filtering through UGC was a time-consuming activity now it can be done in a matter of minutes. Once you have this content, it can be integrated across all media but has particularly successful within social and OOH formats.

I spoke with Adam from hashtag’d last week and asked him about what the biggest hurdles were for getting brands on board with using UGC in this way. From his perspective, he identified the below three concerns as most common:

1)      Rights and Legal Issues – one of the main concerns for many brands is whether or not they have permission from the creator of the image or text to use in a brand’s comms. What hashtag’d can do to address this is request permission from the user in an extremely quick way, meaning that any rights issues are solved instantly.

2)      Quality – although modern technology is capable of capturing high-quality content, it certainly doesn’t mean that all content created by consumers is going to be good. Hashtag’d can filter out the rubbish and present a final shortlist of options, all of high quality.

3)      Effort – the final major concern for brands is that UGC campaigns are more effort than they’re worth. Hashtag’d is able to take the effort out of a previously very manual process and make UGC campaigns extremely simple.

 One of the other interesting things that hashtag’d is able to do are Shoppable Selfies – a way of allowing a brand’s customers to be their ambassadors. Hashtag’d lets you use this feature to collate social content and put photos and videos directly on e-commerce pages. This is an invaluable delivery of social proof for potential customers.

One way of seeing these campaigns is as a partnership between brands and consumers, where both parties benefit from the sharing on social content. An example of a brand that has used the technology to great effect is IMAX who use hashtag’d as part of their campaign to promote Spectre. To build on the social buzz around the film, IMAX used the platform to curate attendees’ posts and filter them by message and positive sentiment. Once these posts had been found, IMAX were able to easily request rights from participants before feeding the content into digital display and twitter ads. Overall, the campaign resulted in extended sell-out bookings and a client who was so happy they commissioned their next campaign with hashtag’d immediately.

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Paper’s Still Got It Five or so years ago as e-books and tablets were just taking off, there were many who believed that the days of printed books were coming to an end. However, looking at recent data collected by Pew the number of people reading physical books has remained pretty much the same since 2011. In 2011, 79% of people said they were reading physical books, while in 2016, 73% say they continue to do so. Similarly, the average number of books read each year remains the same at four. Also surprising is the news that whilst many of us now consume our news online, 81% of consumers still get their news from an offline source, compared to 78% who read news online. Overall, it appears that physical goods and items still have a pull for consumers, most of whom still like the feel of something physical in their hands.

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The Inferno Code To promote the upcoming release of Inferno, the new film starring Tom Hanks based on Dan’s Brown’s novel, Sony have partnered with Google to create an online gaming experience that nicely replicates the detective nature of the plot. In the lead up to the film’s release on 28th October, Sony are using the Google platforms to engage their audience in labyrinthine puzzles that tie in to the film’s premise, all hosted on a branded microsite. This interactive web experience is a competition, through which users can win a trip to Italy where the film is set by solving puzzles based on Dante’s Inferno. The answers to these puzzles can be found within Google applications such as Maps, Gmail, Search, Google Play and YouTube. Certain clues are also hidden on social networks, such as Twitter.   The microsite is totally optimised for mobile, which means that Sony is neatly engaging those consumers who use their smartphone for gaming; Mintel’s data shows that 55% of mobile apps downloaded are game related so it makes perfect sense for Sony to gamify this campaign. (LINK) Whilst the competition element is a way of keeping consumer’s engaged, ultimately this is a fun, immersive experience that makes sense for the film Sony are advertising. The site is loaded with information about the film and its location which succeeds in placing consumers within the world of the film and piquing their curiosity. If you want to have a go on the game yourself, you can do so here (LINK)

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Good Morning Advertising! YuMe have just released their Publisher’s Guide, a research piece which focuses on audience receptivity to videos and includes some interesting nuggets on when and how to best reach audiences at their most receptive. The research shows that it is extremely difficult to determine the factors that make viewers more responsive as there is a huge variety of possible factors. However, it is possible to learn from the context in which people are most responsive and the overall behaviours of audiences. Understanding these contextual and behavioural reasons can help us make our video campaigns significantly more effective. One of the key take-outs that I found surprising is that consumers are most receptive to ads in the early morning. On a scale of 1-100 of receptiveness, consumers placed morning receptiveness at 59 instead of 45 in the evening. Interestingly, the morning (3am to midday) is also the time when purchase intent is highest (at +11%). However, when looking at this increase its worth considering device usage as well. In the mornings, ad receptivity is significantly higher on tablets than smartphones whereas in the evening, ad receptivity is higher on smartphones.

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In-N-Out Pops Up For four hours last Wednesday, American burger chain In-N-Out took over a Brazilian restaurant in Swiss Cottage and opened a pop-up restaurant that attracted an insane amount of Londoners to the scene. The line began to from at around 8am and by 11am nearly 300 hundred people had arrived with some waiting up to five hours for a taste of the famous burger. To get a idea of how long the queue was, take a look at this video showing the line (LINK) This is the first time in four years that In-N-Out have opened in the UK; the last time they were here was four years ago when they did a similar pop-up in Hendon. So how did a fast-food change with zero presence in the UK attract such huge crowds? The only advertising that the chain paid for was a small, black and white print ad in a local paper reading “First come, first served. Limited quantities for sale.” However, the power of the In-N-Out brand meant that the stunt drew most of the crowd through the social media sharing of devoted fans. Part of the brand’s appeal is its exclusivity; in America it only has restaurants on the West Coast, which lends the chain a cult status rarely allowed to fast food. It further distinguishes itself from other chains through the quality and consistency of its meals, sticking to a well-loved formula that even has its own secret language – any one for a “3x3 Animal Style with Scooby Snack?”. You may have missed out on your double-double burger, but this is worth paying attention to as In-N-Out are a fantastic example of how a brand can create loyalty through establishing itself culturally rather than through traditionally advertising.

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Reigning Rulers of Beauty are Officially Bloggers  Beauty brands are getting better are communicating with their audience through social media, but a new study by Pixability has revealed that beauty bloggers and influencers dominate the online beauty space. The study found that videos from beauty brands commanded a mere 2.6% of the beauty conversation this year, which is a decrease from 4.6% last year. In contrast, 86% of the top 200 YouTube beauty videos are produced by creators. The rate of growth for these creators is astonishing, with fastest growing creators growing by up to 500% each year whereas the top brands are growing up to 40% in comparison. Overall, this seems to reflect the general belief that personal creators are a much more reliable and unbiased source of knowledge and increasingly a space for people who feel that they are not represented in the mainstream media.

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Cool for Lyall - Snapchat's Spectacles    App developers, Snapchat, have moved in to the wearable tech market with the  unveiling of their new ‘Snapchat Spectacles’. In a similar vein to ‘Google  Glass’, Snapchat’s own version will come equipped with a built-in video  camera that records footage and allows it to be automatically shared with  friends.     For the price of $129.99 (£100), customers will have a choice of three  colours, and wearers will be able to connect to the app without needing to  plug in their Apple or Android devices. Research in to this field has shown  that around half of consumers think that there is no point in wearable  technology if they can only function when linked with other smart devices.  Snapchat’s unveiling of their ‘Spectacles’, therefore, may well succeed in  fulfilling this consumer demand.      Following the recent interest in this market, about 15% of consumers plan to  buy or upgrade an item of wearable technology within the next year, while  some 51% of consumers do not see how wearable devices could add value to  their daily routine. With the ability to record videos for up to 30 seconds,  however, Snapchat will be hoping that ‘Spectacles’ can expand consumer demand  for wearable technology at a competitive price. (LINK)   

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Who are Never.No?

In simple terms, never.no is a software that allows people to be in ads.

What never.no’s software can do is gather social media content and insert it directly into an ad or TV promo, thus creating engaging content that can change as many as 3 times a day.  The software allows a brand’s audience a new way of engaging with advertising, and also the opportunity to see themselves on TV! All that’s needed from them is to share social content on their own channels (though it’s usually Facebook, Instagram and Twitter) with the brand, perhaps through using a specific hashtag, for the chance to see themselves on the big screen.

For brands, the software lets them update their creative output and stop it from becoming stale.  They don’t need to be wary of UGC as they have full moderation of all content – there’s no chance of anything sneaking through the gaps.

Never.no have only been offering this software to advertisers for the last year and a half, as it was previously just used by broadcasters. ITV, for example, have been using the technology for a while across their daytime programming in shows like Lorraine and Good Morning Britain.

Interestingly, it is not just young people who are engaging with these creatives. In our conversation, Ed pointed out that in fact older audiences engage very highly with the software.

The technology has already been used by Wavemaker for Oykos, where lucky viewers could see themselves cuddling up to TOWIE’s Mark Wright.

 For Oykos, the imagery changed weekly but in fact, the technology is capable of changing imagery much more frequently. In my conversation with Ed from never.no, he told me that at their end, the creative can be updated in a matter of minutes. From a broadcast perspective, creatives need to be sent over 2 or 3 hours before airing but ultimately it doesn’t have to take a long time to put out new creative. If you’re interested in hearing more about this campaign, please speak to Wavemaker’s own Aimee and Monica.

Another interesting case study from never.no comes from the US where they partnered with USA Network and their comedy detective show Psych to promote the finale of the show. They tapped into the fandom by asking fans to share their best impressions of Gus (a character in the show) using the hashtag #SadGus and the winning images were featured in a 15 second spot that aired during the episode. The ad was hugely successful, attracting more views than other commercial minutes in the episode with an uplift of 48%.

One of the biggest obstacles for creating a campaign with technology like this is that the ad creative needs to be built specifically with space to host social content, however in Wavemaker we are definitely in a strong position to make use of this interesting piece of software and share it with our clients.

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#UberKisses In Mexico, an unusual partnership formed between Hershey’s Chocolate and Uber which is proving to be so successful for both parties that it has expanded to the USA. The #UberKisses campaign kicked off in Mexico around Mother’s Day and Valentine’s Day when users of the app could send Hersey’s chocolates to loved ones through Uber for free. The initial Mother’s Day test partnership was a huge success with 100,000 people ordering Kisses in a single day. Partnering with Uber allowed Hershey’s access to a millennial audience who have become accustomed to using on-demand services through their smartphones and gave Uber the opportunity to benefit from Hershey’s strong brand recognition in the country. Overall, the partnership sold as many Kisses in eight hours as Walmart did during the same time period. Now, Hershey have expanded to the US where they are pushing the partnership in different directions, including Uber REMIX, sponsored by Hershey’s. With Uber Remix, users could request a one-off driving experience where an “unexpected vehicle” would come and pick you up. The vehicles ranged from luxury sports cars to vintage motorbikes, and even included a rubbish truck. (LINK) This campaign is particularly interesting because it shows how the Uber on-demand mechanic formed the basis for the initial product-led campaign which then developed into something a lot more interesting.

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Ready for your Close-Up?  Shortly after releasing Stories, Instagram have answered millions of users’ calls and introduced a zoom function to the social network. This puts it ahead of rival Snapchat, where users are still unable to zoom in on video or photos. This new function provides a cool opportunity for brands to do something a little different with their posts whilst it is still a novelty for users. Already it is being used by brands to encourage users to take a deeper look at products and search for things in images, offering a chance for their consumers to engage more with their posts. See here for Adweek’s compilation of some of the brands that are already using this in an interesting way. (LINK)

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R.I.P Pokémon Go Quick question to you all: do any of you still play Pokémon Go? Please correct me if I’m wrong but I’d be willing to bet the answer is no. It’s hard to believe that Pokémon Go only surfaced two months ago in July 2016 and infiltrated all aspects of popular culture, becoming an international phenomenon. However, after such a short period in the limelight, it seems like Pokemon Go’s time  may have come to an end.  Official arbiter of cool, VICE, officially declared that the app is dead in an article on their site. Although VICE’s article is typically tongue-in-cheek, it simply takes a quick search of Google Trends search data to see that they’re not wrong. As shown below, online interest in the game has steadied across a relatively short period.

As we mourn the loss of another short-lived cultural sensation, the decline of Pokémon Go provides an opportunity to think more deeply about the use of nostalgia by brands. Nostalgia is certainly a powerful tool for re-engaging consumers but, at least for Nintendo, doesn’t seem to be a sustainable model for brand growth.  

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I Want It Now! The Rise of On-Demand It’s no secret that today as consumers, we are growing more accustomed to an on-demand purchase culture. At the moment, this is largely rooted in the takeaway food industry with the popularity of apps like Deliveroo, Just Eat and Hungryhouse spawning a host of new rivals like Uber Eats and Jinn. However, now we are beginning to enter a phase where customers are warming up to the idea of ordering different types of product on demand and brands and tech companies are trying to encourage this. One major player is Amazon, who have just launched their Dash button in the UK. Dash buttons are physical instant purchase buttons which you can place in your home and link with your Amazon account. The idea is that when you are running low on a certain product, i.e washing powder, all you need to do is push a button and Amazon will process your order and send it to you ASAP. (LINK) Similarly, Carling have also created their own “Beer Button” which acts in a similar way to Amazon’s Dash. It is designed to be placed in fridges and synced with a smartphone app that automatically adds Carling beer to your digital shopping cart with grocers like Tesco, Asda or Morrisons. (LINK)

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The Rise of the Transumer A new breed of consumer has arisen and they are on the move! Mintel calls these the Transumers. Their research has shown that there is an increase in the amount of time that people are spending in transit and that more people use public transport instead of private. They also point out that commuters today are less accepting of commuter boredom; now, people want to make the most of every second in the day and fill their travelling time with engaging activities. But what does this mean for us? Firstly, there is now a greater market for brands to reach people during these times in transit, either through advertising or on-the-go products. Secondly, as commuters are actively looking to fill their ‘in-between’ times, we should also think about the opportunity this presents to engage a captive audience. This doesn’t necessarily mean more posters on station platforms but instead we should think about what we could create to make boring journeys a little bit more interesting for consumers. One example of a brand achieving this nicely is French beauty retailer Marionnaud, who offered a pop-up beauty shop on-board the country’s TGV trains. This activation was to promote their Pick & Go range, which is designed for people on-the-go. Whilst on board, travelers could be treated to a mini-facial, get beauty tips and try out the new travel-sized make-up products. (LINK)