ADsterdam Campaign Portfolio

The ADsterdam blog covers the advertising world of Amsterdam, its firms, people and the advertising. The slogan ‘The capital of advertising’ tries to position Amsterdam internationally as the advertising capital. The unique selling point is considered to be the ‘location-based’ content, which is entirely Amsterdam-related. It is divided into four major components, the Blog, a Viewpoints section where opinionated readers can comment, the Interviews with professionals in the Amsterdam market, and Agencies & Jobs covering vacancies for the advertising markets.

Project GoalsThe main goal is for ADsterdam to grow, mainly along three dimension; visitors, content and revenue. A chain reaction is intended, in which more content leads to more traffic and ultimately more income. Revenue should come from banners and the vacancy section (through commissions). Secondly, international growth is intended through the proposal to start a ‘European Ad’ blog addressing ‘location-based’ content.

The ProblemADsterdam wants to grow, but there are significant issues with the intended positioning in the market. That is why this post needs to address a number of issues before the campaign idea can be addressed. Is it better to address a niche market or scale internationally? Is the blog aspect compatible with the idea of realizing more revenues? These questions need to be resolved in order to arrive at realistic goals that can be efficiently and effectively reached. Regardless of the resulting growth strategy, it cannot have a high price tag.

Business ModelThe briefing has illustrated the desire to consolidate and grow in terms of visitors, content and revenue. However, our analysis has shown that what you want is not necessarily what you need. The double focus on international editions and establishing Amsterdam as the prime advertising capital seems incongruent. In order to tackle the flaws of the original business plan we reconsidered the different components of ADsterdam. Importantly, our adaptations are based on trends that are currently reshaping the online sphere. To establish Amsterdam as the advertising capital of the world we need to tap into the vibrant atmosphere of Amsterdam; making Amsterdam-based professionals central to the platform. The core aspects of the new business plan are listed below.

1. User-generated content from those in the field. ADsterdam should function as a public sphere where professionals share knowledge and real-life experiences by sending in in-depth articles.2. Enabling networking possibilities for a niche market. ADsterdam should function as a public café where professionals and non-professionals can interact on interesting experiences, advertisements, trends and the market in general.3. Meaningful job vacancies related to the content provided by the professionals. By emphasizing the resume of the specific author, we create an atmosphere where experts are able to show off their marketing expertise. The vacancy site should then aim to incorporate these specific companies and should solely provide interesting and once-in-a-lifetime job opportunities.

With the revised business plan we aim to connect the currently separate dimensions of ADsterdam; the blog and the job vacancies. By making the job vacancies relevant to the blog we aim to revitalize the current revenue stream. By facilitating interesting and in depth stories we aim to capitalize and enhance the current value propositions of the company.

We believe both renowned and starting marketers are willing to demonstrate their expertise and insider-knowledge. ADsterdam should allocate the resources and personal networks to invite these professionals to participate. Being a contributor to ADsterdam functions as a key indicator of being part of the Amsterdam advertising scene. In addition, the editorial team should continue to post their view on advertising, fun videos and opinions; serving as the general gatekeepers of the content displayed on the blog.

In this model we focus on attracting a national as well as an international audience, sharing the passion for advertising. In this respect we thus exclude the option for an international edition, which can potentially mitigate the original ADsterdam brand. With this model the website can actively and openly show the specific value of Amsterdam as the advertising capital of the world; being a valuable source of information for specifically those people who work or are aiming to build a career in the Amsterdam advertising industry.

Target Markets & Campaign Outline

ADsterdam targets a very homogenous group consisting of professionals working in the advertising industry with an eye for details. Additionally, there are also professionals from outside of the Netherlands seeking advice of ADsterdam on advertising companies. There is special interest in growing the international segment.

Their current behavior in relation to ADsterdam is not the ideal behavior desired from them by ADsterdam. Now they rarely visit the website. ADsterdam desires that professionals actively engage with their website. On the short term this means that they desire that professionals regularly visit the website. On the long term they want professionals to actively engage with the content of the website; creating a community.

A key concept is relation to developing an online community is the concept of situated creativity. Potts et al. (2008:459) point out how “consumer-producer interactions are an increasingly important source of value creation” and explain how situated creativity is a new form of creativity that manifests itself as multiple individuals collaborate through new media. In this system, the spheres of culture and economics merge to form a new mode of production. We want to leverage on this model to bind users to ADsterdam and incentives e them to continuously visit the site. Furthermore, they are invited to contribute and create content for the platform, thereby increasing the frequency and diversity of new content on the website. Importantly, we expect our target group (as a subgroup of media professionals) to have the digital literacy skills needed to participate in the new public sphere created by the ADsterdam community. These individuals are already used to using digital media for expressing their ideas, a process often called “digital storytelling” (Couldry, 2008:373).

Our campaign wants to invite users to contribute their stories and claim ownership of the ADsterdam space. It is also important to note that ADsterdam thereby not only serves to cover visitor’s informational needs, but also addresses a social function. Conceptualizing ADsterdam as more than a resource of purely fact-based content is crucial to transforming it into a vibrant community. Research, e.g. by Brown et al. (2007: 13) suggests that this component is crucial to binding users to a site. This is in line with the SMART principle. This behavior is specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-specific. Our campaign tries to evoke this behavior by trying to trigger people to behave in this ideal manner. Additionally, secondary audiences, interested and caught by the campaign could enhance the general traffic to the blog. By tapping into the potential need of advertising professionals to show their expertise and knowledge of the city of Amsterdam, we believe the campaign and accompanying viral video could generate the desired attention to ADsterdam”.

Campaign Strategy

Our campaign aims at increasing awareness and traffic to ADsterdam’s website. Additionally, the harmonious image that the content has been reflecting will be tweaked to a more controversial kind of content, partly also to reflect Amsterdam and the city‘s controversial nature.

Our campaign will be divided in different effect stages. The first crucial part of our campaign is to create brand awareness for the website through a series of clips which will aim to create a little more controversy association to the blog. As for now, all the content in on the blog is in such positives sphere’s it might not spark the audience to comment or give their two cents. It is crucial to understand that we designed these clips to be stimulating and engaging as we aim for a potentially viral distribution. When content is passed on by users to their peers through online media, it is referred to as viral distribution. Viral spreading of content is a highly sought after effect by marketing and branding professionals (Qualman, 2011) as it is very impactful and cost-effective. Next to brand awareness we also aim to create “The capital of Advertising” image for Amsterdam with this phase of the campaign. These short clips will be provoking the cliché image of Amsterdam and the slogan we will use throughout this campaign is “Amsterdam the capital of […]. But also ads”. Every clip will have a theme that represents a cliché associated with Amsterdam, like e.g. weed, the red-light district, and cheese and will be shot in Amsterdam scenery. This phase of the campaign will be worked out in practice throughout the following three weeks.

With invitational message at the end of each of our viral video series we aim to attract participants for our ‘Battle of the Brightest’ competition hosted on the ADsterdam website, which is the second part of our campaign. We want to add the competition to the current vacancies, which are now hardly noticeable on the website. The idea is to have small competitions: a company that wants to put a vacancy on ADsterdam provides a small assignment. This can for example entail creating a storyboard for a commercial or a creating an entire concept. The best entries will be handed to the company, who will then decide whom to give the job to.

The benefits of this approach are that the company gets an idea of what a person can do; his/her creativity and expertise will be shown through the competition. This way, people seeking for a job get a fair chance by applying their skills. Eventually, the winner will be posted on the website, which makes for a nice reference on the person’s CV.  Also, the winning concept can be used, which means the ad companies delegate the assignment that was given to them. Additionally, the competition is free advertising for the ad agency that sets the job for the competition, as it will stand out to the regular vacancies. The advantage for ADsterdam is that they will accomplish their goal of being a place for professionals to meet.

The competitions together with the newly controversial user-generated content are the underlying objectives of this campaign. The idea is to have small competitions: a company that wants to put a vacancy on ADsterdam provides a small assignment. This can for example entail creating a storyboard for a commercial or a creating an entire concept. The best entries will be handed to the company, who will then decide whom to give the job to.

The campaign idea of having a competition and using viral videos as promotion material is interrelated with the different strategies we have to improve ADsterdam. The actions are concerned with the 4 Ps (product, promotion, price and place).

ProductTo promote the competition, in which competitors can win a job at an ad agency, announcements need to made on the website, along with an extra page on the website especially designed for the competition. On this page, the contributions of the contestants can be seen and people will be able to comment on them which all add to the increase of user interactivity. Consequently, having more user generated content means an increase of content in general; this in turn increases the site’s traffic. The competition will also be announced at the end of the viral videos.

PromotionThe key objective of making a viral video is to establish ADsterdam’s brand image. The video will not only help building this new image, it will also increase traffic and raise awareness for the competition. To promote our viral video we will have the video placed on the homepage of ADsterdam, and the video will be distributed to social media networks like Twitter and Facebook to attract more visitors.

PriceFrom the information that was given to us, we know that the vacancies are very important. However, we did not receive any feedback to our questions about the behavior of the website’s visitors. When we know what people like on the website, as defined by the time spent on a certain page and amount of page views, we can tap into these details by strategically placing advertisements on these pages for example. Another way to increase income would be to reserve more space for advertising and to raise awareness of the ability to advertise, which at current is hidden somewhere at the bottom of the page.

PlaceLastly, as mentioned before apart from our campaign the whole lay-out of ADsterdam needs to be re-evaluated. The current website does not allow this for the strategies we propose. The website limits ADsterdam’s opportunities to grow, interactivity and increase of traffic can only happen if the website will change its interface. Since the vacancies are currently defined as providing the most revenue, special attention needs to be given to this particular feature by redirecting people immediately to that when clicking on the home page.

Promo Video

The cliché we will provoke with our first promotional video is narcotics. As Amsterdam carries a worldwide association with legal weed consumption and partying we leverage on this internationally known image to start our series of clips for the first part of ADsterdam’s campaign. The scene is based on The Circle the idea of ‘That 70’s Show’ where all actors sit in a circle and the camera slowly pans to each of the characters while being under the influence of THC. By provoking the cliché of narcotics we mention that Amsterdam is also known for its advertising to create more brand awareness to Amsterdam Capital of Advertising. And secondly by our last shot we direct the audience to visit the ADsterdam website, with just having sparked their attention enough they might want to see what ADsterdam has to offer.

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Reference

Brown, J., Broderick, A.J., Lee, N. (2007). Word of mouth communication within online communities: Conceptualising the online social network. Journal of Interactive Marketing, Vol. 21, No. 3. (2007), pp. 2-20. doi:10.1002/dir.20082

Couldry, Nick (2008). Mediatization or mediation? Alternative understandings of the emergent space of digital storytelling. New Media & Society, 10(3), 373-391

Potts, Jason D., Hartley, John, Banks, John A., Burgess, Jean E., Cobcroft, Rachel S., Cunningham, Stuart D., & Montgomery, Lucy (2008). Consumer co-creation and situated creativity. Industry and Innovation, 15(5), 459-474.

Qualman, E. (2011). Socialnomics: How social media transforms the way we live and do business. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Extra academic and other relevant sources to be found by participants themselves.