The Sauce – 07/08/2024

Welcome to ‘The Sauce’ – your weekly dollop of marketing news.

By Ashleigh Morris, our Content and Comms Lead.

Welcome to ‘The Sauce’ – your dollop of marketing news from the past week.

This week we look at ad effectiveness, Gymshark’s latest collab, and the marketing efforts from the presidential race as the US election heats up.

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Rankings Reveal Surprising Results in Ad Effectiveness

What’s your go-to channel for ad effectiveness?

The results of a recent analysis may surprise you…

Research from creative effectiveness platform System 1 analysed recent out-of-home (OOH) campaigns and awarded Jaffa Cakes’ ‘We’re a cake! You biscuit’ ad 5 stars, while their ‘Clue’s on the box, bruv’ scored 4.9 stars (out of a maximum of 5.9).

It’s a stark contrast to the usual for OOH ads which typically get just 2 seconds of attention and 44% brand recall. The Jaffa Cakes ads achieved a whopping 88% brand recall, meaning these strong-performing OOH billboards perform as effectively as high-performing TV ads.

What does this mean for marketers?

Our co-founder and strategy expert James said, “Many brands have experimented with out-of-home creative over the last year. We’ve seen it all, with easyJet even having a real pilot on a seat on a recent billboard to encourage more female pilots!

“Brands are realising they can get results from a variety of channels, and that strong creative matters. It provides a great opportunity to experiment with creative ideas on different platforms.”

Brands are realising they can get results from a variety of channels, and that strong creative matters.

Ready for The Latest Collab?

We’ve seen a lot of brand partnerships recently, from Unilever (Persil) and Samsung (washing machines), to Deadpool and Wolverine’s collab with Heinz Ketchup and Mustard (when you see the red and yellow it will make sense!)

The latest? Gymshark and cereal brand Surreal… well, probably! In a sea of generic collabs, this is one we’re definitely onboard with. Two innovative brands, with the same values, uniting to double their efforts.

Surreal teased the partnership last week with a social media post which highlighted their previous partnerships and left users guessing with the Gs and Ss from the copy in capitals, while Gymshark also hinted at the collab through a LinkedIn post showcasing the windows at their flagship store filled with Surreal-style cereal.

Surreal also posted photos of an OOH campaign showing the two brands’ complementary ads side by side, with cleverly matched lines such as ‘Spot Me/Spoon Me’, ‘We Do Gym/We Do Protein’ and ‘Shredded/Eat’.

There’s been an excess of brand collaborations recently, many which fail to stand out. Partnerships can feel like an easy option for brands, giving them a way to increase their brand awareness with their target audience. But do consumers really care? In a lot of cases, probably not.

While the full details of this collab are yet to be shared, with these two like-minded brands who are known for creative marketing, we’re excited to see what they come up with.

Partnerships can feel like an easy option for brands, giving them a way to increase their brand awareness with their target audience. But do consumers really care?

Could Marketing Sway the US Election?

Something a bit different from us in a step away from the usual marketing news stories…

The US presidential race heated up a few weeks ago when President Joe Biden announced he was stepping down and VP Kamala Harris was quickly announced as the new candidate.

While Harris’ team may or may not have had an inkling of what was coming, either way they were under pressure to get her campaign up and running. And that they did.

The hard-hitting campaign launch referred to ‘people who think we should be a country of chaos, of fear, of hate’ with visuals of opponent Donald Trump, before conveying Harris’ campaign message of freedom, powerfully underlined by a backing track of Beyonce’s ‘Freedom’.

And it seems to be working. At the time of writing, the campaign had raised $200 million USD, while over 170,000 volunteers had signed up to help with canvassing and other efforts.

The campaign is embracing celebrities from Beyonce to Megan Thee Stallion and Charli XCX who endorsed Harris with ‘Kamala IS brat’, in reference to Charli’s latest album. And people have taken to social media in droves to support Harris with #IUnderstandTheAssignment trending, and #harris2024 reaching number 4 on TikTok’s trending hashtags in the US.

Engaging Gen Z? Harris’ team understood the assignment for sure.

While we usually talk about businesses, we love this as an example of personal branding and it’s also a prime example of talking to your audience in the places they are active. We look forward to watching this campaign unfold over the next few months.

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Contact us on hello@awesomesaucemarketing.co.uk to find out how we can support your business with a client-centred marketing approach – building trust and loyalty.

You can check out previous editions of ‘The Sauce’ here.

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