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20 Apr 2021

Full Contact What We Found Permalink

How Brands Are Utilizing TikTok

Full Contact April 20, 2021

Full Contact’s Social Media Intern, Ariana Revelas, took a dive into the world of TikTok and made it all make sense.

You’ve heard the name. You know family, friends, or co-workers are all over it, learning dances or obsessing over cute dogs and babies but you’re sitting there saying “What is TikTok?”

TikTok is the newest social platform to take the world by storm. It is a video-based platform with the 6^th largest global social network, with over 1 billion users. Why did it grow so big so fast? A lot of that success comes straight from the algorithm which directly impacts how content is served up to the TikTokers of the world.

The algorithm pulls content into a user’s “For You” page and is based on user interactions, video information, and device settings. When a video is posted it is first shown to the account’s followers and people most likely interested in the video details (Video details are what help new profiles gain visibility). From there on, user interactions decide the content’s next route of distribution in new subsets of user feeds (Positive user response to a video tells the algorithm to show the video to more consumers).

Essentially, TikTok wants to show you content that you are interested in and that’s what the “For You” page is all about. User interests could be anything from cute dogs and babies to very specific niche interests like The Avengers movies or pool cleaning videos.

Here is a video of what the platform looks like and how it is used:

Now that you know what TikTok looks like and have somewhat of an idea of how it works, here is what you need to know if your brand is looking to utilize this platform:

Is your target audience on TikTok?

Gen Z popularized the app but in the past year the demographics have expanded. Currently the U.S. user age breakdown is as follows:

Ages 10-19: 32.5%

Ages 20-29: 29.5%

Ages 30-39: 13.9%

Ages 40-49: 13.9%

Ages 50+: 7.1%

Data via Comscore.

How does a brand get started on TikTok?

TikTok holds some of the weirdest content on the internet, currently, so I would say that most things, go. However, it is important to do some initial research to see if other competitors in your industry are utilizing TikTok. For example, TikTok is home to a plethora of food content so a brand like Papa Gino’s would excel on the platform with local New England pizza content.

Only dive into the TikTok space if you have the time and resources to create content. Although TikTok may be the hottest new platform to jump on, make sure you understand how TikTok will give you an edge and support your brand’s goals and objectives.

Find out what your target audience likes, wants, and doesn’t like. Think about your competitors – what kind of content are they posting? Search for keywords and hashtags so you can stay on top of trends around your brand, products, or industry. Proactive listening and joining conversations about your brand is a great start.

What makes a brand successful on TikTok?

TikTok is an innovative, creative platform that is all about fun. Take inspiration from trends and memes, understand how creators native to the platform create trending content, and leverage TikTok’s ability to engage with sound and music.

What should a brand avoid on TikTok?

Don’t plug your own brand and product from the get-go. Many brands excel on TikTok while avoiding marketing their products altogether. Remember, users are not on TikTok to see ads so you have to create content that is engaging and trend-based.

Don’t repurpose content originally meant to be shared on other platforms. TikTok is a beast of its own so some content that can be transferrable between Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, may not work for TikTok.

Lastly, stay away from looking too sleek and polished. Your first instinct for posting social content for your brand is to have the best-looking products out there for your consumers to see, but TikTok content flourishes when it is more spontaneous and less “produced.”

Some of our favorite brands on TikTok:

Gymshark

Gymshark has built a community on TikTok by working with popular creators, sharing user generated content, and utilizes the platform as another channel for customer service.

Ryanair

Ryanair focuses on entertaining their followers by participating in relevant trends, and using the platform to connect with people versus using it as a marketing tactic.

NFL

The NFL utilizes trending sounds and mic’ed up player audio to make their players more approachable and relatable. They do this through Q&As, interviews, dances, and bloopers.

So, what’s next for you and your brand? The best thing you could do, right now, is to download TikTok, explore, and see what connects with and inspires you. Next, think about how this new medium may, or may not, fit into your overall messaging and communication strategy. You never know what will go viral until you step outside your comfort zone and look at TikTok as a new platform for your brand to shine.

View Our Work

Group of healthcare workers pose in front of Papa Gino's delivery truck with stacks of pizza boxes. — Papa Gino's COVID Social
Responding with a lot more than just pizza.

11 Mar 2021

Marty Donohue Agency Perspective Permalink

Advertising’s current sea of sameness: Immense waste of money or awesome opportunity to set your brand apart?

Marty Donohue March 11, 2021

This one is for all of you heads of marketing and advertising- those smart, hard-charging people responsible for the current messaging your brand shares with consumers. The messaging that has as its primary goal to create interest in and desire for whatever product or service you are putting out there.

I ask you all to please switch from your marketing to your consumer hat for the next few days. Become a student of advertising. Watch or listen in earnest to the commercials playing on TV or the radio. Pay close attention to any pre-roll, display ads, or social media marketing posts. If you’re out and about, take in the outdoor boards and transit posters you come across.

Notice anything? Anything at all? How many brands stood out to you? How many messages got your attention or made you think a little differently? How many ads stuck with you?

Chances are not many. There is indeed a rising sea of sameness, a pattern of parity, happening in the ad world at the moment. And while Covid certainly had its effect, this homogenization has been building for quite some time. There isn’t one reason for this. There are several:

CMO’s have less time to make an impact.

According to SpencerStuart’s annual CMO tenure study, the average tenure of a CMO was 41 months in 2019, a number that continues to trend downward for the past five years.
The hyper-analysis of certain analytics.

There is such thing as too much testing, especially when it saps the emotional impact out of the idea. Brands spend weeks if not months making sure their message is right, oftentimes losing sight about making it great.
The “Content is not Concept” conundrum.

Interview footage combined with slo-mo B-roll is not an idea. An anthemic script and powerful music track over stock footage is rarely an idea. Tactics like these have been overdone so much they are all blending into each other.
Shrinkage of non-working media spend.

In an effort to put as much of their budget into paid media as possible, some clients are grinding down the fees they reserve for strategic and creative development: the very resources which could be deployed to fill valuable media space with fresh and impactful messaging that truly resonates with consumers.

So how is all of this manifesting into today’s advertising product? Where there were once Ideas there are now just proof points. Creative inspiration is being replaced with information. You can listen to three minutes of back-to-back radio spots and not know where one message ends and one begins. Too many messages out there look or sound exactly the same. And for marketers who are spending a small fortune every quarter on media, I fear they are wasting big chunks of their money producing flat, formulaic creative that doesn’t resonate with anyone.

Of course there are exceptions. There are brands who still get it, who still push the boundaries across all media to create messages that stand out, make consumers take notice and maximize their brand’s relevance. Progressive, Burger King, Geico, Oatly, Reddit and Crocs are phenomenal at flying in the face of the current status quo.

Many other brands choose not to. And therein lies the opportunity.

Because the bar has never been lower, the opportunity has never been greater for a brand, let’s say your brand, to become one of the exceptions. You don’t need tens of millions of marketing dollars either. You do need, however, to commit to doing things more distinctively than many of those who don’t. There are great agencies out there who would love to help you do it too. Full Contact is just one of those agencies. But it starts with you.

In my thirty-plus years in this business, I’ve had the great pleasure of working with marketing leaders who saw the opportunity and made a commitment to stand out, to be fresher and more disruptive than anyone else in their category. David D’Alessandro of John Hancock was one. Eddie Binder of Dunkin’ Donuts was another. Ari Haseotes, George Fournier and Gwen Forman of Cumberland Farms were too as were Stephanie Shore at Zipcar, Jen Robison and Julie Smith at Atlantic Broadband, Gayle O’Connell and Mary Anne Hailer at Arbella insurance, Katelin Spaulding at Boston Private and Deena McKinley and Jill Grogan at Papa Gino’s/D’Angelo. They each committed to look, sound and feel different from their competitors and they transformed their businesses because of it. They also did it without relying on a mountain of data to inform what they should and shouldn’t say.

This was not a case of the agency pressuring them into doing great and differentiating work. They wanted it just as much as we did for their brand. They saw the immense value of setting themselves apart and they went for it. There was nothing gratuitous about it. It was a smart business move and a far better use of their marketing dollars than coming across like every other brand.

Here’s another way to think about it. From a product development standpoint you are always looking for that Unique Selling Proposition, the distinctive benefit exhibited by a product, service or brand that enables you to stand out from your competitors. Well, your advertising is a product of your brand. Shouldn’t it stand out as much as anything else you put in front of consumers?

Not a rhetorical question. Yes it should.

Marty Donohue is a founding partner of Full Contact advertising in Boston.

marty@gofullcontact.com

View Our Work

Boston Private Case Study
More than a campaign. A business-building platform.

04 Feb 2021

Jen Maltby Agency Perspective Permalink

The biggest brand opportunity in 2021? Ask questions, listen and observe.

Jen Maltby February 4, 2021

Hello New Year.

I don’t know about you, but I have to imagine you are entering 2021 with a great deal of questions.

Questions about all the changes we have personally experienced.

Questions about all the changes we have professionally experienced.

Just plain boatloads of questions.

As a brand strategist (and consumer) I can’t help but to filter this idea of the power and possibility of questions through the lens of what they can help our clients learn as they charge ahead into the next, exciting chapter.

Don’t get me wrong. I know we can’t keep our rose-colored glasses on too squarely. We can all agree that no matter the client category, all have been impacted by the events of 2020, but two that I have been reading about in recent months are the broad worlds of retail and restaurants.

Let’s talk about retail for a minute.

We know from our client experience and never-ending conversations on the topic that retailers continue to be challenged not only by the pandemic but the changes to the overall categorical landscape.

The challenges faced by brick-and-mortar retailers have accelerated at staggering speed in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic and economic crisis. The latest data from McKinsey shows that consumers are likely to keep the behaviors they’ve adopted amid stay-at-home orders. Retailers can’t afford to be in a wait-and-see mode. They need to reimagine their baseline requirements and then turn their attention to taking their customer experience to the next level.

(source: https://hbr.org/2020/07/the-pandemic-is-rewriting-the-rules-of-retail)

There are many great minds coming up with hypotheses about how all this will play out as we begin again in 2021. In fact, we could read articles on the topic from day until night, but what is more important is asking questions, observing and listening to the customers you have today. Why are they still coming through your doors (virtual or otherwise)? What can you do to make them want to stay connected and dedicated to you and your brand? Why are you losing customers? What are they really looking for from you right now?

I would like to share an example or two of retail experiences that have shown great listening and not so great listening in recent months. Example #1: Upon seeing that I was shopping with two children during the end of the busy holiday season, a clothing retailer offered my kids a seat in the back of the store where the (now closed) but pristinely clean dressing rooms were so that my kids could relax and do what they really wanted to do (which was play a game on their phones). The lovely woman in the store even gave my girls a free sample of “unicorn” hand sanitizer. Why did that matter so much to me? I didn’t have to worry whether or not my kids were keeping their masks up, I didn’t have to watch them like a hawk to make sure they weren’t standing too close to other people, and, most importantly, I felt understood. She didn’t actually even ask me a question; she just was smart enough to OBSERVE the opportunity to make a potentially stressful experience more enjoyable. And you better believe I will be back.

Example #2: This one was online, where I acknowledge it can be harder to make a connection, but there is certainly enough opportunity to ask questions and gather data via the online platform. In this case, I ordered two care packages for people that had been quite ill. I found a new online retailer that offered more than the flowers-and-balloons-type options and decided to give them a try. After 5 weeks of waiting for the packages (that I paid to have delivered in 3 days) they still had not arrived and I had not received as much as a note from the retailer to explain the issue. I understand that there are challenges with the delivery process these days, but a simple email would have gone a long way to making me feel better about the expensive purchases I made. I sent the retailer questions, I never received responses. At the end of the day, the packages were delivered but without the retailer ever asking about my purchase experience or acknowledging my complaints.

You can understand without my explaining the difference in these two experiences and I don’t think it has anything to do with the medium I chose to use when purchasing from their stores. The difference was, one observed and listened and one did not. You can guess who will be getting my business going forward.

Switching gears, I feel like I would be remiss if I didn’t talk about restaurants right now. It’s a category we, as an agency, work with and think about all the time.

I used to love to cook. Every weekend I would spend hours prepping, shopping and preparing for the week’s meals. It brought me joy. But I also loved going to restaurants and taking a break from the cycle of cooking and cleaning at home. Now. After preparing three meals a day for my family (that’s 21 a week and 84 a month for those of you keeping score at home) cooking has lost all of its previous joy. Anyone else feel this way? Even though most are back to being able to go to restaurants in some capacity, it’s similar to the in-store retail experience. It often involves more anxiety than relaxation. As a mom, in the back of my mind I wonder, should I be here with my kids right now? Am I putting us at risk? But then, I also think about how much I love my local restaurants. I want to see them survive through this crisis and I want to support them. Is anyone else feeling this torn?

When I think about everything that restaurants have done during this time to question, listen and observe and as a result pivot, pivot again, and pivot one more time I am utterly blown away. So many (especially local establishments) have done such a good job trying to find ways to continue to serve customers like me and my family. But I also think it’s important to remind all of the amazing survivors in the restaurant industry to keep doing what they are doing, even when this all ends.

“I think restaurateurs are going to have to think increasingly more systemically about if food in the home is going to become much more the norm,” said Oliver Wright, global lead of Accenture’s consumer goods and services practice. “In terms of what we eat and where we eat, it’s probably going to be the biggest shakeout we’ve seen in our adult lifetimes.”

~ https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/29/coronavirus-pandemic-forces-a-reckoning-for-restaurants-with-capacity-limits.html

Attitudes are and will continue to change about the food experience and we can’t truly predict how it will all play out, but I have tremendous faith in the category and think that no matter how terribly challenging it has been, the ability to ask, observe and listen will ensure, not only survival, but exponential future successes.

2021 is a year that has left all of us as marketers, business owners and consumers with a lot of questions. So, let’s make sure that we are asking our clients, customers and ourselves what they really need from us to succeed. I think this year is the most important year for any brand to listen. Even though we have all been looking forward to the end of 2020, I think looking to our collective new beginnings in 2021 is where the real opportunity lies.

02 Sep 2020

Jen Maltby Agency Perspective Permalink

Finding The Strategic Opportunity

Jen Maltby September 2, 2020

Well, here we are, somewhere in the midst of a global Pandemic.

I, for one, didn’t see this coming, and even if you did see this new world on the horizon, it would have been hard to predict the real ramifications for your life, your job, your business. And with regard to this post, your brand.

As a country, we have dealt with many challenges over the last few decades and one of the lessons the past has taught is that challenging times can also afford amazing opportunities. While it is tempting to get caught in the weeds of the daily business-related fire drills caused by the Pandemic, I would challenge you to try to find space in your psyche (and your calendar!) to think about the once in a lifetime opportunity you now have to really make a meaningful connection with your customers.

Now this may sound self-serving coming from a brand strategist, but I truly believe that there has never been a better time to take a step back and evaluate your overall brand strategy.

Just think about all the potential questions about your brand and business that you must have for your customers at this time. Things like:

Is what we are saying still relevant today?
How are our customers feeling? How is this impacting them?
How have their behaviors changed?
How are they feeling about you vs. competitors at this time?

I can think of 100 more, and I am sure you can too.

And if you don’t believe brand strategy is critically important right now, like any good strategist, I have done my research on the topic, here is just a sampling of the conversation:

“COVID-19 will change all of us. The key is to understand and analyze the human insight behind the changes, and which of them will stick.”

~ Ipsos, The Role of Research and Insights in COVID-19 Times, 4/29/20

In the PwC CFO survey, nearly 71% of business leaders from companies with more than $1 billion in revenue said they view this crisis as an opportunity to emerge stronger — particularly related to product and service innovations.

As businesses and brand builders, we are all (I’m going to say it) going through this together. Sorting through the madness, Zooming until you can’t Zoom anymore and trying to solve the near-term problems that are very likely filling your collective plates. But successful brand strategy is about really challenging yourselves to take a step back and not only think big picture but be open to doing things differently, if you need to.

The world around us, the world around your customers has and will continue to evolve and the importance of staying connected, of considering where you are strategically has quite literally never been as important.

But don’t panic. With the right strategic thinking and the right partners, your business’ next winning streak could be right around the corner.

In the meantime, here are three things we would suggest you do now to get ahead of this opportunity. These are steps we take all the time when we are creating, or in this case, re-optimizing, the brand foundations of our clients:

Keep it authentic:

Talk to the internal people at your company, not just the senior leaders but a mix of new members of the company as well as the more seasoned employees from a mix of disciplines. Ensure that as the pandemic has taken hold, that they still feel the same about the brand foundations. If they don’t, it’s time to consider two things: Do you need to shift your tone or strategy, or do you need to ensure that they understand how your brand really works in this new version of our world? We have worked with clients to develop solutions to address each of these needs but what is most important to keep in mind is that if the people that make your company run don’t believe in your foundations, it will never feel authentic to your customers.

Don’t be afraid to ask the hard questions:

It has never been more important to talk to and listen your customers. At Full Contact we have clients that are doing better than they have ever done before and we have others that are still navigating their way through these tough waters. BOTH of these kinds of companies need to ask their customers or their customer-facing employees the tough questions about why and how their behaviors have shifted during this time. Monitoring and tracking customer input will help you pivot quickly, make those that are loyal to you feel heard and appreciated, and most importantly help you pave your path forward.

Closely monitor the competitive landscape:

Believe me, I know it is hard enough to stay on top of the day-to-day list of to-do’s right now, but keeping a close look at the competitive landscape is critical. Many of the brands you have watched in the past may be completely changing their story. They could be trying to ride on your business’ successes and claim to offer the same as you; they could be talking about a new innovation or option that you could consider for your own brand, or they quite simply could have dropped out of the conversation all together – giving you the opportunity to steal share.

Above are just three of the many things we think are important when thinking about the best way to strategically navigate through these world-changing, business-changing and life-changing events.

Hang in there.

“Often out of periods of losing come the greatest strivings toward a new winning streak.”

~ Fred Rogers (aka Mr. Rogers)

18 Aug 2020

Full Contact Agency Creative Permalink

Bringing the Sizzle to D’Angelo Social

Full Contact August 18, 2020

Nothing satisfies social media scrollers like some hearty, meaty, hot-off-the-grill goodness.

When you’ve got the biggest, meatiest, tastiest sandwiches around, sometimes the best thing to do is let that delicious grilled goodness speak for itself. And by speak, we mean shout from the mountaintops.

With a robust social media presence, we’re building appetite appeal and brand affinity by showcasing meaty, mouthwatering sandwiches in all their grill-tastic glory.

Still We Grill

Through some weird and challenging times, we reminded folks looking for the comfort food they know and love that we always keep the flame lit for them.

EveryDAy Heroes

We launched the EveryDAy Heroes initiative to to help feed & fuel essential workers at medical facilities all across New England. By encouraging D’Angelo fans to nominate their local healthcare heroes, we provided over 1500 meals at 50 hospitals and healthcare facilities.

Results

13% Increase In Instagram Followers

17% Increase In Instagram Engagements

7.4% Average Instagram Engagement Rate

*The industry average engagement rate is 3–6%

15 Jul 2020

Lawrence O'Toole Agency News, Uncategorized Permalink

Pitching through a pandemic.

Lawrence O'Toole July 15, 2020

This past February our agency, Full Contact, decided to pitch the Massachusetts State Lottery. A few short weeks later, the world changed. We were hell-bent to make the most of the pitch process anyway.

On Thursday, March 12th we organized a small in-house video shoot at our agency to help bring our pitch ideas to life. We didn’t know it at the time, but it would be the second to last day anyone would be willing to venture out in the downtown Boston area for three months. It was great that we finished the shoot, but that Monday our doors were closed. The pandemic had arrived here, and we didn’t know how, or if, we could finish all the work we just shot.

On Tuesday, I got a phone call from Full Contact’s founding partner Marty Donohue who asked, “do you think we can finish this from home?”. What he was really asking was, do you think we can finish this pitch remotely and still have it be great? At that point, we had strategy, media, and creative in various forms. We just had to figure out how to bring them all together without physically being together.

We had to remain open to figuring it all out – despite our closed doors and despite the fear and chaos of a global pandemic. It was going to be a huge change, and we had to be proactive about adapting to it. But also, we didn’t have a choice. We had already invested so much in the client and the ideas – there was no going back. And now, the clock was running out.

If there was any reassurance during those final weeks leading up to the pitch, it came from having been in this situation before. Sort of. It was never anything like navigating a pandemic, but over the years we’ve always challenged ourselves to figure it out. Take what we have and find a way to make it great. When you’re limited, it’s an incredibly uncomfortable thing to put yourself through – until you do it so much that you become good at it. Then, eventually, it becomes an asset.

Getting through that pitch was uncomfortable, and at times, overwhelming. Several of us on that pitch team have kids, but I’m not sure any of us were more overwhelmed or uncomfortable than our Senior Art Director, Ellie Fusco. Imagine being in the middle of a pregnancy, in the middle of a pandemic, in the middle of a pitch. Or as comedian Jim Gaffigan jokes about having a fourth child; “Imagine you’re drowning… and then someone hands you a baby.”

The idea of finishing the pitch remotely was daunting enough. But there was Ellie, working through the weekends, working until 2 and 3am, night after night. She was drowning in pitch work. Now add to that the existential layer of bringing a child into this new world of dangerous uncertainty. That’s no joke. That’s beyond remaining open. Or figuring it out. That’s straight-up relentless. Witnessing her do that was an inspiring reminder of what we’re all capable of.

So, as everything around us came to a grinding halt, we worked tirelessly. By the end of March, Marty had delivered the physical copies of our final presentation and the pitch meeting was held shortly thereafter as a Zoom call – a first for everyone. The presentation went better than rehearsed and when it was done, virtual drinks.

We felt confident about the work, but we felt even better about how we found a way to get it done and make it great. That’s how it goes – the more effort you put in with the time and resources you have, the better you feel about it. That’s a big part of what it means to go Full Contact. And when you do it, like Ellie did, you have no regrets because you feel it in your gut; you made the full effort.

Or is that the baby kicking?

Either way, we’re really excited to work with our newest client and we can’t wait to meet the newest member of the Full Contact family.

24 Jun 2020

Full Contact Agency Creative Permalink

Only the Essentials.

Full Contact June 24, 2020

For a lot of agencies and production companies, the dynamics of social distancing have created considerable challenges and even barriers to making new work. The entire process has needed rethinking – from the creative concept all the way through post-production.

We’ve been able to create new work for our clients safely by getting back to basics. Here’s how we did it.

Our New England Honda client is directly connected to the global supply chain of auto manufacturing, which means that if there’s a disruption, they feel the impact almost immediately. We spent much of March doing what many agencies did – we prepared a lot of response ideas and communications plans. Then, as a phased reopening began across New England, it was important to announce that the Honda dealerships were now open and ready to safely get back to business.

The assignment was to create a broadcast and digital message that simply conveyed, we’re open. But the real challenge was, how do we do this with everything that’s going on right now? Our creative approach had to make sure we were limiting all personal contact. That meant single talent, open location, minimal crew, and safety first.

In other words, only the essentials.

Video, audio, lighting, makeup, talent, and a director. OK and maybe a producer. That’s seven people total. The simplest possible approach for the simplest possible message. No creatives on set, no client, no account team. After the shoot, we edited, color corrected, and mixed remotely. The entire process was extremely efficient and came out great.

So why not do this every time? Of course, clients can’t un-see this level efficiency and productivity once it happens – and they shouldn’t. But what they also see is the value of every function that goes into a production. It clearly reveals what they get and what they don’t get. It might be talent, a specific location, wardrobe styling, editing, music or any number of ingredients that add up to the most important thing; a message that makes an emotional connection. At the end of the day, if we’re conveying the right message, and if that message hits home with our audience, it will have been a good investment.

Whether the budget is big or small, finding and recognizing the value is important for all of us. After all, no one will ever want to pay for something they don’t want. At Full Contact, we practice scaling down as effectively as we scale up. It makes us more useful to our clients, more marketable in our ever-changing industry, and in the end, more essential.

Here it is – a fresh, feel-good celebration of openness that couldn’t be simpler.

26 May 2020

Full Contact Agency Perspective Permalink

Time to put away the brand sanitizer

Full Contact May 26, 2020

Yes it was the right thing to do, for brands and agencies alike.

Take a pause, focus on the big picture, help out any way we could. Soothe, not sell. Provide comfort, not copy points.

It really did feel like we were all in this together, which has been awesome and effective and no doubt helped flatten the curve and save lives.

Now comes the grand re-opening of America. It will be eventual and methodical, but it’s already starting, and it’s going to be a remarkable thing to experience.

And we, as brands and agencies alike, have a tremendous opportunity to help everyone get back to whatever normal is sooner than later. How? By getting back to the business of setting brands apart.

For almost three months in the marketing world, we were not just all in this together, but many were using the exact same script…and imagery…and piano score.

And while there were some outstanding exceptions (Apple, Nike, Old Navy, Burger King and CVS to name a few), there was a lot of pivot parity too.

It’s okay. There were way more important things going on at the time. It’s been phenomenal to watch brands and agencies step up and DO things that really matter to people. It’s been even more phenomenal and gratifying to be a part of that, as anyone at our agency can attest.

But now what really matters to people is getting their lives back.

We can be on the forefront of helping them do exactly that. And if we do, we unleash the most effective stimulus package of all: the awesome power of the American consumer.

If there was a Pent-Up Consumer Demand index, it would be off the charts right now:

According to a recent IPSOS study, 58% of consumers miss going out to bars and restaurants.
This week The Wall Street Journal reported a sudden revival in consumer interest of buying and owning their own car. Also “Buy A Car” google searches are higher now than they were pre-pandemic.
Redfin reported that homebuyer demand, after plummeting by one-third in April, is now also above pre-pandemic levels.

The states are reopening, and literally hundreds of millions of consumers have been waiting at the front door – waiting to get back to their favorite restaurant, to the beaches, to play, to work, to shop inside a store and to spend their money again.

And yes, of course the caveat here is to do it all in a safe and manageable way where we respect each other’s need to remain healthy.

But when consumers do suddenly have the freedom to get out there and spend in droves, employers will have the ability to hire in droves. Spending rockets up, unemployment levels plummet, and once again there is a supply for all the demand that will be out there.

So, how can brands and agencies play a role in creating this self-induced consumer stimulus? By leading the way with optimism and fresh new insights that connect consumers back to their best selves, or perhaps a slightly new and different version of their best selves.

By creating work that breaks through rather than blends in. Consumers are done with the blending in, where so many messages sound exactly the same and say little to nothing.

Time to say something better, say it differently, make people laugh again, make people desire again and happily reconnect them to their individual hopes and dreams.

These past few months have been quite the palate cleanser across the marketing world, a sea of sameness the likes of which we have never experienced before. Now we have a golden opportunity. The slate is clean and the page is blank. People are looking for something new and fresh and different to enrich their lives, to make them happy again.

It is the right thing to do, for brands and agencies alike.

15 May 2020

Full Contact Agency Creative Permalink

Boston Private Resonates With Relevance

Full Contact May 15, 2020

As Boston Private guides its clients through the changing financial landscape, the WHY of Wealth campaign rings especially true. In this latest extension, they show their clients once again that they continue to look deeper and understand what’s truly important in their lives, especially now. These simple, powerful messages translated to digital video, display, in-branch, and out of home.

06 Jan 2020

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Illustration work of FC’s own Adam Proia

Full Contact January 6, 2020

As resident Creative Services Manager, Adam provides a window to his work as an illustrator.

“It’s meant to make people laugh and keep looking.”

When Adam Proia puts pen to paper, it’s usually inspired by something that actually happened. He points out, “I like to pull from everyday life situations and I usually mix in some monsters and magic. Also, I think beer guts are funny.” But it’s the creepy-funny playfulness in his work that grabs us. His college design professor described it as fantasmagorical, and while totally absurd, it somehow manages to be strangely relatable. Adam finds those real, awkward details in our lives and amplifies them through his vibrant, fantastic characters.