Keep It Simple Stupid is the best approach in a multi-screen world. Brands with simple, consistent and recognisable imagery will likely have more impact.
It’s amazing how much you can learn from a biscuit. Not just any biscuit you understand but Oreo, the doyenne of biscuit marketing.
Oreo has mastered the golden rules of multi-screen minimalism and reaped success as a result. The reason why Oreo is so successful is that it’s recognized – as have brands such as Dove and Corona – that multi-screen requires a different brand aesthetic and marketing approach.
In a world where consumers are accessing content from multiple screens and at different times, complex imagery and corporate identities fail to maximise the potential of these new channels.
Oreo has taken some simple rules and some deceptively simple ads – the cookie is always the hero, the colour elements are consistent and the graphics are bold – to create a brand identity that can readily be extended across multiple channels.
It hasn’t allowed itself to be tied down by these rules, however, and has continued to look for new ways to exploit digital channels, including making Vine movies (although as with other messages, the distinctive Oreo cookie is always the star).
What Oreo has understood is that consumer behaviour has changed in a way that requires them to redefine how they communicate. Beyond TV, far more screen time is being spent with laptops, smartphones and tablets than ever before.
It also helps further to have a nuanced understanding of the differences between “meshing”, “stacking” and “shifting” when it comes to consumer usage of multiple devices. Understanding these trends is critical to ensuring that brand messages are coherent and consistently powerful, whichever screen the consumer is using.
The temptation is to focus exclusively on second screening or meshing – the simultaneous usage of multiple devices for related content – when marketers think about multi-screen marketing. For example, this could be someone watching the cooking channel on TV and then searching for the recipe online.
Marketers can tap into this by ensuring advertising content is an extension of the programming content. Messages will be relevant, fluid, and related and often accompanied by a simple hashtag to allow consumers to comment or access further information. Oreo’s “You can still dunk in the dark” tweet during the 2013 Super Bowl blackout is the perfect example of a brand that has maximized the value of meshing.
However, even when people are using multiple screens at the same time, they are more likely doing different things. Stacking is simultaneous usage of multiple devices for unrelated content. For example, this could be checking social media while a football game is on TV. This behaviour is harder for marketers to tap into.
In fact most multi-screen usage is not simultaneous at all. People are generally more likely to be shifting their different screen usage throughout the day. Some of this shifting could be for related content, for example, browsing for airline tickets initially via a smartphone but completing the purchase later via a laptop. But much multi-screen time is at different times of day for totally unrelated content or objectives.
Since predicting how and when consumers will shift their focus from screen to screen is tricky, and moments of simultaneous usage are rare, consistency across screens is key.
Again, Oreo seems to understand this. Whether on YouTube with their recent Christmas “Cookie Balls” video, or on Facebook or Twitter where they serve up a steady stream of multi-screen friendly biscuit entertainment, Oreo maintains the same overall aesthetic and approach.
Of course, marketers need more in-depth audience planning insights into when, where and how different consumers are using different devices but what they also need is a simple look and feel to their messages so that they are instantly recognisable, wherever they are seen.
More often than not, we make quick decisions about what we will interact with, taking only 1/20 of a second to make decisions on the appeal of digital stimuli. Millward Brown eye-tracking data for digital display ads suggests that just one appealing visual is enough to attract attention. Hence as consumers focus on a range of stimuli in quick succession, brands that adopt a more minimalist and to-the-point approach will achieve greater engagement.
The requirement to create communications with a crisp, clear appearance that require minimal cognitive load will only grow as more consumers mesh, stack and shift.
A brand such as Dove (and its Real Beauty campaign) has exactly the right kind of clean, simple visual identity to benefit from this learning and deliver strong impact across online, TV, and mobile screens (as well as in print and outdoor media).
Another brand worth considering is Corona, a Mexican beer brand that topped the 2013 BrandZ Top 50 Most Valuable Latin American Brands. Corona messages feature common elements: sunny beach backdrop, sounds of waves gently crashing into each other, the bottle is front and center. The result is a sense of tranquility that is instantly recognisable and transfers quite seamlessly across screens.
In a multi-screen world, brands that design their content with a direct and to-the-point approach will tend to succeed. But if a biscuit isn’t enough to convince you, perhaps James Bond will do the trick.
In the latest installment of the James Bond series, Daniel Craig’s character has an encounter with his new, younger Quartermaster (“Q”). They meet in the National Gallery where Q hands over a gun and a radio. Compared to the more exciting gadgets from previous films –jetpacks and wristwatches with lasers – these offerings seem benign and dull. Yet later on in the film, they prove invaluable.
Simplicity, it seems is its own reward, not just for James Bond and Oreo, but potentially for you and your brand too.
By Duncan Southgate, Global Brand Director - Digital at Millward Brown.
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