Tu 5/16 - Coke Bets On AI | The Best Small Biz Social Strategy | How To Split Test Ads On LinkedIn

It's Tuesday, May 16 2023. Let's nerd out.

The ad nerds podcast delivers ad industry news every weekday. We're the go to source for people who spend money on advertising, covering Big brands, small businesses, and the latest marketing trends. It's me Spanky Moskowitz, the show's host in a nearly 40 year veteran of the ad industry, I created campaigns for Budweiser m&ms, Frito Lay, the NFL and NBA, I've created over 100,000 ads generating hundreds of billions and client revenue. If you're in or interested in the world of advertising, and want to stay up to date with the latest news, the ad nerd podcast is the place to start.

And I'm going to start by being fair, yesterday, I crapped on the new link, Lipton hot, hard tea ad Sorry, I'm thinking hot tea. I'm like, oh, I need a hot tea. I was brutally honest about how much I disliked their entire campaign. Now the campaign launched in select markets around the US. And they plan on scaling the campaign in 2024, nationwide. And I made a bold prediction that they're going to pivot before this time before 2024 Before they burn through their budget, because the entire campaign sucks. So to be fair, I'm going to share with you one of the ads, I didn't do it yesterday, I chose not to play the ad. And I chose not to play the ad because it sucked that badly. But I'm going to play one of them. And then I will let you decide. And you can comment either on the podcast you can you know, if you listen to it on Spotify or Apple write Spotify, you can comment you can actually leave me voice comments. And you can also comment on the YouTube channel youtube.com/@adnerds. So here is of the ads that are in the campaign what I consider the best of the ads, and it still sucks

Like I said, that was the best of the ads in the campaign. And so I would love to know your thoughts on this since I crapped all over it yesterday, it is your turn to beat me up and disagree. Or if you think that this is pretty bad, go go find the rest of the empty yourself. They're terrible. Like I would never ever make a campaign that looks anything like that.

Did you know that we throw away 12 million tons of furniture in the US every year. That's a ton of wasted furniture. Actually 12 tons because they just said 12 times. Well now brands like Kayo and furnish are stepping up to tackle the problem and make furniture more sustainable. Okay, here's the problem. A lot of furniture ends up in landfills because it's not easy to recycle. You know the materials that they use to make furniture, upholstery treatments. The design, it makes it really challenging to repurpose or dispose of furniture properly. But these brands are finding ways to make a difference. Let's start with kayo. They're a full service resale marketplace. And they make it really easy for you to sell your furniture instead of tossing it. And so they come to your place. They pick up the furniture, they clean it up, they take photos and they list it for sale. They delivered a to buyers in cities like New York, LA San Diego. So I think it's only in major metro areas right now. And it may be beyond that. But by doing this, they've already saved over 5 million pounds of furniture from ending up in landfills. Now furnish on the other hand focuses on the hassle of moving furniture and they understand that young professionals often have to relocate for jobs and lugging furniture can be a real pain. So furnish offers Furniture Rental services. Now this is not an RTO Okay, there are lots of RTO companies this is not a rent to own. You simply choose the style you like high quality furniture and you pay a monthly fee to rent it. They deliver it they assemble the furniture for you and when they're done. They take it back, fix it up and rent it to someone else. They've already saved over 2 million pounds of furniture from going to waste. Now, big brands are jumping into this. IKEA has joined the movement and they launched a buyback and resale program where you could bring your old Ikea furniture back to the store and get store credit in return. And they have collected 1000s of items and giving them a second life. You got to understand though, for these circular furniture efforts to have a real impact, though, they need to be both financially beneficial, viable and environmentally beneficial. It's it's the real task is coming up with the incentives for consumers to choose sustainable options and demand durable furniture that's going to last a long time. Rather than just chucking something in the trash. You know, you got to think about upcycling instead, coming up what a content strategy.

What content strategy does your small business do right now? What is the easiest thing for you to execute? I'll tell you next. Alright, small business owners. I'm one of you, you know that small business owners struggle with creating a sustainable social media strategy. And yesterday, my friend Pamela dropped by the office and we got into a deep discussion about this topic. Right now. She feels like she's failing at social media. And her business right now feels like it needs a social media strategy. That's what she thinks. And I know this pain because I've thought it at times I think we all do at one time or another. Am I right? So I shared some thoughts with her during our conversation, and I want to share them with you to know I didn't record our conversation. But I want to share with you some practical tactical thoughts. Go deep on a single platform and use tools to simplify it. So as an example, if you're watching this on YouTube right now, I film every episode of the ad nerds podcast. I have two Sony ZeeVee one cameras one I left 1 right, recording everything and when I'm done the video goes to YouTube. The audio goes to Spotify for you to hear and otter for a verbatim transcription. Once the video is on YouTube, I go to a paid tool that I like called vidyo.ai. That's V i d y o.ai V i d y o.ai. And I give it the link to the video. It watches the video and it finds key moments or clips for use on social media. Then it outputs them in 16 Nine, which is the traditional landscape one one or square and nine by 16 for vertical video, then it's simply a matter of uploading it to the platform of your choice, right? It doesn't matter if you're on Tik Tok, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, it doesn't matter. Okay, I know you're saying you don't have a podcast right now. That's fine. You don't need a podcast to do this. Grab a grab a camera like the Sony ZV one, you find your whatever camera you like, put it on a tripod with a good mic, preferably erode our ODEE really good mic so you don't have to have a mic wireless mic on you at all times. And then film what you're doing in your business. Are you a barber record cutting hair, you make pizza for a living, record it you style outfits in a boutique fine, film it then you're documenting. You're not creating. Documenting is a lot easier. By the way. Thank you Gary Vee for that. It doesn't need a script or your time because you're already doing the thing you do. It makes it easy when you're documenting. Then drop it into a tool like video.ai and see what you get as a start. Remember, you don't need to do all the crazy graphics at first start with what you can do. There are days where I post the TIC tock and I don't hashtag shit. Don't beat yourself up over it because Even though you know you should at least you got the content up. The best strategy is to put content out there. Don't get stuck in your head about what to put out there. And once you get the habit in motion, it will get easier. Finally, I coined this phrase about six years ago and now people hit me in the face with it when I get stuck on something. And here it is. Version one is better than version none. Remember that anytime you get stuck, version one is better than version none.

Global drink giant Coca Cola is placing its bets on ai over web three tech. That's right. Pratik thakar. The car, head of creative strategy and integrated content at Coca Cola believes that while the initial excitement around web three technologies like NFT, and the metaverse was really cool, AI is the technology that's going to have a lasting impact impact on the landscape of the marketplace. He thinks AI is more practical and applicable for daily use compared to web three. I couldn't agree more like I use AI, daily web three stuff, you know, once every couple of months. So he said you can perform stuff with AI like open AI every day, whereas he wouldn't be doing crypto trading or spending hours in the metaverse on a daily basis. Again, same here. Coca Cola has already embraced AI in its marketing efforts. They launched an AI centric campaign called create real magic which allows consumers to use AI generated artwork using Coca Cola as visual assets. And the campaign was super engaging consumers spent an average of seven minutes on the platform and created 120,000 different images. He emphasized the importance of engaging consumers through AI and leveraging their creativity to strengthen the brand's marketing. He also went on to highlight the significance of connecting innovative technologies like aI with existing marketing strategies such as out of home displays, or influencer partnerships. And while the car agreed, or acknowledged the value of the metaverse in offering, like this immersive experience, and helping to build online communities, he really advised brands to prioritize AI over situational technologies, like the metaverse or NF T's. Ai already has practical application and is readily available. Unlike the metaverse, which is still like in version one development. By the way, Coca Cola has explored NF T's as a way to connect with collectors of physical and digital Coca Cola products. But again, he thinks AI is far more practical and brands can activate AI really, really easily. Coming up, LinkedIn launched a new tool that makes it easy to split test your ads. I'll tell you how to use it next Time.

Are you using LinkedIn as part of your sales funnel? Well, if you're wondering how to test and optimize your ads on the LinkedIn campaign manager, I've got some tips for you see, testing different elements of your campaign is crucial to getting better results and making data driven decisions. Now, I will tell you as a purely creative person, I don't care about the data. But I've got people who do. But running experiments and testing on LinkedIn has not always been easy. It's takes a lot of work. It's been pretty challenging, until recently. Last month, they secretly super quietly because no one's talking about it released a new tool in their campaign manager and it's a built in a B testing tool. This allows you to split test in a single campaign for clarity by the way, I call this split testing. And many times they call it a B testing. I might call it both A B or split testing. They're the same thing. So if you hear me reference both of them just understand where that's coming from. Anyway, so now you can experiment With different ad placements, creative elements, targeting strategies, and really figure out what works best for you in your advertising. For me, it's all about making the best use of your resources and investing in what delivers the best result. So how do you set up an A B test in LinkedIn? Hit the pause button on the podcast right now get some things that take notes. And I'll tell you, it's really easy. Okay, I'll just wait for you go ahead. Okay, you're back. First, you want to start by configuring the test settings and giving it a unique name, and then choose the variable that you want to AB or split test. Next, you're going to set a budget schedule and all the rest of the details for the test, then you're going to build two test ad campaigns that are identical except for the variable element you want to test. This could be the the ad format, the target the placement, you can set up shared settings once and then the campaign manager will automatically apply them to both versions. Once you've designed your ads, it's now time to build the A B test variant. Depending on what you're testing, you're going to create two similar ads with slight differences either in you know the visual or the headline or the body copy. It could even be the landing page that it goes to you can a B test those off the ads using the right so there's a lot of different ways to do it. Remember, it's critical to frame your A B test with a hypothesis. pinpoint what you want to learn and anticipate the outcome. That way, you can experiment with the right variables to get the test to deliver the best results possible. Remember, when you a B test and it's done right, you can review the results, pick your winner, and then a B test off of your winner. And you can get tighter and tighter and tighter in your messaging and it just gets better.

Hey, if you liked the ad nerds podcast, please subscribe on Apple Spotify or wherever you listen and make sure you give me feedback on whether I was too harsh on Lipton. Okay, give it a five star rating and a great review. I'd appreciate it. That's the app nerds contest for Tuesday, May 16 2023. Spanky out thanks for listening. Have a great day.