GMEM Brands digest // July 2018
A new journey for us begins this summer, as we are getting more conscious about seeing the bigger picture of our news projects. What we see on our websites today is about hard work of various teams, constantly putting efforts to achieve maximum in their daily work. But this is just a part of being a strong brand.
The most successful global brands have rich heritage, solid reputation and unique style - and this is where we want to be with our projects. Everything that we do has to be a reflection of our brand values and of what we believe in, creating the biggest digital media on African Markets.
1. Brand communication
Perception challenges are the most important thing that we need to overcome in brand communication. Our job is to make sure our readers and clients understand what the brand is about and are aware of our projects. Which is why we test initiatives targeted on our readers and clients to make sure they know more about what we are doing:
- E-mail news digest for our clients (example)
- Video digests targeted on our readers, so they can easily follow trending videos weekly (Naij, Tuko, Yen)
2. Corporate website
The first thing most advertisers look for in a potential partner is information about the project. It’s very important to have hight quality corporate websites to tell more about what we are doing, show our achievements and present our advertising opportunities .
Which is why past couple of months we’ve been working on the new websites for Tuko and Naij
The work on corporate sites is ongoing: we are to add more interactive elements, videos, cool pictures of the team and we are yet to launch the new corporate site for Yen
Your ideas on improvement are very much welcomed, as well as your support in helping to improve corp sites.
Don’t forget about the team guides, that help you navigate in internal processes, and most importantly - correct usage of brand book.
3. Native advertising content
Now that our marketing team mastered banner advertising, PR and non-standard formats with our clients, the time has come for us to expand in advertising opportunities. Native advertising seems like a logical way to go, as we are all know global publishers like Buzzfeed, who have major part of the revenue brought by native advertising. We just need to find our own way and develop cases portfolio.
You can find our recent cases below
- World Cup category sponsorship on Naij, Tuko and Yen
- EPL category sponsorship on Tuko, as an extension of World Cup project
- Beautiful Peak Milk case in cooperation with video team in Nigeria
- Barclays re-branding project on Tuko
Native project may have lower reach in comparison to wide programmatic campaigns, but these projects are all about relevancy: the project that perfectly fits target audience, works on loyalty, engagement with brand and high response rate from the audience
For clients who are not ready to test native advertising just yet, our PR Executive Mitchelle shared some advices of how to improve reaction on PR campaigns here.
4. Native content formats
Native projects are not just about coming up with tailor made content that will solve client’s brand tasks. It’s also about sponsoring editorial projects like we did with World Cup. To make these projects even more attractive we’ve started to test new article formats. One of the recent cases - World Cup quiz on Naij, Tuko and Yen
As you can see from the pic below, the result in time spent on taking the quiz is quite impressive, not to mention the additional time reading the content around the quiz. The only problem we may have with such format is proper display via Opera Mini on mobile web. But this issue is already resolved in most recent browser versions, so we may continue testing the format, as more people will be able to access such content in the future.
Your opinion maters! In case you have an idea of native project for a particular advertiser or general idea for editorial project, that has commercial potential, please, share it with the brand team and we will work on it together.
5. Tuko Nomination
Last but not least. As you may know, Tuko.co.ke has been nominated for the best online entertainment news platform in Kenya.
We really need your vote to supports us on a way to win — please, vote here :) The voting will last till August 14th
Summary
At the end of the day, how do we understand, that we are moving in the right direction with our brand communication? The best possible response is to see the brand featured in other brand’s communication (Telcom on Twitter).
Stay inspired!
African News Brand Team
