THERE ARE NO QUICK, CHEAP AND GUARANTEED MARKETING SOLUTIONS. LIKE THE TOOTH FAIRY, EASTER BUNNY AND FUN ROOT CANALS, THERE'S NO SUCH THING.
There are no hacks, shortcuts or steals when it comes to strategizing, developing and executing marketing that works. There are no marketing silver bullets, holy grails or secret of secrets that will increase your revenue easily, quickly and cheaply. There are no off-the-rack, one-size fits all solutions that will make your organization look or perform better year after year.
There is, however, Immortology. We create integrated campaigns designed to last.
After creating transformative advertising for some of the world’s most successful companies, we decided it was time to transform the advertising agency. Fed up with an industry hell bent on churning out disposable, short-term and short-sighted marketing that leaves clients short-changed, we founded an agency driven to create legendary creative work that maximizes brand growth over the long and short-term. With a network of 300+ seasoned marketing pros, Immortology is a full-service ad agency without the full-service overhead. We specializing in creating Long Ideas that help our clients outsmart, outdo, outlast and outgrow their rivals - without outspending them. Impossible to ignore and hard to forget, our long ideas are big ideas designed to not only deliver higher returns across various forms of new and old media but to stand the test of time.
WE DO TWO THINGS EXCEEDINGLY WELL:
1. We develop strategic brand platforms made to last:
Are based on actionable consumer insights gleaned from our research or yours
Powerfully differentiate your brand from your competitors'
Center your products and services around delivering what your customers truly want and need in ways your competitors can’t or won’t
Rally internal teams
Guide the development of more effective, evidence-based media plans that drive sales now and exponential growth over the long term
Inspire the creation and execution of highly impactful Long Ideas (Big Ideas on steroids) that maximize growth today and for years to come
2. We craft kick-ass Long Ideas that:
Fuel a never-ending campaign of fresh impossible to ignore and hard to forget creative executions
Seamlessly integrate across all old and new media channels
Maximize both your long-term and short-term revenue without cannibalizing either
Make your brand famous and considered by as many current and potential buyers as possible
Instead Of Wasting Your Time And Money, What If Your Marketing Did The Following:
Reached more people, more frequently with a smaller media budget?
Attracted more loyal customers?
Motivated more people to consider your brand and buy it more often?
Rallied your entire employee team?
Reduced promotions and discounting?
Helped your business become more immune to economic downturns than your competitors?
Made you actually proud of your advertising?
Increased your market share?
Produced dramatically longer lasting campaigns?
Caused people to actually look forward to watching, reading or experiencing your ads?
Generated more free press?
Made your competitors nervous and envious?
What if we can do all that for you and more?
Would you be interested?
We Don’t Create Ads. We Create Long-Term Assets.
Nothing give you better returns than big, long ideas.
Big ideas aren’t enough anymore. They also need to be long. If you want to maximize the number of people who notice, like, share and remember your advertising, you need to think beyond the big idea. Today you need a long idea. While big ideas usually have a shelf life of 18 – 24 months (not coincidentally the average tenure of CMOs), long ideas can last decades or more. Think Geico’s We’ll save you 15% in 15 minutes or Nike’s Just Do It campaigns. Each has created hundreds of executions over the last 20+ years that surprisingly and brilliantly support these two basic messages. Big ideas integrate across multiple channels. Long ideas do that plus inspire hundreds of entertaining, informative, and interesting executions for many years.
Long ideas also last longer. Individual executions in long campaigns get viewed, discussed, shared, talked about and remembered for years to come. In a digital world, great ideas can literally fuel awareness and sales forever. For example a video our founder, David Smith, created for Triumph Boats was recently got re-discovered and generated an incredible 38 million views and more than 568,000 shares – without any promotion whatsoever. Spots he created for Lipton Brisk and Smirnoff Ice are getting thousands of shares and hundreds of thousands of new views every year.
Truth is most agencies and design firms simply don’t have the strategic, creative and production chops to conceive and execute big business building ideas much less long ones. They’re staffed and managed by online direct marketers - not marketers. They don’t have a clue about long-term brand building and therefore put 100% of their efforts into cranking out lots of disposable, short-term, short-lived ideas with results that frankly, come up short. To continue with the theme, this is incredibly short-sighted. And while online direct marketing tactics should be a part of your marketing mix, a 100% investment in them does not even come close to the exponential returns businesses get when they pair them with long-term brand building tactics.
Here’s why.
Offline (traditional mass market) advertising is best at generating demand. Online (digital) is best at fulfilling it. You need both to maximize growth. This is as close as we’ve ever been to a Unified Theory of Advertising. According to the Advertising Research Foundation, the optimal media mix for maximizing advertising effectiveness for most businesses is 78% traditional long-term brand building and 22% online short-term sales activation. For targeting Millennials the ratio is only slightly different with 71% traditional and 29% online. Online sales activation (direct marketing) is a prospect harvesting tactic. And Just like a farmer, you can’t expect to harvest more crops (leads/prospects) without planting, fertilizing and watering the seeds to grow new ones.
In Effectiveness In Context, Les Binet and Peter Field present evidence that all brands need brand building and sales activation to maximize growth. Most companies should invest a minimum of 60% of their ad budgets into long-term, mass market, brand building campaigns and no more than 40% into direct, short-term sales activation tactics. However, the average business puts 72% of its advertising in online media – almost the direct opposite of what they should be doing. Ouch.
Still skeptical? Consider this. With all the targeting capability and data you can imagine, Facebook, Google, Amazon, Apple and direct to consumer brands like Dollar Shave Club and Casper are not only spending heavily on traditional channels, they are all increasing their investments in TV, print, outdoor and other traditional long-term brand building channels. Why? Because they know an over-investment in short-term, online marketing will lead to diminishing returns and sales declines.
What’s more short-term tactics are designed to target and “engage” people who have already shown interest in or bought from you. The simple truth is you can’t maximize growth by spending your marketing dollars on people who were probably going to buy your product or service anyway - whether you discounted it or not. Despite what you’ve heard, targeting that’s too tightly defined can actually stunt growth. Here’s why. For most companies, 50% of growth comes from new and infrequent purchasers. This is in direct conflict with Pareto’s law which states 80% of sales come from 20% of current customers. In How Brands Grow, Byron Sharp presents data that proves growth is directly correlated with increasing the reach of your advertising and penetration of your product. To maximize growth, you should concentrate your marketing efforts on acquiring new customers – not retaining old ones. To do this, your advertising should reach every buyer in the market for your product or service your budget will allow.
Advertising that raises awareness is scarce. Advertising that’s authentic, entertaining, informative, memorable and sells is priceless. Creating that level of work is hard and it takes time. And most agencies shy away from doing things that are hard and time-consuming. You and your customers not only deserve better, you also deserve longer.
Watch the “Bubba Test” and “Divine Intervention Test here and the “Cheating Wife Test” here.
We Make The 16% Of Advertising People Notice, Love, Share And Remember.
Organic reach on social media is dead.
An estimated 84% of advertising is ignored – so just being noticed is a huge advantage. That’s why the number one priority of advertising should be to get noticed. Instead of being afraid your ad won’t be liked, be afraid it won’t be noticed. A million impressions is 100% meaningless if it generates 0% attention. Every single piece of communication you put out there from your business card to your your social media ads to your TV spots should aim for maximum attention. Data from The Long & Short Of It by Les Binet & Peter Field shows that aiming for fame – making more people notice, remember and share your ads – can massively enhance the performance of an ad campaign. Here’s a simple goal we aim for with all our communications. Make your ad the most interesting, entertaining or informative thing on the media channel in which it will appear or start over.
READ MORE: THE RULES OF ATTRACTION
Forget what you’ve heard. Forget what you’ve read. The truth is, people don’t want to have a relationship, conversation or deep interactive engagement with your brand. Nope, not even Millennials. They don’t want to share your content with their friends (unless it really benefits them). And unless your brand happens to be a famous musician, actor, model or politician, social isn’t going to be very social to you.
“Any marketers who believe they’re having a conversation (with brand’s fans on Facebook) are delusional.”
- Nate Elliott, VP/Analyst, Forrester Research
Therefore we don’t waste our time and your money trying to create relationships, conversations or deep engagements with consumers. We’re a full-service agency intensely focused on one thing and one thing only - to stimulate the consumption of your products and services. Period.
Truth is, people don’t hate advertising. They hate bad advertising. Even Millennials are attracted to and swayed by great ads. (Although they’ll never admit it.) There was a time when everyone was saying the same thing about GenX and Y. When it gets down to it no one’s really immune to anything they find really entertaining, informative, attractive and valuable – not even advertising.
We're able to produce successful results time and time again because we hold everything we do to a higher standard – no matter how big or small the project. Our ideas must be more interesting, entertaining or informative than the medium in which they appear. If it’s online, it must be the most compelling thing on the site. If it’s in print, it needs to be the best thing in the publication. If it’s a billboard, we want it stopping traffic.
All marketing – digital, social, native, traditional and even content - is interruptive. We just make damn sure the interruption is worth it. Doing anything less is just plain rude. Impossible to ignore, hard to forget and authentically surprising are the criteria by which we judge our work. Are you ready to join the 1%?
To find out how we can help you outsmart, outdo and outlast your competitors, let’s talk.