MarketingDojo #60: 👹 The Cult Of The Gentle Monster 🎯

How to build an experiential brand, ads that sell, social commerce numbers and more.

Mar 27, 2024

Hello Everyone,

Welcome to the 60th issue of the Marketing Dojo! Big thanks for letting me into your busy inbox. 😊

We've zipped through the first quarter of the year, and oh, what a ride it's been!

Writing regularly has been the biggest unlock for me. It has helped me clarify my thinking, build discipline around staying on top of all the marketing news, and connect with a broader circle of marketers.

Writing has also opened up many unknown opportunities for me this year. In the early months of 2024, I found myself on podcasts, in panel talks, delivering keynotes, and joining roundtable chats. I am grateful for the opportunities I attribute to showing up in your inboxes weekly.

I appreciate your support, and I hope I continue to deliver value.

We have tonnes to cover in today's issue:

🕶️ The cult of Gentle Monster

⚖️ TikTok’s algorithm’s balancing act

🎨 Ingredients of an effective advertisement

🛍️ Social commerce’s size of the prize

And lots more.

Ready to jump in? Let's get started!

Gentle Monster: Revolutionizing Retail for the Digital Age

A majority of our browsing and shopping now happens online. Generation Z is a truly digital native generation that is online almost constantly.

What can draw this younger digital audience to physical stores?

In my discussions with Generation Z, one brand stood out for its retail, immersive experience.

Gentle Monster, a Korean eyewear brand, has perfected the art of creating experiences that attract a swarm of younger audiences into the store. The brand does many things differently:

Experiential retail: Visiting a Gentle Monster store is an experience in itself. Their stores fuse art, design, and technology, creating an immersive and theatrical shopping environment.
gentlemonster
A post shared by @gentlemonster
Unique experiences: With over 34 locations, no two stores are alike, and the brand refreshes its displays every 21 days, ensuring that every visit offers a new, engaging experience.
Take, for example, this store launch in San Jose. Stunning and shocking at the same time.
Collaborations: The brand has mastered the art of engaging with micro-communities by collaborating with a diverse array of artists, designers, and brands.
Futuristic elements: Gentle Monster stores are laced with futuristic elements, from interactive digital installations to AR/VR/MR experiences and engaging robotic interactions, amplifying the brand's innovative and forward-thinking ethos.
Extension of the retail experience on social media: Gentle Monster's social media platforms, particularly Instagram, are like walking into an art gallery-like store. They use visually striking and creative imagery that blends fashion with art, making their posts stand out in a crowded social media landscape.

Gentle Monster's journey was not an overnight success but a decade-long endeavour. Luxottica Group designs, manufactures, distributes, and sells eyewear and sunglasses under a wide range of well-known brand names, including Ray-Ban, Oakley, Chanel, Prada, Giorgio Armani, Burberry, Versace, Dolce & Gabbana, and many others. Luxottica dominates the eyewear market, leaving brands like Gentle Monster struggling to secure shelf space.

The narrative of Gentle Monster, steered by founder Hankook Kim, is a testament to the transformative power of innovative retail and social media strategies. It underscores how creative foresight can disrupt and redefine market dynamics, endearing a brand to the younger, experience-seeking generation.

TikTok's Secret Sauce: Mixing Exploration with Exploitation

TikTok's algorithm often feels like magic.

When I downloaded TikTok, the platform quickly figured out my interests and started serving me interesting videos with minimal setup time.

At its core, TikTok's magic stems from a delicate dance between exploration and exploitation. For example, let us assume you liked, watched or followed an account that shares healthy food recipes.

When TikTok continues to pepper your feed with similar culinary delights, it's exploiting known interests. However, when it throws in a curveball—perhaps a video on girl maths or a clip from a Turkish TV series it's venturing into exploration, seeking to broaden your content horizons.

In an interesting paper titled "TikTok and the Art of Personalization: Investigating Exploration and Exploitation on Social Media Feeds," Karan Vombatkere and his team explore the inner workings of the TikTok algorithm.

A couple of interesting findings:

3 Metrics that signal personalization: User watch time, likes, and account follows are the three signals that help the TikTok algorithm drive personalization for the users.
30-50% of the first 1000 videos viewed by a user are exploitative, i.e., similar to the videos that a user liked, followed, or watched for longer. A much more significant percentage of videos served to TikTok users are explorative, i.e., new content to diversify a user's experience on the platform.

The algorithm behind TikTok does an excellent job of balancing new and familiar content topics. Studies like these help marketers determine the small tweaks that can make them more visible to their target audiences.

Ads That Sell.

What goes into making an effective advertisement?

Avinash Kaushik's The Marketing<> Analyst Intersect newsletter's latest article about the importance of creatives in advertising highlights three important points:

Ad creatives need to be unambiguous about who paid for them. Have you ever encountered those lengthy, cinematic ads with captivating narratives but found yourself struggling to recall the advertised product? Such ads miss their fundamental goal: driving product sales. With most viewers tuning out after the first 10 seconds, it's crucial to feature the brand prominently from the get-go. Otherwise, the ad loses its chance to make an impact.
An example of what not to do is this ad from Coinbase. It's an interesting ad, but the product name appears right at the end for a few seconds. Most viewers would have closed the ad in the first few seconds and totally missed the brand behind the ad.
Brevity is Key: Long-form storytelling is expensive for brands. Advertisements that feel like mini-documentaries can gather applause in the award circle but are ineffective. Irrespective of length, all ads require the same frequency to drive any form of brand recall. Longer ads are 3x to 5x more expensive than shorter ones because they are more expensive to air.
A pro-tip: Do not create a 6-minute ad and then break it into shorter 60, 30-, 15-, and 6-second versions. Instead, start by thinking about a 6-second ad and work upwards from there.
Creativity matters: Creativity is the linchpin of advertising success, influencing 55-70% of a campaign's impact. Yet, the industry often prioritizes media planning over creative development.
Avinash Kaushik leaves with an example of true creativity from a packaging material company called Signet. Look at their product catalogue video. It was interesting enough for me to watch it in full. There are no awards for this one, but the creativity and brand recall are both top-notch.

From Feeds to Sales: Tracking Social Commerce's Surge

A third of social media users recall discovering a new product or service while scrolling through their feeds. Social commerce, the ability to find and purchase a product on social media, compresses the customer journey from discovery to purchase.

This Statista infographic & study uncovers a lot of interesting insights about the fast-growing part of commerce:

Projected Growth of Social Commerce: Social commerce is expected to account for 22% of all e-commerce transactions by 2028, signifying its rising importance.
China's Dominance: In China, social commerce already makes up 47% of total e-commerce revenue, showcasing the country's advanced integration of social media and retail platforms.
Douyin's Influence: The platform Douyin, the Chinese equivalent of TikTok, is a significant contributor to this trend, with approximately 750 million monthly active users by the end of 2023.
Global Discrepancies: While social commerce is predicted to form around 23% of e-commerce revenue in India by 2028, its impact is expected to remain below 10% in the world's other major economies.

Global E-commerce Revenue: Worldwide e-commerce revenue is estimated to be between $2.7 and $3.4 trillion in 2023, with social commerce revenue projected to be between $500 and $629 billion, according to Statista's estimates.

Short Stuff:

YouTube allows creators to declare the usage of AI-generated video content (Preparing for the text-to-video content onslaught).
Instagram is experimenting with longer reels to increase engagement (Short-form content is getting longer).
Amazon Prime Video wins the bidding war for Mr Beast’s gameshow, touted as the biggest game show on TV. (Mr Beast outgrows YouTube).

That’s a wrap on this week. Thank you for your time and attention. If you liked this week’s newsletter or found something interesting, please give me a like ❤️ or drop a comment🗨️. Your support helps drive the newsletter's discoverability.

Once again, thank you for your time. See you in your inbox next Wednesday.

Regards,

Garima Mamgain

P.S: As a frenetic quarter ends, I want to focus on upskilling myself in the next quarter.

So here's a question:

Have any books or courses been rewarding for you?

Please pour in your recommendations. Thanks in advance.

Marketing Dojo