Mark Ritson headlines new campaign showcasing top brand work on YouTube via Emotive

YouTube has launched a new campaign via Emotive fronted by marketing guru Mark Ritson, which explores how some leading brands are achieving their short and long term marketing goals on the platform.

 

The three part series ‘YouTube Works: The Long and The Short of It‘, sees Ritson sit down with marketing leaders from Les Mills, Tourism Australia and CommBank Australia to take a deeper look at their campaigns and results — and offers lessons for all marketers as they look to connect with audiences across the marketing funnel.

Says Ritson: “Nothing floats my boat more than learning from smart, senior marketers from big brands like Tourism Australia, Les Mills and CommBank Australia and understanding where they are seeing results and how they are achieving them. When YouTube invited me to be part of the series, I jumped at the chance.”

Says Mark Wheeler, head of YouTube and large customer marketing at Google New Zealand and Australia: “For marketers seeking ways to connect with audiences across the funnel, YouTube continues to create new opportunities for achieving short and long term marketing goals, from brand awareness to product activations. It’s where brands can meet their audiences, with more than 17 million Australians visiting YouTube in a month to satisfy their unique needs and interests.”

With an existing short term acquisition strategy thriving on YouTube, Les Mills International launched a complementary brand building campaign with bold creative daring their audience to answer ‘Who Is Les Mills?’. Les Mills International’s chief customer officer Luke Waldren and marketing director Ebony de Thierry explain how they’ve increased long term brand awareness while continuing to experiment and grow short term success.

Says de Theirry: “Going into this campaign, we had three key objectives. Increase brand awareness, increase the number of people searching for Les Mills, and drive future demand and ultimately conversions for Les Mills+, which is our digital fitness streaming platform. And overall, the results completely exceeded our expectations.

“We saw that users exposed to the brand ad were 11 times more likely to search for Les Mills. We also saw an absolute awareness lift of 8.85%. The brand campaign delivered a search lift of an amazing 880%, signalling a really strong sign of intent, and helping to support our short term acquisition goals.

“What we have really enjoyed about YouTube is the measurement and the experimentation offerings, so that you can continue to test, learn, and optimise. We actually launched our brand campaign six weeks ahead of our key moment as an opportunity to really understand how it resonates with consumers, to test, to learn, and to optimise ahead of going into that moment. And that is very much a performance-focused mindset that we have brought forward into brand. What we found is that digital video overall, YouTube specifically, has driven the largest ROI for us as a business.”

The other two episodes cover:

Episode 1: CommBank Australia. CommBank Australia CMO Jo Boundy explains how a strategic shift to an ‘audience-first’ media strategy translated to showing up where their audience is going. See how advertising on YouTube helped CommBank Australia reach audiences of all ages and build their brand for the long term.

Episode 2: Tourism Australia. With international borders reopening, Tourism Australia launched an ambitious 9-minute creative film to reach engaged audiences across devices. Tourism Australia’s CMO Susan Coghill and the Chief Strategy Officer of their media agency, UM Media, Raj Gupta share how they leveraged YouTube’s multi-screen solutions like Connected TV to drive desire to visit Australia. It was revealed at the last Brandcast in late 2022 that in a single month, YouTube reached more than 3.5 million people ages 18 and older in New Zealand and over 17 million Australian adults. More than 11 million Australians and 2 million New Zealanders streamed YouTube on a Connected TV.

Client: Google Australia

Creative and production: Emotive

Talent:
Mark Ritson – Columnist, Virtual Marketing Professor, Narrator of YouTube Works
Jo Boundy – Chief Marketing Officer, CommBank Australia
Susan Coghill – Chief Marketing Officer, Tourism Australia
Raj Gupta – Chief Strategy Officer, UM Australia (Tourism Australia’s media agency)
Luke Waldren – Chief Customer Officer, Les Mills International
Ebony de Thierry – Marketing Director, Les Mills International