Naujienos

Joshua Spanier is Google’s global marketing VP for media. He leads teams around the world who plan, buy, run, and assess media on behalf of Google’s brands. Here he shares how his teams are navigating Google’s campaigns through the COVID-19 outbreak.

 

To say it’s a unique time in the world is an understatement. As we all collectively grapple with what this global pandemic means for us — as humans first, but also as professionals — there are often more questions than answers. There is no playbook for times like these, but what I’ve found is that crisis can provide clarity.

 

Though we’re uncovering new challenges every day, we’ve worked to codify a set of principles to use internally to evaluate our media campaigns in this altered marketplace. And in keeping with the theme of “five” — as in the “Do the Five” initiative featured on Google homepages around the world, in partnership with the World Health Organization — I want to share five principles that I hope are helpful to other brands undoubtedly navigating the same uncharted territory.

 

1. Trust local market decisions

 

Though this is a global pandemic, its impact is local. We’ve found it helpful to carry that thinking into the evaluation of our marketing campaigns. Our global teams are providing guidance centrally, but we’ve found it’s best to trust each market to make decisions locally. In other words: direction from the center, but decisions on the ground.

 

At a very practical level, we have built out a centralized, shared spreadsheet for all paid and owned tactics across markets, so we can capture and learn from what is being decided locally. Every team around the world has access to this worksheet in real time.

 

One example of what we’ve learned from this shared context: As interest in news surges around the world, there are many more ad impressions being served in the news category. We’re having to ask ourselves, “In what instances are we comfortable putting our brand alongside news content?” This debate, and local nuance, has helped us make choices, especially around the use of paid social media. Local context is key.

 

2. Constantly reassess your campaigns and strategy

 

As market dynamics change rapidly, we’re constantly reassessing campaigns, creative, and even our guidelines. What we decided two weeks ago isn’t necessarily appropriate today. The one constant assumption we have in this situation is that things will change. Because of that, we’re reassessing every possible touchpoint for our brand across paid and owned channels, from video ads to the automated emails we’re sending via customer relationship management (CRM) systems.

 

We’re asking ourselves every day, “Is this creative or ad placement right for this moment and in this context?” And when the answer is no, we pivot. For instance, we’ve had an Android campaign running that referenced being “out and about.” Was that OK in the U.S. market a few weeks ago? Sure. Today? Not so much.

 

Read more „Think with Google“