Campaign planning
Campaign planning takes the results from the research and strategy phase and puts them into actionable documents called briefs for the creative and media teams. We outline the problem we’re solving or the challenge that needs to be tackled, the desired outcome and the target audience. We also include an insight, which often comes from the intersection between our audience, product/service and what’s going on in culture. Then, we map out a desired response along with the campaign schedule and budget.
Media planning & buying
Research on current media habits and how purchase decisions are made informs our media planning. This is where we make recommendations about how and where to best reach our audience and what fits best with the messaging and creative approach we propose.
Digital, social and traditional advertising
Many ad agencies or specialist firms focus on a particular tactic or media category, like social media, or only focus on messaging and creative development. At Balloonfish, we believe that to be most effective we need to have a deep understanding of all available mediums. This includes identifying what messages and media types make sense for each, depending on the budget we have to work with, audience we’re trying to reach and the desired action we want them to take. View our work to see examples.
Creative development
Working within the creative strategy, we employ copywriting, art direction and design to develop creative concepts that will best reach, resonate with and inspire your audience to action. We aren’t fans of “the big reveal,” though. We’d rather bring you along for the ride.
To start, we demonstrate our ideas through rudimentary sketches and draft copy to illustrate each approach. We’ll show how it could work in different mediums based on the media plan (e.g. video/radio script, social media post, online display/OOH ad).
We also explore additional ideas – the uncommon, non-traditional and unexpected – that could garner extra attention. These could be ideas that work within the campaign, or sometimes even reach beyond.
Direct marketing
Not often viewed as the sexiest of advertising tactics, there’s an art to getting people to sign-up, buy or donate. Most commonly, we employ direct mail, email and direct response TV, but this can also include other more traditional advertising tactics, too. Conversion-focused copywriting and clear calls to action help drive behaviour.
Content marketing
We often like to blur the lines between content and advertising. Helpful content can be key to building an audience. But strong calls to action are sometimes needed to make a sale, too. We find, though, that there’s a lot of grey area between. We work with clients to brainstorm content calendars and often set them up with a social media management tool to manage multiple channels more efficiently, providing them with the tools they need for an effective content marketing strategy and asset creation.
Data analysis
We analyze customer and third party data to identify trends and insights at the start of a campaign. We also review website analytics, digital advertising campaign data and customer data while campaigns are in-market to optimize our messaging and placements.
At the end of each campaign, we prepare a report with key metrics to see how we performed based on campaign key performance indicators. This can provide valuable insights for future campaigns.