“What song are you?”

In a brief moment of downtime the other day I did one of those online personality tests, where the resulting song is meant to represent your personality. I shared it with my friends on Facebook and soon they were all at it. It was just a bit of fun, not to be taken too seriously…

Or was it “just a bit of fun”?  The comments amongst my friends and I hint at something more fundamental. Those songs represent a common experience; a common language we could all engage in and that we actively chose to do so.

You see, music is undeniably powerful. Yet it is also intimate and often subliminal. 

The High Street plugged in to the power of music a long time ago. However, the choice of a playlist can be hit and miss. It’s my belief that the time has come for retail brands – and not just fashion retailers - to pay expert attention to their sound and develop a brand soundtrack.

Did you know that smell is the sense most connected to memory? It’s something that has intrigued marketers for some time. But until recently it has been seen more as a gimmick than a serious marketing tool. However, it’s increasingly being viewed as an effective way to create more immersive brand experiences, thanks to developments in scent technology.

Scent marketing has already been used with some success in packaging and in the automotive sector. Samsung, for example, has created a particularly distinctive and comforting smell that is emitted when someone opens the box that holds their new phone. Meanwhile, car manufacturers have used the technique to develop the ‘new car’ smell – so when you get into a new car for the first time, that wonderful aroma is likely to be less about the interior materials, and more a scent that has been specifically crafted for the experience.

Aroma therapy

One of the most well known examples is fashion retailer Abercombie and Fitch, which scents its stores with a particularly strong, exotic aroma. Although it isn’t to everyone’s taste, it certainly differentiates the brand.

It’s not only in the West where social media advertising revenues are growing rapidly. In the Asia-Pacific region they’re rocketing. In fact, China is fast catching up with the market leader, the US, with eMarketer predicting revenues of $3.4 billion for 2015, almost doubling to $6.1 billion by 2017. To add some context, this represents around 12.5% of all digital ad spend in the country.

But China is not alone in its hunger for social advertising. The Asia-Pacific region overall is performing well, with eMarketer forecasting 2015 revenues to reach $7.4 billion, a huge 43% jump from 2014.

This is great news for publishers and social media channels, as well as for advertisers who can tap into this increasingly socially active audience. It also has the potential to push the already fast-growing programmatic sector through the roof. But there’s just one problem, and it’s quite a significant one – language.

The simple fact is that the majority of programmatic advertisers use contextual – or at least text-based – data for targeting ads. And very few data partners offer global reach in terms of languages and dialects. This can cause complexities and create barriers for brands looking to target global online and social audiences with their advertising.

So what’s the answer?

Our favourite ad this week comes in the shape of a digital billboard that wrapped around a street corner in Stockholm, Sweden – meaning that the billboard faced in two directions simultaneously.

It’s a pretty clever concept that showcases a new live notification feature on the Samsung Galaxy S6 edge+. With a claim to ‘help people with live notifications on the edge’, this billboard does just that.

Programmatic video ad sales in EU-5 are expected to soar 63.5% to reach €369 million by the end of 2015, according to Emarketer. There’s no doubt that programmatic video is fast becoming mainstream and smart brands are using it to reach their audience across every screen, but this begs the question why the uptake of mobile video advertising has been relatively slow.

The main factor has been a lack of confidence in targeting and measurement through mobile. But times are changing, and the following five facts arguably make mobile video the most important audience engagement channel for brands.

The Festival of Media Asia Pacific Awards 2016 are now open for entries so if you have produced some great work in the region in the last year then it’s time to get scribbling.

The Festival of Media Asia Pacific Awards, now in its fourth year, is the only awards dedicated to the evolution of media, celebrating the best in media thinking and communications across the APAC region. Judged by a senior panel of agency heads and global and regional brand marketers, the awards is a prestigious event rewarding the very best work, helping the winning agencies and media owners win new business and increased influence in the marketplace.

The Awards are open to agencies based in the Asia Pacific region and campaigns must have been implemented locally or regionally. Agencies based outside Asia Pacific may participate as well on the basis that their work was created for and implemented in the Asia Pacific region. Likewise, agencies from Asia Pacific may submit work that has run globally.

Football is an emotional game. While some may see it as just a sport, others (and that’s many) see it as an experience. The experience of belonging to a global family of fans that share the passion and love for the game, like you do. So of course, when English football club, Chelsea F.C., rebranded in 2005, it wasn’t something to be taken lightly.

From a branding perspective, the reigning champion’s marketing team not only faced the daunting task of conducting a smooth rebranding, but also needed to ensure a way of maintaining brand consistency. Changing the brand of a beloved football team is something that can make or break your fan base.

Brand at risk

With a fan base that exceeds the Fulham borders, large organisations like Chelsea F.C. face the challenge to maintain an up-to-date brand guidelines for everyone associated with the brand. Often circulated as PDFs, zip files and email attachments; brand guidelines, logos, images and content are stored across many businesses and organisations, working with or on the brand. Files like these are widely distributed, or given access, to anyone requiring guidance on how to work with the brand.

However, there are two major issues that arise using this method.