We sat down with Jenny Stanley, Managing Director at Appetite Creative to talk about how the business is changing the game in the world of creative tech. For more information visit: www.appetitecreative.com
Give us the elevator pitch for your company.
Creative technology studio Appetite Creative connects brands to today’s audiences. The multi-award-winning studio delivers effective global branding and digital advertising campaigns across the EMEA, Americas and MENA regions, for recognisable brands including Bacardi, Tetra Pak, PepsiCo, Starbucks, Samsung, Vodafone and Coca-Cola.
With expertise across a variety of ad formats and digital advertising, using the latest technology and innovation, Appetite has produced world-first Liquid Skins (responsive programmatic ad formats), world-first WhatsApp ads, and innovative lead generation ads connected to client CRM.
The team specialise in playable ads, connected packaging and gamification to drive better messaging, high levels of brand uplift and high engagement rates. Their custom-built Liquid Data platform allows brands to become more customer-centric and learn more than ever before possible, about their consumers in a GDPR compliant way, while educating and creating awareness and driving revenue.
We are a highly dynamic, fast-moving creative technology company full of passionate young people that are bursting in diversity. Thanks to the high variety of cultural backgrounds of people working at the company, we are not only highly creative, but we also have the ability to look at challenges and problems from different angles which ultimately leads to innovative solutions.
Our skillset ranges from digital and web design over connected experiences to several different ad formats and social media marketing services. We love to inspire others through creativity and innovation – our speciality is connecting brands to today’s audiences.
Briefly, tell us about a typical day – or – tell us about something interesting/unusual/fantastic that happened this week.
This week we reached our quarterly goals a month before the due date. This is an amazing achievement especially in the context of the pandemic and economic pressures experienced by businesses at the moment.
While April and May were challenging months last year, we increased overall revenue in 2020. We actually ended the year 15% ahead of our 2020 target, with two of our best months to date seen in the latter part of this year and 36% growth! We’re hoping to build on and better this goal in 2021, and we’re already well on our way.
We’re feeling positive about the opportunities digital creative companies will have this year, as more and more brands rely on high-quality, innovative and data-driven digital channels to connect with customers.
What do you love most about what you do?
We have a young, diverse and dynamic team culture at Appetite Creative, with a great mix of experience and expertise. I personally love working in such a fast-paced and innovative industry – the digital advertising arena is constantly evolving and updating. We work hard to stay at the forefront of that change so we can deliver the best solutions for clients.
No two days are ever the same. One day we might be working on a connected experience for PepsiCo, next it could be working with Hitachi on an internal manifesto, and then we move on to designing branding and logos for a new start-up company.
What’s the best thing about being a BIMA member?
I know several people in my network who are already members of BIMA – and they all strongly advocated for us to join. They told me about the great networking opportunities, access to exclusive content and additional exposure for member businesses. For me personally, the best benefit is getting support and advice from other members within the BIMA community.
Tell us about an opportunity you’ve had or a business problem you’ve solved as a result of being a BIMA member.
Recently, I shared some insights from a BIMA industry report about website personalisation with my team, which lead to some adjustments on our company’s own website. I constantly check for relevant reports and insights to help my business and team be the best they can be. I also feel that I’m helping my team constantly grow and develop – by utilising the BIMA mentoring scheme and giving them access to the live events.
Please share any interesting content from Appetite Creative
We’ve recently carried out a B2B Marketing survey which showed 82% of respondents viewing B2B marketing as a vital driving force for new business. Despite Covid-19, uncertainty over two thirds (65%) of marketers are looking to increase their digital marketing spend in 2021.
We’re hosting a webinar on this topic – which is free to join – on 25 March. Sign up for details here and check out our previous webinar podcasts here.
Interesting case studies which could be of interest to BIMA members can be found here.
At Appetite Creative, we work with many different brands to help deliver customer insights and digital-first campaigns. Recently, we partnered with CurryKing to create a series of bespoke mobile-first mini-games, delivered to the consumer via QR codes on product packaging. The mobile-focused campaign offered an instant share button, highlighting the shareability of the content to the consumer. On the data side, a bespoke dashboard platform tracked every live engagement, allowing the brand to see real-time data from the campaign. The campaign recorded more than 420k users engaged with the gaming experiences, with an average game time of 3.5 minutes.
Another example can be seen in a campaign delivered for Vodafone, to promote a new mobile device targeted at under 25s. By sending invitations, about a treasure hunt game, the audience was directed to nearby Vodafone stores to get involved in a treasure hunt taking place locally. Users raced around shopping centres and high streets to find clues, which revealed information about the new mobile device. The campaign delivered 75 unique players per store, €800k of organic media coverage and over 300 press articles about the game.
These types of insights can play a significant role in decision-making when it comes to the evolution of product creation and its rollout, something that Swiss milk processor Emmi has harnessed effectively. The dairy company teamed up with leading packaging company Tetra Pak to promote the launch of two new products, Oat & Milk Drink and Balance Drink, via interactive digital advertising and connected packaging. As part of this campaign, Emmi and Tetra Pack wanted to be one of the first on the market to continuously engage with consumers digitally, while also educating key audiences about the benefits of existing and new products.
To achieve these goals, the team at Appetite Creative enabled QR codes to be added to the Tetra Pak packaging of Emmi’s new products. Once customers entered the web-based experience via a mobile scan of the QR code, they accessed four interactive games. During the four months the campaign was live, the games were played a total of 45,897 times making it a huge success in the brand’s home country, Switzerland.