Our Guests: Laura Davies, Senior Performance Marketing Manager, Deliveroo, Isabelle Cavanagh, Marketing Consultant, frog

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Design Mind frogcast Ep.39 - Forget the Social Algorithm

Today on our show, we’re jumping into the constantly shifting, sometimes chaotic world of social media. For those developing social media strategy for brands, these are places to tell stories, curate content, sell products and measure engagement. To talk about how to capture attention amidst all the noise while also managing to somehow be authentic on these platforms, we’re joined by two voices deeply enmeshed in this space: Laura Davies, a Senior Performance Marketing Manager at Deliveroo and Isabelle Cavanagh, Marketing Consultant here at frog.
Listen to the podcast episode and watch the full video below. You can also find the Design Mind frogcast on <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/design-mind-frogcast/id1541644073" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Apple Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/5mxbuRY6KtBwIrNhWhu0sx" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Spotify</a> and anywhere you listen to podcasts.

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[26:25] Elizabeth Wood: Now back to our conversation between Isabelle Cavanagh, Marketing Consultant in frog’s London Studio and Laura Davies, Senior Performance Marketing Manager at Deliveroo.
[26:35] Isabelle Cavanagh: I think whatever the debate, the rise of TikTok has really put the question out about demographic changes and uses of social platforms. Undeniably TikTok is seen as a platform of Gen Z and maybe a platform like Facebook or Instagram is that of millennials. Laura, what shift have you seen and demographic usage in Deliveroo’s campaigns and why do you think this shift might be happening?
[26:55] Laura Davies: We’re definitely seeing more of our existing customers on certain social media platforms over others. So our retention activity might prioritize platforms where we can speak to a large proportion of our existing customers. Equally, on platforms where it&#8217;s harder to reach them, there&#8217;s an opportunity to drive incremental new customers, but in turn incremental revenue. So we have to be quite flexible with the approach that we take. So we have to adopt a flexible approach to test and learn to make sure that we are maintaining efficiency on our existing platforms, but that we&#8217;re also open to new alternatives.
[27:29] Isabelle Cavanagh: It&#8217;s often been claimed by some marketing professionals that brands have ruined social media as we know it. And that has been linked to the fact that the demographics are, or the younger demographics, are moving away. Would you then disagree with that, Laura and say actually, that&#8217;s not really quite what you&#8217;re seeing? And instead you&#8217;re seeing people still can drive efficiencies into all the different heritage platforms like the Facebook, like the Instagram?
[27:52] Laura Davies: Well, there&#8217;s serious generational differences when we&#8217;re looking at the usage of social things. Thirty-eight percent of Gen Z actually report spending four or more hours a day on social in comparison to 18% of US adults. So that kind of reaffirms what we already know: younger generations are spending longer on social. And then it&#8217;s just a case of, okay, how do we reach them? Not every business will want to target Gen Z or will know how, but we can&#8217;t forget that this cohort, despite being younger, they will become the primary decision makers. They&#8217;ll be the ones with more disposable income when they&#8217;re older. So they&#8217;re definitely not a generation to be discounted from our marketing efforts. And I think if you&#8217;re, you know, scared of targeting Gen Z, or you&#8217;re not sure of the marketing strategies to use, I would definitely try and read up on it. Learn.
[28:43] Laura Davies: I think, generally speaking, Facebook&#8217;s still the most used social media site. It&#8217;s got 2.9 million monthly active users in comparison to 1 million on TikTok. And, you know, Meta’s had a huge advantage. Their platforms have been around for a lot longer, but we know that there&#8217;s been exponential growth on TikTok in more recent years. So there&#8217;s definitely a seismic shift in the way that the younger generations are consuming content. But I think if we take TikTok as an example, I wouldn&#8217;t say that it&#8217;s just Gen Z on the platform. You know, when I&#8217;m scrolling—I mean, I&#8217;m 28 so I&#8217;m not Gen Z, I&#8217;m a millennial—but when I&#8217;m scrolling through the platform, I&#8217;m seeing more and more content that&#8217;s tailored to my age group. There&#8217;s lots of 30 year olds that are talking about, you know, restarting their lives at 30 and all of the cool things that they want to be doing. And recently, I even saw a group of women on the news that we&#8217;re talking about their new TikTok account, which is something to help menopausal women. There&#8217;s lots of different niches within platforms that I think you just have to tap into. And from an advertising perspective, I don&#8217;t think it matters too much if that group is smaller than what you&#8217;re used to. I think as long as there is scale you just need to know where to find them and how exactly to target them. And I think once you can tap into that, once you&#8217;ve got that kind of golden nugget of inventory, then you can invest more into that and you can make it more efficient over time.
[30:07] Isabelle Cavanagh: I think anyone who works within social strategy can agree there&#8217;s been a rise of new social features and innovations which are really changing the game. Mostly, I think there&#8217;s a lot to say about social becoming the new search channel. Users are turning to platforms like TikTok and Amazon to find new products or be inspired before they even think to go on Google. Laura, what do you say to the idea that social is the new search?
[30:34] Laura Davies: I&#8217;m actually really excited about the fact that TikTok is bringing keyword bidding as one of its new placements. I think that it&#8217;s going to be a super contextually relevant way to tap into what users are already looking at on the platform. We were talking about advertisers needing to not disrupt a user&#8217;s flow on social media, and things being attention-grabbing as opposed to, you know, just putting out disruptive content. And I think that being able to bid on search terms that users are using on TikTok is going to be a really native and kind of fluid way for advertisers to position their ads without actually disrupting the privacy of TikTok users. So it&#8217;s going to be a much more relevant placement.
[31:22] Laura Davies: So I used the example earlier of, you know, I was looking for ideas for my trip to Prague. Well, it would have been great if there was some sort of tour company that was advertising for, you know, a local walking tour, and they positioned that ad next to the content I was looking at. That would have been super relevant to me. I probably would have clicked through. I might have even booked through them. So when we talk about bidding on keywords, it&#8217;s the same concept as Google Search.
[31:48] Laura Davies: A lot of people in the industry have been wondering whether TikTok search is going to compete with Google Search. But I actually think the two can complement each other. So you can use insights from your TikTok keyword strategy, and harvest the search terms that users are using most frequently, and the ones that are working for you, the ones that have the highest click through rate and the lowest cost per click, and then bake those into your Google Search strategy and vice versa. So we actually think there&#8217;s a lot that you can learn from both strategies in combination. They shouldn&#8217;t necessarily be seen as being in competition with each other.
[32:24] Isabelle Cavanagh: I think that&#8217;s really interesting and actually ties nicely back to the idea that earned media is more powerful than people think. What you&#8217;re saying sounds amazing and very technical. But I think actually, if they took 20% of their energy, left that 80% for paid strategy, and directed that 20% into generating user-generated content, earned media, real loyal advocates who would post a TikTok or post on Instagram because they want to—not because they&#8217;ve been paid to—that can really change the game and open up the space for brands. Despite this paid bidding element coming in, right now as a platform like TikTok, for example, stands, if I search ‘Prague’ on TikTok, what comes up is UGC, user-generated content. There&#8217;s no brands there. How do you fill that space? Do you think there is weight in taking a portion of your budget and reinventing the wheel and really thinking about okay, let’s really focus on that sort of earned media, UGC, from advocates? Or do you think they should pause, keep strategizing on paid and keep pushing forward?
[33:30] Laura Davies: I think UGC is such an important lever, but you&#8217;ve got to do it right. So, messages are especially effective when they&#8217;re not coming directly from a brand. You know, word of mouth is one of the most powerful tools that you can have within advertising, especially amongst Gen Z. And a lot of the time you&#8217;re going to your friends or maybe even influencers or micro influencers that you really trust for different recommendations. And when it actually comes from the brand themselves, a lot of the time it can seem a bit inauthentic.
[34:02] Isabelle Cavanagh: So, Laura, do you think brands should take a portion of their energy, leave paid behind and really focus in on generating that real time media by loyal brand advocates?
[34:16] Laura Davies: I think there&#8217;s ways that you can do that without shifting your attention from the paid side. I&#8217;m probably biased because I work in paid media, but there are lots of different contextual advertising solutions that I would argue does the heavy lifting for you. So one example is Pulse on TikTok. It&#8217;s their first contextual advertising solution that places your brand next to the top 4% of trending videos across different TikTok categories. So it really allows a brand to reach the right audience without disrespecting their need for privacy, disrupting the flow, but also allows a brand to piggyback on some of the top trending videos in a given category without actually having to go and ask content creators to produce that content. TikTok splits half of the revenue with the creator whose video appeared before the ads. So, it&#8217;s really clear that they are prioritizing the creators and not just the advertisers. But I think those contextual targeting solutions like Pulse and the keyword bidding are ways for paid media to be positioned in a way that&#8217;s more relevant and less disruptive. I don&#8217;t feel that you need to completely shift your focus. I just think that we need to execute paid media in a more native way.
[35:33] Isabelle Cavanagh: That&#8217;s really the true social network coming back into full power isn&#8217;t it? I love that. How much do you personally use social media and what for?
[35:42] Laura Davies: In my younger years, I used it to keep in touch with friends. I used Facebook primarily as a way to build different photo albums. I think I had one pretty much every month, which is really embarrassing. And I was on Bebo a lot, so I was sharing the love every week. And I got into many arguments over who I was sharing the love with. But, despite working in social, I&#8217;m actually very bad at posting. So I can go months at a time without posting on platforms like Instagram, and I barely use Facebook unless I&#8217;m selling some old shoes on Facebook Marketplace. So I&#8217;m pretty rubbish at social I would say until I&#8217;m looking for recommendations or things to do, you know, foodie places to visit or different countries to travel to. So I&#8217;d say that the content I&#8217;m consuming now is a lot more educational. It&#8217;s how-to videos. It’s interior design. And I think that&#8217;s definitely changed as I&#8217;ve gotten older. But yeah, a lot less as a place of connectivity and a lot more as a place of discovery.
[36:42] Laura Davies: So I love the ability of social media to connect different people and to actually solve real world problems. An example is something that happened to me recently. I was going on a daily walk, and I go to the same lake pretty much every day. And I spotted this really lovely black and white cat. And he was completely out of place, like, there&#8217;s no houses near this lake. He shouldn&#8217;t have been there. And I stayed with him for like an hour, then I ended up having to leave and I felt super guilty. So I ended up posting on my hometown’s Facebook group to try and find his owner. And I was getting, you know, messages and comments from different charities saying, “Yep, we&#8217;re going to post him on our page, we&#8217;re going to spread the word, try and find his owner.” But no luck.
[37:29] Laura Davies: So the next day, I checked the post, and there were two new comments. One was from the owner saying they were on holiday, and Mr. Thompson must have got out. And the second was from somebody saying that they&#8217;d been to the lake today and he was still there. So naturally, I ran and got my cat carrier, I got to the lake, I rescued Mr. Thompson and I returned him to its owner. So it&#8217;s a funny story, but I just love the way that social media was able to reunite Mr. Thompson with his owner. And that just wouldn&#8217;t have happened unless I posted in that group and people were receptive. So it&#8217;s just a nice example of how social media can do good things.
[38:05] Isabelle Cavanagh: My advice to brands is to bring a level of humanity and realness back into what you do, whether that be advertisements or strategy. I think brands are in danger of losing the one thing that drove people to engage them in the first place: authenticity. Getting back to the basics, understanding your consumer, listening to your consumer and relinquishing that corporate agenda just for a little bit will help you drive a greater return. Laura, what advice would you give to other brands?
[38:31] Laura Davies: So my advice would be, from a paid perspective, don&#8217;t spread yourself too thin. Start with one platform and be data-driven about it. Keep testing. So, maybe start broad and then use data to hone in on what&#8217;s working for your brand or your company by using iterative testing. And don&#8217;t discount something just because it doesn&#8217;t work the first time. I think one of the things that I&#8217;ve learned in my career is you can have setbacks, you can try a certain strategy and it doesn&#8217;t work, but actually if you just iterate on it over time, you can definitely prove the value. I think brands using first-party data with measurement studies in place are going to have such a competitive advantage when it comes to tackling iOS changes. They&#8217;re going to have a better understanding of incrementality and the true value of each channel. So, to summarize, my advice would be keep testing, adopt incrementality and invest where it makes sense.
[39:27] Isabelle Cavanagh: Thank you Laura, thanks for joining us today. It&#8217;s been an absolute pleasure.
[39:31] Laura Davies: Thanks so much for hosting, Izzy.
[39:33] Elizabeth Wood: That’s our show. The Design Mind frogcast was brought to you by frog, a leading global creative consultancy that is part of Capgemini Invent. Check today’s show notes for transcripts and more from our conversation. We really want to thank Isabelle Cavanagh, Marketing Consultant in frog’s London Studio and Laura Davies, Senior Performance Marketing Manager at Deliveroo, for letting us in on their conversation about social media strategy for brands.
[39:58] Elizabeth Wood: We also want to thank you, dear listener. If you like what you heard, tell your friends. Rate and review to help others find us on <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/design-mind-frogcast/id1541644073" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Apple Podcasts</a> and  <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/5mxbuRY6KtBwIrNhWhu0sx" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Spotify</a> . And be sure to follow us wherever you listen to podcasts. Find lots more to think about from our global frog team at <a href="https://www.frog.co/designmind" target="_blank" rel="noopener">frog.co/designmind</a>. That’s frog.co. Follow frog on Twitter at <a href="https://twitter.com/frogdesign" target="_blank" rel="noopener">@frogdesign</a> and <a href="https://www.instagram.com/frog_design/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">@frog_design</a> on Instagram. And if you have any thoughts about the show, we’d love to hear from you. Reach out at <a href="https://www.frog.co/contact" target="_blank" rel="noopener">frog.co/contact</a>. Thanks for listening. Now go <a href="https://www.frog.co/make-your-mark" target="_blank" rel="noopener">make your mark</a>.

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