Fun

We’re all children at heart, and these opportunities let our team tap into their collective joy. We stay on top of current trends, as well as the interests and authentic language that will truly engage younger audiences. For more than 10 years, we’ve helped Nickelodeon develop marketing experiences in support of their numerous IPs, live events and co-branded partnerships. We’ve created a wide variety of content and digital destinations that range from custom online games, content-driven microsites, sweepstakes and short-form video content for social and broadcast spots. The key for success is finding ways not only to get kids engaged and interacting with what we create but to make sure they have fun as they play with friends and even their parents.

A great example of this is our work on a co-branded partnership between the film Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Cicis, a buffet restaurant chain in 32 states. We created a mobile-optimized game that challenged users to rise to the occasion and team up with the Turtles to recover stolen pizza toppings from an ensemble of evil villains. In re-imagining the classic Whac-A-Mole game, we concepted, designed, animated and developed a unique game for both single players and two-player teams so families and friends could play together. The experience was full of fun animations, sound effects, surprise micro-interactions and visual payoffs that enriched the gameplay and kept our audience engaged.

Humor

In order to make engrossing content, humor is always key. Throughout our work with LEGO Games, including LEGO Dimensions, LEGO Star Wars and LEGO Worlds, we have worked to bring humor to the forefront of the rich world of LEGO IP. A great example was our “Meet That Hero” social video series for LEGO Dimensions video game. The challenge was to introduce legacy IPs from the 1980s, including “The A-Team,” “The Goonies,” “Knight Rider,” “Gremlins,” and “E.T. The Extra Terrestrial,” to a whole new generation.

Our strategy was to use iconic LEGO Dimensions’ characters that kids already love to tell the unique stories behind each IP. From LEGO Batman giving the cave from “The Goonies” a B+ rating (since he’s an expert on caves) to Lumpy Space Princess from “Adventure Time” relishing the fact that she gets to hang with the A-Team and make her friend Melissa “so jelly,” these pops of age-appropriate humor resonated with audiences of all ages – becoming a viral success with millions of views and high levels of engagement.

Vibrant Visuals

When creating digital online experiences for younger audiences, we use bright colors and incorporate playful illustrated elements. Less text, with simple, straight-forward language, is always better. We always strive to surprise and delight with things as simple as rollover micro-interactions and larger movements like full-page transitions.

COPPA

As parents, aunts, uncles and cousins, we recognize and embrace the need to regulate how brands communicate with younger audiences. It’s simple – we want children to be protected online. We champion the importance and need for COPPA (Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule) regulations and use COPPA as a clear and defining guide for our team. COPPA provides guiding principles and parameters that help define the sandbox our creatives can play in.

When developing experiences for kids, one of our biggest challenges and a main consideration within our creative processes is how we take something simple like a sweepstakes or sign-up micro-site and make it more fun and memorable, all while working within the COPPA guidelines. We work with our clients to limit the need for any information collected and if there is a need to collect into to ensure the parent’s contact email instead of the child’s, for instance. To further incentivize engagement and brand affinity, there are various techniques and enhancements we’ve applied throughout the years to create something more unique. Some of the most successful include incorporating mini-games, downloadable bonuses after submission, unlocking exclusive content, earning additional entries based on interactions and including Easter egg animations that appear as users navigate the experience.

At Mod Op, we enjoy creating a wide variety of work for industries ranging from luxury hospitality to B2B technology, but the kids’ content is something we all look forward to as an outlet for pure, unbridled creativity and a chance to feel like kids again.

At Mod Op, developing and producing thoughtful work for clients that impacts their business objectives is our key to success.  While we often receive great feedback from clients, it is nice to be recognized by an organization like the American Marketing Association for exceptional work.

Mod Op won for energy marketing, and business-to-business social media and is a finalist for business-to-business branding for its work with clients based out of the agency’s Dallas office. The AMA is one of the largest and most trusted marketing associations working to educate, support and enhance the performance of its members and marketing professionals around the world. The Marketer of the Year Awards are designed to recognize excellence in marketing and innovation in various categories.

Great work requires great clients, and we’ve got the best who put their trust in us to deliver for them every day. Our team is exceptional at understanding each client’s business, objectives, customers, products/services, market and challenges. As an integrated marketing communications agency, we take that knowledge and develop plans that leverage the right tools to deliver successful programs.

Mod Op’s work launching ExxonMobil’s first-ever Power Play Awards to promote women in the liquefied natural gas (LNG) industry secured the best overall strategy, design and implementation of a marketing program within the energy sector. The agency launched this awards program in four months, including multiple promotional campaigns and creative materials to raise awareness for the awards, nomination developments and judge recruitment. The awards ceremony was hosted during an industry event in September 2019, during which Mod Op assisted with supplemental public relations and social media needs.

In the category of business-to-business social media, Mod Op won  based on the agency’s work with Stream Data Centers to streamline the company’s organic and paid social media efforts. Mod Op’s social media efforts for the client have resulted in a significant increase in impressions, engagements and follower counts on Stream’s Twitter and LinkedIn profiles and have improved the quality and value of these metrics by focusing on Stream’s key target companies and high-level executives within those companies.

In the business-to-business branding award category, Mod Op’s work renaming PetroCloud to Twenty20 Solutions and updating the company’s overall brand strategy to reflect broader market appeal and clarity of services, scored for the agency. Mod Op’s work has helped the company determine and develop a new brand that not only represents where the company stands today but will also carry it into the future and encompass any new growth. The rebranding included a new name, logo and website overhaul, as well as a conjunctive public relations and digital advertising program to generate awareness of the new brand that continued throughout the year.

The real-world business results from these three clients showcase Mod Op’s focus on client objectives. Learn more about how Mod Op can help you.

Malls were in turmoil before the pandemic began, and many of their tenants won’t survive. But we humans crave a commons. We are, at root, social animals. Which is one of the reasons why the second- and third-order health effects of the quarantine have been so terrible.

It’s also why the return to commons-type environments — once we’re given the “all-clear” — is likely to be robust. We exist differently in crowds. We just do. Like fish. Like birds. We flock together.

But unlike fish and birds, we have constructed our public square. And we constructed it, like it or not, around commerce.

So when we fully re-emerge into a ‘public’ setting, that setting, in most communities around the world, will involve commerce. Our lives are built around it. Which is not to say that the e-commerce trends won’t continue. They absolutely will. The convenience factor is just too profound. While intelligent people can debate the “efficiencies” of e-commerce in terms of total environmental-cost-per-product (where does the emission math net out in terms of bringing each individual product to the consumer vs. bringing the consumer to the product), there is no question that the level of effort required to obtain anything with a tap, as opposed to driving to a store, is incomparable.

But final purchase is just one component of the brand-consumer relationship (albeit a highly important one). There’s still affinity, engagement, persuasion and connection – all of which need to happen before you get to conversion. Get my attention. Tell me a story. Let me see who else responds to that story. Is that a community I want to be a part of?

In these spheres of the lifecycle, “real” life holds certain advantages over the virtual. After all, people still trust and follow each other more IRL than in digital forums.

That tendency will compound in the immediate aftermath of the pandemic. When it’s safe to be in a crowd, people will flock to each other more than ever – ready for brands to engage them. Looking to each other for cues on where they belong.

All of which presents tremendous opportunity for smart brands to forge new pathways into their consumer relationship. Physical ‘brand centers’ and experiences will flourish. There will be ample, prime real estate available. And with purchases shifting online, these ‘brand centers’ will be free from managing the logistics of inventory – which means they can put even more emphasis on building great, memorable, positive experience centers. They can focus on the story they want to tell. Immerse their consumers into their brand tale.

This trend also isn’t new. Branded pop-ups. Bank-cafes. Insta-ready-sets. Retailers have been incorporating experiences in an effort to fight off the incursions of online shopping for years now. But what wasn’t clear was the purpose. Sure, you could go to an art showing set up in a clothing boutique. Or go see a performance in a shoe store. But it wasn’t clear why you would.

Now we’ve all had a clear vision of life outside the commons. Of commerce being purely relegated to click-and-deliver. And it works. It works beautifully. But something is lacking. It’s us, as a collective, being out, being together. In the world we’ve built, brand spaces are where that communion happens. Give us something to focus on – immerse us in a story – and we will come. Because the real reason to go out is us. All of us. Experiencing things together. And that, as it happens, is enough.

The way each brand approaches this industry change should be driven by what they’re trying to accomplish as a business. Having said that, here are some things to think about:

• Take a hard look at your company’s website and the experience it offers to visitors. It’s most likely your most important marketing tool, and now is a great time to invest in it. In the absence of face-to-face meetings and events, your site has become even more important as customers and prospects look to educate themselves on options available to them. If your site doesn’t deliver the right information and experience, your chances of success diminish. Pay attention to user journeys and conversion – your site can be as effective at converting sales as you are, if you design it to be.
• Research search trends and volume. Your customers and partners are searching for what they care about – like raising their hands in a seminar. Make sure your site is relevant to those interests.
• Increase your attention to and investment in social properties. More customers are spending more time on social media, and this represents an opportunity for brands. Invest in meaningful content that creates better engagement with the market. Resist the urge to make every post directly promotional. The best engagement comes from offering something of value to those visiting your properties.
• We’ve all been on a thousand video conference calls while working from home. I’ve found them remarkably reliable and useful in staying connected with our clients and coworkers. Some of our clients have expanded their use of these tools beyond one-to-one and one-to-few meetings to use them for both content creation and networking events. From hosting and recording industry discussions that can be used as content to coordinating virtual happy hours and networking events with customers and prospects, brands are finding new ways to connect using new tools.
• Participation in and sponsorship of industry webinars is a great investment of time and resources, given the right topic and audience. As customers look for ways to stay educated and connected to the industry, publishers and brands are leveraging webinars to fill the void. We’re seeing more participation and engagement in webinars that, again, provide useful, informative content that’s important to viewers.
• During this time, digital marketing has become much more accessible to more companies. In a recent blog article my colleague, Shannon Sullivan, shared the news that the current environment has dropped digital advertising costs by up to 35%. This means brands can get much more exposure at lower media costs. If your brand has underutilized digital media, now is the right time. There are more ways to effectively reach audiences with digital programs than ever before, and the prices are right.

In many ways, the current situation levels the playing field for brands. Big budgets lead to big exposure at tradeshows – big booths, big staff, big sponsorships. Competition for attention is fierce and is typically dominated by the biggest industry players. In lieu of that, all brands are looking for smarter ways to best reach their audiences. Video conferencing technologies are affordable and effective in direct communications with customers and prospects. Without access to outside sources and high production resources, the market’s expectations for video content is much lower as brands try to cobble together production. It’s rapidly becoming less about how big your budget is and more about how well you can connect to the market with compelling content, creating a reality not dominated by dollars but one that places a priority the right content. In many ways, it is back to the basics of understanding what’s important to your market, developing content, not as a commercial for your company, but that focuses on providing value to customers and prospects and then finding the most effective programs to get that content in front of the right audiences.

It’s entirely possible, and maybe even probable, that large, in-person industry events will be impacted for years to come, not only because of the current pandemic, but as companies adjust to a challenging economic environment. It’s imperative that we all adapt to reach our objectives.

We can help. If you’d like to learn more or just talk about your options, please reach out to me at [email protected].

In our business, marketers have reacted in expected ways. Advertising for travel and tourism, brick-and-mortar retail and restaurants has gone completely dark. Many other categories have reduced their spends or paused to wait for a more positive environment. Many have quickly shifted messaging to reflect an empathetic and supportive tone. Some have communicated sincerely about what’s transpiring but continue to march forward to keep business and the economy moving.

One trend has been the soaring numbers of consumers that are glued to computer screens and displays streaming content all day and night in place of outside activities. The collision of more access to consumers and less demand for advertising impressions has resulted in a lower cost for marketers to reach and engage with audiences. According to ezoic, the average open auction U.S. display ad CPM was  $1.34 on March 1 and fell to $0.83 on April 8. It has since bounced back to $0.91 and it looks like it may stay in that range for some time. That means budgets for digital advertising campaigns can deliver 30% to 35% more for the same investment.

Smart marketers are taking the bonus and running with it. This environment will not last very long, but while it does, it offers a powerful opportunity for companies and brands to amplify their message and move ahead. Companies that continue to market and advertise through troubling times get a long-lasting positive impact in sales and market share.

This may be the time to expand, invest and test your digital placements for better results.

• Try new ad units that are simple to execute. Upgrade your 2D ads to 3D or include native ads.
• Explore new placement types. Try in-read video in the heart of editorial content.
• Expand your channels. Add the next on the list to your current social and display channels.
• Monitor and evaluate. Disciplined measurement to provide performance insight is critical.

Many marketers will keep their heads down during the next few quarters.  When they decide it is safe to come out, they may wish they embraced the opportunity to keep building through the tough times and position themselves for the future.

Mod Op’s creative team designed a couple of Zoom virtual backgrounds to add some individuality to our meetings, and yours. Whether you want to start a conversation, lighten the mood, set a professional tone or just don’t feel like straightening up your home office, please feel free to use these cool virtual backgrounds we’re excited to share with the world.

Download them all in the following here!

We’d love to see screenshots of your meetings using a fun virtual background – drop us a line or tag us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn @mod_op_

https://vimeo.com/417281743

https://vimeo.com/417282148

https://vimeo.com/417282302

For instance, we worked successfully through the Great Recession of 2008, we were here for 9/11, and we saw the 1987 market crash Black Monday. Ultimately, from each of these events and others, we moved forward learning lessons about stability, adaptability and empathy. And, as life returned to normalcy, we helped our clients grow stronger and more successful.

From the perspectives of business and marketing, the challenges before us now aren’t unlike those of the past. Yes, there is uncertainty, but we’ve been here before, and we know continued success requires thoughtfulness in our actions. It’s not time to panic or suffer paralysis. We must be sensitive to the goings-on around us, we must be smart, and we must invest wisely in our communications and our relationships. This is the way forward as we support our customers, prospects, partners and community.

We know because we’ve been here before. You could even say it’s part of our M.O.

So how did they do it?

Building an Awards Program from the Ground Up

In December 2018, ExxonMobil LNG came to Mod Op with a challenge to launch an awards program completely from scratch, all based on a referral from someone with whom we’d worked previously. Now, that’s a leap of faith!

From when the moment our relationship with ExxonMobil began, we had less than four months before the awards would be announced to plan the launch, outline objectives, nail down budget, develop award categories and terms, launch two websites, create assets, schedule paid/organic programs, determine prizes, find a platform to track submissions and recruit judges.

Of course, we didn’t (and couldn’t have) done it all alone. In order for a program like this to be successful in short order, we needed collaboration.

Mod Op and ExxonMobil worked together to establish goals that aligned with the key focus of the program; raising awareness of diversity in the LNG industry; building awareness for the Power Play Awards; and building a community of ambassadors for the program across the industry.

Once the objectives and timelines were set, we worked tirelessly to develop a comprehensive awards program from the ground up.

With everything in place, our team flew to Shanghai to help ExxonMobil announce the Power Play Awards at LNG 19. In preparation for the live, in-person announcement, we produced ambassador pins, printed awards handouts, drafted and distributed a press announcement, managed ExxonMobil LNG’s social channels to supplement outreach for the awards and developed and launched two new websites in just four months’ time – one in English and one in Chinese.

Launching and Promoting the Inaugural Awards

Leading up to and during the awards process, Mod Op executed numerous promotional campaigns and developed supporting materials to raise awareness for the awards.

We launched several paid media programs to extend awareness of the awards to a broad audience within the LNG sector, nurtured site traffic back to awards content and encouraged nominations leading up to the submission deadline.

From April through December, our team implemented organic and paid social media campaigns to support the awards and share ExxonMobil LNG updates.

We supported the awards program through public relations by drafting and distributing three press announcements to our media lists. We also pitched the media for interviews during Gastech 2019 to increase exposure of Power Play and the awards.

Throughout the process, Mod Op corresponded directly with nominees and finalists, verifying submissions and coordinating attendance at Gastech. We also developed finalist and winners’ packages. And we worked with an awards company to create and engrave the prestigious trophies.

Supporting ExxonMobil LNG at Gastech 2019 and the Awards Ceremony

At Gastech 2019, our team provided event support including coaching and coordination of speakers and judges, interviewing finalists and winners, designing and printing awards, transporting the trophies, coordinating media interviews, live-tweeting and filming the show and awards ceremony.

During Gastech and the awards ceremony, the Mod Op team filmed and produced five quick-turn videos for immediate implementation, including an awards ceremony recap that was filmed the night of the event, edited and finalized for implementation and social posting by midday the following day.

Putting together an event like this was no easy feat, but it wasn’t just what Mod Op was able to deliver that made it all worth it in the end. It was getting to meet the finalists and winners face-to-face and getting to know them. It was collaborating with various Mod Op team members from other offices and working together to accomplish something big. It was making the client’s dream come to life when so many factors had made it seem nearly unattainable.

A Major “Power Play” of Results

Mod Op and ExxonMobil LNG’s efforts throughout the process paid off tenfold. Not only were the awards a huge success, but the nominations submitted were heartfelt, enlightening and emotional.

Overall, the results of our collaboration with ExxonMobil were huge:

• Digital paid media delivered 560,229 impressions and 3,060 clicks from April – September.
• The Power Play Awards web page received 32,000 pageviews.
• Mod Op’s paid search efforts drove 343,328 impressions, 3,060 clicks and 5,534 visits to the Power Play Awards page.
• Organic and paid social programs on Twitter and LinkedIn generated 4.6 million impressions, 54,000 clicks and 92,400 engagements.
• ExxonMobil LNG’s LinkedIn and Twitter followers increased 238% and 38% respectively from April – December 2019.
• During the nomination process, Mod Op secured 81 nominations, submitted from 157 companies across 52 countries. During the final community voting portion of the judging process, nearly 40,000 votes came in from the LNG community.
• During Gastech and the awards ceremony, all 12 of the international finalists were supportive of one another, because even if they didn’t win their category, they knew this awards program was a win for women in the industry. This was truly a success story for women supporting women.

When all was said and done, the launch of the Power Play Awards was an unmitigated success, and the event proved to be a major power play, both for women in LNG and for Mod Op’s new relationship with ExxonMobil.

Looking for an agency that will work with you to make your business dreams come true? Visit our website or drop us a line!

Although this seems obvious, and, even with the advent of social media and companies like Google and Amazon integrating into our daily lives, many companies, including some large, publicly traded companies, felt it was unnecessary to develop a comprehensive digital strategy.  Companies that were still performing, albeit at significantly lower growth rates than their digital peers, suggested it was not worth the investment to assimilate to ecommerce or digital channels. Sales organizations that have relied only upon on-the-ground sales forces, using long-time personal relationships, have slowly seen that model deteriorate. Covid-19 has significantly accelerated the idea that companies without a digital ecosystem are likely to be “Blockbustered”.

Over the past few years, Mod Op has partnered with many clients to achieve their goal of building a digital ecosystem, encompassing a modern, effective website, mobile applications and a digital media strategy, including programmatic and display advertising, SEM, SEO, social media and public relations.  Additionally, creative is an important aspect of all of these disciplines. Effective creative will always make a good digital strategy great.

To be clear, we don’t believe we need to leverage all disciplines for all clients. Instead, we consider the historic business model of the client and work with management to build a strategy that will transform and conjoin with the existing model, creating a framework for the future. And, while digital transformation has been more common among B2C companies than it has been among B2B companies, there may be opportunities for B2B companies to differentiate themselves through new digital frameworks and strategies. Regardless, an integrated approach, including a portion or all of the strategies above, will allow for companies to outpace their peers, or in some cases, save them from a fate similar to that of Blockbuster.

As we’ve grown and evolved over the years, we’ve added new skillsets and capabilities, and, as of 2019, we put the final pieces of our puzzle in place with the addition of media management, public relations and strategic planning experts. As we’ve changed, so has our story, and today, our story is more compelling than ever.

To tell that story, we’re launching a new campaign titled “What’s Your M.O.?” As with all good stories, ours has many facets, but the main essence is this: We put our best people and practices (our Methods) in action to accomplish our clients’ marketing objectives (their Opportunities.) So, every time we engage with you, whether we’re launching a standalone project, a 360º campaign or an agency of record relationship, we start with a dialog about the end-results you expect to achieve. Examples are brand recognition, ROI, building a digital ecosystem or a number of different of other KPIs.  We then set a plan in motion, implementing the appropriate methods to recognize these goals.

That’s our M.O., and we hope it’s yours, too!

As we initiate this campaign, and more importantly, as we continue to methodically capitalize on client opportunities, we look forward to engaging with you.