17 Dec 2018: What just happened?!
A hugely significant year (they just seem to keep getting bigger!), here is our review of what just happened through our unique lens:
- McDonalds, Commonwealth Bank and Sainsbury’s all saw material growth exclusively from owned media
- We were all shocked into paying more attention to the credibility of our customer data thanks to Cambridge Analytica
- Netflix bought their own outdoor company so they could own and control billboards
- The circus used private homes as their primary communication channel
- We marvelled at the sheer scale of our new clients Coles & Telstra’s, owned media ecosystems
- We created a playbook for transitioning from retailer to media owner, using Amazon as the benchmark
- We introduced new terms to our readers, like Omotenashi and Brand Fidelity
- We explored ways to reduce CLV (Customer Lifetime Value) led by Zappo’s and Airbnb
- We profiled cycling brand Rapha which built a global community around its owned channels
- We saw Amazon, Lego & Spotify in-house their creative & content partly as a response to the increasing importance of owned channels
- We witnessed the biggest owned media FAIL of the year when a horse race sponsor advertised on the Sydney Opera House to public outcry the world over
- We talked about how banks and burgers are struggling with the expectation gap between advertising and reality
- John Lewis and Seafolly experimented with new owned channels with mixed results
- We wrote Sonder’s first ever song to celebrate the retail nexus moving from Christmas to Black Friday week
- We saw retailers Myer, Debenhams and Harrods increase their investment in in-store experiences to attract and retain more customers
If you missed any of these stories, you can find them and more at wearesonder.com/blog/
We would like to take this opportunity to thank the organisations which chose to work with Sonder this year: George Weston Foods, American Express, Coles, Coles Liquor Group, Telstra and Stockland.
We look forward to beating the owned media drum even louder in 2019.