As Global Head of Brand Strategy at Xero, James Kyd is left to be innovative about how it takes on campaigns. The result? Kyd being named on the finalists at the 2024 YouTube NZ Marketing Awards.
Sustainability
In what ways have you incorporated sustainability and eco-friendly practices into your marketing initiatives?
We are thinking about this a lot. Xero has made public commitments with respect to reducing our carbon emissions and working to make our supply chains as ethical as possible. This means we look at sustainability approaches to catering at events and use of merchandise, and we’re looking at sustainability in our advertising. The more we understand about this important topic, the more opportunities we find to improve our position.
Creative Innovation
Creativity for impact is a big focus for oOh! and we strive to work with brands and clients to maximise their Out of Home campaigns. What are some of the most innovative and creative campaigns you have executed this year, and what are you most proud of?
Some of what we are most proud of is embedded in the ongoing learning of what works and does not work across our creative and messaging execution. By understanding and improving our creativity based on data we are able to continually improve what we do. Creativity starts by being able to nurture the most creative approaches to engaging with our target audience and then by being creative about how we keep evolving executions to respond to what we learn.
One campaign I am particularly proud of is our The Xero Beautiful Business Fund, an initiative about backing the future for small businesses. We’re offering over NZ$750,000 in funding to Xero small business customers across the globe. Small businesses can enter right now here and entries are open until August 27.
Cross-channel integration
How have you successfully integrated Out of Home media with other marketing channels to create a cohesive and multi-faceted campaign?
We look at Out of Home as an important part of our media mix, driven by our understanding of our target audience and their behaviours. We target the high density routes for our audiences and take a broad approach from large format properties, street furniture and event sports facilities. We build all major campaigns with OOH executions from the start, and OOH considerations for part of our briefs and early campaign creative evaluations.
Measurement
What metrics and tools do you use to measure the effectiveness and ROI of your marketing initiatives?
Any or our integrated campaigns will feature a set of metrics and will always have a key “hero” metric defined and target in place. Measurements will start from the top of the funnel focused on brand through to conversion and ultimately cost of acquisition measurement. We have a good understanding of how these metrics relate with each other. Based on the breadth of measurement we rely on a range of tools from our own systems, search data, lift and brand health measures.
The Marketer of the Year award is sponsored by oOh!Media. To read more about Kyd’s answers, make sure to get your hands on the September-October NZ Marketing Magazine issue here.
