It’s no secret that we love coffee at Decimal. It’s the petrol in the tanks of our creative team and the wind in the sails of our account managers and digital team. One may call our obsession unhealthy, but drinking coffee at work is, in fact, good for you. Multiple studies have shown that coffee may assist in protecting against Parkinson’s disease, type 2 diabetes, and liver diseases. So what are you waiting for? Put on the kettle and settle into these five reasons to drink coffee at work.

General Alertness

We all know that caffeine is a stimulant. Anybody who’s pulled an all-nighter before work will be aware of the fact that coffee keeps you going when your energy levels are plummeting. Ever wondered how caffeine works? As your body goes about its day, a neurochemical called adenosine builds up in your body. As more adenosine passes through your neuroreceptors, your brain starts signaling that it needs sleep. Caffeine is a sneaky imposter that your brain mistakes for adenosine, which in turn allows more uptake of dopamine. So, when you have your coffee you’re basically fooling your brain into not being tired.

Increased Productivity

Drinking coffee can make you more productive, but it’s not only because caffeine is a stimulant. The coffee break is one of the greatest inventions of the 20th century. But you may be asking how a break makes you more productive. The act of taking a coffee break with a colleague or two allows an opportunity to socialise and talk about personal and work-related topics, which in turn promotes camaraderie and therefore more effective workers.

Alleviates Sleep Deprivation Related Stress

Merely smelling coffee can reduce your stress levels if you haven’t been able to get a good night’s sleep. A study conducted at the Seoul National University found that rats who were exposed to the aroma of coffee showed changes in brain proteins tied to stress from getting too little sleep. Just get up and smell the coffee for a less stressful day.

Protection for Your Liver

Drinking alcohol is very bad for your body, especially your liver. But many of us decide to ignore that fact and have a glass anyway. A 2006 study showed that those who drink at least one cup of coffee a day are 20% less likely to develop liver cirrhosis – a nasty disease caused by excessive alcohol consumption.

Not a drinker? You may still want that cuppa. Coffee can also help prevent non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, but you have to drink 4 or more cups a day to enjoy the benefit.

Coffee Keeps You Slim

Multiple studies have proven that caffeine increases metabolic activity, and many weight loss supplements use it as a main ingredient. While the power of coffee alone probably isn’t enough to get you to your goal weight, it is useful for helping your body burn fat at a higher rate while you’re sitting at your desk.

With the recent H&M blunder, it’s impossible to ignore the fact that sometimes marketing goes horribly wrong despite having the best intentions at heart. Now, we’re not here to defend H&M’s choices, but we are here to tell you that mistakes happen. Sometimes these mistakes go under the radar, but every now and then Twitter finds a new problematic campaign to rip apart online. Here are three of the biggest marketing clangers from 2017.

1 – McDonald’s Szechuan Sauce – October 2017

This one will be familiar to Rick and Morty fans. Thanks to a joke made about a limited edition dipping sauce offered by McDonald’s in the late 1990s as a tie in to the movie Mulan, fans of Rick and Morty made it their mission to get their hands on the 20 year old treat. Never ones to miss a marketing opportunity, McDonald’s jumped on the hype-wagon. They sent the creators of Rick and Morty their own supply of the sauce, and when fans questioned why they couldn’t have it too, McDonald’s decided to make the sauce available to the public (in the USA) for a limited time. When it came time to start the Szechuan Sauce promotion, demand seriously outstripped supply and thousands of Rick and Morty fans were left disappointed (and had a lot to say about it online).
Moral of the story: if you’re going to stoke the flames of hype, make sure you have the goods to back it up.

2 – Dove’s Unintentional Racism – October 2017

Beauty product giant Dove found themselves in hot water over an ad that depicted women from a number of races. The problem was that the ad focused on how Dove products make women more beautiful, and that they showed this with women transitioning from black to white. Outrage broke on Twitter with calls to boycott the company that had unknowingly associated beauty with whiteness.
Moral of the story: race is a touchy subject and marketers should be very careful not to associate a specific trait with a specific race. Dove’s apology, admitting that they’d “missed the mark in representing women of colour thoughtfully” was well received, but they have a long way to go in regaining the trust of women of colour.

3 – OUTsurance Father’s Day – June 2017

Brands celebrating days of importance of social media has become the norm. Father’s Day brought us OUTsurance’s biggest social media mishap to date. The company posted a video featuring multiple fathers interacting with their children. The problem: not a single one of the fathers was black. Of course, social media was ablaze with people bringing attention to the fact that OUTsurance was basically saying that black men aren’t good fathers. The company blamed the mishap on a junior employee, but the fact at the end of the day is that the post would likely have been approved by a supervisor.

Moral of the story: once again, race is a touchy subject. If you’re going to be showing a range of people in your ad, make sure that all races are represented. And don’t blame it on a junior employee when everything goes wrong.

H&M isn’t the first company to make a huge marketing mistake. They’re not even the first to miss something potentially racist. Having diverse creative and brand management teams could go a long way to prevent work that could be considered offensive from reaching the public.

If you believed the hype from all the “top marketing trends for 2018” articles that have peppered industry related blogs over the past few months, you’re probably looking for ways to incorporate influencer marketing into your 2018 strategies. But it’s not as simple as grabbing a rising social media star and hitching your cart to them.

1 – Know Your Audience

This is an essential component of any marketing strategy, so it goes without saying. Or does it? The blessing of digital marketing is that you can reach a huge audience, the curse of digital marketing is that you can reach a huge audience. The key is to identify the specific niche community that you want to target and then find the influencer who matches that audience.

2 – Know the Goal

Why are you implementing influencer marketing? Are you just doing it because it’s the current trend? Again, having a goal in mind should go without saying.

Are you looking for new followers? Are you hoping to reach a wider audience? Do you want more views and engagement on your posts? Or are you looking for sales?

Pick one goal and center your campaign on it.

3 – Find an Influencer Who Fits

Now that you have the building blocks for your campaign – audience and goal – it’s finally time to get to the exciting bit: choosing your influencer.

Finding an influencer who fits can be a tricky task. You’re looking for somebody who not only has a large following, but somebody who’s following fits your target audience. You need to ensure that the person you choose does hold sway over their audience and that their followers will value their insights. Lastly, and most importantly, you need to make sure that your influencer fits your brand. It wouldn’t make much sense for a tween fashion influencer to suddenly start talking about men’s grooming products, would it?

4 – Let Your Influencer Do What They Do

You wouldn’t go to a restaurant and tell the chef how to cook your dish; so you wouldn’t hire and influencer and then not let them post their own content. You picked an influencer because you liked what they do.

Now, it is necessary to weaponize your influencer with essential items needed to communicate about your brand, and you may want to include some pre-written posts, but you should really be leaving it up to your influencer to create posts (within brand guidelines, of course) for the most part. Remember, an influencer will have their own personal style and manner of communication that resonates with their audience.

5 – What’s in a Name Anyways?

Especially in South Africa, there’s the temptation to go with the biggest name available. However, this can be less effective for the simple reason that they are celebrities, not influencers. Though stars in SA may have large followings, their reach of influence may be very low. Getting the right influencer is more about finding trendsetters and thought leaders rather than finding celebrities with thousands of followers.

Once your campaign is running don’t forget to track your results and measure your effectiveness.

2017 has been quite a year. Politically, it’s arguably been the most tumultuous year this century. Socially, we’ve never been as simultaneously united yet divided by our opinions. Economically… let’s rather not go there. But with all this going on, we’ve still managed to live our lives, be healthy, and come up with kick-ass creative ideas. Here’s Decimal Agency’s year in review.

January – March
The year started with a bang. We were on the hunt for new team members, new accounts, and a new space to call home.

We found the new team members – two new community managers, a copywriter, and an account manager. And we landed one of our most important accounts to date: international doughnut brand Krispy Kreme. As for a new home, you’ll have to read on to find out more.

April – June
By the time summer was setting sail for the northern hemisphere, we landed our biggest retainer yet with international shipping and logistics giant Röhlig-Grindrod. In other accounts news, we also secured the account for Lee Cooper jeans and their grand launch in South Africa, which had us all saying 'Ello gov'na!

Our creative highlight for the month of May was definitely the Cocoon 60 launch booklet, created for Antalis. We used various printing techniques such as die cuts and sport varnish to bring the booklet to life.

July – September
Winter was the season of campaigns and though the days were short we burned the midnight oil with new work for Bosch.

For Bosch we created the #CleanLikeaBosch campaign to promote their new dishwasher, which has an impressively low water consumption of 6.5 litres per wash, across almost every media channel available.

October – December
The year ended on a high note. Not only did we move into our brand new, and much bigger, office space, we also landed some new accounts.

One of our most exciting new accounts to date is Toughees – the most iconic South African school shoe. Our team accomplished a huge feat recording a brand new television commercial for them, even though the weather wasn’t playing ball the day of the shoot.

Amid the move and shooting the TVC, we also landed our most stylish account: Tommy Hilfiger.

The Future
2017 has been a year of wins for Decimal Agency. We can’t wait to see what new heights we attain in 2018.

Advertising today is a far-cry from the 50s when misogyny ran as rampant in real life as it does in an episode of Mad Men. Today, brands need to be increasingly socially aware in order to not offend audiences, while still creating effective ads that sell product. But how is this achieved?

Point Of View Advertising

Point of view advertising is the answer. Ads with a point of view convey a brand’s feelings and attitudes towards a subject and show how their values correlate to that of their audience. Ads that convey a brand’s values relatably are proving to be more effective. Your point of view is the difference between people talking about your brand and forgetting it.

64% of consumers with an existing brand relationship say that they shared values with the brand, which was the reason they engaged with the brand. At the same time, 87% of Millennials say they appreciate it when companies make it clear what values they stand for, and 81 percent say companies that invest in their communities deserve loyalty. This could be due to the fact that Millennials highly value being true to themselves and expect others to have the same quality. Another important trait of Millennials is that they have the ability to see through hype and expect honesty and integrity in communication.

Shareability

Point of view ads are perfect for the digital sphere due to the fact that people are very willing to share who they are and what they care about.

Creating an emotional response with your audience is the most important box that any ad should tick. The fact is, we buy things based on how they make us feel, or how others will perceive us once we’ve bought that thing. They are an extension of our identities; we buy and share in order to show the rest of the world who we are and what we care about.

How Point Of View Advertising is Achieved

Well the first step is to define your point of view. If you already have a set of company values drawn up, you can use those. If you don’t have defined values, it’s time to start writing.

Make sure that your company values are relevant and true for you. You will need to back them up and live them every day in your business. For example, if gender equality is one of your values, merely adding some pink to your ad isn’t enough. It would be more effective to produce an ad that shows how your product supports empowerment of women.

Having a point of view and expressing it places you in a vulnerable position. Not everybody will like it, some will say you went to far, others will say you feel short, and it may start some heated debate. Have the courage to spark a public debate, great brands polarise people and the more talk about your ad, the more exposure for your brand.

A Word Of Warning From Pepsi

By now most of us are familiar with the Pepsi ad featuring Kendall Jenner. The ad featured young people of several ethnicities involved in a protest. This was likely to show Pepsi’s support of the current youth protest movement in America under the Trump administration, as well as send a message about racial equality. These are great values for a brand to have, and would have got them a fair amount of support if everything weren’t ruined by the appearance of a privileged member of the Kardashian clan. As the inexorable march of youth meets a line of police, Kendall Jenner breaks forward and offers one of the officers a Pepsi, which he accepts, followed by much cheering and hugging in the crowd. Though Pepsi was attempting to send a message of unity, peace, and understanding but were criticised for appearing to belittle social justice causes.

The warning here is to stay true to your values when creating a point of view advertisement. If you’re just jumping on a hot topic, your audience will read the insincerity.

People don’t arrive at a site, navigate to the right page and complete a goal. Usually they come back a few times before completing that goal.

Google Analytics is an extremely powerful tool that every site owner should be using. We use Analytics on all out websites because it gives meaningful insights such as how many people are viewing your site, how long they stay on pages, where the traffic is coming from and where users are exiting your site. This information can give us perspective on what’s performing well and what needs attention.

It’s quite easy to get basic information from Analytics such as page views, session time, and traffic source, but the software does so much more than just give fast figures. Used properly, Google Analytics is the only tool you need to streamline your website and online marketing efforts.

1 - Browser Report
Quite frankly, you’d be surprised at how many people out there are using outdated technology. It’s all well and good to build a beautiful website with parralax display and video content, but what if users can’t access this content because they’re still running Internet Explorer version 8.

To find out what technology your visitors are utilising, go to Audience, select Technology from the submenu, and click on Broswer & OS. This will show you what browser people are using to view your site. Ensure that your site is compatible with all the browsers listed so that all uses can view your site correctly.

2 - Mobile Performance
Mobile is the future of the internet, according to Google. The search engine has even started ranking mobile friendly sites higher than those that don’t perform well on mobile.

To get more insights on what devices people are using to access your site go to Audience and select Mobile.
Mobile Overview will give you information regarding conversion rates on mobile vs web, and Devices will tell you what handsets visitors use to access your site.

If you notice that your conversion rate on mobile is much lower than on desktop it may be time to take a look how your site responds to various mobile screen sizes and optimise.

3 - Annotations
Annotations are there to help you with good housekeeping within Analytics. Any time you change something on your website you should add an annotation so that you can link that change with a rise or fall in your Analytics reporting graph.

To add annotations, go to your Analytics reporting graph and click the dropdown arrow immediately below the graph. Here you will see previous annotations, click Create New Annotation to add new ones. Annotations can be set as public or private so they can either be viewed by anybody with access to that Analytics profile, or only by you.

Analytics can be a daunting tool to use if you don’t know the basics, but once you have an understanding of how to use it the information that you can glean is hugely important to optimising your site for better conversions.