Category: Uncategorized

Like every year, it’s time to say a word or two about Piksel in 2021. Every year when we agree on what and how to include in the “annual report” to our followers, friends, and clients, we take a deep breath and say to ourselves, what a year this has been.  

And every year the conclusion is the same – the level is higher than the previous one, as well as the number of clients and colleagues. As a reminder, here are the Piksel “reports” for 2020, 2019, and 2018.  

Year after year, we realize that we have conquered new territories, both in terms of innovative solutions for our customers and new countries where they come from.  

So, we started the year with a complete repositioning of the Swedish brand Boksy, on which we successfully worked for 9 months, during which we made a wholesome strategy for positioning the Swedish market on all digital channels, defined all target audiences, created slogans and defined the communication strategy, we have successfully done performance marketing on Facebook, Instagram, and Google, in-depth analysis and guidelines for e-mail marketing.  

On April 1st, we celebrated 8 years of existence, we talked a little with Design Thinking about the growth and development of Piksel, and during the year, we increased the team with Marina, Dragan, Mila, and Mia in the section of account managers/digital marketing specialists, with Magdalena as Head of Operations, with Meri as Head of the Marketing Team, joined by Alek, Vlatko, and Nina in design, and Dragan, Aleksandar, Zoran, and Filip as developers.  

We also had spring reinforcements in the customer section, so we gained the trust of big brands that dominate their market segment. Our spirit for innovation was enough to change the end-users perception of how cool our favorite German customer Würth can be. And our regionally-minded team won the hearts of consumers in the Daikin air conditioner segment in Macedonia, Kosovo, and Albania.  

In addition to the fact that our childhood dream came true to watch the Macedonian national football team enter the annals of history- live, we also prepared for another European performance with a broad campaign for Vivax on all channels, which culminated in a TV spot and a comprehensive approach on all communication channels.   

In the web and software section, we got the regional trust to work on the sweetest project ever for Menage chocolates and the “Volim poslastice” platform, which got its own Android and iOS applications. We also successfully worked on the Tikvesh wine tourism project. Among international projects, we would single out the Zipistream app, which is on its way to becoming one of the most unique platforms for premium content for podcasters, and had the honor of launching the Voila app, which should revolutionize the hospitality sector in the US market.

Although for a long time we have been working as a full-service agency for many of our clients, while everyone tried to adapt to digital channels, Piksel accepted the challenge and continued to expand its services during the pandemic with proven professionals from traditional marketing and PR who helped us position ourselves as an agency that offers an integrated 360 marketing approach.  

The first half of 2021 was a kind of warm-up for what was to come, for which we additionally “worked on our fitness” with the two campaigns for Sava pension company. For both, we dressed Marko as a postman, a role in which we “froze” him a little in February and then “walked” him through the park for the second campaign.  

Refreshed by these campaigns, we decided to continue the pace during summer. So, we started the second half with a goal in the early minutes with the start of Xiaomi’s official social media channels in Macedonia. This competition culminated with the grand opening of our official stores in Tirana and Skopje, with great events, phenomenal discounts, and overwhelming attendance.  

As the last quarter approached, things became more and more serious, so we managed to gain the trust of the three pension companies through the communication platform “Plant a Wish” (Zasadi Zhelba), where we wanted to help the pension companies set up a social responsibility platform that would help to green the future and to give a voice to the citizens to express their wishes for a better future that the three pension companies would have in mind in the coming years.  

Immediately afterward, we had the honor of working on a wonderful informational campaign for preventing hatred and intolerance among young people entitled “Break the circle – hatred is not your style,” supported by the OSCE Mission in Skopje and the Agency for Youth and Sports.  

We also worked intensively with Pakom Company and helped them to celebrate their 15th birthday in the right way, with interesting team building, through donations for those who need support the most, and with digital activities that resulted in increased loyalty of their consumers.  

We also talked a little about what brands should do when popular social networks like Facebook and Instagram disappear one day, also mentioning the digital transformation and the need for brands to adapt their communication to their end users from the new generations.  

We continued strongly towards the end of the year by redesigning the digital communication of our newest healthcare client Re-medika, creating a digital strategy for the brands Becutan Kids Vits and Zdravje Bez Recept for the needs of our new pharmaceutical client Alkaloid, and ending the year by closing our first regional client – Insta Grand!  

Not bad for a year, right? Whether it is or not, we don’t stop there. Piksel is going for big wins in 2022, so if you want to collaborate with the agency with the most serious, creative, and innovative projects in its portfolio, drop us a word or two here, and if you want to be part of our team, we are waiting for your resumes, portfolios, and creative projects here. See you soon! 

Digital transformation. A trending phrase for the last two years. Why? Because the world learned from the crisis caused by the pandemic. The way of working for a large number of businesses, if not all, simply must be digitized.

But what does digital transformation mean and have we really succeeded in fully and effectively digitizing ourselves? One theory is that digital transformation is the adoption of digital technologies by a company to improve efficiency, increase value, and innovate.

Others argue that digital transformation is the process of using digital technologies to create new – or modify existing – business processes, culture, and user experiences to meet new market demands.

Where are we locally concerning these major, global, tectonic shifts? Personally, I think that quite a few businesses relatively quickly saw the opportunity to try to adapt at least part of their business to the digital world, some managed to build a fully digital presence and explode online, while others missed the train and remained in traditional business, although they managed to roll out online solutions quite quickly.

Who has adapted the best?

The most successful were definitely the food delivery services. The biggest and most established continued to grow and develop. The newcomers who saw a hole in the market played smart and launched parts of their online products and services one by one. Even the latecomers were successful enough to take a piece of the pie because the market is not yet saturated.

Here, of course, we must also mention the laboratories that responded quickly with successful online platforms integrated with their internal software where end-users could very easily schedule a test appointment and easily and quickly download the results electronically. Undoubtedly, there are also banks, telecommunication operators, and public supply companies, which with their electronic services managed to reduce the queues in front of the counters and reduce their costs.

Other businesses also found their way

E-retailers have successfully existed before, but the pandemic definitely managed to give them a “nitro boost” in demand, while also forcing large retailers who had an aversion to online sales to adapt in a short period.

Supermarkets partially adapted. Some decided to enter the online segment with a large investment. Some made additional investments. Others just watched silently and were not particularly worried.

The biggest challenge was faced by those manufacturers who dominated the HORECA segment for years. Most of their income depended on catering facilities and high margins. Here, the coffee producers and distributors who took full advantage of the pandemic to change our coffee consumption habits proved to be the most agile, The beer and wine industry, which always had the largest percentage of investments in the trade marketing segment, went through the most painful process.

Having all the examples from the domestic scene, the question arises – how to measure the success of digital transformation? What actually makes a brand successful online? Success is really a mix of several things.

Brand awareness

Brand awareness definitely comes first. Those businesses that have managed to build recognition of their brand where it is associated with a specific digital service have undoubtedly managed to achieve great success in a short time.

All businesses have moved online, but most have not grasped the big picture. Some hit hard on so-called “performance marketing” where the emphasis is on getting as much traffic as possible to websites that sell something. Others hit aggressively advertising what they offer without managing to build awareness of their brand.

User experience

What’s a digital business (or business segment) if you don’t have a good user experience? Design is no longer just a field where we follow trends and make something look nice to the eye. User experience (UX) has been a whole science for a long time. It has its roots in business analysis, psychology, and of course marketing strategy, and a part in software architecture.

Seamless integrations

Integrations between digital channels, websites, and inventory/customer relationship software are perhaps the most important parts of the overall customer experience. They provide a great opportunity for businesses to easily, quickly, and without room for human error guide the customer through their online ecosystem and successfully close the process.

The future of digital transformation

But where are the consumers here and what is the future of digital transformation? Can there be a digital transformation without knowing exactly who our ideal consumers are? Without knowing how to address them?

Boomers

The generation born after the Second World War or the so-called “boomers” get by with digital channels, but they do not have much confidence in them. They are the ones who want to physically go to a bank, post office, store, or anywhere. They want to see and touch a product, save a printed receipt, and have a chat before making a decision. Businesses have long known how to reach them across all channels.

Generation X

This generation is more digitally literate. They want both offline and online communication. They shop both in physical locations and online, but they do not feel secure in the future. Brands have long worked to capture their attention and look to tailor communication to their needs.

Millennials

Millennials are a generation that has been talked about a lot for years as the new misunderstood progressive youth. While talking about them we realized that they are no longer children either (the youngest are 25 years old and the oldest 40). They are the most active and numerous on the internet. Their expectations of digital services are at an all-time high. With them, there is no more room for improvisation. Every glitch of a certain brand in the ecosystem of the digital experience is an opportunity for a yellow card, if not a red card from these end users. They understand social media particularly well and punish brands that merely adapt offline content for online needs.

Gen Z

And what is digital transformation if we don’t understand the needs of Generation Z? Do the local, regional, and global brands operating here know that these young people have completely different interests and needs? That they are born with technology in their hands and are not impressed by what brands serve them, but expect brands to adapt to their needs. The world’s biggest marketing giants are changing their branding to appeal to the new girls and boys on the scene. Because they know that brand loyalty costs a lot more today than it ever did.

Do we know what we will do when digital channels will no longer “sell” so much, so we will have to rely on relevant digital personas who, over time, will not be so much “influencers” as they will be genius creators of digital content?

The future is for us to continue growing and developing as global and local trends develop. But, also as the communication channels and those we address evolve. As long as we follow what is happening, both us, as marketing specialists, and the companies through their brands, we will not have a problem with our consumers. For everything else, there is __________ (insert successful brand name here, and all of the above should be clear to you).

Social media is perhaps the most exciting thing that has happened to marketing in the last ten years. They opened new doors of opportunity that traditional media could not even dream of opening. They gave a voice to all participants in the process, and completely changed the narrative and the way of communication from corporate to human.  

Yes, platforms 2.0 have given the possibility of two-way communication. Seen through the prism of marketing communications, companies are the ones who send the message, but the end user does not just receive it but also has the opportunity to send a message back and start a whole narrative that can go in favor of the company. Also, it can completely change the tone and bring a problem to the surface. 

That is the advantage of Platforms 2.0. What would Platforms 3.0 be? Well, this is where things get interesting.

What to expect in the future of social media? 

I came across the concept of Internet 3.0 through a tweet a few days ago, where this concept is explained in great detail, which I will now try to explain to you in layman’s terms.  

If the goal of Internet 2.0 was to enable two-way communication, Internet 3.0 aims to have the same possibility but to decentralize the power of communication platforms.

What does decentralization mean? It means that we will not have the power centralized in one company that will regulate the communication channel but each of us will be a “server” in some way. So, there will never be an opportunity for a hacker to break into the system, or for the company to manipulate the network.

I’ll repeat it in layman’s terms – this sounds like a blockchain for social networks, a concept of torrents for FB and Insta.  

Why did I turn the conversation to Internet 3.0? Because the world is already ready for it, considering all the controversies related to Facebook and its Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp, and other daughter satellites, and especially considering the almost all-day downfall of the same.  

The conversation involves several things as the security of user privacy, the dependence of businesses on specific networks, and the question of what we do if tomorrow these networks are gone or become irrelevant (RIP MYSPACE).  

To answer that, we must first revisit some basic digital marketing literacy concepts that people often forget and some even (quite justifiably) don’t know.  

Social media in digital marketing

One of the key divisions of digital marketing is branching into three parts:

• owned media (channels and content that are owned by you and over which you have control),
• earned media (content that someone shares – users, media, etc., and based on whose narrative you have no control over), and
• paid media (or custom paid advertising).  

Why is this important in situations like the downfall of social media like FB and its satellite networks? Because if they disappeared for a long time or disappeared completely (you never know), automatically, brands and influencers would not have ownership of their profiles/pages on those networks.

There would be no way to have an earned media moment (there would be no one to share the posts) and would not have access to the paid advertising system.  

What’s yours and what’s not yours online? 

In this situation, the only thing that would be in the control of brands and influencers would be the real-owned media channels. Channels that they own instead of ones owned by popular social networks. What are those channels? Well, it’s not plural, but rather singular – it’s the company/personal website.  

The content you create will always be yours – blog posts, authored videos, photos, designs, or any digital content. Anyone who wants to follow you will always have a way through social media but a website is still yours, not to mention the option to have people subscribe to your new content via email.  

Finally, the best takeaway from the whole Facebook debacle is that the mantra of any digital marketing company or individual creating quality content must be that what is being given/shared is something that is truly valuable. Quality content reaches the end user, and it is best to host the content on your site that is under your control.