The past two years have been incredibly challenging for everyone, and people everywhere have had to adapt as best they can. As the pandemic has continued to shift the way we interact with one another, we’ve also seen personal priorities continue to evolve. One way this evolution is apparent is in the current state of the workforce. At large, from hourly labor up through executive-level roles, people are valuing work/life balance more than ever. With this shift, along with a workforce embracing remote working, hiring and employee retention have become more challenging. Our job as advertisers, and people, is to understand and empathize with this reality both internally and for our clients’ businesses. 

But what does this exactly mean for advertising itself? The advertising world and the way brands communicate is also evolving. More than ever, it is imperative to know your audience and what’s important to them. The ways we decide to connect with our audiences must continue to adapt to our audiences’ changing priorities.

Advertising as a discipline has always been synonymous with change. With that, brand strategy requires an understanding of how social motivators affect business and brands, and where your brand can reside. Today, we are infiltrated with noise everywhere and understand that for businesses it can be hard to keep up, and as a consumer, it can be exhausting.

This evolution across the workforce, for brands, and in advertising, also applies to agencies. After 34 years of business, Neff has a strong grasp on the reality that seasons change, and we have implemented an evolving philosophy in our agency and even in our own advertising. We’ve adopted the guiding principle that “consumers’ feelings about brands are similar to their feelings about people.” It’s important to be comfortable with change as people’s feelings are ever-evolving.

To get into the nitty-gritty, there are authentic ways to reach consumers at different times, and in various places. Our process begins with brand discovery, which provides the groundwork for both brand messaging and the visual identity of your brand. Brand awareness is the foundation for reaching and engaging consumers, but to get there takes a formulated brand discovery process. After discovery, we can develop a strategy for how to reach your audience in the correct place with the appropriate message. With so many mediums available to reach different consumers, it’s important that the corresponding message is authentic and caters towards their needs. This can be done through strategic targeted messaging. 

The Neff team creates targeted messaging for our clients and we also believe in practicing what we preach. Neff is currently running a targeted integrated marketing campaign for Neff in an effort to reach multiple audience personas with customized messaging about our agency. We created targeted messaging based on developed research of our customer base and are running ads across multiple platforms from social, TV, Out of Home, Digital and Radio for each service we offer. The insights and results we’ve gathered are fascinating and have helped us generate unique leads, and it’s done the same for our clients like Iron Hill Restaurant Brewery & Restaurant and the Pennsylvania Department of Education. 

Integrated, targeted marketing campaigns can make sense for any business or brand. It is important to listen to your audience, and the scope and scale of a campaign are always relevant to budget, timelines, and KPI goals. Here at Neff, we have the capability to provide all services in-house, enabling our clients to receive all their marketing needs from one agency, saving time and resources along the way. Staying on top of marketing trends can be exhausting for a business, so it is important to have an advertising partner who listens and understands your needs. We’re all human, and we all need help from others — when working alongside Neff our clients have an advertising partner that will listen, evolve, and adapt to help you continue to grow your business.