What is a brand?

Brands must demand ad campaigns that create change – not just wants

Advertising as usual won't work in a changing world. Chipotle and G-Star Raw show how campaigns can respond to society's biggest challenges

 

 

Kanye West attends the Cannes Lions 2014 61st International Advertising Festival in Cannes, southern France. Photograph: Lionel Cironneau/AP

 

Last week was the most important event in the marketing calendar: the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. The much-coveted prizes, the Lions, are a way for agencies to measure up and convince their clients that their steep hourly rates are justified. But why should you care about backslapping and champagne-popping by marketers, invading the Riviera to celebrate themselves?

The Festival of Creativity offers a snapshot of the marketing year 2014 and a thermometer reading of global markets. No advertising festival or awards show plays a more powerful role in the industry, receiving more than 37,000 entries and attracting more than 12,000 advertising professionals from 93 countries.

But the big question is: how was 2014? 

Epic splits or epic ignorance?
I would like to say the following to agencies: a commercial with Jean-Claude Van Damme doing what's been dubbed "the epic split" between two Volvo trucks is a bombastic dramatisation of an incremental product difference and entertaining as hell, but your clients are facing bigger challenges.

They'll soon have to welcome up to two billion new consumers to the market and most resources are already scarce. They are faced with new types of consumption where it's not about owning a car, but rather the experience or the service you get, or travelling from A to B in the smartest possible way. Collaborative models are a growing market, and digital and tech thinking has completely disrupted business as we know it, for example Airbnb challenging the hotel industry, and hitting $1.7bn (£1bn ) in sales in just six years.

Your clients (and you) are met by virtualisation, where products that were an everyday part of our lives in recent memory no longer exist. Think about paper calendars, alarm clocks or photo albums. Add to this a shift in mindset where a recent survey tell us that around 70% of people think that businesses should come up with solutions to some of society's biggest challenges, such as unemployment and climate change.

How will agencies respond to these challenges? More "epic splits"? More tomfoolery? This year's ad fest showed few examples of agencies understanding this new reality, compared to the ocean of advertising-as-usual. 

Make a mark on the world
Let's look at some of the work where brands (and agencies) dare to make a mark. In a campaign by Whybin\TBWA for ANZ Bank's sponsorship of Sydney's Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, regular ATMs were turned into unique GAYTMs encrusted with rhinestones, sequins, studs, leather, denim and fur to deliver the free-spirited civil rights message of equality.

Lots of brands are leaving the closet and jumping on board the equal rights wagon and Honey Maid's This is Wholesome campaign is another well-crafted example, deserving its share of Lion statuettes. 

Less barking, more beautifying 
But there's so much more brands can do than just bring attention to important issues. Just like any ad break, the festival itself had star-studded appearances. Kanye West, for example, had his say about the state of flux in ad land: "The thing younger people are begging for is a more beautiful world where brands help people achieve things rather than simply barking at them."

Brands have a unique opportunity to play a bigger role in people's lives and to deliver on real needs rather than just creating wants. One such campaign, Speaking Exchange, was for a language school in Brazil that used Skype to facilitate dialogues between senior citizens in the US to improve their students' language skills while building a bridge over a generational gap.

Another campaign took on the food waste agenda with a clever solution preventing perfectly fine vegetables and fruit from being discarded because they didn't fit our image of what nature looks like. Supermarket chain Intermarché (Agency: Marcel, Paris) rebranded them as Inglorious fruits and vegetables. They even cut the price by 30% to make fruits and veggies more affordable for more people.

Colgate Palmolive (Agency: Red Fuse Communications, Hong Kong) made a cunning upcycling initiative, using the boxes from their products as educational materials for under-financed rural schools to educate kids about proper dental hygiene. In another upcycling initiative, Raw for the Oceans, G-Star Raw worked with Pharrell Williams (Agency: FHV BBDO Amsterdam) to turn the plastic waste in our oceans into a pair of jeans made from reclaimed plastic (33% bionic yarn). 

The power of creativity
These are examples of agencies that dare to decipher the complex reality of their clients' businesses and come up with more than a quick-fire solution to a marketing challenge that will be forgotten when the next YouTube video goes viral.

A good example of the shared value gained from this thinking is the Dove Beauty sketches (Agency: Ogilvy Brazil) that won an effectiveness award. The creative thrust of the campaign is a testament to its long-lived effectiveness. Chipotle is another brand showcasing the mileage in making a real difference with their follow-up to Back to the start (Agency: CCA, Los Angeles) called Scarecrow. As well as pushing the boundaries of advertising by launching a series of webisodes, Farmed and dangerous mixes information with entertainment.


It's amazing to see what a difference creativity can make, if it's applied to a cause beyond beefing up an agency's self-esteem. Creativity can and should do far more than dramatise incremental product differences. If applied with insight, big ideas can build resilient, trailblazing businesses, which are much more exciting in the long term than watching the muscles from Brussels doing the splits. Brands must demand more from their agency partner.

I value the strong focus on charities and worthwhile causes like Act Responsible, the Grand Prix for Good and the Cannes Chimera at the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity, but agencies need a guiding hand on the shoulder, rather than just a pat to make the transition from insecure, attention-seeking lion cubs to kings of the ad Savannah.

Thomas Kolster is the author of Goodvertising, and founder of the Goodvertising Agency and the collaborative communication platform dedicated to sustainability, WhereGoodGrows.

The sustainable living hub is funded by Unilever. All content is editorially independent except for pieces labelled advertisement feature. Find out more here.

How I Founded a Top Marketing Technology Startup in Less Than 6 Months

Tiffany Pham, 

Alex Gold is the co-founder of Buzzstarter, a marketing technology company in San Francisco working with the world’s largest brands like Dove, Axe, Degree, Clear, Danone Activa, and Aeropostale to drive higher return on investment for their ad campaigns.

Buzzstarter is a distribution marketplace and exchange that, on one side, connects any type of brand content (such as videos or articles) with hundreds of thousands of users who, on the other side, share the content. He uses data science to optimize the marketplace connections.

Originally from Toronto, Canada, and a lawyer by trade, Mr. Gold’s background is in the entertainment and advertising industries working with Discovery Communications , Vuguru, LLC, and DDB Canada. I sat down with him to discuss his rapidly growing company and the future of communications technology.

After 5.5 months, you’ve had significant traction with some of the world’s most prominent brands? How did you get from 0 to 60 in such a short time, when most entrepreneurs need much longer to build momentum?

Great question. Two reasons: 1) addressing real pain and acute need and 2) maniacal research and planning. Brands are feeling real pain with online marketing right now. There are so many options, and target audiences are not migrating to one or two online destinations. They are splintering to hundreds of thousands. This gives brands, who are used to buying single destination advertising like television a massive headache but also a lot of fear of missing out or FOMO. So Buzzstarter comes in with a value proposition of: 1) a single destination site that will give your brand access to hundreds of thousands of channels; 2) a laser sharp and very open focus on metrics; and 3) increased ROI. People start paying attention. We back that up with an acute understanding of what specific needs are on our platform. We designed it with that in mind.

What were some of the tactics you used to launch Buzzstarter and get it off the ground fast?

We analyzed each step of the process: research, development, operations in a very methodical way. I suggest this to any entrepreneur. This may be in contrast to what you think about most startups, where one prominent entrepreneur described it as “putting on a parachute while falling down.” My Co-Founder Kenzi Wang and I spent months in customer development obtaining information on what our target users (brands and advertisers) wanted. We did not want to build a product on intuition and we shifted the focus numerous times in research. With development, we started two parallels: product engineering, which is typical, but also sales and advisory. Since we knew sales would take some time to get off the ground, we set about creating relationships on an advisory level with potential partners months ahead of time. We are lucky in a way that one of our first customers, Lou Paik, from Danone, has an incredible amount of vision and foresight in the digital space. This gave us a running start. And for operations, we carefully engaged in a trial period with many of our colleagues where they were asked to generate real value before permanent onboarding.  We have a great team as a result like our designer Zach Zorbas and our account manager, Melissa Aiello.

You work very closely with large brands. What do large brands gain from working with startups like Buzzstarter as opposed to their traditional established agencies?

Very timely and funny. Well, first, they usually get to have their dollar go further because startups offer better ROI and more efficiency in their offerings. Large brands get the benefit of the startups’ deep knowledge of up-to-the-minute innovation. Startups act as brands’ eyes and ears on the ground and in some instances form external innovation teams. Large brands can employ startups to source new trends and even partners. My brands ask me all the time what new emerging social media sites are out there as I get calls asking what Medium and Secret are (side note: sign up for Secret – it’s awesome). Dave McClure, the Founder of 500 Startups has always said, “Brands have access to customers and distribution, but like many large companies they don’t move fast and aren’t experts in tech innovation. Startups are tech-savvy and can impart and even transfer rapid innovation forward.”

Does BuzzStarter apply to just advertising? Can it apply to content creators like filmmakers or musicians who have a need to distribute their message cost-efficiently and can’t afford to do so through traditional means?

Yes, of course. We’ve never seen Buzzstarter as applied only to advertising.  We anticipate a very near future in which our plug-and-play platform assists in optimizing communications for nearly every creator of content: from an advertiser to a filmmaker to a musician to nearly any writer.  We are banking on the fact that as the number of means for communicating online increase, the amount of noise is also going to increase. What’s going to matter most is relevance and optimization.  Relevant audience targeting and optimization of message.

This is a great time to switch gears. What inspired your career move from producing creative content to leading a team of engineers and data scientists to drive efficiency in creative content  distribution through technology?

One word: the market.  Coming from the traditional entertainment side at Discovery and Vuguru, I saw that entertainment distribution windows were starting to narrow with the arrival of Netflix and Amazon.  But consumers were (and still are) moving faster than any one platform.   They are consuming content not just in one destination but in a multiplicity of applications, sites, and channels that are not limited to the social web or where you can buy exposure.  The only way to harness this — to truly harness these new market dynamics — was through data and technology.  I saw what Andreas Wigand was doing at Amazon  in regards to targeting audiences across different channels and was shocked that no plug-and-play solution existed.  If you wanted to target audiences on one blog versus another you needed to make separate deals.  On each social network, another separate deal.  That’s enough to give anyone a headache.  I knew there was a need to create a plug and play solution that allowed any content creator or advertiser the opportunity to distribute across all of these apps and social media outlets that no one else can get into.  And now we have the engineering and data science to make it work.  So, I partnered with Kenzi Wang, a growth engineer, moved to San Francisco, and started Buzzstarter.

Was the transition from being a creative to being a technologist challenging?

Yes, it was, although I find my creative side to be an immense asset.  Initially, it was hard getting my head wrapped around the concept of scalability at inception.  Building a technology platform requires that every function and action be scalable to a target market with minimal labor. By contrast, developing a television series or a film is iterative, customized, and often personal.  Coming into the tech world, this was a jarring difference for me but as soon as I learned the ropes, I started to jump. In fact, I use my more creative skills every day in iterative product focused problem solving and roadmapping.  I have picked that up directly from the story-editing and development process.  It allowed us to craft a user focused story faster and launch the company sooner.

Do you have any advice for aspiring entrepreneurs coming from the corporate world?

Yes. This may sound trite, but you have to be an optimist. You also have to be open to a flexible schedule. You may have heard it before, but working in a startup is backbreaking and awful. There are many times you may want to give up. This means you constantly need to be an optimist.  You always have to keep your eye on the positive aspects. Sometimes, admittedly, even blind optimism helps. The other thing you need to be open to is a flexible schedule. Coming from the corporate world, you may be used to 9-5 meetings and some weekend work but startup life is everywhere, all the time, including time you may think is off.  This may sound obvious, but I have met many a new entrepreneur who came from the corporate world only to attempt to run their startup the same way. Not my advice. Be flexible in your schedule and time. It’s the mental barrier that makes such a difference.

How to Outwit Your Competition

Image credit: Shutterstock

Decades of experience have taught me that making thoughtful improvements to existing products is a consistently profitable way to innovate. An effective way to come up with ideas is to start by surveying the market in a familiar industry and asking: What's missing?

Maybe a potential demographic has been completely overlooked by industry leaders. Maybe there's been a lack of innovation for years. You don't have to reinvent the wheel to create a winning innovation.

The question to ask is: How can the products already out on the market be made better? Here are three ways to help you out-design your competition:

1. Examine the dominant brands.
Years ago, I wondered why the shape of the guitar pick had remained unchanged for decades. There were so few designs, even colors, to choose from. I began examining the market and it became clear to me the dominant brands were selling picks that only appealed to serious rock musicians. Where were the picks for garage bands? Where were the picks for fans? As a result, I started a business that sold novelty picks with designs ranging from Mickey Mouse to vampires to a line with polka dots and leopard print marketed to adolescent girls. We also targeted different stores from our competitors, including 7-Eleven and WalMart -- not the typical retail environment for guitar picks, which were primarily being sold at specialty music shops.

Choose a specific market that intrigues you. Determine what the benefit of each competing product is and get a sense of each producer by visiting their website. Who are they marketing their products to? What message is their brand trying to convey? What promises do they make to their customers? Are there any obvious holes? Has a potential demographic been ignored? Knowing what is already out there helps identify what isn't. Use your creativity to envision alternative, superior solutions to the problem their products attempt to solve.

2. Take a good look at packaging.
Don't underestimate the power of delivery. Packaging is an incredibly important extension of your brand, as it forms a consumer's initial impression.

Take my guitar pick business. At the time, packaging had not been made to entice customers. Most stores sold picks in tackle-boxes that you had to rummage through to find what you wanted. Picks were viewed as tools, not as accessories or collectable items. The competitors had successfully been selling picks this way for thirty years. I decided it would be best to package our picks individually and create counter displays to show off the designs -- a markedly different approach from the competition.

3. What aren't customers getting?
It sounds so obvious, but many entrepreneurs don't take the initiative to find out what consumers want and like. Visit retail stores in person to observe how people interact with the products. What are consumers saying about the products they buy and use? Read product reviews on Amazon and message boards to learn what's working and what isn't.

My interactions with consumers confirmed that there was an untapped market for unique, fun picks. We created a survey and asked store managers to have customers fill it out. We explicitly asked them to tell us which designs they liked best and would buy. We used what they told us to create designs that sold. There was no mystery.

Innovations can come from anywhere. But when you choose to capitalize on existing demand by out-designing the competition, you up your chances of success.

Stephen Key

Stephen Key is an inventor, author, speaker and co-founder of InventRight, LLC., a Glenbrook, Nev.-based company that educates entrepreneurs in how to bring ideas to market.

Measuring Social Media ROI: Companies Emphasize Voice Metrics

The influential economist Albert O. Hirschman argues that customers can have a disciplining effect on companies and markets through their exit and voice behaviors. Instead of simply “quitting” a product, Hirschman urged customers to voice their complaints so companies could improve and learn. Hirschman would be a happy camper these days because social media puts a megaphone on the voice of the customer. Results from The CMO Survey® show that companies, in turn, are also starting to see the value of emphasizing voice-based metrics. 

 

The CMO Survey® investigated which metrics companies are using to measure the impact of social media investments. In August 2010 and then again in February 2013, top marketers were asked to share which metrics they use to evaluate social media. Looking across the results, we can see which metrics companies most often use. The survey did not, however, ask respondents to rank or rate each metric in terms of importance.

 

Table: Use of Social Media Metrics 2010-2013


The results offer several interesting insights. The emphasis on pure financial metrics is waning. Sales levels, revenue per customer, profits per customer, and customer retention costs show the steepest drop off in usage with all decreasing by more than 45%. This shift is important because it demonstrates the realization that payoffs from social media are not likely to have a first-order impact on company sales and profits. 

Instead, the impact of social media is likely to have first-order effects in non-purchase behaviors, such as people sharing opinions about companies and brands. This sharing, in turn, creates exposure, builds knowledge, generates attitudes, and ultimately prompts purchase. Reflecting awareness of this fact, companies are increasingly using voice metrics—such as referral and buzz indicators—to measure the impact of social media. The number of companies using “net promoter score” increased 30% while the number of companies using the number of followers and friends increased 27%. Buzz indicators increased less dramatically but still grew by 3%.

These voice effects are important to companies in several ways. First, consumers get exposed to and build knowledge about brands and companies without searching on their own. This may be from others who have had company or brand experience and share in forums or blogs as well as those who are just transmitters of “hearsay” chatter, but have no direct experience. Either way, this type of voice can easily get upgraded to the level of “information” that research has shown consumers believe is valuable. Second, companies realize that not all voices are created equal.

Although opinion leaders and mavens have been measured for decades, the ability to track who is connected to whom and the movement of information between consumers makes voice metrics even more powerful. The emerging power of “Klout” is a testament to this. Third, companies are beginning to demonstrate that these voice metrics are leading indicators of company growth. This has already been demonstrated for net promoter score. Once that connection is solidified across other voice metrics, the use of these metrics will really take off.

The increased use of text analysis is consistent with the focus on online word-of-mouth that we see in the referral and buzz metrics. While only 8.5% of companies are using such metrics, there was tremendous growth with a 28.8% increase in usage over the last 2.5 years. While tools are still emerging to make the most of text, this trend indicates that companies not only want to know if customers “like” their product or service or if customers are willing to “refer” it to others, but also what customers are actually saying in their own words. This unfettered look at what customers are saying about products or brands can be exceptionally valuable for companies that want to catch early marketplace signals they want to ride, amplify, comment on, or squelch.

Of course, “voice” is always better than “exit.” 

However, whether voice equates to company learning and company growth hinges on whether companies can capture that voice, effectively filter it, create actionable insights, and drive those insights into strategies.

 

Christine Moorman, Contributor