Category: Events

Last week, Kantar hosted an impressive new forum of industry debate and discussion focusing on unearthing growth opportunities for UK brands in the modern age. Located at the BFI Theatre on Southbank, London, the full day of seminars and live experiences bought together industry professionals and inspiring agenda-setting leaders to discuss challenges, opportunities and issues which face marketing departments, creative and media agencies, and media owners.

Key themes:

1. What can we learn from the 2019 Brand Z Top 75 brand?
   • Growing brands and expanding their portfolio of goods and services into new ecosystems and entering new, unsuspecting categories. Amazon is now the most valued brand in 2019, and their diversification into voice and entertainment beyond their original USP of an e-commerce platform have catapulted their business results and their reach of new consumers.
   • Top brands are creating interesting new B2B connections, partnering with somewhat abstract brands to create new consumer experiences or bespoke products. Key examples include McDonald’s partnership with Uber Eats, Toyota partnering with Pizza Hut, and Amazon with Nike.

2. Major challenges facing marketers, planners and media owners in 2019;
   • Capping campaign frequency to avoid wastage was a major theme in productivity conversations. Marketers wanted to challenge agencies to provide more rigour in capturing actual frequency thresholds across channels. According to Kantar, 57% of clients aren’t confident in their current planning of frequency.
   • The least understood channels for driving ROI, according to a sample of clients via the Kantar study, are sponsorships and partnerships. 44% of clients agree that sponsorship is the least trusted channel to deliver an accurate ROI. This was a hot topic as it was apparent that sponsorship needed more shared data from the marketing community to prove an ROI success indicator.
   • What is the right threshold to adopt a test and learn agenda? Conversations from senior marketers had unified thoughts on a 70-20-10 approach to commit 70% of working media towards strong performing, tried and tested media channels, 20% against innovation in tested channels, and 10% against out-of-box thinking to drive earned media. All respondents agreed this approach needed a robust measurement framework, off the back of sound hypothesises.

3. Dispelling e-commerce myths
   • Panellists discussed how marketers can have an unwarranted fear or hesitation in amalgamating e-commerce channels into overarching plans. E-commerce ad spend is rising, but not at the level of adoption of consumers to its platforms. This conversation prompted us to explore new figures released from Kantar;
     • Of the online grocery universe in the UK, face wash accounts for only 3.8% of value share, however if we flip this, in terms of online retail sales, it represents 31.8%
     • 45% of e-commerce online spend contribution is from shoppers aged over 55, meaning marketers shouldn’t assume e-commerce is driven by younger consumers; don’t neglect the silver surfer!
       1. 48% of online ‘heavy’ shoppers are aged 55+
       2. It’s not only younger audiences that want convenience (40% of older consumers want shopper delivered to their door)

What does this mean for OMD clients?:

• Think creatively and beyond your immediate category when considering B2B partnerships to leverage brand equity or exchange goods and services. More brands are open for value exchanges to engage with new consumers.
• There are predominant and shared frustrations and unknowns in some key media planning topics such as frequency management, ROI clarity on certain channels and test and learn agendas. There is an industry-wide call to arms to share successful case studies and results with the industry to set benchmarks to help set more accurate standards.
• Dispel myths of e-commerce as a channel which only connect with agile, future-facing Generation Z, as e-commerce already has the scale and spend volume of wider, older audiences.

Authored by Tobie Rhodes, executive director at OMD EMEA

Last week, Kantar hosted an impressive new forum of industry debate and discussion focusing on unearthing growth opportunities for UK brands in the modern age. Located at the BFI Theatre on Southbank, London, the full day of seminars and live experiences bought together industry professionals and inspiring agenda-setting leaders to discuss challenges, opportunities and issues which face marketing departments, creative and media agencies, and media owners.

Key themes:

1. What can we learn from the 2019 Brand Z Top 75 brand?
   • Growing brands and expanding their portfolio of goods and services into new ecosystems and entering new, unsuspecting categories. Amazon is now the most valued brand in 2019, and their diversification into voice and entertainment beyond their original USP of an e-commerce platform have catapulted their business results and their reach of new consumers.
   • Top brands are creating interesting new B2B connections, partnering with somewhat abstract brands to create new consumer experiences or bespoke products. Key examples include McDonald’s partnership with Uber Eats, Toyota partnering with Pizza Hut, and Amazon with Nike.

2. Major challenges facing marketers, planners and media owners in 2019;
   • Capping campaign frequency to avoid wastage was a major theme in productivity conversations. Marketers wanted to challenge agencies to provide more rigour in capturing actual frequency thresholds across channels. According to Kantar, 57% of clients aren’t confident in their current planning of frequency.
   • The least understood channels for driving ROI, according to a sample of clients via the Kantar study, are sponsorships and partnerships. 44% of clients agree that sponsorship is the least trusted channel to deliver an accurate ROI. This was a hot topic as it was apparent that sponsorship needed more shared data from the marketing community to prove an ROI success indicator.
   • What is the right threshold to adopt a test and learn agenda? Conversations from senior marketers had unified thoughts on a 70-20-10 approach to commit 70% of working media towards strong performing, tried and tested media channels, 20% against innovation in tested channels, and 10% against out-of-box thinking to drive earned media. All respondents agreed this approach needed a robust measurement framework, off the back of sound hypothesises.

3. Dispelling e-commerce myths
   • Panellists discussed how marketers can have an unwarranted fear or hesitation in amalgamating e-commerce channels into overarching plans. E-commerce ad spend is rising, but not at the level of adoption of consumers to its platforms. This conversation prompted us to explore new figures released from Kantar;
     • Of the online grocery universe in the UK, face wash accounts for only 3.8% of value share, however if we flip this, in terms of online retail sales, it represents 31.8%
     • 45% of e-commerce online spend contribution is from shoppers aged over 55, meaning marketers shouldn’t assume e-commerce is driven by younger consumers; don’t neglect the silver surfer!
       1. 48% of online ‘heavy’ shoppers are aged 55+
       2. It’s not only younger audiences that want convenience (40% of older consumers want shopper delivered to their door)

What does this mean for OMD clients?:

• Think creatively and beyond your immediate category when considering B2B partnerships to leverage brand equity or exchange goods and services. More brands are open for value exchanges to engage with new consumers.
• There are predominant and shared frustrations and unknowns in some key media planning topics such as frequency management, ROI clarity on certain channels and test and learn agendas. There is an industry-wide call to arms to share successful case studies and results with the industry to set benchmarks to help set more accurate standards.
• Dispel myths of e-commerce as a channel which only connect with agile, future-facing Generation Z, as e-commerce already has the scale and spend volume of wider, older audiences.

Authored by Tobie Rhodes, executive director at OMD EMEA

To encourage the next generation of creative stars under 30, Cannes Lions holds an official Young Lions program where the stars go head-to-head. We spoke to Tobi Babalola from MediaReach OMD Nigeria about his experience as a finalist. Watch our video interview with Tobi here.

My expectations were high, yet I did not know what to expect from the festival. As the days drew closer, my google searches on past Cannes Lions intensified. I must confess that no article or video I saw came close to preparing me for the experience that I had ahead of me.

The Competition – We were briefed by the client on the first day of the festival. We had 24hrs to brainstorm and another 11hours to work on the brief. The media competition was exciting, it was evident that all teams were there to put in their absolute best. You could almost hear the heartbeat of enthusiastic competitors. The competition area had an aura of its own. It was an aura that pushed you to do more, to think, think and think again. When teams submitted their works, the collective relief everyone felt was palpable. So much intense work had been done and there was exhaustion on everyone’s faces. The competition ended on the third day of the festival with our various presentations and announcement of the winners. Now it was time to enjoy other parts of the festival.

The Sessions – Mind blowing and insightful are two words that come to mind. Regardless of your chosen interest, there were sessions that catered to everyone. As a curious creative media strategist, I was especially interested in the discussions that touched on creativity and use of data. One that stood out for me was ‘The Banned Ad 1,000,000 People Signed A Petition To See’ facilitated by Hermeti Balarin, Katie Mackay-Sinclair and John Sauve. The team discussed how to emphasize the power of a creative campaign and how many organic impressions campaigns of this kind generate. Although, I do not agree on the existence of an African story, I also really enjoyed ‘The Authentic African Story’ facilitated by Steave Babaeko, Sandra Iyawa, Omotola Jalade-Ekeinde and Shukri Toefy. I believe Africans are typically characterized by the uniqueness of their diverse culture and categorizing the whole of Africa under a story just does not do adequate justice to the ‘African Story’.

The Festival of Brands – It was downright impossible to get enough of brands at the Festival of Creativity. From Facebook, Google, YouTube, Pinterest, Activision, Unity, Spotify and IBM to name a few. Apart from the free food and drinks available at the beaches taken up by the brands, there was enough memorabilia to go around all visitors. I got a free customized cup from Unity and IBM put my picture up on the LED screen in front of the Carlton Hotel – this was definitely a highlight of my experience at the festival. I mean, my handsome face on a billboard in France is not something that happens often. I promptly took a picture of it and updated my fans back in Nigeria! There were lots of interesting activitations and discussions at the brand beach hubs as well.

The Parties – While it was serious business at the brand hubs during the day, it was quite the opposite at night. We went from one brand party to another through the night every night. Parties were hosted by Google, Facebook and Spotify amongst others and featured music celebrities like Nas, Ciara, Wyclef and more. Every night was a blast! The festival also ended with a Young Lions closing party.

The Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity in my opinion should be on the bucket list for every marketing professional. Being at the festival opens your mind to a whole lot of creativity – It’s like lighting a fuse in your brain, bright enough to last a whole year. It was a great experience for me and I hope I have another chance to attend in the future!

“Influencer marketing equals the modern day British Royal Warrant” – Paul Scannell, Head of Influencer Marketing at INCA.

This, for me, was the QOTD at my day at Advertising Week Europe 2019.

Since the 15^th century, the public have bought into brands and services that have been given the Royal Seal of approval. Why? Because we, as a community, trust the Royal family and their opinion. Nowadays, or since the start of the twenty-teens, tweenies or teens, we as an online community and digital world, are looking elsewhere for inspiration & guidance on our purchase decisions. Cue – Influencers!

But whoever is providing that seal of approval or influencer endorsement requires more these days. One of my biggest takeaways from the various talks I attended at AdWeek Europe 2019, is that it’s not a one way street. Rather, we need to be focusing on the importance of relationships across influencer marketing.

Below are the key relationship takeaways:

Influencer to community

The significance of relationships became abundantly clear from the talk on ‘Harnessing the Power of a Community’, in which the panelists stressed the importance of influencers knowing their community and building a ‘common passion’ amongst them. In this talk, it was interesting to hear how passionate the influencers who spoke were about their community. Christopher ‘Sacriel’ Ball, global gaming influencer actually said “My audience is an extension of my family”, which I found very endearing.

Correspondingly, it’s also profoundly important for brands to recognise who the influencer’s community are, to ensure they are a great fit for the campaign or activation at hand.

So, I bet you’re wondering which type of influencer receives the strongest engagement from their community? The general consensus seems to be that micro influencers tend to have the richest community engagement. This is because the micro influencer tends to be dedicated to a specific passion area, and it is for this specific niche that their audience follows them, meaning they are heavily engaged.

Brand to Influencer

We all know, I hope, that the more you show respect to someone and speak to them on a professional yet friendly level, the more that person will respect you back and therefore go above and beyond. This is just as relevant in the realm of influencer marketing, and was a key theme at AdWeek. Christopher ‘Sacriel’ Ball explained “The strength of the relationship between an influencer and a brand shines through in their content”. Want more from your Influencer marketing campaign? Pay more respect.

Relationships are SO important that, according to the industry professionals and influencers themselves, a trend to look out for in influencer marketing 2019 is the longevity of brand and influencer relationships.

To summarise, the key message from my time immersing myself in everything influencer marketing at Adweek Europe is – in a world where we talk through screens, emojis and likes, it is important to make an effort to get to know one another and build relationships – whether it be online or offline.

Danielle Le Toullec is Senior Comms, Business Development at OMD Worldwide.

My first SXSW experience summed up in three words? Incredible. Jam-Packed. Thought-Provoking.

Ok that’s 5, but if I learnt anything in the past week, it’s that good things come from challenging the status quo. SXSW, the creative, tech and marketing industries’ mecca has been running since 1986. Nerd Woodstock – where the most inspiring and provocative thinkers cover a wide range of compelling topics for all the info-hungry geeks like myself to clamor around the city of Austin, Texas to absorb as much as we can.

With 432,500 people in attendance last year and 4,967 Conference Speakers commanding the stage, to say this event is a beast, is a colossal understatement. In one of my favourite keynotes, ‘7 Non-Obvious Trends Changing The Future In 2019’, Rohit Bhargava wisely said “You don’t need to know everything, you just need to know what to pay attention to”.

So, what’s hot in 2019?

1. Empathy was the word on everybody’s lips, as a driver of innovation and revenue
2. Qualitative Marketing > Quantitative Marketing
3. Tuning into Sonic Marketing
4. Forcing Big Tech to Give a Sh*t.

1.Empathy = Innovation AND Revenue

People all around the world are cottoning on to the fact that the internet is not necessarily serving humanity very well. Despite initial expectations for technology to give us more time to do the things we like, in reality, as it fuels the always-on nature of our lives, it’s leading to staggering occurrences of burn out, depression and disconnection.

Empathy is a very effective way of tapping into consumer needs and understanding them on a deeper level. We know consumers want to hear from their favourite brands. But, and this is a big caveat, the messages need to be adding something to their lives. So, how do brands evolve to answer this need?

In his talk on “A Crash Course In Empathy and Leadership”, Michael Ventura from strategy and empathic design studio, Sub Rosa, shared a General Electric (GE) case study. Ventura showed how they used an empathetic approach to explore, learn, and grow through deeper understanding of how women experienced the GE Healthcare Mammography product. Through focus groups, they discovered that women avoided these appointments as it was “the test to find out when [they]’re going to die”. They were cold, uncomfortable and hated the gowns they had to wear. Armed with this knowledge, Sub Rosa put forward a new approach which enabled GE to revolutionise the whole experience by creating imaging centres optimised for patient-first experience rather than product experience. The result? When the women were relaxed, the machine was able to diagnose breast cancer more accurately, because the relaxed tissue was easier to image. Hospitals started buying the whole imaging centre experience, rather than just a machine. Innovation? Tick. Revenue driver. Big tick.

Cynics may scoff that empathy is a ploy used by big business to make it look like they care. At the end of the day, empathy is a passive tool. It is how you utilise it that will make a difference. And if it is making large conglomerates consider their audiences on a more human level, providing solutions that improve people’s lives… well, that can’t be a bad thing!

2. Qualitative Marketing > Quantitative Marketing

In previous years, Big Data has been all the buzz. But what quantitative data will never give you, is an understanding of underlying reasons, opinions, and motivations behind the numbers. This is where the gold lies. For all the numbers junkies out there, don’t panic. We’re not throwing them out completely! Enter: Behavioural economics.

I attended a talk on the Brand and Marketing track titled, ‘A Psychologist and An Ad Guy Walk into a Campaign’, the former being psychologist Dr Mel Weinberg and latter, ad guy Dan Monheit. The key take away was that great creativity has always been about gut feel, neuroscience just makes it real. As a species, we humans are what Weinberg described as “predictably irrational”. We remember things because they resonate with us personally. And qualitative marketing is the short-cut to tapping into that and creating a valuable brand interaction for a consumer.

In the panel, ‘Is Social Media The New Fast Food?’, this idea of qualitative marketing was explored as a way of delivering something that is actually needed by an audience. It’s an approach that calls for brands to be service providers, no matter what industry they might be in. So, what does this really mean? It’s about investing in one to one conversations, at scale. Alphonzo Terrell, Director of Digital and Social Marketing at HBO said that for them, it’s all about entertaining. It’s about extending the world of their stories so the show doesn’t end when the episode does e.g. The Sopranos Nickname Generator campaign which celebrated the 20th anniversary of the show. Or their Game of Thrones, bleed #ForTheThrone SXSW Activation in partnership with the Red Cross.

To truly embrace qualitative marketing on social, Terrell encouraged marketers to ‘centre the user’ and to invest in training to prepare for the moment before it happens. Build trust in teams so that they have the autonomy to participate in social conversations in real-time. Key takeouts? Know your brand. Have a voice. Engage in two-way dialogue.

3. Tuning into Sonic Marketing

With more touchpoints and channels in the customer journey than ever before, the sonic approach taps into a world of opportunities. After all, the industry of voice-assisted buying is predicted to be worth $40bn by 2022. So, what did SXSW have to say about it?

Mastercard’s CMO, Raja Rajamannar’s talk on “Reimagine Storytelling Through Tech and Experiences” explored this realm of sonic branding as a way to reach consumers who are actively avoiding advertising. There is an added challenge that payments have become so seamless that the enabler brand risks becoming anonymous. With the rise of ‘conversational commerce’—buying through voice-activated products such as Amazon’s Alexa or Google’s Siri, Mastercard are tackling this new need to be able to ‘hear’ a brand, head-on by working with specialists such as Linkin Park’s Mike Shinoda to launch their brand new ‘mogo’ (musical logo). There are distinct sounds for individual scenarios such as cinema, dining, festivals or shopping experiences, as well as locations such as Shanghai, Columbia and Dubai.

Over at the ‘Creating “Sound-On” Content in a Sound-Off World’ panel, we learned that 85% of Facebook video is watched without sound (Digiday). To entice audiences to engage with content, marketers need to think about sound from the beginning. It cannot be an afterthought. Katie Keating from IBM, shared a case study for their quantum computer campaign, where they tapped into the ASMR (Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response) trend by creating content that brought the computer to life, in a non-traditional way.

4. Forcing Big Tech to Give a Sh*t

Despite it being my first SXSW, the rose coloured glasses didn’t stop me from noticing some concerning themes emerging. The obvious issue of Digital Wellness was front and centre in the aforementioned panel ‘Is Social Media The New Fast Food?’. Some stats that they shared:

• 70% think social media makes them less social
• 46% have temporarily deleted their accounts.
• 37% have taken a digital detox
• 21% of young people can’t go an hour without checking their social media feeds

There are platform updates going in the right direction, such as Instagram are introducing tools to help people be more aware of their usage with their daily time limit feature. However, there were many talks which breezed past some serious impending disasters — without anyone offering solutions or seeming too concerned with the consequences. In the featured session on “Self-Driving Cars: The Future is When?” with Malcolm Gladwell & Chris Urmson (Aurora), Gladwell zeroed in on the social and political risks that self-driving cars face. He hit the nail on the head when he said that “people from Silicon Valley are a bit too blasé about security. It’s not encouraging to be launching such a change in a time when cyber security is such an issue”. He warned that “if we aren’t careful, we don’t get what we want from these technologies”.

Steven Bartlett from Social Chain, echoed this in his session on AI & Social Media when he said that “we put money before trust, privacy, morals and accountability and now we’re paying the price. We rushed in without thinking of the impact on mental health, laws or policies.” It’s no secret that people trust brands less than ever. Bartlett went on to say that we need to go from ‘black box’ brand to a ‘glass box’ brand. Afterall, it’s not about what has been painted on the outside but the ability to see inside and make your own opinions about a brand. The more open that these tech companies are about what they are creating and conversations they are having, the more opportunity that concerns will be raised early in the piece, before technology is unleashed and misused. Before it’s too late.

As my colleague, Chrissie Hanson, aptly put it, “Yes, the fight against disinformation requires the collaboration of Silicon Valley, private companies, governments and regulators, as well as citizens; and yes, we need to be more vigilant in protecting our children and ourselves from misinformation, to be better guardians of own data. But consumers shouldn’t have to be the first line of defense.”

As I reflect on my time at SXSW, the lines upon lines of engaged people fighting for a seat in a session, the fervent note taking, the inspiring speakers… I have no doubt that these are the people that will change the world. So maybe you’re reading this thinking, I’m not an engineer for a self-driving car, or designing the next wave of robots designed to love you (Lovot in the exhibition hall, I’m looking at you), but you still have a role to play. Help your client answer a genuine customer need. Tell a story that hasn’t been told. Improve a user experience. Be a more vulnerable leader. Voice your concerns about new technology. Demand accountability from Big Tech. And most importantly, remain curious.

Kate Ivory is Managing Partner, Strategy at OMD EMEA.

Originally published on Business Insider.

In a world where our lives are increasingly optimised, it was no surprise that SXSW, a festival famed for having its finger on the cultural and technological pulse, majored in all things ‘fast and first’ in its 2019 offering.

From application of ‘EQ in the ER using XR’, to ‘Product design in the age of AI’, it was clear to me that artificial intelligence was not only the headliner but finally starting to come of age.

No longer the promise of a brave new future, this was the year that machine learning became applicable and evidenced not only in the lecture halls and exhibition stands, but also outside in the bustling Austin streets, where delegates weaved through the traffic on ubiquitous electric scooters picking up pre-ordered lattes from Starbucks courtesy of their Apple Watches. The elusive powers of AI were abundant all around me and the future was here, or so it seemed.

But somewhere between AI and XR (and possibly around session 45 on the subject) I got to wondering whether this relentless preoccupation with making stuff entirely frictionless, entirely optimised for my convenience, might actually be the single biggest crisis facing brands today. Is it possible that in the pursuit of entirely frictionless utility and seamless consumer experience, brands might actually serve to commoditise themselves into the obsolete?

After all, as Jon Wilkins of Accenture Interactive highlighted in his session on friction and the human brand experience, friction is actually a critical ingredient in the building of emotions – emotions which in turn are proven to be the most significant driver of mental availability and recall. For many brands it is precisely the ability to insert friction into an otherwise optimised experience which makes them so compelling. Take the Ikea effect. No doubt the Swedish furniture giant owes a significant proportion of its success to its curated shopping experience, but it is well documented that the act of building the furniture itself is what imbues it with additional value and keeps consumers coming back time and again. Or what about the foil on my San Pellegrino – an additional Ill afforded barrier to consumption, or evidence of manufactured friction to signal quality in a commoditised category?

Whilst there is no doubt that speed and convenience are increasingly critical components of a good brand experience, successful brands seem to be the ones that are able to identify and navigate the tension between the need for relevancy and receptivity across the consumer journey. As Tricia Katz argued in her session ‘Using AR to bridge the online-offline gap’, it’s important that we understand the layers which consumers are going through at any given stage and adapt our messages to those signals in the real world. Understanding human need requires solutions more varied than simply frictionless interaction, it requires brands to mimic the variable pace of my experience and to adjust the vernacular of their story to offer something meaningful to me along the way.

As I reflect on my time at SXSW, increasingly I feel that for brands to survive in this context, they need to stop being distracted purely by “what’s possible” and instead to consistently ask “what’s valuable”. As brand owners and leaders this means flexing our empathetic muscles like never before, and in doing so, being comfortable with shifting gears along the way. As Dr Kate Stone highlighted, the act of injecting friction into experience is often what enables brands to make the everyday magical. It is built into the foundations of some of the worlds most loved brands – hell, if Supreme can make ‘generation instant gratification’ queue for 24 hours for a pair of sneakers then I’m a believer!

Kate Ivory is Managing Partner, Strategy at OMD EMEA.

Originally published on Business Insider.

In a world where our lives are increasingly optimised, it was no surprise that SXSW, a festival famed for having its finger on the cultural and technological pulse, majored in all things ‘fast and first’ in its 2019 offering.

From application of ‘EQ in the ER using XR’, to ‘Product design in the age of AI’, it was clear to me that artificial intelligence was not only the headliner but finally starting to come of age.

No longer the promise of a brave new future, this was the year that machine learning became applicable and evidenced not only in the lecture halls and exhibition stands, but also outside in the bustling Austin streets, where delegates weaved through the traffic on ubiquitous electric scooters picking up pre-ordered lattes from Starbucks courtesy of their Apple Watches. The elusive powers of AI were abundant all around me and the future was here, or so it seemed.

But somewhere between AI and XR (and possibly around session 45 on the subject) I got to wondering whether this relentless preoccupation with making stuff entirely frictionless, entirely optimised for my convenience, might actually be the single biggest crisis facing brands today. Is it possible that in the pursuit of entirely frictionless utility and seamless consumer experience, brands might actually serve to commoditise themselves into the obsolete?

After all, as Jon Wilkins of Accenture Interactive highlighted in his session on friction and the human brand experience, friction is actually a critical ingredient in the building of emotions – emotions which in turn are proven to be the most significant driver of mental availability and recall. For many brands it is precisely the ability to insert friction into an otherwise optimised experience which makes them so compelling. Take the Ikea effect. No doubt the Swedish furniture giant owes a significant proportion of its success to its curated shopping experience, but it is well documented that the act of building the furniture itself is what imbues it with additional value and keeps consumers coming back time and again. Or what about the foil on my San Pellegrino – an additional Ill afforded barrier to consumption, or evidence of manufactured friction to signal quality in a commoditised category?

Whilst there is no doubt that speed and convenience are increasingly critical components of a good brand experience, successful brands seem to be the ones that are able to identify and navigate the tension between the need for relevancy and receptivity across the consumer journey. As Tricia Katz argued in her session ‘Using AR to bridge the online-offline gap’, it’s important that we understand the layers which consumers are going through at any given stage and adapt our messages to those signals in the real world. Understanding human need requires solutions more varied than simply frictionless interaction, it requires brands to mimic the variable pace of my experience and to adjust the vernacular of their story to offer something meaningful to me along the way.

As I reflect on my time at SXSW, increasingly I feel that for brands to survive in this context, they need to stop being distracted purely by “what’s possible” and instead to consistently ask “what’s valuable”. As brand owners and leaders this means flexing our empathetic muscles like never before, and in doing so, being comfortable with shifting gears along the way. As Dr Kate Stone highlighted, the act of injecting friction into experience is often what enables brands to make the everyday magical. It is built into the foundations of some of the worlds most loved brands – hell, if Supreme can make ‘generation instant gratification’ queue for 24 hours for a pair of sneakers then I’m a believer!

Peita Pacey is Head of Strategy, OMD Sydney, Australia

In children, the act of “play” is well documented to be critical for development of social, emotional, cognitive and physical attributes and capabilities.  So much so, that there are over 270 million searchable options available to help you ensure that the type of “playing” your child is doing, is one that contributes to their growth.   As an area of interest and research, play in adults is also coming of age – focused on the benefits for well-being and overall mental health.  Colouring, gaming, singing, block building are all viable ways to spend some time to refocus the mind.

Now this may seem a little left field, but stay with me, because one thing that jumped out at me from my week here at SxSW 2019, is how much we as Adults are being encouraged here to play.  To play with ideas, to play with technology, to play with art, to play with each other.  Much has been written already about how this year more questions have been asked than answered.  Session after session, panel after panel, experts are stating “You probably won’t get any answers here today” followed quickly by “But we’re definitely going to be asking a lot of questions and we invite you to do so too”.

The Idea of Playing with Ideas

It was this repetitive theme that interested me so much, as it was pervasive across all the content tracks – be it in Brand and Marketing, Convergence, Innovation, Music, Gaming and many, many others.   This attitude of seek and ye shall find, is not only an inspiring one, but as a strategist, one that resonates deeply with me.   To always push for a new way to solve a problem is inherent in what we, as marketers, must do.  Too often, it can be tempting to roll out the same old solution that performed just well enough to keep business flowing in, but not enough to be a game changer.  If our job as media strategists is to hunt down, find and source genuine business growth for our clients we must be permitted and encouraged to try new things, and sometimes to fail a little too.  That is, we need to be allowed to play.

Naturally at a place like SxSW, there are plenty of opportunities to get inspiration for how we can incorporate play into our business lives.   With Empathy one of the key major themes for the festival this year, we have been exposed to a myriad of ways which artificial intelligence (AI), algorithms and data sets can give us the tools to play with our insights taking them deeper and making them more meaningful in our ability to connect with our consumers and customers.  This technology allows us to do this quickly, enabling our marketing decision-making processes to get faster.

Playing with your brand

In Innovation and Connection at the Speed of Sound, we discussed the emerging opportunity and increased impact an audio focused world will have as more people adopt voice-first behaviours, and technologies in their workplace and home.  With the proliferation, and more importantly adoption, of smart speakers and other connected devices increasing exponentially and gaining momentum, we’ve seen a revival in a preference for audio.  Music streaming, podcasting, audio books are all gaining in popularity and consumption, providing brands with more opportunities to connect through content. The next stage of course is to ensure that brands build strong sonic identities, utilising key voice attributes as well as sonic logos.  In the Innovation Exhibition Hall, we saw software that by merging AI and neuroscience together analyses and connects the intrinsic emotional reactions that music can make, dependent on personality type in group and social contexts.  Musimap shows us the next wave of music composition giving us a sonic tool to help us build even deeper consumer and customer engagement in our marketing.  The question for us to play with is how do we create a sonic brand impact on sound-off platforms like social? What is the right mix of audio to visual in this new environment and changing consumer behaviours?  How can we link the visual that people see based on what they are hearing?  Again, playing with technology can help us here.

Playing with Art

T-Bone Burnett brought down the house with his Music Keynote earlier in the week.  His anti-social, anti-big tech stance has been a theme of many talks this week, including Brian Solis, Elizabeth Warren and Roger McNamee, and ultimately he and others have called on us to start playing again with the way we think.  To again embrace art in all its many forms, something which for music fans feels especially easy to do here in Austin.   The festival itself holds live music as a core component, with regular large showcases by entertainment brands and country-specific activations.   Every bar and every hotel have live events scheduled, and you can see performances of up and coming artists in retail shops too.  Madewell, the women’s retailer, held a showcase each afternoon supporting a collection of young female solo artists, displaying their understanding and empathy of their customers delivering meaningful engagements beyond the transaction.

Playing with Technology

In JFK 2020: Could JFK be the NEXT American President we saw how technology designed for one outcome can be adopted and utilised for another.  How one idea can sprout another and another, leading you into new territories that may seem farfetched, but also potentially viable.   It is this element that we must embrace in our work, a curiosity of not how just to improve what is in front of us, but also what we might possibly create.  It’s questioning what customers truly want from you and how can you deliver that in an authentic and unique way?  Essentially, it’s about being truly customer-centric.

Play as a concept is never more clear and honest than in the world of gaming. Don’t Get Got has been a SxSW “secret party game” that sought to add an extra layer of fun to the festival experience, giving people an IRL/VR experience to collect tokens and win prizes.   League of Legends, Fortnite, Super Smash Bros, are all on-ground tournaments conducted around the festival as the Gaming portion of the festival kicked off, allowing teams or individuals to connect with their peers. In so much of modern day gaming, brands can participate through in-game content and engagement, connections which are designed to incentivise you play for longer.  This focus was further evident at the Exhibition where multiple products were onsale from energy containing brain function boosting drinks, to ergonomic player chairs, to blue-lens glasses to allow for more screen time.

This overall concept of incorporating play into our daily business mindsets, sets us up for a more authentic test & learn approach to marketing, because the critical element of play is to try and fail, a process which at its heart requires empathy to work.

Originally published in Campaign Live.

Kristen Colonna, Chief Strategy Officer at OMD North America, talks us through the pits of despair festival go-ers can easily fall down.

Growing up, my father would occasionally recount the phrase, “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road’ll take you there,” a catchy bit from Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland.

I could not have foreseen how often this phrase would pop into my head across my five days in Austin, though perhaps I should have. Being at SXSW is a lot like diving down Alice’s rabbit hole. This year, I had chosen to take a red pill and a blue, and cover the experiential storytelling, and brands and marketing tracks. I was excited to explore the next frontier of storytelling and debate the merits of marketing fundamentals versus new age thinking.

What I found myself reflecting at the end of those five days was not necessarily new enlightenment, but instead a familiar question that begins every brief, every challenge, every marketing conversation: what is the problem we are trying to solve?

Exposed to a myriad of solutions, tactics and shiny objects in marketing today, if we don’t know the problem we are solving, any of them seem viable, and valid, solutions; certainly, at SXSW. In Austin, and in everyday marketing, we must reframe these opportunities in service of a problem to solve, before we slide head first down the holes — and can’t climb out.

Hole #1: Everything is dead

What’s dead, you say? All of it. Brand building. Advertising. Authenticity. Storytelling. It’s all dead. And we’re next. I heard this everywhere, and yet nothing could be less true. What is true is that there are more opportunities to reach and resonate with consumers than ever before, and as a result, context is more critical than ever. Only against the context of the problem we are trying to solve, can we map solutions and vet their ability to accomplish our objectives. Contrary to the hype, nothing is dead, and everything is in play. We just need to know what game we are playing.

Hole #2: The technology tail is wagging the dog

In “Brand Now: How to Stand Out in a Crowded, Distracted World,” Nick Westergaard reminded us to double down on content that is “brand centric and customer aware,” and to solve business needs and consumer needs before creating more stuff! Sounds good, but we couldn’t be further from that truth as an industry.

Wowed by the potential of AI-driven, MR-driven and everything in between, we are witnessing a bit of the tail wagging the dog. Content is being created in service of what technology enables, instead of in service of what connections are required to achieve more valued and valuable relationships with brands. Those more valued and valuable relationships can only happen when we empathize.

With technology leading the discussion, we are ignoring empathy for the barriers and drivers of the consumer, for their unmet needs and desires, and therefore ignoring the true and meaningful application of these new and immersive stories.

Hole #3: Measuring ourselves out of existence

“Awareness is not an Objective,” exalted Kai D. Wright at his SXSW discussion, “Following the Feeling: Creating Brand Value.” The power of his proclamation is all too often over-looked in marketing and advertising.

Awareness is almost always a vague and lazy objective, that obscures the real (harder) problem to identify and solve. It leads us to hyper focus on media metrics and diagnostic KPIs (easier) without having identified the real behavioral or attitudinal change we are trying to affect, over both the short and the long term.

We dive deep into the rabbit hole of campaign performance and optimizations, skipping over insights and the humanity critical to successful marketing. Now make no mistake, linking marketing to business performance, and measuring and attributing it to real business outcomes, is paramount.

But diving into the measurement rabbit hole without meaningful objectives and a clear picture of true success is dangerous for two reasons: it prevents us from creating the kind of content and communications required to forge a meaningful and motivational connection to the consumer, getting them to feel and do, something and; it forces a focus on micro-metrics and short-term performance, without an eye to long term brand value.

Awareness is not (almost always) an objective.

Looking into — but not falling into — these rabbit holes offers a re-grounding in the timeless marketing basics, and gives much needed perspective to all the bright shiny objects at SXSW and in the marketing conversation today.

Originally published in Business Insider.

Mark Murray Jones is Chief Strategy Officer, EMEA, for global media agency OMD Worldwide.

SXSW, the annual conglomerate of festivals held in Austin, has always felt somewhat contradictory. On the one hand, it’s a celebration of artistic creativity and self-expression; on the other, an ever-expanding exposition of emerging technology. In truth, it’s absolutely this diversity that so many have found uniquely rewarding — and that duality that characterizes the event has felt even more profound this year.

It’s my third year here, and there’s no doubt that the relentless and optimistic pace of technological change I’ve witnessed at past events remains — but alongside it, there seems to be an altogether more cautionary, human note.

The clearest demonstration of this must be the ubiquitous use of just one word: empathy, a word that feels like it’s infused the festival, seemingly usurping traditional heavyweights like AI and digital transformation. And having sat through numerous sessions over the past five days, it’s not hard to see why.

Firstly, empathy is inarguably on the decline in our society. Reflected in numerous studies, our ability to see the world through other people’s eyes has been eroded by increasingly solitary lives, lacking interaction, played out behind pervasive screens.

Naturally this has begun to have a profoundly negative effect on society, contributing to mental health issues related to increased isolation, a rise in divisive tribalism, and a compassion collapse characterized by a numb disconnected feeling towards mass suffering.

It’s also bad for business. If individuals’ empathy levels have declined, it seems corporations have slipped even further. Studies have proven the detrimental effect that low levels of empathy have on business performance.

It appears SXSW has taken this theme to its heart in 2019 — almost as though it has some moral obligation to help us navigate the issue. Perhaps there is a collective feeling of culpability given that the very technological change the event celebrates is also in part responsible for the worrying trends we see in society.

The good news is, however, that empathy isn’t a finite resource. In his session, The War for Kindness: Building Empathy in a Fractured World, Professor of Psychology at Stanford Jamil Zaki assured us we can in fact teach ourselves and our organizations to work on our empathic muscles. Several sessions, Including Professor Zaki’s, offered practical advice, strategies and exercises that could help us regain these forgotten skills.

All of this is encouraging, of course, but there was another factor, well documented at the event, that makes implementing these changes undeniably challenging. Time and again we’ve been reminded that the ability to act faster than the competition, in increasingly complex contexts, has become ever more critical.

While empathy helps us make better decisions in life or business, the sheer pace we’re operating at doesn’t always make that easy. Making that right decision at speed is harder and more complicated than ever, putting pressure on us as individuals as well as corporations and businesses.

It is somewhat ironic, therefore, that the eventual savior for this technologically-created dystopia is a different breed of tech. In sessions such as How to Put Empathy Into Business and Empathetic Technology and the End of the Poker Face, Minter Dial and Poppy Crum respectively talked through the opportunity for empathetic AI to interpret our own signals so that in time (by 2022, in fact), machines will know more about us than our own families. Advances in biometric technology will allow us to understand more about one another (and even ourselves) than ever before.

There is a value exchange, of course. Allowing machines to read and interpret the signals we give off can feel deeply uncomfortable and intrusive — an affront to our personal privacy we’re already becoming well versed in. In truth, though, we must be prepared to make that exchange because we will increasingly need help navigating ever greater complexity at speed.

Perhaps SXSW didn’t offer enough answers, but it certainly felt as though there was an understanding that in some way, we’re all complicit in our current predicament — and that the blend of humanity and science that so embodies the festival is most likely where the antidote lies.

The challenge lies in finding the right balance.