There’s a new buzzword in the advertising world — liquid. It refers to the free flow of ideas across different media platforms that mark today’s communication campaign. It helps both advertisers and agencies harness the explosion of multiple screens around them. At the inaugural session of the seventh edition of the Goafest, Srinivasan K Swamy, the chairman of the Goafest Conclave, pointed out that above-the-line advertising, or traditional media advertising, saw only 50 per cent of a client’s marketing spends. Marketers are increasingly spending on reaching out to more consumer touchpoints than afforded by traditional media. It helps convert the interest created among the audience into sales, in a way that advertising can never do.
Tracing the fest’s journey through the years, which has taken up the industry’s pressing concerns each year, Swamy said the pre-purchase stage comprising just advertising was passe. End-to-end solution is what has made its way to the pitch boardroom today. Advertisers such as Coca-Cola were there at the conclave to reiterate his point of view.
Swamy explained pre-purchase marketing was incomplete without exercises such as brand architecture definition, public relation handling and promotions, apart from the usual advertising. It has to be followed up with purchase activations such as retail branding, shopper marketing and managing the leads pre-purchase activities generated. Post-purchase efforts of data analytics, customer relationship management and generating repeat sales will take over from there.
All those stages pose a challenge for coordination. Acknowledging it, Swamy said clients were going back to joint pitches. “Advertisers are calling holding companies for pitches these days, refusing to deal with individual agencies anymore. They are being asked to bring their different verticals to prepare a full-fledged pitch,” said Swamy.
Jonathan Mildenhall, vice-president of global advertising strategy and content excellence at Coca-Cola Company, chose to name the phenomenon as ‘liquid idea’ in a very animated and detailed presentation. However, the term ‘liquid’ is becoming ubiquitous in advertising corridors. Starcom MediaVest Group, the media arm of holding company Publicis Groupe, named its centre of excellence for coordination of multi-media strategies as Liquid Thread, even as marketers warm up to the concept.
To demonstrate how free-flowing ideas have become important for Coca-Cola, Mildenhall contrasted his marketing for the Beijing Olympics with that of the London Olympics. “I spent a gazillion on a handful of content in Beijing that reached just 30 markets. For the London Olympics, we have created as many as 250 different content that will reach 105 markets,” he said.
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Coca-Cola created long-format TV programme content such as documentary footage, music, concert and ensuing conversations across media before the Beijing Olympics kicked off. “Our markets now just need to adjust these content like in a graphic equaliser to get the desired effect,” said Mildenhall.
He stressed that as opposed to the usual 30-seconder, companies like his needed ideas for all the media available today, before launching into his presentation. In his attempt to move away from TV storytelling to dynamic storytelling, he played the role of an editor, telling the company in what areas to create content. “For example, talk about how our brands are making the world a better place,” he added. No one model of content creation could service all the needs of a marketer, he said. And, this is why collaborations will have to range from tie-ups with ‘rockstar’ single agencies, industry collaborations with global tech companies and content creators to create something like the Coke Studio for interaction with brand fans.
“The 30-second ad is just a slice of the whole idea,” he said. It’s the liquid idea that will spread across screens (though not the same content for all the screens). “It’ll earn us a disproportionate share in popular culture.” To encourage such multi-media campaign and content creation, his team devotes 70 per cent of the spends on traditional promotions, 20 per cent on innovations inspired by the feedback from the traditional communication and 10 per cent on risky, but avant-garde ideas. All of these will ensure that the company achieves its 2020 volume objectives.
Holding company honchos couldn’t agree less. Jean-Yves Naouri, chief operating officer and member of management board, Publicis Groupe, said, “Earlier, there were just one or two media, so it was easy to carpet bomb the audience. The audience were also seen less as people, but more as patients, called consumers.”
Content development in today’s multi-media world is as much about deciding which message to spread as it is about ensuring the conversations last. He cited one of his team’s campaigns that was pulled off in a public space, with people who were not necessarily consumers for that brand. Despite that, sales went up by 2.5 per cent.
Tim Love, vice-chairman of the Omnicom Group, advocated banishing the bureaucracy of idea ownership that could hold back different agencies from collaborating. “Let the ideas lead,” he said.
New methods require new measurements. That was where the speakers said the industry needed to buckle up. “The research methods we have are no more applicable to liquid ideas. I am not anti-research, but anti-tools.” He didn’t want a campaign to be judged solely based on a TV ad anymore.