What can we learn from an intensive Advertising Week Europe?
- Steel&Feather
- Mar 28, 2017
- 3 min read
After attending the Advertising Week Europe for four days, which contained great debates, inspirations and insight into possibilities and challenges in the industry, we decided to write a blogpost of the three main themes that were highlighted during this year's Advertising Week.
It is hard to wrap up all of the information within one blogpost with the great variety and insightful debates that were organized, from deep insightful content debates to a special interview with Al Gore, former Vice precedent of the US talking about climate changes and his new movie, which is coming out this summer. However, this post focuses on the elements of which we believe are the most important and insightful aspects that people talked about during the event. If the output of these four days should be phrased in one sentence, it could be said as the following: Be brave and bold and focus on long-term strategies by using relevant content with a storytelling approach for your target audience. The three main themes for this year's advertising week were: content, authenticity and long-term strategy.
Content
People have been telling stories since the stone age. So, Storytelling is not a new concept but for brands it has now become a way to build their relationship with their customers. Therefore, understanding the power of storytelling for brands and understanding their brand objective, can lead to brand success. “Content is King” had been said directly and indirectly throughout these days, which shows how creating content is important for brands. However, there is already a lot of content out there, so it is important to build content and stories that resonate with the brand. Therefore, understanding the brand from the consumers' perspective, by focusing on attitudes instead of the traditional demographic is important for targeting the right audience effectively. You want killers not fillers!
Authenticity
Authenticity is another important element in the creation of brand content, since people trust people not brands. The context of the content is hereby becoming important, so brands can be focused on using influencers to tell their stories, whom resonate with the target audience. People are not rational. From an adverting perspective, it can be difficult to argue how emotions can be important for a brand, since it can be difficult to measure. Therefore, it can be difficult to convince a CFO or CEO to spend money on marketing and advertising. However, humans like emotional attachment and stories, since we have told stories since the stone age. By using authenticity, branding and behavior economy can together reframe people’s perception of a brand, which can lead to brand value. Therefore, always remember to keep it simple.
Long-term strategy
Simplicity is important within a creative mind-set to get the attention from the audience. Finally, a big take off is no matter how a brand or agency are using content and storytelling, it needs to go together with the brand's objective. Additionally, the brand needs to have one brand purpose. Furthermore, it is important to keep in mind how advertising creates and influences culture. Therefore, build a long-term brand strategy and do not only focus on one campaign. A long-term strategy by using storytelling across different medias and platforms and integrating influencers can create bigger brand value. People who are passionate about objects, such as cars, can create brand value, since they hereby can become fans of the brand and become attached to it, as Richard Hamilton explained. In a time where fake news is booming, brand trust (through the combination of simplicity and authenticity) has become an important element to integrate within the brand strategy in order to build a successful brand. Furthermore, with the technology available today, user-generated content can be strategically used to create brand value and further engage the audience to participate in a brand relationship.
With these three themes in mind is it worth it to evaluate the event “is the industry programmed to think too small?” by Ogilvy from Ogilvy & Mather Group UK, who argued how advertising is too small as an industry since it needs to rethink what it can do. Further, he pointed out how humans are irrational and how we are emotional attached, which creates potential for building long-terms strategies. This let people think and perceive a product or a brand differently. Therefore, make emotional relationships by using behavior economics and knowledge. By not aiming for the Bull’s eyes but instead for the things that influence the decision from the audience.
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