ICON IN THE MAKING

CITYAM.COM
MONDAY 14 SEPTEMBER 2015
FEATURE
33
MARKETING
RESCUING
BRANDS
FROM
OBLIVION
Havas Media’s Paul Frampton talks whisky
and consumer apathy with William Railton
IN THE battle for customer loyalty,
brands are realising that, to market
a product, they must do more than
thrust it in front of potential consumers.
According to Paul Frampton, chief executive
of Havas Media UK, curating interesting,
even educational content,
and delivering it in ways which feel
personal, are the keys to capturing an
audience. Overseeing the strategic output
for clients like Nationwide, O2 and
the BBC, Frampton understands the
importance of messaging. Describing
himself as a “frustrated journo who
tweets 30 times a day”, he tells City A.M.
why content must become more meaningful.
What difficulties are brands facing?
You’d be surprised how little people
care about brands. We conducted a
global survey and found that three
quarters of us wouldn’t care if a brand
vanished tomorrow. But despite its
record on welfare and tax-evasion,
Amazon is important to 70 per cent of
people, and that’s because it provides
a better service than anyone else. It offers
thoughtful suggestions about
what we might want to buy, and Prime
provides overnight delivery – services
other brands can’t match. Starbucks,
on the other hand, has a huge presence
on the high-street, but only 27 per cent
would care if it disappeared.
Even Facebook recognises that it still
has to develop its brand-story, which is
why it has been investing so much in
TV, print and out-of-home recently. It
wants to be a brand which is real and
close to you, instead of a monolithic,
faceless company.
Three quarters of
people wouldn’t
care if a brand
vanished tomorrow
AS MARKETING departments look
for bang in every buck they
spend, the relationship with
brands and media agencies is set to
change.
A survey by MediaSense, ISBA and
IPSOS Connect has shown that 60 per
cent of brands anticipate moving their
content development in-house, or
going to alternative agencies, before
2020. So why are agencies coming
under fire?
It has a lot to do with data. The report
reveals that 67 per cent of marketers
think data analytics and insight will be
“critical to success” over the next five
years. “They believe they can create
faster, more dynamic content in-house
because they are closer to their customer,”
says Debbie Morrison, director
of consultancy at ISBA. Brands are waking
up to the idea that their own marketers
are better placed to respond to
social media developments happening
in real-time.
Before now, creative agencies have
tended to focus on big paid placements
for analogue media like television and
trade media campaigns, Morrison explains.
“But marketers have found
these processes neither agile nor costeffective
enough for the purposes of the
creation of real-time dynamic content.”
Traditionally, creative agencies have
been divorced from the implementation
side of a campaign. “It’s not that
agencies aren’t pulling their weight,
but they’re not adapting quickly
Sport allows brands to establish an emotional connection, says Paul Frampton
How can companies foster a better
relationship with consumers?
Building a brand into a rich experience
can be hugely beneficial, and our research
shows that sport and music are
what people are most passionate
about, so these are fertile areas. We’ve
recently launched the #WearTheRose
for O2, which aims to get the UK behind
England for the Rugby World
Cup. The company is allowing “Priority”
customers to access England rugby
shirts; lots of content is being seeded
through social and video channels –
it’s a campaign which is trying to create
a movement. And that is valuable.
When you watch sport on a screen,
the audience is somewhat detached,
but in a stadium, you are part of a collective
experience. And if a brand can
stand out at these occasions, it taps
into something emotional, and establishes
a real connection. We’re encouraging
fans to hold up their mobiles in
support of the England team and make
the campaign go viral around the stadium.
Events like the Rugby World Cup
provide a captive, engaged audience,
and clever brands can capitalise on that
and make content happen.
What are the next frontiers for social
media advertising?
Reactive campaigns on social media are
very important now, and social is being
put front and centre of most campaigns.
It’s clear why. Not only are there
huge amounts of data to be picked up
from the social space, but there is the
opportunity for brands speak to customers
on a personal level.
We recently ran a campaign around
Father’s Day for Pernod Ricard’s whisky
brand, Glenlivet, where we found a
startup which provides gifting through
social media, and allowed anyone to
send a sample of Glenlivet to their dad
with a personalised message, populating
this message with photos from
Facebook. Glenlivet was able to get
thousands of samples into the hands of
potential customers, and not just those
who had come across the promotion. It
was a thoughtful and effective way of
targeting.
The problem is that, in the digital
space, creative still isn’t being tailored
enough. We now need to work out how
a programmatic kind of machine-learning
can be applied to social media, so
we can issue the right message at the
right time to the right person.
As the internet of things proliferates,
what will brands learn from the data?
As people get used to the idea of wearables,
advertisers will be able to tailor
messaging around moods, which is a
very exciting prospect. But a world of
connected devices poses an opportunity
for fast-moving consumer goods
(FMCG) brands, which have been in the
dark before now. Because FMCG products
are sold in grocery shops, customer
data stays with the retailer. But
if some nappies, for example, left the
shop with a digital ID on them, the
manufacturer would be able to understand
the life-cycle and usage of those
nappies better.
Marketers threaten to bring media work in-house
enough to their clients’ needs,” says
Graham Brown, director and founder
of MediaSense. “But shaping creative
around data will require an overhaul of
their modus operandi, and that will
prove expensive.”
Indeed, while 90 per cent of those surveyed
said they would keep going to
media agencies for paid media, 73 per
cent of marketers say they will “increasingly
contract directly with media owners
and technology companies by 2020.”
The threat of disintemediation means
that agency remuneration models will
be scrutinised more and more. As agencies
are urged to adapt content around
the whole tail of implementation, Morrison
and Brown acknowledge that
agencies will need to have more skin in
the game. Just as data informs marketers
about consumers’ paths to purchase,
it can be used to make media
agencies more accountable over the
course of a campaign’s implementation.
Business outcomes will become a
widely accepted key performance indicator,
and project-based briefs will replace
the inefficient, long-term
relationships between agencies and
clients, thinks Brown.
“We have been used to media being
slashed and burnt by procurement. It
will be interesting when media is no
longer considered an expense, and becomes
a cost-of-sale.”
£ William Railton is business features
writer at City A.M.
THE WEEK IN BRIEF
INSTAGRAM LAUNCHES
“MARQUEE” ADS
In a bid to boost ad sales,
Instagram has introduced a new
platform called “Marquee”, which
lets advertisers “own a moment”,
targeting a large portion of the
app’s users quickly. Michael Kors
was the first UK brand to sign up,
releasing 15 second videos to
promote its new “Jet Set 6” shoe
collection. Last
week, Instagram
began selling ads
in 30 more
countries.
MEDIA FIRMS TRY TO
BUTTER UP ARLA FOODS
Arla Foods, which owns the dairy
product brands Anchor and
Lurpak, is reviewing its media
planning and buying briefs across
Europe. Arla’s gross ad spend
across the continent totals
£100m, and the accounts are
currently handled by Carat, MEC
and OMD. The three incumbents
are all throwing their hat back in
the ring, and Carat and Group M
will vy for business in all markets,
which include Germany, Norway,
Spain and the UK.
LLOYDS LOSES
CUSTOMER DATA
Police are investigating the
disappearance of a storage device
containing the details of more than
10,000 Lloyds customers, which
went missing from a data centre in
July. The possible breach affects
Lloyds Premier account holders
with RSA emergency home cover
who filed a claim between 2006
and 2012. This follows a similar
data breach at
Barclays.
STEPHEN WHYTE TO
HEAD UP POSTERSCOPE
Stephen Whyte has been
appointed UK chief executive of
Posterscope, Dentsu Aegis’s out-ofhome
agency. Whyte will join in
November, having held senior
positions at Leo Burnett and
McCann Erickson. He moves from
Netventure Consulting, the
strategic and commercial adviser
to digital media, marketing and adtech
businesses, which he founded
four years ago. Whyte will also
oversee the running of psLIVE and
PSI UK.
AD OF THE WEEK
The drinks
brand
Oasis
returns
with
another
witty jibe at the cynicism of the ad
industry in its latest ad “O celeb”.
Produced by The Corner, the 20
second video placement uses a still
image of an Oasis bottle while the
voiceover asks: “Would you be
more likely to buy it if we showed
you your favourite celeb drinking it?
No? Good.”