The second set of the Effie Effectiveness 2009 talk, took place on the 2nd of April at Cybertorium, Menara Star with yet another splendid lineup of advertising gurus. MARKETING magazine the official magazine for the Effie Awards was there to gain
firsthand experience shared by industry players on how award winning and truly effective campaigns are crafted.
To push the industry into the Effie gear, organising chairman of Malaysia Effie Awards Mr V Kanesan encouraged all industry players to get out of their economic-downturn-shelter and grab the opportunities the economic down turn is offering. He also explains that today the advertising industry is seeing a paradigm shift with the dawn of new media. Due to this, the media needs to be more creative and improve their strategies to be effective in this new paradigm.
To kick start the evening, Daniel Comar, executive creative director of Ogilvy and Mather Malaysia, shared on how “Effectiveness is the New Creative”. Comar said there should not exist competition between creativity and effectiveness and expressed the need to produce results through a quote by David Ogily which says, “We sell or else.” Today the rivalry between creativity and effectiveness can be seen across the board. This he said can be attributed to the fact that many awards such as the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival, Adfest, New York Festivals and DNAD Awards are all based on either creativity or effectiveness rankings and not both together.
Comar says successful campaigns are ideas that cross time and borders; campaigns that are here to stay and change the world. Creative campaigns that are produced with results in mind. How do they do this? Well for every case study, their goal is a flip side of the idea. Comar says, defining the ideas is half the solution. Comar cites Earth Hour started by Leo Burnett Australia as a perfect example of creativity intertwined with effectiveness.
Earth Hour began in Sydney in 2007 with 2.2 million homes and businesses switching off their lights for one hour resulting in a 10.2 percent reduction in electricity consumption across the Sydney CBD. The initiative was in support of a greener earth.
This year Earth Hour was celebrated all over the world in 4,000 cities across 88 countries. Next up was Lee Smith, CEO of Digital, Omnicom Media Group, Asia Pacific with his talk titled, ‘Tagging, Flagging and Nagging for controlled results as he explained the importance of effectiveness and how to plan for it. Smith explains that for a communications campaign to be effective, organising data makes all the numbers gathered useful. For an agency on the other hand, when trying to sell to a client results is exactly what an agency needs to prove its effectiveness and data proves results. So where is this data? Data can be captured through feedback from customers, number of visits to a website, sales, buzz, intent and dialogue. All this data can be found on blogs, forums, social networking sites, etc. Smith says that there is data everywhere, happening at every moment.
The only barrier that stands between you and your data is how to capture all this floating data. His answer is to put a structure around it.
The three ways to do this is:
- TAGGING: invest in a platform – software tools – to contextualise data.This will help you to find out the demographics of those who visit your site, why they are coming and are they satisfied. This will help to monitor the sentiment of your brand by listening to your customers all day. A good agency is a platform that should get you such data.
- FLAGGING: tools that will help you excess your data when and where you need it. Planning for ROI means organising data by storing it in one repository making it easy for information to be retrieved when needed.
- NAGGING: Nag your agency or your company to ensure that your data bank is well maintained. Don’t take no for an answer and shoot down excuses that do not allow data organisation. Also nag for good data hygiene; updating your data frequently. Saving the best for last, we had the honour of listening to Khairudin Rahim, managing director of Lowe Malaysia who presented an interesting case study of a campaign designed to revive Brands Essence of Chicken, a silver award winner for last year’s Effie in his talk ‘The Power of a High Value Idea’. When Cerebos approached Lowe to help them resuscitate their brand, Brand’s Essence of Chicken (BEC), they did not want to change the original formula or the price but they wanted to change the perception that consumers had towards their product and increase distribution. Brand’s Essences has always been known as a drink for the elderly, sick and for periods just before student’s examinations. It was also mainly distributed through Chinese medical stores. As Brand’s has always believed in scientific research to prove the quality and advantage of their product, there exists years of research in their hands. After Lowe’s team sifted through all this research they found a quality that could put BEC above its competitors. The research states that BEC gives better mental concentration. Next Lowe searched for consumer insight that will make BEC relevant to a new target group, the younger generation and they realised that the young want to have an unfair advantage over their peers. Thus they came up with the idea, “Drink BEC daily and you will have an unfair advantage over others by being mentally alert”. With that Lowe created a new tagline for BEC; Stay Alert, Stay Ahead. This tagline inspired their television, print and radio advertisements. It revived the brand to a point where Cerebos decided to invest RM75 million in a new factor for BEC which will increase daily production from 800,000 to 1 million. Inspiring stories indeed and perfect examples of creative marketing that produces results. If you missed out on this round of talks, keep your eyes and ears peeled as the final talk of the series happens on the 6th of May.