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Mobile Johnson & Johnson Technology

Johnson & Johnson head of digital and innovations: ‘for millennials, mobile is like breathing’

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By Benjamin Cher, Reporter

June 12, 2017 | 6 min read

In Asia Pacific, where milennials are making up the majority of the market, the quest to reach them is becoming more and more of a priority for marketers.

milennial smartphone

How do you create thumb-stopping content for mobile?

Mobile seems to be the answer, as Richa Goswami, head of digital and innovation, APAC Johnson & Johnson, puts it, “for them being on mobile is like breathing, it’s normal," she stated during her keynote at Mobile Marketing Association Forum in Singapore.

“Mobile has changed everything, it’s the way you consume content, the way you expect to be engaged, the way you buy things,”

This is even more evident in APAC where mobile ad spend is growing, and smartphones becoming the only way some people in Asia access the Internet.

This evolution of mediums to reach the consumer now offers new opportunities for marketers to connect according to Richa, as the distance to consumers literally narrows with each new media.

“To give a sense of how much mobile is part of our lives, if you think of the evolution of content… you listen to the radio from the other room, the proximity to your content is really far, then TV came along and you would see it across the room, then the desktop,” said Richa.

“Then comes the mobile device, and how do you engage with that device? It’s in your personal space. What a tremendous opportunity it is to create that connect and take it to the next level,” she added.

These new opportunities are upending the traditional rules, Richa noted, with “the main message having to come upfront,” rather than a slow build up to it.

“If you cannot show your brand, if you cannot hook the consumer within the first two to three seconds, you might as well forget about it,” she said.

Do creative for the consumer, not for creative’s sake

This has also changed the game for marketers raised on the old ways of creating work, according to Richa.

“Don’t do creative for the sake of creative. Creative has to be fit for purpose and fit for platform. Now you have your agencies come in with a laundry list of assets, from canvas to bumper ads, everything is thrown at you, but why am I using that particular asset?” explained Richa.

“As a brand we think about pre-shop, shop, post-shop, but consumers do not go through life that way, they go through life through micro-moments. So we took a step back and said, ‘ok, if you are in a micro moment, how do you then take that moment and make it into a creative asset that is relevant?” she added.

Thus it becomes critical that whatever you do “has a purpose on the platform,” according to Richa.

“Please make sure you ask the agencies to give the ROI, as the person paying the money I want ROIs. Just make sure that what you have is fit for the platform and fit for the intent the consumer has,” she added.

This then relates to how marketers should tell a story, and for Richa it comprises of three parts, context, impact and action.

“What do I mean by context; when I think about the region we’re in, there are three critical things, the first is make sure it is applicable to the micro moment they are in, second is learn about the different platforms beyond Google and Facebook, last thing, we live in a region with 2G and 4G, so make sure you are creating the right content for right platform,” said Richa.

“The next thing is impact, the way people recall content on a desktop is very different from a mobile device, so make sure that you’re building a creative that responds at the speed that people consume at. Going back to the non-sexy part of the thing we do, make sure your platform has the speed of response. Traditionally websites are not built for mobile, so we have to relook at the way we build our platform.

“The last thing is action, this is absolutely critical, because again as marketeers, we all love to be at the top of the funnel, we love to create the awareness videos, but a lot of the work is down the funnel where you have a call to action. Now it is absolutely critical in every meeting, for all my content on a mobile device, I make sure that I can locate the product; do I have the offer? Will I be able to access the website to buy? This helps to make sure you’re telling the story, help retargeting, and most importantly that they will buy your product,” she added.

Educating to create thumb-stopping content

For Richa, education is key, from marketers to agencies, creating content that would work well on mobile.

“So we spent a lot of time, we looked at the global audience, we created score cards and educated our agencies on how to create for a mobile feed [for Facebook]. So we spent a lot of time training our people, training our agencies, and we have these scorecards to make sure they had some skin in the game and capture the attention early,” said Richa.

“How do you create thumb-stopping content? There is no silver bullet for that, a lot of that is going through great works, teaching, doing. We got to jump in and learn to surf, if not we are not going to make the mistakes, fail fast and do the great work,” she added.

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