Content is the answer. Now what’s the question?
Walk in to pretty much any seminar at Advertising Week and you’d assume the main preoccupation of the advertising industry was something along the lines of, ‘how do we reach consumers through online content?’
Christian Purser
Or perhaps, in the case of Thursday's Native Ad Forum, ‘how can I grab the biggest piece of the content pie?’
At the beginning of the week I was all for indulging in a big content fest. Four days later, Bafta’s corridors started to feel like an echo chamber filled with digital media buzzwords.
There’s a fair bit of squabbling over who’s best placed to deliver content marketing/programmatic buying/native advertising/real-time marketing [delete as appropriate]. What was missing for much of yesterday were the real key questions: ‘What does today’s consumer actually want?’ ‘How do we use technology to deliver a remarkable customer experience?’ And, ‘what is the role of technology in building stronger brands?’ So it was with a monumental sense of relief that I sat before a panel of senior marketers talking about the broader issues of digital transformation, at Marketing Week’s CMO 3.0…
The CMOs brought us right back to commercial reality by focusing on the things that really matter: customer insight, customer experience, brand advocacy, sales, NPD and innovation. There was open discussion about the importance of technology and innovation in creating competitive advantage, but I didn’t get a single win at Bullshit Bingo in the whole session, compared to the ‘marketing buzzword tourettes’ that was occasionally in evidence elsewhere…
The panel successfully navigated the need for brilliant basics, future innovation, curiosity for technology and the world around us, and reminded us of the stark reality that the purpose of marketing is to grow brands and drive sales; simple pillars of our industry too often lost among the excitement for data, technology, and new techniques.
It would seem that the people that pay our fees want their agencies to do some simple things really well: bring valuable new ideas, constructively challenge the status quo, provide great talent, build a bridge between their brand and the consumer, and for their agency to care passionately about their business.
It is our job as our clients’ partners to decode the future, make it simple to understand, and demonstrate how new ideas and technologies can drive real brand and business value. Advertising Week is a valuable event in the advertising calendar, but it has to be more than agencies and media owners talking shop.
While there was lots of dancing around the content maypole, it will be the people that can get beyond the buzzwords de jour, and link digital innovation to the simple concepts at the heart of business, that will be the partners that are delivering the promise of digital innovation, not just talking about it.
Christian Purser is chief digital officer at M&C Saatchi