Brazil World Cup 2014 - 'The whole thing is going to be real-time marketing' says Coca-Cola's Jonathan Mildenhall
Coca-Cola's vice president of global advertising strategy and communications, Jonathan Mildenhall, has predicted that marketing during next year's World Cup in Brazil will be all real-time.
Speaking at an IPA event held during the Cannes International Festival of Creativity, Mildenhall began by stating his commitment to help the organisation in any way he could and his belief in the importance of agencies.
"Marketing organisations and marketers need the advertising industry more so than ever before. There are several drivers of that. They need outstanding content today to engage with consumers and get consumers to be inspired to drive the conversation on. That's going to get more and more intense," he explained, before highlighting next year's World Cup as one of the drivers of that intensity.
He added that the online marketing strategy for brands next year would be key to their activity surrounding the event, especially real-time advertising.
"Every single sponsor, every single advertiser, even the unofficial advertisers are going to try and do what Oreo did at the Superbowl and create outstanding content that makes their brands feel completely engaged and in touch with consumer sentiment all over the world as part of the World Cup," he stated.
"We're going to come out during the Brazilian World Cup having produced more content than we've ever seen as a global advertising community. We're going to come out of the Brazilian World Cup having tried to create more real-time conversations than we've ever seen."
Mildenhall warned that brands should also expect to be told to "piss off" by consumers following the conclusion of the tournament due to the volume of advertising messages that will be transmitted.
"So we're going to come out of that, we're going to be standing around and looking at the initiatives that succeeded and the types of initiatives that have just pissed consumers off. The initiatives that succeed will be the ones that fuse brand strategy, great content, great stories, great ideas and a great way of measuring it. As a marketer I can't get that anywhere else in the advertising industry."
Mildenhall concluded by calling on the agency CEOs and bosses who were present to help their agencies find their confidence once again. "I hate seeing the advertising industry and its agencies walking around without confidence because you create so much shareholder value and you make marketers like me look good. If you can embrace, adapt and really understand that no industry fuses our perspective together like you guys, then the marketing industry will be a much more dynamic industry."