'There's still no substitute for paid media' – Unilever's Jay Altschuler on real-time marketing
Real-time marketing may be one of the hottest topics in the industry but it is still not ready to replace paid media in top brands' marketing plans, according to Unilever's global head of media, Jay Altschuler.
Speaking at The Drum Live this morning, Altschuler insisted paid media remains king and stressed the importance of giving agencies clear guidelines before they enter real-time conversations on brands' behalf.
"There’s still no substitute for paid media," Altschuler said. "It’s great that we can have these real-time conversations but to really cut through the clutter you have to put paid media behind that.
"We’ve tried to put some guidelines in place to make we do this quicker. Our brand essence has to be consistent in 100-plus markets.
"It’s not sexy but having guidelines gives our agencies the freedom to move really quickly."
Joining Altschuler on the Fast Ads panel were Marks & Spencer brand and marketing manager Ira Dubinsky and Barclays marketing director Sara Bennison. Both agreed that real-time needs to be handled with care.
"It’s a space to be cautious in," Dubinsky said. "You can get really carried away and we’ve seen some brands doing that. You have to make sure you’re doing real-time for the right reasons.
"If you look at the Suarez incident there were 20, 30 brands trying to get in on it. Some of the ads are great but others leave you scratching their heads."
For Dubinsky, relevance and judgement are among the key considerations when it comes to real-time. He said: "The pinnacle is when you know your brand so well that you know when to get in on the conversations.
"This goes way further than the traditional brand book/brand collateral if you want to trust someone in your team to tweet in the middle of the night."
But Bennison said real-time affords brands the freedom to get it wrong occasionally. "If you were making four or five big TV ads a year you couldn’t afford for one of those to cock up. Now you’re producing so much more content, the economics of that change and it does give you permission to fail."
At the end of the session Altschuler and Bennison set the audience two creative briefs to tackle on the day.
Creative teams are now working up ideas around modernising an old Persil campaign and extending Barclays current 'Digital Eagles' TV spot. They will present their ideas later today.