A piece on the role of digital for brands including 5 areas for consideration

1. ROLE OF DIGITAL FOR BRANDS
How brands can change the conversation on social media
TV was made for brands. Literally. That’s what
soap operas were: daytime, low-budget,
dramas with infinite twists and turns spon-sored
by CPG brands, then, whose audiences
(1930s housewives) would tune in to, get
familiar with (week after week) and buy.
Today’s soaps, you’ll know them well, bear testimony to
the early pioneers’ fundamental thinking: provide TV ad
spots for mass audience exposure to brands.
Indeed, TV advertising revenues are booming. But now
mass ‘in one place’ has also declined.
Channels ‘explosion’ has diluted audiences. Internet
connectivity has created interaction where once there
was only broadcast. Device proliferation has re-invent-ed
viewing and ‘always on’ has changed buying
behaviour. Social media, in its turn, has unleashed a
torrent dialogue and supplanted TV’s central role of
awareness and breaking news creator.
In addition, massively re-distributed availability to
information and access on demand to all kinds of
‘content’ allows consumers (that’s all of us) to be
originator, reviewer, commentator, reporter, photogra-pher,
critic, event organiser, fan…add your own
definitions here. Anywhere, anytime.
The world has changed.
Which brings us back to brands. And their desire to
engage with customers to connect to their hearts. As
well as their heads. To make them buy.
Old model advertising: consumers are watching telly
so interrupt them; broadcast big, expensive glitzy
ads…campaigns. Result: consumers will go and buy.
New model approach: consumers are busy; let them
get on with their lives; create content that will be
useful to them to help them live their lives; now put it
where consumers live online. Result: connected
consumers will engage, share and recommend the good
stuff to all their connected contacts who will…engage,
share and recommend.
Virtuous – and sometimes viral – circle.
This is what we do. We create a narrative – actively
inspire conversation – around the awareness that
advertising creates. We devise new angles, propose
new ideas, offer new ways of looking at things,
provide easy-to-share content, mix everything up,
add a dash of fun, stimulate interaction.
Our aim is to help brands not just to join but to change
the conversations about them in their favour.
Like the soaps of the 1930s or the Corries and Holly-oaks
and Eastenders of today, we help brands tell their
stories – even share their dramas, sometimes – with
LEFT TO OUR OWN DEVICES
SMALLER, FASTER, FREQUENTER

2. ‘infinite twists and turns’ to engage and interact with
audiences who tune in to, get familiar with (week after
week) and buy.
From our six years of living and breathing this business,
we’ve created a five-point roadmap, below, for the
role of digital and brands. We invite you to have a look
and see how this relates to your brand.
If you tell us the answer is “It doesn’t!”, to any of the
five points below, well… I’d suggest we should talk.
And we’ll start by listening to you.
OUR FIVE-POINT ROADMAP
1. LISTEN TO THE CUSTOMER
2. WHERE’S THE CUSTOMER?
Back when Tesco ruled and austerity was something
that happened to other people, Sir Terry Leahy, when
asked about Tesco’s success, claimed it was easy: all
they did, he said, was listen to the customer.
Admirable. But while Tesco used to listen, more recently
they have failed to act. Customers were telling them for
some time that they found the service wanting, the
ranges limited, their prices un-competitive. The rest is
history in the making.
Our process always starts with listening to consumers’
online conversations. And we do this differently. We use
an intuitive social listening platform which provides
access to which brands are being talked about and
what is being thought and said about them.
Only when we know what occupies consumers will we
plan and deliver more focused, ‘snackable’ content. It
can be created at speed so that it’s topical, relevant and
responsive to their concerns. It’s delivered on an
interactive, multi-platform and multi-channel basis. We
talk in their language and it’s always, always personal-ised.
This fundamental start point means we have detailed
access to up-to-the-minute conversations actually
taking place online. Which we can now act on. Why
should any brand choose to ignore this resource and
approach?
TV assumes your customer is on a couch. In a living
room. And watching. Or maybe ironing. So not on a
couch. But still watching. Mostly, anyway. And eating
pizza.
Digital assumes your customer is online. Not in the
living room. Nor on a couch. Mostly. Nor are they
watching. They’re searching. Or they’re browsing. Or,
actually, they are watching telly while telling all their
friends about it, discussing their lives and everything
else – wha’e-e-e-e-ver! – simultaneously. And eating
pizza. Possibly. Love it or hate it, they’re on their chosen
social media platform. Social media’s not going away.
TV provides brands with a platform to chase customers.
In fairness, so too does digital. But happy customers are
also happy to chase brands. Own them, even. The ones
they like, that is. Digital disruption allows customers to
do that. Across any number of platforms and on any
device. All brands need to do, therefore, is create the
sort of content that their customers will be happy to
receive, enjoy…and be happy to follow and share.
The trick is in understanding how to articulate and
present different types of content so that consumers –
who choose their own devices to access this content in
their own time – will relate to it. Making content truly
cross-platform so that your brand, whenever any
consumer comes into contact with it remains consistent
and recognisable, involves making it work cross-chan-nel,
cross-site and cross-device.
Social media is the glue that holds this all together. Our
paper, 2014 The Year of Content, provides much more
detail, here.
In this ever-changing
society, the most powerful
and enduring brands are
built from the heart.
HOWARD SCHULTZ
CEO, Starbucks

3. 3. PERSONALISATION AND THE
4Ps OF MARKETING
Brands’ traditional broadcast-to-the-masses business
model is based on their (hoped for) universal appeal:
See brand on TV. Slot it into your ‘consideration set’. Find
it on the on- (now) or offline (previously) shelf. Get
reviews online. Visit outlet, or don’t. Buy it.
We believe the traditional 4Ps of marketing need a
makeover: Here’s ours:
1. Pick it up online – you were browsing or
‘heard’ about it somehow
2. Play with it – check it out, examine it
3. Pass it on – like it so tell your mates
4. Purchase it – there and then, add to basket...
click, or go to shop / kick the tyres
Such interactions leave a trail of data. Digital data
allows aggregation and subsequent segmentation. From
this we create personalised messages.
Our content reflects customers’, communities’ and just
lookers’ comments and activities. So now we can talk to
them in ways that are more relevant to them. Invite
their opinion, ask for suggestions, tempt them to do
new things, try out different recipes and food ideas,
express their wants or just tell you what they think.
Become your advocates and ambassadors if you do this
properly.
Platforms, channels, devices...we tell a brand’s story in so many
different ways
4. HERITAGE IS NARRATIVE stories to tell about their brands.
One of our largest clients is William Grant & Sons. We
work on a number of their brands. The largest of which
is Glenfiddich. So we would say this.
Most brands have heritage borne of years of being in
business, too. Twinings was born in 1706. Lloyds Bank,
1765. Cadbury’s 1824. Jesse Boot launched his herbal
medicine shop in Beeston in 1849. Fox’s Biscuits in
1853. Burberry in 1856. And just one of Unilever’s
brands, Vaseline, is 140 years old. Rolls Royce, Cole-man’s,
Hovis, Heinz, Warburtons, Campbell’s, Kellogg’s,
Coca Cola, IBM (blah!) all of them have stories and more
Consumers love stories. Good stories become a kind of
‘currency’. Especially for slightly more ‘cult’ brands.
Consumers love joining in, sharing their own stories,
spreading them round. If brands are good at creating
content then digital media create the wider distributed
presence that brands crave.
Made for sharing, we’d say. Like us!
This sort of content doesn’t have to be the result of
lengthy planning, expensive production and hugely
expensive TV spots: it needs to be smaller, faster and
frequenter. But relevant, timely and topical, too.
Customers really do love this so long as it’s ‘worth it’.

4. Brands, it’s often claimed, should act like publishers. Well,
maybe. But if the analogy suggests constantly shouting
about yourself, we’d certainly disagree. And even if it
means telling great stories, we’d agree…but only up to a
point.
Everything in moderation, after all. Consumers, unless
they’re watching House of Cards or Downton, can only
take so much!
We may, as consumers, love stories. But not all the time!
Just as we love telling stories. But not all the time. Our
main preoccupation is getting on with our lives. Not
hearing the 101 things we didn’t know about and can
now do with loo rolls or ketchup.
Great content, as we define it, should be useful, useable
and interesting. And, at times, entertaining. You will have
your own criteria. Which we’d love to hear. But ours
provide plenty of room in which to be creative while
providing something valuable, memorable and of
relevance to consumers.
And all the time encouraging and inviting them to share
their comments and thoughts with us and each other.
Because we never forget to listen.
So we never shout about how great Glenfiddich is. Instead
we talk to and with our different communities about the
topics around whisky which they enjoy and want to know
more about. Taste, nose, texture, colour, quality, consist-ency,
ageing, cask properties, water, territory, heritage,
tradition, exclusivity, developments, availability. And we
speak in their language. We change the conversations.
Amongst all the ‘magic’ of creativity we never forget the
balancing factor of ‘logic’.
Our approach to the production of brand content – be it
words, pictures, moving images and video – goes along
these lines: 70:20:10
• 70% is solidly based on our clients’ core brand
propositions and commercial objectives
• 20% is slightly more risqué, exploring new
concepts and themes, testing response and moni-toring
the impact on ROI
• 10% is about pushing the boundaries…as far as we
can without getting too uncomfortable.
Whatever we do, the beauty of digital is that it’s
immediate, infinitively flexible, responsive and
trackable.
This is what we do. Always tailored, and always
personalised. Across platforms, devices and channels.
Across continents. And it works.
5. STAND UP TO STAND OUT AND
STAND FOR SOMETHING!
AND FINALLY…
We’d welcome a conversation
with you.
Don’t just join the conversation
CHANGE THE
CONVERSATION