COMMUNICATING IN A POST-ADVERTISING AGE

Last year at Lynx, MENA’s biggest celebration of creative communications, I was asked to talk about the role of data in fueling creativity in today’s new world — a world that requires us to go beyond traditional forms of communications to tell our stories wherever and whenever consumers are open to listening to them. As Lynx 2017 is right around the corner, I’m once again reminded of the need to define a best-practices model for communicating in a connected age. What follows here are my thoughts on what I’ve seen resonate with clients, stakeholders, customers, the public at large, and my attempt to distill that raw material into an approach that makes sense for all of us to apply in 2017 to increase our success quotient.

Communication is not advertising

First of all, the experience of working in a communications marketing agency is really different from working in an advertising agency. At Edelman, we’re not playing the pure sales game; we’re much more focused on our clients’ reputation, image, narrative, and stakeholders. It’s at least as much about HOW we present information as about the information itself. The words, phrases, and analogies we choose, how we articulate our ideas, the context in which we tell our stories — all of these can have a huge effect on how what we’re saying is perceived. That becomes a major challenge when you’re trying to bridge the gap between the demands of today’s micro-attention-span consumer and what we were all taught back in the day — that reputation is only consolidated through the consistent and sustained provision of value over time.

Getting to the three Cs

This past year has not been one of the more memorable in the world of communications here in the Middle East. Clients have been tightening their belts, and we’ve not had the luxury of time and budget to experiment with cutting-edge, breakthrough approaches. To overcome this, we need to adopt the model Richard Edelman describes perfectly as the need for brands to create a world in which their customers can actively participate — through “collaboration, shared values, and shared actions.”

For me, this is all coming together under the umbrella of what I’m calling the three Cs — community, conversation, and connections — which combine to spark the magic of meaningful communications.

Those campaigns that have stuck in my mind from the past year are pointing to a new era, one in which it’s no longer good enough to come up with a great headline or craft an aesthetically beautiful video. It’s now essential for us to create something that actually delivers something of value to the people we want to listen to us. I’ve seen plenty of articles about how the agencies of the future will respond in the context of a specific social purpose and ‘solve’ real problems, but I don’t see how this can be sustainable. Most people are looking to the creative universe for some respite from the tedium of their daily lives; this drive towards ‘sadvertising’ is going to rebound at some point.

It all starts with connections

People don’t go to Facebook or Instagram to feel sad or cry — I know I don’t. People go to their social networks to connect with people. This presents an incredibly powerful opportunity for brands that are positioned to become part of the social conversation. Consumers will naturally gravitate towards brands that communicate in the right voice, that tell a relatable story in a unique, yet relevant, voice.

But this can’t be the only way brands communicate. We need to go wherever our potential customers go, and talk to them in whatever way they expect to hear from us in those contexts and environments. How can we start to do this effectively? One way is to be sure we fully understand a client’s WHY. Why do they do what they do? How can we convey the passion behind the purpose that in turn drives the value? In many ways, it means the end of advertising as we have traditionally known it. As Paul Polman, CEO of Unilever, has noted:

‘If I project ourselves out five or 10 years, then I don’t see Unilever as an advertiser, I see us as a solutions provider. I see us as a co-creator, with the consumer, of mainstream sustainable living. Neither the word nor the accounting line of “advertising” means anything to me.”

So what does a post-advertising world look like?

If we are going to start ‘co-creating’ with our clients and their stakeholders, we must start thinking how we, as a communications marketing agency, need to adapt to this new post-advertising world.

First, we have to start thinking in new ways. There’s no point in grasping all the shiny new tools we have like video and influencer marketing if we just use them in the same way as our old tools. I’ve yet to see much in the way of well-planned, thoughtful, and considered influencer campaigns in MENA, we all remember the dreadful Etisalat campaign which used over paid ‘influencers’ to promote their services — no one in the UAE and beyond believed in it and it caused a huge consumer backlash for the brand. Or even the Nancy Arjam, Huawei promotion which was not only extremely sexist, full of innuendo but again unbelievable to many consumers.

Clients and their agencies are frequently too eager to see quick results and transact for one-off hits; unfortunately, these are the activities that fall at the first hurdle. They deliver very little for the brand, provide no sustained value over time, and seriously undermine the real benefits of well-thought-out influencer relationship programs.

Second, to keep what we are saying and how we are saying it fresh and entertaining while still retaining the element of trust that’s so essential to a mutually beneficial relationship, the agency of the future will require different kinds of talent! That talent must be able to develop, communicate and, most importantly, sustain compelling stories that generate and keep consumers’ interest.

Third, and most important, this talent will need to be nurtured. It’s not something we’re actively training our people to do, and we have to change this to successfully transition to the post-advertising world. We need people who can think, write, and produce like a journalist and at the same time bring to their work the rigour and brand understanding of a marketer.

These new communicators also need new forms of support — people with technical and development expertise who can help us produce interactive content and deliver our compelling stories through different vehicles — anything from a VR wrap-around on the New York Times with Google Cardboard to micro-bursts that subtly permeate social media streams.

The three Cs resolution for 2017

Let’s start 2017 on a high note. Instead of just rolling over and letting Facebook and other social networks kill off any kind of personally relatable communications with their algorithmic timeline curation, let’s get out there and start conversations. Let’s explore and experiment.

Only by changing our way of thinking will be truly be ready for the post-advertising world. We need to think like news publishers to seriously compete for audience attention. And, at least as importantly, we must convey to our clients that, in order for people to care WHAT they say, they — and you — need to spend time understanding WHY people would want to listen to them.

Whatever happens in this brave new world, let’s not forget the spirit in which Sir Tim Berners Lee brought the web to fruition in the first place: “The goal of the Web is to serve humanity. We build it now so that those who come to it later will be able to create things that we cannot ourselves imagine.”

How will you adapt to the post-advertising world? Share your thoughts in the comments.