This post is by Paul Duxbury, a Director of SPIRE Worldwide, a London-based marketing capability consultancy. SPIRE partner with the World Federation of Advertisers in providing the Effectiveness and Efficiency Diagnostic Tool.

This week I was lucky enough to attend the Global Marketer Conference in Brussels, organised by the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) and the Belgium Advertising Association (UBA). Having enjoyed listening to the speakers I’ve written down my serious and not so serious take-outs from what the marketing leaders shared. Other people will no doubt have their own take-outs, but these are mine for your interest and enjoyment.

Nathan Hodges, Paul Duxbury and Darren Woolley: WFA Global Marketer Conference 2013

Key

	The most serious advice – ignore this at your peril
	Fairly serious advice – think about it
	Not a laughing matter – but it won’t hurt you either
	Light hearted advice
	Just for fun

Stephan Loerke, Managing Director of the WFA

Whilst it remains important for marketing to be effective and efficient, marketers must also embrace the idea of ‘marketing with purpose’, elevating what they do beyond the functional to the emotional and how it can add value to our everyday lives.

Know your consumer. If there’s one thing a conference audience wants to know at the start of the day it is the WIFI access code. Stephan didn’t disappoint and the quality of the signal was excellent.

Karel De Gucht, EU Trade Commissioner

The biggest trade challenge facing the EU now is how to remove trade barriers between Europe and China, and one of the key levers is getting convergence on regulation.

Think on your feet. It’s a brave EU official who opens the floor to questions, and a smart one who when asked a lengthy and not totally clear question neatly responds by restating the question as something else that we really want to talk about.

Chris Burggraeve, President, WFA

The World Federation of Advertisers has been around for sixty years and whilst ‘advertising’ in 1953 meant mainly press and today covers many more channels, the WFA’s focus on effectiveness and efficiency in advertising spend remains equally relevant today.

Respect local knowledge and skills. The acknowledgement of the role of the UBA in promoting and supporting the cause of advertisers in Belgium was well received and reminded us that local communities and collaboration lie at the heart of this global federation.

Kimberley Kadlec, Worldwide Vice-President, Johnson & Johnson

Almost regardless of the size of your marketing budget, in today’s digital world you can be really big on the small screen. And using digital to personalise your communications can deliver impressive and long-lasting responses from your customers.

Keep up with the jargon. ‘Emocampaign’ (btw this term came from tweets about Kim’s presentation) is a fun and descriptive way of talking about commercials that pull at the heart strings, and a good way of showing you are up with the latest marketing lingo- try dropping the term into your next agency meeting and see what reaction you get.

Marc de Swaan Arons, Executive Chairman, Effective Brands (on behalf of Antonio Lucio, Global CMO and Global Head of HR, Visa)

Making one person responsible for Marketing and HR might seem strange, but could be a brilliant way of ensuring strong internal and external alignment to a core message. The support and enthusiasm Visa generated behind their “go” campaign is evidence of this.

Be calm under pressure. If your friend (Antonio) has to ask you (Marc) to fill their conference slot at 24 hours’ notice, don’t worry as the audience will be understanding, especially if you have a clear message and an engaging, relaxed style.

Miguel Patricio, Chief Marketing Officer, ABInBev

A strong set of brand ideals is really important for sustained growth of international brands. These ideals need to be clear and simple enough to survive translation across markets and through all levels of the organisation, to ensure the brand stays ‘on message’.

Immerse yourself in foreign cultures. There’s no substitute for living in foreign countries and understanding the differences, especially if you start to think like a local.

Rory Sutherland, Vice Chairman, Ogilvy Group

Behavioural economics can give marketers a whole new perspective and challenge the seemingly unarguable logic of economic theorists (and the finance department). A good place to start developing your behavioural science learning is Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely.

Take time to consider new ideas, just for the sake of it. Rory didn’t spend too much time illustrating how his ideas could be applied in practice and rightly so, as his intent was to communicate an idea and to get the audience thinking – which is good for our brains and for opening our eyes to new possibilities, even if the implications and practicalities of the idea have not been crystalised.

Will Gilroy (WFA) & Jeremy Cohen (Edelman)

Humble apologies but I was whisked away to give an interview to the WFA during this slot so I missed all but the last five minutes, so I cannot comment fairly. Hopefully the slides and notes will be available for review.

Plan your events carefully. If asked to speak after the ever so dynamic Rory Sutherland, think twice and pass. Or hope the audience will be so energised and alert you’ll get their full attention regardless of the subject, which is I’m sure what happened.

Andy Fennell, Chief Marketing Officer, Diageo

Marketing in the modern world can sometimes look unfathomably complex. But Andy convinced us that the best approach is to keep it simple: spend more, go premium and focus on emerging markets. And what he didn’t say directly, but clearly indicated is the need to give your team the freedom to act whilst making them fully accountable.

Learn from your mistakes. Andy was the only speaker to share a failure from their career and to advise that if you are going to get a poor rating, do it early in your career – you will survive and you will probably be a better marketer for it.

Do let me know if you have any comments. It would be great to hear from you here or on twitter @pcduxbury.

This post is by Darren Woolley, Founder of TrinityP3. With his background as analytical scientist and creative problem solver, Darren brings unique insights and learnings to the marketing process. He is considered a global thought leader on agency remuneration, search and selection and relationship optimisation.

Here is a chance to have your say and be heard.

Media is going through a time of huge transformation. Not just from a media agency point of view, but across all parts of the value chain, from the media owners to the agencies and ultimately the marketers and advertisers.

These changes are being driven by technology and associated social change, where media channels are becoming more fragmented and the media consumer is more empowered than ever before. Some are even becoming media in their own right through blogging and social media.

Have your say in identifying the key issues for the media industry and setting the priorities here

Everyone is talking about the myriad of issues the industry is facing and addressing. But perhaps the time has come to start to agree and prioritise which are the biggest or more pressing issues and which are of less importance.

With Denise Shrivell of MediaScope, TrinityP3 is offering you the opportunity to have your say and prioritise the issues you and the industry are facing – be it as a marketer, an agency or a media owner. We have identified a list of 12 issues (by no means a comprehensive list) that we want you to prioritise from your perspective based on the role you play in the media value chain.

They are:

• Media Audience Measurement – standardisation & methodologies for individual media channels cross platform
• Recruitment & Retention – finding & retaining quality & relevant people resources
• Keeping Up to Date – with constantly evolving market trends
• Tracking media ROI & attribution across channels – proving effectiveness of media/channel activity
• Cost of continually evolving technology and research
• Fragmenting Market & Increased Competition – from other media & channels ie social & owned media
• Contracting Marketing Spend/Margins – finding an effective business model
• Disconnect & lack of recognition of needs & expectations between client, agency & media
• Billing structures – time & resources required verses monetary return
• Increased focus on media ROI rather than brand benefits
• Issues surrounding data ownership and privacy
• Limited scope for outside the square or new opportunities

We also have some suggested solutions we want you to review and prioritise or even pose your own solutions.

To do this simply go to the survey by either clicking on this link or copying and pasting it into your browser.

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/TrinityP3-MediaScope-Media-Industry-Survey

The responses are confidential and there is an option to receive a copy of the results in recognition of your contribution.

Click here to take survey

Please share this with your colleagues, clients and friends in the media industry as the more people that participate the better view we have of the challenges ahead.

This post is by Anton Buchner, a senior consultant with TrinityP3. Anton is a lateral and innovative thinker with a passion for refocusing business teams and strategies; creating visionary, data driven communication plans; and making sense of a more complex digital marketing environment.

Social media is still on the lips of most marketers and is now starting to infiltrate C-level discussion.

Thankfully the hype is settling down and strategic planning and logic is starting to be applied.

If you use the Super Bowl as a barometer, then at this year’s game (XLVII), you would have spotted these 26 TV Ads (out of the 52) with a Twitter hashtag:

1. M&Ms – #betterwithmms
2. Audi – #braverywins
3. Hyundai – #pickyourteam
4. GoDaddy – #thekiss
5. Doritos – #doritos
6. Best Buy – #infiniteanswers
7. Disney Oz – #disneyoz
8. Fast & Furious movie – #fastandfurious
9. Toyota – #wishgranted
10. Doritos – #doritos
11. Calvin Klein – #calvinklein
12. Cars.com – #nodrama
13. Bud Light – #herewego
14. Hyundai Sonata – #epicplaydate
15. Volkswagen – #gethappy
16. Subway – #15yrwinningstreak
17. Subway – #FebruANY
18. Bud Light – #herewego
19. Subway – #FebruANY
20. Bud Light – #herewego
21. MiO Fit – #changestuff
22. Pistachios – #crackinstyle
23. Speed Stick – #handleit
24. Budweiser Clydesdales – #clydesdales
25. Tide – #miraclestain
26. Samsung – #thenextbigthing

Whereas only 4 Ads mentioned Facebook, and 1 mentioned Instagram. None mentioned YouTube or Google+.

This is a massive turnaround from 2012 when both Facebook and Twitter were mentioned 8 times each.

Why?

Because Twitter is a character limited, short sharp notification platform, and Facebook is a social network for engaging with friends.

So it’s a no brainer that if you’re at a sporting event, then you’d be with your friends watching the game, with the occasional short distraction thrown in.

Touchdown

And it was impressive to see that Oreo had their social team and management on standby to quickly react to the ‘lights out’ drama.

Within minutes they scored with this Ad deployed via Twitter with the caption “Power out? No problem.”

https://twitter.com/Oreo/status/298246571718483968/photo/1

Turn the lights on again

However the tectonic shift is not in the type of social media being used it’s the fact that businesses today must integrate the fundamentals of social media into all aspects of their business practice:

• real-time
• people
• communities
• information
• connection

It’s no longer good enough to allow channels to operate in isolation, databases not to seamlessly talk, feedback to be ignored, and poor customer experiences to be created by out of touch front line staff.

Businesses must re-engineer into social businesses or face losing market share.

Here are my top 3 tectonic shifts required

Shift #1 – In-source employee ideas

Attract the right talent, and harness their potential for knowledge sharing.

Gone are the days of a pigeon hole job spec where information is cascaded up and down an organisation at snails pace.

Social businesses need to be agile and open to ideas from all employees. And more importantly harness the power of their employees to create content and conversations that can be shared both internally and externally.

How many of your front line staff are creating content for your company blog or Facebook page? How many are starting provocative topics of conversation in LinkedIn? And how many are shooting videos and snapping pictures at your corporate and sponsored events?

Social businesses such as Starbucks, Zappos, and Nokia are getting their employees excited about the brand they work for.

Nokia has evolved its internal collaboration strategy from forums and wikis to SharePoint and Socialcast. Over 14,000 Nokia employees now use Socialcast daily to facilitate communication and collaboration and keep up to speed on events as well as share stories.

Shift #2 – Outstanding customer experiences

No, it’s not a new concept, however it’s such an easy one to implement. Empower your staff to deliver incredible experiences.

A social business needs to constantly think of the water-cooler stories, taxi conversations, and party discussions that are now being held in social media.

A frown at reception, an “I’m too important to talk to the customer” attitude, or failing to return phone calls simply won’t cut it in 2013. And yes all 3 happened to me last week at a medical centre, with a telco and in a retail shop. They all lost my business.

And internationally, The Royal Bank of Canada recently achieved a 17% improvement in customer satisfaction from implementing a social customer care system that was integrated with their traditional call center.

So remember, it’s all about ‘them’, customers, and not about ‘you’.

Shift #3 – Commanding the centre of attention

We’ve started seeing the emergence of Social Business Command Centres with Dell, Gatorade and Hootsuite’s 2012 Presidential Election Tracker amongst the early examples.

It can either be one physical space or a virtually constructed team. However, most importantly, it’s the centre where listening, product innovation, customer care, engagement, advocacy and real-time content analysis is focused on.

This is critical for understanding industry shifts, changes in customer behaviour and competitor conversations.

With 2.5 quintillion bytes of information being created every day and 80% of the information created being unstructured, it should be a full time job to unearth actionable insights and not left to the juniors in the department.

Nokia uses a tool called Agora which is a 6-screen social visualiser to monitor how customers use and talk about their brand, products, and competitors, and to get an instant feel of what’s being said about the company worldwide.

And NAB launched their social media command centre in Australia in December 2012. Take a look here:

Note, NAB’s social media community grew more than 350% in 2012 and now has over 135,000 followers across Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn and Google+ with content reaching over 12 million users. They apparently receive around 5,000 comments and resolve 600 customer service requests through social media every month, a 10% growth in customer service interactions in social media, on average, for every month in 2012.

Action

So what do you take away from this post?

Hopefully the need to adapt your business now.

Some areas you can action internally. And others may need new partnerships.

If you want to read more about the stages of social business transformation, then I recommend Altimeter’s latest report here, written by Brian Solis and Charlene Li:

And if you need some help, then touch base with TrinityP3 and let’s discuss social business before your competitor does.

This post is by Darren Woolley, Founder of TrinityP3. With his background as analytical scientist and creative problem solver, Darren brings unique insights and learnings to the marketing process. He is considered a global thought leader on agency remuneration, search and selection and relationship optimisation.

It is interesting how traditionally the conceptualisation or ideas phase and the production or implementation phase has been seen as a continuum. That is the agency that is briefed on the project also produces the project.

This stems back many years when creative and production was offered as part of the process of the agency selling media. What was the point of the client buying media and then developing the creative in-house (which was the standard at the time) when the agency could provide this service as part of the media commission and of course a little service fee on top.

It is interesting because technology and a demand for greater accountability on cost effectiveness are continuing to change this view. More than a decade ago, major advertisers in the UK began to decouple production from the agencies. Television, print and later digital production is being outsourced to production specialists, who are more efficient than the agencies at delivering the outputs required.

There are largely two main directions this takes:

1. Going directly to the suppliers the agencies have traditionally used and forming direct relationships with these suppliers eg. Production Companies, Post Production Companies, Print Studios, Digital Workshops
2. Going to one of the growing number of transcreation companies that have grown, primarily out of the UK and Europe but are increasingly multinational and global

Why decouple production from your agency?

• Many agencies structure their remuneration to rely heavily on the production process to subsidise the conceptualisation process (as apparently no-one wants to pay for ideas?) and therefore costs can be high
• If you are a high volume and especially a fast turn-around advertiser (think retail, telco and financial services) there are economies of scale that are difficult to achieve with the agency alone
• The specialist transcreation companies have invested heavily in workflow and approvals systems to speed up the process and lower the overheads and so provide a low-overhead, lower cost alternative
• You are using multiple agencies for ideas and conceptualisation so you can deliver economies of scale at the production-end consolidating with a single supplier

So which way do you go?

The answer to this depends on your production requirements. The questions you have to consider are:

• Where is the majority of your production spend? Is it in a particular media production such as television or digital or print or across all areas?
• What is the size of your spend? Is there enough to deliver the economies of scale to make the decoupling process worthwhile.
• How cost effective is your current production? Are your incumbent suppliers delivering the efficiencies for your spend?
• What is the nature of the spend? Is it creating new productions or is it largely working to templates or creating multiple versions?
• How centralised or decentralised is your production requirement? Are you a single market advertiser or do you develop executions from the core brand idea across multiple and diverse markets?

Case Study 1 – Decoupling television post production

A telco client approached TrinityP3 concerned over their increasing cost of television production. We reviewed the past three campaigns and identified the heavy use of CGI effects in the agency developed campaign as the main driver with each production more complex than the last. Reviewing the proposed production spend and schedule for the coming year we were able to develop a business case for decoupling the CGI and post production from the agency and assisted the client in the process to deliver a 27% saving on their post production costs.

Case Study 2 – Transcreation services across multiple regional markets

An Australian advertiser had traditionally used an agency network to develop the primary brand strategy in Australia and then customise the creative concepts to suit each of the regional markets across Asia Pacific. Invited to assist with their agency review, TrinityP3 identified a significant component of the incumbent’s spend, especially in these regional markets was production. In fact the low agency fees in these markets were being more than subsidised by a higher than expected production cost. We developed a business model from our knowledge of the main transcreation companies and identified an initial 32% saving on production costs.

Case Study 3 – Off-shoring digital production services

A financial services company had several years earlier engaged a digital agency with off-shore capabilities to provide their digital build requirements. TrinityP3 was asked to review the process and costs of this arrangement and identified that the off-shoring facility was under utilised. As the digital production spend had grown the agency had continued to perform more of this work locally than off-shore. TrinityP3 was able to provide the client with a number of options including a financial model for decoupling digital production to an off-shore facility that would reduce their annual costs by more than 50% in the first year with no loss of quality or increased risk.

Of course decoupling production from your creative agency is not for every advertiser. The process is time consuming and can pose significant risk if poorly executed. But for those advertisers with the right requirements, spend and mix to make it worthwhile it can deliver significant savings.

The agencies largely are against it, primarily as it reduces their revenue. But what are some of the risks or issues that you have heard about the decoupling process?

Leave a comment here so we can discuss them.

This post is by Clive Duncan a Senior Consultant at TrinityP3. As a Director and DOP he has an appreciation for the value of great creative and outstanding production values, while also recognising the importance of delivering value for money solutions to the advertiser.

It has been common practice for many years to produce television commercials on a regional basis to yield the potential economies of scale. The problem is that many regions are not populated by homogeneous markets. Instead, the region is filled with diverse and vibrant but often contracting and conflicting cultural norms that must be considered during the production process.

Often the need to accommodate these difference within the production process can significantly diminish the anticipated savings, depending on the creative concept, as more and more additional versions are shot to cover the specific and individual requirements of each market within the region.

Some years ago when I was an agency producer I was sent to Malaysia to oversee the production of a series of regional TVCs for our client a producer of a beverage / cordial aimed at mothers and their children.

The cordial contained a large amount of vitamin C our client from America was quick to point out this was the products USP (unique selling proposition), ideal for promoting happy, healthy growth in children.

The client had briefed the agency to make a TVC that could be easily adapted to the regional areas of China, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.

The Agency had come up with a TVC that had a jingle based upon a classic Beach Boys tune. What this had in common with the target demographic I failed to recognize, nevertheless the client had bought the publishing rights and the deal was done.

All was going swimmingly until preproduction when the cultural requirements and sensitivities for the various markets began to clash. The Brand Manager from Sri Lanka and their counterpart from Bangladesh began discussing the wardrobe for their collective version.

For Bangladesh, the Brand Manager insisted the mother in the TVC wear a sari, the traditional dress of the region. As the production manager I personally remained neutral as both views were valid for the respective markets.

Eventually it was decided that the sari would be used for both versions.

The production proceeded well, the Chinese / Singapore and the Malaysia / Indonesian versions were completed without a hiccup.

It was the last day of the shoot and the mother was supposed to sway gracefully in time to the Beach Boys music as her children danced about holding and drinking the product, a magical and innocent advertising moment.

After the rehearsal the Brand Manager from Bangladesh approached me concerned that ‘her movement it’s, it’s too lascivious!” referring to the mother in the scene.

Now the word lascivious does exist and I knew what he meant but I had never heard it used in contemporary language. How a woman in a sari gently swaying could be considered lascivious was beyond me. I of course had to find a solution to the problem which was easy to do, with a re edit for the Bangladesh version, the lascivious mum ended up on the cutting room floor and the kids got extra close ups dancing and enjoying the product.

At the time, on the studio floor I thought how sad it was that a woman in a sari, gently swaying could be considered lascivious.

While we may think of the world as an increasing global village, the fact is that cultural diversity is alive and well and very healthy and must be considered when planning regional productions. Additional scenes, multiple shoots with different talent, wardrobe and even locations will be required and this will add to the cost and reduce the expected savings.

Greater Asia is a place that demands careful consideration when planning regional TV campaigns, and as a word of advice, always avoid anything that might be considered lascivious.