The Advertising Research Foundation Annual Conference is one of those events I love to hate. I look forward to catching up with old friends and acquaintances, hopefully making some new ones, and maybe, just maybe, learning something new. The trouble is, it is not easy to focus on the content when parallel presentations are spread across numerous different rooms and alcoholic beverages are readily on hand. The following is some wheat that I managed to sift from the chaff of interminable sales pitches dressed up as new learning, vendors acting like old-time snake oil salesmen, and people seeking to exploit our collective insecurities by suggesting that all we know is no longer valid.

Since I have been heavily focused on the topic of brands and the practice of branding over the past six months, it is not surprising that the presentation that stood out most for me was focused on the nature of brands.

Titled “The Involved Consumer: How brands invite customers to co-create, innovate and participate in social media, and why those people accept,” this presentation was given by Farrah Bostic and Steve Pagan of Hall & Partners. I would sum up their presentation as follows:

• While digital media facilitates new behaviors, human nature itself has not changed.

• What the new media have done is allow brands to hear more clearly what people have to say.  

• People still want what they have always wanted from brands: functional benefits and emotional rewards.

• Instead of pushing people to participate – like a game show host encouraging reluctant participants – a brand should deliver on its basic promise first. Participation will follow.

• They suggest that the successful brands of today are like gardeners who visualize what they want to achieve and carefully shape, nurture and prune to achieve that goal.

If the first four points sound familiar to readers of this blog, they should - but I am pleased to hear others express similar ideas. And I think the gardener analogy is a good one, since it implies vision, understanding and an element of control.

By coincidence, the presentation that preceded the one by Farrah and Steve also caught my attention. Graeme Hutton and Tom Smith of Universal McCann provided a new view on the developing world of social media. It seems the United States and Europe lag behind the rest of the world when it comes to the penetration and active use of social media among Internet users (click here to see the review of this presentation by Mark Walsh at the Online MediaDaily).

In the discussion following the presentation, Graeme and Tom suggested that the difference in social media participation was due to the presence of additional media choices in the United States and Northern Europe. On reflection I am not convinced by that explanation. It seems more likely that because internet penetration is lower in the developing countries, the proportion of early adopters among those online is far higher (more like the U.S. Internet population of the mid-90s than today).

David Kenny of Digitas offered some great examples of digital brand engagement in his presentation. I was intrigued to note that he did not seem to espouse the traditional “let go” mantra, even if he did come over big on the notion of listening to what people who love your brand have to say about it.

In particular he advocated reading the raw material—the stuff people post on blogs and message boards—to understand people’s personal stories and opinions. Then he suggested finding ways to amplify and disseminate the most motivating ideas, either directly or indirectly, in highly-targeted online communication.

In the process of illustrating these principles, David introduced many of us to Miller Sparks, a malt beverage that includes caffeine, taurine, ginseng and FD&C Yellow #5. Thanks largely to the last ingredient, drinking this beverage leaves the drinker with an orange tongue (among other side effects, no doubt). Noticing that many photos on Flikr and elsewhere featured people sticking out their orange tongues, Digitas built the brand’s communication around it. Check out the refreshingly different site, designed to connect to the all-night party crowd. Maybe next year we will have Sparks available at the President’s Reception.

Some general observations gleaned from all the presentations and exhibitors are as follows:

• Like many others, Gian Fulgoni of ComScore pointed to the fact that while 17 percent of the U.S. population’s time is spent online, only 7 percent of U.S. ad dollars are spent there. Everyone seems to think that this is because marketers are slow to adopt the medium. Maybe an alternative explanation is that the medium is just not well-suited to advertising?

• TV is not dead. I must have heard half a dozen people say this over the course of three days, but only Alan Wurtzel, NBC Universal, seemed really happy about it. He also suggested that DVRs have not proven to be the industry killer they were expected to be. (Go figure!)

• Emotion is the new engagement - at least as far as selling services is concerned. I was pitched on brain measurement, eye measurement, metaphors and more, all dressed up to capture those elusive emotions. Those presenting these approaches claimed that they make good on the deficits of asking people questions, although no one I saw actually proved their assertion with comparison to in-market behavioral response. I did learn, however, that Cannes winners appeal to the emotions and Effies winners are more cognitive – but more on this topic next week.

If you attended the conference, please share your thoughts too. I am sure I must have missed out on some really interesting ideas and presentations. If so, please do add your review as a comment below. Thanks.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 4th, 2008 at 2:44 pm and is filed under Brands, Media, Other. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. Print this Page