Cannes Lions 2022: How To Calm The Hungry Content Machine Into Submission

Featuring
Najoh Tita-Reid, global CMO, Logitech
Mike White, CEO & co-founder, Lively Worldwide
David Droga, CEO Accenture Song
Lee Clow, Chairman Emeritus, TBWA\Worldwide
Anne Krogh, CMO, IKEA

Truth Bomb
This is the era of the 'hungry content machine'.

Every American sees about 4000-10,000 ads per day1. Advertising requires 2.5 seconds of our attention to induce recall, buying intent, or share of voice. How many actually get our attention? Results of a study that measured the attention of 130,000 ads across 1150 brands were shared by Karen Nelson-Field of Amplified Intelligence, who took to the stage at Cannes Lions Festival 2022 for the Triple Jeopardy of Attention panel: 85% of those ads did not meet these attention requirements. 

The same study found that marketing budgets where performance marketing (60%) outweighed brand marketing (40%), also didn’t meet these attention requirements and concluded that share of voice data no longer accurately correlates to market share, an important benchmark.

The truth is, campaigns aren’t working as hard as they should be and the problem may be the emphasis we are putting on performance marketing. Marketers need quality over quantity, growth in sales over number of followers. Growth in share of voice that accurately reflects growth in market share.

(I hear all of you performance marketing cursing me, but give me a moment. I'll get to my fair point.)

So why are brands spending the lion share of marketing budgets on performance marketing (60%) vs brand marketing (40%) when we have decades of studies that continue to prove that people choose brands based on a brands' commitment to their values. That brand purpose drives longevity and brand affinity is driven more by what brands stand for than by what they sell? 

For the performance marketers reading this, I do not imply that we should do away with the media placements, only enrich them. Marrying brand and performance marketing to create omnichannel, end-to-end campaigns that activate brand promise and drive customers up or down funnel, can close the data integrity gap in media measurement by driving brand affinity across the buyer journey.

During this era of transformation, along with the ability to pivot quickly and often, (because customer behavioral change is no longer predictable) is the realization that to cut through noise in world where 90% of the world's data was created in the last two years, marketing organizations need to be rowing in the same direction–creatively, philosophically, and silolessly marrying brand and performance. Brands can no longer afford to be misunderstood. 

Brand platforms like Apple’s 1997 campaign, “Think Different,” Stock X’s most recent, “Own it” or Logitech's "Defy Logic" can inspire omnichannel expression and better engagement across brand and performance marketing, and across web 2 and web 3.  

Najoh Tita-Reid, Logitech’s CMO, who was a panelist at the Contagious Villa at Cannes, shared that “it’s hard to track everything that touches our brand, but the essence of how to manage everything that touches our brand is to have a really strong brand platform. If anyone, across any platform, is using their own voice around our [Defy Logic] platform…I’m going to be pleased."

Big CPG companies like the global fast food chains, beer and beverage companies, who create multiple (and siloed) brand and performance campaigns each year, are in the habit of developing new intellectual property every quarter, whether mascots or slogans, while discarding the old. This is not a sustainable model as we move into web 3 where community engagement is contingent on consistent IP, similar to the Disney model where new characters (IP) are introduced carefully and thoughtfully across parks, movies, television, streaming, social..etc. The more audiences become invested in the IP, the more invested they become with the brand and vice versa.

Developing end-to-end omnichannel campaigns and content that activate your brand platform in meaningful ways and connect visually and verbally, could be just what the hungry content machine needs to grow market share and create efficiency around attribution models.

As David Droga, CEO Accenture Song, said at the Bloomberg Media Villa in Cannes, “Be a culture that solves don’t be a culture that sells.” Kind of wish I saw more of that sentiment in the Coinbase Superbowl vaporwave ad that Accenture Song created, but hey, we can't be a slave to our dreams, I suppose. 

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