CPX Interactive recently sponsored the iMedia Brand Summit held this past Sept. 11-14, 2011 in Coronado, CA. Ross Cohen, Director of Sales at CPX Interactive gives us his account of the event and shares more about the theme, ‘Going Big in 2012.”
“What happens when advertising can’t bullsh*t us anymore?” That was the question. A provocative question, to be sure, but all the more so when you consider who was being asked: the very people behind the ads. No, not the creative wizards, but the brand marketers — the stewards of the brand.
The setting was the iMedia Brand Summit. The theme was “Digital Marketing at Scale: Going Big in 2012.” A few hundred executives, representing major brands and leading providers of digital marketing solutions descended on Coronado, California with gusto, relishing the opportunity to hear from industry heavyweights, meet fellow marketers and exchange ideas.
A few hundred may sound crowded, but for an advertising industry conference, it’s downright intimate. iMedia carefully crafts its summits for an enjoyable, informative, collegial, and with any luck, productive atmosphere.
CPX Interactive is proud to sponsor these gatherings and our own Jamie Gutterman, Dir. of Sales and Brie Thomas, Dir. of Sales, helped kick off the events with a lunchtime presentation that took the audience on a trip through time. Marketers witnessed just how far advertising has come in recent years, culminating in the latest marketing capabilities CPX brings to bear. Jamie, Brie, and I were on hand throughout the summit and were pleased to see iMedia once again outdid itself, delivering the impressive lineup we’ve come to expect.
Conventional wisdom was challenged, worn strategies refreshed, and clichéd buzz words dismissed, even as new ones were introduced. Summit Host and former Mars Chocolate marketer, Carole Walker, encouraged attendees to be “tradigital.” Shiv Singh, keynote speaker and global head of digital at PepsiCo Beverages, spoke of going “glocal” to achieve scale. While squeezing words together seemed to be the thing to do, others went a different route.
Geoff Ramsey, CEO and Co-Founder of eMarketer, spoke about “magnetic content.” Advertising grew up on the interruption model of TV, but digital gives brands the power to make audiences find them. “It’s more about attraction, rather than distraction,” said Ramsey. This was exemplified perfectly soon after as General Mills showed off their impressive foray into the market with branded information. As General Mills VP Doug Moore explained, users search for help baking cakes all the time, and there’s no shortage of ads fighting for their attention on the results and landing pages, but that really doesn’t concern General Mills. After all, with their branded information strategy, virtually every organic result links to a page syndicating one of their Betty Crocker how-to videos. That’s magnetic content.
Mitch Spolan of Living Social eschewed the vocabulary portion of the speaking formula and instead treated the audience to some amateur video of his daily lunch routine. The group couponing craze is about breaking pattern—getting someone to turn left, when every other day they go right.
Jeff Rosenblum, Co-Founder of Questus/Filmmaker
He was a great speaker, but the real entertainer on stage was Questus founding partner turned filmmaker Jeff Rosenblum, who stole the show with his caustic takedown of traditional advertising, hilariously scathing rebukes of advertising gone wrong and clarion call to embrace the new reality of marketing in the digital age. It started with a sneak peak at his upcoming documentary, The Naked Company. Jeff traveled the country interviewing academics, CEOs, and industry luminaries to discern the future of advertising.
Of course, to know where you’re going, you need to know where you are, and where you’ve been. Cue the black and white Flintstones episode with the cigarette product placement and full-throated endorsement by Fred and Barney (here’s another). It’s pretty shocking to today’s eyes but that’s where advertising started. Cut to the famous shot of the tobacco executives being sworn in for Congressional testimony and you can see where this is going. Trust in corporations is at an all time low. Advertising’s credibility has diminished over the years. Few industries in history have faced change as dramatically as advertising has over the past decade. But some brands are still preaching from the hilltop while consumers ignore ads and turn to unbiased sources of information.
Nowadays, brands can’t (and shouldn’t) stretch the truth. In the digital age, brands can’t claim their product is amazing when it’s a dog. To illustrate, Rosenblum tells a little story about a seemingly wonderful product he found online… and proceeds to mercilessly skewer it (although to be fair, it’s really the abysmal user reviews that do the heavy lifting).
He tells us he works too much and travels more than he should, so he wants to buy his kids a little something. He goes hunting for the perfect present to buy back their love; something fun but not too expensive. Voila! He comes across Crayola’s Washable Colored Bubble Launcher and its wondrous scenes of children filling the air with colorful bubbles, grinning ear to ear with the unbridled joy only a child can experience. It’s perfect, exactly what he wants. He’s ready to buy it and win Father of the Year award.
Unfortunately, before pulling the trigger on the purchase, he can’t help but notice that Amazon customers gave it just one out of five stars. Every product has a few detractors though, right? Well, in this case it was 80 detractors. And it turns out they gave it one star because Amazon doesn’t let you give zero stars. At this point in the presentation, there’s blood in the water and you can see Crayola is in for a tough time in this room full of brand marketers. Scientifically speaking, we’ve seen the quantitative feedback, now it was time for some qualitative reviews. Customer reviewers didn’t disappoint, saying it was “invented to torture parents,” and calling it “the worst ‘toy’ I have ever purchased.”
Perhaps the expression should be changed to “Hell hath no fury like a customer scorned.” The rebukes continued: “Whoever designed this product is a sick individual that hates parents, and thinks torturing children is great fun. It drips everywhere and destroys everything it touches”
These reviews may have made for some nice Schadenfreude, but a customer saying “you can no longer trust the Crayola name,” is a brand’s worst nightmare. That’s where the opening question comes in, “What happens when advertising can’t bullsh*t us anymore?” The answer, of course, is to watch his documentary and find out. Transparency has to be embraced, either you make it happen, or it happens to you. Making that point in the film is no less an authority than creative genius turned altruistic entrepreneur, Alex Bogusky. He continues, “Being a great company is the new brand, because there’s not going to be anything between the consumer and the reality of that company.”
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