TBWA’s top creative says brands must resonate emotionally across media or face the consequences.

A year ago, Lee Clow gave up the title of Chairman and Global Creative Director of TBWA Worldwide and designated himself Worldwide Director of Media Arts. In his first major interview since adopting the new role, he explains why brands must take an emotional approach to communications.

Lee warns that brands face becoming “irrelevant” or even “the focus of online contempt” if they fail to express a consistent identity every time they come into contact with consumers, whether it’s via advertising, packaging or the store experience.

“Finding the disruptive idea for a brand, which usually comes out of its emotional centre, and which we call the ´brand belief`, is the first step to creating a powerful multimedia brand”, he explains.

It used to be very simple.

Brands did advertising: they talked at people; they bought television commercials and held you captive. Now they must interact with their audience in a multifaceted but coherent way.

Everything a brand does is basically a medium and a message. And it needs to be true to a simple, single-minded idea. Using the example of Apple, Lee observes: “There isn’t a single thing Apple does that isn’t a message that confirms or reinforces how you feel about the company. I often tell people that the best ad we ever did was the Apple Store. We do great TV commercials, we do wonderful billboards, but you walk into an Apple store and you’re now immersed in a brand that’s going to change your life.”

“If you buy a product, even the process of opening it becomes a brand experience,” Lee emphasizes.
“Think about any brand that you like; any brand that you spend time with; any brand you go online and check out. It’s usually a brand that has touched you from a number of different points. Because it’s true to its character, you like and admire it. You actually want to go online and find out what’s going on, or if you drive by a billboard it reinforces how you feel about the brand.

“Successful brands are not cold: they have a soul, a character. But thanks to the power granted to consumers by the internet, brands that betray their characters risk getting slapped around”, says Lee.

“The reality of the new media world is that if your brand does not have a belief, if it does not have a soul and does not correctly architect its messages everywhere it touches consumers, it can become irrelevant. It can be ignored, or even become a focal point for online contempt. This insight lies behind the expression Media Arts. You are studying the science of how to bring brands to market. But I think you’d better keep your intuition, your instinct, and your emotional compass intact. Because the emotional centre, the belief of a brand, has to inform its behaviour, and this can’t all be done with the left side of the brain.”

“Ultimately”, concludes Lee, “You’re going out into the media world and creating something that I call art, it happens to be the art of communication. It’s storytelling.

“Great brands have a story, our job is to tell them.”

Golden Drum PR jury member Ulrich Proeschel, Brand Director Europe of TBWA, reveals his hopes and frustrations concerning the PR category.

“At TBWA, we no longer talk about PR, advertising, or any other standalone form of communication.

We believe in a thing called brand behavior. Brands must understand that with the revolution that’s happening in media right now, particularly in the use of social media, they have to be 100% coherent in the way they speak to consumers.

This applies for everything a brand does – no exception.

The problem: it’s very difficult to behave consistently if you’re not sure what you believe in.

You need a big idea – a belief – to deliver against. Brands that do not believe in something will not be successful. And the people who work on their behalf will not be able to produce successful messages.

To me, PR ideas that deliver only the conventional wisdom and do not reflect a deeply held brand belief are not interesting – even if the results are there. The Golden Drum festival exists to celebrate creativity, not conventional solutions.

I am looking for PR campaigns that have a clear brand belief behind them.

I also think that the definition of PR has to be clarified. PR is about earned media, not bought media. I want to see how brands and their PR companies entertain and surprise, convince journalists to share a message, without spending a penny on media. PR must create value.

For any comments or suggestions, send an email to Ulrich Proeschel.

This is one of the most amazing examples of great brand behavior: The Pepsi Refresh Project. Instead of putting money into a Superbowl ad, the soda company decided to refresh the world, by giving away $20million of the complete year.

Pepsi are giving $1.3million in grants to projects that ‘refresh’ the Gulf in the wake of the oil spill. Voting started today. 10 votes per day per person. Please vote!

If you need inspiration how you can ‘refresh’ the Gulf, check out Fast Companies top-5 projects of Pepsi’s extension of The Pepsi Refresh Project.

For any comments or suggestions, send an email to Ulrich Proeschel.

In 2010 Pepsi decided not to run an ad during the Super Bowl. For over 23 years they had taken the conventional approach of putting their can into a superstar’s hand and hoping that others would follow.

But as a brand that believes every generation can refresh the world, they wanted to change something. The decision was radical. No Super Bowl ad, but 20 million US dollars to fund projects that would make the world a fresher place. People where invited to submit their projects, and the whole world could vote. The budget for a one day event now funds a full year of causes. 1000 submissions are accepted every month, but when the Pepsi Refresh Project was launched this figure was achieved after 2 minutes. Since then, over one billion media contacts have been generated during the first twelve weeks of the project – and as the web buzz continues, even more staggering numbers are round the corner. But the numbers are only one side of the coin. More importantly, this campaign is producing value every day. Value for the community, value for the planet and, last but not least, value for Pepsi in the hearts and minds of its audience.

For question and further information simply email Carisa Bianchi.

Rob Schwartz, Chief Creative Officer of TBWA\CHIAT\DAY Los Angeles. shares his thoughts on METAL POTENTIAL on his personal blog. This is what he said about Gatorade Replay:

This isn’t an ad. This is an idea. A big one. It was conceived to be the ultimate product demo. Here’s how it goes. What if you took two rival high school football teams and had them replay a significant game…15 years later. The teams would need to train and get back in shape. And oh yeah, they’d need plenty of Gatorade. Two teams on the New Jersey-Pennsylvania border did this. Here’s the trailer, but got to MissionG.com to see more of the story. Also FOX has turned it into a series. You’ll find more info on that here.

Today Indy Saha, Head of Strategy TBWA\London group and Agency.com (twitter: @indysaha) shares with us some interesting thoughts on the recent Facebook announcements:

From a social and cultural point of view,  THEY ARE THE BIG DEAL.  They will change the way you interact with social networks and how you surf the internet forever, how brands can target consumers and will challenge the dominance of Google as being the most powerful company online.  In fact in year from now any website which has not incorporated these changes, will look very archaic.

WHY IT WILL CHANGE THE WAY YOU INTERACT WITH THE WEB AND SOCIAL NETWORKS

Social networking will no longer happen just in social networks  it will happen on every site of the internet.  Imagine being on any website and being able to “like” that site by simply clicking a button, whether that is an article, a band, a song.  You will be able to leave comments on that site, see what your friends have done on that site, what they think of the content on that site and you will even be able to see which of your friends are currently on that site, and connect with them on that site.

But then imagine going onto another site, and because your likes and activities have been remembered, the site becomes personalised to your tastes or to your friends tastes, or it even suggests stuff that people who liked similar things to you also like (this is the beginning of the “semantic web”), so if you have “liked” various artists/ bands across various sites – by the time you get to a music streaming site like Pandora, it will generate a playlist automatically of songs you might like.

When you do go onto Facebook itself, it will suggest communities you should join of people who also like the same things as you and let you connect with them and share ideas and interests.

Facebook have also introduced their own currency called “Facebook Credits” which allows one payment system across all app.  So you will not need to have separate accounts for payment across Farmville or 1-800 Flowers, but a seamless centralised payment system like ITunes, a seamlessness which will make commerce take off on Facebook in a big way. [I can see print publications developing Facebook editions which will be powered by these micro-payments.]

WHY IT WILL CHANGE THE WAY BRANDS TARGET CONSUMERS

Facebook have made it piss easy for brands to integrate these social features into a website: http://developers.facebook.com/plugins

We will probably see a shift in branded experiences taking place on proprietary microsites and no longer having to be in social networks.

A brand will now know how popular parts of their site experience are, which bit of content are the most relevant.  Not only this they will know the demographics and maybe even the locations of audiences engaging with their site, as well as how they are engaging.   This will open up developing more attitude based advertising.  Wherever consumers go on the web, they will carry their preferences, behaviours and friends with them.

And this is WHY FACEBOOK WILL CHALLENGE THE DOMINANCE OF GOOGLE

Google has a massive advertising and search platform based on keywords.  Facebook is creating an advertising and search platform which is based on behaviors, attitudes, preferences and social connections [what your friends like and do etc], this allows the creation of more powerfully targetted relevant advertising and experiences.

These for me were the big out takes as people who work in marketing.  For more information you can watch the keynote in full here.

Great brands are mad. They are mad in both senses of the word. On the one hand they break conventions, ignoring the conventional wisdom of their industry. Some might call this insane.

On the other hand, great brands have to be angry sometimes. Angry about the status quo. Angry that their products may still not be good enough. Angry that they’re not providing their audience with enough entertainment.

That’s why they’re constantly striving to improve their brand behavior. Great brands care about what they do – in everything they do.

The concepts of Media Arts and Disruption seem to be the best way to create success for brands. I am sure that some of the most admired brands in the world understand this. Some do it naturally, others have incorporated that way of working after experiencing how their performance in the market has changed after doing so.

Great brands have a clear belief-system, and they have a vision about their future. But they also understand the value of three fundamental thoughts that lead everything they do:

(1) They don‘t hunt for target groups. They entertain an audience.

(2) They know that the HOW and the WHERE are as important as the WHAT for a brand.

(3) They say good-bye to 360 degrees communication and welcome the 365 day approach of constant communication.

This changes dramatically how they behave in the world: these brands are artists in the way they use media.

For one year we have been celebrating big disruptive ideas as well as outstanding examples of brand behavior. More than 7.500 people have signed up to our feed and the incredible number of 4.500 individuals have visited the blog more than 200 times. Thank you all very very much.

Let‘s continue to be mad.

Ulrich

TBWA Worldwide has been recognized by Fast Company as an Innovation All-star. As part of the Most Innovative Companies issue, the 59 Innovation All-stars were culled from past Top 50 honorees, as companies that have “fought a dour economy with renewed creativity and bold initiatives.” TBWA Worldwide was first cited in Fast Company’s Top 50 Most Innovative Companies in 2009.

The Innovation All-stars report specifically calls out TBWA for getting “huge props for its work over the past 10 years – Adweek called “Get a Mac” the Campaign of the Decade; and iPod “Silhouettes” the Out-of-Home Ad of the Decade. Ad Age named TBWA the decade’s third-best agency also citing its work for Pedigree and Mars.”

Fast Company’s annual Most Innovative Companies issue honors major brands including Cisco, Disney, and GE along with such rising newcomers as Spotify, Gilt Groupe, HTC, and the Indian Premier League. Facebook leads the annual ranking of the Top 50, after growing its user-base from 150 million to 350 million in just one year.

Overall, Fast Company recognized 250 plus companies, including more than 75 non-U.S. businesses.

To create this year’s Most Innovative Companies issue, Fast Company’s editorial team analyzed information on thousands of businesses across the globe. The result is a package unlike that of any other business media. It’s not just about revenue growth and profit margins; it’s about identifying creative models and progressive cultures – to define the many forms of innovation that exist across the business landscape.

“It was invigorating to engage with so many exciting new ideas and developments,” said Fast Company editor Robert Safian.  “Our goal was to offer a snapshot of the creativity at work in the global marketplace, and to inspire the Fast Company audience with illustrations of how powerful and effective business can be.”