Insights Success The 10 Most Admired Medical Device Companies in De | Page 44

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ntertainment. Today, if a brand tries to claim its
supremacy with perfect creative finesse, it will still
sound like hard-sell to this new breed of an over-fed
target audience.
Brands are now using the ‘idea’ to penetrate within the
conscience of their target audience and do things that they
always wish for with the help of their products/services.
Ariel’s ‘Share the Load’ campaign urging men to share the
load of household chores especially that of laundry with
their wives is an example of brands intruding in the lives of
its target audience albeit benevolently.
2. More Media at no to less cost: Advocacy and social
good act as catalysts to attract media to review the ad
campaigns that appear more as acts of benefaction rather
than promotional content. Moreover, advocacy and social
good being universal in their appeal have the more
organic reach and appeal to larger audience breaking the
barriers of nationality, race, religion, and ethnicity. This
gives a competitive edge to the brand in the scenario
where every brand is boasting about the social media fan
lineage running into millions. The campaign to stop the
sale of acid in retail counter by non-profit, Make Love
Not Scars featuring acid attack survivor Reshma garnered
huge PR across media like The New York Times, The
Wall Street Journal, BBC World, Mashable, Mirror, The
Huffington Post at no cost and personalities like Amitabh
Bachchan, Ashton Kutcher, Sherly Sandberg and Sachin
Tendulkar too shared their support for the campaign,
making it an award campaign.
3. Sustainable Policy: Some marketers are restructuring
their businesses to accommodate sustainable business
practices and are making investments in research and
development of new technologies that can help them
achieve their sustainable goals. Unilever, for instance,
has committed to half its environmental footprints by
2030. P&G plans to replace 25% of petroleum-based
products with sustainable ones by 2020. Branding
sustainability also helps marketers to target consumers,
investors, vendors and employees at one go in a single
communication campaign.
5. Ease of Execution with Technology: Technology and
data have given power to the ‘idea’ whereby they not only
help in the adequate execution of the idea but also help in
measuring the effectiveness of the campaign in real time.
This has encouraged agencies and brands to dream big,
invent without fear and set as challenging goals as
possible and experiment upon their hypothesis. Never
before brands and agencies were so confident about
putting into practice everything that they ever dreamed of
without the fear of sounding impractical and unrealistic.
Toyota has launched i-Road, an ultra-compact electric
vehicle which helps to resolve parking issues in congested
cities of Japan by utilizing small and unused spaces with
networking parking and charging spot stations. This
project would have been unthinkable a decade back in
absence of tech-driven infrastructure that works in unison
with the advertising agencies.
As the evolution of ‘idea’ took from being a piece of
communication to transforming into products, experiences
and engagements, advertising businesses that were earlier
lauded for their creativity now have to be multi-faceted
with innovation, technology, research and empathy. We
can expect Flipkart as a part of its festive sale campaign to
introduce invisible packaging that replaces cardboard
cartons loaded with plastic bubbles with certain sonic
wave's technology that secures the products without
causing any damage. This can save the country from the
generation of tonnes of plastic waste as well as from
deforestation which otherwise forms an inevitable part of
the delivery process. Or can we expect a fertilizer brand to
develop high yielding solution that brings back the
fertility of the barren soil that can solve the problem of
food crisis and waste lands. While the earlier Mad Men
saw advertising going glam and aristocratic, this age of
idea revolution is making advertising mad with innovation
and social consciousness.
4. Awards: Cannes advertising festival, the most sought-
after festival amongst the advertising fraternity branded
as ‘field-trip to future’ for agencies, start-ups and
marketers has been generously awarding campaigns that
are packaged with social good and those that promise to
address environmental, psychological, health and lifestyle
issues. The festival has also introduced new award
category-, Glass Lions: the Lion for Change to challenge
gender biases. In a bid to stay ahead and bag awards at
prestigious awards festivals, brands are making use of
ideas that force their way to the jury's shortlist.
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|December 2017 |