WHERE HAVE

ALL THE BRAVE

BRANDS GONE?
KIM DOUGLAS

What do Robin Williams, the World

Cup, and Ebola all have in common?
They were Googles three most
searched terms in 2014. Not a single
for-profit brand found itself in the
top ten because of its marketing
campaigns. Wondering why? Well,
it might surprise some marketers to
discover that consumers are not likely
to go to the Internet for advertising.
Brands and agencies that are committed to finding ways to enter their
consumers always-on worlds have a
special sort of bravery. They see in new
technologies and media a call to step
away from the familiarity of trusted
messaging and media strategies,
and to start experimenting with new,
non-traditional marketing initiatives
that thrive in the digital environment.
Responding to that challenge means
that they must welcome digitals
unique opportunities versus simply
repurposing existing assets from
traditional channels.

Brands that treat the Internet

like a traditional advertising
medium often irritate, rather
than engage, people.
As with the launching of any new
medium, the first instinct is to adapt
current media successes to the new
channel. This horseless carriage
thinking is why we still find YouTube
pre-rolls (reformulated TV commercials)
and banner ads (reformulated print ads)

all over the Internet. But brands are

slow to admit that these placements
do not always work as well as they had
hoped. Accepting disappointing returns
on time, creative, energy, and media
investments is not the brave course
to follow.
In a recent study of online ad viewership, over 50 percent of viewers
across all age brackets found both
targeted and non-targeted ads to be
equally intrusive. Also noteworthy, the
survey revealed that only 10 percent
of respondents believe that online
video advertising (despite its ease in
audience targeting) is actually tailored
to them correctly.1
These numbers arent new. Statistics
and insights like these have been
readily available for brands to digest
and apply for some time now, yet
adaptation to the changed environment
has been slow.
Perhaps this is because brands are
overwhelmed by the barrage of digital
opportunities; theyve gone from
running print and broadcast campaigns
to maintaining multiple social, digital,
live streaming, print, and broadcast
messages (often for the same budget).
Often then, it seems that brand
managers find themselves coping
by becoming managers of agencies,
rather than acting as marketing entrepreneurs pursuing clear visions of their
brands futures.

PR Newswire. Younger Viewers Find Targeted Ads

More Invasive Than Older Viewers. http://www.prnews
wire.com/news-releases/younger-viewers-find-targeted-ads-more-invasive-than-older-viewers-267164601.html.

OUR PERSPECTIVES

Brave brands see

in new technologies
and media a call
to step away from
the familiarity of
trusted messaging
and media strategies,
and to start
experimenting with
new, non-traditional
marketing initiatives
that thrive in the
digital environment.

Power to the people

Unfortunately for marketers, consumers have increasingly more control over how,
when, and even if they see an advertisement online. A few clicks is all it takes to
skip a YouTube pre-roll, hide a sponsored post on Facebook, or choose to pay for
ad-free streaming. In short, digital audiences are not captive (and they know it), and
they have the power to opt in and out of interruptive messaging.
Consequently, brands that fail to meet one or another of the consumers need
states are struggling to make tried and tested offline advertising principles work
in new, and very different, digital environments.

Four consumer need states

In our experience, there are four predominant needs that drive consumers to
the web: information, service, entertainment, and social interaction.

INFORMATION

SERVICE

Google it!

Can I do it online?

Information gathering is the highest rated

category of peoples time on the web.

This is probably the consumer request

heard most frequently by brands.

91% go online to research

Consumers expect:
To perform offline functions online

89% go online to remain informed

82% go online to educate themselves

Brands to provide any service any

time of day

ENTERTAINMENT

SOCIAL INTERACTION

Just for the fun of it.

Making connections.

84% of those surveyed claim to use

the web primarily for entertainment,
explaining why, every 60 seconds of
every day:

Consumers look to the web to socialize,

express themselves, and advocate
personal belief systems.

YouTube adds 72 hours of new videos

Instagram users upload 48,600 photos4

On a global scale, there are two-thirds

as many active social media accounts
(2.08 billion) as there are active Internet users (3.01 billion people).6

And 15,000 tracks are downloaded

from iTunes5

Ruder Finn. RF Intent Index. http://www.intentindex.com/. Updated quarterly, accessed May 15, 2015.

Mashable. Internet Users Send 204 Million Emails Per Minute. http://mashable.com/2014/04/23/data-onlineevery-minute/.

3,4

5
Apple. iTunes Store Sets New Record with 25 Billion Songs Sold. https://www.apple.com/sg/pr/library/2013/
02/06iTunes-Store-Sets-New-Record-with-25-Billion-Songs-Sold.html.

We Are Social. Digital, Social & Mobile Worldwide in 2015. http://wearesocial.net/blog/2015/01/digital-socialmobile-worldwide-2015/.

OUR PERSPECTIVES

So, what does a courageous

brand look like?
To be brave, brands need to re-evaluate
their roles in both the online and offline
lives of their consumers, a step often
involving accepting difficult truths.
Core organizational structures and
the traditional funding practices of
marketing are being challenged at the
same time as demands for results are
increasing. Its akin to changing the
wheels while the car is moving, and it
requires that brands become more
flexible with their roles.
Brave brands should envision how digital technology can facilitate always-on
story systems, creating an optimal
range of roles in consumers experiences. For instance, if your business
relies on selling products, it is worth
considering how your digital experience
can provide a service layer that serves
another need state. And vice versa. If
you offer a service, think about what
products can bolster that service to
deliver scale and growth.
Brave brands have removed their fingers from the triggers of purely traditional advertising scatterguns. They
have embraced consumers newfound
powers and have taken the time to understand need states before engaging
consumers in a dialogue.
Nike, for example, has repeatedly
revolutionized its original brand offering
over the past five years, shifting from
ads to hardware and now to apps. Initially focused on producing ads about

sportswear (as well as sponsorship),

Nike started by building the Nike+
FuelBand, its proprietary hardware
that directly provides consumers with
relevant information about themselves.
And as wearable devices continue to
proliferate, Nike has now pivoted again
toward software creation apps that
live on other brands hardware to
enhance its digital platform and engage
its customers. With the launch of the
Apple Watch, the Motorola Moto 360,
and many others, Nike has an opportunity to put its brand on the wrists
and in the real lives of aspiring and
serious runners alike.
Similarly, Spotify challenged Apple in
music streaming by offering a music
product more deeply founded upon the
sharing economy, and capitalizing on
social network integration, peer recommendations, and a freemium on-ramp
monetization model. It has become a
one-stop shop for listening to, sorting,
and sharing music across devices,
besting Apples iTunes in terms of revenue for some record labels at least in
its European home market.7
Focusing on a different need state,
Red Bull has reimagined modern
media practices by avoiding paid-for
interruption entirely and moving into the
production of entertainment itself. The
brand has become a major producer
of content through initiatives such
as Red Bull Rampage, Red Bull Stratos, and regular live experiences that
generate tremendous digital activity
and engagement.

7
Macrumors. Spotify Approaching 10M Paying Users, Revenue May Soon Surpass iTunes in Europe.
http://www.macrumors.com/2014/04/25/spotify-10-million-europe-itunes/.

OUR PERSPECTIVES

Both Samsung and Cheerios found

social media success with quick-witted
(and subsequently viral) responses to
the 2014 Oscar Awards and 2015
Super Bowl. The Samsung ad a
photo by Oscar host, Ellen DeGeneres
had twelve A-list stars in it and leveraged the events real-time audience
to generate 3.3 million retweets and 2
million favorites. It also briefly crashed
Twitters servers. The photo was taken
by a device made by Samsung (the
main sponsor that year) and they
claimed it was unplanned.

Wilson at the goal line to seal a win

in the 2015 Super Bowl game for the
Patriots. At that moment, Cheerios
tweeted an image of its renowned
cereal (shaped like an O), along with
the caption Everyone's mouth right now.

Cheerios also cleverly chose a real-time

moment to promote its trademark product: When New Englands Malcolm
Butler picked off a pass by Russell

All of these brands have found success

by identifying a gap and inserting themselves authentically into consumers
online conversations.

FIGURE01

Both Samsung and Cheerios accomplished their marketing not through

traditional ads, but rather by being
ready to seize a momentary opportunity during live cultural events and
appealing to consumers delight in
social interaction.

Lufthansas Travel Companion platform built for the Apple Watch and for the
iPhone and iPad is a great example of digital technology facilitating always-on
Story Systems. The watch app, in particular, is a seamless, hands-free way of
providing upcoming flight information such as the terminal, boarding time or
seat number.

OUR PERSPECTIVES

Five points for creating a brave brand

Brands and their agencies should approach the Internet holistically.
The process of creating an effective online presence shouldnt be seen
merely as a list of tasks or channels that have to be checked off.

UNDERSTAND
CONSUMERS NEEDS

Most paramount is to genuinely understand the needs of the consumer.

Over the past decade, weve seen the
refinement and application of many
new methods of consumer research.
The first step for a brave brand is to
develop a rich understanding of its
consumers met and un-met needs,
attitudes, and behaviors. For this, brave
brands use a mix of online and offline
methods, including instrumented intelligence (directly measured activity on
smartphones and in physical spaces),
ethnography techniques, instant online
surveys and focus groups, and many
other methods.

RETHINK YOUR
BRANDS OFFERINGS

Your brands products and/or services

should acknowledge consumer needs.
If those are not being met, rethink your
brands strategy the center should be
around the consumer. Indeed, a great
brand will build a world around the consumer, ensuring that all touchpoints are
interconnected to create a seamless
experience. At SapientNitro, we call
this our Storyscaping approach.

OUR PERSPECTIVES

THINK PLATFORMS,
NOT ADS

Investing in new digital platforms

requires a different timeline than
traditional media spend. It took Nike five
years to build the different elements of
the Nike+ digital platform connecting
wristbands, an owned online platform,
social network functionality, and thirdparty hardware and sensors.
These types of opportunities in digital
require a multiyear vision and ongoing
investment. Digital platforms typically
live on for months or years, making it no
trivial thing to shut down the products,
services, and communities that people
love. Successful Storyscapes have
long-term visions that deliver on a wider
brand purpose, and their business case.

DO SOMETHING
SIGNIFICANTLY
DIFFERENT

Do not be satisfied with a 2 percent

increment here or a 3 percent growth
spurt there. Creating a great brand via
the Internet is not solely about technology, platforms, or software. Instead,
commit to a different relationship with
your consumers online and beyond.
Brave brands combine consumer
insight with strategy to rethink how and
where the firm can best compete
and then support that positioning with
investment not only in traditional media,
but also in technology, new product
development, and digital modernization.

TEST, LEARN,
AND ADAPT

The greatest lesson of successful online branding is to be immensely agile.

Test, learn, and build organizational
changes around this new way of
behaving. Use every step and misstep
to guide your company forward, and
consistently strive to be ahead of your
brands sector. Otherwise, despite the
transformations, your brand will find
itself struggling to keep up.

OUR PERSPECTIVES

Conclusion
Traditional advertising has been called
selling through yelling, and one of
the reasons why brands struggle is
because they continue to focus on
pushing messages out. Today, making
an impact requires a relationship with
pull. This approach strengthens brands
connections with their consumers
and the benefits it can bring; loyalty,
relevance, and engagement are the
rewards for those brands brave enough
to reduce their traditional message
out approaches.
In the age of the interconnected, brave
brands need to be acutely empathetic
with their consumers a timeless
concept in new contexts. Brands with
a successful and welcomed digital presence understand how their products
are integrated into peoples lives and
are taking critical risks to evolve their
ways in. More so, they are aware of
digitals current role and the future role
that it could play in enhancing consumers experiences and interactions.

Kim Douglas
Vice President, Managing Director,
SapientNitro Singapore & Hong Kong
kdouglas@sapient.com
Kim has spent some 20 years in advertising agencies and
has been the MD for the last 5 years. His primary focus
today is growing our business across APAC out of the
regions HQ in Singapore.

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SapientNitro, part of Publicis.Sapient, is a new breed of agency redefining storytelling for an always-on world. Were changing the way our clients engage todays
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it our Storyscaping approach, where art and imagination meet the power and scale of systems thinking. SapientNitros unique combination of creative, brand, and
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