Advertising Week 2020 | Riya Mehta

 This year I had the chance to attend Advertising Week 2020, an event curated for marketers, brands, advertisers and creatives with the agenda to bring the marketing, media, technology, and creative industries together to drive change. While COVID-19 has had us all staying at home, Adweek 2020 was a nice reminder of how far technology has come to help us be connected with the world. This was my first year attending the Advertising week and I couldn’t be more excited. This year the event being completely remote, made it even more accessible. I had the opportunity to fully enjoy and learn through numerous seminars at my own convenience. To help attendees get the maximum out of the event, Advertising week has made all the seminars available until the end of October. Along with it, the event curated a list of skill specific badges that attendees could opt for and further their professional and academic growth.

During the week long event, I had the opportunity to attend two workshops that helped me better understand the role of Ad Tech in today’s media world and learn about the growing integration of Consumer Experience while devising media plans.

Consumer Experience Badge offered by ARF
This workshop had us attend 5 session namely -

• CX in Covid-19
• The role of Diversity in CX
• Navigating Consumer Expectations During Times of    Disruption
• The ESPN brand in the age of Covid-19
• Making Sense of CX at Fidelity

COVID-19 has had a dramatic impact on CX touch-points such as call center staff working from home and social distancing tactics. These sessions discussed how are companies and customers adapting. In context to banks, paid experiences featuring staff and the benefits of customer experiences helped them build brand equity- particularly through things like caring, being seen as being fair and being helpful. Brand consideration was less impacted which made a lot of sense because the advertising was much more around customer service and reassuring rather than selling. Themes that have come through during the pandemic were -

• Safety has become the new trust. It’s absolutely fundamental now and it's what people are looking for from brands at the moment.
• Certain experiences have changed forever such as digital adoption which has definitely accelerated
• Regular and frequent customer feedback is more important that ever for brands to design experiences for the future.
• Our pre pandemic customers are no longer the same and their needs are changing.

Further, in the wake of social unrest and the Black Lives Matter momentum in the U.S.in 2020, many companies are changing their business strategies. In a talk with CBS, it said it will be committing at least 25% of its script development budget to creators and producers who are Black, Indigenous and people of color (BIPOC) starting with the 2021-22 development season. CBS takes and all inclusive approach as by being inclusive of diversity it can better represent the ever changing culture. CBS aims at being data led and objective as it tries to bring the voice of the consumer into a media company and making sure it is heard and even represented. This change could have significant effects for the entertainment industry. CBS also highlighted the importance of research & how it has played a major role in this. It stresses on how researchers should be willing to change and take risks while using research to evolve & adjust & be more inclusive as anything that is overly static doesn’t work. From a company’s stand-point CBS advices the attendees to always look at your employee base and make sure you have diversity on board, to have woman of color on board represent executive positions. As a final though CBS’s of the view that 

“You lose audience if you don’t cater to or promote diversity.”

Kantar talks on how to navigate consumer experience during disruptive time and the importance of brand in that process. Despite all the disruption caused by COVID 19 Neils Neudecker, Senior Vice President, Kantar says that we are all still the same person with or without the mask, still like the same brands, yet things are still very different now. He further adds 

“During the pandemic there are brands who take the lead and brand who just simply respond to the current circumstances, whatever the strategy be brands need to know what the consumers are thinking, feeling and doing.” 

Now, as humans and as consumers the current situation can be quite stressful and what actually happens to many of us during this crisis is that our anxiety level increases and this traumatic stress leads to coping mechanism like indulgence in food and alcohol, binging TV and social media etc. Brands need to accept that the situation right now is the new normal. Marketers now need to identify cross opportunities and work to make the most out of them. Consumers can’t imagine that things will return to normal and it is important for brands to understand various digital and traditional touch points that consumers engage with and how this plays into the experience of the brand. Neils advices on keeping track of what is happening with your brand category, with things changing by the week brands need to know how consumers are feeling, thinking and behaving in relation to the brand. As a leaving note he said 

“During these turbulent times it is not a good idea to be flying planned rather the opposite in order to ensure your brand can plan its strategy and tactics effectively you need to know what is right now and then you need to anticipate whether that change will last and most important act before someone else does”

 
ESPN particularly spoke about how they used the pandemic as a way to connect with the audience in an honest and authentic way via ‘The Last Dance’ documentary series. Michael Jordan is the most iconic athlete & is synonymous with excellence and championship caliber performance and competitiveness. ’The Last Dance’ was the most ambitious original content that ESPN had ever engaged with & was all set for the brilliant launch in June 2020 that were to be aired during the NBA finals. Then the pandemic hit and on March 11 the sports shutdown happened. When fans and athletes appealed to ESPN for an early release, ESPN accelerated the plans and gave them an early release on April 19. With this, ESPN showed fans that they heard their plea & delivered. ‘The Last Dance’ helped fill the gap of no sports & gave a sense of purpose to people. Everyone waited for Sunday’s to watch the episode and it became a thing for which the whole family gathered to watch together. The show also gave ESPN a chance to connect with the younger audience as they also got interested in Michale Jordon. The result was mind blowing, 68 million people reached between April - June through ‘The Last Dance’. It was a cultural touchstone for ESPN as it executed great documentary storytelling. The project was a BOLD move by ESPN even without the COVID. Further, in this binge watch culture where seasons are released in a day, ESPN made viewers wait from Sunday to Sunday. This helped them build anticipation & conversations. They choose a traditional viewing option over online streaming— that too before COVID. The results were - improved consumer perception about ESPN as consumers now felt ESPN cares about them as a sports fan.

One of the talks was with Fidelity discussing COVID’s impact on customer media consumption as many financial institutions, experienced major disruptions to their business. To cope with this Fidelity had to adjust their media marketing activities. Fidelity’s major strategy was to use channels that showcase customers in best mood by life moments. It found out with the pandemic and furlough people had more time to think about their finances  - the savings, the investments and getting everything in order. Fidelity saw aggressive upward trends of search terms that were related to personal finance, retirement planning as customers sought education & guidance. Luckily, Fidelity was already working towards devising ways to cater to the home working population and hence could transition through the post COVID world quite smoothly, (almost like an at home call centre) which was appreciated by customers as well. 

Ad Tech Badge offered by Verizon Media
This workshop had us attend 6 session namely -

• Changing patterns, changing future
• Dynamic by Default
• Digital Out of home, still critical in today’s omni-channel strategies
• Driving Performance in the Age of Privacy
• Creative empathy 2020
• What’s next for OTT and CTV?

These sessions discussed a number of topics ranging from the every changing role of media channels in the post COVID world and the challenges it brings along to the newfound importance of customer empathy and personalization in media messages and how native as well as new media technology can be used to effectively communicate during pandemic. New research show a shift in the way audiences are consuming traditional news and relying on age old journalism during the pandemic as they find it accurate and reliable. Advertisers now have the option to monetize print media & similar native advertising formats to help build better relationships and foster trust among their consumers during this pandemic. It also talks about the power of personalization and the role of communications and psychology in creating effective advertising. Further using creative storytelling & technology to create ads offering an immersive experience paves the road for having personalized communications with consumers. Using real time data/feedback & digital channels to create dynamic and interactive ads is another way to engage with the consumers - thus emphasizing brands to go dynamic by default.

While the lockdown slowed down the out of home industry, as regions open up advertisers can use digital out of home to connect with their consumers once again. With the ability to innovate and interact with consumers on the go, DOOH’s role in multi-channel integrated media campaigns can be to extend their reach and target consumers on the path to purchase. As a vast majority of people are concerned about data privacy, there’s a shift in third party targeting. It further discusses advertising in a cookie less world and where does this leave advertisers looking to target and optimize their campaigns to relevant, highly engaged audiences? Over 90% of brands said that they were trying to be more empathetic in their marketing, and 81% of marketers are finding it more difficult to pivot quickly to societal and cultural events. Latest findings from Datasine showed that quite often marketers cannot access the data they want in the way the want. There’s a lack of real time data and lack of sentimental analysis. It also gives the example of how very early in the pandemic COVID ads became boring & consumers wanted ads to be more authentic and maybe even funny. Audiences were overwhelmed by messaging saying ‘we are with you’ in COVID 19. Consumers wanted more genuine communications. Companies/ Brands need to think about their own staff, customers and extended stakeholders. Therefore, challenging brands to find the balance. This touches on the topic of how data can help brand be more aware and authentic in their communications while also staying relevant. Brands needs to act like people and need to act responsibly, especially on social media as social media detects fake quickly.

Summing up the conference, I can say that it not only helped me realize the potential media and technology have in the coming decade but also made me aware of the crucial role empathetic and authentic communications while curating consumer experiences will play in the future of this advertising.

Linkedin Links

https://www.linkedin.com/in/radhasubramanyam/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-niels-neudecker/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/seth-ader-4991501/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/flora-kelly-1b375b3/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/mickloizou/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/kim-aspeling-67165537/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/anuj-dahiya-b0b16756/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/stefanbrittoncro/