Goafest 2011: “Media can be as creative as John Hegarty is”

Crowe, C Squared chief executive and Festival of Media founder, was down to introduce two Festival of Media categories at the Media Abbys, and played videos of work he found talk-worthy from around the world, such as a Unicef ad in Germany to raise awareness about child poverty in South Africa. The idea was an outdoor one, with the child’s mouth being the opening of a dustbin, to make people uncomfortable about throwing away food. “It’s a great example of Out Of Home working with Creative and the Media Buyer,” he said. “Media can be as creative as John Hegarty is, if done properly.”

 

With interactive marketing, engaging with an ad makes it more powerful. Crowe added, “A good marketing idea can also change the product.”

 

Volkswagen’s www.thefuntheory.com also shows a great idea can be enhanced with technology. 

 

 

“From the old model where a fortress brand talked down to target consumers, today the idea and technology can co-exist with content and dialogue to create a consumer-oriented business,” said Crowe.

 

Lessons to be learnt are: clients and judges love a great “on brand” stunt; the world is now definitely social; the balance of power is shifting to social, TV and web; and honesty and utility win awards and client’s hearts.

 

Crowe then cut to a few case studies of brands that had entered the Festival of Media Awards this year, such as the digital initiative ‘How many people can you fit into a MINI’, and the Swedish endeavour ‘Choirilla’.

 

 

 

Coming to social, and the role media can play there, Crowe pointed out that the number of visitors to traditional dotcom domains are decreasing, as visits to community brand pages are going up. “That’s why Facebook has the valuation that it does,” he said. He also talked about the seven stages of video ads, and how the sharing of videos now is a proxy of success like ratings are. “There’s TV on web, the leftovers, exclusive, corrupted, reaction and relevance (like Old Spice), truly interactive and consumer controlled,” he elaborated. An example of the last was itsnopicnic.tv, for Cadbury’s chocolate brand Picnic in Australia, which asked people to put up their videos of eating a Picnic bar in 30 seconds. 200 of those ads made it to TV. “Advertisers fear that they will lose control, but by having defined parameters, it can be controlled chaos,” he said.

 

Crowe’s last point was that media should reinforce the purpose and utility of the brand, as in the case of Walmart’s “Save Smart. Live Better.” campaign