The marketing and advertising business must adapt more quickly to rapidly changing technology if it wants to stay relevant, but it must also focus on creativity over everything else, says one of North America’s digital industry leaders.
“Not changing is death,” said Winston Binch, chief digital officer, North America at Deutsch, during the Lotus Talks event in Vancouver.
There were no shortage of bad omens for agencies to be found in Binch’ address: budgets are either flat or shrinking, demand for content is skyrocketing, there’s increased competition from technology giants such as Facebook and Google as well as from brands like Red Bull and Vice.
“Your clients are trying to get rid of you” by hiring their own content creators and “the public, in many ways, is more creative than the creative industry,” Binch said, citing homegrown videos like the one made by 1,000 musicians in Italy to lure the band Foo Fighters to play in their town. (It worked)
“The industry has ignored a lot of the changes,” Binch said. But while the industry needs to invest more heavily in technology and software, he said it cannot forget the strength of storytelling and emotion in their work. “The storytelling around your product and service matter more than ever. Forget ad blocking. It’s how you position yourself. Creativity solves pretty much every problem your business will have.”
Binch is considered an innovator for having grown his agency’s digital offering from 5% to 40% of its revenues in a few short years. Based on his 15 years in the business, Binch offered four lessons to help the industry work through its technology-driven transformation:
Everything needs a shareable idea
“Every single thing you do – whether it’s a print ad, a website or a TV ad – it has to have an idea and something that people can share. It has to be fluid. It has to be something that gets passed along.” Too often, he said, brands forget the customer and the need to create a connection.
Get emotional
It doesn’t matter how smart you are if you’re emotional IQ sucks, said Binch. “Emotion is what powers shareability on the web.” He encouraged people in the advertising and marketing business to “embrace absurdity and bring emotion” to their role, citing animation company Pixar as an example. “We need to try to apply that level of creativity to the products we make.” Binch also cited his own company’s “Find a Match” campaign for the new VW.com, which borrows from the online dating industry.
Names matter
With so much “noise” in the consumer market today, Binch said brands need to do something that draws attention. He pointed to the recent #OptOutside campaign from outdoor clothing cooperative REI, which made a statement by planning to close on Black Friday, one of the biggest shopping days of the year.
You need an enemy
“Pick a fight and get people to make a choice,” said Binch. “You want to put a question in peoples’ minds.” He sid too many brands are too quiet when they launch. “Put an idea out into the world that challenges conventional consumer thinking. When you come up with a digital product, you should be thinking of that from the beginning.”
