Top five highlights about bringing marketing to life in 2019
07 May 2019
Our Content Coordinator, Maree Perkins, reports back from this year’s Marketing Week Live annual conference
Focusing on the emerging issues across the marketing sector, not just higher education, the Marketing Week Live conference provided a mixture of practical, hands-on, expert advice from some of the most respected leaders, including Keith Weed, CMO for Unilever, Sara Bennison, CMO for Nationwide, and Philippa Neath, Communications Manager at Marshall Amplification.
The top five highlights were:
1. Trust needs to be based in a brand’s values
Russell Parsons, Editor at Marketing Week led the panel discussion around the perception of marketing as a career, what needs to change and what will shape the future.
A brand that jumps on the sustainability bandwagon without it being intrinsic to its values and actions opens itself up to ridicule and mistrust. Brands need to have a purpose and this must be fundamental to their culture, history and founded in the heart of the company, not just created in the marketing department.
2. Don’t let the channel dictate the campaign
We all get excited when new technology comes out, but that doesn’t mean it should always be used. Marketing needs to go back to focusing on the emotion and looking at the data around behaviour, rather than being led by the channel.
We’re not just competing in our own sector for attention, we’re competing for the eyes of 15-30-year-olds along with fashion industries, the tech sector, sporting brands, food outlets etc. So we have to think differently and come up with something special.
3. Be more emotional
Video is powerful and has never been more crucial to marketing. It’s not necessarily true that short attention spans are the problem – it’s more truthful to say that we have a small window to grab attention. Most videos will tap into the basic emotions of sad, happy, scared, feelings that are easily relatable, but video needs to go to the next level and take advantage of showcasing other emotions like the Fear Of Missing Out (FOMO), vanity, our need to be first, doing well at work, creating a more personal and believable message. For example, a firm selling administration software arguably doesn’t have the most exciting product but by creating an advert centred around a company’s current paper system essentially causing our protagonist to be signed off sick from work with stress and then an intern taking their place, doing a better job and essentially becoming their boss on their return, with the messaging focused on ‘don’t let the intern become your boss’, you’ve created something comical which taps into real-world fears and helps sell the product.
4. Social is your friend in a crisis
It’s easy to pull back in a crisis or focus your attention on the traditional routes such as issuing a statement, drafting Q&A and selecting a spokesperson, but Susanna Flood, International Communications and Crisis Management Expert, reminded us that social is our friend.
Social allows for a more personalised message, engaging with the community and controlling the space in which the discussion is taking place. It’s important not to change your voice and don’t go quiet. For example, post your statement on Facebook with a bespoke Q&A, and always remain courteous.
5. The importance of Voice Search
Although it hasn’t hit the UK yet, voice search is huge in the US and East Asia so it’s making its way here and is something to keep in mind for international markets.
The question raised in the session was, how do we rank for search questions when the brand won’t be specified? After all you wouldn’t say, “Find me a nationwide mortgage”, you would simply ask it to “find me a mortgage”. No one quite has the answer but the discussion was around a two-pronged attack, firstly creating quality content that is relevant and ranks well in search engines and secondly ensuring content raises your brand profile (thought-leadership pieces and capitalising on strengths will help).