Innovate and reach out
Local advertising agencies have to embrace innovation to survive amid fierce competition and meet consumers' needs, analysts said yesterday.
“Innovation is the key to reaching out to the increasingly fragmenting audience,” said Bickey Russell, head of agency development at Google.
“You will have to create an environment where innovation evolves organically,” he said at the Communication Summit 2015 at Sonargaon Hotel in Dhaka.
Bangladesh Brand Forum organised the event in association with Cannes Lions, The Daily Star, Rakeen Development, RFL, WebAble, Masthead PR, Maverick, Roaring Lions, and Aamra Technologies.
Russell said advertisers should focus on the users and meet their expectations because all the problems they report actually take place due to the failures of the service providers, not for the users.
“Nowadays, advertising has become very complex. Besides, we have to keep in mind that users know the best.”
The Bangladesh-born said the advertisers also need to give their teams enough freedom so they can come up with good ideas at the end.
“We need to have open collaboration for driving innovations.”
Russell said the advertising agencies also need to exploit micro-moments. “On an average, an individual checks their mobile phones 150 times a day.
These are the opportune moments for the companies to reach them out.”
Syed Gousul Alam Shaon, managing partner and country head of Grey Dhaka, said there is a paradigm shift in consumers' demand for content. “Unlike in the past generations, the current generations want it now. They can't wait for the future.”
He said, at the same time, consumers are not only passive consumers but also co-creators. “The society has to be taken as partners in creating contents.” He said advertising has to be a part of the business echo system, not as a separate issue. “Ad agencies have to solve problems confronted by brands.”
Syed Ferhat Anwar, adviser to Bangladesh Brand Forum, said because of the onslaught of globalisation, mediocre brands would possibly cease to exist, and global brands and communication agencies may wipe out local brands. “We have to move faster than we are thinking.” A professor of the Institute of Business Administration, Anwar also talked about the ethical issues of advertising and communication business.
He said: “Brands are not merely brands. They are also contributing to the society. So, here comes the role of the marketers.”
Nazim Farhan Choudhury, managing director of Adcomm, said advertising agencies will have to keep up with the changes in technology and the online landscape so they can tell their stories in a more coherent way.
Indranil Chakraborty, founder of StoryWorks, an Indian company, said business storytelling is not about the hero's journey. “You don't need a complex plot or theatrics. Narrating experiences and anecdotes can make an abstract concept concrete and build its memorability.”
Dan Mobley, regional head of corporate affairs at Standard Chartered for India and South Asia, said when other banks went bankrupt amid the 2008 global financial crisis, Standard Chartered spoke about its strength.
“Our brand strategies include increasing brand awareness and what a good bank can do,” he said, giving examples of a number of social initiatives undertaken by the bank.
He said banks need to keep telling stories about themselves even when people are sceptical. “It is an ongoing task.”
About 600 professionals from advertising and public relations firms, production houses and creative departments of local and multinational companies took part in the daylong event.
Around 60 award-winning communication works ranging from print ads, billboards to interactive campaigns, from around the world were also put on display.
The summit is designed to disseminate knowledge on creative marketing and communication in six sessions with world-renowned speakers.
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