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WORD FROM THE WISE
<
it out
Marketing is changed,
ortune will favour the brave and the swift in marketing over
changed utterly, and
scape and in the relationships between consumers and
brands take deeper root, says Garbhan O’Bric, who has
only the brave and the
F
the coming years as seismic changes in the media land-
been head of communications at Diageo in Ireland for the
last two years.
bold who believe in
“It feels very much like the tectonic plates are shifting in market-
ing in general for a whole host of reasons,” he says. “Firstly, because
quality will survive,
of what is possible as a consequence of technology. Secondly, our
media consumptions are changing. The other massive impact is
that there’s a bit of brand fatigue at the moment. Brands can’t just
Diageo’s head of
sit on the shelf and throw out bland, indifferent communications.
They have to add real value in consumers’ lives. They need to have
communications in
a justified reason to exist today.”
Dealing with these changes and with the current economic back-
Ireland, Garbhan O’Bric,
drop quickly is the key challenge for marketers, he says. “Success
in the next few years in Ireland will belong disproportionately to the
tells Grainne Rothery
swift. The success of the future is dependent on these couple of
years right now. Bravery, daring, ambition and boldness are the
characteristics that will own success in the years to come.”
He’s blunt in his views on the way brands look at digital.
“Sometimes you hear marketers talking about their digital strategy,”
he says. “I think there’s a flaw in the premise of thinking about digi-
tal strategy. What we have to think about is creating strategies for a
digital world. Consumers connect with brands in many, many dif-
ferent places. There’s no such thing as a digital strategy – there’s
simply a brand strategy in a digital world.”
An example of how this way of thinking has been put into prac-
tice at Diageo, he says, was the Guinness 250 campaign last year
and its use of Facebook and its digital relationship management
programme. “It was seamless both online and offline,” he maintains.
“Everything should be about the role your brand plays in people’s
lives and how it adds value. If you start with the role of the brand,
everything else cascades naturally from there.
“You see a lot of brands charging to mobile phones, trying to
send you SMSs,” he continues. “There’s a problem with that,
because they’re simply thinking in terms of the channel rather than
thinking what the role of the brand is. Take a look at Guinness’s Area
22 app – it’s all part of the role we play in rugby, which is to enable
people to enjoy a richer, deeper experience of the sport.”
Volume 4 Issue 1 2010 Marketing Age 17
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