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MAKING THE FUNNEL FUN In fact, notes Tungate, some of the most innovative campaigns today are those that straddle the digital and physical realms in ways we could barely have imagined just five years ago. “There can be a fun, gamification
element to this. I’m thinking of things like the Adidas shop window at Nürnberg in Germany. When the shop’s shut at night, the window is overlayed with a digital display. You can interact with it and view different kinds of sneakers by moving elements of the display around with your hands. The shop window becomes a screen. If you want to buy something you connect with the window via the wi-fi connection on your phone. It’s a fun, interactive element that really appeals to people. It’s advertising, but it’s also a game. “Things like that present a very
seductive way of encouraging people to buy. To a certain extent shopping has always been about entertaining the consumer. There’s a theatrical aspect to department stores and the whole notion of shopping as a form of entertainment. Even in the digital environment that’s the case. The more fun and interesting you can make that experience, the more willing people are to buy, and the less they’ll notice the price. The luxury industry has always been very good at disguising its margins by making the shopping experience so pleasurable that people are willing to spend 500 euros on a handbag – and that’s partly because they’re delighted to be in this amazing store surrounded by beautiful things and good-looking people. If you can make the digital experience so much fun that consumers don’t notice or mind what they’re paying, you’ve got something.” And so to the future. Towards the end
of Adland, Tungate describes certain sections of the twenty-first century ad industry as in danger of “looking like a fat kid playing tag with his nimbler opponents who are tantalisingly out of reach. It will end up looking red-faced,
exhausted and undignified.” It’s a vivid image. How can agencies mitigate against ending up “red-faced, exhausted and undignified”? “Well, in the old days you knew that
everyone watched a certain TV show at a certain time, so you put your ad there. Or you knew that a certain type of person drove down a certain road, so you put your billboard there. It was a much more sedate and considered form of advertising. My theory, and the thinking underpinning that metaphor, is that advertisers now have to find their consumer first. They constantly need more research on where consumers are and how they consume content. “There was a sense while I
was researching the book that there’s a certain amount of panic in the industry. And it shows itself in different ways. You’ll notice that the Cannes Lions Festival of Advertising is now the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. Now, you could say that’s just because they wanted to create more categories, but it’s also because advertising agencies are saying, ‘Are we even advertising agencies anymore? Aren’t we just creating stuff which is sometimes advertising, but could be a film sponsored by a brand? It could be anything.’ That’s what I meant by the ‘fat kid’. You need an entertaining idea that will federate consumers around it - something so enticing that consumers will congregate around you, rather than you having to worry about which platforms they are on.”
THE ENTERTAINMENT EXCHANGE So how does Tungate view the notion that brands – and by implication their agencies – now need to look towards the
36 issue 20 january 2014
entertainment industry for more relevant creative models? “I spoke recently to a guy called
‘ARE WE EVEN ADVERTISING AGENCIES ANYMORE?”
Olivier Altmann, who’s Chief Creative Officer at Publicis here in Paris,” says Tungate. “And he said his advertising agency is almost more like a film production company now. In other words, you have a product, a 30-second spot, or a longer piece of branded content online which is anything between three and 15 minutes. That’s the main feature, if you like. Then, within that, you’re looking at creating characters who might Tweet or do interesting things on Facebook. They might even become characters you could sell in store, the equivalent of Iron Man or Spiderman. Olivier was saying that the advertising agency model is becoming more like the Hollywood model, where you create a universe with characters, then create merchandise around that and use different media and platforms to tell the story in different ways.” It’s a long way from Mad Men’s Don Draper spinning
the Kodak Carousel. Or is it? Then, as now, advertising was a form of storytelling and the most successful stories are still animated by a single, clear, easily understood idea. “Your core idea now has to be enticing enough that consumers want to come to you,” says Tungate, “and not feel that they’re being interrupted in their daily lives. That, I think, is the interesting challenge for the future.”
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