TV was made for brands. Literally. That’s what soap operas were: daytime, low-budget, dramas with infinite twists and turns spon-sored by CPG brands, then, whose audiences (1930s housewives) would tune in to, get familiar with (week after week) and buy.

Today’s soaps, you’ll know them well, bear testimony to the early pioneers’ fundamental thinking: provide TV ad spots for mass audience exposure to brands.

Indeed, TV advertising revenues are booming. But now mass ‘in one place’ has also declined.

Channels ‘explosion’ has diluted audiences. Internet connectivity has created interaction where once there was only broadcast. Device proliferation has re-invent-ed viewing and ‘always on’ has changed buying behaviour. Social media, in its turn, has unleashed a torrent dialogue and supplanted TV’s central role of awareness and breaking news creator.

In addition, massively re-distributed availability to information and access on demand to all kinds of ‘content’ allows consumers (that’s all of us) to be originator, reviewer, commentator, reporter, photogra-pher, critic, event organiser, fan…add your own definitions here. Anywhere, anytime.

The world has changed.

Which brings us back to brands. And their desire to engage with customers to connect to their hearts. As well as their heads. To make them buy.

Old model advertising: consumers are watching telly so interrupt them; broadcast big, expensive glitzy ads…campaigns. Result: consumers will go and buy.

New model approach: consumers are busy; let them get on with their lives; create content that will be useful to them to help them live their lives; now put it where consumers live online. Result: connected consumers will engage, share and recommend the good stuff to all their connected contacts who will…engage, share and recommend.

Virtuous – and sometimes viral – circle.

This is what we do. We create a narrative – actively inspire conversation – around the awareness that advertising creates. We devise new angles, propose new ideas, offer new ways of looking at things, provide easy-to-share content, mix everything up, add a dash of fun, stimulate interaction.

Our aim is to help brands not just to join but to change the conversations about them in their favour.

Like the soaps of the 1930s or the Corries and Holly-oaks and Eastenders of today, we help brands tell their stories – even share their dramas, sometimes – with

LEFT TO OUR OWN DEVICES

How brands can change the conversation on social media

SMALLER, FASTER, FREQUENTER

ROLE OF DIGITAL FOR BRANDS

‘infinite twists and turns’ to engage and interact with audiences who tune in to, get familiar with (week after week) and buy.

From our six years of living and breathing this business, we’ve created a five-point roadmap, below, for the role of digital and brands. We invite you to have a look and see how this relates to your brand.

If you tell us the answer is “It doesn’t!”, to any of the five points below, well… I’d suggest we should talk. And we’ll start by listening to you.

Which brings us back to brands. And their desire to engage with customers to connect to their hearts. As well as their heads. To make them buy.

Old model advertising: consumers are watching telly so interrupt them; broadcast big, expensive glitzy ads…campaigns. Result: consumers will go and buy.

New model approach: consumers are busy; let them get on with their lives; create content that will be useful to them to help them live their lives; now put it where consumers live online. Result: connected consumers will engage, share and recommend the good stuff to all their connected contacts who will…engage, share and recommend.

Virtuous – and sometimes viral – circle.

This is what we do. We create a narrative – actively inspire conversation – around the awareness that advertising creates. We devise new angles, propose new ideas, offer new ways of looking at things, provide easy-to-share content, mix everything up, add a dash of fun, stimulate interaction.

Our aim is to help brands not just to join but to change the conversations about them in their favour.

Like the soaps of the 1930s or the Corries and Holly-oaks and Eastenders of today, we help brands tell their stories – even share their dramas, sometimes – with

OUR FIVE-POINT ROADMAP

1. LISTEN TO THE CUSTOMER

2. WHERE’S THE CUSTOMER?

Back when Tesco ruled and austerity was something that happened to other people, Sir Terry Leahy, when asked about Tesco’s success, claimed it was easy: all they did, he said, was listen to the customer.

Admirable. But while Tesco used to listen, more recently they have failed to act. Customers were telling them for some time that they found the service wanting, the ranges limited, their prices un-competitive. The rest is history in the making.

Our process always starts with listening to consumers’ online conversations. And we do this differently. We use an intuitive social listening platform which provides access to which brands are being talked about and what is being thought and said about them.

Only when we know what occupies consumers will we plan and deliver more focused, ‘snackable’ content. It can be created at speed so that it’s topical, relevant and responsive to their concerns. It’s delivered on an interactive, multi-platform and multi-channel basis. We talk in their language and it’s always, always personal-ised.

This fundamental start point means we have detailed access to up-to-the-minute conversations actually taking place online. Which we can now act on. Why should any brand choose to ignore this resource and approach?

‘infinite twists and turns’ to engage and interact with audiences who tune in to, get familiar with (week after week) and buy.

From our six years of living and breathing this business, we’ve created a five-point roadmap, below, for the role of digital and brands. We invite you to have a look and see how this relates to your brand.

If you tell us the answer is “It doesn’t!”, to any of the five points below, well… I’d suggest we should talk. And we’ll start by listening to you.

TV assumes your customer is on a couch. In a living room. And watching. Or maybe ironing. So not on a couch. But still watching. Mostly, anyway. And eating pizza.

Digital assumes your customer is online. Not in the living room. Nor on a couch. Mostly. Nor are they watching. They’re searching. Or they’re browsing. Or, actually, they are watching telly while telling all their friends about it, discussing their lives and everything else – wha’e-e-e-e-ver! – simultaneously. And eating pizza. Possibly. Love it or hate it, they’re on their chosen social media platform. Social media’s not going away.

TV provides brands with a platform to chase customers. In fairness, so too does digital. But happy customers are also happy to chase brands. Own them, even. The ones they like, that is. Digital disruption allows customers to do that. Across any number of platforms and on any device. All brands need to do, therefore, is create the sort of content that their customers will be happy to receive, enjoy…and be happy to follow and share.

The trick is in understanding how to articulate and present different types of content so that consumers – who choose their own devices to access this content in their own time – will relate to it. Making content truly cross-platform so that your brand, whenever any consumer comes into contact with it remains consistent and recognisable, involves making it work cross-chan-nel, cross-site and cross-device.

Social media is the glue that holds this all together. Our paper, 2014 The Year of Content, provides much more detail, here.

In this ever-changing society, the most powerful and enduring brands are built from the heart.

HOWARD SCHULTZCEO, Starbucks

Brands’ traditional broadcast-to-the-masses business model is based on their (hoped for) universal appeal:

See brand on TV. Slot it into your ‘consideration set’. Find it on the on- (now) or offline (previously) shelf. Get reviews online. Visit outlet, or don’t. Buy it.

We believe the traditional 4Ps of marketing need a makeover: Here’s ours:

1. Pick it up online – you were browsing or ‘heard’ about it somehow

2. Play with it – check it out, examine it3. Pass it on – like it so tell your mates4. Purchase it – there and then, add to basket...

click, or go to shop / kick the tyres

Such interactions leave a trail of data. Digital data allows aggregation and subsequent segmentation. From this we create personalised messages.

Our content reflects customers’, communities’ and just lookers’ comments and activities. So now we can talk to them in ways that are more relevant to them. Invite their opinion, ask for suggestions, tempt them to do new things, try out different recipes and food ideas, express their wants or just tell you what they think. Become your advocates and ambassadors if you do this properly.

One of our largest clients is William Grant & Sons. We work on a number of their brands. The largest of which is Glenfiddich. So we would say this.

Most brands have heritage borne of years of being in business, too. Twinings was born in 1706. Lloyds Bank, 1765. Cadbury’s 1824. Jesse Boot launched his herbal medicine shop in Beeston in 1849. Fox’s Biscuits in 1853. Burberry in 1856. And just one of Unilever’s brands, Vaseline, is 140 years old. Rolls Royce, Cole-man’s, Hovis, Heinz, Warburtons, Campbell’s, Kellogg’s, Coca Cola, IBM (blah!) all of them have stories and more

3. PERSONALISATION AND THE 4Ps OF MARKETING

4. HERITAGE IS NARRATIVE stories to tell about their brands.

Consumers love stories. Good stories become a kind of ‘currency’. Especially for slightly more ‘cult’ brands. Consumers love joining in, sharing their own stories, spreading them round. If brands are good at creating content then digital media create the wider distributed presence that brands crave.

Made for sharing, we’d say. Like us!

This sort of content doesn’t have to be the result of lengthy planning, expensive production and hugely expensive TV spots: it needs to be smaller, faster and frequenter. But relevant, timely and topical, too. Customers really do love this so long as it’s ‘worth it’.

Platforms, channels, devices...we tell a brand’s story in so many different ways

Brands, it’s often claimed, should act like publishers. Well, maybe. But if the analogy suggests constantly shouting about yourself, we’d certainly disagree. And even if it means telling great stories, we’d agree…but only up to a point.

Everything in moderation, after all. Consumers, unless they’re watching House of Cards or Downton, can only take so much!

We may, as consumers, love stories. But not all the time! Just as we love telling stories. But not all the time. Our main preoccupation is getting on with our lives. Not hearing the 101 things we didn’t know about and can now do with loo rolls or ketchup.

Great content, as we define it, should be useful, useable and interesting. And, at times, entertaining. You will have your own criteria. Which we’d love to hear. But ours provide plenty of room in which to be creative while providing something valuable, memorable and of relevance to consumers.

And all the time encouraging and inviting them to share their comments and thoughts with us and each other. Because we never forget to listen.

So we never shout about how great Glenfiddich is. Instead we talk to and with our different communities about the topics around whisky which they enjoy and want to know more about. Taste, nose, texture, colour, quality, consist-ency, ageing, cask properties, water, territory, heritage, tradition, exclusivity, developments, availability. And we speak in their language. We change the conversations.

Amongst all the ‘magic’ of creativity we never forget the balancing factor of ‘logic’.

Our approach to the production of brand content – be it words, pictures, moving images and video – goes along these lines: 70:20:10

• 70% is solidly based on our clients’ core brand propositions and commercial objectives

• 20% is slightly more risqué, exploring new concepts and themes, testing response and moni-toring the impact on ROI

• 10% is about pushing the boundaries…as far as we can without getting too uncomfortable.

Whatever we do, the beauty of digital is that it’s immediate, infinitively flexible, responsive and trackable.

This is what we do. Always tailored, and always personalised. Across platforms, devices and channels. Across continents. And it works.

5. STAND UP TO STAND OUT AND STAND FOR SOMETHING!

AND FINALLY…

Don’t just join the conversation

CHANGE THE CONVERSATION

CHANGE THE CONVERSATION

We’d welcome a conversation with you.