A celebration of Asian success, and rightfully so, was what Philippine Marketing Association pulled off at the 1st World Marketing Conference and Trade Exhibition at SMX Convention Center last June 19 to 20, an event for which the region’s brand builders will be grateful for a long time.
Beyond toasting
Presentation after presentation paraded global Asian brands from
That was just Day 1 for you. The second and final day asked the audience to brace itself for the inevitable Marketing 2.0. Following a stream of caveats, forewarnings and reality checks, the crushing consensus from experts and trendspotters, resonating louder than the event’s symbolic gong could ever herald, was: Dramatic change is coming and will uproot much of the marketing landscape. From every Day 2 speaker’s account, the new rules of the marketing game have become far more complex than before. FMCG experts schooled in promoting products and creating emotional experiences may find it right up their alley, but wait till the other disrupting factors start to weigh in.
While technology will be a driving factor, ironically those who swiftly crown the consumer as king and leverage such commonplace phenomena as “word of mouth” and “authenticity” will see their messages float above the New Media clutter.
Leading marketers acknowledged this. Globe Telecom CEO Gerry Ablaza said the Internet “has made consumers more savvy and discriminating; it has given them an unprecedented say in how products are created and delivered.” Ablaza also quoted from an IBM study on how “viral marketing can change perception in a heartbeat.”
Yahoo Philippines GM Jojo Añonuevo confirmed this online pervasiveness, startling the audience with his company’s surveys that among home surfers, 81 percent accessed the Internet from the bedroom, 51 percent from the kitchen, and 21 percent from the bathroom! He also mentioned how on YouTube, the videos of Dell computers with exploding CPUs nearly ruined the brand in China, while the Obama Girl music video’s 7.6 million hits may have turned the tide of the current US presidential race.
Consumers have become so empowered by technology that, according to TNS-Hong Kong’s Client Service Director Stephen Yap, they now drive their own messages through 1.4 million blogs posted worldwide everyday. He said the omnipresent mobile devices (4 billion by 2009) are leapfrogging other appliances as the “device of choice” for consumers to interact with content, brand, and experience.
“Marketing has become all about starting or joining a conversation—and how to make your product/service the buzz of discussion forums running on almost every topic or brand under the sun,”
Marketers need not worry about impact and clutter as much as creating connection and engagement, said Lyn Rogers, Asia Pacific regional director of Carat Media. In moving from “high-waste” mass marketing to near perfect 1-to-1 relevance in their messages, marketers nevertheless must provide new metrics that can support ROI, she added.
“It’s like going out on a date: you don’t want just anybody coming up to you in a bar; you would rather have someone to have engaging, interactive, two-way conversation with.”
Additionally, she stressed that all aspects of marketing communications today should drive the audience to visit a brand’s website.
Web 2.0 would have profound implications, said Synovate’s Global Media Head Steve Garton, who boldly predicted that in five years, the best way to reach a consumer audience would be through online social networks. Consumer 2.0, in which the consumer is much in control in a saturated media world, has given Internet TV and social networks top-of-mind attention for media planners, he added.
“We’ve gone from primetime to my time, mainstream to my stream.”
Peter Pezaris, founder of popular site Multiply, asserted the “closer consumer connection” that can be created through social networking. Targeting ads via social networks, he said, will hit very specific demographics. Furthermore, “it gets a pass-along impression delivered to audience of trusted friends and family, creating momentum effect and raising ROI.”
Synovate’s Garton admitted how it had become “enormously hard” to keep up with changes in consumer behavior. “The only certain implications to expect are: Marcomm is in radical transformation; the consumer is at the heart of all we do; relationships with customers are key; ads will be more and more performance-based; and traditional ads will be overwhelmed by digitally driven challenges.”
