Adtech Day 1: Live blog – Unilever’s Babs Rangaiah & Jenny Williams
Welcome to Mumbrella’s live blog from Adtech Sydney.
8.54. The hall’s starting to fill. Here we go…
After a loud burst of Massive Attack or something suchlike chairman Jenny Williams takes the stage.
And we’re off. And we’re straight into the annual question. Will this be the year of mobile. It usually takes at least half an hour til somebody asks that.
Still on the intro blurb. You can follow the Twitter stream online apparently. Hashtag is atsyd.
9.06. Uh oh – Jenny’s just given out the log-in for the wifi, so expect it to go down any moment now.
9.07. In a triumph for print, Adtech is ditching its digital feedback system, and switching to good old paper. I knew this digital fad wouldn’t catch on.
9.08. Babs Rangaiah from Unilever is first keynote. We’re watching a South park video on life without the internet. “What did people do for news before the internet?”
Back to Babs. What are Unilever doing about it?
“We’re trying to live the space ourselves. We push our people to get a social media profile, do whatever our consumers are doing to understand how to go about marketing to them.”
“We give our marketers a digital IQ test.”
9.14 Oops. First visiting fireman. Babs, who’s global something or the other, wants to know if we use Hulu “or whatever the local version is here”?
Ten rules from consumers for Unilever online marketing:
1. “Be part of our world” “We don’t just live in Australia.” Apparently they’ve got mobile phones in India too.”
2. Penetrate our culture.Hire the Superbowl MVP (most valuable player, I think). “You know you’ve penetrated the culture when he then goes on Oprah and talks to Oprah about Dove.”
3. “Give us a voice and a role”.
(9.27. Yikes. Jenny Williams’ voice started coming out my computer, to the consternation of the person sitting next to me. She’s on the front page of the Adtech website and, it would appear, starts randomly speaking if you’re not careful. Adtech website duly closed.)
4. “Be authentic.” Or get punked
5. “Listen to us”. Take individual consumers as seriously as one analyst or an FT reporter.
6. “Create value.
7. “Don’t be corporate.” Uses the example of Coke’s initial hostility to Mentos video”s.
8. “Keep it simple.” Don’t ask consumers to jump through hoops to get a discount.
9. “Telling friends”. Plays BBH/ Axe video. “Cleans your balls”
10. Do good. “In today’s world, more than ever consumers know exactly what your company is about.”
9.44: Yet another social media stats video. “Australia is the social media capital of the world.”
“It’s our time now to rewrite the rules. What we do now could define our careers, but only if we make it so.”
And that’s it for Babs… and indeed for this session. Thanks for reading
Tim Burrowes
Linkedin
really clever and witty stuff from Axe.
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