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Marketers must burst ‘bubble’ of personal taste and listen to audience, warns OMD strategy director

Marketers need to stop living in their “bubbles” and start listening to what people are saying on social, OMD’s content strategy director has warned.

katy-eng

Eng: “The little bubble that I live in is obviously not reality”

 

Speaking at Mumbrella’s Entertainment Marketing Summit on the ‘Harnessing the Power of Social’ panel, Katy Eng said the US Presidential election was a reminder to marketers of the need to think beyond what they know and listen to what people want.

“Social allows us to get a lot of feedback for the content we are putting out there,” Eng said.

“On my social channels never once did I hear a pro-Trump post, but obviously America speaks very differently and the little bubble that I live in is obviously not reality.”

Addressing a panel on the power of social, Eng warned that marketers are “missing a trick” by not looking beyond their own circles.

“If we continue to operate in the little bubble of what we think and what we believe without listening to what the people are saying – and they are saying it and being very honest on social – then we are missing a trick. And creative is missing it,” she said.

Eng added that “data and social listening helps to de-risk the creative process”.

Caroline Spencer, director of development at Fremantle Media Australia, also cited Trump’s astonishing victory as an illustration of how we can lose sight of what is happening in the world.

caroline-spencer

Spencer: “I have nothing to do with my audience [but] as a broad content supplier I need to be able to know what my audience is talking about”

“So many of the mainstream media were sitting in an echo chamber in social. They were re-endorsing each other’s views constantly and had no idea what was going on with the people who delivered Trump this win,” she said, before admitting that she too did not mix directly with her target audience.

“I have nothing to do with my audience [but] as a broad content supplier I need to be able to know what my audience is talking about without putting them in a focus group situation,” she said. “This is where this [social] comes into it, and it has become so important for us because it gives us an edge.”

Meanwhile, Spencer revealed how chatter on social channels had demonstrated the endless appeal of romance-based TV programs.

2016's finale of Ten’s The Bachelorette saw 972,000 tune in for the final decision down on the 1.52m for Sam Frost’s final choice.

Content similar to Ten’s The Bachelorette “has a long way to run”, according to Spencer

Such content has a long way to run, she said.

“If you had said 10 years ago that every free-to-air schedule was going to be littered with not just one, not just two, but sometimes three relationship, love or dating shows, I probably would have laughed you out of the room,” she said.  

“However, if you had looked at social you would see that romance is massive. There is a long road to travel down with this. The key is how are we going to get into it differently.”

Later, Twitter and agency Jaden Social spoke of their collaboration in a campaign to promote a new album from Aussie singer Reece Mastin, who has been absent from the music scene for three years.

Sager: Twitter global music chair

Sager: Twitter global music chair

Jennie Sager, global chair of music and head of music and entertainment at Twitter, said such partnerships can not only help musicians and entertainers engage with audiences but allow them to do so at minimal cost.

“That’s where I think it is different with social media,” Sager said. “If you think about traditional media, buying ad time on TV…would have cost millions of dollars. We were able to get this happening for Reece for essentially nothing.”

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