That feeling of Vuja De, plus agencies flying the CMO flag
In this outtake from the Weekend Mumbo, Damian Francis reflects on the biggest non-audio learnings from Mumbrella's Audioland event last week.
Last week featured our second conference of the year, Mumbrella Audioland. The Mumbrella team has written a number of stories that have come out of the conference, with more dropping today. But there were two points which were worth pulling out that didn’t necessarily relate solely to audio.
Do you ever get that feeling of Vuja De?
What is the first thing you say to any international colleagues, contacts or friends who ask whether they should visit Australia?
I think for most of us, the words that just cascade from our mouths immediately are something around the lines of “Oh, yeah, you should definitely come, Australia is great.”
Then you start waxing lyrical about whichever city you are based in and the things they should do.
I imagine this is similar when someone, particularly someone you might not know overly well, asks you what you think of a client you’re working with. If you’re an agency, that is.
“Yeah, great brand. Great to work with. You should definitely try them out.”
But perhaps this shouldn’t be the automated response. Perhaps it should be more real.
Our international keynote for Mumbrella Audioland was the excellent Tom Beckman, global chief creative officer for Weber Shandwick. He would easily be within my top five best speakers at any Mumbrella event I’ve curated.
Beckman spoke about some amazing work the agency had done for Visit Sweden. So what do you think he said when I told him I was keen to visit Sweden and had only come as close as Copenhagen?
“Denmark is prettier. So is Norway,” he said, expression not flinching.
The thing is, there was no work on behalf of the Danish or Norwegian tourism boards that had been talked about in as high regard as ‘Spellbound by Sweden.”
What Beckman highlighted both to me, and then in his presentation, was the idea of Vuja De. Deja Vu in reverse. Experiencing something familiar as if it were strange and new.
Only by accepting where Sweden sat by comparison to its neighbours, and why, could he and the team critically look at the country and then think about it differently. That gave them the opportunity to offer up something strange and new using the familiar.
Sweden is filled with forests. But forests on their own aren’t particularly interesting. Everyone knows what a forest is like. But to take it, reinvent it, add to it, and then package it up again and serve up something completely different – that could make you visit Sweden. If you want to see what that looks like, go here.
“Her eyes borrowed from a deer” is such an amazing line. Scare people into going to Sweden? Why not? So the question is, how often are you hyper realistic about your brand or the brands you are working with, and how could you use that to your benefit?
In defence of the CMO
One of the key messages of the day came in the second last session. A panel including Dentsu Media ANZ CEO Danny Bass, among others, came together to discuss what media buyers wanted and thought of audio mediums.
Towards the end, Bass lamented the CMO role being increasingly detached from the boardroom and the spend decisions not being truly controlled by the marketing teams.
“Our job obviously is that we don’t want that,” he said. “We want to give marketers fire power into the boardroom to talk about how we drive growth through marketing.”
More details on that on Monday – it deserves a bigger piece as Bass had some fantastic insights. But for the here and now, it was great to hear a push from agencies to give marketers not just the firepower to gain results for their brand, but the firepower to gain results for their profession as well.
We’ve talked long and hard about the attempt to get more recognition for marketing at the top echelon of business, but it will take more than just marketers to make it happen.
There are obvious reasons why it is in agencies best interests to push the marketing profession as much as they can. But that doesn’t mean it’s been happening enough. The brand/agency relationship works well on a practical level, but it is great to hear it being talked about on a different level now.
Damian Francis is editorial director at Mumbrella.
Have your say