We all know everything you put on the web has the potential to reach billions.
So when an agency in, let’s say Belgium, does an online assignment for, let’s say Heineken, they could be reaching not only the population of Belgium (11 million) but people all over the world.
There are 2 problems with this: the first is that the message Heineken is sending to the people of Belgium may not be the message they wish to send the people in the UK or the US.
The second is that if the communication becomes popular all over the world the local agency and local marketers are not really rewarded for it.
Now we understand the importance of “one clear message”, but we do not really think the first is a big problem.
People on the internet do not receive communication in the same way as they do with, for instance, TV. It’s is not forced upon them.
They either receive it from friends or they have actively looked for it themselves.
And though the Belgium message may not be 100% in line with the US message (for instance the Belgium message might be “Brussels no 1 choice!” where the US message might be “Look cool while refreshing”) chances are small they would actually contradict each other.
The second problem, local agencies and local marketers not being rewarded for global success, is much more serious.
The best way of illustrating this, is by looking at a local web initiative that has become a global success.
One of our creative teams (at the time when we were the ECD’s at JWT Amsterdam) did a thing called “KitKat Jesus”.
Basically there had been a couple of Jesus shaped things in the news (like Jesus’ face in a tosti that was sold on ebay) which inspired the team to photo shop a Jesus shaped face in a broken KitKat bar.
They just emailed the picture to some blogs (not mentioning that it was from an ad agency of course) and things exploded from there.
Today it has over 90.000 Google results and it was printed in newspaper articles all over the world.
It was also spot on the brand’s “Have a break..theme. In fact, almost all bloggers and journalists mentioned the brand’s theme unprovoked.
But like we said, there are problems with this.
A problem could of course be that KitKat headquarters does not consider this good PR (because of religious feelings), but like we said, we consider this a minor problem.
The big problem is that things like this don’t happen often enough and that brands are wasting massive opportunities to reach millions of people at extremely low costs (the KitKat Jesus thing did not cost more than 2 hours pay for the creative team).
And the reason that they don’t happen enough is that it is just not appreciated enough.
Most ad agency account people don’t care because they don’t get paid for any success exceeding their home market and local marketers don’t think they will get a raise or a promotion for going the few extra thousands of miles (get it?).
In fact most of the times the only reason that things like these happen is because there are some creative teams and agencies wanting to make a name for themselves.
So what should global brands do?
In the first place they should create a system which encourages and rewards local marketers and agencies to create local online campaigns (or just fun stuff) that also benefit the brand on a global scale.
Then they should allocate budgets to make campaigns that become popular globally even more successful (for instance budget to create a follow up).
They should do this, and work hard at this until it comes natural to everyone working on their brand everywhere.
When they have achieved that, it may become time to look strictly at brand guidelines again.
Update: decided to give some more supporting evidence: this Dutch Heineken commercial was also meant as a local campaign. would be nice to see this kind of work more often.
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“Most ad agency account people don’t care because they don’t get paid for any success exceeding their home market and local marketers don’t think they will get a raise or a promotion for going the few extra thousands of miles (get it?).
ReplyDeleteIn fact most of the times the only reason that things like these happen is because there are some creative teams and agencies wanting to make a name for themselves.”
1. This comes to prove that YES, IT ALL COMES DOWN TO MONEY IN THE END! So the fuckin’ “bags of passion” all the agency people pretend to carry are a bucketful of shit.
2. This shows that YES, THERE ARE CHEAPER WAYS TO ACHIEVE FAME AS A CREATIVE besides ad awards, while also HELPING THE CLIENT instead of wasting their advertising budget on cosmic enormities that generate less press than a 7-year-old playing guitar in the bathroom. And this sends as back to conclusion no.1: no bags of passion involved in the process! Fuckin’ amateurs! :)
(Great post again!)
i really like this nico-anca dynamic. I get mentally stimulated by the post and i don't even have to formulate a response because Anca does it for me!
ReplyDeleteyes nico, it CAN pose a problem but the the things that go globally viral tend to be more "human" than regional/national. the heineken example is a great example of a classic beer ad scenario that hit a nerve with both genders. a lot of beer ads ignore that women exist. the kitkat jesus example is interesting. would never run here in holy USA. but it's funny. and so has run here virally. but it selects its own audience. bible thumpers aren't going to get it. so they can't get angry about it!