Not the Usual Suspects

I’ve never been to The Cannes Ad Festival. Twenty years in the advertising business and I simply have never attended. I always sensed that media people were gate-crashing at a party for creatives and agency top management. Plus, I associate Cannes with a feeling of agency nostalgia, reminiscent of the last night of Studio 54, when the advertising old guard believed it ruled the world and excess was a part of the business. And while clients and media people are now welcome at Cannes, I still don’t feel that I’ve missed anything significant. However, Cannes Lions are important in the content of judging great examples of our craft.

At MEC, we have come to realize the importance of recognizing and celebrating the work at the heart of our global operation. MEC’s “Global Ideas” was established in 2003 to honor great work, but also to catalog the diversity of our work, to benchmark innovation, and to stimulate idea-creation from all of our markets. Ideas used to have a simple role in marketing, advertising and media: they either informed or entertained. Today’s advertisers, however, now look for ideas that will incite consumer engagement and change customer behavior. This is a far greater developmental challenge. With consumer empowerment increasingly driven by the digital world, brands must seek novel ways to authentically and effectively interact with consumers.

No matter how diverse a portfolio, good work can be separated from great work by recognizing the degree of “consumer centricity” involved. The work grounded in a clear consumer insight or a universal truth, builds a stronger, more active relationship between brand and consumer. And this is the essential cornerstone to building better business results.

A word of caution: advertising or media work that derives from a brilliant idea, but isn’t firmly grounded in a consumer insight will not provide real engagement or long-term benefit to the brand. Attention-getting advertising stunts have always been popular; however, this kind of short-term “fad” planning as an adjunct to a campaign has other detrimental effects today. It divides the objective of unified communications planning into separate shops or separate silos within an agency and can create two classes of planners.

Great ideas are grounded in consumer insights, but their discovery requires tremendous thought and rigorous work. However, once the insight is clear, the idea generation and campaign evaluation evolves easily and organically.

“So where do such great ideas come from? The short answer is anywhere. And, increasingly, they are not coming from the past centers of excellence.”

Here is a terrific example from India for Nivea Soft moisturizing cream where brand sales were increased by 45%. And this was achieved without spending millions of dollars on mass media advertising.

In India, Nivea is mainly known for its packaging as the cream in the “blue tin”. Given its long heritage in the market, Nivea is also associated with the older woman — “the cream my mum uses.” Into this climate, Nivea Soft launched a moisturizing cream for teens and young women aged 15 to 22 years old. These girls wish to look beautiful, but either do not have the parental consent or the money to pamper themselves with beauty products. Nivea Soft was positioned on the benefit of “moisturizing care for young skin.” The communications platform developed to address this consumer need was: “Stay Simply Beautiful.”

Since competing brands from Unilever, L’Oreal and Garnier outspent Nivea, the MEC team on the subcontinent needed to win that mind space outside of the conventional TV and Print. Both engagement and amplification were essential for success.
Local consumer research showed that young women in India were beginning to feel a sense of growing independence or a strong desire to effect some change or some difference in their lives. This generation wanted to be recognized and appreciated — not just by their family and friends, but by the larger world. They craved the spotlight and getting noticed.

This consumer insight provided Nivea Soft with an idea called, “I want my moment in the sunshine.” Here’s the scenario. Imagine that you, a 19-year-old young Indian woman, are at your favorite movie theater to catch the latest Bollywood film. It’s just a regular day out with friends.

Before the movie starts, a representative from Nivea approaches you and invites you to take part in a contest for the ‘Nivea Soft Stay Simply Beautiful Face’. All you have to do is have your interview taken on camera. You are both surprised and honored to be among the chosen few.

Just as you are expecting the film to start, an ad break is posted, and you suddenly see yourself on the big screen. You have been judged the most beautiful face of the day. Your interview is being screened and the full house is congratulating and cheering you. You are being noticed and appreciated, thanks to Nivea Soft.

This first leg of the program was conducted across the three key cities of Mumbai, Delhi, and Kolkatta at movie theatres, malls, and large offices complexes. To scale up to a national canvas, 100 Beautiful Faces from the on-ground engagement were selected for pictures and profiles to appear on www.nivea.in/ simplybeautiful for a nationwide poll.
The 100 contestants also had to create a viral campaign of their own and were encouraged to get the public to vote on-line or via text message for the All India “Simply Beautiful Face.” The girls worked with their friends and their newly acquired “fans” to get more public participation. Radio amplified the activity through contestant interviews and location updates during the ground activation.

Nearly 100,000 consumers visited the website and over 30,000 voted in the poll and sales soared. All of which emerged from an insight that enabled our local team to cut through a cluttered category, to stand out with a small budget, and to launch a new product into a competitive marketplace.

Markets like the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) countries, Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Asia are skipping over years of development to move straight into digital and electronic media centricity without any questions or issues. The drive and motivation of a generation of young entrepreneurs with “can-do” attitude certainly provides ample opportunity for the business of media strategy.

So, back to start. Where is the best work coming from? Who is having the best consumer insight and great ideas? Although every organization will be different, I would suggest that in today’s environment, the more global the base, the more consistent the agency. At MEC, we were delighted to see Canada, Singapore, Denmark, Mexico, Colombia, France and Germany getting top honors at
our internal recognition awards, along with the usual suspects of the UK and the USA.

Our top honor went to India for work so grounded in consumer insight that it provided such a natural execution. Also rewarding to see was the depth of new and different work in content, in digital, in corporate and social responsibility, in retail… from all four corners of the world.

A few years ago it seemed the best work came from only a few places. Now unexpected work from unexpected places is no longer unusual. Perhaps it is best said that brilliant work comes from brave clients and is generated by talented people — wherever they might now be in the world.

Andrew McLean can be reached at andrew.mclean@mecglobal.com

MEC India Nivea Team: 2007 Global Ideas Winner
Left to right: Bhanupratap Singh, Vasundhara Srinivasam, Priyam Goodluck, Manas Mishra, Naina Shewakramani, Prashant Bhojani, Payal Rohra, Ashok Iyer, Tony Pratap, Chetan Shetty