CANNES \u2013 How does a huge marketer like Nissan convince its procurement people to explore new, non-traditional ways of reaching audiences and measuring those efforts? \u201cWe have this kind of internal joke that right now we have more pilots than American Airlines,\u201d is how Allyson Witherspoon, Nissan\u2019s GM for Global Brand Engagement, explained it.<\/p>\n
At the recent Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, Witherspoon was one of four panelists who discussed new video ad formats and how creative and media agency professionals are working more closely together to build stories relevant to specific audiences. It was one of several discussions at Cannes<\/a> under the auspices of the FreeWheel Forum on the Future of Television.<\/p>\n Moderator Matt Spiegel of MediaLink kicked things off by asking \u201cHow much more will you pay for a non-standard ad?\u201d<\/p>\n Responded true[X] President Pooja Midha, \u201cIt\u2019s how much more will you pay for impact. Non-standard, who cares?\u201d<\/p>\n That\u2019s where things got complicated, as Witherspoon explained. \u201cIt\u2019s difficult, because sometimes you don\u2019t always know what the outcome is going to be. Within this campaign or within each kind of percentage of always on, what amount of that is going to be something that you\u2019re going to be testing.\u201d<\/p>\n Which is where Nissan\u2019s \u201cpilots\u201d come in and how testing is needed to help change the thinking within procurement. \u201cOnce you take the results from that, how do you actually start to scale that? I think that\u2019s when you can start to advance the financial discussion, once you\u2019re able to show that impact across, in the case of Nissan, all of our models, across all of our markets, that\u2019s a very powerful discussion to have,\u201d said Witherspoon<\/a>.<\/p>\n Wavemaker\u2019s Amanda Richman said the test-and-learn approach also needs an activation plan. \u201cSo as you\u2019re presenting a learning road map, you actually can say, \u2018if this works we\u2019re going to scale immediately.\u2019 We\u2019re not going to wait and have another committee meeting, it\u2019s not going to be three months. Turn on a dime and then roll on to the next test.\u201d<\/p>\n Along the way, people on both the creative and media side need to come together more than ever, said John Osborn, CMO, OMD USA, because media plans traditionally have been built in a process wherein storytelling has been relegated to creative agencies.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s a gap in between, which is story building, and I think it\u2019s amazing what happens when you get tight teams sitting together, working together from the onset, as opposed to the traditional iterative process where sometimes media comes in late in the game,\u201d Osborn said.<\/p>\n He described the process with Nissan, TBWA and OMD<\/a> \u201cliterally welded together at the hip, working on which types of data will better inform the right kinds of storytelling.\u201d<\/p>\n true[X]<\/a> does real-time creative optimization for Nissan as it simultaneously measures real-time brand lift. \u201cWe launch with one version of an engagement, and as we see the data coming back we\u2019re able to actually build with Nissan and its agency a more elaborate version, or a version that lets you go deeper or let\u2019s us hone in on what we see really lifting,\u201d said Midha.<\/p>\n Spiegel<\/a> wanted to know whether creative personalization is right for all brands, particularly the biggest ones with the widest target audiences.<\/p>\n \u201cOne of the things we\u2019ve seen across the tens of thousands of engagements we\u2019ve built is that strong, persistent branding, even for very, very well advertised brands, is really important in actually driving results for them,\u201d Midha said.<\/p>\n