Provokeap:“Brands Need To Move At The Speed Of Culture”

(MENAFN- PRovoke) SINGAPORE - Brands need to take an agile, integrated, social-first approach to leverage the growing power of creators, influencers and fandoms on social media, according to speakers at the PRovoke media Asia-Pacific summit.

Ogilvy PR's Anggie Aprillia, director of social and influence marketing for the ASEAN and South Pacific region, and APAC head of influence James Baldwin, outlined the key elements of what it means to be“social-first” in a presentation at the event.

Baldwin said one definition of social-first was leveraging the language, content and culture that exists on social platforms:“Brands need to keep up because culture moves fast. How we move at the speed of culture is an incredibly important part of brands connecting with their audience.”

He said that TikTok in particular had changed the social media game:“It's not about followers, they don't matter when content is good; if it's fit for platform it will reach the audience you're intending it to. Consumers are in the driving seat – they can see through fake news, they can see through sales content – so we need to earn their respect and attention. You can buy views but you can't buy trust; content needs to be right and relevant.”

Baldwin added that while“being in culture is the shortcut to being relevant as a brand”, the challenge is knowing when and how to respond. He cited the response from North Face where the outdoor clothing brand was called out by a TikToker who got soaked hiking in New Zealand in a supposedly waterproof jacket and whose video went viral, with more than 14m views. North Face's marketing team saw the video and reacted immediately by sending her in a private helicopter to the top of the mountain with a brand-new jacket.

“The brand rode that moment to showcase the relationship they had with consumers. Make sure can find space for your brand to play and have a voice – and create a structure around your marketing team that allows you to respond at the speed of culture.”

Baldwin also said that influencer and creator marketing could no longer be viewed as an optional bolt-on by marketing teams, or as“just for fun”:“Creators are now taking centre stage – these are the people who can create real relationships with brands. Audiences have little trust in brands that are trying to sell them something but they do trust real people.”

He referenced Ogilvy research showing spend on influencer and creator partnerships has increased three times the speed of advertising in the past year, because it leads to tangible return on that investment:“It's not just about vanity metrics that are easy to measure, it's about driving real ROI – and influencers are at the heart of that. Influencer commerce – or I-commerce – is relevant. There have been four million posts of the 'TikTok made me buy it' hashtag with 48 billion views, and we know that 47% of all influencer posts show visible ROI.”

As for the future of creator and influencer partnership, Baldwin said creator-branded product lines will be standard:“This is already happening in areas like beauty. The communities they speak to will buy anything they tell them to – they are invested and it's extreme fandom. Meaningful creator partnerships will be fundamental if you want to tap into culture first; creator commerce will be an integral part of marketing strategy”. He gave the example of caffeinated drinks brand Prime, now valued at $3 billion after a series of influencer partnerships gave its products cult status with teenagers.

Baldwin also highlighted the importance of brands seeing their own employees as influencers and creators:“LinkedIn's B2B Institute found that the collective size of employees' networks is on average 10 times larger than brand audience alone. If you're not working with employees to create content and tapping into their networks you're missing out on a massive audience. Marketing teams need to learn how to leverage this.

He said“individualism is back” after brands insisting on one tone of voice for many years:“This creates androgyny; a lot of brands sound the same and it's very safe. When you integrate employee voices you integrate their individual tone of voice and their ability to tap into different communities in a different way from the brand tone of voice,” particularly as data showed 53% of consumers see employees as the most credible source of info about a company, content reaches a 561% bigger audience when it is shared from an employee, and engagement doubles.

“Inspire employees to care about your business and inject creativity into the way they talk about your business. Create a programme that educates them and helps them create social media content to ensure your brand shows up in a great way.”

Aprillia said a social-first campaign approach also had to include“something for people to talk about, and something for people to do and create”.“It's not just about likes and comments – we need them to take action, to buy. And we need to have plenty for people to actually see,” she said.“The best social media campaign is not on social media – it's actually an amazing partnership that people will talk about on social, screenshot and post. Don't rely on static posts, do something for people to talk about.”

She added that brands and their comms teams and agencies needed to understand the true breadth of social media to find“fandoms” where they were – not necessary on the biggest social media platforms:“People are asking for reviews on Reddit and doing livestreams on Twitch.”

In a panel discussion around these ideas, Unilever's Louis Peireck, senior global brand director for the Vaseline brand, talked about the Cannes Lions Grand Prix and multiple SABRE-winning Pro Derma Transition Body Lotion campaign. This started as an idea from the Ogilvy team to create a new product for transwomen struggling with hormone-related skin changes.

“When the agency brought the idea to our team, it was a perfect fit with our brand purpose,” said Peireck.“We knew very little about the needs of transgender consumers so we had to learn, and the next step was to truly co-create this product with them. It was a two-year process with the best of Unilever scientists, and we came up with a product that was social by design and was the first skincare product ever for transgender women.

“The launch was so natural and easy because we had involved the community. As social media has changed, this is a prime example of how to innovate and involve a community from day zero.”

In terms of getting the balance between short-term and long-term gains, Peireck added:“We're moving away from campaigns to building worlds. We see the role of our brand in culture as a world we're building. If you are building a world unintentionally, you're doing short-term things all over the place. If you are consciously building this world, every short-term effort is building toward this long term, distinctive brand world.”

A second case study to illustrate how brands can respond to a more integrated social media approach that doesn't rely on static social content and reaches“extreme fandoms” was the Changi Airport 'beJEWELed' campaign, which won four Asia-Pacific SABRE awards . This marked the Singapore leg of Taylor Swift's Eras Tour with a fan singalong in the airport's 'Jewel' area, which features an indoor forest.

Changi Airport Group SVP of marketing and corporate communications Ivan Tan said:“We couldn't afford to be an official sponsor of the Eras Tour so we had the challenge of how to tap into this cultural moment. Singapore had cornered the Asia Pacific market and had six shows, and we were the gateway for all the Swifties coming to Singapore and wanted them to experience a bit of Changi magic.”

Tan said he had spent“a lot of time” speaking to the airport's legal team.“In all our materials, we had to be very clear this was not a Taylor Swift event, but our takeaway from all the earned coverage was that we managed to pull it off. A social media event is not just on social – you need to take it out into the real world where people are talking about it. The response was phenomenal.”

Ogilvy PR Asia president Emily Poon concluded the session by responding to the question of how many brands were ready to move quickly to become part of culture in a credible way.

“It really needs a client that is risk-taking enough and believes in the idea, to fight legal, compliance and operations and all the hurdles and obstacles that come up. There is a lot of appetite, but only some clients move from PowerPoint presentations to reality,” she said.

“It's a matter of being fearless – and being more comfortable with being uncomfortable. IT's always uncomfortable to do great work, to challenge, and to find solutions together when it gets tough. I'm confident, though, in our PR and comms community's ability to be agile, to think about different stakeholders, to scenario plan, and with our proximity to news cycles and cultural trends. The recipe for success is all there, it just requires a mindset shift.”

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