I recently spoke to a group of students studying art and design who were considering a career in advertising. There was a degree of hesitation from them about their chosen career, having seen so many headlines regarding the demise of our industry and in turn marketing. The digital revolution is sweeping all before it. Nothing will ever be the same. Forget everything you know, change is the only constant.
As I stood in front of these students I could see fear on their faces. Was their chosen career about to disappear before they had even graduated?
I proceeded to give a talk assuring them that far from disappearing, this was the most exciting time to be in our industry. Yes, of course we were being confronted by enormous change. Yes, the digital revolution was revolutionising the way we worked. Yes, many companies would disappear. But many new companies would be created.
OPPORTUNITY IS EXPANDING
'Creative destruction' is the breaking down of old habits and practices that in turn creates new and more powerful means of expression.
The walls have come down – innovation is magnified, old habits die. New avenues of expression appear. In all this, opportunity and creativity are expanding exponentially.
Technology has always been a spur to creativity. Mozart without a piano would have been somewhat limited as a composer. Rock 'n' roll without the electric guitar would have remained folk music. And no one would have booed Bob Dylan, calling him a Judas, when he went electric. Technology is the means by which creativity leaps forward. It empowers our thinking.
Just as technology has liberated creativity, so it is liberating marketing. It is offering brands the opportunity to occupy a greater sense of space in the consumer's mind. Surely that makes this the most exciting time to be in marketing as well as advertising?
But this will only be the case if brands realise the seismic shifts that are occurring in the marketplace.
The question for so many brands is to understand how they engage with their audience. And notice the word 'audience', not consumers. I purposely use this word because I want to encourage us all to think about the public in a different way. I think the word consumer is old fashioned. It assumes complacency and lethargy, a one-way, top-down means of communication from producer to buyer.
TOO MUCH CHOICE
In many ways I could argue the public don't need to consume more. They're over-consumed and underwhelmed. More often than not, choice confuses rather than clarifies.
Many years ago, in his book Future Shock, Alvin Toffler predicted that the proliferation of choice was becoming bewildering and confusing for consumers and leading to a sense of isolation. But Toffler's mistake was to think of people as consumers.
If, however, I change the word consumer to audience I begin to alter my terms of engagement. Audiences seek to be entertained, they engage, they interact, they show commitment, they enthuse and, if treated properly, return for more. What Toffler never appreciated was the extent of the public's desire for entertainment.
As marketing looks into the future and ponders the world that is opening up, it must realise that the entertainment industry and the fashion business are increasingly overlapping.
David Beckham, the footballer, is both a sportsman and a fashion leader. He has a contract with LA Galaxy and Armani. Jude Law is not only an international movie star, he is also a fashion icon, modelling for Dunhill. And the same is happening to products. The iPhone both entertains me and makes me look cool. It is a design must-have.
These two worlds are merging. For those who can remember Morecambe and Wise, we would all say they were hugely entertaining. None of us, under any circumstances, would say they were fashion icons.
Today we live in a different world. What a star wears to the Oscars garners almost as much attention as what they win. The red carpet does more than just guide them into the show, it is also a catwalk.
For brands this offers huge opportunities and signals enormous dangers. Increasingly we live in a world dominated by fashion – the food we eat, the places we go, the cars we drive. Our homes and our lives are being driven by fashion and style.
Performance, of course, is fundamentally important. Functionality is still at the heart of a product or service, but it also employs design and style to encourage its adoption. What technology originally provided was reliability. It made things work better.
It isn't so long ago that VW was running a powerful and memorable campaign around the thought, 'If only everything in life was as reliable as a Volkswagen'.
Eventually it had to stop running the campaign. As reliable as the VW was, it came about seventh in the annual reliability charts published by the AA. In other words, reliability was no longer an issue. And so it is with more and more I brands.
The issue is not 'does it work?', but 'what does it say about me?' It becomes a fashion statement.
As society becomes wealthier, we increasingly seek other things from the products we buy. None of this is new. For years we've looked to the emotional benefits a brand offers, wishing to signal to others our place in society. Traditionally this was described as status. The paper we read, the car we drove, the place we lived – all of these reflected our wealth, knowledge and background. Top people read The Times, the wealthy drove Bentleys and Rolls-Royces. Keeping up with the Jones's was crucial.
TODAY IS ABOUT STAYING AHEAD
But today that's changed. It's not about status. That's class-ridden and old-fashioned. It's about staying ahead. It's Vorsprung Durch Technik, Be original, Keep Walking. It's egalitarian and inclusive. Money isn't the only measure of your success. Wearing the right pair of jeans in the I right finish doesn't cost a I fortune. It does require an understanding of fashion.
When we launched Haagen-Dazs in the early 90s we were in the middle of a recession. Not, you could argue, the best of times to be launching a luxury ice-cream brand. Far from it.
We positioned the brand as a sensual pleasure. We didn't compare it to other ice creams. In fact, we hardly mentioned the word. But at £3 a pot it was not only accessible, it was the most stylish pleasure you could purchase. The brand took off. We weren't in the ice-cream business, we were in the sensual pleasure business.
Sadly, over time a succession of brand owners dragged it back to the sector. Now it's just one of a number of ice-creams fighting for attention in that supermarket chiller cabinet. Imagine where you could have taken that brand had they realised the potential of that positioning.
And of course this engagement with fashion sits alongside the desire to be entertained. So we see the two worlds of entertainment and fashion merging.
I could say the future is about fashiontainment – a terrible word, I know. But the problem for many brands is that they still talk of consumers and think of themselves in the conventional top-down world of marketing.
The new world of marketing is fashion driven, or style driven. Unlocking the sales potential of your communication is going to require different thinking. Increasingly people will want to buy the product that says the right thing about them.
Marketing directors will have to become more like style directors. They will be making decisions not based on consumer research but on instinct and gut feel.
ENTERTAINED AND ENGAGED
Audiences want to be entertained, engaged, amused, titillated. They want to interact, enthuse, be passionate. And they want it constantly and consistently new.
This new world will move too fast for the conventional marketing risk-assessment tools. Instead we will have to take our cues from the fashion world. We'll be flipping through the style pages as well as the business ones. So the lessons of the future won't come from the world of fmcg or the old brands. Research will move from being a measurement tool to one that is future facing.
When Orange launched itself as a network provider back in the mid-90s, it did so with a radical name. Orange. Why orange and not banana or strawberry? Why not a multitude of other names? Orange, after all, doesn't seem very advanced or technologically future facing.
But out of that decision and a brilliant line – 'the future's bright the future's Orange' – a hugely successful brand was built. One of its competitors at the time was called Cellnet – remember them? A dreary and predictable name. Well it rebranded and is now called O2.
And what has it done recently? It has branded the converted millennium dome as the O2, an entertainment venue that has almost certainly added value to the brand.
There is one other important point to remember when you're in the world of style and fashion. The value equation changes dramatically. Premium pricing becomes not only achievable but sustainable.
Anyone know the price difference between a Dyson and its nearest competitor? Well, here it is. The Dyson is roughly £199 and the Vax Turboforce upright is £99. That says it all, really.
I could define marketing as the anticipation and provision of consumer needs while adding value to the bottom line. I would add to that the need to also inspire and create demand.
To go back to my starting-point, this is the most exciting time to be in marketing. But my fear is whether we have the people capable of grabbing this opportunity. Digital technology and the relationships that brands can now build with their potential audiences are unprecedented, but only if employed with daring thinking.
ACCELERATED DESIRES
The value of a great idea hasn't changed. The opportunity to exploit it has. What it provides is speed and access. I can get more of what I want more easily. It has accelerated people's desires, not changed them.
Technology has liberated marketing from the conventional media patterns. It has created an environment in which brands can really develop their own agenda, where their creative and entrepreneurial skills can be competitively deployed against the brand's needs without having to even engage with conventional media.
This doesn't mean established media outlets are wrong, but they have to be employed in a more inventive way. Unless marketing directors rethink their audiences and redefine how they engage with them, opportunities will be wasted.
Brands should be viewed through a prism of style and substance. The world of fashion has understood how to live with those two needs. Marketing should be looking to how it manages this and can create continuing success.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sir John Hegarty is worldwide creative director, BBH.
Figure 1: Bob Dylan used technology to give folk music a new electric rock sound
Figure 2: The dull-sounding Cellnet relaunched as O2 and rebranded the Millennium Dome
Figure 3: Haagen-Dazs
Figure 4: The advert that launched a hugely successful brand, with a radical name