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Why Marketing Leaders Should Question the Loyalty They Expect Of Customers · The Lead Creative

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: How close are you to the algorithm?
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: How differentiated are you?
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: And and every single client's aware of this.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: Their budgets are not increasing.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: There is more pressure on them to even invest in retail media spaces.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_02: Welcome to the Lead Creative.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_02: For the second year in a row, we are at the NetBank IMC conference to find out what shifts marketers are experiencing from AI to digital marketing to how the consumer is interacting and engaging with brands in times of really, really great constraints.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_02: This conversation is brought to you in collaboration with our production partners, Swetomedia, as well as Africa's largest B Cop certified marketing agency, Roger Wilkins.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_02: Enjoy the conversation.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_02: So a CMO that I spoke to recently said they were sitting at a in a creative review and she very quickly realized that it was death by committee for the agency.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_02: And of course, we keep hearing time and time again that work is becoming more bland.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_02: So those kinds of client committees, if you could call them that, kind of lead to work, lead to work that satisfies everyone but doesn't resonate with anyone in the you know in SP.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_02: Very unsatisfying in a way, right?
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_02: So from a leader's perspective, how do you have those difficult conversations with clients where you kind of ask them to have less people in the room so that the work has teeth, the work isn't blend, which is what they pay us for as agencies?
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: So I think marketing today really does require quite a shift.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um I think marketers are today expected to have way more skills than they had in the past.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: It's become way more complex.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: And risk and compliance and social media and all of those things have made them less brave, right?
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: So I think in the new world, the 100% algorithmic world, our challenge is going to be dealing with parity of outcomes or outputs, scale, mass outputs versus quality, differentiation.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: So in that AI slop, and there's a place for that, but in that AI slop, you could quite easily look very same as one of your competitors.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: And if you change the colour of some brands' logos or their creative, they all look the same, they're all saying the same, there's no differentiation, there's no bravery around product innovation.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: You're right.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's we're in a bad place.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: The challenge we also are faced with is that when you're looking at the social media platforms, and that's why I think all creative people and all client people should be media people.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: They need to get closer to the algorithm to understand it.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: But in that world, the algorithm is stacked against a brand.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: They need you to spend more, they need you to produce more content, and they choke you, right?
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: So this is this is what we need to hate and what we need to make sure we can beat.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: So never mind just like in the boardroom, but just getting closer to the understanding that you have everything stacked against you to scale a great message, right?
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: So it's even more important to make sure that it's differentiated, it gets attention, um, and if your product is not differentiated, you need to actually go back to the drawing board.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I think this also speaks a lot to local RD.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: Like if you think about these big hair care brands or sanitary protection brands, they don't do any local RD, or very few of them do.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: They bring what they have and they sell what they have and not what we need.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: This is a massive this is how most brands work, let's be honest, right?
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: Trying to find a deep consumer insight, you know.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: So there needs to be quite a big mind shift around less is more and it needs to be very good.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: And to do that, we need bravery, we need faster decision making, smaller teams.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: Because also remember that when these signals come in from a data perspective, they're gonna come in in seconds.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: The content needs to be produced in seconds or the trend is gone.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: You've missed your moments.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: And it doesn't move at the same speed as client admin and POs.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: So the system ha there has to be a a way more autonomous system based on very f uh on a on a few very simple principles that will drive a standout piece of communication.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I think you'll need less people in that room, as you quite rightly say, because technology will remove um a number of the challenges around compliance, is it uh safe, is it you know, whatever, that you can automate.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: So having someone in the room that is braver is and if and markets are gonna have to look through their teams.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: And they're gonna have to say, right, who can we automate out of this team?
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: Who really brings a different perspective, who can move at the speed of of culture and trends, and then who's brave enough to put a rubber stamp on it?
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_02: From an agency's perspective, how do you approach that conversation?
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_02: Are you able to to say yeah?
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, and I think with the trends around 100% algorithmic by 2030, that's what a what what that's what we're looking at inside our own business.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: How close are you to the algorithm?
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: How differentiated are you?
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um and and every single client's aware of this.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: They their budgets are not increasing.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: They there is there is more pressure on them to even invest in retail meter spaces.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: The kind of elastic budget is increasing.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: So they have to streamline what they do.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_02: You mention AI and AI slop.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_02: So of course, AI makes creative execution quicker, but it also takes you to average far quicker than anything else, right?
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, some of those like weird, very smart fantasy videos that are popping up on TikTok with series, I must say they're pretty damn late, like draw you in.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_02: So are you so you so you're finding that actually it's evolved quite a bit?
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's getting really good.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: And we just launched a product called the Culture Index, which identifies conversational trends within seconds and can convert that into campaigns.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I think the more signals you have about your consumer, the better the you everything runs on data.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: AR runs on data, right?
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: So if you have crappy data, you will have a really bad output.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: So it's really important to make sure that your data spine is correct, your signals can be delivered correctly, and that the the output has is aligned to an incredible design system.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: And this is where I think design's gonna play a big role in the future.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: Because it's gonna come back to, you know, how do I design a system that can scale with speed and still remain relevant, interesting, differentiated, how adaptable is it?
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um so I think design's gonna have or design system thinking is gonna have a another heyday for sure.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_02: So there's also something else that is happening quite a lot, and we talk about it about in relation to brands, and this is this idea of loyalty, loyalty to brands, and it's as though brands expect people to be loyal to them, while in most instances brands aren't loyal, or at least people feel as though brands are loyal to them.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_02: They're shrinking pack sizes, when pressure comes, prices rise, all of these things that people perceive as a brand not being loyal to them.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_02: How should a brand communicate within these constraints to ensure that it shows people that there is a certain amount of loyalty, that it didn't abandon that relationship with the consumer first before the consumer kind of walks out of the door?
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: We just spoke about the RD locally, right?
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: So you're trying to sell me what you have, not what I need.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: So I'll give you an example.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: So I drove um a very fast, uh, my children are growing up, very small, two-seater, fast sports car.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: And with the increase in crime, I decided I'm selling this car and I'm going to get a reliable four by four, four puddles, etc.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: So I went into a German manufacturer and I said, I would like to test drive this car.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: Bearing in mind I've been driving a sports car, I want something fast as well as uh safe.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um and they said, sorry, you can't test drive that car, we don't keep them in stock.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: So I was like, ah, so you're expecting me to make a massive investment untested.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: First problem.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: Second problem, I know more about the car than the person selling it.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: Because I've done my homework.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: Then they offered me to drive a much lower down car and try and sell me a much lower down car because that's the kind of car a woman should drive.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_02: Whoa.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: Then I say to them, oh, and if I want a colour screen, oh no, that's the extra 40,000 rand.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, and what about the telephone charger?
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: No, that's an extra 12,000 rand.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I need a sunroof.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I need a tow bar.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I, you know.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: I sat in the car and I thought to myself, I'm being ripped off.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: Got in my car, drove down the road to a Chinese car manufacturer, got in the car, everything is standard, a million kilometre of warranty, a third of the price.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: Same outcome.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: My friends laughed.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: They were like, I can't believe you drive a J Coup.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: The Uber driver laughs when he comes to my house to pay to me for the airport.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: I said, wait, you'll be driving a Chinese car soon.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: And this is the reality.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: You at you try your hardest to remain loyal.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: But at some point, you just reach a level of frustration with the brand and you move on.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: And that tolerance level, that tolerance level has uh diminished.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_02: So with you, it wasn't price.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_02: And sometimes the price conversation kind of comes in when, especially when referring to Asian cars, right?
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_02: Or cars from the Asian markets.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_02: It's so in this instance, it isn't price.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_02: And you're also saying it's not necessarily a loyalty thing.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_02: So what was the driver?
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_02: What is this driver that brands are probably not seeing that their customer walking into that showroom wants?
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: Don't make it so hard for me.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: What's why must there be so many barriers to your brand?
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: And you I mean, even recently you've seen massive pushback on the likes of Chanel and Hermes, where people have to make an appointment and you know, and they'll decide whether you can buy one of their handbags.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: But at some point, even really wealthy people are gonna go, no, bugger this.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: This is way too much effort.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: I have to jump through hoops, you know, backflips.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: So I think it becomes a value proposition.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: So like you're questioning, you start questioning, you know, everything, and and it's based on your competitor set, right?
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: So there were no competitors that could compete.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: Now suddenly there are people who can compete with you at a third of the price.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: So now it starts becoming an interesting value proposition.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: So if you've bought a car at that price and you now need to downgrade your price to compete, what about the people that have already purchased that car at that price?
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: Now you're gonna annoy all those customers.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: So it's a very tricky position.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: And let's be honest, most luxury brands have massive margins.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: So it's always the kinds of it in the end of the day, as more brands enter a market, your competition changes and essentially the value proposition changes for the whole market.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're not if you're not understanding your consumer properly and where they're at, I mean most cars in South Africa sold below the six hundred thousand mark.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: So that's where the competition happens.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um but if you can offer an Audi at a at a at a six hundred thousand Rand price point, what are people gonna go for?
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: They'll still want the Audi.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: That would still have been their first choice.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_00: But at some point you just feel ripped off.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_02: This is true.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_02: Now coming back to the theme of this year's NetBank IMC conference, which is about the shift, what's the most important shift that you're navigating in your work right now, and how will it shape how brands build relevance over the next five years?
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: The speed at which things move in a creative or advertising business, it's too slow.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's way too slow.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: And uh if you think about a creator, you can generate content.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: You're the client service person, the traffic person, the creative person, the production person, and you have your own following already.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_02: The democratization of creativity has become much more than it ever.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: So our competitors are looking very different to the competitors we had five years ago.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: So I think it's it's more the uncertainty, and in uncertain times what happens is people shut down, they move or reassess the the industry.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: I think we just have to be more ambitious for ourselves.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I think we need to drive what sits at the core of our business, which is innovation.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: We approach every problem with innovation, we need to turn that inwards a little bit.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um I would say the big the biggest challenge is the democratization of creative.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_00: And if you think of if you were a creative person growing up, your parents would say, Oh, advertising.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_01: What the hell?
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_00: Are you mad?
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, you can do it for a little bit, but then grow up and do something proper.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: When I sold my second business, my father said, Ah, actually, this sounds like a proper business.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: So I think I think that has changed.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_00: People see creativity as a as a a way to um enrich their lives and and drive a future, and that is not purely focused on a creative agency anymore, which used to be the only real outlet other than pure play creativity, and most artists are are poor.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_02: So, Don, we ask our guests to leave a question for our next guest.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_02: And uh our previous guest that's always the question.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_02: Our previous guest was uh Dr.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_02: Tebe Ikalafeng, the chairman of uh Brand Africa.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_02: And the sad question that he left for you was with AI and technology developing so rapidly, when should he come to the funeral of your agency?
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly what I said to you.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: My agency is not going to die.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: No, we have too many um entrepreneurs and investors in this region because we're a a group of entrepreneurs across the 11 owned markets on another 40 markets.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_00: So it's it's it's their life.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: And we will adapt as fast as we need to.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: I think if we don't, as I said, if we don't understand the algorithm, we don't understand our role and the democratization of creativity and what our role is going to be in future, there will be funerals.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: There's no doubt.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: I have no doubt of that.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_00: But is Densy gonna be one of those?
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: Not if I can help it.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you so much.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_02: It's now your turn to leave a question for our next guest by passing the mic to them through a question about creativity, marketing, the industry, and sometimes life.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_00: Who is my next guest, your next guest?
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not sure yet.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, what the next means I can't be that mean.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um, okay.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: So my question would be if you're a marketer, how do you reassess your brand's ambition?
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_00: Is it big enough to be a global innovation powerhouse or to drive a global brand scale it outside of Africa?
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_00: So how are you gonna do that?
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: How do you get your team to do that?
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_00: And then how do you have a tough conversation around automation in your own team?
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_00: How do you remove the people in the room that actually slow things down instead of speeding things up?
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_00: And how do you remove friction?
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_00: And that would be my question to Mark.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_02: Don, thank you so much for joining us.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_02: So much insight in there, and there's a lot that both marketers and the creative industry will take away from that.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_02: And I think for me it's or run away.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_02: Run away after answering, hopefully.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_02: Uh but I think for me the thing that I take away is sure, we're creating, we are creative, we're making and doing all these things, but are we moving fast enough?
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_02: No.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_02: Of the time.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_02: And that's kind of the thing that I take away.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: No one is coming to save us.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_02: This is true.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you so much for joining us.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's a lovely meeting you.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_02: This is the Lead Creative.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_02: Like and subscribe.