Bates 141 Asia Pacific CEO Digby Richards delivered the keynote at the 2009 Taipei International Commercial Film Festival – a top industry event organized by the prestigious ADM Magazine in Taiwan. The event theme was “Culture and the future of advertising”. Other speakers included the leadership from other international 4A agencies.
Digby’s keynote presentation is entitled “Move Me”. According to Digby, cultural currency for a brand is generated by getting “personal”. The more personally relevant brands can be with a message or a conversation, the more it will engage the audience, evoke an emotional response, and build the relationship – in other words, “if you move me, you connect with me and the conversation gets richer! And if you move me, I will move others!”
This is something that cannot be effectively driven from a global or regional hub. Most global ideas are being developed and driven from the center (e.g., New York or London) with validating involvement from the regions to disaster check against any cultural no-no’s and comprehension issues. This approach, Digby argued, is not effective because the more brands talk from a (cultural) distance, the less it will engage, let alone get noticed.
He called for the practice of ‘Move Me’ globalization, where a global brand fixes on a global tone or personality, with some brand ID cues and then leaves its key countries and regions to add a layer of interpretation and connection to their local market context. The likes of Virgin and Sony are good examples of this approach.
The digital age has made marketing easier, less expensive to make and far less costly to distribute. This is helping big brands and smaller local brands, interact and engage more often, with a pipeline of data to help convert shoppers to buyers.
Added Digby, “and we all know that buyers do not exist at a global or regional level, they come from the streets in the countries.”
In the keynote, Digby shares global, Asian and local case studies including Fiat, Sony and Virgin Mobile. The entire presentation can be downloaded here.