The Sweet Shop’s Claire Davidson on day one of the Mena Cristal Summit in Lebanon

February 6 2014, 8:55 am | BY Lynchy | No Comments

Jeepers it’s cold here. Wowzer! Flying into Lebanon and leaving behind the high temperatures of Bangkok was a bit of a shock to the system yesterday. The Mena Cristal Summit for Media and Communications is held high up in the mountains of Mzarr Kfardebian, above Beirut. There are 42 hills up here that extend across 80km and it’s the largest ski resort in the Middle East. Where better than this to hold an advertising festival I say! There’s not a lot of snow as yet, but everyone is predicting that to change during the festival. Regardless, I’m already best friends with the heater in my hotel room and don’t think I’ll be taking off my ultra warm puffer jacket any time soon.

This year marks the 9th Edition for the Cristal Lab Programme, and the theme for 2014 is “Where Innovation Meets Creativity”. The region’s leading creative and production communities have come together for three days of seminars and forums to celebrate and award the most innovative communications strategies, the finest digital trends, the most outstanding marketing and unsurpassed advertising.

I took in a couple of the conferences today. This year the festival ponders what has been affecting our industry and influencing its creative course most recently – new forms of product content distribution, mobility, digitialisation and real-time data processing and analysis.

First up was the Founder and CEO of the Cristal Festival Network, Christian Cappe, who firstly welcomed us all and then brought us a showcase of the best work from the Cristal Festival judged in December in Courchevel. What started as a French-focused festival in 2001 has shifted into a European focus, and ultimately now a global focus. And of course the Mena Cristals also launched during this illustrious and expanding journey.

Most of the campaigns highlighted by Cappe today relate to the theme and focus for our programme during the next few days. They included the best of the best in:

Client contact via Mobile Communication – Please the World, Issey Miyake from France.
Relationship with Youth Market – Skoda Hostel from Russia.
Best Use of Promo & Activation – Milka Last Square from France.

Mena 2.jpg Two years ago the festival introduced the Future Is Now competition, based on the fact that data and technology are, as we know all too well, changing our business at an alarmingly quick rate. These were awarded to projects that showcased a reinvention of the relationship between the consumer and the brand in their campaigns.

Best Use of Creative Technologies – Durexperiment Fundawear from Australia.
Best Use of Telecommunications and IT – Hipoglos’ Bluetooth Diaper Alert from Brazil.
Best Use of Social Media – Facebook 1914.

Seeing all of this work set a nice framework for the next speaker onto the podium to expand upon. Rami Saad, Managing Director, Digital of Starcom Mediavest Group brought us “The Rise of Data and Analytics in Marketing”. Rami warned us that he was a fast talker, and boy, was he correct. Here are some of the key points I was able to scribble down at breakneck speed.

So, analytics, where did all of this noise start? What can you control? In what context? And at what speed? (I’m writing, Rami, I’m writing) The history of analytics used to belong exclusively to the realm of the nerds. Today though it’s those who master the technology that hold the keys to a bright future. Hello Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page and Sergey Brin. For the first time ever the year’s number one job isn’t from the health care industry, it’s a tech job. And we all thought growing up that it might be in advertising one day…

Analytics are what is important to all brands right now, more than ever before. Consumers drive product purchasing on so many various and varied levels, and brands need to tap into all of this intel and evaluate the reasons why.

As an example, let’s look at ourselves for a moment. Buyers are truly becoming obsessed with self awareness. How far did I run yesterday? How many minutes did I sleep last night? How long did I brush my teeth for? How many calories did I eat today? There is an obsession for counting things. Companies can now tap into this to ‘help us’ and they are doing so successfully. Businesses such as Nest, Micoach, Sleeptracker, My Fitness Pal and even Bedpost absorb this data very quickly to help in the consumer’s ‘self improvement’. They have access to a single view of a customer, mobile analytics, in page analytics.

3 real things companies can do today to optimise digital spend based on meaningful metrics are:

Clearly understand how all media channels work together.
Correctly attribute ROI to different brand actions.
Build a data management platform.

Also remember to:

Express your desire to experiment explicitly.
Surround yourself with the right partners.
Market your lab stories.

Saad left us with the quote to remember ‘foregoing human intelligence technology is but a fancy calculator’.

Last up today was Frederic Bellier, Managing Director of Radium One. Bellier brought us “Time to Leverage Smart Marketing Data for Real-Time Media Performances”. He took us deeper into what Cappe and Saad had commenced with.

It is forecast that by 2018 digital media will be 100% programmatic.

Looking forward to that date, we also need to look back at the last three years of data driven marketing and see what we’ve learnt.

1st party data activation is everything.
Data and media should never be separated. Data is a commodity, media is the currency.
There is no business at scale for data alone.
The more systems, the least propriety, the least efficient.
Social media is not Facebook. Social media is copy and paste. (Sharegraph vs SocialGraph, Intent signal vs Vanity Signal)

What is making programmatic efficient is data + RTB (real time bidding). 1st Party Data is the audience consumer touch point. How do you use your data pools in audience segmentation matching to ensure that your data activation is reaching your target audience? You collect, that’s how. You collect campaign data, CRM data, site data, mobile data, social media data. Interconnection of systems is the key. Take a breath and stay with me. The integrated data and media technology is everything. That, my friends, is the way forward for brands to be successful with their customers in today’s world. Collect. Analyse. Build Upon. Phew.

It’s time now for Yahoo’s cocktail hour followed by Impact BBDO’s Opening Mena Cristal Dinner. See you all tomorrow.

Just one final note, Wikipedia tells me in Mzarr “along with traditional alpine skiing, people can practice ski-doo, night skiing, snow boarding. Entertainment such as ski shows and fashion shows, including G-string models, are organized to promote the resort.” Now if that’s not going to create abuzz at an advertising festival I don’t know what will.

Claire
Davidson, Executive Producer ASIA & MENA @ The SweetShop, reporting for Campaign Brief Asia at Mena Cristals 2014.