Changing The Process: Greg Andersen of BBH

The following are on-the-fly notes from the Consumer Engagement conference: Greg Andersen, Head of Engagement Planning, BBH:

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Digital media will all become mainstream, but all the debates about clutter, fragmentation, ROI, etc. will be mute if we can’t harness people’s attention.

Interruption to engagement…doesn’t work anymore. We have to earn attention. If we get people to want to consumer marketing, then they’ll want to consumer our brand and learn about our products. This is why BBH introduced Engagement Planning as a fundamental discipline.

Old versus new media. Channels won’t become irrelevant as long as content becomes relevant. People don’t engage with media, they engage with content. We think about brands as content providers. To be efficient in this environment, brands need to think about aggregating audiences on their own, versus buying them.

In a fragmented world of limitless choice, only the most original, imaginative and visible content will have any chance of commercial success.

Invert ratio: Instead of more on media and less on content, what about more on content and less on media? Example: Smirnoff Tea Party video [white guys doing hiphop video].

Millward Brown study on DVR Households: Best creative is 30X more likely to be stopped and watched than the worst. The worst tad is 5.5X more likely to be fast forwarded than the best.

We’re living in an increasingly screen-based society. More televisions now in homes versus people. Screens in homes, cars, stores. Even print is being delivered via screens now.

Communications is an idea-based discipline. Example: Axe Dry video [Game killers.] The brand had success because Axe thinks of itself as an entertainment brand. People wanted to consume the marketing. That to us is engagement.

What is the big idea? What is the platform? What is the narrative that can travel across platforms?

Changing the process can be very difficult. How do we engage ideas that are rich in content and experience – on an ongoing basis?

Four disciplines:

1. Account management
2. Creative
3. Account planning
4. Engagement planning

Collaboration is key, inside the agency and out. Changing the process freaks people out.

1. Why the need for constant evolution?
2. What is this Engagement Planning thing?
3. …and what’s this new way of working?
4. How might I need to approach things differently?

Rigor around content and channel choice. Get away from generalizations like objective setting and get down to specific tasks. What specifically is the role of communications? The more specific, the better we can get to measurement.

Ideas get better when you have a lot of people collaborating from the beginning with a sense of ownership.