The second day of Ad Summit Pilipinas 2018 revealed more ROIs that aim to inspire and empower advertisers and marketers to create ad and marketing campaigns that move people.
Katryna Mojica, chief executive officer of Ogilvy and Mather Hong Kong, started the day with a talk on “Return on Initiative,” by looking into the intricacies of agency leadership in varied cultural settings.
She talked about her experiences working—from the Philippines to Vietnam, Indonesia, and currently Hong Kong—and her learnings about working in culturally diverse environments along the way.
“I always feel that leadership in an organization is creating an environment where people can do their best work,” she said.
As a global Pinoy boss, Mojica also talked about Filipinos’ intuitive capacity for adaptability, which she described as both strength and weakness, in the sense that this could prevent Filipinos from speaking up and engaging in constructive dialogue.
“Return on Initiative is about maximizing Filipino talent,” she said. But Mojica used the talk as an opportunity to talk about the position of Filipinos in the industry.
She urged people to get these dialogues going, to start creating an environment where Filipinos could strike a harmonious balance between “our ability to adapt and empathize with others” with the courage to speak up and clearly communicate both agreement and disagreement in the workplace, and to come up with a healthy friction that would help everyone’s talents to flourish.
“Let’s build a tolerance for dissonance, let’s build an appetite for disruption,” she said.
For his part, Josy Paul, chairman and chief creative officer of BBDO India, gave a moving discussion on “Return on Inspiration.” He said, “Don’t create ads, create acts.”
In his talk, he shared his unique viewpoint on advertising, which treated campaigns as less of parading the values of the brand, and more of using the brand message as a platform to incite action and spark movements.
Through advertising movements such as Ariel’s #ShareTheLoad and Whisper’s Touch the Pickle, Paul showed how far simple messages and calls to action could go in terms of initiating people into important conversation.
Through memorable passages such as “Content is King, Context is King Kong”, Paul emphasized the importance of recognizing the issue; the problem; and the cause that needs to be communicated, to see what’s happening in society in order to respond in a way that makes things a little better, maybe not by changing the situation, but getting people to talk and later, create action on it.
“Our return is response from a society that is waiting for things to happen,” he said.
In measuring the impact of these ads, third speaker digital guru, Girish Menon, underscored how data and measurement can become keys to effective digital marketing, because as, he said, “Digital advertising is plagued by risk, fraud, and lack of transparency… And around the world, advertisers are waking up.”
But he reiterated that digital is still the most measurable medium in advertising.
To maximize its impact, Menon, who is currently the vice president for client development for m[PLATFORM] APAC, said, “Improved use of data and measurement will help digital marketing deliver more impact… buy audiences and not websites; focus on brand health, engagement, and conversion metrics, rather than cheap clicks and impressions; to invest in independent ad serving and verification; and to develop a data-driven messaging strategy.”
Blockbuster Online Content
Francis Flores, the global brand chief marketing officer for Jollibee Foods Corporation, shared the stories behind their viral ad campaigns, stating that such is an example of Return on Intuition.
“Don’t be afraid to use your intuition. Your agency will love you for using your creative freedom,” he said.
Flores explained, “Intuition is having the confidence to make bold decisions without solely relying on market data.”
As for the secret to Jollibee’s blockbuster ads, “Powerful brand stories with powerful truths that are well told,” he shared.
By powerful truths, he meant powerful insights or the “hugot.” These powerful insights should be well told to ensure blockbuster viral campaigns that generate high brand buzz, he said.
Lastly, Wil Dasovich, vlogger/ YouTube content creator, talked about Return on Influence.
“I always wanted to be an entertainer, but I wanted value-added entertainment; I wanted entertainment that people could learn from,” he quipped.
Alongside fellow content creator Jako de Leon, Dasovich also talked about the combination of value, authenticity, and story-telling, which results in personal and organic stories that make audiences place their trust in an influencer.
Together with the Vlog Squad—consisting of Haley Dasovich, Alodia Gosiengfiao, Jako de Leon, Daniel Marsh, Bret Maverick, and Josh Yozura—Dasovich shared their motto as content creators: “We can rise together if we help each other.”