And The Winner Is: New Media

Michael Hedges June 28, 2010 Follow on Twitter

TV spots are “a constraint.” Radio advertising? Who cares? And print? Please! The advertising people swarmed into Cannes surrounded by their new best friends: the social media and smartphone people.

The ad campaigns and media luminaries getting all the attention at the 57th Cannes International Advertising Festival demonstrated a change – or two – over the last two years. Always seeking zeitgeist, the peers of selling through media, basking in the bright sun, beamed with delight. Ad spending will rise. Creativity rewarded. We haven’t seen that spirit since, well, we hardly remember.

When Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg took to the podium the packed hall chattered as the assembled multitudes Tweeted his and their every thought. “Everything,” he said, “will revolve around people and being social and facilitating is key. Everything touched by technology will go through a shift to be people-driven.”

The ad people named Zuckerberg their Media Person of the Year, who took a shot at rival Google saying it got its start “when I was in middle school.” Facebook has 500 million users worldwide and reaching a billion, he said, "is almost a guarantee.” What he needs is Russia, Japan, Korea and China.

Not all that long ago, WPP Chairman Martin Sorrell to the Cannes podium to declare Google a “frenemy.” WPP is the world’s largest ad agency holding company and media buyer. The ad people feared – and many still do – facing Google pitching their clients directly.   Almost all of Google’s revenue is from advertising and WPP is contributing about €700 million a year.

Debating social media’s role in the ad world with Unilever chief marketing officer Keith Weed, Sir Martin called Facebook, et.al the “modern form of letter writing.” He also suggested ad people shouldn’t “bastardize (social media) by making them financially-driven.” Facebook, said Weed, is "word of mouth on steroids".

Unilever, which sells everything from Dove soap and Knorr soup to Pepsodent toothpaste and Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, announced intentions to double new media spending. "I think you need to fish where the fish are," said Weed. The ad people awarded Unilever Advertiser of the Year.

Microsoft, for its part, made its pitch to the ad people without nuance. Its Window Phone 7 platform will be an “ad-serving machine.” It will enable “advertisers to connect with consumers over time,” said Microsoft General Manager for Strategy and Business Development Kostas Mallios in a video ad shot and distributed at Cannes.

Television remains the boss though numbers kicked around – unsourced and not verified – suggest there are 20% more “spots” on the Web than on TV. Opportunities on the Web are still very much top of mind. “By breaking the constraints of the 30 second format,” said TBWA / Paris CEO Guillaume Pannaud to Les Echos (June 25), “the internet offers us the time to tell stories and fit in more affinity.”

Saved for the last night at Cannes was the Grand Prix award for film, ads shot in the video format. The winner was a “classic TV commercial” said Ad Age (June 26): the humor-infused campaign for Old Spice called “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like." When the campaign produced by Wieden and Kennedy migrated to the Web it go more than 10 million page views in a matter of weeks.

The Titanium Lion, one of the biggest of the big awards, went to a campaign for US consumer electronics retailer Best Buy, created by Crispin Porter + Bogusky, called “Twelpforce.” The trick was Twitter. Best Buy organized techies – called Twelpforce - to answer customer questions via the social networking portal Twitter. The whole thing was promoted with ads.

Also stunning the Cannes juries was the Nike/Lifestrong “Chalkbot” campaign, winner of the Integrated Grand Prix and co-winner of the Cyber Grand Prix with DDB Stockholm’s “Fun Theory” campaign for Volkswagen.

Nike’s long time agency Wieden and Kennedy put cycling great Lance Armstrong together with a public service message about cancer survival. Tour de France fans will know the tradition of writing messages of encouragement to cyclists along the route in colorful chalk. Wieden and Kennedy created the Chalkbot, which created “chalkings” along the Tour de France route from messages received from social media platforms like Twitter and mobile SMS. The campaign never used paid ads. Nike has won the Cyber Grand Prix, the digital media award, more than any other advertiser.

The radio jury did not name a Grand Prix winner after a campaign for the Red Cross of Columbia was considered for the Grand Prix for Good category as a charitable campaign. “We couldn’t find anything that just took radio to the next level,” said jury president Paul Lavoie. A Gold Lion for radio went to Cultural Inglesa language school in Brazil, created by Lew’Lara Sao Paolo, for a digital trick, sending Brazilian-Portuguese subtitles of English language songs via radio sub-carrier data streams.

“Television and online spending will outpace other media as they lead with return on investment metrics,” said GroupM chief investment officer Rino Scanzoni as the media buyer, part of WPP, released revised ad spending forecasts (June 24). Global spending, divines GroupM, will rise 4.5% in 2011 to €365 billion. Ad spending in Western Europe could grow 2.1% this year over 2009 and another 2.3% in 2011.  For Central and Eastern Europe the predictions are even bigger: 6.5% growth this year and 10.6% in 2011. One-third of new ad spending will come from China. US ad spending will continue to slide 1.3%.

Parsing the results and chatter from Cannes it is fairly clear the ad people see a future. Otherwise, spending forecasts would not be so positive. New media may not be the only thing but it’s the next best bet. Much of that growth will come quickly as Brazil, Russia, India, Indonesia and China come online, literally and figuratively. At the same time, American proximity to and comfort with the technology – from Google, Facebook and Microsoft to the marketing geniuses at Wieden and Kennedy – will continue to drive the advertising business.

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