Digital Matters: Key lessons for social and digital advertising

Advertising must be combination of “Mad Men and math men”
Cindy Gallop, founder and CEO of IfWeRanTheWorld.com and former chairman of BBH New York, said advertising in the future must be data-informed, not data-driven. “The opportunity for the future is ‘Mad Men plus math men, creativity plus data, advertising plus technology,” she said. Christian Toksvig, vice president, business development at Getty Images, told Campaign Asia that many advertisers are "crazy about metrics" and immediately hook onto CPM and “likes”. But he added, “What does that mean? Is that customers? No...It doesn’t necessarily translate into money.” Bruno Fiorentini Jr, general manager for advertising and online at Microsoft Asia-Pacific, added later that the industry does not have the capacity to accurately analyse the overwhelming amount of data. “The point is what to do with that data and how to filter what’s important from what’s not. Advertising is about emotion and connecting with consumers.” 

Breakdown the walls between paid, owned and earned media
Ken Mandel, managing director for Buddy Media Asia-Pacific, said the “dirty secret” of social is that it is not free and that money has to be spent on paid advertising to “prime the pump”. He said brands that take a holistic approach and amplify social media through paid advertising will be more successful in the long run. Miguel Bernas, director of digital marketing for SingTel, raised concerns that digital marketing efforts tend to get benchmarked against success in e-commerce and off-line results are attributed to off-line advertising. He said the situation is often a lot more complicated than that, and added that this is a real challenge for digital marketers.

Don’t be stupid: Balance control and personality
Tahir Basheer, partner at Sheridans Solicitors, urged brands to exercise caution when creating an in-house social media team and have a company policy in place when using social media. But Buddy Media's Ken Mandel took a more frank outlook, just urging brands to “not be stupid”. He said, “You can’t give all of these crazy rules. These checklists will go out of date in a matter of months or weeks." Adriana Gasgoine, CEO and founder of Girls In Tech, agreed, adding, “I think what corporations and some start-ups lack is the personality behind the people. I think you can control the message, what they say and how they interact with the customer base, but these are human beings. You can't over control.”