It’s no longer ade­quate for mar­keters to sim­ply put forth their most cre­ative ideas. Instead, in order to forge mean­ing­ful bonds with con­sumers of the future, mar­keters must also pro­duce cam­paigns that com­bine tech­nol­o­gy with a slew of touch­points and an ele­ment of social good. That’s because these so-called “big idea” cam­paigns are the ones that are tru­ly mem­o­rable and make rela­tion­ships with con­sumers stick.

It’s yet anoth­er change, but the strength of the mar­ket­ing indus­try is in its abil­i­ty to adapt as the mar­ket­place changes. For decades, naysay­ers have pre­dict­ed the down­fall of the adver­tis­ing indus­try, point­ing to bro­ken mod­els, but that’s sim­ply not a risk as long as adver­tis­ers stay rel­e­vant, add val­ue and respond to needs. That’s accord­ing to Michael Roth, chair­man and CEO of glob­al adver­tis­ing hold­ing com­pa­ny Inter­pub­lic, who spoke at Ad Age’s recent dig­i­tal con­fer­ence.

Case in point: The indus­try has faced a num­ber of recent changes, but suc­cess­ful mar­keters have looked toward the future and are cre­at­ing con­tent that is not just cre­ative, but spans plat­forms while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly doing social good. This, Roth said, will be increas­ing­ly key to con­nect­ing with con­sumers because it forges a much stronger bond than sim­ply a pur­chase trans­ac­tion.

Fragmentation

The media land­scape is now frag­ment­ed among many dif­fer­ent out­lets. This leads to con­fu­sion about where clients can get the most bang for their buck.

“And this is where we in the busi­ness can add val­ue,” Roth said. “Clients are look­ing for some­one who can help them make sense of this. Some­one has to be agnos­tic about what is spent. That’s how we add val­ue.”

Consumer Control

Mar­keters must also par­tic­i­pate in con­ver­sa­tions 24 hours a day, Roth said.

“That’s all you hear is the con­sumer is in con­trol and the rea­son you hear that is because it’s true,” he said. “We do all the things our clients do and encour­age you to par­tic­i­pate, but the point is that the con­sumer wants it when they want it and how they want it.”

Roth said the best exam­ple of this issue is binge watch­ing in which con­sumers lit­er­al­ly con­sume a ton of con­tent at once. This, he said, forces mar­keters to think how they will deliv­er sto­ries in an envi­ron­ment “that is so imme­di­ate and on demand.”

Technology

Tech­nol­o­gy has also changed the world.

Roth points to out-of-home adver­tis­ing and encour­ages mar­keters to think of oppor­tu­ni­ties where they can add val­ue. In Peru, for exam­ple, an engi­neer­ing school want­ed to help the pop­u­lace know about its offer­ings, so it tack­led a local water acces­si­bil­i­ty prob­lem by devel­op­ing a bill­board that con­vert­ed humid­i­ty into drink­ing water.

“Every­one in the com­mu­ni­ty showed up and used this as a source of drink­ing water,” he said. “Think about the rela­tion­ship the per­son has with the provider of these ser­vices. It can­not be bro­ken.”

Purchase Funnel

In addi­tion, the pur­chase fun­nel has “changed dra­mat­i­cal­ly,” he said.

He points to L’Oreal’s Intel­li­gent Col­or Expe­ri­ence cam­paign in which the brand installed vend­ing machines in the New York City Sub­way that “[detect­ed] the col­ors in a wom­an’s out­fit and [picked] out the most promi­nent and relat­ed col­or palettes, then [rec­om­mend­ed] L’O­re­al Paris prod­ucts to match and last­ly [allowed] women to quick­ly and eas­i­ly pur­chase those prod­ucts on the spot,” the brand said in a release.

“Expe­ri­en­tial, tech­no­log­i­cal and cre­ative are now the types of transactions…that devel­op the rela­tion­ship between L’Oreal and the brand and the con­sumer,” Roth said. “The theme I’m devel­op­ing here is that it’s not just one par­tic­u­lar item. It’s using all of the dif­fer­ent tools we have to make the rela­tion­ship with the con­sumer stick.”

In oth­er words, siloed offer­ings are sim­ply not going to cut it any­more.

“We have to have a com­mon goal,” he said. “And crit­i­cal to this is cre­ativ­i­ty. This is where our indus­try has a leg up on all those oth­ers out there.”

In addi­tion, mar­ket­ing of the future must incor­po­rate three addi­tion­al fea­tures:

1. Native Utility

Accord­ing to Roth, brands have to be able to cre­ate sto­ries and use cre­ativ­i­ty specif­i­cal­ly for the dis­tri­b­u­tion plat­form they’re on.

“You can no longer do a 30-sec­ond TV spot and take the spot and put it on mobile or put it on some type of social con­text,” Roth said. “It has to be an offer­ing rel­a­tive to the dis­tri­b­u­tion sys­tem you’re using.”

2. Data

Mar­keters must use data to know where the con­sumer is, to get to the right con­sumer and to make sure it works.

3. Social Good

Roth said he thinks this is the future as the rela­tion­ship between brands and con­sumers becomes “some­thing bet­ter than just point of sale trans­ac­tions.”

In oth­er words, com­bin­ing tech­nol­o­gy, cre­ativ­i­ty and adver­tis­ing are the “lynch­pins that are dri­ving busi­ness in the future,” Roth said.

In addi­tion, mar­keters have to be able to com­bine these fea­tures with a sin­gle voice, which, he con­cedes, is not easy to do. How­ev­er, he points to three cam­paigns that do a par­tic­u­lar­ly good job of com­bin­ing these ele­ments.

Coca-Cola Peru’s Happy ID

In Peru, Roth said cit­i­zens weren’t smil­ing in their driver’s license pho­tos for some rea­son.

“And it took on this thing as a cul­ture – you nev­er smile when you go for a driver’s license in Peru,” Roth said. “So we had this insight: Let’s see if we can make peo­ple hap­py, which ties into the Coca-Cola cam­paign on hap­pi­ness.”

As such, the brand installed free pho­to booths that allowed con­sumers to take pho­tos sim­ply by smil­ing. And par­tic­i­pat­ing con­sumers also received free Coke. As a result, 45,000 Hap­py IDs were cre­at­ed.

“Every­thing was at play here – tech­nol­o­gy, cre­ativ­i­ty, media, big idea, dis­tri­b­u­tion and social good,” Roth said. “Which is why it was award-win­ing at Cannes.”

In a blog post, Lizan­dra Fre­itas, Coca-Cola Transandean Fran­chise Unit Mar­ket­ing Direc­tor, said, “With the ‘Hap­py ID’ cam­paign, we sought to encour­age all Peru­vians to under­take a great mood trans­for­ma­tion, start­ing with a very sim­ple and easy act: to smile while hav­ing their nation­al ID pho­to tak­en. Smil­ing is a sign of opti­mism, well-being and hap­pi­ness. And it should be expressed and become increas­ing­ly vis­i­ble.”

Nivea Sun Kids

In Brazil, Roth said sun­screen brand Nivea was faced with the chal­lenge of how to dis­tin­guish itself from oth­er sun­screen brands, so it aligned that prob­lem with anoth­er com­mon prob­lem: chil­dren run­ning away from their par­ents at the beach.

Nivea designed a bracelet for the child’s arm, which could be torn out of mag­a­zines and then paired with an app that allowed par­ents to iden­ti­fy the bracelet and set the max­i­mum dis­tance their chil­dren could go.

“If the lim­it is exceed­ed, you are alert­ed and the radar shows you when you’re near­by,” Roth said.

What’s more, the bracelets were humid­i­ty-resis­tant and could be used more than once.

“It uses dig­i­tal, print, and has a social cause if you will and relates to the con­sumer – the moth­er at the beach and mak­ing sure her child is pro­tect­ed. I can’t think of a more pow­er­ful mes­sage,” he said. “You can see how all the dif­fer­ent dis­ci­plines had to be brought togeth­er and demand for the bracelets was off the charts. They sold out all the mag­a­zines in which they were print­ed.”

Point­ing to the rela­tion­ship between the brand and par­ents going to the beach, Roth said, “What we do actu­al­ly works when it is done cor­rect­ly.”

Navy’s Project Architeuthis

Accord­ing to Roth, the chal­lenge for Camp­bell Ewald for this par­tic­u­lar cam­paign was to help the Navy recruit 1,000 cryp­tol­o­gists with­out paid media, so the agency focused on gam­ing. Specif­i­cal­ly, the cam­paign tar­get­ed self-moti­vat­ed, high­ly intel­li­gent con­sumers that like solv­ing puz­zles.

Project Archi­teuthis focus­es on the fic­tion­al abduc­tion of the archi­tect of a top secret weapon and the cryp­tol­o­gist Maria who sneaks aboard an ene­my ship to send out cod­ed mes­sages, puz­zles, ciphers and the like over the course of 18 days. The puz­zles even­tu­al­ly revealed six major clue words, which, in turn, could be used to track down coor­di­nates of the ene­my ship.

Per Roth, the cam­paign exceed­ed the Navy’s recruit­ing tar­get by con­nect­ing the brand with about 1300 cryp­tol­o­gists and it was such a suc­cess, in part, because the mes­sage was so incred­i­bly rel­e­vant to its tar­get audi­ence.

“The point here is that what [mar­keters] do works and we have an amaz­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty to bring this all togeth­er. The agency is the epi­cen­ter of where tech­nol­o­gy, [cre­ativ­i­ty and social good], come togeth­er and we have to make sure we work togeth­er with a com­mon goal,” Roth said. “Our approach should be that what you need to have are tal­ent­ed peo­ple who are con­ver­sant in digital…you can’t just silo dig­i­tal capa­bil­i­ties. You need to have strate­gic insight. You have to be account­able. And, in cer­tain cas­es, I believe the notion I start­ed to talk about – the demise of the indus­try – couldn’t be more incor­rect than it was in 1972. It’s a pret­ty excit­ing place to be.”

What’s your take on the incor­po­ra­tion of social good into mar­ket­ing cam­paigns?