Advertising versus digital. The irony is the battleground doesn’t even pit apples against apples, rather an activity against a medium. Simply put, it’s about say and do. Ad agencies have spent decades perfecting their craft of “saying” for brands. Owing to media costs, they honed their art into 30-second narratives for TV audiences. Conversely, digital agencies have historically focused on the “do” – where brands interact and transact.
The middle ground is brand engagement: the interactive rich media aspects of a brand’s presence online. Ad agencies and digital agencies have fought over this space. The former have accused the latter of creating whizzy interactive stuff while not understanding brand values nor consumer insight. Digital agencies, on the other hand, argued that ad agencies merely create an extended linear format of their 30-second narrative online, not understanding the interactive nature of the medium.
It’s no surprise that ad agencies have invested in their digital capabilities while digital agencies hired the best and brightest from ad agencies. Now though, the lines between the two have become blurred because those entering the workplace have never known a world without digital. This is creating a growing pool of agencies adept at embracing and executing storytelling in the context of interactivity and tech.
This is important because, in a digitally enabled world, brands need their narrative to connect seamlessly with their values, promise, personality and their service. They must manifest their behaviour consistently and emotively wherever people experience it, or interact with it.
Brands now carry greater responsibility: they have the power, reach and scale genuinely to change the world for good and that’s becoming a mandate bestowed on them by consumers.
Some of Unilever’s brands lead the way. For example, Lifebuoy is more than a hygienic soap: through behaviour change programmes, Help a Child Reach 5, the brand is helping children in India by teaching good hand-washing habits for life. So far, the initiative has reached more than 180 million people at risk from disease.
Such ambitious programmes require agencies to step up to the responsibility of becoming the custodians and architects. If brands are the new reference points of how we judge our world, they need to demonstrate action against their promise in an authentic and truthful way. They need to make their narrative purpose driven and action oriented, else they will find themselves discredited and irrelevant.
The best agencies, many digitally born, are stepping up precisely to this challenge. Not constrained by the 30-second format, and exploiting all that digital media offers, they are creating powerful long-form brand narratives that play out in digital with other media as the support act for this main event. These powerful narrative moments then extend into authentic and consistent behaviour through a brand’s entire digital and physical estate. A good example is Beats’ Game Before the Game, a five minute epic of authentic rituals undertaken by the world’s most talented and accomplished sports stars.
The best agencies no longer define themselves by media but by their ability to bring brand narratives to life in stories, behaviours, and utilities that play out seamlessly across all channels. At Sapient, we call this “storyscaping” – the intersection of story and tech – and we believe it offers a rich seam of creativity enabling brands not only to say what they offer the world but also to make the world a better place through how they deliver it.
Maggie Lonergan is director of strategic growth at SapientNitro
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