Photos by Yam Nava
At the Click! 2017 one-day digital summit by Publics One and Google held on Friday, August 11, 2017 at WhiteSpace Manila, the cognoscenti of the creative industry gathered in an invitation-only event that distilled learnings from agency, brand, and tech company leaders.
Philippine landscape
Several speakers provided insightful data that revealed who the Philippine consumer will be in the future. “Mobile is driving digital. Video content will account for 80% of content in 2020,” revealed Isabelle Turpault, Digital Director, Publicis One Philippines, in a talk titled “Digital Landscape in the Philippines.” “The average Filipino is looking at two to three screens. Mobile penetration is driving shorter and shorter attention spans. Globally, our attention span has dropped to four seconds. If your content takes longer than one second to load, you would have already lost a view. If you are not present from the very first moment, you will hardly be considered in the end,” observed Willy Kühne, Head of Agency, Google Philippines. “Experience is the new currency with 58 million average monthly queries about experiences,” shared Gara Santos, Industry Head-CPG of Google on the subject of the industrial landscape, specifically consumers and categories.
Sales
Speakers also focused on how to provide a frictionless and seamless experience for consumers who transition marketing to sales with mobile digital connectivity. “Fifty-four percent of sales in the world is influenced by some sort of digital experience. The time from media to commerce has shrunk to a single swipe,” warned Gareth Mulryan, Chief Executive Officer, Publicis Media Singapore, as he elucidated on how companies are going into e-commerce. “The future is about going from offline to online to non-line,” noted Rajesh Sheshadri, Head of Agencies for Google Asia-Pacific as he talked about industry investment in digital. “It’s all about getting in front of consumers instead of getting in the way of consumers,” admonished Nic Burrows, Digital Strategist, ZOO Asia Pacific, in a talk titled “Unskippabl;e Content that Moves People and Setting the Right KPIs in Digital.
Brands
Some of the world’s biggest brands revealed how they succeeded in the digital medium. Agencies also noted that the digital medium provide instantaneous metrics that create higher standards for creative effectiveness. “I always challenge my team to think about how we can embed ourselves in customer behavior other than video. Our most winning campaign is non-video. It’s about KitKat benches as a venue for the selfie generation across the city. In the end, we need to move towards an integrated planning model and framework and make it all click to drive the brand purpose.” shared Paolo Mercado, SVP Communications Marketing and Innovation of Nestle Philippines, member of the Creative Economy Development Council of the Philippines, and adobo magazine regular columnist, in a keynote address titled “Winning in a Digital World According to Nestle.”
“As marketers, we were taught to be disciplined but it takes courage to let somebody else have control over your content. Collaboration is not limited to agency partners but consumers,” confided Margot Torres, EVP and Deputy Managing Director, McDonalds’s Philippines as the Click! 2017’s second keynote speaker in a talk titled “Winning in the Digital World According to McDonalds’s. Elucidating on how agencies and brands can no longer dictate or force their marketing upon consumers, Stephan Czypionka, VP Marketing, Coca-Cola Philippines, proclaimed, “We need to move from ‘creative communism’ to ‘creative darwinism.’ Instead of creating ads that people want to skip, we need to create content that they don’t want to miss. More and more consumers are willing to pay to avoid us. We need to change this so that they will be willing to pay just to experience us.” Czypionka noted that Coca Cola has shaped popular culture repeatedly: from popularizing the American version of Santa Claus who is jolly, round, and garbed in Coca Cola red instead of the slim green-garbed Saint Nicholas of Europe, to multi-racial ads that espoused multi-ethnic harmony released right after the brutal assassination of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.
“It’s not about technology. It’s about the idea. It’s about creating innovation in customer experiences. Brands need to work with partners brands to open up the technology to drive this innovation. The immediate future is about mixed experiences through AR,” noted Neil Hudspeth, Chief Experience Officer, Publicis One Asia. “Brands are seeking greater accountability for their digital spends and asking ROI,” warned Sheji Ho, Group Chief Marketing Officer, aCommerce, Taiwan, as he talked about developing one’s e-commerce strategy.
Programmatic
Programmatic—automated ad placement—has revolutionized media spend. Speakers gave their insights from the point of view of both agency and brand. “Data is currently in silos. In order to future-proof your data strategy, you need to take time to set up a unified ecosystem and move to always-on, not media-led, data collection and strategy,” advised Marc Langenfeld, Programmatic Solutions Lead, Publicis Media Asia Pacific as explained the “Age of Programmatic.” “With our partners, we use data and analytics to get them in the funnel, drive them down the funnel in the shortest possible path and improve customer experience. We use data to drive personalization, localization, persona and travel segments and beta test to learn and improve continuously. This affects our upselling strategies so we can create the shortest path to conversion,” revealed Candice Iyog, Vice President for Marketing and Distribution, Cebu Pacific Air, in a talk titled “Data-Driven Marketing Now.” These brilliant insights and more provided a synergy among creative industry leaders at the Click! 2017 one-day digital summit by Publics One and Google.
Machine Learning
Ken Lingan, Country Head of Google Philippines, in an interview adobo magazine, revealed how Google’s artificial intelligence technology is already changing the digital experience of countless Filipinos and if there are machine learning applications tailored to Filipino needs. “Machine learning is already available here in the Philippines. If you use Google Photos, and you want to search dog or sunset, these things are already available in the Philippines today. If you watch a video on a YouTube app, you watch one video and then it suggests another video, that is already machine learning. But we have nothing to announce yet on a Philippine focus AI application or machine learning application,” he shares.
These brilliant insights and more provided a synergy among creative industry leaders at the Click! 2017 one-day digital summit by Publics One and Google.
