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Key Takeouts: WMG Post-Cannes Wrap Up

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]The World Media Group hosted a post-Cannes wrap event last night at The Adelphi in London, giving the audience a taste of what went on at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity this year. The panel, chaired by Hannah Last, Sales Director UK at The Economist, included Mark Bembridge, CEO Smartology; Arif Durrani, Director, Reuters Global Content Studio; Massimo Marioni, Europe News Editor, Fortune; and Shula Sinclair, CSO, MSIX & Partners.

Last began by asking the panel to describe the event for those in the audience who had never been. Durrani, who has been going to Cannes since 2009, has watched the event evolve from its film festival roots to incorporate Media, meaning media planning and strategy and media owners to PR and Adtech. “Adtech has grown each year since then to become a much bigger part of the equation,” he says. “They own the marina, all the yachts; the money is there.”

Although official figures suggest there are about 10,000 paying delegates, Durrani suspects that you can times that by four once you account for all the unofficial visitors enjoying fringe events along the Croisette throughout the course of the week.

This year’s highlights

Marioni, ranked the Spotify concerts high on his list, but more importantly, Cannes gave him the opportunity to talk to “high-ranking Google executives” about the development dangers and issues around generative AI. While Fortune doesn’t report on Cannes itself, the event generates plenty of content and affords Marioni unparalleled access to top executives through panels, meetings and lunches.

Commercially important

For Smartology CEO; Mark Bembridge, Cannes is a serious business. “We’ve had more meetings than ever this year. It’s commercially important to us. You get all the key decision makers in one place and it’s an opportunity to sit down and thrash out real deals,” he says.

Sinclair agrees. “From an agency perspective, we talk about looking for inspiration from the best creative work, but make no mistake, we’re making deals.” Does she feel the festival’s moved too far from its creative routes? “It’s moved with the times,” she says. While Sinclair admits it’s quite a fractious relationship between creativity and new technologies like generative AI, she believes it’s all part of the essential ecosystem. Don’t assume that creativity is separate from business, she says.

The hot topic – generative AI

Every year, there’s a buzz around a new theme and this year, it was generative AI. Last asked the panel whether they thought the hype was justified.

Marioni doesn’t believe it’s been overhyped. While there remain lots of questions around how we use it responsibly, he believes it will be transformative for the industry and could reframe what intelligence or creativity is.

Bembridge believes AI’s still got a long way to evolve, but will do so quickly because of the huge uptake. One of the challenges, however, is scale – there aren’t enough people to programme and build the models required for it to move as quickly as we might like.

In the meantime, many marketers are using it in its current form. Reuters’ Content Studio is using programmes like ChatGPT for content and strategy ideation, for example, tapping into what Durrani describes as “Google search on steroids’. They are also working with a new Beta version of Photoshop that incorporates a new feature called Generative Fill that allows you to add to existing images using AI, allowing you to create credible mocks for pitches in seconds.

Other themes for 2023

Moving away from AI, Last asked the panel about their creative highlights. One of the highlights for her, she said, was seeing Apple win Creative Brand of the Year –surprisingly for the first time.

Sinclair cited Dove’s Grand Prix Award-winning ‘Turn Your Back ‘campaign encouraging people to turn their back on a TikTok filter, which she said felt “really defiant”. Sinclair also highlighted a clever, emotive use of Metaverse technology in Tuvalu’s campaign, ‘The Last Digital Nation’, which won a Titanium prize. The sinking island is being recreated in the Metaverse to preserve its history and culture before it finally disappears.

Marioni referred to Mastercard’s Priceless campaign, now in its 25th year. “LinkedIn told me an interesting anecdote – the data Mastercard had at the time was pointing them away from using the campaign,” he said. “But despite the data, the people in the room felt there was something about the line that could resonate. And they were right, so there’s hope for everyone!”

“At the core of every powerful idea there’s an innate human universal truth,” says Sinclair. “When I see that, the jealousy I feel is the mark of a brilliant campaign!”

More than just a jolly

With Cannes often being viewed from the outside as a ‘jolly’, Last asked the panel how they justified it to their bosses. Everyone agreed that if it wasn’t great fun, it wouldn’t attract the high-ranking attendees, from stars like Kevin Hart and, last year, Ryan Reynolds, to the senior executives from the industry’s most successful companies.

“It’s difficult from both a sustainability point of view and from a work justification point of view but it does deliver,” says Marioni

Bembridge agrees: “There are two parts – the deal-making and the networking. It’s the one touchpoint in the year where you meet people you haven’t seen for a while in real life. You share something together as an industry and that keeps those relationships going throughout the year.”

The Croisette and The Gutter

Part of the lure of Cannes is who you might meet walking down the Croisette. Sadly, this year, roadworks dominated the main thoroughfare, which, according to Durrani, was a major detraction. “It wasn’t just a terrible aesthetic, it actually changed the experience because it removed the serendipity of bumping into friends, colleagues, speakers and stars when you’re walking up and down the strip. That’s a big plus of Cannes and unfortunately it was totally prevented this year,” he said.

Thankfully, the roadworks didn’t stop people gathering in Cannes’ famous Gutter Bar, a small corner bar outside the Martinez Hotel but where hundreds spill out into the street in the early hours of each morning. Sinclair’s advice is to avoid The Gutter at all costs, but while Durrani understands the sentiment, he does see the reason it exists: “Cannes is increasingly restrictive – in the evening it’s all private dinners, wristbands and VIP groups. If you’ve just won an award, or have spent the day pitching clients, the Gutter is the one place where everyone can go to celebrate or just catchup.”

One final piece of advice

Finally, Last asked the panel to suggest their one tip for anyone attending for the first-time next year.

Bembridge says organisation is key: “Get really organised and really prep because there’s so many great things going on and so little time. Really organise your time well.”

Sinclair agrees but suggests giving yourself some flexibility: Plan but don’t be too rigid. Let serendipity happen. Running into people you haven’t seen for 20 years can open up an opportunity that you may never have expected.”

Prioritising is essential, according to Marioni: “Plan, prioritise, be open to possibilities, and remember, there are lots of invites but not everything’s going to be beneficial.”

Durrani’s advice? “Take advantage of the fact that there are so many different marketing and tech disciplines as inspiration for true creativity. It’s when you can mash 3 or 4 ideas, trends or connections together and come out with something completely different where the magic happens in terms of creative thinking. Cannes is great for that.”

You can watch the video of the WMG’s Cannes panel on what Generative AI means for trust and truth in marketing here.

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Experts Share Top Tips for Creating an Award-Winning Campaign

Yesterday, members of the World Media Awards judging panel and the creators of this year’s Grand Prix winning entry for Sonos came together for our Awards Masterclass to discuss what it takes to create an award-winning content campaign. Here are 10 top tips from our expert panel to ensure your content campaign rises above the fray and makes its mark on the judges.

1. Outline your challenge with laser focus

“Make sure the challenge is absolutely precisely outline before leading on to the creative solution and the media partner or channel choice. Clearly articulate the challenge, because that lays the foundation of everything that follows.” –  Christoph Woermann, CMO, Corporate Bank, Deutsche Bank.

According to Christoph, two entries that demonstrated this perfectly were Volkswagen: For the Many,Not the Few – The ID.3, winner of the Automobile category, and Levi’s: What Does Performance Mean to You, winner of the Luxury, Lifestyle & Fashion category.

2. Deliver your pitch with passion

“Make us believe it’s a winner from the minute you start speaking. First, tell us what the challenge was and how you solved it. Secondly, talk about the power of media and message, and how the entire campaign becomes an interesting experience for the consumer. Thirdly, prove it’s a credible solution with relevant KPIs. Lastly, tell us why it mattered. Why would a consumer genuinely enjoy experiencing what you’ve created?” – Kate Ivory, Group Managing Partner, Head of Strategy, OMD EMEA

Kate described Tourism Australia’s pitch for ‘From Country. To Company’ as one that was delivered with passion and power, creating a story that was really compelling to listen to.

Brooke Steinberg Global Planning Director, Vizeum, who is part of the award-winning Sonos pitch team agreed:

“Have fun. You’re showcasing work that you’re proud of, so express that, whether it’s verbally, in written form or in a video.Find ways to showcase your passion and the great times you’ve experienced working on the project.” 

3. Put the judges in your shoes

“It’s all about storytelling,” said Jamie Credland, SVP, Client Strategy & Marketing, The Economist. “And to tell a good story, you need to take us on a journey of here’s this insurmountable challenge, this difficult, terrible adversity you’re facing, and the smart ideas and hard work you came up with to overcome it.”

Jamie gave the example of Astana International Finance Centre’s winning entry for ‘My Kazakhstan’, which starts by asking, “What do you know about doing business in Kazakhstan?” immediately putting the judges into the shoes of the agency and the media owners who were working on this huge challenge.

4. Less is more

All the judges agreed that the Sonos team, represented by Brooke Steinberg, Global Planning Director at Vizeum and Gabriella Manzini, Global Account Director, Vizeum, had absolutely nailed their three-minute video pitch for Sonos’s ‘Brilliant Sound at the Intersections of Culture and Cool campaign. Gabriella’s advice:

“Be concise; you can’t tell the whole story. You can’t talk about every single execution. So really draw out the key steps that helped you to tackle the challenge – the insight, the execution. And the results really have to reflect what the challenge was.”

Christoph Woermann’s advice is to strip away anything you don’t need. “Always think, less is often more. Less text, less variety, less goals to achieve. Less is more. Focus, and you will be a winner.”

5. Brand, agency and media partner relationship must be seamless

Our experts were impressed by the completely seamless, integrated team of brand, agency and media partners on the Sonos campaign .According to Johan Jervoe, Chief Marketing Office, UBS, that doesn’t happen overnight. Creating a well-oiled content marketing machines takes time:

“It takes for your own brand team to understand what works, where you get content, who the expert is. It takes time to understand what the insights are and how that translates into aesthetics. And then measurement – finding the right media partner, the right channels and the right format on those channels.”

Jamila Saidi, Head of e-Commerce Marketing, DIT UK Gov, cited another seamless example in Samsung’s campaign “TV is Making History Again’:

“A combination of three things really made the award stand out above and beyond the others: the brand synergies with CNN and astronaut Scott Kelly; the integration of the message, the messenger and the channel delivering it; and the timing – the 15th anniversary of the moon landings.

6. Use audience insights to solve human problems

According to Jamie Credland, the human element of audience insight is often overlooked. “When it comes to an audience insight, these are people with business problems, personal problems, family problems, all kinds of challenges in their lives. And the best campaigns were the ones that tried to bring that challenge to life.”

He gave the example of Tech Mahindra’s winning Corporate Influencer campaign, ‘In the Future’ which talked about the number of people who believe analytics is absolutely key to their business, yet only 10% felt their company currently did it. “That talks to a certain anxiety among senior executives – treating the audience like human beings is really, really important.”

Kate Ivory agreed that Tech Mahindra had cleverly used the insights to develop a real solution, an efficiency index that allows executives to test the organisation’s performance against industry leaders. “They identified a problem, and they created a tool that was of genuine value back to the consumer. That’s the power of insights – to genuinely develop solutions.”

7. Be authentic.

Jamila Saidi reiterated the important of being authentic:“People see through the fluff, when you’re doing something for the sake of it or when you’re jumping on the bandwagon.”

It ties in with having your pulse on your customer base and really understanding your audience. She used Electronic Arts’ FIFA20 ‘Play Wrong’campaign, winner of the Media & Entertainment, category as an example”

“They did a fantastic job with their segmentation, really tapping into their audiences to understand them (it was a very different audience than they’re used to), which made everything so much more authentic, locally relevant and really believable. This made the storytelling even more compelling.”

8. Remember, judges are people too!

An important tip from Jamie Credland: ‘Tactically, when you’re writing your entry, remember, judges are people too and they respond to stories in the same way that your consumers do. So,get the judges emotionally engaged with your entry, and you’ll go a long way.”

9. Be prepared to throw it all away

Kate Ivory’s advice to ensure you’ve created an award-winning campaign:

“When you’ve gone through the process of creating your campaign, you’re about to hit go on buying the media, creating the content, just step back. Put yourself in your consumer’s shoes, the person that’s going to experience every element of this, and ask yourself, if you’re them, is it of any value? And if it isn’t, be prepared to put it in the bin and start again, because there’s too much clutter out there.”

 When the judges are going through the award entries, it’s the ones that offer real value that float to the top.

10. Be brave

As winner of this year’s Content and Leadership Award, it’s fitting Johan Jervoe gets the last word on how to create exemplary content-driven campaigns. Johan’s advice: “Be brave!”

VIEW WEBINAR

Key Take Outs: Rebooting your brand/business in the post Covid-19 world

Rebooting your brand / business in the post Covid-19 world

As businesses plan for life after Covid-19, a crisis with no precedent, how do they approach a world challenged by economic recovery? That was the topic posed to a panel of four industry experts today in the World Media Group’s third webinar, hosted by Damian Douglas, Managing Director EMEA, Time.

Douglas framed the conversation by looking at where we are in the news cycle and the financial markets. While both suggest we are in recovery mode, the situation is still fragile. The crises of recent memory (the dot.com bubble 2001, the financial crisis 2008) were economic in origin, and neither led to mortality or unemployment on such a significant scale, which adds another layer of complexity. When previous playbooks and recovery strategies can only be indicative, how can businesses build or rebuild brand equity through a period of huge disruption?

Douglas began by asking Louisa Loran, Vice President at Maersk responsible for the company’s brand communications strategy, how the logistics firm, which is instrumental to the global supply chain, had handled the Covid-19 crisis.

Strong customer focus

Loran explained that when she joined Maersk, her challenge was to understand how an asset-driven company could become more customer focused as part of its digital transformation. The decision to become customer-centric proved its worth, firstly a few years ago when they had a cyber-attack and now during Covid-19. “It’s the ability to understand your customers and put together value propositions and solutions to match their needs that enables you to be successful,” she said. “So Covid has been business management for us, not crisis management.”

Gordana Buccisano, EVP Global Client Transformation, Havas Group, who works directly with Loran on the Maersk business, agreed. She said her role had not changed through the crisis – she was still focussed on both long-term brand positioning objectives and short-term commercial objectives supporting Maersk’s digital transformation. “Covid or not, what matters is having the agile mindset to be able to adjust,” she said.

Authenticity is still key

Douglas then turned to David Wheldon, Vice President at WFA and the former Chief Communications and Marketing Officer for RBS, to ask what we should be looking for in brand behaviours, and how brands could build consumer preference, particularly against challenging economics. The key is authenticity, Wheldon said, and “a brand, knowing what it is and what it does, and doing it in the right way, with the right tone.”

Referencing Wheldon’s time at RBS, Douglas asked what the sentiment around that brand was when he joined in 2015, following the damage to its reputation in the 2008 financial crisis. Wheldon described RBS as the “least trusted brand in the least trusted sector.” His first job was to take an honest look at what RBS was: “A failed attempt at building a global brand.”

He discovered that the Royal Bank of Scotland brand – what customers who banked there called it – wasn’t as damaged. A brand strategy separating out the consumer facing brands, focusing on its customers and telling them the truth led to the bank’s recovery.

Authenticity and value are an important part of Maersk’s new brand strategy. “In the past, Maersk had a perception of being reliable,” Loran said, but they needed a different strategy to grow the brand. “We landed on being trusted, open and brave,” she said. Instead of saying, “We’ll tell you exactly when the vessel will be there,” it allowed them to say, “You can trust us to find the right solution for you.”

Loran believes that being brave is also about being honest and taking responsibility for what you can solve. “There are certain things we do with the strongest belief that they’re the right things, but we also admit our failures when they happen,” she said.

Consumer confidence on the rise

With consumer confidence playing an essential role in how well brands perform, Douglas asked Phillipa Leighton-Jones, Editor At Large – The Trust – The Wall Street Journal | Barron’s Group, to talk about its consumer confidence reports and what they meant for brand behaviour.

Leighton-Jones described The Wall Street Journal | Barron’s Group as a bellwether of what the C-suite is thinking. “These are the decision-makers who will be shaping the economy of the future in many respects,” Leighton-Jones said. “And when you’ve got marketers who are fighting hard for every dollar of discretionary spending, you need to make sure that they know what kind of environment they’re talking in and what kind of conversations they need to be having.”

So what are the decision makers thinking? According to Leighton-Jones more than half of the1000 respondents surveyed across The Wall Street Journal | Barron’s Group expect the economy to get better in the next three months, a 22 percentage point gain from mid-March. They also anticipate an increase in expenditure on personal goods and travel, she said.

Less twaddle, more focus

With that in mind, Douglas asked Wheldon if it was safe for brands to revert back to type and start entertaining us again after months of being circumspect.

“I think people have had enough of ‘we’re all in this together, with you every step of the way’ type communication,” Wheldon said, adding that some of the brands doing it looked “pretty inauthentic” and there was a lot of “twaddle” around. He praised KFC for really understanding their market. While they were closed, the fast food provider encouraged customers to make their own KFC at home and post their attempts on social media, then responded with “relatively insulting” comments about people’s efforts. It went down well because “they understood their audience, got the tone right, and were sensitive to what was happening,” Wheldon said.

Relieving Customer Pain Points

Returning to The Wall Street Journal | Barron’s Group’s Leighton-Jones, Douglas asked how publishers could capitalise on what has been a period of growth, with increased audiences and engagement. “People are looking for brands to talk to them,” she said. “Not necessarily to sell to them, but to demonstrate some value and leadership. It’s always going to be about putting the customer first, and thinking deeply not about what products or services you want to sell them, but how you can solve their pain points.” Demonstrating what she called “edifying utility”, allowed businesses to tell “brave brand stories that are authentic, and that show your leadership,” she said.

How far to plan ahead

Picking up a theme from audience members, Douglas’s final question was how far should brands plan ahead when everything is changing so frequently.

Based on his conversations with CMOs, Wheldon said, “On the whole, it’s a 30 day rolling plan with the 90 day horizon, and financially that kind of works for most people. Because beyond that, how would you know? So zoom in tight on 30 days, and be flexible and pragmatic.”

Loran said Maersk will continue to operate on many levels, optimising on short-term weekly cycles, evaluating their value proposition communications three months out, and planning ahead much further – three to five or even eight years – for their brand architecture and repositioning. What won’t change, she said, is their brand vision “to connect and simplify our customer supply chain,” which is not an overnight turn.

Be bold and brave

Douglas wrapped up the webinar by revealing the results of an audience member poll asking how optimistic they were that the advertising industry would bounce back before the end of 2020. The results, he said, were fairly evenly split (35% optimistic, 42% pessimistic and 23% unsure), reflecting where we are right now with the ever-changing news cycle.

Finishing on a positive note, he pointed out that brands and businesses had “everything to play for” and this was an opportunity to be brave as we navigate clients and businesses through a period that no-one’s experienced before. “As humans we will make mistakes,” he said, “But ultimately, I think we’ll get judged on motive and generosity.”

Should anyone wish to hear more about the Consumer Confidence study Phillipa Leighton-Jones mentioned, please do get in touch with phillipa.jones@wsj.com

Key Take Outs: Editors’ Perspectives: How global leaders are responding to the COVID-19 crisis

World Media Group Editors’ Perspectives: How Global Leaders are responding to Covid-19 – Key Take Outs

Five months after the first cases of Covid-19 were reported, there is hope that much of Europe, along with Asia, has passed the peak of infections. But with global leaders responding differently to the crisis, there are discrepancies about what’s being measured, whether we can compare countries, and what we should to do next. The World Media Group invited a panel of journalists, reporters and analysts from six leading international news outlets to shed some light based on their own experiences of reporting on Covid-19.

The panel was chaired by Arif Durrani, Executive Editor, EMEA, for Bloomberg Media Studios. In his opening question, Durrani asked how outlets had covered the virus and what they had learnt as a result.

“What we’ve learnt is to expect the unexpected,” said Adrienne Carter, Asia Editor for The New York Times, based in Hong Kong. “Everything we think is true…is always countered by a different narrative. Everything changes from moment to moment.”

The value of imperfect data

For Alan Smith (OBE), Head of Visual and Data Journalism at the Financial Times, it has been the realisation “that imperfect, uncertain data has never been more valuable.” The crisis has elevated the importance of data and analysis to the news agenda, he said, as “it’s almost impossible to make sense of the situation without using data.”

With the deluge of information since the pandemic was declared, Durrani asked how the panel prioritised what to cover, and how they were tracking what was resonating with their audiences.

Aria Bendix, Senior Reporter at Business Insider USA, based in New York City, who was the first BI reporter assigned to cover Covid-19, explained that Business Insider had always relied on data from their community to determine the focus of stories. She said the “unending stream of interest in the virus” over the past three or four months had led to a greater need for service journalism. Readers have “really simple questions that actually don’t have simple answers in this time,” she said. “And I think that our mission is to satisfy that information first and foremost.”

Smith agreed with the need for service journalism. He said the Financial Times had made much of its Coronavirus coverage free to allow people to keep up with a story that was constantly changing.

Durrani turned to Ishaan Tharoor, Today’s Worldview Columnist at The Washington Post, to understand how he decides what to write about. Although he is based in DC, Tharoor explained that his role was to provide “a more global story and craft and, in many ways, try to hold up examples elsewhere in the world to the American conversation.”

That means drawing comparisons, for example, in showing how South Korea can offer certain lessons to the US and also showing how the US could never emulate what South Korea did, he said. It’s about “recognising the political tendencies of certain types of leadership, leadership styles and how the pandemic is triggering non-health risks to democracies and republics elsewhere,” he said. “It’s about trying to stitch together a sense of where we’re going in this incredibly unpredictable, unprecedented time.”

On the ground challenges

Durrani asked about the challenges and developments in specific regions. Laura Bicker is the BBC Seoul news correspondent, based in South Korea, which has now crushed the curve of Covid-19. Bicker found herself running “into the fire” when Daegu became a hotspot. While she took advice from a high-risk safety team, the situation on the ground often played out differently and she found herself having to make difficult decisions for herself and her team about how close to the frontline they could safely get to tell the story that the readers or viewers needed to know.

Mindy Massucci, Head of Global Content, QuickTake by Bloomberg, based in New York, explained how she has tapped into Bloomberg’s network of journalists across 120 countries for on the ground reporting as the world gradually returns to ‘normal’. Whether she’s talking to a reporter in Berlin getting his first haircut in two months or receiving a photo of what social distancing looks like at one of the oldest shopping malls in Chile, these first-hand accounts demonstrate “what it’s like for life to slowly start creeping back,” she said.

How do we measure progress?

As our minds turn towards recovery, what sort of metrics should we be looking at? According to Business Insider’s Bendix, “Our primary responsibility as journalists is to contextualise this current moment for the public. Obviously, we won’t know where we are in history in the moment, but to provide some sort of educated guess about where we are in the trajectory of this pandemic.”

One of the problems, she said, is that when comparing regions or countries, we are not always comparing ‘like for like’, which can lead to false equivalences because there are “so many confounding factors, right now that can influence how an outbreak actually manifests within the population.”

That’s where a tool like the FT’s Coronavirus tracker comes into play. According to Smith, its “under the bonnet assessment” of different types of data sources reveals just how much you can rely on them to make comparisons – or not.

APAC as a barometer

Looking to the future, Durrani asked what lessons we can learn from countries such as Korea.

Echoing Bendix’s concerns, Bicker said that “it’s not ‘like for like’ so it’s very difficult to say that what’s worked here in South Korea will work in the UK or the United States.” That’s partly because Korea was prepared with testing, she said, so there was never a need for lockdown. The success of the strategy has also come at the cost of privacy, which wouldn’t have been deemed acceptable by other nations.

Carter believes there are lessons the US, UK and Italy could learn from South Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan. She talked about what’s known as ‘everyday life quarantine’ – infrastructure and a social culture that enforces social distancing and hygiene measures – to allow people to ease back into life without a treatment or a vaccine.

Massucci argued that the cultural difference in the US is too extreme for this. Referencing the current protests over mask-wearing, she said, “People, especially, in the United States, are so protective of their rights. They don’t like it when government comes in and tells them they can’t do something.”

Even once we’ve crushed the curve, Bicker believes it will take time to get back to normality. In South Korea, health officials are telling the public a second wave is inevitable, she says, giving an insight into what’s likely to come in the UK, US and Europe.

New levels of engagement reflect hunger for trusted news

Despite polls suggesting that trust in journalism is at an all-time low, engagement appears to be higher than ever. Bicker referenced BBC.com getting 40 million average daily visits in the first couple of weeks of April, and Smith said that the Coronavirus tracker was now the most viewed FT story by “many million page views.” According to Carter, The New York Times has “seen more interest in our journalism than ever before” and the pandemic has “reinforced the importance of on the ground reporting of trusted sources.”

It’s a reminder that in a situation where information can potentially save lives, there is no place for fake or inaccurate news. In the race to break a story, Bloomberg’s Massucci reiterated journalists’ responsibility to double check sources. “One of the things that I say to my team all the time, is I’d rather be late, last and right, than first and wrong.”

Belinda Barker, Director World Media Group

Key Take Outs: Working with Trusted Media in Times of Crisis

Advertising and the COVID-19 Pandemic: Working with Trusted Media in Times of Crisis:

Brand safety is always high on the agenda for advertisers, but what does this mean in the light of COVID-19? That was the question posed to a panel of 11 industry experts yesterday during a webinar hosted by the World Media Group. The panel was chaired by Alex Altman, Global Client President at Wavemaker.

To view the entire webinar please click the link below:

The role of media in a crisis 

Altman’s first question, addressed to Emma Winchurch-Beale, International Sales Director at the Washington Post, was how the newspaper’s editorial team balanced the need to report what’s going on without causing undue anxiety within its audience.

“People are frightened and it’s our job, along with our colleagues in other news organisations, to be the guiding light and help them through this pandemic,” she said, emphasising the newspaper’s role was to offer reassurance by delivering trusted information, as well as practical advice. To that end, they have created a new COVID-19 subsection on the website, and most of the COVID-19 coverage is free, outside of the pay wall.

Denise Turner, Insight Director, Newsworks, the UK body for national newspapers, agreed that people turn to trusted news sources in times of crisis. She said print subscriptions and newspaper home deliveries were on the rise, and traffic to digital outlets was up by 30-50% in the UK. Engagement is also up: “There’s an uplift in not just dwell time, but also comments on articles [and] shares. So people are not just passively absorbing it, they are actively engaging with the content.”

The need for well-researched trust-worthy content

Johanna Mayer-Jones, SVP of Partnerships at The Atlantic, agreed that the significant spikes in traffic and engagement across the board are because “people are hungry and they need information and news that they can trust at the moment.”

Referencing a popular article called ‘How the pandemic will end’ by Ed Yong, she explained the importance of delivering thoughtful, well-researched, scientific-based content exploring the long-term impacts of the virus. “We want to be thinking about conversations that might take place in two or three day’s time or a week’s time and provide a different type of perspective at this moment.”

Altman turned to Damian Douglas, Managing Director EMEA at Time,
to ask how they were adapting to consumer expectation of news brands in light of COVID-19.

“First and foremost, this is a humanitarian crisis,” Douglas said, so publishers will look at it through a more humane lens. The shift in commercial modelling to make COVID-19 coverage free was really important as audiences seek accuracy, truth and insight, he said; media organisations and brands must be seen to be going into the breach and not being overly commercial.

Advice for the C-suite

Altman then turned to Alison Harbert, Head of Client Marketing at Investec
to ask how she was advising clients in the current climate. The silver lining, she said, was that it had made Investec “think about who we are actually trying to help and what are we trying to help them with…what we can do that’s really relevant to them.” She also stressed the importance of moving at the right speed in the ever-changing situation.

When questioned about the legacy changes that will stay with us around homeworking, Harbert said that despite the fact we may run back to the office the moment the doors open, she hopes the time away has proved that this can work. “I think, as a human race, that this is forcing us to do some good stuff that maybe we should have done earlier.”

Altman asked Janet Balis, Global Advisory Leader for Media and Entertainment at EY, what advice she was giving to CMOs navigating the current crisis. Balis emphasised three points. “Strike the right brand voice and tone. And I think it starts with the word empathy… expressing a vulnerability in the face of an invisible force that’s larger than all of us.”

Secondly, she said while we often talk about storytelling, what’s important now is how that manifests itself with customers: “Your brand is only as good as your experience.” Finally, this is the “moment to really lean into very agile messaging and much better teaming collaboration,” she said, enabling brands to successfully change messaging at any given time.

Balis said she was now starting to see companies moving out of the initial triage moment of enterprise resiliency and looking forward – what she described as “the now, the next and beyond.”

Fake news still a threat

Addressing questions from the audience about fake news, Altman asked Stevan Randjelovic, Director of Brand Safety & Digital Risk EMEA, Group M, what he recommended. Randjelovic’s advice was firstly to invest in trusted news outlets. He also recommended human vetting of smaller regional or local publishers; using third party verification companies; and, most importantly, constantly monitoring where campaigns are delivering.

Harriet Kingaby, Co-founder of the Conscious Advertising Network, highlighted the human impact of fake news: “We talk very much about human safety as opposed to brand safety because we see that the decisions that advertisers make actually have impacts in the real world.” She cited a recent Newsworks report showing how advertisers pulling money from hard news outlets in times of crisis can cause real problems and encourage the rise of fake news.

How can brands market responsibly during crisis?

Altman’s next question, for Jack Dyson, Global Head of Content Strategy, SAP Customer Experience, was whether brands can continue to market during this time.

Dyson talked about the importance of going back to your brand values and brand purpose, and examining all of your actions through that lens to ensure you’re dealing with customers in the right way. He stressed the importance of tone, and why ‘It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it’ is absolutely critical now. All advertisers needed to do “a sense check that the right message is coming across to the right people in the right way and to the right audience, but also with the right cadence,” he said.

Time’s Douglas believes we’ll see a permanent change in how brands are looking to engage with audiences. “Pre-COVID, we were talking about a different form of capitalism, which means putting brand values front and centre.” He believes that it is the brands “working with genuine motive,’ and guiding people through the current crisis – such as McLaren developing protective wear or Louis Vuitton creating hand sanitisers – that will be remembered when we come out the other side.

Alex Delamain, President of The World Media Group and SVP Head of Sales & Client Services EMEA, The Economist, wrapped up the webinar with her key takes outs:

  1. It all starts with humanity. As publishers, we have a huge responsibility to be helpful and generous in this time of crisis.
  2. Brands must strike the right tone – empathy and compassion is key.
  3. Brands need to be connected with their customers through partnerships, relationships and ‘companionship’.
  4. Brands need to be much more agile – traditional digital transformation needs to move much faster.
  5. Brand purpose really comes into play now – we have to look at everything through that filter to ensure authenticity.

Closing on a positive note, Delamain reiterated Balis’s point: “We’re in the now, but there’s the next, and beyond. As brands, it’s really important that we start thinking about life after COVID-19 because it will come.”

Belinda Barker
World Media Group Director

Journalism 2020: The Rise of Populism KEY TAKEAWAYS

Fake news surrounds us. To an extent, it always has: propaganda, misinformation and lies are as old as language itself. But the rise of technology, the power and influence wielded by the internet, by social media, has meant that fakery has become more sophisticated, more widespread and more damaging to trust in the media than ever before.

The concept of journalism is founded on truth and impartiality. But when those founding principles have perceivably been brought into disrepute, whether deserved or not, media companies and outlets must act.

The World Media Group kicked off its 2020 events calendar with a session looking at this subject, and asking: what are the implications of fake news, for journalism and advertising, and what can news organisations do to counter the public’s growing disaffection with the media?

The session was chaired by Sarah Thorpe, managing director, Europe at The New York Times, who kicked off proceedings asking panellists to try to define the sometimes nebulous term.

Fake news: nothing new

“Fake news has been in existence as long as news has been in existence, in very varying degrees whether through bias, opinion or downright manipulation of information,” said Phillipa Leighton-Jones, editorial director, innovation at The Wall Street Journal.

“What’s changed is the velocity and sophistication of the tools available, which is in many cases playing into an increasingly polarised political environment. [Fake news] could conceivably mean everything from the most sophisticated deep-fake to someone not being honest about where their information has come from in an otherwise respected newspaper.

For Anne McElvoy, senior editor and head of Economist Radio at The Economist, fake news boils down to motivation. “Fake news has to be about the intention to distort or deceive,” she said. “If that’s not the intention then it’s not fake news. We should also be aware that the media is capable of committing fake news without meaning to. It’s something we have to transparent about. What do we do when we screw up?”

Mary Wilkinson, head of editorial content at BBC Global News, cited a Reuters report from last year that “showed that in the UK alone, trust in news has dropped from 55% in 2015 to just 40% last year”.

“So I think as a reputable broadcaster, we need to do our utmost to ensure truth stands out from the crowd and that people know there are places to go to for accurate and impartial information.”

Hazel Baker, global head of UGC news gathering at Reuters, hates the term ‘fake news’. “It’s so broad, it’s ill-defined and tells you nothing,” she said. “It’s been used by politicians and members of the public. I think categorisation is really important when it comes to actually assessing problems and understanding. The broad categories in fake news are misinformation – the spreading of false information – and disinformation – the deliberate spreading of false information.”

Undermining advertiser trust

As a cultural malaise, fake news has worrying implications for brands and their relationship with media owners.

“The net impact is that often advertisers don’t know where to go,” said Leighton-Jones. “In some cases this has led to instances of ‘blacklisting’, where advertisers won’t place ads against key words such as ‘Trump’. It’s a crude measure.

“Overall, what that loss of confidence among advertisers could mean for media at large is less funding for quality journalism, which costs a lot of money to make.”

Wilkinson concurred. “I think it’s in the interests of advertisers where their ads are going to be,” she said. “Subscriptions are rapidly growing, but good quality journalism is still dependent on advertiser revenue. I would buy direct, you don’t always have to go via the advertising platforms.”

Reining in anti-social media

The degree of power and the influence wielded by social platforms is having a detrimental effect on reporting, according to Alex Wood, Europe editor at Forbes, who argued that journalism needed to retain its historically more considered approach to the gathering and dissemination of information.

“It’s about slowing down,” he said. “We’re becoming obsessed with the clicks – the race to get into Google News is a race to the bottom.”

It’s a point that resonated with all the panelists, the consensus being that greater regulation governing online platforms was of paramount importance.

Wood in particular welcomed this month’s news that Ofcom will be given greater powers over social media, which will force them to act over harmful or overtly erroneous content.

The “idea that they don’t have the same responsibilities as publishers” is a massive concern, he said. “When they have the capacity to change opinion and change the world, they have to abide by the same standards. The game is really up for platforms. This idea that they can pretend they don’t have the same responsibilities as a publisher is wildly dated. When you think of the capacity they have to influence opinion and to change the world, I think they have to behave in the same way, to the same standards.”

In the main, standards among news organisations are as high as they have ever been. But in order to combat public scepticism  – and to reassure advertisers – communicating that fact has become crucial.

Accordingly, the BBC has a public-facing website that “covers everything from misinformation to disinformation, debunking rumours and theories doing the rounds on social media”, Wilkinson said.

The truth will out

Meanwhile, the broadcaster last year convened the Trusted News Summit. “We’re now working with a number of partners because no one publisher can do this on their own,” she said. “It includes the FT, Facebook, Google, Reuters, AFP, where we’re going to try and set up an early warning system because in certain situations, particularly in developing or new democracies, disinformation is actively dangerous.

“We’re trying to establish a framework where one publisher can alert everyone else and the tech platforms and hopefully nip things in the bud before they go completely viral.”

Wilkinson is optimistic about the future.

“On polarising subjects, there’ll always be people who believe what they want to believe. But there will be subjects where they will need to know the facts, and if those publications have a track record of being accurate and impartial, they will turn to those outlets. The antidote to all this is keep on doing very good journalism, explain your methods and when you make mistakes, admit them, and hopefully the truth will out.”

Belinda Barker
World Media Group

Photos: Jane Clipston

WMG Davos Diary – Key Takeaways from WEF 2020

Many World Media Group members were at the World Economic Forum in Davos last week to discuss the global, regional and industry issues affecting business leaders today. Here are some of the key takeaways, as observed by Katya Ionova, Creative Director, UK & EMEA, Business Insider and Damian Douglas, Managing Director, EMEA, Time.

Youth Power

Although the average demographic of attendees at Davos is aged 52-54 for men and aged 49 for women, the question of how we can support the younger generation was a critical theme that ran across many areas of discussion. Concerns ranging from the kind of planet we’re passing on, to the lack of funding for the global mental health epidemic that’s affecting the younger generation were high on the agenda. Greta Thunberg wasn’t the only young voice to be heard this year – 10 teenage activists from all over the world were invited along to encourage collaboration between generations.

Sustainability

Environmental risks, renewed commitments to sustainability, carbon-neutrality pledges, the circular economy and financing a sustainable future were all big themes and more CEOs were seen wearing the SDG pin. The message was clear: we have less than a decade to act, so maintaining the status quo or ‘business as usual’ is no longer acceptable.

Stakeholder Capitalism

The growth of stakeholder capitalism was a frequent discussion point. Companies can no longer serve only their shareholders but must consider all stakeholders, using business as a platform for change to address the environmental and societal issues that matter most to today’s employees and consumers.

Transformation

The Fourth Industrial Revolution and technology such as AI, driverless cars and the IoT formed the basis of many discussions around digital, organisational and societal transformation. The transformation of people was another important theme, from supporting mental health issues to unlocking the potential of human capital.

Brands as Content Creators

A packed fringe agenda featured events from brands such as Accenture, who produced a daily live show. Bank of America, EY and Refinitiv used their social and digital channels to deliver lively content throughout the week. Many World Media Group members led with a content agenda, such as The Wall Street Journal, which hosted The Journal House again, curating discussions on topics aligned to the seven themes of the main agenda. Media newcomers included Condé Nast’s Vogue, which hosted a networking nightcap in Davos House.

Purpose-Driven Marketing

Will we see Davos’ ‘Youth Activism’ theme translate into purpose-driven marketing campaigns? If previous years are anything to go by, they will trickle down from CEO to the rest of the boardroom and start to manifest in 9-12 months. Two years ago, the themes at Davos were around Women, Gender, Diversity and Equality; it’s no coincidence, then, that we saw an increase in DNI campaigns at Cannes last year. We predict that we’ll start seeing Gen Z-centric creative at Cannes in 2021.

Finally, we couldn’t sign off without mentioning the best-branded swag at the event! Every year, Zurich Insurance provides blue woolly hats and they were everywhere – even featured on posters for the Zurich-sponsored airport WiFi. Zurich gave out 13,000 hats this year and pledged to plant 13,000 trees. It goes to show that merchandise can still be an effective marketing tool if it’s a) useful, b) on-brand, and c) entirely fitting for the environment it’s being shared in.