ADFEST 2024

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SPEAKERS : CLAIRE WARING, ECD, R/GA AUSTRALIA: “BRANDS NEED TO INVITE PEOPLE TO PLAY WITH US IN CULTURE RATHER THAN JUST INFLUENCING IT”

“Stories are changing. Entertainment is no longer made up of one-way experiences. They’re interactions, they’re spontaneous – enabled as tech blurs the lines between the real and virtual worlds.”

People no longer want to be fed complete narratives in a passive fashion. That’s a challenge but a good one. It opens up new meaningful ways for brands to connect with people. Because they can do more than telling.

Brands can put people in the centre of their stories. They can connect with people in the Phygital worlds of augmented reality, interactive screens and using mobile as a control device. They can connect in the metaverse – the gaming worlds, immersive web and with avatar wearables. They can connect in social.

Connecting with people can be very simple. At this year’s Super Bowl show, Rihanna took a break between songs to refresh her make-up. Her make-up brand, Fenti, achieved US$5.6 million in earned media and search for the brand increased 883%.

It can also be wonderfully inventive, like The Unfiltered Tour with Vice by Publicis India:

…or Verizon’s Stadium in Fortnite that allowed gamers access to the Super Bowl in Fortnite, the year no one could go to the Super Bowl IRL:

An R/GA example is the campaign, Nike for Every Body. The aim was to make athletic fashion more relatable. It’s not easy for Gen Z women to see themselves in Nike stores. Mannequins appear unattainable. R/GA used Snapchat AR technology to reimagine mannequins as dynamic digital models to show how real women with real bodies, wear and move in Nike apparel. Shoppers can hold up their phones as they walk through the store to see realistic displays of real local women and get product reviews from them. Metaverse wearables is another example of extending a story – virtual clothing with which users can dress up their avatars.

In social, you can get people to play along. The Lil Jif Project is an inventive example. A new style of rap was emerging. The word in social was that the “mumbling” sounded as if rappers had peanut butter in their mouths. So Jif got Ludacris to release a track online in which he rapped with his mouth full of peanut butter. When the popularity of Ludacris’ new flow grew, Jif (via Ludacris) launched a rap challenge on Tik Tok – asking people to rap with peanut butter in their mouths. The best raps were recorded with custom little gift jars. The challenge proved that anyone with a spoonful of peanut butter can produce mumble rap and Jif peanut butter became “cool”.

Claire Waring gave us a personal example of the joy of being invited to play with culture and also outlined what that joy could mean for brands:

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25 March, 2023