Ron Samuel’s flashbacks from AdFest 2017 Day 4

Former judge and AdFest veteran Ron Samuel (pictured left) details his daily flashbacks from AdFest 2017.

Flashback: Day 4 – Paul Kemp Robertson

These are hard days for brands. They have to deal with a level of volatility and blind competition that didn’t exist before. Any competitive advantage you may have is transient which means you need to ramp up quickly, reap the rewards, de-construct  then move on to the next thing. It takes courage and visionary leadership. Paul Kemp Robertson (pictured below) from Contagious explained why brave creative work was also more important than ever.

He talked about the need to constantly be connected to your audience in order to stay relevant and being prepared to make big changes when needed.

He gave an excellent example with Axe (Lynx is some markets). The campaigns used to be based around the creative strategy of turning any ordinary young man into a sex magnet. They were funny and memorable but becoming irrelevant to their audience who were rethinking and redefining their own sexuality. Suddenly the sex magnet strategy began to make the brand look more out of touch than connected. So they had to change and they did it well by actually saying their own work was no longer relevant to the new way of thinking of their audience. Of course it was beautifully executed and very entertaining but more importantly it was a great example of a brand saying we’ve changed as well, sorry about the old stuff.

Contagious is all about making brands braver, which they have to be because they won’t always get it right. Paul showed a great example of that with the drone made to look like a seagull and pooping sunscreen. He quoted John Hegarty’s reaction when he saw it at Cannes ‘The most stupid thing I’ve ever seen.’

Without relevance and context you’re wasting everyone’s time.