Brands capture ‘cultural zeitgeist’ to grow, marketing and creative leaders say
Four creative and marketing industry leaders explain why brands must listen carefully to culture to grow businesses. However, brands are also galvanising culture, too.
Top marketing and advertising executives have long argued that brands must move at the ‘speed of culture’ to connect with customers and improve the health of their business in the short and long term.
This is still a truism in Australia’s brand and creative economy, according to a panel of industry leaders speaking at an event for The Growth Agenda in Melbourne last Thursday.
The event was attended by Advertising Council Australia board members, advertising and creative agency leaders and brand marketers, who gathered to discuss how original creativity finds its audience to generate commercial returns.
The Australian’s managing editor and commercial director Darren Davidson said: “While measuring creativity remains an inexact science, great ads that delight and inspire matter for the bottom line. Creativity is at the heart of business innovation, and innovation is the engine of growth.
“The Growth Agenda examines the linkage between creativity and business performance, occupying a unique position in this crowded and ultra-competitive Australian advertising, marketing and media industry.”
Advertising Council Australia chief executive Tony Hale also explained why growth-seeking businesses should turn their attention to the industry, and vice versa.
“We need to put confidence in the business community for creativity, and what that can bring to business results and growth at any element of the customer journey.”
Panellists speaking at the event offered a window into how marketers and advertisers are navigating the current economic and cultural landscape, which is rapidly evolving.
Panellist Suzana Ristevski said “I think we actually have to get faster as an industry.”
Ristevski, who is set to depart NAB as chief marketing officer to lead Google’s marketing operations in Australia in the coming months, urged brands to think more broadly about how they communicate with customers, beyond media channels to focus on great creative ideas.
“You [can] buy eyeballs on TV, absolutely. But if the content is brilliant, and you’ve tapped into an idea, that content can actually generate more eyeballs than you could possibly imagine,” she said.
However, brands must seek to deeply understand their audiences in order to be culturally relevant, panellists argued.
“You need to set yourself up properly. So you know who you are, who you’re talking to and what are you trying to say,” explained Dentsu Creative ANZ chief executive Kirsty Muddle.
“And then you need to be able to respond to the context that is happening so you have a relevant role in whatever’s going on in society today.”
Staying ‘relevant’ and defining a brand’s role in society, however, is a business fraught with increasing risk in 2024, as brands that lack understanding of their customers’ values and needs have seen some companies that have chosen to take a stand on social issues embroiled in backlash in recent years.
The voices of disgruntled customers are becoming louder, too, on social media channels, for example. This is a challenge brands must continue to navigate, panellists explained.
Speaking at the event, home loan challenger Athena’s chief marketing officer Sarah Sproule said that businesses must be attuned to culture within their company’s sector: “Culture itself is nuanced. And then how you tap into that creatively also has another nuance depending on the category that you work in,” she added.
Ristevski said setting a clear brand foundation is essential in the rapidly changing media landscape – one in which social media enables consumers’ voices to be more easily published, heard and seen by larger audiences than ever before.
“But the more the proliferation of media channels, the more the proliferation of other people talking about our brands, the more we need to be very, very, very clear on what our brand personality is and what our purpose is.”
Creative innovation studio R/GA’s vice president executive creative director for APAC, Ben Miles believes that brands should make a contribution to society and culture.
“Real brands that resonate with their customers create long-lasting impact because they’re really authentically trying to improve or engage or push forward a community,” he said.
Read more in the next edition of The Growth Agenda, out Monday 18 March.
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