<font color="#CC0033">Cannes 2008:</font> The consumer is moving into the brand kitchen

“Word of mouth is the new mass media,” declared Nigel Morris, chief executive officer of Isobar, a worldwide digital marketing network, as he took the audience at the Cannes Lions through a fascinating talk on Brand Management 3.0: Building Brands in the New Digital World.

Starting out, Morris said that there were four big influences affecting business dynamics: globalisation, digital technologies, consumer activism and sustainability. Each impacted the other. Moreover, each was being fuelled by media communications which had made the world more interdependent, interconnected and transparent.

He reminded the audience that “people use brands to help them navigate through confusing and complex choices in life”. However, the abundance of choice is leading to greater confusion rather than clarity. In such a situation, brands only have a role to play in a stressed out consumer’s life if they add something to his conversation. In fact, Morris went so far as to say that “the brands whose consumers tell the best stories will win”.

He said that the clichés that surround the changing media scene could not adequately convey the change that brand communicators had to undergo. In an interconnected world, brand and business behaviour is becoming the key determinant of image. “Above everything else, it requires a different mindset” on the part of brand custodians, said Morris. And that is difficult to achieve.

Morris likened the manner and place of brand communication to the rooms of a home – a living room, a dining room and the kitchen. In the old days, when guests came home, they had a drink in the living room before moving to the dining room, while the kitchen – the backend, so to say – was effectively out of bounds.

Things have got much more informal now, and guests are likely to walk into the kitchen with their drinks, while the host cooks up a meal. What this means is that the host has far less control on the situation than before, when they all sat in the controlled environment of the living room or the dining room.

Morris said that the same thing is happening with brands. As informal media proliferates, the consumer is moving into the very place where the brand is being created – he has a hand in it and can no longer be addressed in a controlled environment.

Talking of the bewildering changes in media and what that means to the role of ad agencies, Morris ended by emphasising that, contrary to the general impression, “the role of creative has been enhanced, not diminished”.

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