Consumers are like cats and dogs

This is an analogy used by Thomas Strerath, CEO of OgilvyOne Worldwide Germany speaker on Superpanel: TV’s Burning Issues, on day one at MIPTV. He used this analogy to describe how people are currently consuming media and how their clients are pushing them to use non-traditional marketing solutions.

To answer this, Ogilvy started Neo@Ogilvy, a fully integrated division of OgilvyOne Worldwide, which is a full-service digital and direct media company. It was pushed by its clients as well as seeing revenues move from mass media to other new digital platforms. Wanting to avoid the situation of the past where media buying, which was an agency function but moved to specialist companies, Neo@Ogilvy wanted to bring digital media buying back into the agency.

Think long form

It also allowed the creatives to think more long form and not just in a 30-second spot space. Content is King is a very old statement but was mentioned many times on the panel. Brands are looking for longer, more engaging relationships with their consumers.

Let’s face it; we humans have a need for relaxed entertainment. When we get home at night after a hard day at work, we want to be entertained. Sitting in front of our TVs, our entertainment is interrupted by marketing and depending what your state of mind is, you either accept it or reject it and don’t take notice at all.

Digital has opened many new platforms for marketers; Neo@Ogilvy evaluates these and offers them as new opportunities to clients.

Creating longer form, relevant content is what the consumer is looking for. If you’re about to purchase a new vehicle, 30 seconds is not enough – a tjree-minute clip telling me about the features, is what I’d want. This content can be available on a website, on mobile or even packaged on a DVD.

As Strerath stated, content needs to be relevant and if it is it will be consumed and not skipped. He gave BMW as an example.

Video clips on BMW are one of the most searched for clips on the web by passionate owners and prospective buyers. These clips vary from the movies that BMW created years ago to interviews with the BMW designers, stories on new product development and BMW’s many sponsorships.

Controlling the interaction

Ogilvy is in the process of aggregating all BMW-related content to make it more readily available over various digital platforms. It’s about brands being open and interacting with their consumers and letting them take control of the interaction. Let them be the cat rather than giving them a bone and waiting for them to come back to you.

What’s very important, though, with the growth of user generated content and sites like YouTube and MySpace, is that the content needs to be of high quality. Just because it’s on the web or destined for mobile doesn’t mean the content needs to be inferior. High production values are paramount in terms of brand association. The fun clips, the viral ads and all the user-generated content has an appeal to a particular target market. But if you’re building a brand through long form, branded content, it needs to be entertaining, informative and relevant.