The Only Way is Ethics

A couple of weeks back, I had the pleasure of attending two marketing conferences. The first was the iMedia Summit where I interviewed Marc Mathieu of Unilever on his views on a data driven marketing approach. The second was the Advertising Association’s annual conference LEAD.

At both sessions, there were some common themes and consensus around the fact that the advertising industry has a responsibility to get back to what it should do best, which is understanding and serving the needs of people. The creative industries are rightly being celebrated for the contribution they make to the UK economy; 3 times the standard growth at 10%, but simultaneously the industry is , like many British establishments & industry verticals, facing some tough introspection around trust and confidence.

In the last 6 months, the nation has hopped from one "trust" sensation to the next, with the Oborne HSBC story spiralling more out of control today in to question marks over the Barclay Brothers (owners of Telegraph) taking a ￡250m loan from HSBC, and utility companies continuing to be under the spotlight for pricing. Behind the Oborne story is a commercial question related to advertising but even before this story broke, it was clear the advertising and marketing community is not immune from introspection. Tough questions are being asked of us the tripartite of brand owners, agencies and media owners.

The themes from the conferences I attended were increasing concern around whether consumer data is being used appropriately and the efficacy of digital advertising were regular themes but the hardest hitting stat surrounded the waning trust in advertising and in brands from the British public. Richard Eyre, who opened Lead, quoted the Edelman Trust barometer that illustrates that in the last 20 years those in favour of advertising has spiralled from 51% to just 27% with one in six saying they feel bombarded by ads.

Eyre called for the industry and the AA to re-set, “for a new deal ” and termed his solution to this “the only way is ethics.” At this moment, it struck me that the industry may finally be fronting up to many of the issues that Havas has been shining a light on for the last 4 years with its’ Meaningful Brands research. This survey of 19,000 Brits, looks at the perception real people have of how brands contribute to their daily lives, considering three areas; product & price, personal wellbeing and collective wellbeing i.e. society.

The same study supports the same findings of the Edelman Trust Barometer. Havas Media’s latest Meaningful Brands survey reveals that just 22% of respondents say they feel brands communicate honestly through their advertising. Worse still, only 1 in 4 (25%) say they believe that companies and brands are working hard at contributing to people’s lives and daily well-being. In a related study analysing what is arguably lauded as today's most engaging new channel marketers have at their fingertips, social, a recent Havas Labs study (using Crowdemotion software that captures facial expression) showed that less than 20% of the content generated any emotional reaction with people.

https://labs.havasmedia.co.uk/2015/01/crowdemotion-havas-media-social-emotion-study/

Reassuringly, 58% say that they do believe brands should play a key role ( in fact almost equal to the role they feel the government has) so there is hope but this significant gap, illustrates a clear expectation for business to take more responsibility and to behave in a more human way. Many would question whether advertising can address trust issues, but my response to that would be that smart communication can. Much advertising ( banking in particular) paints a rosy picture through elegant storytelling which bears little resemblance to the experience of their customer service. Advertisers need to be more authentic, more human and use organic "conversational" channels as well as mass media. They need to be seen to listen more and to evolve the conversations they have with people based on their needs, concerns and complaints.

For brands that demonstrate social and environmental responsibility there are however big rewards. 71% of people say they would trust brands that consistently do this. Unilever’s Crafting Brands for Life still stands out as the best example; Mathieu at the iMedia Summit talked of many initiatives using new data signals to help improve both products as well as advertising; Keith Weed at Lead talked about Unilever’s improving employer brand as a result of this program. It struck me that a trend Contagious introduced a couple of years back, “marketing as service” should get more of the spotlight.

Marketing and advertising starts and finishes with people, but as we were reminded at the AA conference, too often shareholders or egos can get in the way. I will finish where I started which is to say that brands, agencies and media owners have a duty to think more about the consistency of what they communicate in an ad, versus the reality of the day-to-day experience of their brand.

Brands need to increasingly leverage new forms of intelligence from real people ( from channels like social) to make their communication more meaningful and useful. Let’s hope that the thought provoking speeches at LEAD and Andy Duncan’s (AA President) rally cry for change this year does not fall on deaf ears. In an Economist Intelligence Unit survey of 400 global marketers yesterday, a huge 81% said they required structural change to better serve their business.

The brands that will win in 2015 for me will be those that review the way they are organised so they can focus more on being human and ensuring that more of what they do (rather than just say) can genuinely be held up as providing personal value. If the 4th biggest advertiser in the world can be on stage twice in a day talking about how they strive daily towards this, then all brands can. The advertising of tomorrow is not about storytelling, it's about story living.

Our latest Meaningful Brands research will be released in early April so watch this space.