Set little fires: How to embrace risk and push creativity and other lessons from the Festival of Marketing.

A warm spring morning’s walk along London’s Southbank, breathing in the energy of the city. Kids playing on the river beach before school. Clusters of people gathering around coffee vans. The blue sky, the river, the sun. Having been away from the big smoke for so long I approached last week's trip with apprehension, but was pleasantly surprised. Somehow it was not so big, not so smoky as I remembered. It felt familiar, alive, helpful. I walked to Westminster full of hope and possibility. A pretty good mindset for a day of talks about thinking differently. This year’s Festival of Marketing took transformation as its theme and its speakers really delivered. From the changes the industry needs to make to hear unheard voices, to the power brands have to make a real difference, we heard insights and perspectives from data analysts, think tanks, CMOs and journalists all with something important to say.

I came away frantically scribbling down ideas, opportunities and different approaches to how we work with our clients and how we connect with our community. More on all that soon. But in the meantime, here are the top takeaways from the day…

1. Use your influence responsibly: “The emotional connection brands have when we do work well is really powerful”. ?Diageo CMO Cristina Diezhandino talked about the company's portfolio of brands and the longstanding, meaningful relationship those brands – including Guinness, Johnnie Walker and Baileys – have with their customers. She recognised that today, consumers expect more of their brands and part of the work brands need to do is meet that expectation in an authentic way, leveraging their emotional connection to better dial into the consumers life, concerns and context. Think creatively. Find the single word truth that can shape your brief. Use data and engagement to enhance the relationship your work establishes. Make a difference. Of course this is about marketing, about ultimately selling more product, but it is also about recognising the power you have and using it well. The new Guinness regenerative agriculture programme, where the brand is working with 40 farms across Ireland to reduce carbon emissions and improve soil health through the production of barley, is a compelling example.

2. Make your content trustworthy: “Words carry meaning and implications. Have some humility.” Reuters and Reuters Plus (Reuters’ brand content studio) talked about what brands can learn from journalism when producing content – stressing how in an age of fake news, regardless of the topic of your content, drawing on reliable primary sources will elevate your credibility. So many brands think their content should solely focus on their own product, opinions, service or context. But if a journalist only had one viewpoint in their story readers wouldn’t trust it, or want to engage with it. ‘Support your content with insight, be specific,’ was Reuters Plus senior manager of client content strategy Rachel Adams' advice. Share your opinion as a brand, have the voice of people or customers in your content, but bring in other voices and perspectives too. Use statistics to reinforce your arguments, research, read around your subject, draw in credible external sources. It will all serve to make your content, product and brand more sticky, not less.

3. Beware the product delusion: “If you’re remembered you’re much more likely to be bought.” In a conversation about innovating in the B2B marketing space, Mimi Turner, Head of EMEA & Latin America, The B2B Institute LinkedIn and Annabel Venner formely of Hiscox, shared their dos and don’ts for what is so often considered the poor relation to B2C. They talked about the ‘product delusion’ and how so many B2B brands fall into the trap of reeling out product claims in their marketing, forgetting how humans make decisions and recall information (hint: it is not rational/functional thinking alone, there is a lot of instinctive and emotive thinking going on).

"Brand health today is financial health tomorrow.'

Mimi Turner

They discussed how the majority of B2B businesses target their marketing at their 5% of active buyers, forgetting the 95% of passive buyers where there’s such potential for growth. To win in this space a B2B brand should think about leveraging its insights and data to read future customers and then create for those customers, claiming their ‘mental availability’, so that when those customers come to buy, the brand will be front of mind. ‘Brand health today is financial health tomorrow’, Turner explained, setting the whole room's pens in motion. Following this, Venner advocated for thinking creatively, pushing the brief, innovating to establish your brand's equity with the audience, but she acknowledged that often this can be a hard internal sell. Her solution? ‘Start little fires’, try small and quick creative responses that demonstrate impact while keeping risk minimal. Those little fires can create a compelling business case by showing the heat creativity can produce and the potential it has to spark new business opportunities, markets and growth.

4. Purpose has to be real and deep, to count: “We are an impact brand that makes chocolate not a chocolate brand that makes impact.” The most inspiring talk of the day came from Nicola Matthews, head of marketing at Tony’s Chocolonely. A true example of a brand committed to tackling a serious social and ethical issue, at Tony’s Chocolonely the issue came first. And runs deep. The chocolate industry is unfairly divided and exploitation is an ingredient in every household chocolate bar we buy. Tony’s Chocolonely was set up to make all chocolate 100% slave-free, starting with their own products and expanding to drive change worldwide, on the ground, in the supply chain, at policy level. Wherever they can. Their purpose is on their packaging (their manifesto is printed on their wrappers), drives their marketing and is even in their products (their bar is unevenly shaped to represent the unfair division of the industry, their advent calendar – which caused uproar last year – had one day without a chocolate in it, one day with two…). By thinking purpose-first at all points they have made a product people believe in and care about, have a community of forever friends' who can be called upon to act and make a difference where it counts and are maximising every opportunity to deliver against their manifesto. Brands that make money and are part of the consumerist machine CAN be good. And do good. It was a reassuring rally cry that I certainly needed to hear, and that I’m sure many others felt buoyed by too.