This week at Ad World, our experts across S4Capital owned the virtual stage during its ‘21 edition. Combining their knowledge with hyper-focused speeches, actionable strategies and in-depth workshops, they showed up in the same way we approach our work as the marketing world converges: together. Here’s your cheat sheet in case you skipped class.

From the secret sauce behind the TikTok algorithm to new ways to foster diversity, equity and inclusion internally, this virtual conference left no subject out of the curriculum. Our marketers and leadership alike were there to shine a light on the most relevant aspects of a sustainable strategy, all through a common thread: the importance of truly knowing your consumers.

What Makes Audiences Tick on TikTok

Our very own Claudia Cameron, Head of Marketing and Insights at IMA, inaugurated Stage 1 on Monday for a 20-minute session on all things TikTok. She started with a very simple rule: don’t make ads, make TikToks. While many brands overanalyze and overproduce what they post, keeping it simple and focusing on storytelling is the real key to an entertainment experience that doesn’t feel forced.

Moreover, your focus should not be on what a platform can give you. Instead, you may want to stop and consider what you can give its audience. “Keep low-key branding, look for native TikTok creators and maintain the collaborative environment,” she said. One way to do this? Join an existing challenge and sponsor influencer content to post on your brand account.

Although different brands go for different solutions, it’s important to have a long-term strategy and not just post once in a blue moon. Some additional tips include: make the first three seconds memorable, pick a trending sound and encourage users to leave comments. TikTok is a great environment for brands to experiment and build closer digital connections with consumers, as long as they are able to speak their language. 

Mitigate Flaws in Your Attribution

Regardless of the platform you’re using, one thing is true for all: you have to follow the metrics. However, it’s important to remember that even though attribution models are useful, they are never completely accurate. That was the main concept of VP of Account Services Brittany Blanchard’s talk on Tuesday, titled “How to Break Your Reliance on ROAS for Paid Search Campaigns.” 

With more users making cross-device purchases, return on ad spend (ROAS) becomes a flawed representation of each channel’s real effectiveness. Basing your decisions on this metric alone can be misleading—and while advertisers may be scared to put leads at risk for testing, it’s a necessary step toward growth. “Don’t overthink it. Use lots of metrics to tell your performance story and let common sense reign,” says Blanchard.

Her in-depth talk unveiled the foundations for a better testing and experimentation approach to digital marketing, focusing on how to set up your paid search and social performance measurement in a foolproof way. “To answer the questions you may have, it’s important to run a test,” she explained. How? “Choose a control audience and a test audience. Agree to what you’re going to measure, how, and give it enough time.” That last point is the key: “Things don’t happen instantly. Consumers think before they buy.” 

Marketers, the Modern-Age Investors

Even after all this measuring, cross-checking and strategic thinking, marketers are seldom thought of as investors. However, that’s exactly what they are. On his panel “An Economist Approach to Marketing That Drives Accelerated Long-Term Growth,” Decoded Advertising’s Head of Media Strategy, James Donner, talked about maximizing profit—and how the lack of investment discipline can create both massive risk and opportunity for brands.

“Advertisers and media buyers are less trained in economics, but they should be,” Donner explained. To truly maximize profit, marketers need to get rid of bad habits like short-term thinking, having a narrow view of return on investment (ROI) and relying on flawed data. These mistakes may lead them toward sales activations to boost ROI—and although these scale faster, so do they decay. Instead, focus on brand-building campaigns, which are the main drivers of growth. 

According to Donner, another tip is to track incrementality. “Measure brand’s impact on the bottom line over an extended period of time. Give it 12 or 14 months before drawing any conclusions.” And while you do so, make the most of your strategy by creating benchmarks for channels and audiences at various levels of spend over time. 

A Recipe for Continued Growth

Although proper measurement takes time, the timeline for content creation has shortened. As S4Capital Executive Chairman Sir Martin Sorrell said during the conference, “In today’s world, activation and implementation became more important. You can’t spend three to six months producing a TVC when the market is moving at lightning speed.”

In his eye-opening session about the future of advertising, Sorrell broke down the pillars he stands by—faster, better, cheaper—and how the death of the cookie will enhance the power of first-party data. As a first step, brands should reclaim their data and build an ecosystem that can inform the development of content and its distribution through digital media. This includes adapting the content to different needs, regions and languages. To do so, regional structures are no longer necessary. As Sorrell puts it: “In a digital world, we can centralize the production hub and create, produce and distribute digital content in all different regions. Our BMW Mini win from last year is a good example of that.”

As the world evolves and moves beyond the pandemic, efficiency will continue to be key. “Digital is where growth was, is and will be,” Sorrell noted. “By 2024, 70% of the market is going to be digital, which is why we are digital first in our constitution.” Circling back to the S4’s foundational pillars, he explained how agility and a better understanding of the ecosystem protect the value of the delivered products.

It all boils down to one concept: to get consistent growth, you have to understand consumers. However, it’s important for marketers to know that there’s no single source of truth to get there. Every attribution model will kill your strategy if it’s the only thing you follow—but by analyzing multiple data points to see what your audience is engaging with and through a more efficient, adaptive production process, you can better apply learnings to deliver effective content at record speed.

Con un ritmo de cambios en la tecnología cada vez más acelerado y con plataformas nuevas que surgen igual de rápido, puede ser difícil para los negocios adaptarse. En vez de reinventar la rueda, las marcas con historia deberían esmerarse por ser ellas mismas.

Cuando se trata de transformación digital, las marcas con historia están en una posición particularmente difícil: deben considerar cómo proveer experiencias nuevas e innovadoras y, al mismo tiempo, conservar el carácter, la imagen y la relación con el cliente que han funcionado tan bien hasta ahora. En algunos casos, estándares de marca muy rígidos y la resistencia interna hacia el cambio pueden afectar la relación de los clientes hasta con las marcas más queridas. Entonces, ¿cómo hace uno para invertir en transformación digital sin perder eso que lo hace tan único y exitoso?

Prestar atención a las necesidades de los clientes y cómo satisfacerlas.

El primer paso para adoptar una estrategia digital es mantener el foco en el cliente. ¿Cómo pueden las plataformas digitales agregar valor para ellos más allá de tu IP y tus productos existentes? ¿Cuáles de las necesidades de tus clientes no están siendo satisfechas teniendo en cuenta los canales que tienes hoy a tu disposición? Además de poner el foco en los hábitos y las necesidades de los clientes, deberías fijarte en la competencia en cuanto a inspiración y puntos de referencia, y también para ver dónde están las posibilidades. ¿Existe alguna manera de que puedas proveerles una experiencia aún mejor?

Cuando te imaginas la experiencia que quieres darles a tus clientes, evita un error común que muchas marcas cometen: la suposición de que la transformación digital sólo significa un sitio web o una app llamativos. En realidad, la transformación digital es un proceso multifacético que va a requerir que reestructures el modo en que llevas a cabo el negocio. Así que más allá de invertir en un sitio web nuevo o en una experiencia en una app, necesitarás un enfoque mucho más integrado en cuanto a cómo tu mensaje central se puede amplificar a lo largo de varios puntos de contacto, medios y otros modos de comunicación. Esto también significa reestructurar tu equipo un poco. Un ejemplo de los cambios que podrías implementar incluye fusionar tus equipos de marketing e IT para asegurar una experiencia de usuario más fluida en la web.

Usa tu estatura a tu favor—pero no le temas al cambio.

Es difícil romper con los viejos hábitos, pero las marcas con historia tienen una ventaja sobre las nuevos: décadas de relevancia cultural y la confianza de los consumidores, dos elementos a los que pueden recurrir cuando se imponen en un espacio digital. Por ejemplo, una de las marcas de juguetes más icónicas de todos los tiempos: LEGO. Cuando la atención de los niños se desplazó desde los juguetes físicos hacia los smartphones y iPads, LEGO no iba a desaparecer sin dar pelea. La gran amenaza de los medios digitales no pudo con el legado de LEGO. Al contrario, el fabricador danés de juguetes decidió seguir las tendencias e invertir fuertemente en apps, videojuegos y películas. El esfuerzo de la transformación digital tuvo tanto éxito que hoy se lo denomina el “Apple de los juguetes”.

Niels B. Christiansen, CEO de LEGO, mencionó en el reporte “LEGO Play Well” de 2018 que “los niños de hoy están mezclando sin esfuerzo lo que es real y lo que es virtual, reinventando el juego de una manera que la gente de mi generación jamás se podría haber imaginado”. Eso también inspiró a la marca a borrar esas líneas entre las experiencias físicas y digitales. “Nosotros, en LEGO, estamos abiertos a esa fluidez en el juego”, agregó la CMO de LEGO, Julia Goldin, “y queremos tener un rol más grande en el desarrollo del niño” tanto online como offline.

La sofisticación de LEGO en plataformas digitales culminó con Nexo Knights, una franquicia de juguetes diseñados para retener la atención de los niños a través de un ecosistema entero de experiencias y medios que incluyen una serie de TV, una app, una experiencia de realidad virtual y un juego en la web. Esta vigorosa campaña introdujo a los niños al mundo de la series de juguetes – pero aún con todo el énfasis puesto en el juego de realidad virtual y la app móvil, el foco seguía estando en las cajas de los coloridos bloques de plástico dentro de las cuales los niños podían meter sus manos.

Algunas cosas simplemente no se replican digitalmente, según Sander van der Vegte, director de MediaMonks Labs. “Desde la sensación de los bloques hasta el sonido del click que hacen al unirse”, hay muchos elementos físicos propios del querido bloque de juguete que harían que fuera imposible reemplazar el aspecto físico del juego. La gran pregunta a considerar con la transformación digital es cómo lo digital puede aumentar la experiencia o eso que la gente ya ama de tu marca.

Descubre cómo construimos bloque por bloque el lanzamiento de Nexo Knights.

No te aferres a los modelos de negocio con legado, sino mejóralos de una forma inteligente.

Aferrarse a un modelo de negocio con legado puede ser un suicidio en un ambiente de hábitos cambiantes de consumo. Las empresas que se adelantan al proceso de transformación digital pueden priorizar herramientas, plataformas y las características que encajan dentro de su modelo de negocios existente en vez de intentar reinventar la rueda o negarse a la ola de cambios en las necesidades de los consumidores.

Un aspecto de la campaña de Nexo Knights que no deberíamos pasar por alto es que invita a los consumidores a ir y explorar los negocios físicos de LEGO en varios modos diferentes—aún a sabiendas de que la mayoría de las ventas de juguetes se dan en internet, no fuera de ella. Lo que parece una mala idea dio resultados para la marca. Una clave de la campaña es la experiencia de realidad virtual de Nexo Knights que deja que las personas entren, literalmente, en el mundo del IP en el momento que entran en un negocio de LEGO. Luego de que conocieran el producto, los niños podían encontrar recompensas en los locales que podían escanear en la app de Nexo Knights, aumentando su experiencia digital con visitas a los locales físicos. Con las dos herramientas, la marca utilizó la tecnología digital para fortalecer el negocio físico y animar a los niños a ver los productos en persona. ¿Quién dijo que las ventas en persona se habían acabado?

La transformación digital definitivamente puede ser intimidante—te obliga a mirar la manera en que formas relaciones con los consumidores y puede también afectar tu producto. Pero adoptar una estrategia digital no tiene por qué resultar en una crisis de identidad. A veces, la mejor estrategia es ser tú mismo.

A new Forrester report by Jay Pattisall, unveiled at the start of Cannes Lions, highlights how the pursuit of customer experience (CX) as a go-to strategy has in fact inhibited growth for many brands. Instead, brands must invest in creativity (and identify the right partners to help them do so) to achieve higher returns. It’s welcome news at Cannes, which celebrates creative excellence and serves as a benchmark for best-in-class communications—and MediaMonks is proud to have been interviewed alongside other agencies for the report.

Pattisall relates CMOs’ focus on CX to a diminishing prioritization of creativity; one   finding in his Forrester report is that “Every brand offers the same digital experience because they all address the same customer needs, use the same technology platforms, and design for the same mobile use case.” Brands shouldn’t put all their eggs in one basket by focusing purely on function, but place greater attention on offering creative experiences.

A recent article published by Marketing Week agrees that brand creativity is on an overall decline, yet is a key indicator of success: 67% of companies with top ratings on McKinsey’s Award Creativity Score—measuring quantity, variety and consistency of Cannes Lions awards won—have above-average growth, according to the article.

Learn more about the cost of losing creativity.

What does this mean? Creativity might not be immediately quantifiable, but it can go a long way in increasing enterprise value. MediaMonks Global Executive Creative Director Jouke Vuurmans has long spoken out against brands failing to take advantage of the creative opportunities available to them. He has noticed a “suburbanization” of design where bold brand identity has taken a back stage to sanitized interfaces that tick off the same boxes. Because digital interfaces are often the most common—or even first—settings in which users will engage with a brand, this results in a lot of wasted potential for brands to differentiate themselves and deliver on the brand promise.

Building content and experiences requires input from many people across the organization, each perhaps pursuing their own goals—but they must collaborate to ensure their efforts are on the same page. “Just because so much focus is on digital doesn’t mean we should ignore brand within this relentless creation and distribution of content,” says ter Haar as quoted in the Forrester report, “The Cost of Losing Creativity,” highlighting the importance in remembering that even the most solutions-oriented approach shouldn’t dismiss the brand-building opportunities of creativity.

The Interface is the Brand

At MediaMonks, we believe every engagement that users have with a brand is an opportunity to represent its core products and services. Most apps that exist to fulfill a specific function essentially look and feel identical, lost in a sea of sameness where differentiating factors are slight, if they exist at all. This is especially true in travel brands, for example: any airline app will let you book a flight or check in with a digital boarding pass. But brands can stand out by fusing creativity and technology to fulfill a wider purpose. The Aeroméxico app is a great example of this by offering smart content based on users’ itineraries, helping them easily find offers most relevant to their trips.

The use of highly relevant and targeted personalized content shows how even the smallest interactions can make a big impact on the user experience—and those interactions directly translate into brand loyalty. “Creative experiences that embed the brand’s purpose and values within a tech-fueled solution connect the uniqueness of the brand, the emotional needs of its customers, and the convenience of technology,” writes Pattisall in the Forrester report.

We agree. While brands have come under great pressure to engage their consumers through always-on content, it’s become easy to view small pieces of content as disposable or having limited impact on the overall consumer experience. “People underestimate the creative value of always-on communication,” cautions ter Haar. “Just because it’s 6 seconds on Facebook doesn’t mean you can’t think about distinction.”

Drive Purpose Across the Ecosystem

A remedy for unlocking the creative potential in any touchpoint or piece of content is to begin thinking in terms of ecosystems. The user journey extends beyond individual channels and platforms. Likewise, brands should take a more holistic approach at the creative experiences they provide. “We spend a lot of time thinking about creativity as a broader term—something as part of UX, digital design, flow—across anything that’s building people into an ecosystem,” says ter Haar. “How does the work we do for brands lock people into an ecosystem?”

Take grilling brand Weber, who also realized audiences were beginning to care less about objects—like grills—and gravitate more towards experience. This shift in consumer focus provided Weber with an untapped opportunity: how could they use creativity through content and experience to position grilling (and by extension, their brand) at the center of social experiences that consumers crave?

The result is an all-encompassing digital ecosystem that serves not only as a place to learn about grilling products, but to seek out and discover inspiration about grilling as a lifestyle. By infusing this promise across an ecosystem that encompasses personalized web content, connected apps, interactive demos, in-person experiences and more, Weber has achieved a compelling digital ecosystem that accounts for a griller’s every need, infusing emotion and aspiration into every step of the experience.

In his Forrester report, Pattisall highlights the importance of infusing creative problem solving at the beginning of every creative process: “Rather than bolting creative on at the end of the process as an established look or defined list of deliverables, initiate the project with creative problem solving to help define the problem and craft a solution at the start,” he writes.

It all boils down to instilling your work with a sense of purpose. When working with clients to narrow their efforts and align those goals with moving the business forward, we enjoy quoting the NASA janitor who proudly told President Kennedy that he was helping to put a man on the moon. A similar sense of purpose should manifest from every step of the creative process, at every level of an organization and at every touchpoint at which users engage. Such an approach ensures customer experiences differentiate a brand and uniquely affect consumers to strike a stronger, longer-lasting connection.

A new year is upon us, and with it comes the potential to find new opportunities for engaging with audiences and providing them fun, engaging experiences. In fact, according to a consumer trends report from Attest, customers have a large appetite for content that brands seek to satiate. As you settle into the year by gauging how to realize your goals with tactical planning, a couple Monks weigh in on steps to take.

When planning for the new year, it’s good to begin by stepping back and reflecting on the past. 2018 has prompted consumers and brands alike to consider the role data plays in our lives, highlighting a need to use it responsibly to add real value to users’ lives. With a proliferation of voices constantly vying for our attention, it’s in this spirit that we ask brands to keep things simple moving into the new year. Why? Because simplicity allows you to better provide a consistent, relevant experience for your audience wherever they are.

Jouke Vuurmans, Global Executive Creative Director at MediaMonks puts it plainly: “People are blind to what’s not relevant to them, which makes it easy for them to tune it out.” But simplicity is key to leveraging data in smart ways, which in turn “leads to higher likelihood that people will like and do something—that interactivity makes it stick.”

This Year, Less is More

By now you’ve likely set your budget and strategic goals for the year and are developing a tactical plan to successfully meet them. Easier said than done, right? Let this be your first step: take a deep breath and adopt a simplified approach in how you distribute information to your audience. Whether it be the information that helps customers make a purchase or content that demonstrates the value and relevancy of a product to customers’ lives, simplicity is the key to unlocking sticky, memorable and delightful experiences that have impact and drive conversions.

First, what do we mean by simple? Designing simpler experiences means providing users with greater clarity of information that they can act on immediately. For example, we built a car scanner for Uber in 2017 that would immediately and automatically alert drives if their car qualified for one of Uber’s services as they pulled up to a gas pump. The scanner provides users with a clear message and, by offering a link to signup if cars qualify, a CTA whose value becomes obvious—all without requiring any input from the user. The goal is to meet the user at the right place and the right time with the right information.

Gain Trust Through Transparency

In the past year, data collection and personalization have gotten a bit of a bad rap. Anticipating this unease makes it all the more important that brands rethink the way they collect and use data to benefit the user. The problem, according to Jason Prohaska, Managing Director at MediaMonks NY, is that access and understanding of this data has become over-complicated for both brands and users alike.

Take media buy, for example: the promise to users is that handing over data will result in more useful and valuable content for them—but it’s hard for brands to access that data in planning their media buys, providing less-than-stellar results for everyone. “What we do well is help brands navigate this challenge through programmatic solutions to provide small moments,” says Prohaska, “little bits of info applied properly to provide tremendous value.”

A new year means new challenges and opportunities.

Let’s look at one such moment. Taking inspiration from the trend of using smartphone cameras as mirrors for applying makeup, beauty brand Ulta wanted to make one of their own that could help add product relevance to users. Our solution, made in partnership with Google, is the Moxi Mirror. The smart mirror app scans the user’s face before providing them with a personalized stream of beauty content. Because they can access the mirror while viewing the content, users can apply their new know-how while applying their makeup.

Setting the Foundation for Personalization

The user experience detailed above is simple, though the tech under the hood may be a bit complicated for some organizations to design for. While everyone can see the value in personalization, the under-the-hood requirements often intimidates. But “personalization doesn’t need to be really complex to make a huge impact,” says Vuurmans. “You could create just three different segments for your audience and conversion will already improve.”

The first step to tactical planning for simpler user experiences aided by AI is to open up your strategy to different types of messaging and methods for distributing them. The singular creative thought behind your brand or campaign should be conceived as a platform from which related ideas can thrive—different ideas and messages you can tailor to segments.

When planning or distributing your content, ask yourself: “What is the key information, and how are we tapping ad tech to solve that loop?” The second question can be a bit trickier to answer—but help is available for brands who need help making that next step. “Our focus at MediaMonks is largely on the user experience and value proposition,” says Prohaska, “then bringing the best out of ad tech on behalf of brand initiatives and UX, evolving the bad and old into new hotness that is more valuable to our partners.”

By keeping informed about what messaging works on a per-audience and per-channel basis, you can provide fun and simple, intuitive experiences across channels that drive conversions. This makes all the difference between content that annoys versus content users enjoy, helping you achieve your goals reaching into the new year with a stronger brand-customer relationship.

With an ever-quickening rate of technological change and new platforms emerging just as fast, it can be tough for businesses to adapt. Rather than reinvent the wheel, legacy businesses should strive to be themselves.

When it comes to digital transformation, legacy businesses are in a uniquely tight spot: they must consider how to provide new, innovative experiences while retaining the character, image and customer relationship that have worked so well thus far. In some cases, rigid brand standards and internal reluctance to change can squander customers’ relationship with even beloved brands. So how does one invest in digital transformation without losing what made them unique and successful? 

Take stock of customers’ needs and how you can meet them.

The first step in adopting a digital strategy is to keep a customer-centric focus. How can digital platforms add value for them on top of your existing IP and products? Which of your customers’ needs are unmet given the channels that are available to you today? In addition to focusing on customer habits and needs, you should keep an eye on competition for inspiration, benchmarks and to see where possibilities lie. Are there any ways you can provide an even better experience than them?

When envisioning the experience that you want to give customers, avoid a common pitfall that befalls some brands: the dubious assumption that digital transformation solely involves a flashy site or app. In fact, digital transformation is a multifaceted process that will require you to restructure the way you do business. So rather than just invest in a new website or app experience, you’ll need a much more integrated approach to how your core message is amplified across several touchpoints, media and other messaging. This also means restructuring your team a bit. One example of changes you might implement includes marrying your marketing and IT teams to ensure a smoother user experience on the web.

Use your stature to your advantage—but don’t be afraid of change.

Old habits die hard, but legacy businesses have one advantage over newer ones: decades of cultural relevance and consumer trust that they can draw upon when asserting themselves in a digital space. Take, for example, one of the most iconic toy brands of all time: LEGO. When children’s attention shifted from physical toys to smartphones and iPads, LEGO wasn’t going to go down without a fight. The big, bad wolf of digital media failed to huff, puff and blow the LEGO-brick house down. Instead, the Danish toymaker chose to follow the wind and invest heavily in apps, videogames and film. The digital transformation effort has proved so successful that it’s today regarded as the “Apple of toys.”

Niels B. Christiansen, LEGO CEO, mentioned in the LEGO Play Well Report 2018 that “today’s children are seamlessly merging what’s real and what’s virtual, reinventing play in ways people of my own generation could never have envisioned.” This inspired the brand to similarly blur the lines between physical and digital experiences. “We at LEGO are embracing that fluidity in play,” added LEGO CMO Julia Goldin, “and we want to have a bigger role in a child’s development” both online and off.

LEGO’s sophistication in digital platforms culminated in Nexo Knights, a toy franchise designed to hold children’s attention across an entire ecosystem of experiences and media including a TV series, a mobile app, retail VR experiences and a web game. The robust campaign introduced children to the world of the toy series—but even with the bells and whistles of a VR game and mobile app, the focus was still on the boxes of brightly colored, plastic bricks that kids could dive their fists into.

Some things simply aren’t replicated digitally, according to Sander van der Vegte, Head of Labs at MediaMonks Labs. “From the feeling of the bricks to the sound of them clicking together,” there are many physical elements to the beloved brick toy that would make it impossible to replace the physical aspect of play. The big question to consider with digital transformation is how digital can augment the experience or thing that people already love about your brand.

See how we pieced together the Nexo Knights launch brick-by-brick.

Don’t cling to legacy business models, but enhance them in a smart way.

Clinging to a legacy business model can be suicide amidst changing consumer habits. Companies that are early in the digital transformation process can prioritize tools, platforms and features that fit within their existing business model rather than try to reinvent the wheel or deny the changing tide of customer needs.

One aspect of the Nexo Knights campaign that shouldn’t be overlooked is that it invites customers to visit and explore LEGO retail stores in a couple of different ways—despite the fact that most toy sales are happening online rather than off. What sounds like a bad idea has proven fruitful for the brand. A keystone of the campaign is the Nexo Knights VR experience, which lets customers literally step into the IP’s world as soon as they walk through the doors of a LEGO store. After they became acquainted with the product, children were able to find power ups at stores that they could scan into the Nexo Knights app, enhancing their digital experience with in-store visits. With both assets, the brand leveraged digital tech to enhance brick-and-mortar retail and to encourage kids to see the products in-person. Who said retail was dead?

Digital transformation can certainly be intimidating—it forces you to take a long, hard look at the way you form relationships with customers and can even cannibalize your product. But adopting a digital strategy doesn’t have to result in an identity crisis. Sometimes the best strategy is to be yourself.

While a clear distinction between art and advertising may not always exist, consumers have a sixth sense for ads that tug at the heartstrings with one hand and their wallets with another.

What makes the difference between a campaign that delightfully intervenes rather than one that merely interrupts, and how can you begin to develop and conceptualize such a creative piece? With MediaMonks’ Water Ripples installation as an example (produced in collaboration with Stella Artois, Mother New York and Water.org), we’re diving into three main ingredients that make up an artful intervention.

And that’s really the test for elevating something to an art form—helping your audience situate themselves and your brand within a larger framework of social good, taking them outside of themselves and their everyday. While aesthetic beauty is ideal for creating a memorable campaign, it’s that self-identification with the human condition that leaves a lasting impact.

Thirsty for more? Read more about Water Ripples from FWA.

1. A Culturally Relevant Purpose

Both works of art and advertising evoke emotion in the audience, which means a particularly artistic campaign should have a clear, culturally relevant value proposition or purpose. A good place to find inspiration is to back a cause or highlight an issue that you feel aligns with your business or audience. And consumers agree: to a Sprout Social study from earlier this year, about two thirds of them think it’s important for brands to take a social stance, so don’t be shy. While it may seem risky, an experience or campaign that drives social good connects to audiences on a human level–and demonstrates your business’ desire to be socially responsible. Even if you aren’t able to solve the world’s problems, you can at least aim to unite people together or ask them to contemplate their place in society, just like any work of art or literature would.

The Water Ripples piece aimed to portray Stella Artois’ care for the clean water effort. And that’s a great cause for a brewery: beer is 90 to 95% water, after all. Through the use of 600 motor-controlled water droplets to replicate the look of rippling water, the installation beautifully depicted the “rippling effect” that the brand and installation participants made in social impact.

2. An Experience that Enhances the Environment

Whether you’re building a large-scale art installation or want to play with a digital platform in a unique way, cleverly intervening with your audience’s everyday environment can go a long way in striking an emotional or empathetic connection between themselves and your cause.

While the Water Ripples’ most outstanding feature is its visuals, its biggest effect on viewers and participants was that it provided a quiet, contemplative and meditative space—a stark contrast to the hustle-and-bustle of Grand Central Station during commuting time.

3. Audience Agency

Every good campaign should have a call to action, but an artistic one should offer a call to contribution—and that contribution should prompt participants to feel as though they’ve made a significant impact or connection with other people in the world (and hopefully your brand, too). How do you allow participants to immerse themselves in the cause by providing an experience?

To answer this question, the team behind the Water Ripples installation accounted for several tiers of participation, including those who answered the call to contribution as well as those who were simply passing by. Participants who made a financial contribution by purchasing a limited-edition Stella Artois chalice were able to make the water ripple, symbolically signifying the impact of their participation—and providing delight to those viewing from afar with the beautiful show.

Helping your audience place themselves within the grand scheme of the human experience doesn’t have to be that lofty—sometimes it’s as simple as designing a specific place for photo-ops and Instagram-worthy moments.

With brands speaking directly to audiences in the same channels where they socialize with friends, the pressure is on for brands to speak more transparently and authentically to their audiences. But while “be authentic” sounds like it should be the easiest advice to take to heart, it’s anything but—especially for brands wading into a new market or showcasing a product without high market awareness.

The good news is that authentic messaging typically boils down to providing an honest portrayal of what consumers should expect from your brand, products or services. A Forrester report on customer experience highlights the importance of keeping your promises with what it calls the customer experience (CX) vision: “The CX vision should be an honest representation of the promises that a company makes through its brand image and messaging,” in terms of its values or its role in people’s lives.

A trendy solution for brands seeking a more authentic relationship with consumers is to forge partnerships with influencers: influencers showcase their relationship with the brand and its products, thereby providing an authentic CX vision to their audience who’s often heavily engaged on digital channels. While this method is effective, it may leave brands feeling wary about entrusting others with their brand image.

Ensure CX Vision is Accurate with Production Guidelines

L’Oreal faced a unique challenge when it sought to integrate influencers into its omnichannel campaign celebrating the launch of its Unbelieva’brow line of makeup in Italy. With no substantial eyebrow market in the region, the team used this white space to their advantage by focusing on regular, everyday interactions between consumers and the product.  While the overall campaign leveraged L’Oreal’s international reputation, the inclusion of influencers helped localize the content across the Italian market and provide viewers with a way to relate to the brand.

The four influencers—who each portrayed a different lifestyle like beauty guru, fitness expert or travel enthusiast—were given creative control over the scenes they would shoot themselves. Because portraying the eyebrow makeup was key, there were a lot of ways this could go wrong, like using improper lighting or putting the brows out of focus. That’s why we implemented a series of specific guidelines to ensure deliverables would remain authentic yet fit seamlessly into the overall campaign.

Guidelines were both general (stick to a neutral color palette to match the international campaign assets) and specific (shoot on an iPhone X to maintain the look and feel of a social media video, avoid artificial light which makes the makeup hard to distinguish). Content-wise, the influencers had relatively free rein outside of needing to shoot a horizontal and vertical video demonstrating each of the product “proofs”: that it’s waterproof, smudge-proof, transfer-proof and workout-proof.

From there, we were able to put on the finishing touches to optimize each deliverable for each channel, offering different glimpses of an overall narrative. “It was like a reverse-project,” says Willemijn Jongbloed, Project Manager at MediaMonks Amsterdam. “Usually you get the assets first and do the design after, but this time we produced while we were still getting the footage. Creative was never ‘done,’ it was a very intertwined process.”

Because of the guidelines in place, the influencer-produced work could be implemented with little rework and fast turnaround time. “It would have felt staged to ask them to reshoot,” says Madina Paulig, Creative at MediaMonks Amsterdam, “so we just focused on minor tweaking to keep that authentic feel.” The process, which required smart coordination between designers and editors, resulted in a relateable and eyebrow-raising campaign that clearly focused on the product value.

Provide Controlled Flexibility with Content Frameworks

The Unbelieva’brow campaign used an unorthodox approach, but it worked: “In order to get the full concept across in a manner that speaks best to our audience, we gave our influencers the freedom to communicate this in their own, authentic way using their personalities to resonate with our audience,” says Paulig. This is the crux of what organizations must tussle with in the social-infused, influencer-dominated environment that’s transforming the customer-brand relationship.

While the process outlined above worked well for a single campaign, a longer-term need for assets likewise requires a new creative framework. Inspired by the rise of direct-to-consumer brands’ leveraging of social, Avon (the direct-sale business) saw a need to empower its representatives to tweak and optimize digital content while safeguarding a consistent brand image and style.

“What we’ve got on the other hand is the advantage of 133 years of history and more than five million people’s worth of scale and therefore we’re trying to learn to move at the same kind of pace as those insurgent companies, while recognizing we’re a very scaled business,” James Thomspon, Chief Brand and Beauty Officer at Avon, told Marketing Week.

Partnering with Avon, we’re working with them to develop an always-on content studio that will deliver feed-ready assets on a weekly basis, amounting to over 12,000 a year. With the need for localized content at front-of-mind, deliverables will be available in multiple languages and tailored for specific channels, with space available for reps to customize the messaging to their local audience. This last point is key for ensuring that representatives can engage with their audiences authentically while maintaining a centralized design process.

Leveraging an online community of representatives or hiring influencers are just two ways to enhance marketing with authenticity. By rethinking creative and production processes, brands can safeguard themselves while placing greater trust in influencers and partners to accurately represent their CX vision to consumers. A well-defined process ensures that everyone involved can have fun with the freedom to express the brand’s relevance in their lives—and what more authentic message is there than that?