Creating Clear, Engaging And Relevant Copy For Your Target Audience

I was invited to contribute to an expert panel on how to create clear, engaging and relevant copy for an audience. It's vital to maintain this focus to produce content that speaks to your community. My contribution is part of this panel just published by Forbes: 16 Ways To Create Clear, Engaging And Relevant Copy For Your Target Audience

The power to make a change

In my latest piece for @Forbes Communications Council, I wrap up some of my inspiration from the 2022 Cannes Lions festival. The opportunity to drive substantial change is there for those willing to take advantage of it. I have started working with my teams on this to inspire meaningful work that makes a difference for the business and us as people.

Here is the full article: Lessons From Cannes Lions 2022: Three Ways CMOs Can Work To Ignite Change.

Leveraging customer behaviour

Using intent-based marketing, you can generate more traffic for your site and landing pages. Forbes recently asked the Communications Council leaders for ways to produce more traffic. In this article on Forbes, I cover how you can identify elements of customer behaviour to position your content and leverage search to present a solution to the problem faced by the user.

You can read about customer behaviour and eight other essential parts at Forbes here: Nine Ways Intent-Based Marketing Produces More Traffic.

Day five: Cannes Lions 2022

Day five at Cannes Lions was the best day of the week.

I listened to Anne Krogh, the CMO of Ikea in Denmark, talk about how IKEA puts customers at the heart of its circularity strategy and how they approached the need to assemble a global circularity movement.

Think long-term. Rather than having old unwanted IKEA furniture go to the rubbish dump, IKEA bought back 155,000 items of furniture and repaired items where needed. They then offered second-hand items for sale, enabling customers to get what they wanted for less, avoiding the premature costs of destruction and the cost of needlessly producing new furniture.

You can multiply your efforts by the number of customers who engage by taking action. IKEA has more than one billion customers each year globally, giving them the opportunity for considerable change. In saying this, they acknowledge that as consumers, we want transparency - but we also want items tailored, delivered, and available 24 hours a day. There is massive complexity, and you must be flexible - and one of the solutions may be a new business model.

My favorite quote from this session was, "Creativity is the answer to every question. Creativity is formula resistant". Adam Kerj, Chief Creative Officer, Accenture Song.

I then moved into two sessions on short-form social video with a special session with TikTok and how to build audiences. The team from TikTok and LADBible showcased the different expectations of video content between YouTube, YouTube Shorts, TikTok, and Instagram. One of the big takeaways from this session was that "content created for TikTok works well in other places, but not the other way around".

My final session of the day and the week in Cannes was with one of my professional heroes Harjot Singh, Global Chief Strategy Officer of McCann. Harjot was, as usual, direct and personable. He walked through the simplicity of communicating for change, whether in advertising, marketing, or general communications.

We spoke through what it takes to produce the best work and the three simple elements it always contains. @Harjot, I think you would own Audacious as a first name. I will write a separate post on this session, and how it served to reinspire me in the work I need to do.

Side note: I included the image above, not perfect as it is, because the name of the cross-funciton Marketing and Communications Services function that I lead at ION, is Impact!

Impact was a word that was used repeatedly by many different speakers throughout the entire week at Cannes Lions - and it’s why I chose this name.

The effort we take and the work we produce must have an eduring impact. I am proud to lead Impact@ION.

My first Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity was an incredible experience full of different perspectives and the most brilliant people and their work. I was able to attend working sessionse with two of my professional hereos (Cindy Gallop and Harjot Singh), as well as being invited to two Global CMO Growth Council Sessions to discuss important issues facing our industry. To continue to take advantage of this event and to deepen my knowledge and deliver audacious and powerful results from my work I have subscribed to Cannes Lions Digital. I am already looking forward to Cannes Lions 2023.

Day four: Cannes Lions 2022

Thursday was a pivotal day at Cannes Lions for me. I was invited to participate in the Global CMO Growth Council sessions with industry leaders from the Marketing, Advertising and Creative industries. I attended both the 'Brand, Creativity and Media' and Talent working groups.

I was humbled to be in the room with the leaders of our industry. As a group of 24 leaders, we discussed the actions the CMO Growth Council are taking to resolve real problems facing our industry. We reviewed the steps taken to date and where there are still improvements we can make. This initiative has been four years in the making already, and I believe it will offer sustainable solutions for our industries.

Before those sessions, I was fortunate to hear David Droga from Accenture Song. David is the most-awarded creative at the Cannes International Festival of Creativity, and he's Australian!

David spoke about the importance of creative leadership and that it's essential not to be constrained by the rigour or process of your industry. You can't create new solutions or new art if you limit yourself in this way. Everything we do has to have an impact, and we should include all the 'thinkers, tinkers, makers, and shakers' and allow them to showcase their ideas across a bigger canvas.

He also said that we should embrace the things we're scared of, which for creatives are often things like technology and data. If we embrace these things and seek insight, we can solve problems we've never solved before.

“The only thing worse than not having a great idea is having one and not making it happen”

— David Droga, Lumiere Theatre, Cannes Lions 2022

I then attended a session on the 'Do'conomy. The founder, Mathias Wikstrom, opened with a statistic for context.

“Every year, 23 billion pairs of shoes are made. Our innovation has accelerated human consumption.”

— Mathias Wikstrom, The Forum, Cannes Lions 2022

Mathias, based on data from 5,000 brands and a billion transactions in 32 markets, argued about the need for sustainability and what brand owners can do to future-proof their brands.

“Impact is the new language”

— Mathias Wikstrom, The Forum, Cannes Lions 2022

One of the six big changes he proposed is to have carbon labels on products. In an example of the purchase of a pair of jeans (8.98 kpCO2e and 21.45 kgCO2e) consumer behaviour changed. 32% of eco-consious consumers reduced their footprint and 12% of non-eco conscious consumers did the same. This change was achieved through labelling. Mathias also showed that consumers are willing to pay up to 10% more for products from companies that provide greater supply transparency and data around environmental and social governance.

Removing environmental waste and friction is an improvement. As creatives, as designers, as decision makers we should work to be change-makers rather than change-takers.

Day three: Cannes Lions 2022

With day three now complete, I am over the halfway mark of my time in Cannes for the International Festival of Creativity. This morning the day kicked off with a sell-out session on story-telling with Ryan Reynolds.

Next generation storytelling

Ryan talked about his approach to story-telling and social media and the need to move fast to keep up with the speed of what people are talking about and culture. Ryan spoke about his approach to storytelling and not harm. We are all, like it or not, social media companies. We have an image of ourselves and an image that we project to the world. He said that advertising should be fun and lighten people's load, not add to it. Finally, Ryan mentioned how diversity and inclusion make the stories we tell better. The day three kick-off was the most popular session I've seen this week and was full of great ideas around storytelling.

The first secret speaker session of today was Lisa Merrick-Lawless from Purpose Disruptors, who spoke about our approach to the climate crisis as a "crisis of imagination". Lisa said that we are thinking small and tinkering around the edges, and this tied in with the second secret speaker session with Txai Surui, who points out that "it's not just climate change, it's the everything change". How can we change our approach to global heating and the climate crisis to drive successful change for all of us? This remains an important problem to be solved for the future of the planet.

Marketing experimentation as a superpower

Romain Mallard, a Senior Marketing leader from Coca-Cola, spoke about it being time for a quantum leap in testing and learning at scale. With marketing being a critical driver of organisational growth, we need to be nimble in our approach to marketing and campaign execution.

Romain spoke through the process Coca-Cola took with Bain & Co to change beliefs and internal culture and drive growth using marketing experimentation. Key challenges in implementing this change included the need for it to be at the core of the business strategy, not as a bolt-on or 'skunk-works' programme. They also faced cultural differences in how different cultures affected how some national teams reacted to outcomes that could be perceived as a failure, with many not wanting to report on these tests. Romain pointed out that if you only test safe bets, you're only confirming what you already know, which has minimal value to the business and positive change.

Finally, he argued that you could not teach change. Instead, it would help if you gave people the tools they need to support and deliver the change. Narrow down the field and then let the players on the field execute. Please don't give them change: provide them with a tool. This session was positive, with lots of ideas to test and measure in our approaches to our work.

Emotional intelligence at the heart of brand growth

My highlight session of day three was the 'Emotional intelligence at the heart of brand growth'. This was also the first holocast session of the day, with bestselling author Daniel Goleman Ph. D. joining on stage from New York as a hologram. This session was my first experience of a holocast and hologram in person, and it was faultless.

Make it stand out

Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.

The presenters discussed the importance of emotional intelligence to businesses and brands. In their 2022 update to their first Brand EQ report in the weeks leading up to the Covid pandemic in 2020, they have shown that emotionally intelligent brands grow more quickly.

"Previously, we calculated the gain in value to be +682% from 2010 to 2020, and extending this to late 2021 increased the gain to +910%, boosted by stellar performances by brands like Google, Netflix and McDonalds. Our original observation has actually been amplified between the two waves."

These measures are linked directly to growth, and the emotional intelligence people attach to a brand. The team also outline in their report that Brand EQ is most strongly related to young people. The young, who is an audience that is often targetted, tend to be early adopters and advocates for the brands and essential businesses of tomorrow. This power goes beyond their current spending power and will continue to strengthen and deepen the brand relationship over time. This was a great session from the team at Craft, and both their 2020 and 2022 brand EQ reports are available online.

While I was comfortable with a speaker appearing virtually, and I think I'd have been fine if all of the presenters were present via holocast, it does raise the question if more of the event could be digital and online?

Highlight of the day

One of the highlights today was a reinforcement of the Nike presenters on day one. A presenter from Craft echoed back to the audience the power of Nike obsessively listening to one audience - athletes. There is such power in this focus that it resonated with others and was presented back in a separate session. Day three was another brilliant day full of knowledge, opportunity and insight. I am well over halfway already and know that days four and five will pass very quickly.