Millward Brown launches Firefly And Digital

Millward Brown launched its two new brands Firefly (Qualitative) and Digital on Friday in Mumbai. The event saw speakers from across the Millward Brown world speak on the power of integrated insights for truly value added decision making.

Themed as "Worldwide Mesh ' Weaving the content into context', the launch took off by introducing the evening's proceedings. Gordon Pincott, Chairman ' Global solutions, Millward Brown began with a story on integration. He said, "A smart government would integrate all sources of information. The most important failure was one of imagination."

Another speaker from Millward Brown, G.Christopher Madison, Director of Digital Strategy, Africa, Middle-East, Asia & Australia elaborated on how social media has changed the face of business relationships. He stressed that this has brought a change in the brand-consumer dynamism. It is now no longer a command and control relationship but a pure networking relationship. He further added, "Marketers should now stop thinking campaigns and start thinking conversations."

Rakesh Kumar, Head of Firefly ' AMAP (Africa Middle East Asia Pacific) discussed how brands should treat this relationship with their customers as one of a romantic nature. He said there are five basic stages in this relationship which are Romance, Familiarity, Power Struggle and Stability. He then explained each of this in detail with relevant examples. Brands need to appear as an object of desire as is seen in the case of AXE. Brands should remember not to come on too strongly. Giving your brand a face is very important and works marvels as is seen in the Vodafone Zoo Zoo advertisements. Consumers today have a need to connect to people and face instead of just mere objects. Kumar further said in the Power Struggle stage, "Brands need to be completely honest with their consumers. As a brand, you must reveal your intentions and unravel the real you. Tata Nano, Delhi Traffic Police and Old Spice are all good examples of this." In the final Stability stage, brands need to establish their credibility and reliability. "Dogs are reliable, however social media is not. Listening in real time means investing real time and real money," Kumar further added. Kumar ended his presentation by urging all marketers to treat this as a romantic relationship so as to gain confidence of the consumers.

Shiv Moulee, Chief Client Officer ' India, Millward Brown gave an insightful and interesting presentation. Moulee insisted that brands need to go beyond projects and he analyzed, what is called the Attention Economy. Today most brands are trying very hard to get the attention, however Moulee questions if this is not becoming an obsession and therefore forgetting the chief reason as to why brands require the attention in the first place. He said, "There is a definite decline in consumer bonding because today the consumer is faced with innumerable amount of choices. The nature of engagement is also changing." He further spoke about how consumers are today seeking a brand that is different from the rest. Moulee further added, "According to statistics, Indian brands are telling good stories and also are being noticed, however not for the right reasons, the stories are not being noticed for the brand. This is a recent trend that has been noticed and is a major concern."

The takeaways from Moulee presentations for brands were that brands must stay true to their core essence and make a distinction between advertisements that are different and advertisements that make a brand stand apart. He concluded by saying, "Integration is going beyond projects, silos of disciplines, beyond simple addition of information. It is about imagination." | By Janees Antoo [janees(at)adgully.com]

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