The Art of Conversation: Building Great Brands in the Digital Age

Moderator: Stuart Elliott, NY Times
Susan Whiting, EVP The Nielsen Company, Chariman, Nielsen Media Research
Beth Comstock, President, Integrated Media, NBC Universal
Carla Hendra, Co-CEO, Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide

“Conversational marketing” seems to be the new buzzword about how marketers communicate with consumers.  What does it mean?  This lively discussion, with three high-energy women moderated by the highly entertaining Stuart Elliott of the New York Times, tried to get a view of the landscape.

According to the panelists, it’s no longer a “monologue,” now it’s a “dialogue,” of course enabled by the two-way channel of the web.  Conversational marketing is real, and has evolved pretty quickly—it’s a change in the ways that we go about marketing.  Advertising always focused on an audience, whereas in a conversation you don’t think about an “audience”—you talk about a conversation.  The new mantra is, all bets are off.

Nielsen is “trying to follow the conversation”.  Set-top boxes will no longer work.  On the Nielsen social networking site heynielsen.com, a lot of people are communicating and influencing dialogue.  The measurers (as well as agencies and advertisers) are torn between the art and science of marketing, and some worry that the art part is getting lost since everything is so quantifiable.  It’s exciting because of all kinds of opportunities, technology is the enabler and we see that in the content side as well.

Agencies or marketers are not used to having to listen, and they’re having to learn fast.  It’s not as convenient as it used to be, with a “big idea” and easy execution.  Now everything you do has to have authenticity—you have to give up control, you can’t dictate the outcome like before.  Dialoging is being done by necessity to get people to understand advertisers are not pushing this stuff at them.  Smart marketers understand they have to have this dialogue.  Consumers want to be part of the stories unfolding, they’re not willing to sit passively and swallow what’s served.  Enter all the consumer-generated media…

But it can be taken too far: the BBC had a call-in program where no viewers called in, and BBC staff called in as “viewers”.  They got caught. Advertisers may have to back off to get the results they want.  The content is very important.  It puts more pressure on creative.

What scares people, or gets them angry, is impolite use.  IP and privacy haven’t caught up with the technology.  You can get a lot of cooperation with the right way of asking and a clear understanding of what’s going to happen.  In simple terms: COURTESY. 

The advertising world needs people who understand how to produce across all media. Advertising is the prevailing model, but advertisers may have to back off and do sponsorships or subscriptions.  Philips bought all spots on NBC news and “gave back” 3 slots, allowing more time for news and features.  They got a huge positive reaction.

Finally, the big question on everybody’s mind: will there be enough ad dollars out there?  It’s early, and the business models are not clear.

Personally, I’m glad they brought up my favorite topic in advertising these days, COURTESY (or the lack thereof).  It was a great session and, at the end, we were left with more questions than answers.