One of the best aspects of attending industry events is the opportunity to exchange points of view with other participants.  This was brought home during the last panel I watched at SIME, where some of us in the audience didn’t necessarily agree with the panelists in one small point.

Don’t get me wrong: great creative is fundamental to a well-run campaign.  However, as a former sales guy I’m a little tired of the intense focus we have as marketeers on the creative and winning awards. Cannes Lions are a beautiful thing and definitely don’t do you any harm as a brand or an agency, but when evaluating a marketing activity I’m more interested in understanding four aspects:

• Will the activity live after the first or second  push (is it built to live, or built to die?), or are we just thinking about separate, ephemeral campaigns?
• Are we measuring impact, and what were the results? Are we focused enough on ROI instead of bells and whistles?
• Are we prepared to engage with our audiences once they come across this?
• How is this communication adding value to our audience? Why should they care other than because it’s really cool?

As mentioned, I was not the only attendee thinking about these topics after hearing the panel, and we had an interesting chat later on.  Funnily enough I found a very relevant presentation of his on this topic below: