VIDEO: Getting Brands Out Of Category & Into Culture

Connecting people, data and content is how @CaratGlobal sees brands moving into culture and conversation.

An interesting presentation here from Doug Ray, Global President of media agency Carat, and Sanjay Nazerali, the Global Chief Strategy Officer of Aegis Media.  In it, they flesh out a POV that Carat’s been developing on ways to help brands be more organic components of conversation and culture versus existing solely in categories.

Part of their thinking behind their thesis are the following three points:

  1. The most important driver of commerce is trus
  2. People drive action
  3. Conversations about products (and services) happen largely without brand involvement

The two make the point that media companies are uniquely suited to match brands to culture and conversations through technology.  It’s an argument that Ray made earlier this year in Ad Age.  I was skeptical.  But here, he and Nazerali lay out the argument in a much more cogent fashion, explaining that you can now understand people better through the data, the digital trails we leave around, and that can be used to develop more impactful content.  And it’s this content that increases the chances that a brand can organically be involved in conversations versus being stuck in categories, or shopping occasions.

Take a look:

After their presentation, Nazerali gave some additional remarks (this is just over 4 minutes)

What I think is good about this framework is that it’s an effort to connect culture–everything that’s happening outside a company’s walls, and the shifting context thereof–to focused and measurable impact on the brand.  That impact could come in the form of improved brand equity (always important) to increased preference, perhaps even to sales.  Anything that makes culture less amorphous is a good thing.  And maybe media companies, given the amount of data they track for brands, are in a strong position to lead the marketing through culture.

HT to Andrew Susman of StudioOne for the video links.

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