Complaining about social media? You could try running an ad on it

EVERYTHING is different. Nothing has changed. That was the theme addressed by Gary Vaynerchuk at yesterday’s seminar, during which the CEO and co-founder of VaynerMedia made the case that the advertising industry is still catching up with a changing landscape.

Social platforms, Vaynerchuk argued, are the stages for consumer attention and should be the number-one objective for marketers. “This device has a lot of attention,” he said, holding up his smartphone. “You can’t get your children off this f**king thing. And the funniest thing is you can’t get yourself off of it.”

He added: “I’m having conversations this week with people who say social media should be regulated because it’s so powerful it’s changing the geo-political nature of the world. And we are talking about that, yet not a peep about creative in social.”

According to Vaynerchuk, the industry puts the past on a pedestal and there’s much excitement about the future, but not enough focus on what’s happening today. “I don’t know about you — and there may not be many people in Cannes right now who are more excited about AI [than I am] — but if I hear one more f**king person say it this week, I’m going to punch them in the f**king face,” he said.

Vaynerchuk said social platforms will mean more creativity and that the industry needs to embrace the word ‘and’ rather than ‘or’.

“We are not as creative as we can be because we are not making enough creative,” he said. “Brands should really be considering doing 10, 20, 30 ads a day across all social platforms to become more relevant with more consumers to actually drive their business.”

He also believes we must become more consumer-centric: “We say it all day long and yet we’re fully living in boardrooms. There’s a different way to do adver-

P&G brands boost the ‘wow’ factor

CREATIVITY that grows

markets is the next reset for advertising, according to Marc Pritchard chief brand officer, P&G.

“It’s the creative ambition that we’re setting for all our brands,” Pritchard said in a session on Tuesday in the Lumiere. “Growing markets contributes to broader economic growth and inclusion and that’s good for business and that’s good for society. Growing markets is hard work. It requires resetting the bar across every aspect of creativity. It requires resetting the bar on creative insight.” The aim is to discover mind-opening ‘wow I never thought about it that way’ insights which can then be turned into creative brilliance,” he said.

Pritchard also said that changing people’s habits is a way of making a market grow, pointing to a campaign that tried to persuade consumers to “do it every night”.

The Cascade ad eventually reveals that it’s referring to running the dishwasher every night and aims to get a message across about how regular small loads can be more efficient and sustainable than handwashing dishes. The sink uses four gallons every two minutes. According to Energy Star, certified dishwashers use less than four gallons in an entire cycle. “Period protection is another market that has significant growth potential,” Pritchard said. “But it’s often the subject of misinformation and myth. Whisper, Always and Tampax are resetting the bar through creative education that provides product knowledge and growth of the market.”

In India 23 million girls miss school during their period often due to lack of period information. A Whisper campaign aimed to solve that problem and change a tising and it’s being done in our faces constantly — by emerging brands, emerging creators, emerging publishers. Everything that’s actually happening in society is happening from a social-first framework.

“You cannot sit here and complain about what social media is doing to our society and yet never run an ad on it or disrespect it as not important.” century-old education system. The P&G ad became the first to show the biology behind periods and features the anatomy of the uterus and period cycles.

Pritchard also emphasised that the bar needs resetting on creative inclusion to serve all people and each person and this should expand beyond narrowly defined target audiences.

“In the US, My Black Is Beautiful is a brand that serves the unique needs of black women who face outside expectation about the role of their hair in becoming beautiful,” he said. The latest P&G film, ‘Unbecoming’, tackles the acceptance and beauty of black women’s natural hair — a perfect example of “resetting the creative bar to grow the haircare market by serving all people and each person in countries around the world”.