LIONS DAILY NEWS
WEDNESDAY / JUNE 22 / 2016
INNOVATION Special
NEWS
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Coming to a sixth Why the urge to transform screen near you… is the norm for R/GA
CHRISTINE REMOVILLE
RENAULT’s Lions Innovation session yesterday, Embracing The Connected Customer Revolution Through The 6th Screen, revealed how far the company has integrated digital into its marketing strategy. “The industry is a seeing a significant increase in the number of cars and tyres purchased online,” said Renault’s chief digital officer Patrick Hoffstetter. “Globally 10%-15% of cars are acquired through e-commerce.
At Renault there is a genuine transformation of the way that we market products.” “Historically, a customer would have an average of four brands in mind,” Hoffstetter added. “But now, due to the amount of information available, that figure has risen to six.” According to Accenture Interactive managing director Christine Removille, the in-car screen will play an increasing role in Renault’s loyalty and outreach programme. “People spend an average of seven - eight hours per week in their cars, rising to three hours per day for urban drivers,” she said. “This is a fantastic opportunity for what we call the sixth screen because, in most countries mobile usage is forbidden while driving, so the in-car screen is a great way to interact with our customers.”
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BOB GREENBERG, founder and chairman of R/GA, and Nick Law, global chief creative officer, took to the Lions Innovation stage to explain how the agency regularly transforms itself in order to stay relevant. “R/GA has transformed itself roughly every nine years due to the way that technology has disrupted the business of advertising,” Law said. The motivation, he added, was not to let what happened to Blockbuster happen to R/GA: “Remember them? They went from being everywhere in the DVD-rental business to being non-existent. But Netflix, which also started out in the DVD business, got ahead of digitisation. Then they started buying content and streaming it, and then they went into content creation.” The truth about staying ahead
BOB GREENBERG: MASTER OF REINVENTION
of disruption is, however, pretty brutal. “You have to change when you’re on top of your game,” Law said. “If you’re changing because you have to, it’s already too late. And on top of that, you have to change from
the bottom up. People being hired to cope with disruption never works.” Greenberg then took over and offered a brief history of R/GA’s many incarnations: “In 1977, we were working with a camera developed by the Navy and software from a jet-propulsion lab to pioneer computer-assisted filmmaking. In 1986, we embraced digital video because it was quicker and cheaper than film, and we created the first digital studio. Then, in 1995, we reinvented ourselves as an interactive agency because it was clear that the internet was becoming really important. In 2004, computer literacy was widespread, so we moved towards creating brand experiences. And in 2013, we became a company for the connected age rather than an agency.”
5/31/16 1:07 PM
21/06/2016 7:55 PM