From Hamsters to Wizards, Weirdness That Succeeded

Michael Sprague, executive vice president for marketing and communications at Kia Motors America, discussed a successful campaign for the Kia Soul, created by the David & Goliath agency, using characters that are, improbably enough, hip, music-loving hamsters.

Kia was aiming the Soul at millennial consumers who "thought I was selling Swedish furniture, who thought I was Ikea," Mr. Sprague said. "What the hell do we have to lose?" The agencys ability to home in on those car buyers and understand their tastes in music, gaming and pop culture helped him sell the campaign, he added.

Still, Mr. Sprague offered a remark that drew some startled laughter from the audience. "Our agency does best when theyre put under an incredible deadline pressure," he said. "Great ideas bubble up under stress."

At a panel about the uses of so-called big data in advertising, Scott Howe, president and chief executive at Acxiom, a marketing technology and services company, predicted that in the next five years advertisers will have to "stop thinking about media procurement and start thinking about data procurement."

For Tim Cadogan, chief executive of OpenX, an ad technology company that uses data to serve digital ads, a potential area of concentration will be "improving the interaction of advertising and content," or what is known as native advertising.

Marketers that interrupt consumers before they complete a task like reading an article online are sending messages at the wrong time, Mr. Cadogan said. Once a user completes the task "is the perfect time" to deliver messages they will be receptive to, he added.

John Battelle, executive chairman at Federated Media, described some brands as struggling to shift from traditional ad forms like commercials to having conversations with consumers on social media platforms.

"Brands dont have confident voices in real time," Mr. Battelle said. "When you see campaigns that appear ham-handed, its probably because they were written by committee and cleared through legal."

Marketers are the target audience for a new initiative from Twitter, called sponsored surveys. Twitter executives briefed reporters on the introduction at an event on Wednesday. Sponsored surveys will enable marketers to ask Twitter users a handful of multiple-choice questions, like "Which brands do you associate with Fashion Week?" The surveys will appear as part of the promoted Twitter posts that users see in their newsfeeds, whether they are on computers or mobile devices.

Adam Bain, chief revenue officer at Twitter, said that survey marketing in the digital landscape, particularly on mobile devices, had "become a bigger pain point for marketing."

The surveys will seek to take the place of interruptive surveys like the ones seen in pop-up screens when visiting certain Web sites, an experience that Mr. Bain described as "really disjointed" for users.

 

Strategy One