Conversations.

About a month ago I started reading Seth's Blog, an insightful and thought-provoking marketing blog.

Reading Seth's Blog has started to change the way I view the relationship between marketing/advertising and audience/consumers.

There are a few truths that I knew to be true before I started reading Seth's Blog:

1) Regardless of how great the marketing or advertising is, if a product or service sucks it will eventually fail. 

2) The 'brand' encompasses more than the logo, it's about how they communicate the brand's beliefs. 

3) Brand communication is moving from being a monologue to being a dialogue. 

Marketing and advertising is about more than how you communicate - it's about how you listen and more importantly what you do with what you heard. 

It's not enough to engage with your audience and to understand how they view and relate to your brand, but you need to be responsive and accountable to your audience beyond the conversation. That is how you create a true dialogue. 

It's all about the feeling.

Tonight I attending a talk on Cannes Contenders/ A Contagious Briefing hosted by Paul Kemp-Robertson (which I highly recommend).  

Kemp-Roberston, showcased some awesome creative (I'm sure most of it will be making headlines next month at Cannes), but he also touched on some key industry trends that groups the best creative together.  

One of the key advertising trends he discussed was empathy marketing - seeing things from your audience's perspective. What this means is being able to understand and place yourself in your audience's position and understand their perspective.

What this come down to is how is the audience going to feel, perceive and react to the creative. Being able to understand your audience will help you target and connect and connect with them. 

One brand, who I think, is consistently able to actually execute empathy marketing is Dove. Last month Dove made headlines with Real Beauty Sketches (Ogilvy Brazil). Now TORKE+CC (Portugal) did it again for the brand. But this time with an emotion packed print ad. 

The Carbon Paper Ad

TORKE+CC

Dove Does It Again

Every time I see a Dove campaign, print ad, or TV spot, I am always amazed by the powerful message they are able to convey.

There latest efforts, The Real Beauty Sketches does it gain.

The Real Beauty Sketches