In order to prepare the BrandPalace course, we conducted a series of expert interviews with some of Belgium’s most important advertisers. We wanted to know what these Marketing or Communications Managers saw as the biggest contribution a course could bring to a better collaboration between advertisers and their agencies.
These were the main recommendations :
1. It’s all about building value
- Be a partner in building value – not only for the consumer, but also for the company (and it’s shareholders …) Brands are one of the company's main levers to build value.
- Know the place of advertising in a broader business context. Advertising can only be successful if it’s in sync with the whole business process.
2. Hard Facts
- Be more open to the hard data that underlie a communications strategy
- Better understand the facts and figures behind a briefing
- Be more involved in defining the critical success factors of a campaign
- Be more accountable.
3. Reality Check
- Be sure to really know and understand the target audience,
- Don’t get lost in your own small and privileged microcosm
- Real interest for real people, the real world and real shopping behaviour
- Pay more attention to the actual feasibility and the practical consequences of your proposals
- Better understand the business processes within the clients’ organisation, such as logistics, production-, channel - and pipeline management.
4. Partnership
- Be a partner in the briefing process : a brief takes a lot of hard work, to be done together by advertiser and agency.
- Be a partner to all the stakeholders of your client’s organisation.
- Be open to take your part of the brand-guardianship, by managing the knowledge acquired by each campaign.
With these recommendations in mind, we invited the speakers who can help us to become a better (sparring) partner in the branding and marketing processes.
But maybe, as a reader, you have additional recommendations or suggestions. Please feel free to post them !
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