Carolyn Schofield, Brand and Marketing Strategy Consultant at BrandScience NZ, shares key insights from the Brand Summit 2024, highlighting brand co-creation and customer loyalty, with talks from Zoe Scaman and Islam El Dessouky. Read below to learn more.

On September 26th I joined nearly 400 other marketers at the Marketing Association’s Brand Summit. As a marketer who is passionate about building strong and distinctive brands it was a fantastic opportunity to learn from brand marketers in New Zealand and from overseas. I could write pages on the event but in an attempt to avoid a TL;DR reaction I’ll stick to sharing a few key ideas from the fantastic International Keynote speakers.

The emergence of the multiplayer brand 

The event got off to a flying start with Zoe Scaman, the Founder of Bodacious, a strategy studio that specialises in leveraging rapidly emerging shifts in the world of entertainment and fandom to create culturally compelling dynamic brands. So, for those of us who are perhaps a little more old school, what exactly does that mean? Zoe took us through the evolution of user generated content from its early days of forums and fan fiction, through brands as creators and curators, to the current creator economy where creators are building their own mini economies around brands. This has led to the emergence of the concept of the multiplayer brand, where a brand actively co-creates with users creating a mutual value exchange.  Zoe made an interesting observation that there is a whole generation of young people who have grown up creating their own worlds in Roblox and Minecraft, and for whom co-creation is intrinsic. She shared a couple of interesting examples. The first was the musician Grimes, who has made her voice freely available online so anyone can use it to create their own music. Grimes retains 50% equity in what’s created, generating reciprocal value for her and for the creators.

The thought of allowing anyone to play with your brand is scary for many Brand Managers. After all, the data shows that consistent and overt use of your brand code is a key factor in marketing effectiveness. But in the era of the multiplayer brand, brands are learning to be more flexible. Zoe shared another example of one brand, that is learning to loosen the reins and allow people to co-create with brand assets. Disney has in the past been notorious for the degree of control it has over its brand (I know from experience, as at one point I worked on third party offers with them) but earlier this year they launched Disney X Epic Games, with the company behind Fortnite. This new universe will allow players to engage with Disney in the ways that are most relevant to them, creating their own characters, stories and experiences using content from Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars, Avatar and more.

Building Cult Loyalty  

The second international keynote was Islam El Dessouky, Global VP Creative Strategy & Content at Coca-Cola. He started his presentation on Brand Storytelling, Culture and Creative Effectiveness by looking at different models of loyalty, depending on whether a relationship between a brand and its customers is relational or transactional, and passive or active. He described four types of loyalty: traditional loyalty (relational, passive), inertia loyalty (transactional, passive), mercenary loyalty (active, transactional) and cult loyalty (relational, active). Around 55% of loyalty falls into the mercenary loyalty category (‘what’s in it for me’) and another 30% would be traditional, passive loyalty. However, if you can bring together relevance, community and cultural context a brand can build active, cult loyalty. One example of how Coca-Cola are doing this is with their Foodmarks campaign, which celebrates the combination of a delicious meal, a special moment shared with others and an ice-cold Coca-Cola. To bring the campaign to life Coca-Cola created five immersive, in person experiences around the world, each inspired by a moment in popular culture. For example, one referenced a famous picture of Marilyn Monroe with a hot dog and Coca-Cola in New York City’s Union Square. The immersive activation transported attendees back to 1950s America with shops, breakout shows and more, recreating the world of the photograph.

To get the chance to hear from these world class speakers, and many others, without having to leave our shores was a real treat and a day well spent.  I’ll look forward to seeing the line up for next year’s event.

Source: Carolyn Schofield, 3 October 2024