Kathryn McGarvey, Managing Director at NosyHQ, shares key insights from her first Brand Summit, covering Gen Alpha, storytelling, and the importance of commercial results. Read below to learn more.

As a new-ish member of the Marketing Association, I jumped at the opportunity to head north for my first ever Brand Summit. It didn’t disappoint. The selection of speakers was fantastic and there were plenty of interesting marketers to talk to in the near-capacity crowd during the breaks. (How's this for an interesting mix? On my table alone we had marketers working in incontinence products, wealth management, food, paper towels and me, a strategic customer researcher).

Laura Davies of DDB Aotearoa welcomed us and told us "it's a good day to be in marketing." She wasn't wrong.

The Brand Summit turned out to be a full eight hours of insights, inspiration, remarkable stories, food-for-thought and connections.
Here’s my top takeaways from the day - some are great reminders of the basics, others new information (at least to me):

1. The brand of tomorrow

The international keynote speaker, strategist and futurist Zoe Scaman, told us that brands under the closed control of marketers are a thing of the past, and today's model that uses creators and curators to support and build brands will give way to a new way of branding. Gen Alpha, already adept with new technologies, will play a more active role - they won't just be consumers, they will collaborate and co-create brands alongside the brand owners.

2. You need a problem at the heart of a campaign

Leanne Too, KFC Marketing Director, shared the stage with Kelly Grindle of Special PR to talk about their "KFC Gravy Train" campaign, where they wrapped an Auckland train in KFC branding, delivered Blues fans to Eden Park, served them hot chicken en route and got outstanding results. Kelly said "you need a problem at the heart of a campaign" and that "what is the key problem to solve?" is something that is essential for any brief.

3. Story story story

Annabel Fribence, Westpac Australia's Chief Brand & Marketing Officer, had a slide simply titled "the heart eats first". Islam ElDessouky, Global VP Creative & Strategy & Content, Coca-Cola, echoed the sentiment when he said "a new generation demands storytelling."

We might think we are rational humans, but marketers have proven that emotions trumps rationale every time. Tell a story, engage emotions, make people feel something - then reap the rewards.

4. The supremacy of commercial results

In a contemporary marketing environment, it's easy to get distracted by measuring metrics that don't actually make a difference to the things that actually matter.

Annabel's slide that said "You bank commercial results, not marketing metrics" was easily the most photographed slide of the day. Simple, yet clearly powerfully resonant.

5. You can't bore anyone into paying attention

Colleen Ryan of TRA shared their recent research that found that Kiwis think they are more playful and humorous than others. Humour is a great vehicle to grab attention, be memorable and be talkable (just be prepared to offend some people.)

YES! 👏 Please, 👏 let's 👏 be 👏 funnier. Or if we can't convince the C-suite to go for outright humour, can we at least embrace not actively boring potential customers? As Kelly Grindle said, talking about his work with KFC, "brands are so fucking serious all the time, it's just fried chicken".

6. (The right) research matters

As a customer researcher I'm possibly a little biased, but it was nice to have the value of research - the right research - reinforced by several of the speakers.

Leanne Too of KFC told us "we thought we were cool but our research was telling us otherwise.” (It's really hard to see your brand impartially when you are living and breathing the brand every day.)

Annabel Fribence, who had also been at KFC, told of a research project where they spoke to thousands of Australians about KFC, discovered what they didn't like about the brand was "fried chicken" so they developed a healthier, chicken salad product as a result of the research findings. It flopped. (Cue a sharp, disappointed intake of breath from this researcher.) Then they interviewed KFC super fans, and found that what they loved about KFC was - no prizes for guessing this - "fried chicken". So they doubled down on the fried chicken-ness of KFC (to the extent that they changed their name back to Kentucky Fried Chicken) and it proved successful. (I'd arm wrestle someone quite puny to prove that insights from listening to your very best customers is the easiest path to more effective marketing, so I was relieved to hear her story end well.)

For this visitor from Hawke's Bay, it was well worth the trip north. It's always a pleasure to be in a room with people who speak the same language, connect with people, be challenged and learn a whole heap.

Congratulations to all the speakers and the team at the MA who did such a great job pulling it all together.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Kathryn McGarvey has more than 25 years’ marketing experience, from marketing for small local businesses, through to the types of big city soulless corporates you’d never confess to working for at a party without expecting a litany of (justified) complaints.

She now runs NosyHQ, based in Napier, New Zealand. She spends her days interviewing people, digitally eavesdropping and generally engaged in wholesome snooping on behalf of her clients, to help them better understand their customers, where they hang out and what motivates them to buy. 

Source: Kathryn McGarvey, 3 October 2024