YouTube Exec’s Advice On How Brands Can Stay Relevant

Yesterday, BRING and Universal Music held the inaugural MOVE in the City event, with headliners including Aussie music artists Alison Wonderland and the Thundamentals.

Before the event however, marketing execs from YouTube and Wrigleys sat down with Alison Wonderland and BRING to discuss how brands can stay relevant today – and to discuss the launch of Wrigleys newest campaign.

The panel was moderated by BRING Creative Director, James ‘Griff’ Griffiths and the speakers were Alison Levins, CMO of Mars and Wrigleys, Caroline Ward, industry head of Google and Youtube, and Aussie artist Alison Wonderland.

Dubbed “Are You Part of The Conversation?”, the discussion centered around how brands can connect to their consumers and stay relevant in the eyes of younger generations.

This topic is particularly prevalent for these speakers, as Wrigleys is launching a TV campaign, centered around supporting up and coming Aussie musicians.

Created by Clemenger, the campaign stars Alison Wonderland, and features Youtube ads (which are currently live), where well-known artists point the consumer in the direction of new Aussie talent.

“The creative idea was: how cool is it if you get served an ad, and instead of waiting for the click so you can skip it, you actually get to see something that you want to watch the whole way through,” Levins said.

One trailer has been live for a week – with the rest launching today – and Ward said the video has already had 1.5 million views, a click-through rate of 54 per cent (twice the industry average).

“We’ve got 60 pieces of content, we think we’ll deliver about 120 million impressions, 10 million views over the six weeks of the campaign. You’ll see it on Facebook, Instagram, Spotify, Snapchat, Shazam, out of home media,” she said.

“Basically, if you’re between the ages of 16 and 25 you’ll see it at least five or six times and interact with it. It’s massive.”

However, Ward said YouTube had to take a bit of a chance on the campaign initially, having had a traditional broadcast sponsorship for a number of years passed.

“We just weren’t reaching the consumers that we wanted,” she said.

Yesterdays panel is part of a global study called ‘Are you part of the conversation’and looks at how brands can interact and engage with music artists – and culture as a whole.

Levins pointed to brands like Lynx and Guiness, who have been around for years but have reinvented themselves to keep up with consumers.

“[Guinness] considers communication a craft. And it really understands the value of creativity, and the blending of creativity in culture to make a brand have resonance with consumers,” she said.

Griffiths asked how, in an age where people can block out ads completely, how brands can still connect with new consumers and speak to them in a relatable way.

Levins said the key is getting noticed – and that the first five seconds of an ad has become more important than ever.

“A piece of communication that just informs you and doesn’t do anything else is going to have a very hard time getting attention from people,” she said.

“We don’t do product marketing. It’s about brands and about storytelling. You have to work much harder than you have done in the past.”

Ward agreed, and said that consumers are more demanding than ever.

“The customer is three things: incredibly impatient, they’re very curious, and they’re also demanding. They want it, and they want it now.

“There’s this myth that people have lost attention spans – they haven’t. An advertisement attention used to be around 30 seconds, it’s now over a minute 40,” she said.

“People will stay and watch and be engaged if it’s meaningful, if it’s authentic, but also if you give them something, and you continually build on that again and again.”

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