Brands in reality confront a double challenge: “inspiring love” to a new multichannel consumer and knowing how to adopt new communication strategies to position brands in a way that is more human and close. Marketing Directo interviewed Isabel Lara, vice-president of ATREVIA to delve deeper into this topic.
ATREVIA works to maintain fresh, attractive and alive brands. How does the company achieve this?
It achieves this with a good dose of creativity and courage to make things original different. Nowadays being an attractive brand for the consumer involves fresh and different communication that offers something more to the consumer. Something that allows consumers to identify with the brand and making them feel part of it.
What is the key to fresh communication that offers something more? Be disruptive in a way that communicates the message and be able to surprise consumers… In our case we have an area of brands that is responsible to help companies precisely to do this: reach the heart of brands, shake them and bring them close to clients with original content help to create and maintain, according to the case, the passion for the brand…. It is our Brandshakers area.
Stretching links with the public across multiple channels is one of the keys functions of ATREVIA. What type of actions is it developing?
It is clear that effective communication arrives to the consumers there where they can find it. It is impossible to reach every consumer and multiply their impacts if not exploiting all channels. For this motive, we always speak of channels in plural but never of strategies because a strategy is unique.
One must contemplate all channels: media, bloggers, influencers, social media, point of sale, street marketing… These are the actions that we are developing: 360 actions that allow us to bring the message of the brand to the public wherever they are, in an original way and adapted to each channel. All of this allows us to see the return on investment by using measurement elements.
As a global communications consultant, what importance does creativity play at the time of communicating?
Creativity is essential but pragmatic. Big ideas that don’t have a practical application, a true return on investment, don’t make any sense. Ideas cannot overcome effectiveness. Creativity has to help brands achieve objectives clearly and measurably.
The important thing is not that the consumer remembers the idea, but that they remember the brand, associated values, feel attracted and opts for that brand when making purchase decisions.
Has the communication crisis been reinvented?
One must recognize what the crisis has done. The budgets in communication have been reduced and maximum amount of creativity has to be squeezed out of this by looking for creative solutions with high impact and little investment. It is also true that the change doesn’t come solely motivated by the crisis: the rise of social media, the way of consuming contents nowadays, the necessity for listening to the consumer and conversing with them, the multiplatform and the immediacy of information… They are elements that without a doubt also have contributed to the change in the way that we communicate with our clients.
In relation to the previous question, we confront ourselves with new terms, trends and concepts in ways that are almost constant. For example, we are listening to a lot of talk on communication campaigns with the 360 product. What do they consist of? What profits do they report in comparison to other actions?
As what was previously stated, communication is now 360 by itself. It is an overused term but today is it more real than ever. It is not more or less arriving to consumers across all channels and using all types of support.
It is to be in dialogue with their consumers by adapting the communication and messages to each type of support and channel. In our case, to achieve this in an effective way, we rely on teams formed by people specialized in different areas: creativity, PR, online, events, audiovisual, design… This allows us to offer a maximum quality service which is totally adapted to the needs of our clients.