Delivering what one attendee described as “the defining act of AdTech Beijing” (no, this attendee wasn’t an Ogilvy employee), Brian Fetherstonhaugh, chairman and CEO of OgilvyOne Worldwide gave an informative and entertaining overview of the transformation of marketing in this age of radically empowered consumers–consumers who in many ways are way ahead of marketers. His talk was aptly titled “Survival of the Fittest.”

Brian started his career in advertising with a P&G household cleanser called Mr. Clean whose logo, appropriately, was a bald, musclebound man. In olden times, he jokingly reminisced, marketing was a simple business: Our job as marketers was to beat consumers over the head with the same message–to “club them and drag them to the cash register,” as Brian put it.

No longer. Today, that easy prey has evolved into a nimble creature largely immune from the persuasive powers of marketers. We can’t catch them, let alone club them. On a global basis, in 2007, consumers spend about 24% of their time with digital media (in China, about 20%). But marketers? They’re only spending about 8% of media budgets on digital. “We’re lagging,” said Brian. “We’re behind by a three-to-one ratio.” It’s what he calls the “marketing confidence gap,” and failure to close it has been lethal to CMOs: “What’s the average tenure of a CMO? 21 months. Only 14% of CMOs globally have been in their jobs for over three years. In order for us to succeed, in order for us to survive, we must embrace change and become marketing superheroes… the shapers of the future.”

Let me add that his slide presentation, which made minimal use of text and excellent use of images and videos, was exemplary use of PowerPoint: The images punctuated, and the audience could focus on what Brian was actually saying. That’s a rare thing these days: Most of us are capable of either focusing on what a speaker’s saying or what he’s got on his over

Brian champions a new approach–one that updates the Four Ps of marketing for the age of the empowered consumer. Rather than Product, Place, Price, and Promotion, we ought to be thinking in terms of Experience, Everyplace, Exchange, and Evangelism. He described a specific skill set we need to have for each of these.

Moving from Product to Experience: “In the old world, you picked a technical feature and beat it to death over and over until it penetrated the mind of the consumer… How long does this last in insurance or financial services? 30 days? And on eBay? 1 minute?” He stressed the need to understand the “customer journey”: “In your category and your cultre, how do people shop? How do people shop for cars?” he said. “No matter what business you’re in–automotive, insurance, FMCG, luxury goods–understand the customer journey now. When you understand the experience, amazing things can happen.

Hershey’s–the “Great American Chocolate Bar” and a truly venerable brand in the States–asked Ogilvy to create a billboard advertisement in Time Square in New York for one of their products, Brian related. “We found a place, and the space below it happened to be a store for rent. What we did was rented the store, and created a complete brand experience for it. Outside and inside it’s a total brand experience that’s playful, fun, full of memories of childhood, crazy machines–a wonderful brand experience. Online is all about the same thing.”

Moving from Place to Everyplace: “Place” used to be all about the retail store. It’s gotten more complex by orders of magnitude. “We need to be the maser chefs of the 21st century,” said Brian. A phone is Now a wallet. Mobile, he says, is still in its primitive stages in the U.S, but much more advanced in other parts of the world. “There’s nothing more personal than a mobile phone. In your heart or in your pants, it goes everywhere you do.”

Moving from Price to Exchange: “How much is an email opt-in worth to you?” Brian asked, to illustrate an important point: As marketers we need to appreciate the value of things “What’s the value of the first sale in your business?” Increasingly, it’s all about exchange. In one extreme example, there’s the young Canadian man who started with a red paperclip and bartered it, item by item, until he had acquired a house. Ogilvy Amsterdam might not have had this in mind when they undertook work for a Dutch charity called Orange Babies, which supports women and children in Africa suffering from AIDS. The idea as simple: Put money in the donation box and the crying baby on the video screen smiles. The boxes have raised thousands of Euros in donations!

Moving from Promotion to Evangelism: Brian also talked about one of my favorite Ogilvy concepts: the Big Ideal. “It’s about getting people so inspired and so excited that they tell other people. It’s amazing how much people will share if you ispire them. It takes passion and emotion to create this kind of evangelism.” A brand has to ask itself, “What’s a brand’s best self?” It links it to a cultural trend or truth, and at the intersection is “The Big Ideal,” which can be formulated simply as “_______” believes the world would be a better place if…” Some examples? Apple beilieves the world would be a better place if people had the tools to unleash their potential. Coke believes the world would be a better place if we saw the glass as half full and not half empty. Johnson & Johnson–an Olympic sponsor for which our Beijing team has done some excellent, “big ideal”-based work–believes the world would be a better place if people took care of each other.

This formulation can give rise to terrific work. Dove, for example, believes the world would be a better pace if women were allowed to feel good about themselves. Unilever found that a depressingly low 2% of women believe themselves to be beautiful, and on this insight and this “big ideal” they built a highly successful campaign: The campaign for real beauty. It started with a website, then a PR campaign, then an outdoor ad campaign with real-time voting, showing pictures of real women and asking “Gray or Gorgeous?”, “Oversized or Outstanding,” “Wrinkled or Wonderful.” Then came the work of true genius: a viral video from Ogilvy Canada called Dove Evolution–not originally shot as a TVC. The results speak for themselves: Sales for Dove were up $500 million.

Brian Fetherstonhaugh’s advice for the the marketer of the future?:

  1. Experience: Do your customer journey
  2. Everywhere: Create an idea that doesn’t start with TV or print
  3. Exchange: Calculate the value of your customer
  4. Evangelism: Bring passion to your brand