While scanning through the various presentations from the 2010 Cannes Lions I was struck by how much digital media abounded, in particular online video and social. Digital media taking centre stage at Cannes has been on the cards for a while I know, but the trickle has most definitely turned into a flood.

With Google, Yahoo, Adobe and a range of other tech businesses attending, it must have been one of the geekiest summits to date. Some tech brands apparently realised that they are not exactly the sexiest in this space, with Yahoo! feeling the need to bring Ben Stiller along to liven up their party.

But although many of those at Cannes were talking about social and video, very few actually made a direct connection between the two, and how powerful they are as a combined force rather than two separate modes of communication. While some segments did talk about the need to inspire, and others the need to converse, a more reasoned debate on mixing the two could have been more interesting.

While I agree that social is indeed the new weapon in the marketer’s toolkit, far and away the best method of actually getting a conversation started is well-crafted video content, so joining the two cohesively should make for a perfect union. Certainly some of the campaigns that were considered to be successful left me baffled as to exactly what metric defined this success.
An oft-referenced campaign at Cannes was from Best Buy, where more than 2,000 Best Buy experts were available on Twitter 24 hours a day to give technical support. It claimed to have so far resulted in 22,000 tweets, but is this really that good? I am not entirely sure over what period it was measured, but having 2,000 people available 24/7 in order to generate roughly 11 tweets each, over the course of say a month, doesn’t seem like wild success to me. That being roughly 2.5 tweets per expert per week? Maybe if some better communications had been inserted into the campaign to generate more interest up-front we could have seen significantly better returns. When I see agencies being carried shoulder-high through Cannes for those kind of results I can’t help but think that brands are being duped.

The consensus among the digitally-converted at Cannes was that “brands must learn to listen and not shout.” Well, yes, I think we all agree, up to a point. Listening is all well and good but what are we actually listening to? For a brand to listen and ultimately create a great response it requires the consumer to have said something of value in the first place. Otherwise filtering the wheat from the chaff can be an exceptionally tedious process.

So how do we make sure these ultimate conversation conditions occur?
Well this is where video comes in. A well crafted piece of communication can serve as the launch-pad for the conversation to come. The better crafted the initial communication, the more value will be found in the following conversations. If social is the Big Bang, then video is the lighted touch-paper. So in essence brands do need to listen, but maybe they should also be saying something of interest first, and then listen for the response.

So rarely are brands actually delivering decent launch-pads for social campaigns, the resulting “conversations” – if they occur at all, are driven by weak, often negative themes like a bad customer service, or overpriced goods, or not enough chocolate biscuits in the discount selection box. Responding to this isn’t brand leadership, it is customer service.
Where is the inspiration? What is the big idea? Where is the spark of imagination and novelty that gets a consumer really excited about a brand, wrapping them up in a compelling story with the power to reach them on a whole new level and inspire en-masse? The broadcast media companies traditionally having the stranglehold over the prime distribution channels were always relied on to deliver an audience where brands alone would struggle to be heard. Brands would then insert their message into that audience. However, with the watering down of the effectiveness of TV due to both the ever-growing plethora of channels, and the rise of the internet, this is now starting to change. In the new landscape, brand marketers can think more editorially about their communications strategy than ever before. In the gaps that are created lie a golden opportunity for agencies to deliver a more editorialised approach to video advertising, delivered not just over TV but over a range of medium with social capabilities at their heart.

In order to seize the opportunity brands must be both story-teller and listener, with an engaged consumer firmly in the middle. Consumers want to hear something they don’t already know, that is exciting, and that they want to share with their friends. In return they will give the story-teller loyalty and custom. A good joke always gets passed on. The same mechanisms are at play here and it is ruthlessly Darwinian to its core.
Being able to ignite the conversation effectively is the secret to great brand communications. It is great stories that inspire, and if that inspiration can be made real in even the smallest way through ownership of branded goods, then the queues for those will form down the street for your next product release.
Once inspiration is attained, the social sphere will kick into life almost of its own accord, carrying the story far and wide and your sales with it.

So the opportunity is pretty clear for agencies that can pull together the best of all these mediums into a single strategy. Marketers must not abandon everything they know about story-telling, product development and distribution and replace it with dull mantras around listening. They must be able to do both, with the audience at the centre. Close collaborations should be formed between brands and agencies who can create inspiring products and ideas, communicated through highly creative films delivered over socially connected channels. Finally, the whole campaign structure itself should be re-examined, and replaced with a more episodic approach to communications that generates an audience and constantly grows it.

Marshall Mcluhan famously said “the medium is the message,” and I have to confess I never fully understood that. But what I do know is that the medium “shapes” the message, and how it does is becoming clear. Facebook, YouTube or Twitter, are not the be all and end all of social media, these are merely amplification channels that are harnessed in the hope of finding new audiences for great stories. The same way television was in its day. Advertising is far from dead, but it must adapt, in order to to inspire through the delivery of conversational style content rather than an over-reliance on high-impact recall, without a properly thought through plan sitting behind.

It is no accident that one to two minute branded films are growing in this space, as not only do they create a deeper engagement with the consumer, but they are editorially created to be more conversational in style and episodic in nature, which suits the dynamics of the new distribution mediums of social. All we need now are agencies who have a firm grasp of this new value chain to deliver cohesive campaigns that deliver real value for brands.

Follow Chris Gorell Barnes, CEO, Adjust Your Set, on Twitter @CGorellBarnes