Many agencies utilise the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity for making significant announcements. GroupM's MEC was among these highlighting MEC's new Wavemaker content division. MEC discussed how it made blues-rock band Broken Witt Rebels, stars. The formerly little-known band has attracted offers from major labels and three festival slots within 10 weeks.
Speaking at Cannes Lions, the team at MEC Wavemaker demonstrated how the approach it has taken to creating powerful content and targeted social engagement is relevant to any brand seeking to resonate with its target audience.
MEC delivered the successful plan via partnerships with more than 30 companies. It secured support from the likes of Facebook, Crowdmix, Spotify, Twitter, SoundCloud, YouTube, Shazam, Buzzfeed, Joe Media, Live Nation and major outdoor advertising contractors, including JCDecaux. MEC also worked with video collaboration platform Seenit, to document the journey on film, in order to get the band signed up.
"This is a story of passion. We wanted to get the band signed and we took a gamble when we set out to make this happen - but we've succeeded. The story of Broken Witt Rebels goes to show the power of great content," said Mark Knight, Group Strategy Content Director at MEC Wavemaker.
While MEC collaborated with various players for Wavemaker, Kantar Worldpanel has formed a global partnership with Facebook that brings Facebook mobile ad exposure data into Kantar Worldpanel's Consumer Mix Model (CMM) service.
The enhanced CMM tool, that will be available in India too, combines Facebook's mobile ad exposure data (in addition to desktop) with Kantar Worldpanel's continuous consumer packaged goods (CPG) purchase data to provide brands with an accurate assessment of the effectiveness of their cross-media advertising campaigns.
The advertising landscape has witnessed rapid change in recent years as brands increasingly turn to digital formats. In April Facebook announced that its advertising revenue had grown by 57 per cent to $5.2 billion in the first quarter of 2016 alone, with advertisers drawn to its increasingly large user base.
The tool allows brands and advertisers to understand the real impact of individual advertising campaigns on actual sales and the contribution Facebook and other media have on their return on investment. This in turn will help them to optimise their media planning and ultimately improve the efficiency of their media investment.
Josep Montserrat, Chief Executive, Kantar Worldpanel, said, "The partnership allows our experts to build a solid understanding of how advertising works and the role that Facebook plays in a wider campaign context. Working with Facebook will allow us to inspire even better decisions to optimise advertising budgets and maximise advertisers' return on investment."
