Everything, even the toilet, is media now, says Jon Wilkins
Apr 05, 08
exchange4media News Service
 According
to Jon Wilkins, Co-Founder, Naked Communications, the communications
industry was undergoing an evolution, and the monkey media
man, in simple words the believers of traditional media communicating
the advertiser’s message effectively, would soon be extinct.
He was addressing the delegates on the first day of GoaFest
2008. The growth in media channels, and the resulting media
fragmentation would soon make mainline advertising a thing
of the past. The objective should be to find new and innovative
mediums that are lead disciplines, and not follower disciplines.
He reiterated that the digital wave, along
with new lines of thinking, would erode the power of advertising.
Quoting an English idiom, ‘Do what you are doing, but don’t
bury your head in the sand’, Wilkins said that communication
today was going to be about details and building relationships”.
He took the audience through various examples to depict the
use of innovative solutions that kept the audience at the
centre. According to him, until that was in place, one could
not win the advertisers’ trust.
Citing the example of noodle brand Vindaloo,
Wilkins said that the client was bold enough to say that if
you consumed this brand, you have to use the toilet. “We did
use the twisted English sense of humour to communicate this
message, and this really was a bold client, but in a sense
we were really able to open new mediums of communication with
this. We used public toilets, with toilet panic zones, and
it has been four years, but this is still one of the most
memorable campaigns.”
Wilkins also spoke about the importance of
big but simple ideas that could be taken on viral mediums,
and how agencies could give clients the right direction for
the brand message if they embraced all forms of emerging media,
and knew how to break away from tradition. He said, “This
was said at the Advertising Conclave on April 3, 2008, as
well, but the point is do people really understand the meaning
of taking a brand 360 degrees, and what this entails?”
For Wilkins, the need was to take communication
4D already. The fourth dimension for him was where the audience
was engaged with the product, and that could be done by appropriate
content communication, on-ground activation, events and other
forms of communication. “More importantly, it means a whole
new approach – re-training, a new skill set. There are examples
today when media agencies tell their employees, ‘Alright,
you have been a media buyer, and now you are a communications
planner’. The professionals don’t have a clue what that means,
but they get the new business cards anyways. If you don’t
know something, that is fine, but a little bit knowledge can
be very dangerous.”
Wilkins urged the audience to think on new
media lines, in all plans, and consider that as a lead medium.
He ended his address with, “Somebody needs to take the clients’
marketing problems more seriously. If we understand that,
we are in the right direction already as we have everything
else that is required to be the in right place.”
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