Goafest 2014: ‘All creative ideas in future will be boundary-blurring’: Preethi Mariappan, Razorfish

The metrics have moved from the “‘like’ to win” era of 2009 to the time of Facebook Apps to the present age of ‘social relevance’. This was the underlying theme of the opening session on day two of Goafest, presented by Preethi Mariappan, ECD, Razorfish Germany.

“The metrics have moved from how many likes you can get to changing behaviour; to how you can generate leads. From that point of view, (we need to see) what kind of ideas can go places,” she said.

With only 74 per cent of the top 5,000 YouTube channels belonging to brands, they need to compete on the channel with the likes of Lady Gaga, she noted.

Maggi #CookHack

The first case study Mariappan presented was for Maggi #CookingHack, a series of six-second videos on Vine that taught users ‘How to peel a potato in six seconds’ and other such kitchen tips. The speaker described the concept as edu-vine-ment.

View the video from Vimeo here:

MAGGI Vine Cooking Hacks from ProjectGallery on Vimeo.

“It had a new type of narrative, it was driven by the insight that young people are moving from YouTube to Vine. It was tuned to the audience behaviour and offered short, snackable content, which they could also watch on their mobile phones,” she explained.

Mercedes Benz CLA ‘Take The Wheel’

In the US market, two months before launch of the CLA, Mercedes Benz launched a social media campaign titled ‘Take The Wheel’.

Mariappan explained some key elements of the strategy. The campaign did not go after the most popular influencers in the automotive category, but sought out influencers in the lifestyle category. Another aspect of the campaign was that it used authentic images shot by the photographers and did not doctor with them.

Audi A1 Heartbeat Run

‘It’s time for your first Audi’ was the message Razorfish had to get through while engaging the audience. View the video here:

Audi A1 Admired - Heartbeat Run from ProjectGallery on Vimeo.

“All experiences today are amplified socially. You have to give people an experience to share,” the speaker noted.

Audi #1MillionReasons

Another case for Audi was for a long term campaign, one that involved three to four years of fan engagement. The brand invited fans to reveal on social media why they loved the brand. Each like contributed to become part of a 3D model of the car, the AudiA8, on a custom created site.

“There is a story behind each like. Usually when talking about fan value, it’s a dollar discussion. But behind every like if there is a real fan, there is a real story to share. That’s what this campaign was about,” explained the Razorfish ECD.

Unilever ‘All Things Hair’

“No one’s really waiting for your next hair campaign,” said Mariappan, referring to her next case study. Unilever teamed up with Google to understand the 1 billion ‘hair’ searches happening on Google. The idea was not to learn about the hair problems but to solve those problems – thus was born allthingshair.com, a site where experts responded to hair problems expressed on search through videos.

“This is the era of social relevance. And this is the kind of campaign we’re going to see more of,” the speaker added.

Surmising her presentation, she said, “It’s hard to define whether this was a search idea, an influencer campaign or content marketing. It’s a prototype for all creative ideas in future. All creative ideas in future will be boundary-blurring.”