A big day for entertainment and the craft of advertising. The awards today featured the type of premium content and experiences with the power to turn heads and make people gasp - and, of course, generate a lot of buzz in the industry. Moreover, they all seem to have something in common: a deep understanding of brand purpose.
Experiences on the game Fortnite (Grand Prix Digital Craft), the digitalisation of Sao Paulo’s Pride parade on an Instagram feed (Grand Prix Entertainment Lions for Music) and the breath-taking images of real doctors and nurses with their skin marked by the continuous use of PPE during the pandemic (Grand Prix and Gold Industry Craft) were amongst the big winners.
The always insightful daily discussions pointed towards the future of brands and their purpose in the world. Sebastian Jespersen (Vertic) and Stan Rapp (Independent) advocated for a new nomenclature in marketing: from engagement to “entanglement”. For them, entanglement is about brands seamlessly making part of consumers lives and adding real value. “It’s about share of life, the two parts acting like one”. True brand purpose and sense of community seem to be important in this discussion, points that were picked up later.
In an open and honest discussion, Jonathan Mildenhall (TwentyFirstCenturyBrand) shared his views on how to create an iconic 21st century brand through four pillars: purpose, community, being tech-based and narrative-based. The first pillar sparks attention and is often mistaken or misplaced in the advertising industry. Jonathan made sure to highlight that purpose is not a charity sponsorship or doing something good for the sake of advertising. A 21st century iconic brand must be able to translate purpose into a business plan: their products and services need to actively deliver their purpose in the world.
Looking into the 21st century art market, Christie's (the renowned British auction house) showed how NFT took the art industry by storm. NFT - or Non-Fungible Tokens - are a way to commercialise the property of artwork, music, merchandising, memes or any piece of content in the digital space. Containing a unique and unforged code attached to it, NFTs can help curators, artists, and creators to authenticate digital work and guarantee its provenance. Different artists and companies are experimenting with NFT: everything from trading the ownership of a meme to musicians selling original content or NFTs for their albums. We are yet to see if NFTs are here to stay. However, it opens doors for new types of partnerships in the digital and physical world, being a possible game-changer to fund the work of digital creators.
Different technologies, possibilities and nomenclatures may have appeared today, but it was great to see that the future of our industry has one word written all over it: purpose.