Office With a view: Former Warner Bros. TV executive believes that advertising’s future is highly personal, and that large companies are moving beyond generic marketing.
Today, there’s no reason a person who doesn’t use makeup should be made to watch a lipstick promo, or that someone in Montana watches a commercial about a company local only to Californians.
That’s the olden way of making ads, the one-size-fits-all approach to get a product in front of the masses. But now, with the help of big data and more personalization tools, it’s possible to craft a message tailored to a consumer’s location, education level, interests and even community. Eric Frankel, founder and CEO of AdGreetz, thinks brands are starting to take advantage of this cheaper, more effective way of engaging today’s consumers.
“It didn’t matter whether you were 12 or 92, male, female, married, single, kids, babies, whatever it was – we all pretty much got the same [message],”Frankel was the one who spoke for this issue of Office With a View. “Then the TV commercials that I grew up with moved off of NBC onto Facebook, Instagram and YouTube, and eventually Snapchat and TikTok and everywhere. Again, almost everything was one size fits all, generic.”
Frankel quit Warner Bros. after two decades as president of domestic cable distributors. He was most recently the president. The company uses video personalization to help clients tailor their marketing across 26 channels, including streaming and social media. Their clients include tech giants like Amazon, Google, and Hollywood players such as Universal Pictures or ABC.
Frankel noticed that more companies are open to creating targeted, data-driven ads through social media and data, perhaps because of the increased digital activity during the pandemic. That’s a sea change from his time at Warner Bros. when companies were less sophisticated at leveraging this information.
“At Warner, we always talked about data, and the guy with the most data would win,”Frankel. “And we never did anything.”
By making simple modifications to the same ad — whether it’s for a car or a vacation spot — Frankel said adding information like an address, shortcut to a ticketing site or specific images can make a huge difference in getting people hooked in a more personal way.
Read on for Frankel’s take on how social media has transformed marketing, how they use data to target ads and what has been the biggest change during the pandemic.
What drove you to launch your own company and leave Warner Bros.
It was obvious that all these companies, all these brands, and all these people had this information. So I met up with [former Disney chairmen Dick Cook and Joe Roth]We also raised $12 Million.
In those days, I tried to be the best-dressed guy on the block, to wear suits and ties and luxury clothing from Barney’s. However, I discovered that none of these companies ever interacted with me.
How can data be used to generate personalized ads?
Brands, agencies, clients and ad platforms are now [provide]There are hundreds of data points, all from reliable sources, that show this is what people want. When we [mention] San Francisco and we’re thinking about dinner tonight, and if I knew you had a family, we’ll connect the dots … and we show a smiling family. When we say there is UberEats delivery, you pay attention — so we get about five times more attention on Facebook and seven times more on Google. Brands have returned and said, “Your ads by saying” “San Francisco” and getting the street address of that McDonald’s or whatever it is, has doubled the sales.
How has social media changed the game of golf?
Social media can be a great source of information. There are many people who can tell. [our partners] whether you’re looking to buy a car, whether you’re looking to buy a house, whether you’re about to get married. None of us know whether this data is 75% accurate or 98%, but it’s a lot better than talking to you about diapers if you don’t have a baby. Sometimes we do messaging where friends send something to friends, so that’s called user-generated. Obviously that’s accurate, because you’re pushing something to me, and you know all about me. There’s contextual data if I know you’re in San Francisco, I know that it’s 4 p.m. I know what the temperature of the room is. I know that it’s Thursday. I know the sale begins in 36 hours.
How many companies are using data to approach their marketing?
I would argue that this is being done by 2%–3% of brands. It’s something we read about every day, if you were to read about personalization, you would think everyone in the world does it. Almost no one does. I’m just making it up based on costs, because we’re able to go to Facebook, Google and everywhere and pull all their creative. These things take time, but then they catch on and become very popular. Why? Because we’d love to press a button and watch what we want when we want to go to bed and pick it up.
What’s the biggest change since the pandemic?
We performed well during COVID. We’ve had more senior executives for more gigantic companies book meetings with us in the last eight days than in our 10 years of existence. Are they awakening? Are their bad habits fading? Do they even realize it? [Companies]Static ads without data. So you don’t have any babies at home? All right, so there’s no reason to tell you about Gap Kids. That’s a stupid message. But they should be telling you they have the world’s greatest blue jeans and T-shirts or whatever else people like you and me might buy.
