Advertising lives its best moment in Mexico this 2022, in which it obtained metals as a double Grand Prix in Cannes Lions. After this festival, Verónica Hernández from Ogilvy and Claudio Flores from Altazorboth members of AVE, the body in charge of this award, reveal what is coming in the Effie Awards 2022.
Merca2.0 – Finally we see a woman at the head of the presidency of the Effie Awards, what do we need to normalize the presence of women in management positions in the advertising industry?
Verónica Hernández – We as women need to encourage other women, mentor them, help them, be supportive and push them to reach management positions. We are just as valuable as men, with different and complementary skills with which we can bring a lot of value and humanism to the industry.
Merca2.0 – As president of a Council and CEO From an agency with a great track record in the world, what can you advise women to improve their business skills in advertising?
VH – First of all, believe it, be noticed, not be “sorry” about anything. Women have qualities that men do not have and vice versa. Let’s take advantage of those qualities for our professional growth. Ask for what you need and want without fear. Take more risks, learn from everyone. Take and know how to see opportunities when they are there. Know how to ask for advice and have a lot of resilience.
Merca2.0 – 2023 has new creative parameters with some awards Cannes with great metals obtained by Mexico and an edition of Effie that will have a manifesto for what is coming, what will this say?
INSPIRATION
The contest of Effies 2022 will be an inspiring contest for the judges. The judges will be proud to have judged good cases and to bring a metal to those who deserve it.
It will be inspiring for the Brands and for the entire ecosystem that makes up the Industry. Make Brands and Agencies feel proud of their work. A job that brings business results, that moves consumers, that moves the country’s economy.
Let’s work together to make it so!
Merca2.0 – Is there a worrying data illiteracy or is it being resolved in advertising in Mexico? As you see it?
Claudio Flores – In a normal transition process in the face of a digital revolution and a pandemic disruption like the one we just experienced. Five things we do more digitally than ever before have intensified: work, study, socialize, entertain, and consume. We took a leap into the future between 2 and 10 years in terms of the penetration of the use of digital technologies and we changed the way we make decisions.
The fact that audiences became much more digital implies an enormous challenge of homogenizing the metrics that allow us to understand the scope and frequency. One of the important challenges facing the industry is knowing how to complement advertising strategies with more qualitative metrics such as: stream data, big data and small data.
However, these changes bring us face to face with the phenomenon of dataification of people, that is, the use of data on Internet users to generate marketing, communication and advertising strategies.
We have faced enormous challenges in terms of privacy and protection of our own data, and this will continue to grow. There has been a gradual development in the first 20 years of the 21st century and a bad culture of people’s data management, however, fortunately, new legislation such as GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) in Europe and other regulations such as California in the United States they are generating a new culture of protection of the information of audiences, consumers and citizens in their interaction with the digital.
In this process of understanding and making good use of data, important players have emerged who are doing an extraordinary job of training talent, such as the IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau), which trains new generations of marketers who know that they are no longer illiterate in terms of of digital data.
Merca2.0 – The role of technological integration in advertising is growing, what should agencies do to better adopt it?
CF – You have to understand that it is an industrial, cultural and sociological change that is not going to go in reverse, so all advertising in the future, no matter where it is, is going to be programmatic, so there is no longer any need to generate stimuli looking for audiences massive if not programming the stimuli based on sociodemographic and psychographic data of specific people, we are already seeing this in Mexico with the implementation of out of home programmatic which is a digital spectacular that programs advertising based on traffic
Merca2.0 – What are the trends in data and market research in the world that you would like to see implemented by Mexican agencies?
CF – The demand for market research is very clear, Greenbook*’s Grit Insights Practice Report 2022 marks as the most important trends to follow that the service production cycle be much more efficient, that is, faster, cheaper and more powerful, and that is a trend that is here to stay.
Research is changing, from being done by people to being generated by people’s own interactions with digital platforms and technology, so instead of going to ask, we are observing what people do with technology, because we already have that natural data and that is the most important trend of change.
Research agencies today have the challenge of becoming more consulting, of converting data into strategies.
On the other hand, it is clear that there are segments of the population that are being left out of this digital leap, 200 million people in Latin America do not have an Internet connection, so it is very important to carry out digital literacy and public policy that incorporates these neglected segments.
Connecting the unconnected constitutes an enormous social challenge to be resolved for which those of us who make up the ecosystem of communication, marketing and advertising must take responsibility.