Following Initiative Talks “Stand Out Content”, we catch up with Ramzy Abouchacra, regional managing director of Initiative.

Tell us a little bit about Initiative Talks…

We created Initiative Talks as a platform to tackle specific subjects that are of interest at that point of time to trigger a conversation between different people or entities that don’t usually talk with each other so that we come up with a way of working together. The initial idea was to start a conversation but it doesn’t end there. Throughout the year, we have to keep the conversation going by fueling it with more tools or data.

Tell us a bit more about the themes of each conference…

We started it three years ago and the first subject was mobile. One of the key learnings from that event was that the main consumption on mobile is that of videos. So next year, the conference’s theme was around video – where do people view it, what they view and how can we measure it. And last year, half of it [the conversation] was about measurement.

Throughout that year, we moved away as a company from TV planning and digital video planning to a platform that we call video planning irrespective of whether it’s on TV or digital. As far as we’re concerned in terms of media, they [TV and digital] always perform the same way, have the same viewers and we need to be able to measure that. We also developed our tools and last year we were the only agency that had a tool to measure the combined reach of TV and digital video platforms. Last year one of the key things that came out of the conference was content. This year we wanted to understand content from a different perspective. Whenever content is discussed, it’s usually about the content that works. However, for each piece of content that works, there’s a lot more to it [than just the content]. Today there is no way to tell if a piece of content works or not. When you tell a client that you have an idea for a piece of content, they ask you how much they have to pay for it, and it’s a difficult question, because you don’t know how well it’s going to work, and the KPIs you have are not clear. Moreover, the client wouldn’t know which agency to brief [creative, digital, media].

What did you aim to achieve out of this year’s conference?

We tried to get everyone who is involved and the key message is that it [content] doesn’t really fall in anyone’s territory. It’s a shared responsibility. We wanted to tackle the subject from three perspectives:

1. Content creators. We wanted to understand what inspires them and how they see brands interacting. What we learnt is that a lot of these filmmakers and scriptwriters have a lot of frustration toward clients that say that’s my brand and logo, put it somewhere and make it work. So the first lesson was that content has to be genuine. There has to be certain honesty and only then can a content creator work well.

2. Production. This side answers the question of how much to invest. Content is new to us advertisers and marketers but it’s not new to the world of TV. You’ve always had producers who are investing money and getting money. We wanted to understand how do you identify if a piece of content is going to be commercially successful and only then – from a media or marketing perspective – can you understand how to place a certain value on it.

3. Distribution networks. We wanted to understand how much should go into distributing versus creation. If you have the best content in the world and nobody can see it, then what’s the use of it? If you produce a brilliant TVC, but don’t have money for media placement… it’s the same thing.

Content has been around for a while, so why are you choosing to talk about it now?

Content is not something new, but the way people consume it has changed. It has become very polarized because of the technologies. You don’t find content, it finds you. And it finds you based on your habits and patterns. So you’re most likely to see and consume content that you either agree with or that entertains you, and that’s really important for us as advertisers, because you’re more likely to be engaged with the advertising in content that you agree with.

Whether you’re looking at politics, economy, entertainment, lifestyle, everything is so polarized. Everyone has an opinion and they express it. Twitter is like a huge microphone where everyone can voice their opinion and is an influencer. Today people who didn’t have any influence 10 years ago, and who still don’t have any TV celebrity status, are influencers. The world has changed and consumers are more likely to be influenced by someone who is like them.

Coming back to the issue of responsibility, whom should clients talk to?

The ad field was integrated, then split into creative, media, PR, and so on, and then we started talking about integration again, so we’re going back in a full circle. It’s like raising different children and everyone wants to prove that they have a different personality and want to act on their own but at the end of the day, they need to act as a family.

So today, more than ever before, the differentiation between creative, media and PR only exists in our minds, not consumers’ minds. They don’t see digital as separate from TV in their lives. If they’re consuming a piece of content, it’s the brand talking, not which agency is doing it.

What needs to happen is integration in the real sense – not just sending two emails and one briefing session – because otherwise, the work will be mediocre.

As media agencies, we are not responsible for the content but only for a certain part of the content creation process. Creative agencies can’t produce content because they understand brand values but not entertainment values of branded content. Producers understand the entertainment value but not the media value or the brand equity. So bottom-line: all these entities need to work closely together for a piece of content to become successful.