i3 - January/February 2016 - 95

CM s
IRWIN GOTLIEB

was so well integrated that it didn't have any impact."
Gotlieb recalls similar results from an effort to digitally
insert products into older television shows; a character's
fridge would contain a certain beverage, for instance. "When
we ran those specific episodes in front of our own staff,"
notes Gotlieb. "None of them could remember what brand
it was."
Third, Gotlieb cautions that branded content should still
adhere to financial reality. He says that "the one thing that
has always concerned me about this space is that people
spend substantial chunks of money on the creation of content, and very rarely apply the disciplined metrics that are
part of the media practice to those components."
Even projects up for award consideration at the prestigious Cannes Lions advertising festival are sometimes
produced with little regard for costs per thousand impressions. He says, "Sometimes that number is absolutely
shocking."

chairman of GroupM Global

hether it's
called branded
content, native
advertising or

advertorial, Irwin Gotlieb has
a message for marketers: "You
can't lose your objectivity when
it comes to this stuff," he warns.
"And you can't get carried
away."
Gotlieb is the Chairman of GroupM, a media
investor that is behind one out of every three ads
in the world. Gotlieb, who began his advertising career in 1970, gives three reasons
marketers may want to damp down their
exuberance when it comes to ads that are
meant to be enjoyed.

C R E AT I N G B R A N D E D
CONTENT

E F F E C T I V E N AT I V E C O N T E N T
None of this is to discredit branded content
that's done right. Native advertising can be
powerful, Gotlieb says, "when it's executed
correctly, when there is a true narrative,
where the content is sufficiently compelling to attract and retain an audience, and
when in fact is the appropriate creative idea
behind it. It's very rare that a concept has
all of those elements. From a practical standpoint, creativity doesn't seem to be scalable as
many other things that are done in the media
practices."
New technologies can assist marketers to optimize
how relevant messages reach consumers. But Gotlieb says
"the latest shiny technique" is not a reason to fundamentally
redefine the CMO's role.
"I believe strongly that the fundamental principles of marketing and communications are just as valid today as they
were five, 10 and 15 years ago, they're just executed a little
differently," Gotlieb explains. "The availability of data at a
very granular level makes the task both more complicated
and more effective because you can now segment audiences
with great precision.
"But the fundamental principles of marketing, the fact
that you have to reach the right audiences, the fact that
you have to scale those audiences, the fact that you have to
identify when someone is moving from a passive stage to
an active stage and a purchase decision, the fact that you
have to understand the specific consumer journey-those
principles remain very much intact."

Chief Marketing Officer
("the role of the Chief
Marketing Officer
should continue to be
called Chief Marketing")

First, he says, some products are better suited
to branded content than others. Credit card
companies get to talk about travel and entertainment; creating compelling content about laundry
detergent is more challenging.
Second, creating branded content that achieves a marketing goal is a fundamentally difficult balancing act.
"If you don't integrate it so that it feels absolutely native
and believable, if the brand doesn't actually belong in the
story, then you violate the integrity of the narrative," says
Gotlieb. "If you do integrate it seamlessly it's very likely the
audience won't notice."
As an example, he cites the couch on American Idol.
Three years after the show debuted, Gotlieb asked a group of
300 marketers if they knew what color it was. Less than 50
said they did. And fewer than 10 said they knew the reason
behind its look.
"The couch was red and Coca-Cola paid handsomely to
have that red texture. It wasn't interrupted, it was quite
native, it was beautifully integrated, except the audience
never understood that Coke paid for it," explains Gotlieb. "It
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