Weekend Media Festival, the largest regional communication festival, will be held from 21-24th September at the old tobacco factory in Rovinj, bringing the most relevant topics in the field of media, marketing, advertising and communication to its 10th birthday. Regional and worldwide experts will participate in over 100 lectures, panels and presentations, among which is also Ivan Stanković, founder and president of Communis regional agency and professor at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade. Regarding his lecture “What Do Women Want”, we spoke with Stanković about challenges that marketing experts face nowadays, underestimation of women as a consumer group and the concept he invented to help his colleagues develop communication with women in a manner that they will appreciate.
You are going to introduce a new communication concept on Weekend Media Festival, a concept that you invented yourself. Where did the need for such concept arose from?
For quite some time, I’ve been arguing that our profession requires radical changes. If we do not make them, we’ll vanish just like dinosaurs. That’s why I invented a concept whose first step is very simple and everyone should take it – changing one letter. The “A” in advertising should be changed to “E” so that we have “e-dvertising” where the “E” would have a dual meaning.
First one refers to using e-model of communication i.e. everything related to the new habits of digital media consumption. The latter, even more important, is emotion as the basis of communication. In this era of diverse information, human brain is not able to process all data which is why consumers decide in an utterly simple manner. They either like something or they don’t. Hence, creating emotion by communication is essential.
You say that women are an unjustifiably neglected consumer group. Why should we devote more attention to them?
In great number of cases, women are the dominant buyers or decision makers. In some categories such as grocery shopping, summer holidays, house hunting and the like, they make decisions in over 90% of cases. Women are becoming increasingly independent, for example, they control 61% of total personal wealth in the USA. They take up a large percent even in some categories that are not feminine. Did you know that 47% of gamers are actually female?
How is your profession currently treating women?
It’s a fact that men hold the positions of creative directors in 90 out of 100 leading American advertising agencies. And men don’t understand women that well. That is the reason why we often don’t communicate appropriately and such communication is considered insincere by women so they reject it. I will illustrate bad examples in my lecture at Weekend Media Festival and emphasize men’s failed attempts to answer the question: what do women want? They know exactly what they want and what they don’t want. The problem is that timing frequently overlaps.
Could you further explain your “5E” communication concept and how it could help communication experts?
The “5E” concept is a variant of the classic AIDA communication concept. The first “E” stands for “excess”. In an era of excessive abundance of information, the first step is to make sure your message gets noticed. Which is why an excess is required for consumers to notice you. The second “E” is right behind the first and it denotes “entertain”. After you had drawn attention with the excess, you will lose the consumer if you don’t entertain him with a stimulating story. Third step would be “emotion” –relationship between the brand and consumer is starting to form. The next “E” is very important. “Experience” is the moment of truth when the consumer makes contact with the brand and finds out whether all the promises have been real. Precisely for that reason, everybody focuses on the place and manner in which the consumers encounter with the brand. The last “E” denotes “engagement”, which refers to winning over local consumers.