How can a company use marketing to make a memorable impact when the average human attention span is less than that of a goldfish?
Shreya Kushari, chief client officer at OMD USA, noted this statistic in conversation with Frank Cortese, global head of brand media at Canva, and John Campbell, senior vice president of client partnerships at Disney. They spoke on a panel together as part of the Variety Studio presented by Canva at Advertising Week.
“Use those two seconds really well,” Kushari continued. “And go into the insights of ‘What is it that they’re doing, what are they looking for? Are they laid back? Are they leaned in?’ And therefore, customize the branded experience that we do for them.”
Cortese mentioned that Canva is working on the fourth version of a campaign called “What Would You Design Today?”
He noted the importance of finding ways to make a campaign interesting: “Showing up with experiential activations at tentpole moments, integrating ourselves into popular television and film content along the way, where we can take the message from the campaign and also infuse it into various touch points that a consumer might come into contact with.”
Campbell shared an anecdote about creatively using technology to capture audiences’ attention — especially new audiences. Disney recently partnered with the NFL to showcase Pixar’s “Toy Story” characters playing football, which brought in “millions of new audiences.”
He said, “You start to have families watching the NFL that never looked at that before, just because it didn’t appeal to them. But when you put it in a ‘Toy Story’ format, all of a sudden, my 7 and 5-year-old love Woody, and they want to watch the NFL.”
Also on the topic of technology, Cortese discussed how AI can be used to facilitate a more efficient and creative experience in Canva’s Magic Studio. He offered several examples; users can, for instance, have a brainstorming session summarized into a document.
“We’re really trying to make it easy for people to take the mundane tasks that maybe they’ve had to spend a lot of time on, but give them more time to think creatively and think strategically. So that’s how we think about it being a co-pilot for people on the side,” Cortese said. Kushari agreed that AI should be used to “make life easier.”
“We can’t teach emotions, true emotions,” Campbell said. “We want to make sure we have that balance of technology as well as human creativity.”
Cortese concluded the conversation by saying, “We are trying to do bigger, fewer, better partnerships with our partners, making sure that we’re really driving impact and attention with our consumers, and engaging them in a way that is helpful to them.”
Watch the full conversation above.
