Forget the lingo – talk to people as fellow humans and make marketing noble again. That was the message from Unilever at the Global Marketer Conference.
"Forget about consumers. Consumers are dead," said Unilever's global SVP of marketing, Marc Mathieu. "All of our vocabulary as marketers talks about people in a way that's not considering them like humans.
"We call them target groups as if we want to shoot them. We need to think about people as human beings. It's about all of us rediscovering the importance of humanity on the work we do."
Pick up today's AdNews (in print and on iPad) for our Special Edition report on the AANA's Global Marketer Conference, where big names turned up to deliver big ideas to speakers and delegates from around the world representing a mammoth $700 billion in global ad spending.
Hear from Mathieu along with the likes of Sir John Hegarty, Diageo Reserve's James Thompson, BrainJuicer's John Kearon, Kimberly-Clark's Michelle Froah, Adidas China's Colin Currie, Acer's Michael Birkin and Google Glass' Ed Sanders.
News in this issue
• Brands must start caring about sharing
• Conde Nast champions 'unsexy' email
• Digital agencies can't turn a virtual dollar
• Salmat flags big, dumb letterbox revival
• Westfield fights to keep up with Amazon
Also in this issue, it's the third and final round of the AdNews Agency Rankings – see more here, and here. Find out the peak performers across advertising, media, digital, direct and, for the first time, media companies are included in the mix.
We've got $800 million PR mogul Richard Edelman discussing the future of PR – social, search, advertising, content and "creative newsrooms" – and Google, Nissan and Whybin TBWA come together to discuss a record-breaking YouTube campaign for the carmaker.
Plus top creatives talk best and worst briefs. Spinach partner Frank Morabito: "'You have to write an ad,' account exec said tersely. 'It has to be written now and it has to cost $200,000.' 'Is there a brief?' I asked blithely. 'That's the brief.' My heartbeat accelerated to the speed of a Bugatti. 'Don't fuck it up and have it by tomorrow.'"
Other people in the magazine: Tom Moult, John Steedman, David Nobay, Richard Morgan, Andrew Antoniou, Ben Smith, Nick Simkins, Dean Hunt, Phil Nobay, Jeff Cooper.
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