Starcom CEO: "Media is the next creative"

In 2011, when Norwegian band Kaizers Orchestra approached Laura Desmond (pictured) about how to promote their new album and crackdown on piracy, she said something they never expected: “Give people the music before it’s even out.”The band’s original music sheets were put on sale on iTunes and music stores, and fans were invited to post their covers online. When the record finally came out, sales hit the roof and Kaizers Orchestra’s Facebook fan page population jumped by 100%.“Media will be the next creative,” said the global chief executive officer for Starcom MediaVest Group. “It’s going to be about how to reach consumers and how to keep them interested. It’s about making it fun, and as an industry, we’re still figuring it out.”To answer the million-dollar question, the spotlight on China is growing increasingly strong as the world’s role model to follow because the country has jumped directly into the digital era.“We’re learning from China in terms of e-commerce, search, consumer adaptability, what is acceptable or not because the Chinese have skipped a screen, they went from traditional media directly to mobile, and we’re very excited.”Desmond’s approach, therefore, is to pick up on global consumer trends and expand on them locally, which is why her brainchild project – The Human Experience – nixed all of Starcom’s regional offices to refocus them on purely global and local pushes.And how local is local? “A few blocks,” she said, citing geotagging and behavioural monitoring apps that can take consumers to the closest restaurant or shop.“This display of brands unleashes a whole new level of creativity, which is increasingly important in the light of globalisation: everyone is a Beyoncé fan, a Coldplay fan. But it’s how to localise that experience and how to penetrate that selling factor into the local market that makes it responsive.”