Drugi jezik na kojem je dostupan ovaj članak: Bosnian
By: Magdalena Mucić
For its 10th birthday, from 21 to 24 September, Weekend Media Festival will bring to the old tobacco factory in Rovinj the most relevant topics in the field of media, marketing, advertising and communication. Over 100 lectures, panels and presentations will be attended by regional and world experts including Ivan Stanković, Founder and President of the Communis regional agency, and professor at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade.
On the occasion of his lecture What Women Want, we talked with Stanković about the challenges that marketers face today, underestimating women as a consumer group and the concept he designed to help colleagues communicate with women in a way they will appreciate.
Magdalena Mucić: At the Weekend Media Festival you will present a new communication concept which you devised. Why the need for it?
Ivan Stanković: I have been arguing for a long time that radical changes are needed in our profession. If we don’t make them, we’re done for, just like the dinosaurs. That is why I have designed a concept whose first step, that everyone needs to make, is very simple – one letter change. In the word ‘advertising’ the letter ‘a’ should be replaced by the letter ‘e’ so that we get ‘e-dvertising‘, where ‘e’ has a double meaning. The first is to use the e-model of communication, that is, all that is related to the new habits of consuming digital media. Second, and more important, is that emotion is the basis of communication. In today’s diverse information age, the human brain is unable to process all the data, so consumers make decisions quite simply. They either like something or not. That is why creating emotions through communication is necessary.
Magdalena Mucić: You say that women are unjustly neglected consumer group. Why should we pay more attention to them?
Ivan Stanković: Women are the dominant buyers or decision-makers in a huge number of cases. In some categories, such as buying food, trips, houses and the like, they are decision-makers in more than 90 percent of the cases. Women are becoming more and more independent. In the US they command as much as 61 percent of the total personal wealth. They also appear in a large percentage in some non-female categories. Did you know that 47 percent of gamers are actually women?
Magdalena Mucić: What is the current attitude of the industry towards women?
Ivan Stanković: The fact is that currently, in 90 of the 100 leading US advertising agencies men are holding creative director positions. And men don’t quite understand women. That’s why we often address them improperly, and women see this communication as inauthentic and discard it. In my lecture at the Weekend Media Festival, I will present bad examples and especially talk about the unsuccessful attempts of men to answer the question: what do women want? They know exactly what they want, and what they don’t want. The problem is that it often overlaps.
Magdalena Mucić: Could you explain to us in some more detail your ‘5E’ communication concept, and how it can help communication experts?
Ivan Stanković: The ‘5E’ concept is a variant of the classic AIDA concept of communication. First ‘e’ stands for ‘excess’. In today’s abundance of information, the first step is to make your message noticed. That is why some excess is necessary for consumers to notice you. The second ‘e’ comes immediately after the first, and stands for ‘entertain’. After you attracted with excess, you’ll lose your consumer if you don’t start with an interesting story that will entertain them. The third e stands for ’emotion’ – a bond between a brand and a consumers starts to be created. The next ‘e’ is very important. ‘Experience’ is the moment of truth when a consumer comes into contact with the brand and learns if all the promises were true. That is why everyone is taking care of the place and the way consumers meet the brand. The last ‘e’ stands for ‘engagement’, conquering local consumers.
