CAN co-founder, Harriet Kingaby and Dilip Shukla of Reset Digital discuss how advertising needs more human understanding and how a results first approach leads to more conscious advertising.
Dilip is an industry veteran from senior media agency roles at WPP, Dentsu and Omnicom also co founding and scaling mediatech startups focused on human understanding for better communication.
Harriet: What’s the most important thing the ad industry can do to be its best self
Dilip: Recognise that everything we do gets better when we understand human beings better. The industry overestimates its expertise here. The systems and tech our industry uses are based on demographics, sometimes search information, sometimes previous purchases and we measure effectiveness with misleading data. This is a pretty limited understanding of people
Ask yourself this question, do your systems tell you why people do what they do? Human beings do what they do because of their emotions and feelings and the stories they build about their lives. Why does this matter? Results. Reset Digital uses this information to drive great advertising results for brands like Starbucks, Carolina Herrera, Ford, BMW and many more. Better results is what a better industry does.
Harriet: So, more human understanding, does that make our actions as an industry more human?
Dilip: Well yes, more human understanding does end up driving more conscious advertising choices, they are a natural consequence of the way that better results are achieved.
Harriet: OK, how do more human systems improve advertising and business results?
Dilip: When you have data that tells you how a person wants to feel, what their emotions are, their life narratives at any particular moment, then you can understand what kind of communication they are open to. People are complex and dynamic, our industry systems see people as stereotypical and static. This has to change. Reset Digital maps people’s emotions and feelings to place the right ad or brand for that person at that moment. We work with world leading brands and agencies who deploy sophisticated tracking of return on investment and business performance. The result is better results.
Harriet: And how do these more human methods lead to more conscious advertising choices?
Dilip: Technology now allows you to understand the detailed human emotions and feelings that attract a person to a specific web page, video, tv programme or influencer. These emotions and feelings tell you which brand or creative execution that person will be most open to at that moment.
This means that you value well created, meaningful and often in depth content more highly.
It means you don’t spend towards “enrage to engage” type media which is currently way overvalued – because no brands are really in that space.
It means you value the moment rather than taking the data and “buying theaudience” somewhere cheap.
It means you value creative more highly because you can see why it works and for who it works.
And ultimately it means you can see a business value in understanding people for their unstereotypable complex human identity which will lead to a lot of positive developments in the industry.
Harriet: What sort of positive developments?
Dilip: First of all, better results. But then because those results lead more conscious, responsible behaviours, the industry is more highly valued by advertisers. And then because we treat the people we communicate with more like human beings and they see our more responsible and effective behaviours, they start to upgrade their opinion of the industry. So we try and understand human beings better than we already did. So we start to care more about the people inside our companies. Who can see this happening . . . . because human understanding.
Thank you to Dilip for sharing his invaluable insights with CAN. His perspective on human understanding in advertising highlights a powerful shift – better results come from recognising people’s emotions, not just data points.
If you’re looking to create more conscious and effective advertising, explore CAN’s Manifestos here.
