Wunderman is the largest digital marketing network in the world, and its CEO and chairman, Daniel Morel, views data as a key to success in the advertising field.

“Data is sexy, know that,” he said.

Morel believes the next big step in advertising is to seize and sort through big data while utilizing creativity to build a more valuable and personal relationship between companies and its consumers. Morel spoke at the Joyce Hergenhann Auditorium Tuesday afternoon as part of the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications’ Eric Mower Advertising Forum.

Morel titled his lecture “A Wink in the Dark” to suggest a metaphor about the importance of advertising agencies using big data.

“Doing business without collecting data is like winking in the dark,” he said. “You know what you are doing, but nobody else does.”

Wunderman is made up of more than 20 networks. Some of its clients include Microsoft, Nokia, Coca-Cola and Ford, according to Wunderman’s website.

In 1961, Wunderman “completely changed the way businesses advertise” when Lester Wunderman founded it, said Morel. Now, Wunderman covers 93 percent of U.S. retail trade.

“Lester imagined a conversation with the consumer, which in the process you can better understand the customer and later you will be able to earn their trust,” Morel said.

Big data permits businesses to understand a consumer not through studying the audience’s interests, but more through the audience’s behavior, Morel said.

“If you want to have a job within the next ten years, become conversant with the term big data,” he added.

Morel said the media now explains and analyzes the behavior of consumers through social media and the Internet. He added that Wunderman and its clients now collect more information from customers than ever, but they never know what they want to buy, so they have to constantly advertise.

If an agency wants to better understand the context of their audience, Morel said the agency must build a closer relationship with media. He added that agencies should also understand that creative content that is both valuable and engaging drives consumer connections.

“You want to bring an element of usefulness and creativity to the audience,” Morel said.

Chandler Bullock, a sophomore advertising major, said although he usually focuses on other aspects of advertising, he could still relate to Morel’s lecture.

“As someone who is more focused on creativity for advertising, I appreciated it when he discussed the bond that context and creativity have in advertising,” Bullock said.

Maia Henderson, a junior advertising major, said she also appreciated Morel’s mention of the necessary relationship between creativity and big data in advertising. She added that most advertisers usually think they have to choose between one and the other.

At the end of his lecture, Morel played a promotion by Coca-Cola that expressed the company’s aspiration to build relationships with its consumers based upon the data collected from their cell phones. Morel said this valuable exchange of data will provide Coca-Cola’s consumers promotions as they travel through life.

“The data you collect on your phone gives your client the ability to engage with you in a valuable, personal manner,” he said.

Morel said a consumer’s cell phone is more valuable than their wallet, because most consumers have access to them and cell phones reveal a lot of personal, specific data.

Ian Brooks, a junior advertising major, said Morel’s lecture helped him better understand the future of advertising.

“What I got from the lecture was that I think the lean digital media startup is not going to be the biggest kind of startup in the next few years,” he said. “It is going to be these joint ventures where you’re going to see lean digital media combining with the data, and it’s going to be those shops that have both.”

Published on February 12, 2014 at 1:31 am

Contact Anna: almerod@syr.edu