Like their partners in the Canadian news industry, the country’s media agencies are undergoing unprecedented transformation. The National Post is holding conversations with leaders of Canada’s largest agencies on the fast-changing fundamentals. This week, Rami Dudin, the group strategy director for Courage, speaks to writer Rebecca Harris.
When I look at the industry today, there is this ongoing debate between performance marketing and brand building, which I call the science versus the art of advertising. We see a lot of performance marketing for a good reason — it’s easy to measure and it’s pay-per-click and all these things are important for marketers and CMOs. But the other side of the coin is you really need the big brand-building work.
Maybe calling it big is not the right word because a lot of times, we assume they have to be $2-million TV shoots and very polished creative. But what we’re trying to do at Courage is say I can do a brand ad for $200,000 and it’s going to have a really good impact, it’s going to bring you into culture, and it’s going to bring earned media impressions to you..
. The fundamentals of how we act at Courage is we acknowledge the importance of performance marketing, but we know that clients still want the big ideas; they still want the brand-building work. I feel like we as marketers, we love to put eras on things.
So, what I’m hearing a lot these days is, ‘Purpose marketing is over. No one really cares about purpose market.
