How Legacy Brands Keep Their Fingers on the Pulse

Lessons from Kraft Heinz, State Farm, Translation and BBDO

How does a legacy brand keep its finger on the pulse of popular culture? During Tuesday’s Clio Creative Summit, hosted at Omnicom’s office in NYC, execs from Kraft Heinz, State Farm, BBDO and Translation shared their formulas for success with attendees and moderator Emily Seal, executive director of the Clios.

“It’s built off of the premise that people hate consuming ads, but they love consuming culture,” said Joel Rodriguez, head of context and planning at Translation. “It’s not just about the story. It’s where it shows up, when it shows up and who it shows up through.”

Communications between brands and agencies can make all the difference, noted Simon Au, ECD of Kraft Heinz in-house agency The Kitchen.

“I could text[the CMO at 2 a.m. and he could approve something within an hour,” he said. “That is not something that we can do in an external agency because there’s probably five layers of people that you have to go through to do exactly what I do.”

His team has a weekly newsroom meeting for their brands, bringing together social media and creative pros to see if they should move on a trendy discussion (like the recent KitKat’Chup Bar).

BBDO SVP and creative director Matt Low views the client-agency relationship in a similar vein.

“The clients know their business better than we do,” he said. “We are a team. We are a team. Their problem is our problem.”

Baldwin Cunningham, director of media and partnerships at State Farm leans heavily into the brand’s “Like a good neighbor” mantra when looking at partnerships. “We’ve been involved with basketball for some time, and a WNBA sponsor for seven years,” he said. “We don’t do boxing. It’s kind of violent, right? So that’s not really a good neighbor. So we pick and choose the areas that we’re in based on the audience and the strategic alignment.”

Rodriguez closed the panel with his top lessons on building a brand.

“The details matter to the people who matter. Notice I didn’t say consumers,” he said. “Treat your audience as people before you treat them as customers and you’re going to build trust that leads to transaction. Number two is super simple but super important, and often overlooked: Listen before you speak.”

“And being on brand means being on purpose. Like I said: the details matter to the people who matter.”