Cannes Lions 2010: “Print, too, is going to be video” – Henrique de Castro, VP, Global Media & Platforms, Google

“Online or offline, don’t think about that. Everything is going to be online,” this was the suggestion of Henrique de Castro, Vice President, Global Media and Platforms, Google, to agencies (both creative and media) and advertisers during the first session of Day Four of the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival 2010.

Speaking during the session titled ‘The Beautiful Ad Game’, Castro was bullish about the digital world and asked creative people and TV planners to not make different plans for online TV and offline TV, or adapt an offline TV campaign for online TV later. “Both the media are going to converge,” he said.

“Cross media is going to be more relevant. Even print is going to be video,” Castro said, adding, “A car magazine can’t write much in words. It will have to showcase features in a video.”

He also urged the media and advertising fraternity and advertisers not to wait for Nielsen data to come to strategise their online campaigns as these took time, and by the time they were out, technology would have made strides. “Don’t over-complicate. Do the campaigns and test them and adjust accordingly,” he advised.

According to Castro, there was need to make dynamic ads to further boost engagement with the consumers. “These campaigns are globally scalable and more and more advertisers are buying global campaigns these days,” he added.

Emphasising that “social will be in every media”, Castro said that in a society “there are a lot of social signals like making friends and connecting with families and relatives, behaviour and recommendations; and they would be in every media”.

One can “watch a match in Argentina and chat at the same time,” he said, adding, “All this is going to be an intersection of science and creativity.”

With delivery platforms like TV, PC, Tablet, iPad or mobile, collectively there would be millions of delivery platforms, and creative people and planners would have to adapt their message according to the platform. And hence, there would be a need of advanced planning and targeting tools. Castro apprised the gathering at the session that Google was building tools to evaluate and make effective campaigns to deliver these campaigns at different geographies. “This is going to happen in the next 12-36 months,” he said.