Milan, Italy. At Tomilli.com we had the pleasure of connecting with Marta Nava, Creative Lead at Imille, Milan and this is what he told us:
Why “Digital Heroes”?
A hero, by definition, is someone capable of extraordinary actions and has a great power of will. While the “digital” can be their army: this revolution has disrupted the world, giving people new tools and the power to create new ideas, new scenery, new futures.
Imille, as an agency, wants to be a hero with our services to brands, helping them realize their full potential, and, as a consequence, redesigning their new futures.
But we think that anyone, if they truly believe in this revolution, can contribute too.
How can you redesign a world that evolves on a daily basis thanks to technology?
In the same way you did before: finding insights that are relevant.
This has always been the most difficult part of our jobs because we have to find concepts that are universal and cannot be questionable, even for people who do not share our background or our lifestyle. Now, thanks to technology, we have more tools to listen to our audience, to extend our way of seeing things, to create new ideas and, last but not least, to communicate them and get in touch with people.
How can you connect with audiences again post-crisis?
What brands are asked today is to be “real”. A rather difficult request to satisfy, but for which the contribution of digital is decisive. The Coronavirus created a completely new economic and social scenario, overturning our world. Therefore, it pushed people to review the management of resources (time, money, attention, emotional load, etc.) dedicated to their occupations. The task of companies is to respond to this trend, offering not only new products, services or experiences, but also renewed principles and values, which satisfy the functional, emotional and social dimensions of people.
What do you think is the greatest error that a Creative Lead can make?
Gathering their insights from something that has been done before. We need to instead search for them in everyday life and in what we observe from what is happening right now.
Too many creatives have the habit of spending a lot of time looking at brilliant campaigns to “get inspired” but this has caused them to become unaccustomed to forming their own opinions and thoughts about things. This bad habit doesn’t generate interesting ideas, just copies of what has already been done.
How do you inspire the creative talents of Imille?
Luckily, I am surrounded by interesting people. So, to inspire them I just need to let them express themselves. I try to get them to ask questions and to be curious about the world around them, to look for new points of view and interesting ideas. Always starting first from the idea and then from the execution. This is the most complicated part because the modern style of work almost forces us to be more performers than thinkers.
Advertising and the media are going out of their way to support political candidates and defend political postures. Is this positive for the sector?
Advertising and the media are the mirrors of our culture, for better or for worse. It is natural that they also deal with politics and what is happening in the world. If this were not the case, they would be disconnected from the reality that surrounds us.
What is important is to equip the audience with tools to understand with a critical spirit what is being communicated to them, but this is a cultural and thought revolution that is not the task of the advertisers or the media.
Is the media losing its credibility with audiences?
It depends on the media. But above all, by those who create the content. Sometimes people who work in communication lose focus on what they are saying and who they are saying it to because they have too much interest in communicating their ego and what they think. And this creates a loss of credibility because people cannot always relate to that.
We have to say something relevant to the audience, not to ourselves.