AME's Grand Jury Spotlight Interviews celebrate the exceptional minds shaping the landscape of advertising and marketing communications. Our esteemed jury panel for 2024 includes visionary leaders renowned for creating influential, results-oriented campaigns for leading brands worldwide. This diverse jury represents some of the most recognized creative and strategic trailblazers in the industry. Their dedication to driving impactful, innovative work not only sets the standard for excellence but also inspires future generations of marketers and advertisers.

2024 AME Grand Jury member Baggio Xiaofeng Song is the Co-founder and Chief Growth Officer of iNSPIRE, an integrated agency based in Shanghai. He bringsnearly two decades of experience to the jury panel. He is know for his expertise in developing brand strategy, crafting integrated communications campaigns, devising media strategies, implementing programmatic media solutions, and spearheading e-commerce strategies and technology solutions. Previously he has cultivated his skills through notable roles at esteemed organizations such as Leo Burnett, BBDO/Interone, Google, and Omnicom Media Group. At iNSPIRE, Song leads a dynamic team comprised of brand strategists, media planners, content planners, performance media operators, and data analysts. Together, they collaborate to deliver comprehensive omnichannel strategies and executions tailored to both international and local brands operating within the Chinese market. Additionally, Song drives e-commerce and social commerce initiatives at iNSPIRE.

In the interview below Baggio shares his perspective on future forward trends, consumer's media behavior, data and AI, how brands are adapting to e-commerce platforms and much more.

AME Awards: Why are effectiveness competitions like the AME Awards important?

Baggio Song: Putting aside the vanity part of it, effectiveness shows keep reminding us why are we doing all these and how to do it properly, right? In real life, most successful communications that propel brands and businesses forward are orchestrated. Results are never solely reliant on a single brilliant insight, a clever slogan, a standout commercial, or a crafted media plan. Rather, it's the culmination of all these elements working harmoniously. It's akin to achieving the perfect chemistry by blending the right ingredients in the right proportions. Effective shows enable us to strip away the fancy layers of communication and understand why and how it truly functions. They reveal the recurring patterns of success, offering insights into replicating achievements. Above all, they are a constant reminder of the ultimate objective of marketing communications: to instigate consumer behavior change and foster growth.

AME Awards: What future forward trends and innovations are brands embracing for 2024?

Baggio Song: I think Sora has surprised us all big time, and OpenAI will surely keep doing it. I’m not going to talk about disappearing jobs or value-chain break-ups, but it will surely have an impact on the industry very soon. Actually, at iNSPIRE we have been using AIGC tools to improve creation production efficiency for over a year now. I’m very much looking forward to seeing a first scaled 100% AIGC campaign coming out in 2024 and seeing how the results will be. The thing is, audiences wouldn’t care how the content is created (they're so used to CGI content already); it’s the industry and investors who are talking about it all the time. I believe that when more marketers and agencies embrace AIGC, it will speed up the value diminishment of some overly hyped creative production, in turn allowing us to invest more resources into other components of communication and orchestration between them. However, we still need to see if AI beats Hollywood production in commercial results, hopefully in the next three years.

AME Awards: How has the use of data analytics and artificial intelligence impacted the effectiveness of advertising campaigns?

Baggio Song: Speaking of the effectiveness of campaigns, evidence from around the world has shown that it's mainly attributed to quality media reach. Creative content is surely credited too, but in terms of its creation, it still has many 'art' aspects that cannot be measured or repeated. So, I will mainly be talking about the media part.

Data and AI are not just tools that we use for better campaign and media planning; they are essentially indivisible components of how we work. In China, we have access to world-class data platforms for audience planning and decision-making. To counter walled gardens, we work with top third-party data analytical partners to study consumers' cross-platform behaviors and pathways to conversion. We leverage platforms' AI tools to precisely control campaign cadence and inventory to achieve reach and frequency goals. We use tools like 'Alibaba databank' to validate media campaigns' impact on commercial results.

In a nutshell, in the age of marketing science, data and AI are essential if you truly care about effectiveness.

AME Awards:  How have brands adapted their advertising strategies to capitalize on the growing trend of e-commerce and direct-to-consumer models?

Baggio Song: If we exclude automotive, more than 40% of China’s consumer goods are bought on e-commerce platforms each year. This makes dominant players like Alibaba and Douyin (Tiktok in China) unignorable forces for both product sales and brand building.

Selling on e-commerce platforms under a direct-to-consumer model allows the brand to access not only buyer data but also data on prospects and category users for targeting purposes. For a premium international skincare brand, we have been vigorously upgrading the media strategy for three years, utilizing e-commerce user data for omnichannel brand image building. We also collaborate with platforms to understand users’ cross-channel consumption behavior and assess media effectiveness in driving sales growth. The e-commerce model is not solely for sales; it also provides us with the best quality data sources and analytical tools to study brand user assets and channel synergies.

AME Awards:  How has media marketing changed the way brands engage with consumers? Are there standout brands who are excelling at skillfully reaching consumers in their own personal lane of interest?

Consumers’ media behavior is very much shaped by how and what they consume in the media. We used to sit in front of the TV for hours each day, so a few 15-30 second spots during commercial breaks made sense. However, when people are constantly streaming and swiping away most content within 3 seconds, we need to rethink our content strategy.

Compared with three years ago, today we create 20 times more content versions for Clarins Paris for any campaign. But it doesn’t mean we film a dozen perfect TV commercials. In the age of social media and short video dominance, we approach content creation more pragmatically, faster, and with more agility. We have a content team constantly working on larger volumes of content at just the right quality that matches media formats and users’ different content interests and expectations. Platform feedback provides real-time results, allowing us to determine which content performs better and adjust budget allocation accordingly. So instead of a one-size-fits-all strategy, we create content customized to consumer segmentations and needs.