Yesterday, Intersection CMO, Esther Raphael talked about post-covid revenge spending and out-of-home. Today, she talks about the brands which didn’t pull back during Covid and are thriving.
In January, Intersection formed Creative Labs to perform in-house creative for clients. How’s it going?
It’s going amazing. Last year, so many teams shrunk that our clients needed help creating and executing things. Creative Labs was formed not just to come up with the whole campaign, but also to take that creative and reformat it for the hundreds of sizes that are needed to accommodate an out-of-home campaign. We reached the 100 client mark in less than six months and work with a vast array of businesses from Coke to The Barnes Firm. We’ve done train wraps, buses and air, and we have designers all across the country in each of our offices. The beauty of that is when a client comes in and says “I want to run in Minneapolis,” it’s not the designer in New York who’s doing it. It’s the designer in Minneapolis who says I know what’s going to work best here.
Many brands pulled their horns in during Covid. What brands didn’t pull back in the pandemic and thrived?
Definitely the mobile betting sector, they did not let go. In Chicago, they are doing a multi-year ownership of Addison Station near Wrigley Field to support their new gaming sports book that they are opening at the stadium. It’s a message of “we were with you and you could bet on your phone throughout the pandemic, now we’re going to be with you at Wrigley.”
Another category that’s super interesting was mobile food delivery. A no brainer, you’re in your home and you need food. Brands like Fresh Direct, Amazon, Uber Eats – they’ve really taken over as a result of the pandemic.
If you could change two things about the way brands do creative, what would you change?
Sometimes we put ourselves first and we promote the thing we want to hear and see in the world instead of what the consumer wants to see.
Authenticity is huge too, and those are the brands that are going to be most successful. Look at influencers as an example, gone are the days of people fawning over movie stars and pop stars. The next generation is looking to real people. People on Tik Tok just showing you their life, taking you into their home, showing you how they cook, showing you how they dance…they’ve become the new influencer.
Intersection is on a hiring tear right now. How has the company been growing this past year?
My phone was just ringing about that! We have a lot of positions to fill because we won a lot of markets during Covid. It wasn’t the position everyone took, but it was the position we took. We wanted to come out bigger on the other side, and we did.
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