Interview with Yvonne Tocquigny, partner at TY Branding Group

“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half”.

This sentence, attributed to department store owner John Wanamaker, has become a legendary comment on the fundamental problem of advertising.

Measurement

Of course, digital ‘solves’ this problem. Online, every ad is clickable (or at least viewable) and can therefore be tracked.

But digital measurement has become its own curse. It leaves little room for brand advertising, where the goal is awareness, not direct action.

Yvonne Tocquigny, partner at YT Branding Group, understands this well. She has helped companies – especially in the tech space – to shape their brands and promote them to the public.

In an exclusive interview with AdInMo, she describes the new digital dilemma.

 “You never could get any real metrics from print or TV,” she says. “So when you suddenly could get measurement from (digital) ads, everyone wanted to max out their budgets on it. Marketers could see what they were getting.

It was like marketing on crack.

 “But sometimes measurement can be a curse. Say you want to focus on the spirit or creativity of a brand…(some clients) will say: how can we measure that? They prefer to bang away at measurable tactics that get short term results.”

 This frustrating first-hand experience makes Tocquigny especially interested in InGamePlay brand advertising. AdInMo’s enables developers to seamlessly insert brand ads into a game. The ads are contextually targeted and, highly visible, but they are also click-free and do not interrupt game flow. 

 She also believes gaming represents the ideal context for brand-building digital ads because gamers are so uniquely committed to the worlds they enter into. She says: “Games are really more like experiences. In something like a fashion game or an interior design game…people are exercising their creativity or exploring and learning new things. Brands can benefit from being present in these places – where people are having positive experiences.”

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