The other day I asked Cristiana Pană – Head of Strategy & Growth @ Minio Studio – a few questions. Minio is an integrated communications agency that aims to solve business problems for the brands it works with. We spoke to Cristiana to get a better understanding of what 2021 meant for Minio Studio.

An interview by Marian Costache, from the #reinventyourself #reinventyourbusiness series.

What was 2021 like for you? Did it really mark the post-pandemic comeback?

For Minio, 2021 was a more predictable year than 2020, but far from devoid of complexity or challenges. While many of the uncertainties from the beginning of the pandemic have tempered, people have become accustomed to the restrictions, pressures on budgets were still quite high and brands’ willingness to invest was not as high as it was pre-pandemic. However, Minio Studio is an integrated communications agency that wants to solve business problems for the brands it works with. So despite a restrictive context in 2021, we have found the resources to innovate in multiple ways, in activation mechanisms, sampling, communication mixes or even the way we communicate certain topics.

Also in 2021 we decided to focus on strengthening our team, expanding our delivery capabilities in digital solutions, but also streamlining our internal processes so that we can be more agile, more creative in the projects we develop.

#projects

Our projects in 2021 were marked by the following words: agility, efficiency and unconventional solutions to solve conventional communication problems. Often, impact in advertising is measured in marketing budgets invested, in industry awards, in how a campaign is or isn’t visible in the market. But the pandemic reality has reminded us that impact is measured first in brand business results and then in all of the above. That means being willing to listen, to diagnose with the client, to have the courage to test and to be willing to lose in losing bets, but without forgetting to pursue the ultimate goal: the real business impact of the communication measure.

Many of the projects in 2021 indicated that we are in an ongoing pandemic: more cautious steps, chunks of projects cancelled, budgets cut before the start date, lack of continuity in working on the brand, more tactical communications and less focus on the brand communication itself. However, I can’t say that 2021 wasn’t a good year and didn’t mark a turnaround. On the contrary, I think 2021 was a year that challenged us to be more agile, proactive and unconventional in our approach. While many of last year’s initiatives don’t compare to pre-pandemic levels of investment, the trend points to a positive: a resilient optimism to do impactful things in uncertain times.

What does an unconventional approach mean for Minio Studio?

Unconventional is usually defined in advertising by those projects that innovate and disrupt the market. In pandemic times, however, the unconventional has become commoditized because of the uncertain nature of the whole market context. Simple sampling projects became unconventional simply because human interaction with consumers was no longer possible. A lot of pressure was put on new channels: digital and influencers who had to overcompensate through unconventional message dissemination architectures or activation techniques, the connection to retail and the impossibility to operate in the physical environment.

For us, unconventional means any action, message or idea that innovates the market, but also the category, image or even the activation history of the brand we work for. Furthermore, unconventional can sometimes mean the communication mix chosen or even the way you choose to spend a budget versus past actions.

The unconventional is usually defined in advertising by those projects that innovate and disrupt the market. In pandemic times, however, the unconventional has become more comfortable due to the uncertain nature of the entire market context. Simple sampling projects became unconventional just because human interaction with consumers was no longer possible. There was a lot of pressure on new channels: digital and influencers who had to overcompensate with unconventional message dissemination architectures or activation techniques, the connection with retail and the inability to activate in the physical environment.

For us, unconventional means any action, message or idea that innovates the market, but also the category, image or even the activation history of the brand we work for. Moreover, unconventional can sometimes mean the chosen communication mix or even the way you choose to spend a budget versus past actions.

#pandemic

For us, pandemic has been a very fruitful period, many of the campaigns we’ve developed have translated into industry awards, category innovations. Through them we have been able to change perspectives and the way we look at certain product categories. We specialise in integrated brand campaigns, digital campaigns that include video, experiential and new media (influencers) components.

One of our pet projects is the campaign Every cub with its own milk, an education campaign carried out for SAMAS Association Romania, which aimed to educate mothers about the use of animal milk for babies under 1 year old. Mothers don’t like to be told they don’t know how to do things right for their babies, so it was clear that taking on the role of expert was not the answer for us. So we had to innovate what and how we communicate.

We opted to use a rational and educational message, based on scientific evidence, in the language mothers use with their little ones. And we have had the most dramatic results in terms of message receptivity and impact in the way mothers are opting for their little ones’ nutrition, with 80% of mothers surveyed – following the campaign – declaring that they will no longer offer animal milk. Incidentally, this campaign was awarded silver, being innovative in the Medical Sector category, but also in Budget -, Creativity + at the Romanian PR Award 2021. More about the campaign HERE.

#unfished

Other examples of unconventional campaigns were those run for a brand new to the market. This is the Unfished Plantuna brand, the first Romanian brand to offer a plant-based alternative to fish. Being aware of people’s scepticism about plant-based products and the fact that they see alternatives as a compromise of taste, this product launch in the market was a challenge for everyone. The unconventionality in this project translated into an innovation in the way a food brand communicates.

The Wierdly Good campaign helped us bring consumers closer to the product, showing that we understand their tensions and scepticism in an authentic way. We advertised the commercial in the launch spot, i.e. we chose to illustrate the reactions of an actor and a food blogger to their first encounter with the product. You can see the Unfished campaigns HERE and HERE.

#dermatocosmetics

Another market where we could come up with unconventional solutions in 2021 was dermatocosmetics. The CeraVe brand conducted a global study in 23 countries to see how people changed their skin cleansing routine. As the online environment has become more dynamic in an unprecedented way, consumers’ attention to long educational messages has progressively shrunk to such compact pieces of content (see TikTok), which made our mission to turn the study into something interesting for Romanians to watch a challenging task to say the least.

To disrupt the way educational content is produced by dermatocosmetic brands, we set out to develop the first online show dedicated to skin cleansing. We took inspiration from the most interesting and popular news formats, reality shows and competitions, brought them together and created a show, in the truest sense of the word. The campaign has been awarded and nominated in several industry competitions, winning 1 silver in Fashion & Lifestyle at the Romanian PR Award 2021. The results can be found HERE.

Last but not least, another opportunity to bring in the unconventional factor was in the way we chose to continue the promotions edition for Mondelez. We developed a cross-branded campaign for three brands from different angles of the taste spectrum – Oreo, TUC and Philadelphia. We realised that while it may seem like a simple task, finding the right snack to suit each occasion was actually quite a challenging task, especially when the target typologies we were working for were as different as possible. Therefore, we created a whole discipline: Snackology, the science that studies the perfect snack for every occasion. Read more about the campaign HERE.

Where do you place your focus for 2022?

For 2022, we have a number of activities planned to highlight our accumulated expertise in the market over the last two years. For example, in 2020, just before the pandemic, we were planning to launch this biometrics service that we would scale out of the projects we are working on directly. We are among the few agencies that integrate biometric data analytics into our day-to-day work to optimise our creative materials.

Using biometric technologies, we can already quantify people’s attention, emotions and psychological responses in the design we develop for the brands we work for. In this way we capture non-conscious aspects of decision making, taking into account that the mind reacts to what is happening in milliseconds, faster than we are aware. Using neuroscience technologies, we understand these reactions to optimise the efficiency of our services, and we plan to officially launch it in the market.

We believe that now – more than ever in the context of the pandemic – to streamline communication and the way it works, ads need more than ever to be integrated with data from monitoring and streamlining how consumers interact with advertising materials.

Of course, our plans aren’t just limited to launching this service, but it will certainly be a big part of what’s to come in 2022 at our agency. Among other ideas for 2022, I mention the Minio Academy know-how development projects through which we constantly encourage team learning, attendance at industry events both as participants and speakers, and a number of reputation projects that will constantly strengthen the agency’s visibility in the market.

How has the relationship with clients gone during the pandemic and what conclusions have you drawn from it?

For us, the pandemic has been an opportunity to build with our partners (both clients, but also collaborators, suppliers) various solutions that work in this volatile market context. I like to think that healthy relationships have been strengthened and those that did not add value to the parties have been made more efficient. This has given space to the birth of strong partnerships with those who wanted us on their side, we have produced many proactive ideas that have solved emerging business problems and we have adapted our working possibilities so that we contribute to the same common goal: creating impactful campaigns for both the brand and the stakeholders. You’ll learn more about our visionary approach from a project co-signed with clients and partners that will be released to the market soon.  In the project we will detail what such an effort to address brand issues in the Romanian advertising market actually entails.

Future plans?

We are a strategic communications agency that focuses on solving brand problems in relation to their consumers, whatever their nature (visibility, distribution, positioning, etc.). This translates into the fact that we predominantly have complex campaigns that integrate multiple communication channels or even brand repositioning for products or services that are harder to market.

In 2020, just 4 years after its launch, Minio became the most awarded independent agency on the market. So, our future plans will encompass a lot of activities and campaigns to strengthen our position on the market and bring us even more competitive advantages (expertise, specialised know-how on growing channels, innovative ideas, award-winning campaigns, new clients in the portfolio), but also more benefits that go back to the market (business results for the brands we work for, social responsibility projects).

Source: We Invent