Gustavo Lauria of The Vidal Partnership: Social media lets us know what consumers like

After being a prizewinner at the IAB MIXX Awards 2012, Gustavo Lauria, managing partner and CCO of The Vidal Partnership in New York, spoke with PRODU about the importance of including digital strategies in ad campaigns.“The IAB MIXX Awards 2012 got everyone talking and it went very well for us, discussing the process and the results. What I tell the guys in the agency is that many talk about digital as something they always have to include in their campaigns. Well, that’s fine and it’s a really great tool but it’s just that, a tool. I think it’s more powerful, much more powerful, what we can learn from social networks than what we can do with them. Yes, we can produce a great idea and get it to our target audience over social media, but that’s what we always do with media – we always have to have sound criteria and the best ideas,” Lauria said.The creative made it clear that for him, the outstanding value of social media is the chance it offers to learn what people like, since it’s just like having a daily focus group.“This is important for our market since it’s spread around a number of cities. Very often the message we air on these platforms sparks an immediate response that could be the perfect test to show us which way the campaign should go. A good project has to please the public to make the client happy,” Lauria said.