Raluca Ghilea (Perceptum): “Intelligent marketing will be the king”

Innovation is everywhere around us. Only in Bucharest are over 50.000 active users of the bike sharing solutions, numbers that prove the existence of a big marketing potential for the brands that want to use the multi-channel promotion. In this context, the bike with video display was brought on the local market by Raluca Ghilea, owner/CEO Perceptum Concept. More about the new promotional technology and what they can offer and also about the experiential marketing market in Romania and its trends, in the following interview.

AdHugger: When did you first discover your passion for the marcomm industry?

Raluca Ghilea: During my University years I worked in television and this is where I first felt the fascination of storytelling. It was an experience filled with creativity and discovery, meeting new people, taking inspiration from them and further inspiring the audience. The transition to marketing and communication was smooth and natural as marcomm is all about storytelling, engagement and interaction.

AdHugger: What made you choose this professional path?

Raluca Ghilea: The attraction that I felt for the power of storytelling to inspire others was what set the basis of my career after I finished University.  Although I attended a technical faculty, I chose Marketing post-university studies and I worked in the marketing department of different companies in different industries: banking, automotive, pharma. With every new position, from marketing specialist to communication coordinator and then marketing and PR manager, objectives were becoming more and more challenging and I had to put to work not only my creativity and marketing expertise, but also my technical background to create a winning formula, beat market averages, maximize sales and increase ROI.

AdHugger: Where would you say that is experiential marketing in Romania at this point? (creativity, budgets,resources, campaigns developed)

Raluca Ghilea: Experiential marketing has gone a long way in Romania. Romanians are early adopters of technology, they are enthusiastic about new communication tools and experiential marketing relies greatly on technological innovation and multi-sensory interaction. Augmented reality, virtual reality, intelligent marketing and personalization are at the core of the boldest campaigns that we see in Romania. But at this point I would say that companies and brands need to dare more, to be more visionary and see that the audiences change fast, Millennials are there, but a new generation arises, the post-Millennials, also known as the iGeneration. So brands need to adapt faster to their new customers and make use of the latest experiential marketing tools in order to make their customer journey an unforgettable one.

AdHugger: How do you hope to see it evolve in the next years?

Raluca Ghilea: I can certainly tell you what our plans are, at Perceptum, the marketing and communication company that I started 8 years ago.  We provide integrated marketing services, social media, content marketing, creative and public relations strategies that are customized to target today’s wide variety of communication channels. For the next years we’ll keep doing what we proved to do right so far: experiential storytelling, focusing more on the customer and less on the public. Shaped by personalized marketing and innovative interactive technologies, the customer journey is crucial for engagement, conversion and retention. This is where brands become part of their lives and gain loyalty. And for the next years I see even more innovative marketing tools emerging, more multi-channel interaction and multi-dimensional brand experiences.

AdHugger: What are the main trends in the field?

Raluca Ghilea: Intelligent marketing will be the king. Always driven by data and personalization, always centered around the customer experience. Intelligent marketing allows brands to connect all the customer touchpoints in order to amplify their brand message and gain trust ant collective level but, most important, custom-tailored and highly relevant to each individual. In the future we’ll see a lot from the rise of the Artificial Intelligence and the advancements in visual arts and technologies (we can say for sure that the future in marketing is visual).

AdHugger: What about the DOOH?

Raluca Ghilea: In our data-driven world, Digital Out-Of-Home is starting to take the place of traditional Out-Of-Home static media and brands are now investing more in the new OOH technologies. The DOOH market is on an ascending track and according to a recent DPAA survey, more than 60% of international companies have included DOOH in their media plans in 2017. The main advantage is that Digital Out of Home and live data will allow for new levels of geo-temporal audience segmentation and targeting. Plus it encourages social media sharing and instant communication, tools that appeal to the new generations and boost brand messages through hi-tech experiential brand storytelling.

AdHugger: How is Perceptum positioning in the market?

Raluca Ghilea: Perceptum is an agency of “firsts”: we are the first to have introduced Gravity Lifter and DreamOC as innovative hi-tech marketing tools, we have brought the video-brochure into our clients’ campaigns, we have used multi-sensory immersive video mapping with scent activators and so on. We are all about innovative and memorable brand storytelling where the customer does not have the VIP seat. Because the customer is on the scene, performing along with the brand, experiencing the brand as part of their lifestyle. Competition between brands and products on the market is fierce and our goal is to find those personalized marketing solutions that are able to bring fast ROI and long-term brand attachment. Perceptum’s results so far, the local and national marketing campaigns that we have orchestrated for different industries have proved us right. And we’ll keep doing what we do best: always following the lifestyle trends of each particular audience in order to create customized brand experiences that rock, convince, entertain and create loyalty.

AdHugger: What determined you to bring Kino-Mo in Romania?

Raluca Ghilea: Nowadays the public is dictating the trends and the Romanian public, as shown by the Eurostat statistics, is one of the most addicted to technology ones in Europe. The high-tech marketing came as a response to this situation, because the most important aspect when you promote a brand is to deeply know your public and to come in the meeting of its preoccupations, priorities and passions. It’s the only manner in which the public can become part of the brand story.

Romanians are early adopters of the latest technologies in the world,therefore we believed that bringing in Romania the bicycle with display, a marketing tool awarded internationally, one of the coolest tools produced by Kino-Mo, with the latest generation holographic technology Hypervsn™ would be a great idea.

The Kino-Mo hologram is an unique promotional tool perfect for highlighting products, brands and services in the commercial spaces. This type of display completes the series of technological innovation that we integrated with success in the marketing campaigns and the in-store activations, in order to create memorable experiences that put in the center of the communication the consumer’s benefits.