SIGNAL IN THE NOISE: ADVERTISING IN THE AGE OF DATA

Advertising is the quintessential example of an industry known for creatively embracing what’s new and next. From emerging technologies, channels, and formats to bold, go-to-market media strategies that are guided by evolving customer expectations for personalised, seamless, and omnichannel experiences, the most successful brands, agencies, and vendors just keep moving forward. 

This topic has been discussed for a number of years now from “Talking to Ourselves”, “Lee Chow Will Only Say This Once”, CP+B’s “Woodshed”, and “the Disruptor Series” and many others. What is absolutely clear is that the agency model has shifted. We all know it’s shifted. We can feel it. Our relationship with the client has shifted. Our value proposition (and perceived value) has shifted. The culprit? For the sake of brevity – is “Data”.

The introduction of “data” into our business has shifted the perception that what, once upon a time was considered alchemy, is now quantifiable. The pendulum that swings between art and science in advertising has decidedly taken a step towards science. Why? Well, for one, it’s the natural course of human progress. 

We humans have a history of decoupling and commoditizing our once lofty constructs. You may remember years ago the arduous task (and associated costs) of building a website? Today, we have Squarespace for $16 per month. 

Moreover, with the dollars attached to advertising at large, you can bet that any number of intelligent people will attempt to commoditize any number of its functions. To this end, the advent of this “Age of Data” has put all advertising practices under scrutiny.

But the backlash today being witnessed (against the traditional ad agencies of the world) is palpable. The problem appears to be that this “Age of Data” promised far more than it has delivered.

It is the natural and inevitable course of human evolution. However, being able to quantify and benchmark every consumer transaction along the customer journey is not tantamount to success. We now, arguably, have access to every metric under the sun but the data is largely meaningless. We are still pressed daily to find the signal in the noise.

This harsh reality has manifested in plateaued CX performance, digital transformations that did not deliver the expected returns, and early efforts to capitalize on new technologies and models that took a technical, rather than operational, viability path.

The larger risk may be market-based. While taking a step back to build foundation, those firms may have missed a closing window of good economic times and deferred more aggressive strategies to an economic climate that is at best mixed and, at worst, recessionary.

At the same time AI and robotics move deeper into the organization, closer to the customer, and, more profoundly, into the very makeup and operations of the company. This presents the best mechanism to drive growth - a strategically planned ecosystem that delivers value to customers throughout their life cycle. To establish a successful ecosystem, CMO's will need to thread the needle between employee experience, customer experience, brand purpose, creative, and technology, imbuing all these crucial areas with customer obsession.

Smart CMOs will undoubtedly begin pulling back on strategies that drive short-term gains at the expense of customer affinity, including dark patterns —design patterns that manipulate customers against their own interests. Meanwhile, spend will flow back into creative as the importance of differentiated branding becomes apparent in a world of digital sameness.

At the same time, technology-driven innovation — the ability to deliver new business results through opportunities discovered by continuously experimenting with technology, both emerging and established — will soon be table stakes for leading organizations.

Today, deep learning is sorting pictures posted on Snapchat, natural language processing is providing the backbone for customer service chatbots, and machine learning is helping companies accelerate product development by handling tasks from forecasting the effect of cancer drugs to helping to edit Hollywood movies.

Just imagine an advert that dynamically changes the tone of the voiceover based on the unique preferences of the viewer. The convergence of AI with human creativity and insight will transform advertising, and we’re just beginning to see what’s possible.

Artificial Intelligence allows machines to be able to carry out tasks in a way that we would consider “smart”. And, Machine Learning is based around the idea that we should just be able to give machines access to data and let them learn for themselves. Employing both, however, despite their infinite promise, has also not yet delivered real, tangible value (at least at scale or en masse.)

Yet, we are still pressed daily to find the signal in the noise. Moreover, we are still dealing with error-laden legacy data in disparate silos and clients are ill-equipped and the speed of technological change (which means we are always catching up.)

As a result, somewhere between ‘what is infinitely possible’ and ‘what is possible today’ lies the ad agency paradox today. Selling the promise of data-driven creative and personalisation at scale to clients whose platform simply will not get them there.

This paradigm shift also extends its own vernacular – now also far more focused on return on investment and short-term results. And herein lies the problem du jour. But, in the short term, humans are still the ultimate software. 

It is as if, metaphorically, someone had just invented the paintbrush. Despite, potentially, never using one, you can still see the infinite possibilities in its premise. But you can see (in this example) that the paint brush’s promise far exceeds its current application. Ultimately, this is simply the ebb and flow of all human endeavour. 

The agency of the future will undoubtedly be consumer centric, automated, transparent, collaborative, intelligent, nimble, experiential, and focused on a sprint versus a marathon approach. They can champion creative but will undoubtedly have deep expertise in strategy, consumer insights, and measurement.

Moreover, this heightened focus on the measurement will allow agencies to not just understand campaign performance, but to also understand how a brand is moving people through a journey and how advertising is fostering that movement.

With a heightened level of insight about what people think, feel, and do (after they interact with a brand’s advertising) we are simultaneously entering an advertising landscape with more immersive experiences that engage consumers on a deeper emotional level. 

One thing we do know? The importance of data and how it’s used to make changes that put consumers first cannot be understated. Agencies that pay attention to this now are sure to set themselves up for success in the years to come.

THE MARRIAGE OF DATA AND CREATIVITY

Certainly, creativity captures an audience’s attention. But, to retain digital eyeballs, advertising also needs to be both contextually relevant and targeted. As such, there is understandably a lot of hype around the relationship between data and creativity today.

Marketers are recognising the power of data and creativity working together and that, within the right framework, data can always improve the creative process and campaign’s success. The trick is marrying digital and creative into one seamless marketing campaign.

Marketers applying data insights to their digital marketing campaigns’ creative sides might be surprised by the opportunities data creates. Using analytics to identify specific groups of customers can help marketing teams ensure that messaging and branding are tailored to each audience. Data insights allow demographics to be broken down further than simply “college students” or “middle-aged parents.” Instead, marketers can target “highly educated Californians aged 20-30,” developing content that resonates with that audience.

The impact of data on campaigns shows that analytics and creative are no longer separate marketing categories; creative campaigns need to be based on data insights, and data has to be presented to consumers in a creative way to be useful. Data as the linchpin to creating more emotional content.

Take the NIVEA Protection ad (below) as an example. A print ad in a magazine supplied a tear-out bracelet with a built-in locator that parents can use to keep track of where their children are on the beach. Using advanced mobile and geo-tracking technology, the bracelet enables parents to set a maximum distance their child can go, and sends a smartphone alert if this distance is exceeded.

In this example, NIVEA uses a highly creative approach to engage parent’s emotions – fear, protectiveness and desire for a worry-free holiday – to establish themselves as a brand that keeps children safe.

The 'Melanoma Likes Me' campaign for MELANOMA PATIENTS AUSTRALIA, leverages real-time social data to identify when users are out in the sun, raise awareness of the risks of sun exposure and educate the audience on how to identify melanoma.

Using a real-time response tool that utilises API endpoints to identify popular hashtags related to having fun in the sun – such as #beachside, #sunkissed and #tanlines – the campaign instantly responds with social messages from @_melanoma.

In this example, MELANOMA PATIENTS AUSTRALIA reached its target audience (via their channel of choice) at the very moment they are at most risk from sun damage, and opens up an immediate channel of engagement.

The bottom line? Greater collaboration is needed between creatives and data analysts. While this is already beginning to happen with the examples above, the unison of data and creativity needs to become the rule rather than the exception.

THE CONSUMER-CENTRIC BRAND EXPERIENCE

Everyone understands that the experience needs to be consumer-centric’ today. Experience is any sensory, mental or emotional interaction with a brand. It means the product, service, content and ads. Creating and distributing these experiences efficiently are the key to building an emotional relationship with consumers.

Probably the simplest, most useful way to think about brands is as mental associative networks, a psychological construct that goes back to Aristotle. Each encounter with a brand potentially adds to and changes a complex associative network in our brains, linking the brand to other images, experiences, and feelings.

For any brand experience to become part of the right associative network, the brand must be easily and uniquely identified - so distinctive assets such as logos, characters, colours, slogans, or tunes are of central importance in making brand experiences effective.

It helps if the associations are ones we find mostly pleasant or attractive rather than repellent. But probably even more important is the number, range, and intensity of the associations, because this will increase the probability that the brand will come to mind in a wide range of contexts. This, at any rate, is my understanding of the theory of ‘mental availability’. What does such a theory imply for marketers?

Firstly, that scale is important; the more effective impressions you deliver to more people, the better. Big brands are bigger because more people buy them. Powerful communications of any sort will have little impact unless, through whatever means, they reach a mass audience. And because brands compete for mental availability, this must be proportional to what others are doing; also maintained through time, because otherwise the associations created tend to decay, or be supplanted.

Secondly, all impressions must be fluently linked to the brand - consistency in the use of distinctive assets or ‘fluent devices’ is essential.

Thirdly, apart from consistency in the use of distinctive assets, it is more important for brand impressions to be interesting, appealing, or in some way stimulating, than to be constrained by adherence to a narrow script. Brands could learn from entertainers who flourish by continually surprising their audiences with something new and unexpected, sometimes even controversially (think David Bowie, Madonna, Mylie Cyrus).

All this can be done through paid-for advertising, which has the disadvantage of high cost, but still offers high control and guaranteed scale. It can be done through the delivery of the service itself, whether personal or digitised (Amazon’s success is partly due to the ease and reliability of its user interface, and increasingly to the ubiquity of its name and logo in our lives).

But service is often more fallible in its delivery and a bad experience of service more damaging than a boring advert. It can be done through packaging, and through product design, as Apple has shown. And it can be done by anyone who knows how to create news, even if this involves being controversial – a core skill, like it or not, of Donald Trump.

None of this is really new. It’s how brands and celebrities have grown and prospered since the time of Phineas T. Barnum. Only the range of available media continually increases, and the complexity of the synergy between them. But even a century ago there was plenty of scope for creating ‘brand experiences’ across multiple channels, as William Hesketh Lever demonstrated:

In the 1890s he published the Sunlight Year book, an annual reference work and guide to life which was given away free to schools and to users who saved enough Sunlight cartons – something we should now grandly call ‘content’. In 1887 Lever Bros. announced that it would give £2000 to the ‘religious and benevolent institution’ that most customers voted for (votes on the back of a Sunlight box only) – what we should now call ‘Cause Related Marketing’.

When the RNLI won, he presented them with a lifeboat called ‘Sunlight Number One’, and then commissioned engravings of it in a choppy sea, the name plate highly prominent, which he sent to the Illustrated London News. [from The Anatomy of Humbug]

This year’s Cannes Gold Lion for ‘brand experience and activation’ went to Microsoft’s Xbox for designing a console that could be used by the disabled. The ‘Changing the game’ campaign apparently achieved ‘$35m of earned media’ and Xbox’s ‘social voice increased by 246%’. All good publicity for the brand:  but after all, the most significant marketing element of the campaign was a chunk of good old, paid-for, two minute mass TV advertising, aired during Superbowl (estimated cost: $21m) - not so different, perhaps, from Mr Lever publicising his lifeboat.  

Is ‘brand experience’ a helpful concept to explain what’s been done here? Or is it in danger of becoming a fashionable buzzword at the intersection of technological innovation, ‘brand purpose’, and that perennial blob of vagueness, ‘creativity’?

But perhaps brand experience can still offer us a useful new perspective,-especially for twenty-first century brands which, it’s often said, somehow play by different rules – or at least use different techniques. To explore this thought, I reflected further on a brand already mentioned – Amazon.

My own ‘brand experience’ of Amazon comes in many, various forms. Let me adopt the format of Jeremy’s imaginary brand: I buy a new printer, and my favourite brand of shaving soap, through Amazon: the experience is simple and seamless and the products arrive next day. But the experience is also annoying –pop-ups push me to subscribe to Amazon Prime, or to donate to charity. The website is functional but not attractive, not even completely user-friendly, though it is familiar.

Amazon boxes arrive at my home, branded with the smile logo; later, I take them to the dump for recycling. I notice that the people who deliver them often seem harassed and under pressure. I read about how such people are exploited by today’s ‘gig economy’. I read about how Amazon are still planning to deliver by drone, and think this a terrible idea. I hear a lot about how Amazon don’t pay enough taxes. Some of my friends refuse to use Amazon on principle, but I still do because it’s so easy and reliable. When they send the wrong thing, it can be quickly sorted out on the phone – usually a refund with no questions asked....

This could go on for some time – Amazon is ubiquitous and a part of my daily life. No one else’s experience will be identical to mine, though I imagine many will be similar. Yet the experiences are very mixed. Practical, functional benefits are mixed with much that makes me uneasy.

Oddly, I haven’t even mentioned how Amazon ‘personalises’ my experience by recommending things. Perhaps because it’s now so normal I take it for granted; perhaps because the recommendations are seldom very interesting, and sometimes bizarre. Yet it’s all part of the brand experience.

Amazon, as a brand, is enormously successful to the extent that it almost constitutes a monopoly – not in the sense of an illegal cartel, but simply that its scale and efficiency mean it has no serious rivals (outside China). But even if such rivals exist, I as a consumer never think about them.

So Amazon’s dominance can once again be reduced, ultimately, to two factors: mental and physical availability. I think automatically of Amazon; I can instantly and easily buy through it. And nothing else comes close. A hundred years ago, in the United States, something similar could have been said of the Sears Roebuck Catalogue.

Jeff Bezos never assumed that his platform would dominate the market; he knew he had to work at it. Interviewed in 1997, he said, “there's nothing about our model that can't be copied over time. But you know, McDonald's got copied. And it still built a huge, multibillion-dollar company. A lot of it comes down to the brand name. Brand names are more important on-line than they are in the physical world.”

This is refreshingly old school. Bezos didn’t talk about brand values, or brand purpose, or indeed brand experience. He talked about the brand name, the trademark, the ownable thing that distinguishes Amazon from anyone else trying to offer something similar. Because frankly, any business aiming to compete with Amazon would almost certainly have values, purpose, and a set of experiences that would be pretty similar to Amazon’s.

Then he says: Brand names are more important online. OK, this was 1997 and Google was still a research project at Stanford, but he was right then and he’s right today: the most important search engine is still the one in your head, even though most digitally oriented marketers seem to think targeting and getting clicks are all that matters. 

For me, the most telling chart in the 2018 AA Case study that won Gold in the IPA Effectiveness Awards showed how Google searches for ‘AA’ collapsed over a very few years, as the brand put all its money into short term activation. All their measures of marketing efficiency looked brilliant, but almost too late they realised their mental availability was vanishing, and they were haemorrhaging customers. Fortunately, they were able to recover by reverting to heavy TV advertising with a strong emotional appeal and a distinctive asset – a singing baby. It’s an old trick but it still works!

Yes, brands need to be aware of their many ‘touch points’ but they must also accept that they can’t control them all. That need not matter, as long as they focus on the ones that they can. Amazon flourishes despite bad PR; the AA averted disaster by following classic principles of brand advertising. But if ‘brand experience’ becomes a fashionable buzzword that distracts marketers from such fundamental truths, it risks doing more harm than good.

The Changing Face of Wealth Management Brands

As we are sure you’re aware, consumers have become increasingly connected and data-driven. They use the Internet to research and buy products and services, and their use of social media is disrupting patterns of loyalty, creating new forms of commercial communities and recreating the purchasing process.

Companies can no longer focus on the “where” and the “who” of selling. They are unable to continue only targeting “emerging markets” or certain demographic groups. Instead, they must pay new attention to the “how” and the “why” of consumption. The always-on, networked consumer is the new “how”, and the independent, cooperative and socially conscientious consumer is the “why”.

It is, therefore, imperative that companies invest in capabilities that help them better understand and act on these changes. That includes embracing advanced analytic tools that interpret rapidly changing data and assist in identifying opportunities.

Businesses should also consider adopting more agile business models and partnerships to improve their strategic and operational responsiveness. These steps can help them, for example, to deliver more tailored services and to shift from traditional products to the more experiential offerings that consumers expect today.

We are in a moment of unprecedented experimentation. Consumers are far more open to test-driving new brands, products, and experiences today (and the phenomenon is global.) This context is redefining how consumers trust brands. With near-infinite access to resources, consumers no longer rely on centralised institutions for direction.

Moreover, consumers are willing to try almost anything when their networks are also experimenting and when a brand’s reputation stays intact. This means that a brand’s illustrious history is less critical to cultivating consumer trust than its ability to feel personal. But a willingness to experiment can all too quickly morph into a state of mindless distraction where messages don’t register with consumers and the barrier for creating powerful emotional memories rises.

Companies that bank on consumers’ “almost infinite appetite for distractions” (credit to Aldous Huxley) are only successful when they also offer the remedy of product curation that eases consumer decision stress. This is the modern tug of war between consumers’ pursuit of novelty and craving for familiarity.

FINANCIAL SERVICES + WEALTH MANAGEMENT

The wealth management industry is in the midst of significant change. As the industry is re-shaped, one positive outcome will be that more people will have access to a greater quantity and quality of investment strategies and advice that was traditionally reserved for high net worth individuals. Two drivers that will accelerate this democratisation of wealth management are a shift in investor preferences and advances in technology.

The younger generation of investors typically likes digital solutions, demands convenience and desires transparency and control over their finances. Those preferences are also increasingly shared by other demographic groups. The user experience they desire is shaped by their experiences with companies such as Apple, Facebook, Google, and Amazon. The result is a growing need for wealth management offerings that deliver tailored investment advice, are accessible through multiple channels, allow for social/peer input, and are intuitive to use.

Technology has already disrupted and transformed industries such as transportation, travel and many others. It has already had an impact on wealth management and will continue to transform it. Access to more data, the ability to quickly convert that information into useful models and algorithms, and applying that intelligence to decision making enables science to play a more significant role in investing.

By using technology to simplify asset allocation, facilitate exchange-traded funds (ETF) or mutual fund research and selection, and deliver other common investment activities, costs can be reduced and services made more affordable.

Another significant trend is that as smartphones and tablets become ubiquitous, clients expect to be able to monitor their portfolio, undertake research, transact and get advice – all in real time and on-the-go.

The demand for mobile app services is so acute that 80% of high net worth individuals under 40 years of age indicated they would leave their wealth management firm if it fails to provide an integrated-channel experience. It’s clear that modern technology allows for fiduciary advice to be delivered affordably, at scale, in real-time and with exceptional client experience.

Companies such as Wealthfront, WealthSimple, Nutmeg, and Betterment have successfully raised millions of dollars and used that funding to take their technology-driven solutions to market and rapidly build significant asset bases. Traditional players such as Schwab and Vanguard have responded with their own advisory tools.

Whether you believe the startups or the traditional players will lead the industry into the future, investors will still want exceptional user experiences and advanced security across all channels. Solutions such as mobile app development platforms can be strategically used to ensure design and back-end services of mobile wealth management apps meet all of the user experience, security, regulatory and compliance requirements for both investors and asset managers. 

It is the convergence of demographic trends and advances in technology that provide a unique opportunity for previously underserved market segments to benefit from the democratisation of wealth management. For those who could not previously afford a personal financial advisor or weren’t as comfortable with human-based advice, there are now more options to achieve their financial and life goals.

Some so-called “Robo advisors” or automated advisors are already gaining traction and attracting new clients, but future innovations in service are certain to provide additional opportunities to reach more wealth bands. There will always be a place for human-based advice to complement science-based advice, but it’s exciting that high-quality advice, regardless of the form it takes, will be available to more and more people.

It’s clear that there are forces and innovations changing how consumers invest. As a result, established wealth management providers have worked hard to extend their products and services to customers who've moved onto digital touch points. They are evolving product-focused approaches to digital-centric strategies and services designed around customer outcomes.

This new paradigm earns loyalty by delivering consistently excellent experiences across flexible and extensible platforms, enhanced by third-party apps and integrated channels.

Digital technologies empower customers like never before, transforming their relationships with wealth management providers and their use of financial products and services. The speed that customers embrace new touch points and service models is only getting faster, blindsiding traditional companies that still struggle to adapt.

According to Forrester Research, “Superior service and low or no fees are more important to customers than specific banking products themselves. To acquire and retain customers in a competitive field, wealth management companies must build trustworthiness and invest in support capabilities to ensure that they remain relevant in customers' lives.“

As wealth management products and services move into the consumer arena, they will need to create brand identities with an emotional bond between the consumer and the product. Inadvertently, these identities will, therefore, shift to the social meanings consumers have attached to the wealth management product or service.

THE CONSUMERS PAIN POINTS

Most of us seem to understand the inherent value of saving for our future. However, wealth management seems like something for people with more (notable) disposable income. None of us ever seem to have enough to save for our future and there is always something unexpected to pay for.

What’s clear is that people have considerable anxiety about managing their finances.  Moreover, the fact that wealth management products and services are largely considered to be complex, complicated, intimidating and confusing – and you begin to see the challenge.

POSITIONING

As a result of the evolving landscape and consumer, the trend is to reinforce positioning as a Wealth Management brand that understands clients’ struggles and can help them relax with its simple solutions. This while showing the positive side of investing, thus, shifting the consumer from feelings of financial anxiety to demonstrating a path to success.

By partnering with the brand, consumers are optimistic because they have found a path to financial success, stability, and peace of mind.  Savvy brands, therefore, need to cut through the noise and focus on the broader human lifestyle experience while empowering people to have control over their finances. They can do this by showing they have products that solve the anxieties of consumers who value clarity, simplicity, flexibility, and accessibility. The importance of bringing a more human perspective to the world of finance cannot be overstated.

Resources

How Financial Services Firms Can Get Creative with Content

Inside Wealthfront’s Content Marketing Strategy

How Marketing Financial Services to Millennials Revealed a Winning Formula for Digital Audiences

Digital bank Monzo plans ‘Hargreaves Lansdown for millennials’ with low-cost funds

Major Banks Are Speaking A Language Their Customers Don't Understand

 

Brand Strategy: Whoever Has The Best Data Wins.

We've all heard by now that companies are using artificial intelligence to streamline the way they do business, but an influx of more intimately personal data has opened doors to even greater brand benefits.

This year, a number of companies made use of impossibly detailed personal information. Not just age, name or location, but details gathered from saliva samples and body tracking sensors.

Biometric information, for example, like your genomic profile, has become more easily accessible.  This due to the increased efficiency and falling costs of the technology involved in obtaining it. This has given brands in various categories, from luxury fashion to fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG,) the opportunity to use biometric information to both add value to their product and strengthen their marketing messages.

Today’s savvy consumers only consider brands that demonstrate that they understand and care about “me”.’ And what better way to do that than build bespoke products and campaigns for each customer?

BESPOKE PRODUCTS
In September, Nike launched its Advanced Apparel Exploration 1.0 capsule collection, a line of clothing based on the personal data of several athletes. The sportswear brand used sensors to track how the athletes’ bodies reacted to different environments, measuring heat, sweat and airflow in various urban settings – from the subway to the office to a club – and converted the data into body maps.

The entire collection was formed around these data insights – so every item was constructed to provide extra ventilation or coverage in the areas it was needed. Using biometric data, the brand aims to design clothing with extra value for the wearer.

Other companies have taken it a step further, personalising their products to each customer’s genetic makeup. Fitness platform Lose It! partnered with startup Helix to use genomic information to create diet plans tailored to people’s genetic profiles. And wine delivery platform Vinome followed a similar system to offer personalised wine selections.

As well as using personal data to aid product development, companies are also using genetic testing to ramp up their marketing. These campaigns and product developments could not have happened without significant technological advances. And as startups continue to innovate, even more meaningful data will become available.

New York’s Loomia, for example, is developing technology that will allow people to track the way they wear their clothes and sell that data to brands. To this end, Loomia has created a smart clothing ecosystem that can track when clothes are being worn, what setting they’re being worn in and what other clothes they’re being paired with.

Loomia’s smart fabrics collect and store environmental data specific to individual pieces of clothing, like what temperature it was outside when someone wore it. When it comes to market, people will be able to trade this data with brands for rewards – giving apparel brands a unique opportunity to track how their products are used. As startups like Loomia continue to develop new forms of data, brands will be able to strengthen their creative offering with insights that were unheard of until now.

Though these are early examples, they point to a future where companies infuse their offerings with intricate data gathered from both products and customers. For brands and marketers, customer data is like oxygen — nobody survives very long without it. Used intelligently, this data will help shape campaigns, inspire new products, build loyalty, and drive business strategy.

Welcome to the future.

Brand Strategy: Politics And Purpose

Pepsi’s Kendall Jenner advert was a car wreck, but its social conscience insight was sound. That insight is that lifestyles are the central focus of brands today.  Ergo, politics and lifestyles can no longer be treated separately. 

So, what’s a brand to do in an increasingly polarising world?  Stay neutral and risk becoming irrelevant or wade into the debate and risk a backlash? 

Nowhere is this division more evident than in the US, under Donald Trump’s presidency. Just a sniff of partisanship could rouse pitch-fork-wielding masses, as numerous brands have discovered. Also, any brand hoping to lay low until better times arrive will be waiting a long time for three reasons. The first is social media, which is amplifying people’s fears and entrenching their beliefs. The second is the lack of accountability among those in power and the third is rising inequality across the world.

The fact that brands are more comfortable getting active politically today is an extension of a larger trend to use morality as marketing. Brands today are taking that to another level, tapping into our sense of what’s right and wrong.

By advocating for causes and incorporating them into their business models, brands allow consumers to vote with their wallets on the kind of world they want to support. These feel-good purchases of self-expression have earned a catchy name: cause-sumption.

These are admittedly heavy subjects for a soap brand or sportswear label to contend with. But those that have spent the past decade differentiating themselves through purpose and cultural relevance can’t go back to saying: ‘It’s all about the product.’ So, what can they do?

Increasingly there is a responsibility to make a social stand on the things that your consumer base cares about. The brands that got to grips with the new political lifestyle vocabulary most successfully were those that picked specific social issues – as opposed to overtly political ones – tied to their stated purpose.

None of this guarantees an easy ride, but an honest position that reinforces a brand’s purpose can be very profitable. In the first ten years of Dove’s Real Beauty campaign, from 2004-2014, sales reportedly grew from $2.5 billion to $4 billion, and the award-winning “Evolution” ad spot earned an estimated $150 million worth of media time.

Ultimately, the pros of cause-sumption marketing often outweigh the cons, making for memorable brand messages that connect well with consumers. And the revenue speaks for itself.

THE BIG PICTURE

Without a doubt, a brand that takes a political stance risks irritating consumers who disagree. But it’s also an opportunity to stand up for values that are consistent with the brand’s messaging, earning further respect from consumers who are increasingly looking to vote with their wallets.

Just remember - if you don’t stand for something, you stand for nothing. Brands should, therefore, be politically active to the extent that doing so is consistent with their values, messaging, and worldview. The key is knowing when to speak up and when to stay silent - and there is a fine line between political activism that feels meaningful versus selfish.

Once you determine why consumers and employees feel an affinity for your brand, it will become clear whether or not that affinity is relevant to the political issue at hand.

The Evolution of Digital Strategy

The business of marketing has become an ever-expanding sprawl of options and complexity. There are multiple partners with niche expertise rather than truly broad- based integrated offerings.  Moreover, the traditional Advertising and Public Relations agency model’s are dead and competitors from unexpected quarters are moving in, forcing us all to work harder: whatever it takes to stay relevant – and valuable – to our clients.

To succeed today clients need broad-based, integrated offerings – not one individual agency’s niche area of expertise.  Therefore the role of the Brand Strategist has never been more valuable.  Today’s Brand Strategist must be a polymath. Their expertise must span a significant number of different subject areas and draw on complex bodies of knowledge to solve specific problems.  Today’s Brand Strategist must also have a solid understanding of all media past and present: specialists and authorities in any number of disciplines.

We would further argue that if everything is digital, then nothing is.  And now that our "old media" as well as our modern channels are digital, the very term has perhaps outlived its usefulness. "Like air and drinking water, being digital will be noticed only by its absence, not its presence," as technology guru Nicholas Negroponte put it. So, by definition, today’s Digital Brand Strategist is simply a Brand Strategist.

The task may appear Herculean, but the goal has not changed.  Today’s Brand Strategist must understand the complex world we have come from, the world we are in, and also be forward-thinking to anticipate future trends and create a path that ensures the success of a product or service. 

Being an on-trend, relevant, inspiring, purposeful, innovative and community-centric brand are the things that will make people pause, listen and pay attention.  Customers want to identify with a brand they can grow with, that earns their trust and makes them feel valued.   People want to evolve with a brand whose products and services help give their business or life meaning and significance.  End to end, a brand must become a consumer’s best friend.

After well over a decade of constructing digital strategies on behalf of clients, one thing has become abundantly clear: most are often confused about what digital strategy is and how to develop one.  When defining and developing any strategy, it’s imperative that clients understand that strategy follows structure, people and an idea.  Second, clients must understand that profit and return-on-investment (ROI) are outcomes, not the strategy itself.

There are numerous approaches to conducting digital strategy, but at their core, all go through similar steps:

• Identifying the opportunities and challenges,
• Developing a vision around how the online assets will fulfill those business and external stakeholder needs, goals, and  
• Prioritizing a set of initiatives/tactics that can deliver on this vision.

It goes without saying that within each of those stages, a number of techniques and analyses may be employed. 

IDENTIFYING OPPORTUNITIES

First, you have to define what you’re hoping to achieve for the brand, product, or service. Start by analyzing the following five factors:

• Presence: Measure of the brand’s digital footprint,
• Influence: Branded message adoption,
• Perception: Emotional reaction to the brand,
• Engagement: People organically participating in conversations,
• Resonance: Reaction to the overall conversation about the brand.

You need to define your business’ overall mission/objective first – your digital marketing mission must fit into your grand plan.  Therefore it’s imperative that you ask the right questions and that you understand the brand objectives that most closely align with those key business opportunities and challenges.  You also need a very clear understanding of your brand truth. You should also answer this question: what is the overriding objective you want your digital marketing efforts to achieve? 

Once you’ve benchmarked the brand’s current equity and position, you must segment your target customers. Customer segmentation allows marketers to connect all customer touch points and identify what motivates a brand’s core consumers in a multi-channel environment.  

VISION AND CLARIFICATION

Once you have a clear understanding of the target, their path to purchase, goals, opportunities and challenges, it’s time to formulate your message and positioning. Positioning is a marketing strategy that aims to make a brand occupy a distinct position (relative to competing brands,) in the mind of the customer. 

The idea is to identify and attempt to “own” a marketing niche for a brand, product, or service using various strategies including pricing, promotions, distribution, packaging, and competition.  Ultimately, as we have previously explained, this power resides in the marketers' ability to cloak their product in the universal dreams, fantasies, and values of the masses.  We are therefore creating and selling modern myths that leverage the collective pool of cultural, psychological and mythical elements to create a "brand mythology."

Now look at your brand's story/positioning and ask yourself:

• What is the story/positioning telling my target customer?
• Why does my target customer care about this story/positioning?
• What sort of emotions does my story/positioning evoke?
• How does my story/positioning connect to the emotional needs of my target customer?
• How will that story/positioning incite action on behalf of my brand, product, and service?
• What is the source of competitive advantage for your digital business model?
• How can you manage business complexity in the global digital economy?
• How do you create digitized platforms that enable new and evolving digital opportunities?
• How can you simplify your customer experiences without creating burdensome organizational complexity?
• How can you create new information offerings that generate bottom-line value?

The resulting narrative enables the use of social channels, for example, as a means to convey a product, service, or brand’s benefits.  Brand stories are what drive interactions with customers.  If you need further assistance in refining your brand's positioning and subsequent messaging, we would suggest reading through the wealth of information provided by Beloved Brands.

You now should ideally have an intimate understanding of your brand’s current positioning, goals, objectives competitors and challenges. From here you should be able to ascertain where a winning brand message and position can be found in the future. 

You also now should have a clear understanding of your target consumers demographics, psychographics, and technographic profile keeping in mind that you may have multiple target segments within any target group.  Note:  At any number of agencies we have worked at (or with) in the past, many have also employed the use of detailed Buyer Personas, which can be a helpful exercise – as the better understanding you have of your target(s), the easier it is to engage them.

TECHNOGRAPHIC SEGMENTATION

As your target consumer base varies, the technologies and social networks you utilize to reach them will naturally vary, too.  Imagine you’re a retailer and based on your research and planning you’ve discovered that YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and a variety of social retail oriented platforms such as Pinterest or Fancy are best suited to help reach your brand’s target audience.

Let’s say that you’ve also discovered that more than one-third (33%+) of the activity surrounding your brand is based on your target consumer’s mobile behavior. You’d naturally want to define the experience that consumers will have with your brand’s products by channel, across multiple platforms, based on their behavior patterns. This exercise is also known as User Experience (UX) Mapping but the most important things you must ask yourself prior to creating any map are:

• How do customers search and find information about my product, service, or brand?
• What social platforms do they favour (Technographic Segmentation)?
• What’s the purpose of the specific social platforms and technologies we’ve chosen to utilize?
• How do these mediums play into our mobile strategy?
• What is going to differentiate me from my competition?

As the world has shifted to digital and social media specifically, consumers look to fellow consumers to inform any purchasing decision.  Influencers are therefore a critical part of the digital market success as we move towards the new marketing models that make up social commerce and consumer experience.

Another helpful exercise at this stage is to create a Marketing Calendar that shows your brand’s marketing efforts across the channels you are leveraging in your marketing programs. Use it for benchmarks related to your digital strategy.  What are important dates for your brand's success?  This could be based, for example, around a Holiday, trade show, product release or any other points in the year that align best with sales. A social media content calendar can also be developed to support your Marketing Calendar.  Always keep in mind that when it comes to engaging prospects or customers that quality is far, far more relevant than quantity.

Creating benchmarks and key performance indicators (KPIs) by channel and platforms is also extremely important during this phase.  This is imperative in order to estimate your brand’s expected return per channel — and whether this return is measured based on awareness, engagement, online sales, or any number of other components.  From an agency standpoint this stage is also imperative to setting realistic expectations with clients.

The ultimate goal of engagement is to create a feedback loop that allows you to meet the goals you set forth in the strategy development phase. In order to be successful, you must continually evaluate and alter your digital strategy based on the information that you gain from your campaigns and digital initiatives. As marketers, it’s important that we measure everything.

Throughout every campaign, you must also utilize social listening tools to get insights into campaign performance, variances in brand health, and language cues that are indicative of purchase intent and overall brand performance.

ENGAGEMENT/ EXECUTION

Extending consistent on-brand, on-message content and collateral across all selected channels is imperative and the cornerstone of brand building.  Approach your constituents with the goal to engage their personal lives and experiences. Be authentic, honest and try not to increase friction or decrease participation. Execution is what brings the strategic plan to fruition. Sounds simple, right?

With a clear understanding of the elements above you’re in a strong position to frame and articulate a winning digital strategy for your brand.  Keep in mind we’re discussing digital strategy versus tactics. The terms tactic and strategy are often confused: tactics are the actual means used to gain an objective, while strategy is the overall campaign plan, which may involve complex operational patterns, activity, and decision-making that lead to tactical execution.

OVER TO YOU

This framework/overview is based on our experience (and is a work in progress) however, what would you adjust based on your experience?  What do you think about it? Is there something irrelevant? Is something missing?  Looking at the sector you are working in, would you approach this differently?

Digital Strategy 101 

Written by Andrew B. Giles. Andrew is the head of digital innovation and strategy at Goodbuzz Inc. You can follow him @Goodbuzz and on Facebook.

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Goodbuzz is a digital agency based in Toronto, Canada. We help brands create and capture value from emerging trends in technology, society and the workplace. We prototype the future - and believe the best way to predict it - is to create it.  Follow us on Facebook or Twitter or if you have any questions contact us directly.