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The why, what and how to building a better future for programmatic

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By Damon Reeve

With Isba’s study revealing that 15% of digital ad spend is unaccounted for, a statistic from the PwC-produced report that prompted headlines, Damon Reeve, chief executive of The Ozone Project, offers his first-hand insight into what this means for the programmatic sector.

The results from Isba’s Programmatic Supply Chain Transparency Study, carried out by PwC and in association with the AOP, have practically self-penned the industry’s headlines for the past few days.

“Missing billions”, “big holes”, “the unknown delta”, “mind-boggling” – perhaps not the usual words used to describe a positive first step, yet that’s exactly what this report represents. If, as an industry, we want to create a more sustainable, future-proofed environment for digital advertising we must first acknowledge that things aren’t working as they are. These results certainly speak to what many people already know, and reinforces the need for change.

As we look to create a blueprint for that change, it is a great step forward that it has been driven by advertisers and publishers – as the principal architects – alongside their respective trade bodies. Reversing the trend of disintermediation by programmatic tech vendors, and working together to find their voice, albeit of frustration, is one of the best outcomes of this study, and why it must be a first step and not an end in itself.

In the interests of disclosure, The Ozone Project is an advertiser-led business created by publishers and was developed to tackle many of the issues highlighted in this report. We see ourselves as a significant catalyst for the shift towards a more grown-up advertising environment, one less willing to accept the past shortcomings of programmatic.

The answer is not just what to do next, it’s how we do it

As we entered the 2020s I was convinced we would see an adult programmatic self emerge; still with lots of growth and development ahead, but also less wild and irresponsible than the younger child of the 2010s. Given some of the research in this report was produced in Q1 2020, it’s clear there is still much to do before a more mature self emerges. Nine weeks of Covid-19 isolation has given much time to reflect, and it seems how we go about change will be as important as what we change.

Firstly, collaboration must be front and centre. Through their trade bodies, advertisers and publishers have highlighted some of programmatic’s most persistent problems. An astonishing insight from the report is the confusion over whether advertisers and publishers have the right to access the log data for campaigns they are running. The answer to that question should not require consulting a legal department.

The programmatic supply chain should genuinely work in the best interests of publishers and brands. Together they must build on this work to address one of the critical recommendations from the report; standardising terms and conditions for buyers and sellers, while creating consistent data taxonomies and data sharing rules. This first step will help close the somewhat unhelpful gap that has developed between advertisers and publishers within programmatic advertising.

Secondly, while transparency is at the heart of this study, it isn’t something to fix, it is a way to behave. The ‘opacity by design’ approach that has challenged the sector for years represents institutionalised behaviour that will require a concerted effort to correct. Being open, authentic and human in terms and conditions will be deemed important qualities, rather than hiding the ‘unknown delta’ in technical terms and jargon that almost no one understands. Patience has been worn paper-thin amongst advertisers and publishers, and in this new future we will see vendors and partners selected on operating principles as much as technical capabilities.

A starting point for what to do next

The insights and recommendations from the report itself provide a framework for where future focus must be directed.

As already mentioned, standardising terms and conditions through Isba and the AOP is an obvious next step to remove much of the friction and confusion that exists today. It took PwC more than nine months to receive the information for its analysis, with an often ‘round the houses’, confused approach to who could give permission to use the data.

Brand safety has been high on the marketer agenda during these challenging times with a specific focus from Newsworks’ #BackdontBlock campaign. This new analysis should enable further grown-up conversations around brand safety generally, particularly as the study’s advertisers appeared on an average of 40,524 different domains. That’s not a misprint. 40,524 different websites. How many websites do you visit on a regular basis? Even looking beyond the first page of the Comscore top 3,000 yields some very random websites. Only 19% of campaign impressions were delivered on premium publisher domains, with the vast majority appearing on other websites and the unregulated long-tail of the internet. Responsible advertisers will no doubt be asking questions about where their advertising is going, and what exactly it is funding.

Next, the ‘unknown delta’ needs to become known. In an automated world, one would expect any margin for error to be reduced, and therefore any major gap is concerning. While many have offered thoughts as to why – from currency fluctuations to the compound impact of rounding through the supply chain – it’s important to remember that this 15% ‘unknown delta’ appears in the very small proportion of data that could be matched for the purposes of the study. If this reflects the ‘best of the best’ – major advertisers working with the most premium publishers – the 15% delta will be significantly bigger with smaller sites and smaller advertisers that weren’t measurable.

A final point not specifically called out in this report but to me is inferred in every insight and recommendation, is aligning incentives for each participant in the supply chain to the value they provide. And this extends to the agreements brands have with their media agencies. It will be very difficult to move to a trusted grown-up programmatic ecosystem if each actor is trying to game the system, whether through opportunity or necessity. Remove the incentive for opacity and we build an advertising environment that we all want. It’s on advertisers and publishers to build on this study and remove these incentives.

“The market is damn near impenetrable.”

In last week’s Financial Times, the frustration of Phil Smith, Isba’s director-general, regarding the programmatic world couldn’t have been more obvious. Yet with some time to reflect and digest, what is becoming increasingly clear is that this first-of-its-kind collaborative study has already laid great foundations for building a better future for digital advertising.

By Damon Reeve

Sourced from The Drum

 

 

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Coca-Cola slams brakes on ad spend: ‘There is limited effectiveness to brand marketing’

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By Katie Deighton

The Coca-Cola Company is looking to cushion the Covid-19-led decline of its bars and restaurants business by reducing marketing costs globally, and, in some markets, coming “off-air” entirely in Q2 2020.

The company reported global volumes were down by 25% in the first quarter of 2020. This was driven primarily by a substantial decline in its away-from-home business, which comprises trade orders from bars, restaurants, movie theaters, sports stadiums and on-the-go retail such as convenience stores.

James Quincey, Coca-Cola’s chairman and chief executive, noted this was partially offset in the US by a rise in drive-thru and carryout orders, as well as e-commerce and grocery stockpiling in some developed markets.

However, with lockdown halting out-of-home events and minimizing grocery trips for the foreseeable future, the company now predicts its second quarter to be “the most severely impacted” of the financial year.

Coca-Cola has thus cut brand marketing – partially to reduce costs and partially because it is skeptical of return on marketing investment at this time.

“We’re being … mindful about the right level of brand marketing and new product launches given the consumer mindset across market,” Quincey told investors yesterday (21 April). “We’ve developed and determined that in this initial phase there is limited effectiveness to broad-based brand marketing.

“With this in mind, we’ve reduced our direct consumer communication we’ll pause sizable marketing campaigns through the early stages of the crisis and reengage when the timing is right. These plans will vary from market to market with our earliest reengagement focusing on the recovery in China.”

He added: “Staying close to our consumers in a relevant way is a key guiding principle, and staying disciplined to demand an appropriate ROI is a close second.”

John Murphy, the company’s chief financial officer, confirmed that in its quest to “really stay close to the consumer in a relevant way”, Coca-Cola had made the decision come “off-air” in “many markets”.

He explained the brand is implementing this Q2 shutdown in order to give its various markets more flexibility with marketing strategies and budgets later in the year, dependent on when and how each country reopens for business and events.

“We have had a number of communications announcing that we will take a pause for now while we focus our efforts on our communities and on other priorities and that we’ll be back later in the year,” he said, alluding to the “millions of dollars of planned marketing spend” that Coca-Cola says it has donated to pay for the personal protective equipment (PPE) and beverages for healthcare workers.

Despite the company’s skepticism over brand marketing during coronavirus, it is making a concerted effort to enhance its presence on the shelf. The company has “redeployed” its ground sales reps and trained them in merchandising.

Coca-Cola hopes this will result in “increased share of displays of stock on the floor”, aided by a “ruthless” prioritization of core products and key brands to “help customers simplify their supply chains.

“We’re also taking this opportunity to reshape our innovation pipeline to eliminate a longer tail of smaller projects and allocate resources to fewer, larger, more scalable and more relevant solutions for this environment,” added Quincey.

The company’s decision to halt brand marketing is in stark contrast to the strategy of Procter & Gamble, one of the world’s largest advertisers. The CPG business is planning to increase spending on advertising during the coronavirus lockdown period in order to “maintain mental … availability to the greatest extent possible”.

Feature Image Credit: Coke’s Super Bowl 2020 spot was a celebrity-heavy affair

By Katie Deighton

Sourced from The Drum

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How UK broadcasters are adapting now that ‘TV ad prices have fallen through the floor’

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By John McCarthy

UK TV broadcasters are attracting record audiences, meeting their public service remit, and keeping the lights on while working from home. In return, they are bracing for a precipitous drop in ad revenue these next few months.

First, ITV said it expected a 10% ad revenue drop in April. Just weeks later, Channel 4 announced business cuts and staff furloughs, blaming the pandemic’s “severe effect” on demand and predicting that the current situation would burn a 50% hole in the TV market in April and May. ITV also said it was “taking measures to reduce costs and manage cash flow”.

At any other time, these audiences would be cause for celebration for the TV industry (ThinkBox says Easter weekend viewing in the UK was up 29% year on year). However, there are a difficult few months ahead as broadcasters look to ensure the flow of content keeps people informed and entertained at home, which balancing the books.

Barney Farmer, sales and marketing director at Nielsen Online, says its data shows that UK ad spend dropped 27% year-on-year across all media channels in March. Money coming in from from travel, transport and business utilities halved, while retail investments fell by a fifth. Some sectors saw the reverse. Among them was government advertising was up by 38%, food was up 16%, and tech/computing rose a massive 60% from an already high base.

Farmer explains: “The initial data for TV advertising in April does not paint a pretty picture, and it is expected that the numbers will drop significantly for the overall month.”

Many TV budgets have been frozenbroadcasters are unable to rely on tentpole events to prop them up. Brands looking to activate around the now delayed Euro 2020 (which ITV was expecting a particularly strong performance from) have been forced to shelve their best-laid plans. Other businesses are turning off the tap due to diminishing stock or demand.

“Broadcasters will be looking at all avenues for revenues, whether that is through different advertising sectors or ways to ensure money stays in their businesses via different digital channels,” adds Farmer. “Out of a crisis often comes new ideas so we can potentially expect something emerging that doesn’t exist today.”

The UK’s major broadcasters are all reliant upon ad income, although to differing degrees. ITV is less vulnerable to the ad freeze than the likes of Channel 4 due to its diversification efforts in production, e-commerce and its stake in streaming service BritBox. Sky, meanwhile, has user-generated revenue to lean on — although without the draw of its sports properties it could be bleeding custom.

Which brands are still on TV?

Amid this bleak outlook, British broadcasters are forming battle plans.

Some advertisers are still spending, with many leaning on TV to communicate how they are adapting to the pandemic or driving home message for viewers to ‘Stay At Home’. Though it’s brought the economy to a grinding halt, there is an opportunity for usefulness and long-term goodwill from brands willing to embrace a higher purpose. Others TV spenders may still follow, be it retailers directing shoppers from their shuttered stores to online, or games and apps looking to grab the attention of a bored locked-down populace — also, prices for a premium ad slot have dropped significantly.

“It’s looking like the cheapest TV pricing I’ve ever seen in my in my media career,” asserts Mihir Haria-Shah, head of broadcast at Total Media. Some audiences are down 50% year on year in terms of pricing. “I wasn’t working then, but it is comparable to the 2008 recession”.

The combination of larger audiences tuning into the TV at home and a reduction in demand for the inventory is to blame, argues Haria-Shah. “TV is really deflationary at the moment, and prices have really fallen kind of through the floor.”

Haria-Shah also notes some trepidation among brands that have been absent from TV for a while, a quick return may look “opportunistic”.

“Given the current circumstances, there’s quite a fine balance between doing the right thing for your business and also maintaining your long-term brand reputation,” he continues.

He adds its important to note that not every brand’s been fully hamstrung by the pandemic: “Some brands have actually reported their best sales in years, or for younger brands, the best in their existence.” FMCGs are among those seeing a bump from some of the early panic-buying of essential items, for which toilet paper will long be a visual metaphor for.

Right now, one of the biggest barriers to entry on TV, beyond falling ad budgets, is the lack of ability to produce big-ticket, sensitive creative. With most of ad land under lockdown, amendments will have to be made to existing films. Shots of friends and family out in the world having fun, or even in close contact, now carry negative connotations. The tone has to be right. The message can’t deviate too far from stay home. And the work can’t feel cynical, else long-term damage will be done in the name of short-term gains.

Some brands have been quick to adapt though. Apple is telling us that the lockdown doesn’t mean the end of creativity. Nike has been showing the home training routines of athletes. Toyota new creative was directed over Zoom. Mobile-footage and sweeping image slideshows driven by voiceover are the flavour of the day for brands limited in what in they can produce.

Accessibility

To woo brands among all this, broadcasters are looking to remove as much as the friction from buying and production as possible. Certain fees are being waived, and the best spots are more readily available than they’ve been.

On the production side, ITV’s in-house team is now being tooled to help clients where it can. There’s a great effort to get the work over the line fashion in its keen to help and others will be doing the same.

The in-house creative teams have indeed been busy too, Channel 4 and the BBC’s PSA efforts both landed earlier this week with strikingly different tones but the same message – ‘stay at home (and watch TV)’.

Further down the chain, according to Haria-Shah, TV ad clearance house Clearcast is reportedly working at an impressive rate – its new priority is to ensure no TV ads exploit the pandemic, spread misinformation, or offer advice contrary to that government guidance: “It’s [clearance period] seems to be down from five to three working days.”

He believes demand in TV ads will rise these coming weeks.

“TVs always been seen as the best brand builder. And now consumption is through the roof, you can sit alongside record audiences on trusted news or alongside the escapism of comedy, soaps and drama. There’s a lot of longer-term positive associations, that brands that advertise correctly can build right now.”

The aforementioned broadcaster budget cuts threaten this dynamic. Many productions have been frozen, few that were on the slate can be delivered under lockdown. As replacements, broadcasters have literal warehouses of archive content they can tap into.

ITV moved fast in releasing Euro 96 footage to its on-demand Hub as was requested by fans. BBC’s current affairs panel show is going ahead with phoned-in floating heads in a virtual studio. Netflix released a series of calls between Joel McHale as a bonus Tiger King episode. A BBC weatherman stole headlines by entering a frenzied cover of the news theme after his delivering his forecasts.

Will these bold makeshift productions continue to draw high attention these next few months? Or will audiences get their heads turned by a wealth of entertainment content on many of the ad-free subscription video-on-demand services.

Disney+ has just launched, Netflix and Prime and going anywhere. And for some, Quibi may be worth a look.

Concluding, Haria-Shah says: “You always believed that soaps like Coronation Street would always be on the TV. Its pause is a real symbol of how serious an impact this is having on the TV landscape.”

By John McCarthy

Sourced from The Drum

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Secret Cinema pivots to Zoom experiences

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By Jennifer Faull

Secret Cinema’s plans for 2020 involved a much-anticipated show for Dirty Dancing, breaking the American market and bringing its first slate of Disney films to life following a mega tie-up with the movie giant. But amid Covid-19, the year ahead looks very different.

“It’s like winter has arrived, there’s a slowing down for three months, six months… I’m not sure,” says chief executive Max Alexander, who was facing a different kind of pressure just a few months ago when he revealed his ambitious plans to expand the experiential company.

After receiving private equity backing from Active Partners’ $131m fund and attracting industry heavyweights like Alexander, IMG veteran Alex Ward and The Mill and Copa90 exec Damien Macaulay, it inked tie-ups with Netflix and Disney to act as a pseudo ‘experiential creative agency’ to plan events around their most popular titles.

A stroke of luck meant that it had wrapped up its successful showing of Stranger Things just weeks before the coronavirus outbreak in London. Meanwhile, as the situation improves in China, Alexander is hopeful that the Casino Royale show in Shanghai will re-open. The plan to bring Dirty Dancing to life this summer has not been cancelled, though he is anticipating that dates will change.

“But in America the brakes were pulled hard,” he continues. “We were so ready to go and now it’s hard to get people to return calls about property we can’t possibly visit in LA and Las Vegas.”

The partnerships with Netflix and Disney are still holding strong, but events are likely to take place deep into next year, even if circumstances on both sides of the Atlantic improve.

Perhaps surprisingly for an experimental company that can’t put on any experiences, Secret Cinema has not been forced to make redundancies to its team of over 40. And that’s largely thanks to a quick pivot to bring “congregational storytelling” into the digital world.

Last week, it held its first Zoom party. 80s themed, hosted by actor Jackson and two DJs, it sold over 1,000 tickets at £5 a pop to raise money for the Trussell Trust, a nationwide poverty charity and food bank network.

“It was wonderful. We had 600 browsers open at any one-time. People were playing games, we had a dance-off and we encouraged people to dress up. It was amazing.”

Since then, it’s forged a deal with ice-cream giant Häagen-Dazs for an eight-week run of virtual screening experiences. Dubbed ‘Secret Sofa’, it will take place at 7.30pm every Friday and feature bespoke content, character narratives and interactive elements inspired by the evening’s film.

The first screening will be for Wes Anderson opus The Grand Budapest Hotel. Much like its live-action experience, Secret Cinema will issue those that have signed up with an email containing instructions on what kind of costume to wear, the sing-a-long and music playlists to rehearse, dance routines and prop making advice.

Recipients of the newsletter will also be given a code that allows them to order the chosen Häagen-Dazs flavour of the week online via a collaboration with Amazon Prime Now.

Finally, a Secret Sofa Facebook group will host audience discussions about the film and encourage people to share their pictures from the night.

“What we’re trying to do is, firstly, not to overstate our own importance in people’s lives,” says Alexander. “What we’re doing is kind of silly right? It’s not serious, but it is important to add some kind of structure and appointment to people’s lives; come, dress up and have a dance. We’ll get better at it, embellish it and add more as we get up and running. But right now, it’s put a hat on, grab an ice-cream and watch a movie.”

Though born from necessity amid the coronavirus chaos, Alexander has every intention of keeping the format when life inevitably returns to normal. Having a digital extension of the brand was always on its agenda, it just hadn’t figured out exactly how to execute it.

“It’s the kind of thing we’ve wanted to do this over the past few years and have never had the time to get our act together because we’re always on the treadmill of the next show. But we have a loyal base and we’ve wanted to offer more than just a couple of shows a year,” he says.

“We’ll keep going after. Why wouldn’t we? If this does appeal to people, it’s not a huge overhead for us to deliver and for people to consume.”

Feature Image Credit: Secret Cinema

By Jennifer Faull

Sourced from The Drum

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Stephan Loerke, Tamara Rogers, Nigel Vaz and more on the next digital disruptions

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By The Drum Reporters

From The Trade Desk to Condé Nast and Puma to PepsiCo, we ask some of the world’s best digital marketers where they think the next big industry shift will come from?

Nigel Vaz, global chief executive officer, Publicis Sapient

If you’re riding (or getting hit by) waves then you’re probably still swimming in the shallows. By which I mean it would be easy to answer that the next big wave is the ability to reach new possibilities in personalization at scale, across touchpoints, through data and machine learning. It’s true, but tells only part of the story. What we are all here to do is not to help clients create a deliverable, but a way to operate and exist so they don’t end up on the receiving end of another company’s disruptive breakthrough. The most compelling conversations I have are with business leaders who aren’t looking for waves, but horizons: people such as Novartis chief executive Vas Narasimhan, whose vision is to move beyond being a pharmaceutical company and to create value for patients and support them through their entire lifecycle. That’s an incredibly powerful and purposeful ambition that requires reimagining that business on a number of fronts, from strategy to experience to the application of data.

Oliver Deane, director of commercial digital, Global

Voice will start to have a huge impact on our daily lives. We will begin to do much more than ask Alexa to play the radio. As we embrace voice to be more productive, we will use our devices to order groceries while we make dinner, have a long-form feature read to us while we exercise and book our train travel while shopping. Much of this technology is already accessible – the wave of disruption in the coming years will be how much voice is used and how regular it becomes within our lives.

Ray Soto, director of emerging tech, Gannett

The digital signs of the next big wave are all around us, but you can’t focus on one without considering the others. I foresee the next big wave will be a convergence of several technologies that solves a problem and delivers an experience worth being a part of. I see it as something that helps us navigate our digital space differently, but provides a more immersive experience and efficiency without a lack of connection we may feel today.

Adam Harris, director of custom solutions, Twitch

I believe live sport is surfing the first wave of digital disruption. Sports often look to expand their reach into different audiences or look for different ways to communicate with existing fans. On top of that you have a host of traditional sports, such as golf and Formula 1, with aging fan bases, contrasted with the eSports scene, which is thriving among younger demographics – just look at the success of the recent Fortnite World Cup.

With eSports’ success as a purely digital-first experience, traditional sports have a huge opportunity. Interactive live environments such as Twitch are made for the kind of communal, passionate tribal experiences live sport delivers. We are already seeing strong engagement in this area with the likes of the NFL, Champions and Europa Leagues, MLS, Rugby League and National Women’s Hockey League all broadcasting live on Twitch.

Luke Davies, senior manager of global yield, Reuters

Data privacy law, again. GDPR is a slow burner and unfortunately our industry’s attempts of adoption have reduced the general user experience quality across the web. For GDPR, and now CCPA in 2020, with the potential for wider uptake across the US market, we can expect to experience changing tides across the next few years.

Simon Gresham Jones, chief digital officer, Condé Nast

On our mobile devices, again. 5G will open up a new frontier of business and creative possibilities for brands. For media and entertainment in particular, there’s an opportunity to re-imagine how we inspire our audiences at scale.

Morten Grubak, executive creative director for northern Europe, Virtue

The intellectual properties of brands. Brands need to be innovative in the products, services and solutions they bring to the world (this is where adding value really gets to live), not just in their communication.

Creative agencies should have as much contact with product development and innovation, not just marketing. We need to prove our value by solving real problems – and not just that, but doing it in surprising and interesting ways to capture the world’s increasingly scarce attention. It’s harder than it sounds. But don’t fret: the world is young.

Alexandra Willis, head of communications, content and digital, AELTC

A continuation of the ability of AI, machine learning and automation to drive personalization: it will just get better and more sophisticated and therefore true choice for the consumer over experience, rather than just customization within rules.

Voice: not being wedded to keyboards will rapidly increase the speed at which things are expected to happen, both in terms of the way we work and how consumers engage.

5G penetration: if it does what it says, it could transform the cost and flexibility of content production in such a way that we move completely away from linear and digital, and have a truly integrated model.

Alysia Borsa, chief marketing and data officer, Meredith

It’s hard to pick just one thing. From a consumer perspective, behaviors continue to evolve and expand to multiple platforms, with voice being a major shift in engagement. From a business perspective, providing personalization and relevancy in a cookieless world is going to be disruptive, and players who have direct relationships with consumers will be best set up to succeed.

Julie Clark, global head of automation revenue and podcast monetization, Spotify

How we leverage and utilize data is going to be a massive disruptor to our industry; we all need to plan for it now rather than allowing it to happen to us. There is also a reimagining happening right now as we start to connect digital back to real-world engagement of consumers. While direct to consumer brands have fundamentally changed purchase behaviors, I do believe human tactile experiences will continue to be fundamental now and into the future. From pop-up store trends to retailers becoming more skilled in connecting their on and offline worlds, I think we are going to have an interesting few years seeing these worlds merge.

Victor Knaap, chief executive officer, MediaMonks

In my opinion the word ‘digital’ needs to be killed soon – everything is digital. Besides that, my prediction is media companies that don’t master programmatic will have a real hard time in the next 12 months. To be frank, I am afraid we all generally expect too much from the near future. Old models die slowly, while we are overlooking the real change that will happen in the long-term. The media, agency and consultancy industry will look completely different in 10 years’ time.

Tamara Rogers, global chief marketing officer, GSK Consumer Healthcare

A truly intelligent internet of things. A world where the devices around you no longer just respond to your instructions, but predict your needs based on the behavioral data patterns they have tracked. For example, your vehicle self-adjusting the seat and heat pads to the optimum position and temperature to ease your back pain, identified as an issue from the way you have been moving during sleep the previous night and your range of mobility since rising. How are brands part of a dynamic system to improve the quality of life?

Aaron Cho, head of digital, IPG Mediabrands Hong Kong

There are growing privacy concerns around the usage of data, while digital properties continue to tighten their data policies. I think these forces might bring about the next big shift in digital marketing for two main reasons. Firstly, the privacy landscape is still changing and the dust has yet to settle – there’s no clear indication about which digital linkages will break and which ones marketers will need to bridge, which affects practices around identity resolution and data-driven audience planning. Secondly, while there are numerous data and tech companies on the market right now, their solutions are mostly still in development in the APAC region and there’s also a very real shortage of talent that understands how to manage their implementation.

Josh Peters, director of data partnerships, BuzzFeed

First-party audience collection and data privacy. They’re intrinsically linked together – as they should be – and companies and brands who handle this well will be big winners. We’re already seeing apps like BigToken helping consumers not just take control of their data but also helping them monetize it themselves. That’s a huge shift in the market – users making money off their own data instead of just companies. This, in turn, makes the data the app holds even more valuable in the market.

For brands and publishers, the ways in which they collect and use audiences is going to be imperative to future success, especially in an industry whose regulatory structure is exponentially increasing in complexity. Tech that makes it easy to collect in areas third-party pixels can’t, that seamlessly connects to privacy compliance frameworks and even the privacy frameworks themselves, will change the way marketers do business. The ones who make it both easy and effective will help change the course of digital marketing soon.

Sean Lyons, global chief executive officer, R/GA

Data privacy. There are a lot of new technologies currently in development that rely on almost unlimited access to people’s behavioral and personal data. What happens when people, and legislators, decide that privacy is more important than personalized messages and services? What happens when these technologies fall into the wrong hands? There is a big opportunity to solve this problem in fair and novel ways.

Mike Scafidi, head of martech, adtech and consumer data, PepsiCo

The next digital disruption will be through establishing trust. This will protect the interests of the consumer and improve the marketer’s ability to have an accurate understanding of the consumer. This will fundamentally disrupt everything we see in the data ecosystem today.

Sujatha Kumar, senior director of marketing, Visa India

I think we are seeing it as we speak. It’s no longer a fragmented market or media, but it’s a fragmented consumer who has a myriad of choices and a short attention span – hence the rise of programmatic ad platforms for dynamic creative optimization. There’s still a long way to go on how these platforms really evolve to serve their purpose – not just to us marketers, but also the end consumer.

The other big disruption will be voice – how it will become the key enabler and how tools such as facial and voice recognition will become the norm for security encryptions.

Stephan Loerke, chief executive officer, World Federation of Advertisers

The next big wave of digital disruption will be voice. We see penetration of voice assistants growing exponentially, and hurdles to voice commerce are comparatively low – once the technology is fully there. From a brand marketer’s perspective, voice will change the equation fundamentally – in terms of consumer trust, role of platforms and brand presence.

Chris Curtin, chief brand and innovation marketing officer, Visa

Augmented reality will hit in a big way. I think we’ll see it primarily through virtual shopping experiences, with consumers being able to trigger supplemental experiences through AR and brands. With AR, companies can manifest much more engaging experiences with their consumers than what we generally see today.

Adam Petrick, global director of brand and marketing, Puma

I think many brands have been successful in making the jump from advertising-based messaging to storytelling, story creation and content-focused messaging. Now we must find ways to actually leverage the power of the technology at our fingertips to leverage content and story creation in a targeted way, at scale. That’s the issue at the heart of the current moment of stress and tension in the industry. Once we overcome the hurdle of getting promising dots to line up, then we can all start to focus on the ‘next’ wave, which I have to assume will be linked to end customers beginning to exert ownership of their personally owned marketing space and opting in to virtually all messaging that we want to deliver.

Jeff Green, chief executive officer, The Trade Desk

As I have said before, we will likely never see a bigger industry shift than what’s happening right now in connected TV. We are at the very beginning of the digitization of TV advertising. For the first time, advertisers can apply real data to their large TV ad campaigns. Much of what we’ve done over the past decade has simply been a dress rehearsal for the digital shift happening in TV right now. Every top advertiser wants to know how they can best access CTV inventory at scale and how they can apply programmatic to it.

Nicolas Bidon, global chief executive officer, Xaxis

To use a famous quote: “The future is already here – it’s just not very evenly distributed.” I believe the next big wave of digital disruption will be when some of the forces that have been at play in China for a couple of years already – such as mobile-first experiences powered by AI, social commerce at scale and frictionless mobile financial payments, to name just a few – will make their way to the US and Europe.

Lisa Utzschneider, chief executive officer, IAS

At IAS we are placing big bets on connected TV and OTT as the next digital disruption. We are already seeing major broadcasters start the shift to CTV/OTT content and that trend is expected to continue and grow. We’re leaders in creating solutions for advertisers and publishers to ensure that every ad impression is viewable, brand-safe and fraud-free, and we’re bringing our 10 years of experience in digital verification to the CTV space with our open beta in the US.

By The Drum Reporters

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Coronavirus: Brand Moves

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By Chris Nurko .

The coronavirus pandemic continues to change the way we shop, work, socialize, travel and much more. It’s a fast-moving situation, but we’ve pulled together another of our regular, up-to-date snapshots of how brands are responding to the crisis. We hope this is informative and helpful – please circulate it to anybody you think might find it of use.

Manufacturing & Retail

Alibaba co-founder, billionaire Jack Ma, has promised to donate one million face masks and 500,000 testing kits to the US. The first shipment took off from Shanghai on Monday. He has already sent supplies to five other countries. “Drawing from my own country’s experience, speedy and accurate testing and adequate personal protective equipment for medical professionals are most effective in preventing the spread of the virus,” he said in a statement. “We hope that our donation can help Americans fight against the pandemic!” China is the world’s biggest supplier of face masks. As the coronavirus crisis in China ramped up in January, the country cut face mask exports to the rest of the world while buying up most of the world’s supply.

Several supermarkets including Stop & Shop in the US and the UK’s Iceland are opening earlier to serve older customers, and German-based retailer Aldi has just donated £250,000 to charity AgeUK.

UK-based greetings card and stationery retailer Paperchase is refusing to accept cash payments due to infection worries. If this policy spreads, New York City’s recent decision to ban cash-free stores may have to be rethought.

Luxury goods conglomerate LVMH has announced that its perfume and cosmetics production facilities will switch to making hand sanitizer, to be distributed free to French authorities and health organizations. The facilities usually make upmarket products for LVMH’s luxury brands such as Christian Dior and Givenchy.

Pernod Ricard’s Swedish vodka brand Absolut has offered to supply Swedish authorities with high-proof neutral alcohol for use in hand sanitizer.

Research firm Gartner has just released a report on brands’ reaction to the virus in China. Unsurprisingly, time spent online shot up by 20%, and brands reacted to that in a variety of ways.

  • Estée Lauder’s Weibo hashtag “We Can Win This Fight”, associated with the brand’s celebrity video messages, has been viewed more than 61 million times and has generated 328,000 discussions.
  • Louis Vuitton’s physical stores were closed in the lead-up to Valentine’s Day, so the brand launched an online pop-up store within the WeChat app, with live chat for pre-sale consultations and promotions shared via store associates online. Online sales were double those of Valentine’s Day 2019.
  • Activewear brands have been quick to promote in-home exercise content at a time when usage of the short video app Douyin (known as TikTok in the West) has seen usage as much as double. Nike began posting workouts to the platform, and its account has amassed 346,000 followers and more than 2 million likes.
  • Transparency proved important too; household cleaning brand Dettol took to its Weibo account to detail how it was handing the spike in demand.
  • Reactivity is also vital: When the dog of a beauty influencer began trending on Weibo after appearing in a livestream, beauty brand Perfect Diary used his sudden celebrity to launch a “Dog Eyeshadow” pallet; 16,000 pieces sold out in 10 seconds.

However, Gartner analyst Danielle Bailey warned that what is appropriate in China might not work as well in the West. “China has a much higher tolerance for sales messaging than the West, and a business-as-usual strategy approach is not advisable for Western markets,” she said. “Brand-building should be prioritized in this period. During a crisis, timing is critical. Determining the appropriate cadence and striking the right balance between commercial and branding messaging will be key.”

Amazon has announced that it is hiring an extra 100,000 employees in the US to cope with unprecedented demand for deliveries. It will also raise pay by $2 an hour. Earlier this month, Amazon relaxed its attendance policy for warehouse workers, allowing them to take unlimited unpaid time off through the month of March and launched a $25 million relief fund. The “Amazon Relief Fund” will allow employees to apply for grants that are equal to or up to two weeks of pay if they’re diagnosed with coronavirus.

Apple has closed all of its stores outside China until March 27. That’s more than 450 sites. However, employees will continue to be paid during the outage. Outdoor clothing brand Patagonia has already implemented store closures, and Starbucks are said to be considering it after a case of the virus at one of their sites in Seattle.

The UK government has put out an open call for businesses including Ford, Honda and Rolls-Royce to help produce medical ventilators. However, it is not immediately clear how a manufacturer of jet engines or cars could turn to producing specialist medical equipment, which international parts would be needed or what certification would be required. One option could be to adopt defense industry rules which can be used to order certain factories to follow a design to produce a required product quickly.

Mercedes has been hit by a wildcat strike at its Vitoria plant in Spain’s Basque Country. After a case of coronavirus was confirmed at the plant, the firm asked its 5,000 workers there to continue working. However, they refused, forcing the closure of the factory.

Technology

Chinese-owned computing company Lenovo pitched in quickly to help with the initial Wuhan outbreak, donating all of the IT equipment for the Wuhan Pneumonia Prevention and Control Headquarters, a temporary hospital constructed seemingly overnight. Lenovo is now working with Intel to provide the data analytics and computing needed by researchers from the Beijing Genomics Institute (one of the world’s largest genomics organizations) to crack the new coronavirus’s genome in a race for a cure. Knowing the disruption that was coming, the company early on strengthened its VPN capacity globally to support employees who would be working remotely.

Global cloud computing company SAP has responded to the crisis by opening up free access to its Ariba Discovery supply chain solution and Tripit, its travel itinerary manager. Other could-based connectivity providers such as Google and Microsoft are offering free trials of their enterprise collaboration tools.

Pinterest is redirecting anyone who searches coronavirus to a dedicated page in collaboration with the WHO, while Google has set up a separate search module for verified Coronavirus information. Apple, meanwhile, has changed the rules of its App Store to ensure that any virus-related apps can only come from approved health bodies.

Human resources software provider Workday is offering employees a bonus worth two weeks’ pay. Workday said it hopes the pay can “help alleviate some of the pressures” brought on by school closures and other changes, and said it would also create a relief fund “to help employees who may need additional support and have significant hardships that go above and beyond.” The company will also expand benefits like paid sick leave for employees infected with COVID-19 and Care.com coverage for back-up childcare. It’s also giving employees one year of access to the meditation app, Headspace.

Online commerce facilitator Shopify is offering its 5,000 employees a one-off $1,000 to set up a home workspace, while requiring them all to work remotely.

Healthcare & Fitness

The growing telehealth industry has, for obvious reasons, seen a huge bump in uptake. Doctor On Demand has reported a 15-20 per cent increase in virtual visits; Austin, Texas-based startup Wheel, which vets and trains clinicians for other telemedicine firms, has seen what it describes as “a remarkable increase” both in demand for visits and from doctors wanting to join the network.

Home fitness is booming, with some interesting results. Peloton, who have shifted from static bicycles and treadmills to all-round fitness training, is offering free 90-day trials of its app, which allows users access to yoga, strength training, stretching and other classes whether they own one of the company’s treadmills and bicycles or not. Nintendo’s Ring Fit Adventure game, which retails at $79.99, is selling on some sites, particularly in China, for up to $250, and is out of stock in many outlets. The fitness-training game contains physical controller accessories so can’t just be downloaded, and the manufacture of those has been hit by factory closures. 

Travel & Tourism

This sector has been particularly hard-hit, with airlines, travel companies and cruise lines among the worst affected by both the global pandemic’s travel bans and the stock price crash. Virgin Atlantic has just announced that it is to cut 80 per cent of flights by March 26th and is asking staff to take eight weeks’ unpaid leave during the next three months, which has sparked a social media backlash against its billionaire founder Richard Branson. The Virgin Group’s chairman has meanwhile asked the UK government to provide £7.5bn of state support to the aviation industry. British Airways and American Airlines also plan to cut capacity by around 75 per cent, and Irish-based budget airline Ryanair has cancelled 80 per cent of flights until May.

Many hotel chains are now offering travelers free cancellations – but as with many businesses, their policies are evolving on a minute-by-minute basis. Hyatt, Hilton, Marriott and Intercontinental, among others, are waiving cancellation fees for bookings up to the end of April. One snag, though – if the booking was made through a third party, as so many are, it may not be eligible for the program. Expedia has so far offered free cancellations or changes in certain circumstances but their call centres are reportedly overwhelmed.

European travel giant Tui is suspending the “vast majority” of its operations, including package holidays, cruises and hotel operations and applying for state aid.

Sports & Media

While Formula 1’s Australian Grand Prix was cancelled at the last minute, a hurriedly-arranged online event proved surprisingly successful. The All Star Esports Battle featured real-life F1 drivers, plus endurance, IndyCar and Formula E stars, battling against professional esports contestants. Ferrari and McLaren both have professional esports teams, with the former winning last year’s F1 esports championship. The event attracted more than half a million viewers – ­90 per cent more than any previous esports racing event.

Legendary and long-running motorcycle race the Isle of Man TT has also announced the cancellation of 2020’s event. This will be a major blow to the small island, which estimates that the event brings a £28m boost to the local economy. The event has been run since 1907.

The TV and film industry is starting to cancel filming, which won’t be good for workers in an industry which relies heavily on freelance talent. The BBC has just announced the postponement of several headline TV series, while Disney has paused its film productions of Batman and The Little Mermaid. More will undoubtedly follow.

Disney did bring a little cheer to families stuck at home, however, by releasing Frozen 2 three months ahead of schedule on its Disney Plus streaming channel. The move, according to new Disney CEO Bob Chapek, is about “surprising families with some fun and joy during this challenging period.”

Film studio NBCUniversal, hit hard by the lack of cinema audiences, has started streaming current movie releases via Apple, Sky, Comcast and Amazon, pricing them at a premium $19.99 for a 48-hour rental. The crisis “could serve as a catalyst for long-delayed change,” noted Variety’s Andrew Wallenstein. That includes the prospect of premium video on demand – that is, making movies available earlier to watch at home, for an elevated fee that would help offset lost theatrical revenues.

One of the more interesting media pivots of the last few years has been the global Time Out Group’s move from publishing increasingly unprofitable print city guides to running hip restaurant-based food markets, now operating five worldwide. Unfortunately, they’ve just announced that all five are to close for an unspecified period. Not good news for a brave operation.

19-year-old NBA star Zion Williamson has pledged to pay the salaries of all workers at New Orleans’ Smoothie King Center arena for the next 30 days. “These are the folks who make our games possible, creating the perfect environment for our fans and everyone involved in the organization,” he wrote on Instagram. ”My mother has always set an example for me about being respectful for others and being grateful for what we have.” Other NBA players and team owners have also pledged amounts in the hundreds and thousands of dollars to support laid-off workers.

By Chris Nurko

Sourced from brandchannel

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Why Leveraging Transparency Is The Future Of Brand Trust

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By Brain Fanzo.

Every business is in the business of trust: building it among customers, scaling it to capture markets, and maintaining it to fuel growth. That’s a tremendous challenge in a digital world full of bad news and fake news. How do brands break through the noise?

Transparency is the answer. Transparency shrinks the distance between a brand and consumers and builds trust. Consumers gain an authentic window into who you are, what your brand is about, and the value you provide. Transparency also helps scale trust at a faster rate.

It’s All About Access

If someone asks me how to become more transparent, I give a one-word answer: Access.

Today’s consumers crave access to the brand and the people behind it, as well as the products themselves. Why do people wait in line for the latest iPhone? Because they want early access to Apple’s innovation in particular — not just a smartphone. They want that connection to the brand.

You can provide access to your customers by being transparent about what’s going on in your company, say, from an employee’s perspective. Consider peppering your social feed, company blog, or email newsletters with employee profiles that reveal their insights into customer needs and how they meet them or offer tips on how to get the most out of your product.

You may even find that some of your employees can be influencers themselves, with their own social accounts and followers.

To be successful at transparency, you need to know the difference between transparency and over-sharing, which requires calculating the risk versus reward for each sharing opportunity. One caveat here is that the calculation depends on the context. It changes and evolves.

For example, the idea of talking about the mental health struggles of one of your executives in 2015 would not have met the criteria for transparency. But today, when movie stars and Olympic athletes talk about their mental health challenges, it might. We should re-ask an old question and put it through today’s risk-versus-reward calculation.

How to Scale Trust

Everyone in the world craves empathy, the feeling that someone else understands you. To scale trust, you must first scale empathy, and technology is the vehicle to do so. By using technology to understand and leverage information about customers and prospects, you can gain insight and create empathy. Of course, data can be misused, and we’re right to be concerned about that. But a dashboard that provides insights using quality data and the latest best practices in analytics can help overcome that challenge.

On the marketing side, you can scale trust using influencers that have already established trust among their followers. Influencers could be celebrities with massive followings and reach; thought leaders who have built trust and rapport with a focused audience over time; or a subject-matter expert — someone who is “in the weeds,” doing the work, within the company as an employee or outside, as a customer.

Subject-matter experts can be tremendously influential because most of today’s consumers don’t trust a brand or a logo. They trust the people who work for the company and represent the brand. They offer a peek behind the curtain — in a word, transparency. This can even work with celebrity influencers.

Tweet from John Legere customer-loving @TMobile USA CEO

Let’s face it: Nobody really believes that LeBron James drives a Kia. When today’s consumers see LeBron in a commercial for Kia, they immediately know he is getting paid to endorse that product. The ad isn’t effective because you think, “Hey, LeBron James drives a Kia.” Instead, it comes down to, “LeBron James associates with Kia as a brand because they have principles that he believes in as a dad, as a leader.” He is lending Kia his authenticity.

The Future of Marketing Is Relatability

John Legere, CEO of T-Mobile, has taken a very transparent approach to marketing. He shares his unfiltered thoughts across multiple channels. He replies to social media posts, he makes himself available at events, and he does ask-me-anythings (AMAs) online. He even takes transparency a step further by sharing his personal life and hobbies through a Facebook Live show where you can watch him cooking at home. That access into who he is at his core not only builds trust but also humanizes his brand. I couldn’t tell you if the CEO of my carrier is male or female, yet I can say with some certainty that the leader of T-Mobile cares about his customers. I understand his values, which allow me to connect with him at a deeper level.

That relatability is that secret to building trust and I share more examples like John in my 2020 keynote program Think Like A Fan!

Let’s face it: The Field of Dreams notion of marketing — if you build it, they will come — is broken, if it ever worked in the first place.

If you build a website, if you launch a new social channel, if you have a new email newsletter, no one is going to embrace it simply because it exists. Consumers are smarter than they’ve ever been.

Not only do they have more access to information, but they also have more channels to decide how they’ll consume content.

Transparency is a way to leverage this access — actually embrace it — to answer the question, “Why should I trust you?”

Transparency will play a huge role in the future of marketing and how you connect with consumers in the digital world. Targeting and segmentation will still be vastly important, though, and hyper-personalization is changing the game enormously.

This was first posted on Blogs.Oracle.com and you can find out more by reading “Segment of One: A Glimpse into the Future of Digital Marketing.”

By Brain Fanzo

Digital Futirst and Founder iSocialFanz iSocialFanz

Brian Fanzo is a digital futurist keynote speaker who translates trends and technology empowering next generational businesses

Brian has been recognized as a Top 20 Digital Transformation Influencer; a Top 50 Most-Mentioned User by CMOs on Twitter, and a Top 25 Social Business Leader of the Future by The Economist. His followers on social media and podcast downloads for FOMO Fanz and other podcasts rank in the hundreds of thousands, resulting in Brian being an influencer for 19 of the Fortune 100 companies.

web: https://www.brianfanzo.com
email: [email protected]
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Your Brand Is Your Greatest Asset

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By Blair Brady .

No matter the industry, product, customer or size, a company’s brand is its single most important asset. Your brand isn’t just your logo. It’s how you interact with the world — from your customers to your employees — and it all stems from the brand. So, what do you do with your most important asset? You protect and grow it.

At times, those two things — protect and grow — can seem like two opposing forces. If you protect something, you have to keep it close. But to grow something, you have to give it space. This is why it’s critical that your agency understands the ecosystem that is your brand.

Your brand manifests itself through strategy and identity, experience and storytelling.

Strategy And Identity

Your brand strategy and identity are the essence and foundation of who you are and what you stand for. We use our own brand process to reveal our clients’ brands through five key components: Purpose, Promise, Character, Champions and Assets.

Though a lot goes into crafting each of these components of a brand strategy, at their most basic levels, this is what each one stands for:

Purpose: This is your why. The purpose is very, very high and emotional.

Promise: This is what you do. This is the one thing you promise your customers.

Character: This is who you are. The unique blend of personal human traits that allow your brand to interact with other humans.

Champions: The people who love and advocate for the brand. Anyone who loves you — customers, employees, partners, etc.

Assets: The things you own to deliver on your promise. What your brand owns or does that allows you to uniquely provide your what.

Many people use different terminology for these five components, which is perfectly fine, as long as the adequate level of effort is invested in uncovering and articulating the components of the brand.

This framework articulates the brand’s essence — what it stands for, what and how it delivers, and who it is. This framework provides the foundation for when the brand’s identity comes to life, both visually and verbally. It serves as an internal guide that informs all interactions and representations — from employees to partners to customers. When everything a brand does is couched in this strategic framework, it will be protected from distortion and misrepresentation, commonly referred to as “off strategy.” That’s why it’s so important that the agency working on the creative execution of a brand understands the brand’s strategy and how to translate it.

Brand Experience

Your brand experience is how your brand shows up in the world. This is how people experience the brand. No matter if your company is B2B or B2C, it still interacts with people. This is why it’s critical that when you deploy your brand (again, your most valuable asset), you do so in an intentional way that creates value. In crafting your brand experience, think about why it matters to someone — why should they care? What is their reason to believe? The best brand experiences are designed with the customer at the forefront.

Storytelling

Lastly is brand storytelling. When people experience your brand — through sight and sound — they often have a reaction. Sometimes it’s emotional, sometimes it’s intellectual. These reactions create a story — a story of how a brand makes a person feel or think. The way a brand grows is by telling these stories and putting them out into the world. When someone sees themself in that story, they want to experience it too. This is where the growth occurs, then it multiplies.

The delicate balance of these three entities is critical for a brand and any agency that works with a brand to understand and practice. Your brand is a living, breathing thing. It needs constant attention, evaluation and the freedom and means to interact with the world.

The best advice I can give is to invest in your brand. Campaigns come and go, but your brand should be enduring. And for something to be enduring, it has to be well-crafted and thought out. It must never be addressed with a “this will work for now” mentality. What you save in cutting corners on your brand, you will lose in dividends with off-strategy work. What you gain when you invest in your brand will repay you in multiples in the market.

Feature Image Credit: Getty

By Blair Brady

Blair Brady is CEO & Co-Founder of the award-winning WITH/agency, a creative agency driven by brand strategy.

Sourced from Forbes

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Brand Management: 5 Effective Principles

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With digital marketing becoming an influential approach for most brands, the importance of brand management is often underrated. Simply put, brand management is the science of creating a positive relationship with the target market. However, it also entails the various facets of the customer’s association with the brand and even the relation to the purchasing process. There are five effective principles of brand management which are important for most brands to effectively manage their target market and garner a positive response from the consumers:

Know your USP

Each brand has a unique selling point. This USP sets your brand apart from your competitors. For instance, Idea’ “India ho Gaya hai 3G me busy” ensured that they came up as the leading telephonic brand for the 3G technology. Similarly, the affordable rates offered by JIO for 4G technology set the approach as a brand differentiation key. In order to create it, the product’s position needs to be fit properly in the market. Here, the demographics of the consumer base will play a huge role in understanding what kind of branding will intrigue them.

Relate your marketing communication to brand awareness

Very few people understand the difference between marketing messaging and effective marketing communication. All the communication that goes out through your brand should include your USP and be associated with the brand awareness that you are trying to create. Do not target just traction from your branding approach, instead, include targeted consumer traction for your brand. This will ensure that your brand does not fall prey to false growth but instead sees the qualitative approach.

Keep developing your brand internally

The main idea behind conquering the right market is that you would need to keep evolving with times. Everybody involved in brand development should learn to collaboratively ideate and keep introducing changes from the very inside. One way to do is to get buy-ins from the other departments which co-create the core of your brand. You can also get a buy-in from the external stakeholders. Learn to incorporate different views into your brand which you may have ignored initially. Also, always include the R&D department. Your research and development team can tell you what is being appreciated in the market and how changes can be incorporated to align your brand with the same.

Create a winning influential marketing strategy

Word of mouth is a strategy that never loses. With our entire world revolving around following the right influencers and following targeted propagators- approaching a strategy that includes influential marketers would be very helpful. There is such a thing called a third-person effect. Just ensure it does not look like an obvious product plugin. Have a subtle influential marketing strategy where the influencers you choose do not look sold and your brand management is done subtly.

Do not underestimate a brand management software

One important pointer to remember is that even though a brand may evolve, the core of it never changes. Simple elements like colour, messaging, the shape of the logo stay in the minds of the consumers. So, they start to resonate with them. With brand management software, you can adopt evolution while keeping the core principals the same.

Summing up

While brand management has a lot of facets, the simplest of principles can give you the much-needed head start. This simple approach would surely help you in making an effective and influential brand management strategy. While most of these are already adopted, but there are a lot of simple mistakes pertaining to these principles that we make on a regular basis.

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5 Questions to Ask Before Your Brand Takes On the Industry Challenger

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Startups take risks, something all organizations should do

Today, large CPG brands are feeling even greater pressure in an expanding world of new go-to market strategies. Subscription services, ecommerce “anti-brands” and sustainability-driven challengers are changing the paradigm of how people shop and consume.

Brands like Hims have linked a suite of products to address top-of-mind men’s issues such as hair loss, erectile dysfunction and anxiety. The online subscription model offers a discreet (no face-to-face medical consults) and holistic solution for guys that otherwise might not seek help through normal channels.

Truman’s combines both a subscription and sustainability model to deliver mix it yourself nontoxic cleaning supplies to your door. The reusable spray bottles and small refill cylinders make shipping and storage easy.

These are two of many current startup examples. They challenge key assumptions of how products are formulated, how they work and how they’re delivered to consumers. To win against these anti-brands, marketers need to learn to take risks like a startup.

For many startups, the irony is that they are risking everything including savings, homes and the investment of close associates and family. This is not simply a professional risk from which to rebound from, but also a risk to current life and future.

So how do they find the resolve to take risks? By understanding the risk, defining the potential return, outlining the strategies to mitigate and communicating all of this clearly to internal and external stakeholders.

To win against these anti-brands, marketers need to learn to take risks like a startup.

Here are five fundamental questions that need to be answered to help you get ahead of the conversation, assess risk and build a solid case to leverage with internal/external stakeholders while putting your own mind at ease.

How certain are you that the consumer wants the product?

If you think you’ve identified a clear missing need in the marketplace, have you done the simple task of talking to potential consumers about a product that solves this need? As simple as that sounds, many teams haven’t, and a series of short conversations can not only help you confirm that need but may help you sharpen your product offering.

Can you link your innovation efforts to a parallel success in a different category?

Perhaps your product is a new enough proposition that it is difficult for consumers to understand. Can you identify something in a different category where the leap has been made and reapply some of the thinking? For instance, protein first hit shelves in the snack bar category for consumers that were using bars as a no-prep source of protein for fitness routines. Recently, marketers saw the behavior of these products being incorporated into less rigorous lifestyles and began to bring protein into juices, cereals and even coffee creamers. It was a logical reapplication to adjacent breakfast choices.

What needs to be true for product success (quality, efficacy, flavor, credentialing, price point, etc.)?

Every category has a shopper decision tree, which is the sequence of choices a shopper works through to find the product for them before they choose and buy. Identify this for your product. Once the key “Who am I?” “What am I?” questions are answered, what is the differentiating aspect of your product that communicates why it’s right for that consumer.

For some food categories this is nutritional credentialing, for others it’s simply a flavor choice. Be clear on what that is for your product before you start to create the packaging or develop supporting communication. This will also be a key part of your customer sales story.

What is the minimum level of confirmation you need to launch?

If your launch is national, does it start with test markets in partnership with a key retailer? If not, what is the minimum data set you need for launch confirmation? This can be as narrow as multi-city qualitative with 40–60 consumers if your confidence in the product is high, or as expansive as a full quantitative with thousands of respondents. A research professional can help you understand the right level of clarity and the costs involved.

How quickly can you course-correct based on market response?

This is something most large CPG companies don’t like to think about but that almost all entrepreneurial enterprises expect to do. Quick adjustments based on real market response and customer feedback is crucial. Not only are you honing your proposition in the real environment where it lives, but you are building a stronger relationship with your customer by working together for success. Plan for a measure and adjust milestone after launch, price point, support and even design if necessary. Perhaps you won’t need it, but if you don’t, the conversation is a happy one to have both internally and externally.

In the end, willingness to risk is very personal and tolerance for risk within organizations is a difficult thing to change. Assessing your proposition carefully by using the questions above is a good start to building a strong plan for launch, support and (if needed) adjustment.

Feature Image Credit: Tolerance for risk within organizations is a difficult thing to change. Getty Images

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Chris Lowery is president and CEO of Chase Design Group.

Sourced from ADWEEK

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