This year we have been able to participate in a few events within the sector and speak with professionals who lead innovation in companies and agencies, expanding our vision on the present and future of marketing and all the disciplines that surround it: advertising, market research, analytics, etc. Festival of Marketing, MAD//Fest London, Esomar and Most Contagious were some of the events in which our team were there to provide knowledge and experience in regards to audience intelligence.
We have asked some of the thought leaders, from all of those areas, about the main lessons of "Marketing, Advertising, Disruption" (inspired by MAD//Fest London) learned in 2019. Take note...
1. A new way of thinking about analytics is the real disruption
“2019 was filled with buzz about data-driven storytelling. While it’s good that marketers and pundits are thinking more about data, it’s clear that there’s more work to do. Social listening, performance media and web analytics are top of mind but the missing piece is audience. When I refer to audience, I mean studying and analyzing real people–their interests, characteristics and media habits that make them unique. This way of thinking about analytics is the real disruption.”
Michael Brito, EVP of Digital & Analytics at Zeno Group
2. ROI of influencer marketing programs is key
“Influencer marketing is nothing new, but the landscape dramatically changed in 2019. Consumers’ heightened expectations raised the bar from #sponcon to authentic and creative storytelling. Social platforms started removing publicly facing likes. Influencers became more cognizant of what it takes to maintain their followers’ trust. These shifts helped brands understand how to be successful with influencer marketing—particularly in terms of leveraging data-driven solutions to identify and qualify potential partners. This led to higher demand for nano-influencers and a shift towards a more targeted approach. Influencers continued to be a growing line item on CMOs’ budgets – with global spend predicted to reach $10B USD next year (Mediakix)— and finding efficient ways to manage and measure the ROI of these programs has become essential.”
Lauren Kaufman, director, integrated marketing and analytics at PAN Communications
3. Branded content strategy informed by data
"Always ensure your branded content strategy is based on data and that the insights are interpreted thoroughly and agreed upon by all stakeholders. Don't overcomplicate things and identify your target audience using all available tools and focus on ensuring the content is entertaining and engaging to that particular group. Ensure you have a full distribution and activation strategy in place prior to going into production. All branded content campaigns must include full measurement which will allow decisions to be made for future investment - if it is not working - change it, if it is working do more.”
Andrew Canter, Global CEO, Branded Content Marketing Association (BCMA)
4. People and culture at the heart of brands’ thinking
“1) 2019 saw the start of a pivot back to brand-building within marketing. Recent years have seen a focus on performance marketing as the rapid growth of digital disrupted the industry, but over time, the evidence has built for the balance of marketing investment to be in favour of brand-building activities to ensure long-term effectiveness, and brands have begun to take notice. 2) Experience continues to be a significant point of differentiation for brands. In 2019, the leaders have made their customer and brand experiences the focus of their strategies, winning in the battle for share of experience with well-articulated brand values and with people and culture at the heart of their thinking. In some categories, share of experience has now become an indicator of growth.”
Amy Rodgers, Managing Editor, Research & Rankings at WARC
5. New subscription services entering the market
“The most interesting area of market disruption in 2019 was around subscription services. For example, the announcements around Disney+ and, on a smaller scale, The Athletic in the UK. Both are part of an ongoing trajectory of digital platforms being behind paywalls and subscriptions. 2019 also saw UEFA launch its OTT service (free but requires email sign-up). 2019 will prove to have been the high-water mark for new subscription services entering the market. Many consumers now pay more than when they simply subscribed to one cable contract (for many, including me, the subscriptions are in addition to cable!) The new decade will see the market consolidate with giants like Amazon, Apple and Disney dominating streaming dashboards through which we will buy our subscriptions.”
Lewis Wiltshire, consulting partner at digital sport consultancy Seven League
6. Learning new skills every day to find working solutions for each customer
“Marketing does not exist any more, at least not in its pure, traditional and self-indulgent form. Instead, it has moved on to become technical automation and optimisation of digital processes on the web, specialised research into deep, underlying drivers of human behaviour, and most importantly, a continuous source for innovation, transformation and change based on meaningful interactions with the customer. The good news: It's absolutely easy to identify professionals who have understood this paradigm shift, because they are the ones who stopped using traditional formats, types and titles of work. They are the ones who also don't talk about agile, but simply are agile. They are the ones that learn new skills every day to find working solutions for each customer rather than just trying to sell an ill fitted and outdated product in a new colour at a discount. For everyone else, the time has come to acknowledge that they still might be on payroll, but their job doesn't exist anymore. Go find yourself a job that is more conservative to reflect your conservative mindset. You are definitely wrong in marketing.”
Thomas Hirschmann, CEO and founder at Behavioural Economy
7. Being truly audience-first in a cookie-less world
“With the rise of the ‘cookie-less world’, creativity and audience-first marketing are at the heart of the solution. Indeed, Nielsen has always put Creative at the top of the ‘why’ advertising campaigns are successful (47%), way above Targeting (9%) - image below. Moreover, Forrester’s Rusty Warner predicts that Content will dispute the crown position of brand priorities to ‘Data management & analytics’. We believe this change is for the better. Audience intelligence allows brands to be truly audience-first; puts creativity and audience marketing back at the heart of strategy. In other words, brands need to stay relevant to their audiences via audience intelligence and understand the economics of brand relevance.”
Javier Burón, CEO and cofounder at Audiense
Photo by timJ on Unsplash.