Adopting Tech for better Marketing
We live in a generation where you can order dinner by texting an emoji of a pizza to Dominos. It’s an age where attention spans are shorter, and consumer expectations are higher. How companies remain relevant is largely based on their ability to create seamless experiences with consumers - which is a world much different than ever before.
Jamie Gutfreund is the Cheif Consumer Experience Officer at Hasbro, and was previously the global chief marketing officer for Wunderman - a leading digital communications agency. Last July, she sat down with Victoria Feder of the Online Marketing Institute to give a discussion on trends in the marketing industry entitled “Think like a CMO: Are You Future Ready?”
According to Jamie, “63% of the people in a survey we did felt they were more tech-savvy than the brands they interact with.” This is a fascinating insight because it shows that millennials and younger generations will soon require brands to be an active part of the conversation, compelled to offer highly customized and worthwhile brand experiences. To a tech-savvy consumer, every single part of their online world is customized - brands die because they can’t adapt in the same way. Blockbuster was offered Netflix, but they declined. Now blockbuster is a faded memory. Toys R Us failed to capitalize on the fast-growing e-commerce market of the early 2000’s - they could have been the Amazon of toys. Sears pioneered the buy-at-home experience with their catalog, but failed to translate that same UX to the web. Companies that can’t adapt to the fact that Millenials and Gen Z live in two worlds, one in reality, and one online, will be the driving force in why they will die.
Companies need to “Deliver a great experience that feels custom made to me” - as Jamie puts it. Brands need to not only deliver a great brand experience, but it needs to feel custom tailored to the consumer. This custom experience needs to feel integrated - and like it itself is a product of the company - which means departments inside companies need to work together - something Jamie says doesn't happen as often as you’d think, with “73% of executives [saying] their companies operate in silos.”
One advantage of the fact that these generations live in an online world is that there is an incredible amount of data that is cultivated. Companies can collect data about an individual - extrapolate insights from that data and develop highly targeted, highly customized campaigns at a rate of speed and accuracy that has never been done before. This advantage goes both ways, too. The customer gets a customized, relevant consumer experience out of this exchange - which ultimately results in the brand making their life better.
This leads us to our key takeaways:
- Companies that don’t adopt new tech in order to stay relevant will die faster than any company has died in the past
- Brands need to act more like people. They need to be tech-savvy and feel like they were born on the internet - like the new generation of consumer
- Data drives experience - and experience drives data. An engaged consumer will continue to purchase the product and support the company if they feel the brand produces products and experiences that positively benefit them. This - in turn - supplies the brand with more data that they can use to create a better consumer experience.
We live in a world where the consumer has just as much of a voice as the producer. With the advent of social media - anybody can create communications that reach a large audience of people - and anyone can make a statement about a brand or company that can have lasting, and devastating effects on that companies bottom line. This has changed the landscape of how companies are expected to interact with the consumer base with the consumer requiring a more personalized, and interpersonal relationship in order to feel authentic- brands need to accept tech - because the consumer already has. Companies that adopt modern marketing techniques will continue to be relevant for generations to come. And brands that don’t - will die.
