Review Preview No. 5 - Transforming Marketing
By MEC
Introduction
Welcome to Review Preview No. 5. For this edition, we’ve created a guide for implementing marketing brand initiatives in a digitally enabled world by identifying the key components of this evolution. As in previous editions, our thoughts represent the insights and experiences from a multitude of markets around the world.
The journey to marketing in today’s digital era requires a change of culture, organizational structures, technology, measurement frameworks and operating models. Digital transformation is more than a one time, single program or activity, it is on-going. Digital has transformed the ways in which consumers explore, discover, buy, and engage with products and services as well as with each other, transcending traditional channel boundaries.
Digital experiences are supplementing brand impressions, and piecemeal strategies of deploying digital channels are no longer sufficient: technology powerfully changes how consumers experience brands. Rather than treating digital as a channel, focus on delivering brand experiences that add value in the context of the consumer’s needs.
By 2017, in most major markets, digital touchpoints, such as mobile devices, will influence over 50% of retail sales. Over 10% of all sales will be online. Increasingly, sophisticated location and context aware apps and sensors are permeating the physical world.
You must think about your business as part of a digital ecosystem of value that connects resources, networks and platforms inside and outside the company. You must harness technology, both to deliver a superior customer experience and to drive agility for operational efficiency. The biggest challenge is staying ahead of technology and your consumers’ rapidly changing expectations. Open your services and data to reach consumers in new ways. Fund disruptive innovation and experimentation activities with consumers.
TV has (still) never been hotter
What did you watch on television last night or the night before? I am pretty certain that 90% of us could answer that without too much thought. The reason? Rather than being undermined and even destroyed by digital media – which was predicted by many – TV has instead witnessed a resurgence, with overall viewing figures stable or growing.
From an advertising perspective, Enders Analysis reported in October 2014 that “TV remains and will continue to be the core brand advertising medium in all market territories for the foreseeable future”. Of course Netflix and other direct to consumer distribution models threaten the existing TV model, but for now, with increased investment in content and with dual screening breathing new and exciting life into the media, TV has indeed never been hotter and never offered a greater opportunity for advertisers to engage viewers and consumers.
Projecting forward, as programmatic buying makes it presence felt on television and as precision targeting starts to become a reality, as for example seen in the UK with tailored advertising service Sky AdSmart, it is more than likely that television will continue in good health for years to come as long as it continues to embrace developments in technology and consumer demands.
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