More Fresh Ideas from Digital First
As we said in a previous post, Digital First 2017 gathered a multitude of expert speakers, highlighting the many facets of digital today. Here are some more fresh ideas we heard at the event.
It is clear: to boldly go where no man has gone before, organisations must combine Spock’s ‘pure logic’ with the intuitive approach of Captain Kirk.
Sitecore advocated to do this with better customer experiences, but stressed you first need to get the basics right first. We learned the new direction Shazam is taking, while Dentsu Aegis’ consultant Wim Vermeulen stressed the need to refocus on brand building. ‘Get with the program, people!’
Sitecore says you’re only as strong as your weakest customer experience
Fabienne Heiles and George Lavric of Emakina’s partner Sitecore started by asking what had changed in digital since last year. To the surprise of many, they said last year’s slides still apply!
George Lavric and Fabienne Heiles remind us we need to get the basics right
Lately, we hear a lot of talk about artificial intelligence and machine learning. And how they will reshape customer experiences and digital marketing. Fine, but we need to master the basics first. So before you start running, you better analyse where you really are and want to go.
Make sure to collect the information you need, and go for intelligent data instead of big data. When working together to create an organisation’s digital future, follow these golden rules:
1° start by talking to your customer (not at your customer);
2° work together step by step and agree on what comes when;
3° begin small, communicate, test, optimise;
4° don’t underestimate the digital maturity of your audiences… they are often more advanced than you think;
5° make sure you know who the final customer really is;
6° establish what’s already in place and what the level of digital maturity is of the organisation; Forrester’s maturity chart is useful for this. Otherwise you’ll never deliver the right experience.
Forrester’s Customer Maturity Model
Most organisations are still in the ‘Attract-zone’, while you need to move to converting and creating advocates. A key insight: you hear all the time this process is not about technology, but for a big part it actually is! You can’t ask to drive fast and win races, when you don’t take extra good care of your engine.
Shazam it!
Kelly Tennison, Shazam’s Commercial Manager for Benelux and Turkey gave some insights in how one of the most popular apps of all time is moving forward. Shazam has been downloaded over one billion times in over 190 countries, and people use it over 20 million times each day.
Kelly Tennison tells Shazam changed a lot from being an SMS service for songs
Shazam TV is an exciting tool connecting your big screen to your mobile device. A great case is a recent campaign for Fiat in Turkey. When ‘İçerde’, a popular ‘Whodunit’ TV series arrived at its grand finale, you were invited to shazam it, to be taken to an immersive 360° environment. With Fiat prominently in view on the screen, you could rotate and find out who the killer was. Product placement at its very best!
A second innovation is Shazam’s visual recognition technology. In magazines, on packaging or any surface, you can now scan images, allowing to win something, launch a personal message, or receive extra information. For instance, when capturing 6 Disney characters with Shazam, you could win a trip to Disneyland. Other success stories include competitions for Caprice in Greece, Budweiser in the UK, and Peterman in Belgium.
In March 2017 Shazam launched the first scaled augmented reality, delivering AR experiences including 3D animations, product visualizations, mini-games and 360-degree videos.
It’s a bit like r2-d2 in Star Wars sharing Princess Leia’s ‘Help me Obi-Wan Kenobi’ message. First cool campaigns include AR for Fanta and a demo with singer Wyclef Jean.
And what is next for Shazam? With Geofence, it wants to harness the power of location beacons to make music recommendations… bridging the physical and digital worlds!
Wim Vermeulen: how brands win in the age of algorithms
Wim Vermeulen, Strategy and Innovation Director at Dentsu Aegis Network, came with a provocative eye opener. For the last ten years, we’ve been too focused in marketing on the short term. It has become the norm and marketing is driven by ratio.
70% of our campaigns are activations trying to convince our consumers with rational arguments. But if we want to safeguard our future growth, we need to feed Kahneman’s System 1, the autopilot, the brain’s fast, automatic, intuitive approach.
Research shows that a decade of ‘short-termism’ has made marketing less effective, brands are less powerful, and sales go down (see also a good article in AdNews). Brands have two choices, says Vermeulen. Either they try to play the algorithms, or they become so unique that consumers will choose them no matter what the algorithm is pushing.
Wim Vermeulen says we need more focus on brand building
Effectiveness seems to be optimised when 60% of the communications is devoted to brand building, and 40 % to sales activation. But we live in a reality that is very different. Only 30% of our efforts go to branding, and a whopping 70% to sales activation. Time to wake up and do the right thing!
Let’s conclude with a fun clip one of the speakers shared. Truth comes out from children’s mouth… we’re in a constant state of information overload! Get with the program! So, let’s hurry up and get cracking!
