iProspect snaps up Josh Dwiggins as new Global Chief Client Strategy Officer

iProspect announces the appointment of Josh Dwiggins to its global leadership team as Global Chief Client Strategy Officer.

Operating in the intersection of 3 Cs can help brands win

At the launch of the dentsu-e4m advertising report 2022 on Tuesday 1st February, iProspect’s Global President Amanda Morrissey shared the global perspective of convergence. Morrissey began her keynote address by highlighting that the actual convergence of media happened during the Covid-19 pandemic. “We have been talking about the convergence of media quite forever but all these years media was focussing on consumers' life, not in the technology world. The actual convergence happened during the pandemic when the long-pending fundamental change occurred”, Morrissey said.   While most media experts blame it on a change in consumers’ behaviour during the pandemic, Morrissey says otherwise. According to her, “It is not just the changing consumers’ behaviour because their behaviour has been changing earlier as well. It is actually a change in consumers’ conscience; the way they think about their problems and the lens through which they see the world has fundamentally changed. And this will continue to change their decisions moving forward.”   She noted that consumers' are now experiencing new ways of interaction with brands, new ways of entertainment, they are learning how media operates and how it gets delivered and that is where the lines of fundamentals are blurring.    “We can’t think of offline and online journeys separately because they are intertwined,” says Morrissey adding that the digital and virtual worlds are blurring and sometimes they are replacing the physical world as they all are interlinked. The pace of this change is not slowing down.   Morrissey laid emphasis on the 3 Cs for convergence-culture, content, and commerce. Explaining the success formula for the advertising sector, she noted, “Opportunity for growth lies in the intersection of culture, content and commerce, all powered by data. Brands will win in this world of convergence if they operate on intersection of culture, content and commerce and focus on delivering today and building a better tomorrow simultaneously”.   “We need to think about tomorrow, today, Morrissey said, adding that the change in fundamentals is being witnessed all across the world”, she added.   Citing the example of the UK, where she resides, Morrissey said that doorstep delivery of items grew by 120 percent in the pandemic which created huge opportunities for brands that were into d2C segment and those with physical shops to incur losses in the tune of 22 percent. She said that the US is expecting up to 18-45 percent growth in various categories in the online commerce segment. She also highlighted how the Chinese purchased over 40 percent of the goods online even before the pandemic, compared to 22 percent in the UK and 18 percent in the US.   “The behaviour of Chinese consumers is not due to technology but their openness to brace new things and willingness to shop online. The markets adopted technology according to the consumers' need, Morrissey further added.   Citing a quote by Cedric Charbit, CEO of Balenciaga-“We need to set ourselves up to anticipate the change, rather than process the change when its too late”, Morrissey advises marketers to be ahead of consumers and not respond to their needs.   She also gave an outline of changes likely to appear in the future such as everything will be shoppable, all forms of brand conversations be it video or text or anything, will allow shopping and contactless payment.   “Consumers' expectations are super high. They are very demanding now. The question is how brands are readying themselves to treat their consumers meeting their expectations. Apart from brand building, marketers will have to provide seamless experiences and interaction points to their consumers. Every media should be like performance media,” Morrissey explained. She said that her company is offering a series of tools to brands to keep a track of consumers interactions.   Talking about Metaverse and NFTs, Morrissey says innovations of the virtual world have started blurring lines with the physical world and the brands should be ready to leverage these technologies. “We are planning an entire ecosystem for brands that operate in the intersection of physical, digital, and virtual world to offer a broad range of immersive experiences. We are also working on how to add haptic technology in the virtual world so that users can touch and feel in the virtual world and bring them into the real-life world. We are also working on NFTs for clients,” Morrissey told the audience explaining how iProspect was blending virtual and physical worlds for the brands which want to remain ahead in the race.   Morrissey further added that the consumers will take decisions based on their gut feelings and hence brands should substantiate every claim that they make about any product, they have to have a sustainable strategy. “People focus on healthcare and wellness. Self-care brands will be expected their products of impact on consumers' lives, health monitoring, make more experiences able to make better choices. Predict and add value”, she said.   Adding further, Morrissey noted that ethics is at the heart of decision making and that brands need to think about the environment, ethical growth of business because consumers can see everything that brands do, including the supply chain.      Find the article originally published here: http://ow.ly/4jIM50HS072 Content 0

Gamified Commerce

Media Trends 2022

The Beginning of A New Era

The global demand for privacy is one of the most consequential consumer dynamics at play today.   Across the globe, 91% of consumers are concerned about the amount of data that companies can collect about them, [i] and 42% have taken steps to reduce the amount of data they share online.[ii]   In light of this desire for increased privacy, most technology platforms have recently implemented or announced restrictions around data collection and user tracking through their web browsers and operating systems.   For brands and the advertising industry, the magnitude of this evolution is massive.   On the short term, it is undoubtedly a source of conundrums for many marketers and publishers. Processes, ways of workings, legal compliance efforts, technology stacks, customer data strategies – even business models – must be reviewed and rethought to limit business disruption.   Yet, in the long term, it offers a unique opportunity to (re)build trust between brands and consumers around the data issue. Success will hinge on increasing efforts to educate audiences (67% of consumers declare they have little to no understanding about how their data is being used[iii]) and defining a right value exchange that works for all (only 15% of consumers feel they are getting a good value from granting access to their data[iv]).   In the midst of sensationalist headlines, technical solutions still being worked out, and a lack of shared standards to get behind, it is normal for marketers to feel lost and nervous. In a recent marketer survey we conducted, 60% of respondents declared they are not familiar with tracking prevention or are unsure about the consequences on their business, showing that this fast-changing landscape is not fully understood yet.[v]   In this new dentsu definitive guide for global marketers, The Cookieless World, we rise above unique market perspectives and cut through the ambient noise to help you focus on what you should know today and investigate tomorrow to be ready in 2023, when the world will become cookieless.   For more, download the full report today: http://ow.ly/KDTK50FKTaJ    [i] Microsoft Advertising in partnership with iProspect, 2020 Consumer Privacy and Brand Trust Survey, Dec 2019 – Mar 2020, as featured in the report In Brands We Trust, published in April 2020   [ii] Dentsu, Decoding Data Dynamics: Digital Society Index 2020, Global survey of 32,000 respondents   [iii] MMicrosoft Advertising in partnership with iProspect, 2020 Consumer Privacy and Brand Trust Survey, Dec 2019 – Mar 2020, as featured in the report In Brands We Trust, published in April 2020   [iv] Microsoft Advertising in partnership with iProspect, 2020 Consumer Privacy and Brand Trust Survey, Dec 2019 – Mar 2020, as featured in the report In Brands We Trust, published in April 2020   [v] iProspect, iProspect 2020 Global Client Survey, November 2020, as featured in Future Focus 2021: Brands Accelerated, published in April 2021 0

Making the most of Attention by Aligning UX with Consumer Intent.

This article is authored by Chris Philp, VP, Lead, SEO and Karen Kysar, Senior Director CX Strategy.    Advertising campaigns are not the only ways for brands to get consumers’ attention. Guiding them when they search for information, helping them to learn more about a topic, and assisting them in accomplishing what they want are powerful means for brands to capture their interest and to influence what happens next.   To design valuable, consumer-centric experiences that will be noticed by their audiences, marketers should focus on three priorities: correctly interpreting intent, solving users’ problems and delivering on expectations.   Understand intent Correctly interpreting intent is not just about observing consumers’ search activities and the various tasks they perform throughout the day, but also about understanding their reasons and the context around them. First-party data is a good place to start. For instance, website analytics inform about the kind of audiences you attract, CRM data show who buys your products, and customer support data cast light on consumers’ struggles. To complement these data sources, ad hoc surveys can capture consumers’ attitudes, motivations and triggers. For example, running a large-scale quantitative survey of first-time moms helps understand what their everyday looks like, where they are seeking advice, and how they handle caregiving issues. To give voice to that data, small-scale user studies enable you to hear directly from first-time moms (e.g., the types of searches they perform). As privacy regulations give consumers more control about how their data is used, we anticipate that consumer surveys will see renewed interest from brands. By encompassing what audiences express and how they interact with your brand, this approach makes it possible to truly know audiences as people. You can then develop actionable portraits rooted in data which help identify areas where your brand is well positioned to win with content and develop content roadmaps that truly address your audience needs.   Solve a problem To help consumers solve a problem, start with a shift in focus from the brand to the consumer. It is about adapting the brand response to the consumer moment, and recognising that all these moments are not necessarily about purchasing a product. For instance, Google has identified four pivotal micro-moments: I want to know, I want to go, I want to do, I want to buy. When first-time moms look to soothe their crying infants, they will often turn to search engines. The keywords they use carry a lot of intent and emotion. A search for “swaddle” may be about looking for a product, while a search for “swaddling” may be about looking for information on whether it is safe. In both cases, these keywords are proxies for the underlying problem: how to get a baby to sleep through the night. In the search engine result pages, results for the “swaddle” query are centred around products – which only partially addresses the bigger problem at play – and there is a lot of advertising competition. Conversely, the query “how to get a baby to sleep through the night” returns the “Interesting finds” component, which provides users the option to land on a content page. For brands, it is an opportunity to demonstrate they understand people’s intent and context, and to provide a valuable solution rather than focusing solely on the product and transaction. From telecom companies developing guides around improving Wi-Fi reception to water treatment companies educating consumers about contamination of water, this approach using value as the key factor to capture attention is applicable across all industries. By understanding intent and assessing the search engine results page and content types delivered, brands can much better assess not only the problem, but the best suited format for delivery, too - whether that is a video, an article, an image or other.   Deliver on expectations Delivering on expectations means ensuring that you are not only showing up when people search, but also that they can convert easily once they land on your website. This requires acting simultaneously in two dimensions: the user experience (UX) and the technical side. There is an important difference between a website that looks clean and a website that is truly user friendly. Analytics can help you detect the most problematic bottlenecks of your website. Then, user testing can help you understand the various reasons behind these bottlenecks, such as a frustrating product catalogue organisation, or an impractical checkout. These insights can help you address the most urgent pain points through A/B testing, and ultimately improve your UX. From a technical standpoint, there is a host of aspects to consider, starting with site speed. Site speed is fundamental in user experience, and has a strong influence on bounce rate and conversions. Marketers should regularly monitor their site speed, using online tools such as Google PageSpeed Insights. Additionally, UX plays an increasingly important role in search engine rankings. From May 2021, page experience signals (e.g., mobile friendliness) will be included in Google Search ranking. Simply put, UX is not only important for making the most of the attention of people who reach your website, but it also conditions your ability to get the attention of additional users through search results!     As one marketer out of two (48%) declares that not being consistent across every element of the consumer experience is a main challenge for long-term trust in their brand (iProspect 2020 Global Client Survey), strategic use of content presents a true opportunity to bring the experience together - from attention to transaction - by making the most of consumer intent and context through value.     This article is excerpted from the report Future Focus 2021: Brands Accelerated. Download it now for key insights on how brands can make the most of brand and performance to accelerate their growth. 0