Last Wednesday, March 29, we had the pleasure of running our first event of 2017 for our clients. Google very kindly hosted the event in their office and we spent the morning talking about the key trends, challenges and solutions for our clients in the digital economy. A summary of the key highlights and takeaways are provided in this post below:
Philippe Seignol: Overview
Philippe, the Head of Digital for iProspect & AMNET for LATAM, kick started the session by providing his thoughts on what the digital economy meant and why we needed to be ready to think and act more differently than ever before. In particular, he talked about the differences with the consumer today, and due to the fact that they are infinitely more connected, brands can no longer rely on what has been successful in the past, but evolve quickly to ensure success in the future. A key example from Philippe was the change in content consumption and due to the rise in video streaming and content platforms such as Netflix, the media landscape was due to change dramatically in the near future.
Jake Hewlett (iProspect Colombia Chief Client Officer) & Carlos Estrada (iProspect Chief Operating Officer): The Digital Economy, The Rules Have Changed
Jake and Carlos spoke of the core trends and factors that are driving the digital economy, the new rules that brands must adhere to with their consumers and how they can set about the challenge of driving growth in today´s reality. The key takeaways were as follows:
Whilst it´s easy to get caught up in the futuristic trends and predictions such as AI, Mixed Reality, 5G and self-driving cars, it´s important to really grasp the opportunities & challenges brands are faced with today, and focus on delivering the best possible experience for your customers now. Yes, it´s important to prepare for the future, but not at the expense of delivering excellence for your consumers today.
Colombia´s digital economy is growing at a rate, with 54% digital investment growth in the last 3 years, 113% in mobile and now representing 17% of total advertising investment in the market.
Mobile is a key driver of the digital economy as we now have a customer more connected, informed and empowered than ever before.
As a result, iProspect believe that ´Attention´ is one of the most valuable currencies of the digital economy today – as we only have the capacity for 8 seconds of attention on average today!
Therefore, the logic of traditional advertising no longer applies and we must play by the new rules of the consumers of today´s economy. These are as follows:
- Act authentically: authenticity is a core value consumers want from brands today
- Personalization: 71% of consumers today prefer personalized communications. Creating bespoke experiences is a must today.
- Privacy: whilst they want a bespoke experience they expect their own data to be treated totally confidentially and with complete responsibility on behalf of the brands.
- Simplicity: All the above must be delivered seamlessly or you won´t meet the customer expectations.
Carlos then talked about 7 core focus areas for brands today to ensure growth in the digital economy:
- Know what state your business is in. Before knowing what, you may need to change you have to be 100% clear on the situation of your business today, your people, your technology, your consumer and your product. Don´t start changing until this is completely clear.
- The Long & Short of It: Move towards and agile set up that allows you to be flexible to fast moving changes in the industry, but ensure you always have your brands longer term objectives as your marker.
- Specialize & Integrate: Brands can´t specialize everywhere, and nor is it efficient for them to do so. Choose where you must specialize and where you need integrators in your business.
- Invest: Once you are clear on the points above, choose where to invest. Undoubtedly, with the opportunities within data and marketing technology, businesses will need to invest but only once you are clear on the other 3 points will you be able to invest correctly.
- Encourage testing & learning as a core part of your organization and learn to accept and develop from failure rather than punish it.
- Put marketing at the center of your organization. Marketing is now far more than just media; it is the heartbeat (or has the potential to be) of your business.
- Be interesting: Don´t market for the sake of it. Market with content you know is going to be of interest to your audience.
Fernando Reyes, COO of AMNET Colombia: The programmatic landscape
Fernando talked us about the emerging market of programmatic here in Colombia. Whilst it is undoubtedly a vital area of marketing already within Europe & the US, it is still only starting to take off this market. That presents a huge opportunity for early adopters given that within Dentsu Aegis we are already very clear on what factors are most likely to drive results within programmatic.
Additionally, Fernando talked about how programmatic should really be thought of as far more than just display media, as through the Double Click Bid Manager platform as well as the other leading Demand Side Platforms (DSPs) in the market, almost all ´traditional´ media is now available to be bought programmatically, including Radio, OOH and TV.
Finally, he stressed the importance of data when it comes to driving the best possible performance and that through a combination of 1st party and rich 3rd party data sources, we are able to model and target an audience in a highly relevant way for your brand.
Overall the morning was incredibly engaging and thank you to all our clients who attended and participated in the mornings´ discussion. We certainly are very excited about the opportunities the digital economy presents but we understand that challenges it can present for brands too. We are here to help our clients navigate that challenge every step of the way in order to help them deliver real business performance.
