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Five CES 2015 takeaways for disruptive marketers

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By Seb Joseph, News editor

January 9, 2015 | 8 min read

Marketers at this year’s CES were united in their admission that the internet-of-things rush has not always prioritised the customer. Google, McDonald’s, Disney, Conde Nast and Fox shared five disruptive ways brands can harness technology to put the customer front and centre of cross-platform plans and personalise content at scale.

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Content is king but distribution is queen and she wears the pants

Having great content but not the means to spray it out to consumers renders it useless. That was the belief shared by Google, McDonald’s, Disney, Conde Nast and Fox on the Brand Matters panel yesterday (8 January), who urged their peers to be more sophisticated when using technology to balance media budgets with reach. Disney’s executive vice president and chief financial officer Jay Rasulo said: "If you can’t get your product distributed in ways that consumers want to consume that product then you better think long and hard about putting that investment into it in the first place."

Bob Saueberg, president of Conde Nast, shared the belief, adding that as a publisher it is focused on owning "unique models", particularly in e-commerce and video to push its brands into new channels for consumers and advertisers. "Most people don’t realise that digital is now bigger than our print business," he said. "We’re using every tool we have to fight for the consumer’s attention. When we do that well all the monetisation models will come and the consumer will pay for the content. We need to have all the intellect and tools in place to give advertisers everything they need [when that happens].

Whether it’s buying expensive sports rights or creating a campaign for tens of millions, advertisers now have the power to turn these broadcast products into personal experiences through targeting technology and mobile media. It is why Rasulo teased delegates at the panel "not to be surprised" if future Disney acquisitions were in the distribution space, especially now that the business feels "pretty good" about the breadth of content it has between its Disney, Marvel and LucasFilm brands.

Mobile is a behaviour not a device

It’s been the year of mobile marketing every year since the arrival of the iPhone in 2007 but Google believes 2015 will be the time when the discipline finally tips into the mainstream. Advertisers and media owners are getting closer to demonstrating the true value of mobile in the customer journey, buoyed by the emergence of sturdier cross-platform models. Margo Georgiadis, president of Google’s Americas business, "hopes" the advancements give marketers the impetus to treat mobile "like a behaviour" and "not a device".

She added: "You need to find that distribution [outlet] for amazing content but the ability, especially with the advent of mobile, to begin to understand the consumers’ context is what people expect. It’s about being willing to see that opportunity where technology can make things ‘automagical’, helping consumers and publishers to make decisions."

Google, like rival Facebook, is selling this proposition to advertisers as personalisation at scale, blending the mobile experience with the physical experience. Disney’s Rasulo urged brands to see themselves as both "storyteller" and "technology player" in the rush to balance global versus local activations and warned "without the use of technology there’s no human way to create things and dilute that form of media".

Personalisation versus globalisation is not an "either or" question

In a marketing ecosystem defined by granularity and customisation, marketers are at odds as to whether to treat personalisation and globalisation as complementary or opposing forces. It is not a question of "either or", according to Disney’s Rasulo, and if brands "can’t propagate content in a scalable way that’s meaningful" then they will fall by the wayside.

McDonald’s chief marketing officer Debbie Wahl backed the outlook and said the restaurant wants to have its "Big Mac and eat it" when it comes to "thinking big and acting small". She added those are the "bets" the company is looking for through its revamped marketing strategy, bolstering its ability to create content that’s relevant to go out on a large scale.

Social media is key to this goal, which was handed a boost recently when a campaign that served 32 million NFL tweeters with targeted content sparked a 30 per cent "uplift" in engagement – the highest increase it has seen. Wahl added: "The trick is how can we create more of these [experiences]. Sports stands out as an opportunity to do this in real-time. A big powerful idea that can be contextually relevant is always better than relentless activity".

It’s not about IT anymore but how technology can monetise 'serendipitous moments'

For many years, technology firms and content owners were at war. Now the landscape has changed drastically to unite the two. While it is an uneasy alliance, Fox president and chief operating officer Randy Freer said it was key to the business becoming more customer-focused after years of operating at a "wholesale" business-to-business level.

"There are so many people who love 26 years of the Simpsons but we don’t have that one-on-one relationship yet," he said. "We’re going to go out there and build and develop those relationships.

"It’s not about IT anymore but rather how technology externally gets products to consumers and also helps you internally have as much transparency so that you can see as much information as possible and ultimately make decisions based on that information in a quick and intelligent way."

But this shift can be slowed by a relentless pursuit of the right time and right message through data, the panellists warned, which advertisers will soon "realise that they can’t go all the way in there". Google’s Georgiadis said the business saw advertisers extract real value from their media plans when they are creative.

"The value comes when [advertisers and publishers] take different types of unstructured data that you wouldn’t have expected and are then proactive. There’s a renaissance of creativity," she added.

Stop pushing commercial interruption. It’s not good for business.

As big as they are, many of the biggest advertisers and publishers now think small. But while technology has succeeded in elevating the value of marketing, it has yet to shake many advertisers from what Fox’s Freer dubbed "commercial interruption". He said advertising products "haven’t really changed in 50 years" because "commercial interruption", whereby people are hit with content that may not interest them, was still rife.

"We know that consumers don’t like it and if they have an alternative then they’re going to watch it," he said. "We’re seeing that trend go but [the industry] keeps focusing on 'lets put another commercial interruption in'. We have to work with brands like McDonald’s to figure out what is the new advertising product and how to get back to thinking about the customer or else we’re feeding them what they don’t want and that can get in the way of great products."

McDonald’s Wahl said the key to breaking free from traditional advertising was to make more marketers see the value in real-time needs addressing rather than real-time marketing.

She added: "With all of that data now available we see an opportunity to transform into a more human, frictionless, convenient and fun experience. It’s about understanding how do you use things that can get people to immediately engage with something that is so relevant and useful that it also brings value to them."

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