The DTC algorithm could be the end of serendipitous discovery
I recently stopped following most of my friends and acquaintances on Instagram, and I started following people who inspire me — namely, yogis. As a result, I’ve been discovering lots of new brands. One of those brands is Birddogs shorts. When I was scrolling on Instagram and discovered these shorts, I bought a pair. It took seconds.
Excited that I had discovered this new brand, I quickly told a bunch of people about my find. Some knew about them, but many more didn’t. I felt good; I had a new badge brand, something I used to show the world my interests and priorities. I also discovered and bought Bombas socks, Quip toothbrushes, and American Giant sweatshirts.
But the truth is, I didn’t discover those brands, they discovered me.
All of these companies use predictive analytics and data analysis to identify people who are likely to be in-market for their products, even before the consumer realizes they’re in-market (like my experience with Birddogs). We are in an era marked by the death of discovery. It’s really sad, and also very exciting.
Remember when you discovered brands by walking down the street and stumbling on a store that sold the most unique shirts you’d ever seen? The proprietor was a fashion designer who just opened a store and she was striking out on her own. That sort of discovery still happens, but not as often as it used to. We just don’t have to discover brands that way anymore. Likewise, brands don’t have to rely on that kind of discovery. We have Etsy to introduce us to our own curated list of unique brands, and those unique brands have tools to discover us.
Clients come to agencies looking for help understanding and shaping the customer journey. They want to understand the best ways to influence consumers’ behavior as they shop and move from brand discovery all the way to purchase.
One of the reasons communications planning became so popular and important is because the customer journey became so complex. But, when it comes to most direct-to-consumer categories, what used to take months now takes minutes. What used to involve several channels and experiences now involves only a couple of channels (e.g., Instagram and Amazon). Now we live in a world driven by social commerce.
This new era has significant consequences for agencies. In a world where the channel is real estate (Instagram is the best mall in the world outside China), the media is the POS (when you can shop directly from an ad, the ad becomes the point of sale), and the journey has collapsed, what is the role of the media planner? If discovery is better managed through an algorithm, are we now data planners and data procurers?
This shift also has social consequences. Consumers like using brands as badges. We use brands to position ourselves in society and to make us feel important. One of the reasons we do this is so we can say we “discovered” brand X. But that’s no longer true. We didn’t discover anything. Will this impact our overall relationship with brands, making it less deep and defining? Or perhaps the opposite will be true. It’s too soon to know with certainty.
But one thing I do know: Serendipitous discovery is no more. We are now in the era of algorithmic discovery, and we are just beginning to understand the impact on society, on culture, and on commerce.
Barry Lowenthal is chief executive officer of The Media Kitchen