Transformation is both fast and slow, says MediaCom Melbourne head of strategy Tyler Greer (main photo), but media agencies can help brands see the bigger picture…
Bankruptcy, according to Hemmingway, occurs slowly, then all at once. Brands could be forgiven for feeling the same way about the current demands of digital transformation. A task that has been appearing on the horizon as a distant swell, before quickly cresting and breaking thanks to the storm of new behaviour that was whipped up by covid. Today, companies are scrambling to undertake the changes they need both to thrive in the new ecosystem and to survive the changes that threaten to leave them behind.
Digital transformation is easy to misinterpret as a siloed approach to e-comm, or a better social media calendar, or installing salesforce. In truth these are simply elements of a much larger approach that sees every facet of a company speak to the other. Where media fits into this and the role it can play in helping brands better understand their customers is broad and evolving.
Life has changed. There’s a story twist that you likely saw coming. The pandemic has overturned our lives in ways big and small. Almost all of them are of profound importance to brands, as they try to better understand audiences and what their paths through consideration, purchase and advocacy look like.
Across the past 18 months, e-comm has presented itself as the real game changer. A slowly building trend has been supercharged by covid, growing in Australia (13.4% growth 2020-21). Importantly, it has been fuelled by grocery, a shopping experience that is more habitual and therefore more likely to become permanently integrated into our lives. But regardless of the product, the digital world offers brands a scenario in which every ad exposure is an opportunity to convert.
Playing that out, as we all are in real time, we can start to see the burden of transformation that this places on businesses. A brand with a product, hitherto only available in a bricks and mortar store like, say, a supermarket, is suddenly obliged to make this product readily available direct to consumer. Several reasons drive this: the need for ownership of first party data, because whomever owns the conversion points starts to own a decent idea of who their customers and potential consumers are; snagging a sale, especially for FMCG products, can be impulse based and therefore a lack of D2C is an opportunity missed; and, most importantly, consumers demand it.
This approach often requires a complete end-to-end re-engineering of how companies operate – from supply chain, to fulfillment, customer service, warehouse and storage, inventory management, returns, marketing and sales. It means adoption of new technology and marketing technology that can ensure data is secure, real, and properly managed, and that each division of the company is speaking to all the others. Headache? Oh yeah. That’s why upwards of three quarters of businesses are battling to make it work.
What role does media play in this? A significant one. The high digitisation of media means a high amount of consumer touchpoints and, therefore, a vast amount of data to be collected, understood, and made useful to the ways businesses understand their audiences both existing and yet-to-exist. By 2025 it is estimated there will be 75 billion (that’s billion with a B) connected devices globally. Each of these will likely have media and app touchpoints – social, health and fitness, mapping, music and audio, content, food ordering, ride sharing, search, flights. (and that’s just the front screen of my phone). In all of this, we drop data signals, most of it first party, that gives brands clearer ideas of who we are, where we are, what we want and why.
Personalisation is more than just a buzzword. As a media principle, it goes to the heart of the critical role this industry plays in the digital transformation of brands. We know that, when done right, studies will suggest it can reduce acquisition costs by as much as 50 percent, lift revenues by 5 to 15 percent, and increase the efficiency of marketing spend by 10 to 30 percent. But the understanding of audience it both relies on and offers is of extreme importance to businesses trying to plot their way to growth. Any talk of the critical connections being sought between AdTech and MarTech is underwritten by this fact – media offers a window to new customers and their journey to conversion.
There has never been a time in which media and its functions have been so deeply baked into the results and the operations of brands. The conversion gateways of every digital placement are collapsing the purchase funnel in ways that allow for a mere instant to pass between discovery and purchase. The proliferation of platforms that can carry advertising and collect audience data is expanding; and the population’s expectation of personalised experiences is increasing. Critically, attribution, whilst not yet perfect, is getting ever more sophisticated, moving far beyond the basic models of first/last touch.
Brands are not transforming so much as the world is transforming around them. Some are thriving in this new world whilst others are still running hard to catch up. Media’s requirements are proving no less transformational, as tech capabilities move to the become the centre of what agencies, publishers and platforms offer. At the agency I work for we have long recognised that media needs to view itself beyond its traditional media-buying functions. It is a service that can help brands and marketers better see the bigger picture, both the one that reflects the world as it is and one that offers a view into the world we are building. And in a transformative moment like the one we are in, nothing could be more valuable,
