What does brand success look like in a digital, social, mobile age?

Joel RubinsonPresident,Rubinson Partners, Inc.

joel@rubinsonpartners.com

Blog.joelrubinson.net

Twitter: @joelrubinson

Why are we asking this question?

“Though social and digital media are rapidly transforming marketing and new tools emerge daily, in most firms the organization of the function hasn't changed in 40 years. How should marketers revamp…to meet the new realities?”

The Ultimate Marketing Machine

by Marc de Swaan Arons, Frank van den Driest, Keith Weed

Source: Harvard Business Review

Publication Date: Jul 01, 2014. 

But why are the rules of brand-building ANY different?

Why have they changed?

Media has always been the way marketers connect brand ideas to consumers.

As media fast evolve to becoming digital, so do the rules of brand-building.

…so how can the picture of brand success remain the same?

Changing media changes everything

Effie Award submission:

“Instead of using traditional media, we wanted to leverage a variety of social and digital platforms…what we call moving from brand time to human time”

Old Spice

A new campaign tracker metric?

marketing research

So today my talk is really about…

marketing

Media

So what’s so different about media?

AOL “Buying at Speed” findings across 20+ product categories:

• We live in an always connected world where we browse daily…engaging in shopping behaviors without shopping purpose

• When we ARE shopping, up to 80% of purchases (depends on category) involve digital, lean-forward behaviors

A push-pull media world

McKinsey Consumer Decision Journey

AOL: Buying at speed: how technology empowers the always on shopper. Jan, 2014

Paid advertising possibilities are exploding

Brands are media, building their own audiences...the essence of always-on marketing

Time spent accessing the internet via mobile devices will surpass computers

We take our smart phones to bed, to the TV room, and to the store while we shop

We are starting to pay for things using our phone. Brand communication and transactions converging…and in the moment micro-surveys conducted right on the same device…

Mobile life creates consumer and shopper marketing convergence

Social…people are media too

The majority of digital advertising placement will be affected by behavioral data and predictive modeling algorithms, much of it as part of search and real time bidding systems

According to AOL, 90% of advertisers are now using programmatic

Advertising has become a naturally occurring conjoint experiment so campaigns can be optimized in-flight

The lift in advertising ROI from Math men is significant and repeatable

The rise of math-men in advertising

TV is becoming a multi-screen experience

• Over half of TV viewers multi-task

• Twitter ratings now part of how we judge popularity

In era of rapid change, evidence is more important than ever…

• The world is moving so fast, it creates a huge KNOWLEDGE VOID

• We researchers need to be in the evidence business, driving marketing change in a fact based way.

• Spend as much time understanding media behaviors as you do consumer attitudes and understand how they affect our brand preferences and the way we shop

The most important thing researchers can do in the coming year is to get serious about integrating digital

…Into your framework for brand success

…into your brand research data strategies

…into your research modalities

Move digital into your comfort zone

surveys

digital

Mobile research

Brand success metrics go beyond the brand tracker…

Old Spice Effie Award submission…

Step one: take the traditional brand KPI array

• Outcomes Sales, share

Equity

ClicksBrand

liftConversi

onsViews

attributessocial media

listening

Brand audience

Ad aware

P’views,

UVs

• Equity

• Marketing activity

Step one: and integrate digital and social behaviors

• Outcomes Sales, share

Equity

ClicksBrand

liftConversi

onsViews

attributessocial media

listening

Brand audience

Ad aware

P’views,

UVs

• Equity

• Marketing activity

Step two: look to social media

• Understand how people, rather than researchers, articulate attribute factors

• Assuming you find that the same positioning picture coming from social media as from attribute ratings, cut your tracker expense by eliminating continuous tracking of attributes.

Step three: bring in data you can’t get from a survey that has action value

• Certain online panel companies are using social log-in. That comes with something called “oauth permissions”.

• Now Social data on likes, interests, audience classifications etc. can be integrated into survey results, blending brand profiling and ad targeting

• Link ad serving to shopper data to measure advertising impact

Step four: understand the power of first party data

• What Starbucks marketing COULD do

• Match multiscreen clickstream behaviors to transactions

• Target advertising in Facebook, Twitter, and display to customer segments defined by a mix of digital behaviors and attitudes• Database of all ad results so Starbucks can use data

science to understand what works• Model first party data segments using 3rd party data, to

extend reach

• What Starbucks research COULD do

• Extend the mobile app to include an “in the moment” survey capability.

• Match survey results to clickstream and transaction behaviors to create better audiences

• Prove to the enterprise the value of first party data to encourage new marketing priorities and actions

Note: these ideas I am suggesting are not based on any conversations or work with Starbucks or any of their agencies

In 2015, think digital and do something big!

• Integrate digital into KPIs

• Shift half your money from long form trackers into digital and data science

• Add in data integration (frequent shopper data, facebook oauth permission)

• Redesign an upcoming segmentation study to be targetable

• Conduct “in the moment research” via smart phones

• Commit to creating and mining digital ad results data

To help you along…

• “Brandbuilding in a Digital, Social, and Mobile Age” available on Amazon.

• http://www.amazon.com/Brand-Building-Digital-Social-Mobile/dp/1492840424/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1411033633&sr=8-1&keywords=rubinson+brand-building

Parting words…

The marketing insights team mission must become how to deliver

more for less.  There is so much waste and so much research that under-delivers, if we can't achieve more for less, shame on us.“

Stan Sthanunathan, SVP CMI UnileverJanuary, 2014