Investment in digital and new channels set to increase in 2020, despite measurement concerns.
How can marketers improve their advertising programs by putting their marketing in motion?
Like the cycle of water in our environment, when everything “works,” there is a steady stream of water that moves through our world, sustaining its health. And there are natural and man-made disruptions that can interrupt the flow and create challenges in that system, just as there are in the marketing world that can impact the creation and implementation of efficient advertising programs.
A significant proportion of marketers globally (46%) don’t have the right balance and synergies between digital and offline media, while three quarters (76%) still struggle with cross-channel measurement.
Let’s get moving!
The definition of media and advertising is broader than ever, such that the key to successful marketing is understanding and managing the flow of insights and information through all aspects of the business.
If you think of the marketing cycle as fluid and constantly in motion, then the most important thing to ensure is that you have a constant, steady stream of insights moving through that cycle. You must understand how things move smoothly through the system, the outside influences that impact its efficiency – positively and negatively – and how they need to be measured or adjusted to properly manage and maintain momentum.
Today, the role of marketers is evolving to be further entrenched in the business, touching all aspects of the “system” – from overall business and product strategy, brand and communications, innovation, experience, and ultimately sales. Our responsibility is to transform, engage and activate to create a holistic brand experience that delivers short and long-term growth with optimized return on investment. Otherwise, we risk the opportunity to create an impact on the sales and brand experience. Marketing in Motion encapsulates the perspectives of nearly 500 senior-level marketers from advertisers, media and creative agencies, and media companies to examine the opportunities, challenges, and trends facing the industry and provide practical implications for getting media right.
Transforming Strategy
Research enhances integration via collaboration.
Most marketers feel their organisations are creating integrated marketing programs and research is helping them collaborate between their various departments to find synergies and create opportunities. The first step in Getting Media Right is to align your overall organisation to ensure there is seamless delivery across the marketing organisation and identify opportunities for synergy and collaboration. For most marketers, that integration has taken place. However 25% of Advertisers indicate their organisations are still struggling to integrate marketing efforts. One factor impacting successful integration is failing to understand how to use research to navigate movement throughout the organisation. Research brings marketing departments together, but a few silos still exist so there remain opportunities for further improvement.
Case study: Winning the smart speaker race
When marketers look across media and non-media touchpoints, and consider how they are faring relative to competition, new strategic insights can be uncovered.
What really drives brand growth?
Competitive analysis
Top 10 impactful touchpoints for category Analyzing 27 touchpoints along the consumer journey across 8 smart speaker brands showed that the 10 most impactful touchpoints contribute 62% of the brand equity. Maximising those touchpoints is key to winning the smart speaker race.
Interestingly, besides TV ads, recommendations by friends and family are the second strongest brand driver. When people hear recommendations about Sonos their experience is around 100% more persuasive than Google. For BOSE it is still 50% better. Luckily for Amazon, not many people talk about these small brands as they have a low reach of memory.
1. TV ad 12.5%
2. Friends/Family 8.5%
3. Search engine visibility 6.0%
4. Product in-store 5.9%
5. Own product usage 5.6%
6. Seen others use 5.2%
7. Online video ad 5.1%
8. Usage of other products 4.7%
9. Tests/Reviews/News 4.3%
10. Product in online shop 4.2%
Many advertisers still struggle to create insights from data.
Even once you have all of the data you need, it still needs to be analysed in a way that uncovers useful insights. A large portion of Advertisers (47%) still aren’t confident in their ability to integrate multiple data sources and create meaningful insights. And both Advertisers and Media have seen an overall decrease in confidence over the last several years – nearly doubling their lack of confidence. This is especially true of marketers in North America, who show even less confidence, likely because they have access to a much larger data pool, creating a bigger task in sifting through and analysing data, especially if some of that data still exists in silos. To address this, marketers should re-evaluate the data available to determine its actual usefulness, and work with partners who can guide transforming complex data sets into actionable insights.
The issue of diversity and inclusion in advertising is prevalent within the industry.
Over 76% of marketers are confident they’re creating advertising that’s diverse and inclusive, but there are areas within that in which the industry is not fully aligned. Kantar’s AdReaction research* has also shown a disconnect between the confidence of marketers and how appropriately consumers see themselves portrayed in ads.
15% of Media still see advertising that includes racial stereotypes. While 17% of Agencies find content that features sexual identity stereotypes. This is a problem, as there’s greater scrutiny on the industry to create balanced and representative content
The #metoo movement has raised the profile of gender equality in advertising.
While marketers’ confidence that they’re appropriately handling gender issues is relatively high, there’s still room for improvement. 1 in 4 of Agencies and 1 in 5 of Media and Advertisers lack confidence that they’re creating ads that avoid gender stereotypes. However for Advertisers this is a slight improvement over last year, when 26% lacked confidence.
Further, 1 in 5 of Agencies and 1 in 6 of Advertisers don’t feel their organisations are creating gender-balanced content, indicating potential lost opportunity either by not reaching audiences they could be or by offending some consumers they are reaching.
Creating Balance
The challenge is not that marketers aren’t measuring ROI, but the rate at which they are doing so.
Nearly all marketers measure marketing performance, but to fluctuating degrees. Many are doing it only annually or less, likely because the data collection is painful and time-consuming. However, with a solid data engineering foundation and a more seamless connection, it becomes much easier to move to an always-on framework.
Marketers want balanced measurement, but what actually happens is skewed short-term. Improvements have been made; in 2018, only 47% of Advertisers measured a mix of short and long-term, which has since grown to 60%. But Media, especially, seem to be focused on quick proof that efforts are impacting sales, and overall we see a similar trend in North America, where marketers, are more heavily focused on short-term sales measurement.
Marketers need synergies to create a balanced flow across marketing efforts.
Being able to combine results of marketing campaigns from various channels and platforms as well as from brand engagements outside typical advertising tactics is crucial for not only understanding performance of marketing campaigns and efforts but also to inform future strategies. While a small portion of marketers – more so among Agencies and Media – are beginning to integrate ROI results, many more are still working on it or using results from these measurements separately, largely because results from MultiTouch Attribution (MTA) studies haven’t always aligned well with Marketing Mix Modeling (MMM). For many, MTA is used primarily for digital measurement while other activities are primarily measured using MMM. To create the synergies needed in an omnichannel world, marketers need to create unified measurement solutions.