Coauthored by Joseph Dressler and Marisa Fuller
The annual MediaPost Digiday Brand Summit took place in early December. Over 150 brands and technology providers came together at the Summit to share their marketing tactics, strategies and successes in a collaborative and open environment. Some of the key influential brands that were there included Pepsico, Denny’s, Direct General, Capital Brands, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Best Buy, Skullcandy, Wyndham Hotels, McKee Foods, Coke, Eileen Fisher, Discover, Organic Valley, and Travelzoo. What makes this conference so effective is the time away from the office, in a relaxed atmosphere with clients who want to collaborate and think about new ways that to make marketing more efficient.
Here are our top five takeaways from the event:
1. People Based Marketing is real….but no one is really sure how to do it.
A sea change has happened. Marketers are embracing a vision of targeting real people with known attributes as the cornerstone of their strategy. At the same time, t]a shared anxiety is: how does a Marketers get started? Do they need a DMP? What data should they share? How can they share it in a privacy-safe manner? How can a marketer validate that a vendor delivers on their promises? We are at the tipping point of People-based Marketing, but more education is needed to drive mass adoption.
2. It’s a Platform world.
Brands now understand that the entire lifecycle of a customer is key to their success and that they need to figure out how to be present for all stages of the lifecycle. Brands are becoming more adept at working with multiple technology vendors to get best of breed service or find the solution that is good at everything.
3. Internal Innovation at the client level is key.
Traditionally, a client had a few key marketers that worked in conjunction with their agency and the brand grew following this playbook. In the current, more complex, companies are in desperate need of innovation. That is why the industry sees trends of combining the CMO and COO role, and pairing CRM with Media as a must-have strategy, as well as a re-emphasis on the core of email marketing. Brands are seeking employees who can juggle media strategy, programmatic buying, and analytics.
4. Agency and Client Partnerships need to evolve.
The days of Mad Men are over. Clients are smarter and they are presented with a near limitless choice when it comes to where to place their media. Add to that equation the lowered cost of producing creative and it becomes clear that that clients need an agencies help for sage counsel. Clients need agencies to think about their business, profits, and evolution of the space. Buying cheaper media is not the long term play. Buying smarter, more impactful media will make the partnerships stronger in the long term.
5. Mobile is key.
More and more brands are mobile-first as they see their opens on mobile and engagement on mobile rates surpass desktop. Brands understand that their audience now looks at content on their phone before all other mediums. other devices are important, but the first point of contact is mobile. At LiveIntent, we see the same with ~67% of opens occurring on mobile devices. Brands should design emails and associated landing pages for mobile and then adapt them for desktop in order to make it easy for your customers to take action.
