The scientist: Observe primates in their natural habitat. Look for patterns. Intervene.
The average consumer: Huh? This is certainly a coincidence!
The chief digital brand officer: “Identify each audience (we can go more granularly than ever before based on behavioral segmentation). Gather all of your owned first-party data, rented second-party data (other people’s first-party data) and set up campaigns to leverage third-party data. Use it to build out target audiences and identify media receptivity insights on each. Identify the moments of media receptivity and create a cadence of media moments to drive action. Build a strategy around reaching each audience in receptive moments. Set up a basic plan to test out the number and kinds of media touches needed to get the results you’re looking for. Identify or develop the creative necessary to fuel each of these touch points for each audience. You can’t have individual conversations at scale without a robust script. Increasingly, each media touch point has its own creative format (think Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram) and requires expertise to author.”
Look, this whole business of audience first and account planning really lends itself to smarty pants type language, especially when it involves the digital/social graph. 90% of the torture we have to endure in this business is due to the fact that people would rather knead, pound and stretch a simple concept until it is nearly unrecognizable, than just speak in plain English.
The quote above is taken from an article in AdWeek about automating word of mouth (how’s that for a paradox?!). It correctly points out, that this method results in “recommendations” or “advise”; more “Salesmanship” than Advertising. For anybody reading this that is not ‘in’ Marketing, here’s how the new form of salesmanship works – they cheat. All of your credit card purchase data, loyalty card data, HHI, demographic info, location data, browsing history, cell phone numbers, email addresses, online purchase information, zip code, underwear size and God knows what else, is being chewed on by a supercomputer that eventually spits your consumer profile out the other end in the form of a bullseye for a particular “advisor” (aka: brand/advertiser/marketer). Using the example of a successful campaign employing these tactics as cited in the article, Neutrogena observed their customers and noticed that most of them purchase only 1 of the many Neutrogena products. So, they started packaging multiple products in display ads (the easiest type of ad to serve against very specific audiences) to include the product they already typically purchase with one that they don’t.
I know this sounds complicated but please, leave it to the “expert authors”.
In marketing language, AdWeek drools over it this way: “The brand worked with digital media firm Catalina to mine shopper loyalty-card data to identify brand consumers who also bought competing beauty products. To drive incremental purchases, creative units showcased two different Neutrogena offerings side by side. These ‘perfect pairings’ were established based on items consumers had shown an affinity for or already purchased. For example, makeup-removal wipes were paired with the brand’s cosmetics and served up to customers who already purchased Neutrogena cosmetics. Banner and video ads allowed users to interact with the pairings and get more information.”
I’m sure these are all swell folks. But KISS: Watch. Learn. Act. That’s all this is. Why the confusing narrative(s)? I believe it’s in order to intentionally over complicate things. Why we do that, I’ll leave to the psychoanalysts.
And in all of this, the notion of “Showmanship” is lost. Salesmanship, Google searches, any type of CRM, segmentation, isn’t worth a damn thing unless there is knowledge, awareness or loyalty to a Brand that’s been pre-established. To get that, we are talking about a totally different animal living at the top of the sales funnel. It involves big time spending and big time talent to create. All this other stuff is neato, but nothing new… and certainly not as ingenious as all of those abundantly choice words make it seem.
