By Susan Perolls, Director, Loudmouth PR
This month’s MWLive conference and Insights Show gathered together spokespeople from across the marketing industry to discuss the topics that are challenging marketers today.
As you might expect from the name, data was at the heart of the discussions, but the shift was towards using it to improve consumer experience, particularly in the wake of increased automation.
Second Screening – Distracting or Desirable?
One of the most innovative pieces of research came from Glenn Gowan, Head of Audience at ITV, who had commissioned, NeuroInsight a neuroscience-based marketing research company, for a first-of-its-kind research project. This was to look into second screening and the impact programming apps can have on viewers during live TV viewing.
The research followed small groups of viewers monitored in a natural living room setting, watching Britain’s Got Talent (BGT) live. The objective was to measure audience engagement with the TV show and, more specifically, with the advertising around the programme when they interacted with the BGT app at the same time as watching the show live.
Research participants wore a visor and an electrode cap, which allowed their electrical brain activity to be captured through the sensors on the scalp. The activity was tracked during the course of the programme and brain activity was monitored and recorded in sync with what they were watching.
The results showed that using the BGT app increased viewers’ enjoyment of the programme by 16%. Interestingly, by being more engaged with the programme, they became 15% more receptive to ads and 23% more receptive to the brand idents during each commercial break. Viewers’ commitment to the programme increased the more time they spent on the app, resulting in up to 31% more interest in ads and idents than those not participating in the app experience.
For ITV, the knowledge that they are complementing, rather than distracting from, audience experience is allowing them to invest in, and deliver more apps. While they still use traditional tracking methods such as BARB and information from their ITV Hub service, the NeuroInsight data has provided deeper insight into viewers’ engagement with ads and a strong arsenal for courting ad investment.
The Power of Personalistion
Moving from research data to communications, Elliott Clayton, Vice President, Media UK, Conversant Media voiced what was a common theme throughout many of the discussions – how to personalise connections with consumers in a world of automation.
Clayton asked the audience to think about personal media messages in the context of meeting real people. You will always remember charismatic people as a result of some small but personal touch that resonates with you, even if you haven’t seen them for a while, he said. In an ideal world, that’s what personal media messages should do.
Easier said than done. According to Clayton, 75% of all business say personalised communication is essential to their future, yet only 12% are truly equipped for it. The challenge is bringing together the different data streams from across channels and devices –CRM, social, display, historical purchase data – and connecting PII to non-PII data.
Referencing Gartner’s 2016 Hype Cycle for Digital Marketing and Advertising, Clayton talked about the increase in personalisation and ‘personification’ technology profiles, and how activating these is the key to maintaining an ongoing personal connection with consumers across all channels and devices.
The consolidation of marketing and ad tech is set to continue and recent acquisitions show large global businesses reaching out to this new market, Clayton explained, with Verizon buying AOL to target person-first media at scale, bringing media and mobile together. Likewise, Dentsu Aegis’s acquisition of Merkle will allow the media company to create a single customer view, which is essential to creating a personalised profile. Whether that leads to what Clayton calls the content personalisation Holy Grail – media messages with personality and charisma – only time will tell.
Personalisation is also at the heart of communications for TwentyCi who specialise in ‘life event’ contextual marketing. Planning Director, Danny Crowe, explained how recognising behaviour changes that come as a result of life trigger events – e.g. moving home, having a baby, retirement – allows you to hit the consumer with communications that are absolutely appropriate to what’s happening in their life at that particular time.
TwentyCi call this “marketing in the moment”, but what does it mean in reality? Crowe gave an example of a wine seller, who, noticing a customer’s buying pattern has slowed down, may be tempted to bombard them with “Buy Now” offers. If the vendor knew that their customer was actually winding down their wine collection because they were in the process of moving home, they could offer a much more relevant and memorable piece of communication. Sending them a bottle of wine at the right time to say “Congratulations” will be appreciated, and far more likely to open up the door to stocking the wine cellar in their new home.
Tablet to Tablet in 5000 Years
One of the most entertaining sessions came from, Paul Walsh, CEO of Infinity, a call tracking company that allows companies to track which phone calls are coming directly from their website. Walsh gave a whistle-stop tour of communication across the ages, from writing on clay tablets 5000 years ago, to the start of mass communications with the advent of the Gutenberg press in the mid-fifteenth century, to the age of the mobile phone, and most recently, the rise of the messaging app.
Walsh provided a bizarre look into a future dominated by VR, which he said would be worth $40 billion by 2020. By 2030, he suggested most us all will be having some kind of VR sex and – quoting futurologist, Dr. Ian Pearson’s theory – by 2050 we may all be having sex with robots. Showing the clip from The Matrix where Neo discovers that he is part of a sophisticated virtual reality, Walsh referred the audience to entrepreneur Elon Musk’s comments that there’s only a one in a billion chance that we’re not living within a simulation created by a more advanced civilisation.
Coming back down to (perceived) reality, the key takeaway from Walsh’s session was that whether marketers are preparing for AR, VR or simply trying to reach their customers in the most effective way today, they need to be omni-channel ready, which means understanding how their consumers want to communicate and where they will be most receptive to information.