WTF: What's The Future Of Marketing In The Age Of Assistance

WTF: What's The Future Of Marketing In The Age Of Assistance

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With the availability of product and service information everywhere and at any moment the consumer is empowered like never in history. Nowadays, consumers perceive themselves ahead of brands, which try to reach them over the old-fashioned ways. The Forbes article summarizes the talk “Marketing in the Age of Assistance” at the Advertising Week in New York between I. Thygesen (President Americas at Google) and K. Weed (CMO at Unilever), which gives great insights into the viewpoint of a Google representative and a representative of a cooperation regarding the current trends and opportunities in marketing.
Even though the balance of power shifted from the traditional means of advertising and branding to the empowerment of consumers, I. Thygesen believes that “Marketing’s best days are ahead of it”. He sees the challenges of the new generation of consumers, who life in an on-demand community that delivers products, services and experience immediately as an opportunity for those marketers, who master this disruption. Out of his perspective, marketers need to align all their activities and their marketing strategy with the consumers wants and needs – reaching full consumer centricity. Moreover, he perceives the digital era more as a gift for Marketing than a challenge.
Nowadays’ consumers are not only researching before a big purchase (e.g. car, kitchen), but also for small items. They expect to get not just relevant content but individually tailored information to assist them in their purchase decision. A research at Google revealed that consumers expect that brands know more and more about them to give them better experience and assistance. Concerning Apps, consumers will go in the future with the App on the market, which knows their location, preferences and offer availability – they will not want to enter the data themselves for receiving the service.
The Google representative I. Thygesen believes that three major trends will drive the age of assistance in marketing. Firstly, we will reach a point where every item can be researched. He mentioned the case of shower curtains in the US, where the mobile searches for this item were up 200% in the past years. This illustrates that every item can get a “high consideration” item in the future. Secondly, consumers have high expectations and they will leave you if you do not engage them when, where and how they want. Thirdly, consumers are very impatient and want immediate fulfillment of their demand. Today’s companies and brands should bring engagement, experience on mobile and real time to aim for instant gratification.

The Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) of Unilever K. Weed demonstrated in the talk how his company deals with the challenges in the age of assistance, presenting Unilvers’ 5C of consumer engagement.

1. Consumer Journey
At Unilever, they develop a unique customer journey for each brand across all channels. While planning the customer journey, they try to connect the dots between the search process, interested assets, “how-to” videos, ratings and reviews. In the end, they design the customer journey thanks to this input while focusing on the user friendliness.
 
2. Connect
Additionally, they try to learn how consumers engage with their mobile appearance through analytics software. The essential questions for them here are where consumers go, what they type in the search bar, what they find, what connects them in the end and what their next step is.
 
3. Content
Following the costumer centric marketing strategy, Unilever tries to build content based on needs for real customer value. A practical example is their entry adoption from “stain remover” to a more specific description “removing wine stains”, which resulted in 30% gains with only a 11% increase in budget.
 
4. Community
Unilever makes great usage of their community to drive engagement and boost brand resonance by delivering real customer value. They use data points to identify opportunities for pilots. For instance, they are able (with the help of Google) to predict the next hair trend with a 90% accuracy six months ahead. In terms of marketing activities this is an extremely valuable skill, because destination sites, how-to videos and the engagement of influencers can be prepared and perfectly timed.
 
5. Commerce
Furthermore, Unilever made Marketing one of the most strategic functions in their company. In their perspective, this should demonstrate the high value and the high return, which is currently delivered and will increasingly be achieved by this function.
Both speakers agreed in the end that the transformation, which is happening in the marketing world, is very challenging but marketers need to adapt to survive, or they even have not a chance to be successful in the future.

Gerard Galindo & Marcus Pernegger

References: 

 

Solis, B. (October 2017). WTF: What's The Future Of Marketing In The Age Of Assistance. Forbes retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/briansolis/2017/10/11/wtf-whats-the-future-of-marketing-in-the-age-of-assistance/#b380f9b4de6b