Brands are finding it increasingly difficult to communicate with consumers who are being overwhelmed by the amount of noise they are continually exposed to through both online and offline channels. (TNS 2012) Digital Life study carried out by TNS reveals that 61% of the UK population do not want to be engaged by brands via social media (2012). The popularity of different types of communication is increasing but do consumers approve of this?
The real question is, have consumer attitudes developed at the same pace as technology? From a recent survey in 2012 conducted by IAB, research shows that people are very accepting of relevant advertising- 55% agreed that they would rather see advertising that is relevant to their interests (IAB 2012). Central to the concept of advertising will be medias ability to derive sufficient understanding and meaning from the rich streams of signals and data that consumers give out, and not just from their online habits, but also from their behaviours in the real world.
At a Google brand reimagined conference, Eileen Naughton gave the staggering statistic that the world checks its mobile phones more than 100 billion times every single day. Naughton stated ‘mobile isn’t just a technology, mobile is a human behaviour’. She elaborated in how much people’s lives have changed over the last 10-15 years, and how much technology has radically changed the way people communicate. Therefore Google seeks to understand and interpret human behaviours like no other brand on earth. So, Google seeks to understand people, through understanding what it is people do: what they search for, what they watch; what they browse, where they are. Naughton expressed this as ‘understanding what people do is the best way to understand who people really are’. In other words, identity is expressed not through our words, but through our actions.
Marketing to consumer needs has always provided a direct route to relevance & marketers need to prioritise which channels are right to reach specific individuals. The key to campaign success lies in knowing when and where to connect with each consumer, and the foundation for making those decisions is 360-degree, accurate data (Acxiom 2011).
However there are many technologies that help media react better to the need in relevance that will only further develop in the near future and become the norm. “This highlights how the gap between technology, marketing and sales is closing. This gap from inspiration to purchase is closing at such a rapid rate, with so many different methods of engagement and so many points of purchase, that no longer can one media tell a story” (Steinbichler 2011). Technology has given consumers the ability to control the relationship between brand and individual. As a consumer’s digital footprint becomes larger and more connected, the potential to move to a new level of service that places a consumer first rather than the services they consume is becoming apparent. “The service people use, the content consumed, the adverts seen are all provided on the basis of some prediction as to what people might be trying to achieve based on their past behaviours. This does not take into account the rich, broad context that accompanies people in whatever they are doing, but is a broad and basic prediction" as Coplin, chief envisioning officer at Microsoft describes.
A case study that demonstrated how you can create a disproportionately large effect from trying something different; in this case, not choosing a traditional media route. Ukonwa Ojo talked about how her brand, Durex, used Youtube to great effect. Her team had identified that technology was getting in the way of sex. In fact they found that people are now having 20% less sex than in 2000, due to mobile phones. But they turned this insight on its head: if technology was the cause, they could make technology part of the solution. Durex made a film alerting people to the fact that there was now a way their mobile phone could improve their sex lives, by turning it off (See below for video campaign). One of the points Ojo made was that Durex went back to trying to understand human behaviour and she encouraged to replace ‘consumer insights’ with ‘human insights’. Stated “to judge work from a human perspective not just a marketing perspective.” (Marketing magazine 2015) Now more than ever, brands must understand when and where it’s appropriate to join the conversation with consumers and when they do, to make those communications as relevant, consistent and delightful as possible (Acxiom 2011).