“Leading Marketers Share Their Vision” What Vision?
After wrapping up the “Consumer Insights: Leading Marketers Share Their Vision” session on Wednesday, I decided that my lunch at the Utah Hotel was probably more enlightening than this panel.
The premise of the session, as put forth by moderator Kevin Delaney of The Wall Street Journal, was that consumers are acting differently than they used to, so how do we as marketers reach them? Read: the digital lives of consumers is changing the way they behave and interact with media and therefore creating a challenge for marketers.
On panel to tackle this question were Mel Clements, Advertising and Digital Manager of Nike Basketball, Daina Middleton, Global Advertising and Interactive Marketing Director for HP, Mark Fogelberg ANA Director of Communications and Content, and Zdenek Kratky, Brand Manager of Consumer Lifestyle for Philips DAP.
Now, with a premise like “consumers are acting differently, how do we reach them” one might anticipate a rousing dialogue of innovative and forward-thinking approaches to reaching this new breed of consumer, or discussion on this the new breed of consumer—alas, no such dialogue occurred. The resounding theme of this panel was decidedly that traditional marketing methods work, irrespective of the changing consumer climate. There was, however, a lot of buzzspeak thrown around about the need to “engage the consumer,” and to listen and to “join the conversation.” But when questioned directly about efforts to do so, the replies were, at best, vague and sloganized with little specifics or “vision.”
“Integration is not about creating a bunch of different touchpoints and shouting at the consumer, its about continuing a conversation in an appropriate place and in an appropriate way,” offered Daina Middleton of HP. Zdenek Kratky did acknowledged that “if you believe your brand is in your control—it’s really not” and stressed the importance of superior creative, content, and “delivering on the promise of advertising.”
For the next forty minutes the session consisted of almost apathetic, lukewarm discussion on hot topics like identifying/engaging Influencers (how do you do it?) and social media (how do you pick and choose what to do?). Clements offered most of the commentary around social media as Nike has experimented with Facebook and widgets but concluded, “I haven’t really seen anything new [in social media].” Well that’s really enthralling. I swear I saw Daina yawn at one point, but she did state that HP takes a holistic approach to integrating digital (social media initiatives included) into online/offline touchpoints. When asked about specific examples of social media campaigns though, the panel sat there silently looking at each other.
To be fair, the panelist’s insight/advice on targeting the digital consumer was consistent with everything else we have been hearing at this conference: understand your targets, be relevant, be authentic, listen, engage. Middleton made a great point on managing expectations with the social media marketing: “Approach marketing from a lifecycle standpoint; consumers are not always in the purchase funnel (particularly in social media). Keep purchase expectations low, its like TV where its not just about the purchase funnel but about selling through engagement.”
Overall, the panel offered very general ideas about “engaging” and “conversation” with little specifics. The take-away was for marketers to focus on compelling, creative content (over channel); qualitative targeting; and a focus on scaling through engagement and entertainment. “Best way to scale in digital is to sell through engagement,” concluded Kratky.
