Modern Marketing - Blog by Collaborate PR & Marketing

The Creepy Line

Whilst the constantly changing world of technology is interesting, the way it affects our lives, opinions and behaviour is where marketeers should focus. Nowhere is this more prevalent than in the way technology affects our privacy. In the Digital Strategy Sessions I run, I call this The Creepy Line. It’s the feeling or idea of technology becoming too pervasive. The interesting aspect is that everyone has a different threshold. For some, being tracked their every waking moment is a positive choice, as they see immediate useful feedback, maybe in the shape of health data - such as sleep or exercise patterns. For others, the mission is to stay ‘off-grid’ to as great an extent as possible. For most, it’s somewhere in between where people are happy to offer up very intimate details about their lives in some areas, such as a fertility app, but want to keep everything else under wraps. Understanding where your customers’ Creepy Line sits and what, if anything, you can do to influence it, is increasingly important. The difficulty arises when using so-called second or third party data – or someone else’s first party data as it’s sometimes known. Third parties may guarantee the ethically sound nature of their data using, ‘privacy-safe’, ‘scrubbing’ techniques to remove Personally Identifiable Information (PIIs). However, such talk immediately takes me over The Creepy Line.

Marketing Strategy In A Digital World

In the Digital Strategy Sessions I run I sometimes start by saying that I am going to try and make an argument with which the people in the group should feel free to disagree.  I go onto suggest that digital marketing is dead, and that we should talk about marketing strategy in a digital world.  To illustrate my point, I occasionally describe meetings where I’ve sat with a group of senior executives who are grappling with how they should handle the effects of digital and networked media on their market. However, when I raise a few issues for discussion there is a slightly awkward moment and the executives in question say words along the lines of, ‘Let’s wait for Fred – he’s our digital specialist’.  At that point, the barriers go up and, ‘Fred’ becomes a way of avoiding the digital issues – whatever they may be.  The idea of marketing strategy in a digital world can sometimes help overcome this obstacle and ground subsequent conversations.  We can then go on to discuss which aspects of the digital world are relevant to the executives' specific market sector and planning techniques for including them within ongoing business planning - in ways that everyone can understand and appreciate.  Not just Fred.

Advertising Aliens

At a Digital Strategy Session I ran the other week for a creative agency, one of the management commented that she’d recently been to an advertising conference and felt like she was at a technology show. Her comment was that if an alien had landed at the event, it would have assumed advertising was largely about software calculating small differences in consumer behavior and purchasing patterns. Certainly all very different from the days of the fabled Big Idea, where ad agencies would arrive and unveil the result of their reductive brain-mashing. These days, a lot more attention is paid to the brute-force style analytical approach where the goal is to maximise clicks, fans and followers. Undoubtedly, the apparently revolutionary advantages brought by automated markets trading signals and attention data are highly alluring for CMOs with data-hungry procurement officers breathing down their necks. However, as media companies increasingly morph into software houses and drive the big data agenda forward, it’s very easy for the power of good creative to get lost. Or become confused with innovative data management platforms or whizzy, layered look-a-like and life event targeting techniques. No doubt, it’s all just part of the ebb and flow occurring in media and marketing as the rising tide of digital and networked media continues.

Everyone Wants Answers

Everyone would like specific answers to their specific digital marketing questions. And ideally they would like them immediately and in a paint-by-numbers format. This is one lesson I have learnt from the four hundred odd Digital Strategy Sessions I have run. Generally, it’s good to give people what they want. Especially, if others are saying they can provide perfectly packaged, specific, actionable, deliverable, measurable strategic plans.  However, in my experience – unfortunately - it’s just not feasible. The world of digital is now so vast, fluid and throws up so many challenges – not to mention jargon – that I think it’s best to focus on the landscape and how digital and networked media is changing specific sectors. And how that influences business strategy – if at all. In fact, most marketing folk and brands know this to be true, and understand that the most important aspect of operating in today’s markets remains understanding what consumers (aka people) are doing differently, and how technology is changing their expectations. Along with the tools that let them operate in these new networked media environments.  So in the Digital Strategy Sessions that’s what I focus on and, generally, people find it helpful. Even if deep down they really want specific answers to their specific questions. But, hey, don’t we all?

Don't Full Stop Me

Recently, I’ve been involved with some research studies about how teenagers communicate through digital media.  It’s been really interesting to see and hear first hand how the much-fabled digital natives – or in this case mobile natives – manage their burgeoning social lives.  As is always the case with technology-led behavior change, there’s much that isn’t new.  For instance, the intensity of feeling that occurs as young individuals test out their sense of self and peer-skills  - as they always have.  However, the tiny behavioural aspects on which the groups are focused can be bewildering.  This was illustrated by the power of punctuation within text-based chat on FB Messenger, Whatsapp or Snapchat.  For one group I spoke to there was no greater social affront than to be ‘full-stopped’.  This merely meant the addition of a full-stop when answering someone in chat mode; but is viewed as the equivalent of turning around and walking away when in a physical conversation.  The other notable aspect of such social circles is the multi-channel nature of the group dynamic, where individuals are communicating, goading, joking and gossiping simultaneously across three or four different image sites and chat services.  This means that should the dreaded full-stopping ever occur its chilling effect is quickly amplified through and beyond those involved.