The chief marketing officer of the future could look more like Star Trek’s Captain Kirk than the guys from the “Mad Men” show.
Traditional advertising is making way for branded content and “total market” campaigns as diverse groups of mobile-empowered consumers become less of a captive audience.
And yes, the QR code is on its death bed.
A group of marketing pros made those and a few other predictions during a panel discussion on emerging industry trends at a monthly event in March, put on by the American Advertising Federation of Orange County.
Much of the talk centered on technology and how it’s changing the industry.
Hannes Meyer, chief creative officer at Irvine-based digital agency Rhythm, said that in the next two to four years, “we’ll see a massive jump in predictive marketing,” where data analysis plays a crucial role.
“When a user visits your website, you’ll already know it’s a user that shops around for months, or buys right away after seeing what two, three products look like,” Meyer said. “You’ll also know where is he in the decision-making process, and depending on that, you can serve him an ad with specific content—a 20% discount offer if he’s ready to buy, and if he’s not close, maybe information about the product.”
Targeted offers seem ideal. You’re not presented with an ad for a boat if you’re in the market for a crib, but there is a trade-off when it comes to personal privacy.
“We are making leaps and bounds, and at the same time we also have to look into how a lot of people are becoming more and more wary about how companies like Facebook and Google are tracking us and collecting data,” he said. “In Europe, people are much more apprehensive about it. Many have stopped using Google because of that. It has to be done in an intelligent way so that it does not turn off the consumer from providing data.”
Meyer also pointed out Google Inc.’s new practice of down-ranking websites that are not mobile-device compatible.
“If your website is not mobile-friendly, it’s not accessible, it’s not readable, and it has maybe a bad user experience on mobile, small-screen devices, Google will now punish you and not rank you as high as previously on an organic search,” he said.
“This is a big trend for how we design and advertise in the mobile space. Some clients might have still a very low percentage of mobile traffic coming to their website because of the target audience they have. But because of the [search engine optimization] factor that Google now takes into consideration, it’s now becoming a must.”
Chris Mellow, director of digital and engagement at Grupo Gallegos in Huntington Beach, took the argument a step further, saying that a mobile-optimized site alone isn’t enough. It has to be designed with mobile-only in mind. His agency focuses on advertising to Latino-American customers, and 65% of them are Millennials who use a smartphone as their primary Internet device.
“It’s not just a matter of making sure your website is working on a mobile phone,” Mellow said. “You have to understand that your consumers will be accessing the websites primarily via their mobile phones.”
Mobile-friendly efforts aren’t the only new tactic agencies are employing.
Mellow also noted a “shift in consumer targeting” away from dual campaigns for the general market and for Latino consumers to “total-market campaigns.”
“It’s targeting the audience based on its realistic makeup, especially in states like California, where you have a minority majority,” Mellow said. “Five years ago, general market agencies were still very much a lead at the table, and multicultural agencies were add-on partners. Now, just because of the importance of the total-market approach, multicultural agencies don’t just have a seat at the table but are sitting at the head of the table in a lot of ways.”
Meanwhile, the audience is no longer a captive one, no matter who is doing the talking, said Nick Miede, creative director at Column Five in Irvine.
“Content marketing has become popular recently with the rise in social media and the empowerment of consumers,” he said, referring to consumers refusing to passively watch or read ads designed for broad audiences. “You are advertising to someone, and if they don’t like what they are seeing, they can whip out their mobile phone, and if they don’t like what they are seeing [there], they can go to a new website or a new app.”
Consumers “might spend a sliver” of their day, if at all, thinking about a brand, “but they’ll spend huge chunks looking for content that they are interested in,” he said, adding that more companies are creating or sponsoring such content that can lead consumers back to the brand.
Miede also noted a trend toward longer-form journalism, and stories paid for and placed by advertisers, and media experiences that present “natural opportunities for marketers to weave a story angle here and there, or show a cause they care about.”
“While everything is focused on very visual, shorter attention spans, some of the biggest publishers are actually looking at long-form opportunities,” he said, including famous top 10 list maker BuzzFeed among them.
The industry’s future, despite the phase-out of the QR code, looks bright, said Rachel Svoboda, director of marketing and business development at Santa Ana-based DGWB Advertising and Communications, which recently took a stake in content developer Amusement Park Brands.
“As the economy continues to rebound, I believe companies will invest in new business and business development in ways we haven’t seen before,” she said. “The landscape will continue to be more competitive. More accounts will become project work, while fewer will be of the more traditional agency-of-record model.”
