Marketing Should Be More Jazzy

Understanding consumer behavior in a connected world... I’m not exactly sure where I read that this is the biggest challenge marketers face nowadays, but it’s not far from the truth. The landscape where brands meet people is becoming more complicated by the day, and every journey needs some digital component. How do you connect all these encounters? How do you learn from them? And, the million dollar question, how does it work?

The funny thing about our industry is that we seem to glorify innovation, but we’re not innovative at all. At best, innovation is used as a creative idea to attract attention from the target audience. At worst, it’s simply for creative juries. This is all fine by me. The job of a creative is to stand out from the crowd. If innovation can help, you should use it. The reality is it’s not very substantial and doesn't innovate the sector as a whole.

However the contrary rings true: almost any new technology or innovation means “finding new ways to reach people”. A very mediatized way of innovation. This can be new platforms, like social media was a revelation for advertisers, or new tech under the hood (cookies, data ...).

Now more than ever there’s a massive discord in the market. I’m fully aware this distinction is not something new. We used to call it marketing vs. sales, above vs. below,... In any case, half of the job is to create desire whereas the other half is to kick the ball into the goal. Today we call this brand building and performance marketing. Sometimes we try to take shortcuts to mix it up with channels: brand building being traditional and performance marketing being digital.

This is not how people work.

Let’s step back and look at the funnel: SEE - THINK - DO; or ATTENTION - CONSIDERATION - ACTION. A lot of attention stays towards the SEE phase where traditional agencies present strategies with hero creatives and the DO phase where performance agencies can harvest and turn leads into sales. The THINK phase of the funnel might be the most important one but it’s often forgotten. At best there’s some kind of content marketing in place. But other than that, it’s all very separated.

Marketing theory is very much like a waltz, 123, 123, 123. One step after the other. In real life it’s all a bit more jazzy: you might learn about the brand the moment you’re buying it, a friend’s recommendation (or an influencer, why not) might throw you straight into the THINK phase, or maybe once you learn about the brand you vow to never buy it. It also relates to high- or low-involvement products: buying a car is a different story than ordering a new beer in your favorite bar.

Marketing innovation is a way to work this funnel - integrating the different steps instead of separating them. At AdSomeNoise this is something we invest in ourselves. With a grant from Smart Hub Vlaams Brabant, we managed to make a proof of concept where we can make personalized and interactive digital video. As we speak, we’re turning it into a proper ad tech platform. We see the pivot to online video as something that’s here to stay in digital advertising. Unfortunately, the quality and richness of video becomes less of an asset the lower we go in the funnel. By upgrading video with personalisation and interactive features, we’re creating a whole new ballgame.

(if you’re interested in our technology, drop me a note)

steven@adsomenoise.com