the experience issue - نیما شفیعزاده · the experience issue february/march 2018...

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THEEXPERIENCE ISSUE

THE EXPERIENCE ISSUEFebruary/March 2018

CASESTUDIES60

Cook Islands TourismChange as good

as a holiday

64Melbourne Racing Club

Westfi eld Style Stakes

68Soothers

Achilles’ heel into greatest weapon

72Black Hawk

All-natural dog food

76Prospan

Don’t ignore a cough

FEATURES14

Making memories in experience marketing

22Infographic

Generation ex

24Experience versus qualifi cations

28Infographic

Work experience

46Marketer profi leCarolyn Hyams

58Infographic

Voice experience

30

52

INTERVIEWS30

Jared Cooney HorvathBrain, predictions, memory

38Nicola Millard

Intelligent conversations

52Ben Cairns

East 9th Brewing Co

14

22

64

72

44449_06-07_contents.indd 06 18/01/18 10:16 AM

BESTOFTHEWEB82

Editor’s choiceAmaury Tréguer

84Most sharedJarther Taylor

86Most readNick DavisCONTENTPARTNERS

44Marketo

Demonstrating marketing’s value

50Forrester

Bad CX and trust crises

56UnLtd

Emotion and experience

COLUMNS88

Bec BridesonWTF is FX?

90Steve Sammartino

Their brand not yours

92Valos and Lloyd

Focus on Boomers

94Sérgio Brodsky

From consumers to citizens

96Jac Phillips

More experience, less time

98Con Stavros

Experience acceleration tips

8844

50 90

84

8

Contents44449_06-07_contents.indd 07 18/01/18 10:17 AM

PublisherPAUL LIDGERWOOD

Associate publisherLACHLAN [email protected]

EditorBEN [email protected]

Sub editorMADELEINE SWAIN

Editorial designKEELY GOODALL

Production managerALICIA [email protected]

Digital pre-pressKARL DYER

Commercial partnershipenquiriesLUKE HATTYTel: +613 9948 [email protected]

Strategy and partnershipsmanagerJANE BOWMANTel: +61 408 180 [email protected]

Subscription enquiriesTel: 1800 804 [email protected]

Marketing is a publication ofNiche Media Pty LtdABN 13 064 613 529.Suite 1418, Level 14,1 Queens Road,Melbourne VIC 3004Tel +613 9948 4900Fax +613 9948 4999

ChairmanNICHOLAS DOWER

Managing directorPAUL LIDGERWOOD

Commercial directorJOANNE DAVIES

Financial controllerSONIA JURISTA

PrintingGRAPHIC IMPRESSIONS

FIONA KILLACK YPage 14

JAC PHILLIPSPage 96

JARTHER TAYLOR4

AMAURY TRÉGUERPage 82

FELIPPE DIAZPage 36

a

BEC BRIDESONPage 88

CON STAVROSPage 98

Contributors

Marketing would like to recognise and thank tEditorial Advisory Board for their invaluabl u n , n

but not limited to Dr Michael Valos (chair), Car Rud ick,Erik Zimmerman, Mike Harley, Shannon Peachey, Trisca Scott-

Branagan, Skev Ioannou, Cameron Woods and Peter Little.

Marketing ISSN 1441–7863 © 2017 Niche Media Pty Ltd. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, internet, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publishers. While every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of the information in this publication, the publishers accept no responsibility or liability for any errors, omissions or resultant consequences including any loss or damage arising from reliance on information in this publication. The views expressed in this publication are not necessarily endorsed by the editor, publisher or Niche Media Pty Ltd.

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THE EXPERIENCE ISSUE

Ben IceEditor,Marketing.

Editor's noteW hat was your experience when you

picked up this issue and saw the theme? Did you think, ‘Terrifi c!

An important topic in my profession; reading up on it will help me sharpen my marketing knowledge’?

Or, was your feeling a little less comfortable? A little more ‘if I come across that word one more time…’

If you’re anything like me, the word inspires a little bit of both. Very, very few of the articles that have come across my desk in my time here have not touched on experience in some way. As far as buzzwords go, it’s up there with the buzziest. Unlike a lot of others, however, it more than lives up to the hype.

I feel like it’s in a pretty good place at the moment. Starting a few years ago now – realising the importance of good CX and justhow quickly customers could jump ship after bad ones – marketers became obsessed. CX became the goal and singular point of focus as advances in technology fi nally meant measures could be taken to close the gap between consumer expectations and the experiences delivered. It has transcended B2C and found an important place in the world of B2B marketing too.

Well, the technology is here and the gap is closing steadily (yes, some still have a way to go). One thing that hasn’t changed? The obsession.

Today – and I’m glad to say it – a consumer’s experience with a brand stretches far beyond streamlined path-to-purchases and being provided with back-up customer support where needed. The obsessed among you will already know they want an experience that

makes them feel part of something, one they’ll remember, one they can share online and generates plenty of likes, one that goes beyond money exchanged for goods and services and supports a cause.

It’s a good thing. Commerce began with the trading of goods and services with the aim of avoiding starvation and fending off danger. I don’t think much of the academic study of early commerce and stone age humanity is dedicated to the CX satisfaction of the ancients, but you can bet they had to travel long distances to pay handsomely for a very limited range of products. (Still, their wares were all hand made from locally sourced materials, so maybe today’s consumers would love them.)

As manufacturing became industrialised and disposable income became a reality, it was the purchasing itself that became the purpose, as brand-hungry shoppers began using materialism as a means of self-expression and escapism. It was no doubt a great time for marketers, but to me it all just feels a little consumerist compared to what’s gaining momentum now.

With our ability to search, compare, purchase and parade our items in record time with zero effort, it’s refreshing that a growing number of our transactions are satisfying more than our material cravings by supporting social and environmental issues.

So, if you haven’t already, put your obsession to good use and think about how you and your business can change the experience of more than just your customers.

– Ben

44449_11_editorial.indd 11 18/01/18 10:19 AM

“Jinglesget stucknotbecauseyouhear themamillion times,butbecauseyousingthemahundredtimes.” (30)

“Any brand thatdoesn’t showagility in the faceof shifting externaldynamics is abrand that canlose relevance ina moment.” (86)

“Be prepared to have somefailures, but make sure thosefailures are on your terms,not as a result of wateringdown a concept.” (14)

“Brands with the foresight tobroaden their audiences fromcustomers to citizens, and theirrevenue model from sales to thecreation of shared value, will bethe game-changers.” (94)

Experience/s v/

Noun1 Practical contact with

and observation offacts or events.

2. An event oroccurrence whichleaves an impressionon someone.

Verb1. Encounter or

undergo (an eventor occurrence).

OriginLate Middle English: viaOld French from Latinexperientia, fromexperiri ‘try’.

Source: Oxford EnglishDictionary

“The very fact you are beingpaid to work on a brand or achannel or a product meansyou cannot and should notuse your own opinion toderive insights.” (96)

MARKETING FEBRUARY | MARCH 2018

marketingmag.com.au

“Idon’t like thewords‘artificial intelligence’,because frankly,there’s very little that’sintelligentabout it.” (38)

44449_12-13_snippets.indd 012 18/01/18 10:20 AM

“Brandstewards needto have thecourage to sellunfinishedproducts.While itsounds abit crazy,we need torememberthat many ofthese alreadyexist.” (90)

“Seeingothersof the samelevelwithout the studentdebtbehind themshowsit’s absolutelypossible toprogresswithout formalqualifications.” (22)

“Boomers’ media use isnot static. Every year, theirdigital media use is moreclosely resembling that ofyounger consumers.” (92)

“Everybody has thatinner anarchist, for lackof a better term. Everyonelikes to think of themselvesas a bit of a rebel.” (52)

“[AI] is not something of thefuture anymore – it is verycurrent and companies needto start embracing it to delivermore personalised experiencesto their customers.” (82)

“How manytimes haveyou beento a mega-event whereyou feltlike oneof 10,000sheep beingherded fromone room toanother?” (36)


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44449_12-13_snippets.indd 013 18/01/18 10:20 AM

14 FEATURE

Making memoriesIn an era of digital everything, real encounters are more cherished than ever. Today’s best brands take conversations with their customers offl ine through

experiences that drive loyalty and turn audiences into advocates. Fiona Killackey investigates.

S cott Galloway, clinical professor of marketing at the New York University Stern School of Business and founder of business intelligence fi rm, L2 Inc, recently proclaimed that “the biggest threat to retail is experiences”. As

wages remain stagnant and the cost of living increases, consumers are choosing to spend their money – and their precious time – indulging in unique experiences they can then share with friends and followers. Latching onto this shift in spend are brands that understand that in order to cut through their consumers’ attention walls, they must provide people with something diff erent.

Enter: experience marketing. In 2017, experience marketing was on the rise

worldwide. A study by EventTrack found that 78 percent of marketers use experience marketing as a vital part of a brand’s advertising strategies and, more importantly, 98 percent of users feel more inclined to purchase

after attending activation. Known also as ‘experiential marketing’ and as a close cousin to ‘event marketing’, experience marketing is a form of activity that enables brands to have an impact upon consumer behaviour by providing experiences that inspire, educate and – when done well – incite positive emotion.

Educate and drive emotion According to Jean-François Ponthieux, founder of Cartell Music, which includes So Frenchy So Chic, an experience-based French-themed music festival, there are three reasons brands should be looking towards experience marketing to engage and grow their audience base. “First, experience marketing creates an emotional connection between brands and audience. Next, a genuine one-to-one conversation between audience and brand for a minute, an hour or even a day, can go a long way to building brand

Mercedes-Benz Vans with Airbnb Cockatoo Island.

16 FEATURE


marketingmag.com.au

How to do experience marketing wellExperience marketing walks a fi ne line between quality interactive activations and fl imsy marketing stunts that threaten to ruin a brand’s reputation. When considering experience marketing for your brand, follow these simple guidelines:

1 KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE When you know your audience, you

understand what excites them and what frustrates them. Identifying these points of pain and pleasure is one of the fi rst places to start when considering how you may offer a solution. What would bring your audience joy? What would alleviate their frustrations? What would they want to share?

2 ENABLE BRAND INTERACTIONOne of the reasons experience marketing

works is that people have the opportunity to engage with your brand before purchasing from you. Ensure any activation or experience ties in with a solution your business offers (whether a product or service). From one-to-one conversations through to FAQs (frequently asked questions) on social media posts, experience marketing can form an invaluable feedback tool for brands.

3 ENCOURAGE STORYTELLINGOne of the best metrics for experience

marketing success is the storytelling and amplifi cation conducted for your brand by those interacting with it (also known as word of mouth marketing). Ensure the experience is conducted in a way that allows and encourages people to snap, share and #shout about it.

4 TEAM UPOne of the best ways to amplify your experience

marketing effort is through collaborating with a like-minded business, brand or individual. Not only will this allow you to leverage their audiences, it can also often lead to more creative brainstorming and execution, as you’re working with people who may see new opportunities for your brand to connect with its audience.

5 MAKE IT MEMORABLE Experience marketing should create memories

that last long after the collection sells out or the season ceases. Ideally, you want people to relay the story of your brand years after the fact. By choosing an iconic location (Cockatoo Island, for example) or providing a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity (‘Meet the Master’), you’re setting up memories your audience will keep – and share – for a lifetime.

loyalty and connection and, in return, brands can far better understand how their customers perceive them.”

Finally, says Ponthieux, this new form of marketing, “can transform passive consumers into potential advocates”.

Katherine Gracey, marketing manager at Mercedes-Benz Vans Australia and New Zealand, agrees. “An experience puts the assessment of a product and brand into the hands of a third party. Straightaway you have a message coming out of the experience via social media or word of mouth, which has a higher level of credibility and believability compared to the traditional approach.”

Angelo Klidomitis, head of marketing for RedZed, believes the shift from traditional and above the line marketing to experience marketing “comes from the ability to make a much more personal connection with your customer”.

“In an environment where we are so interested in understanding the genuine feeling that a customer has with your brand and their broader motivations in so many other areas that don’t directly relate to your off ering, developing activities that allow you to have a two-way engagement with them is invaluable,” he says.

44449_14-20_F experience.indd 16 18/01/18 10:26 AM


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Increase insight through inspirationOne of the reasons experience marketing is on the rise isthat brands can witness first-hand what excites and engagestheir audiences. This insight is invaluable in creatingfuture marketing campaigns, targeting relevant customers(and their lookalikes) through digital advertising andunderstanding which pain points to alleviate in futurerounds of product development.

For Mercedes-Benz’s new van, the Marco Polo Activity,Gracey and her team wanted to understand what inspiredand engaged a new target market for the brand. “We knewwe needed to hit a different market compared to the rest ofour product portfolio.

“To drive positioning and awareness in the targetleisure market, we partnered with Airbnb with activationon Cockatoo Island. The activation included three ofthe new Marco Polo Activity vans, kitted out by stylistMegan Morton and set up on Cockatoo Island, availablefor public bookings through Airbnb over one weekendin August. We wanted to demonstrate the versatilityof the Marco Polo Activity and its lifestyle appeal and

Wewanted to bring thatto life in an accessible way –inspiring our audience to thinkof their own adventures. to do that we knew we needed to give people a hands-on experience with the vehicle,” says Gracey. “Given the van is dual-use (a people mover during the week and a weekend getaway), we wanted to bring that to life in an accessible way – inspiring our audience to think of their own adventures.” The vans booked out in less than an hour.

For Klidomitis, experience marketing via the ‘Meet the Master’ campaign off ered his team at RedZed – an Australian lender specialising in solutions for the self-employed – the opportunity to better understand its key market. ‘Meet the Master’ is a competition in which small business owners get to nominate their ‘business hero’ with a chance to win and be fl own anywhere in the world to meet them face-to-face.

Mercedes-Benz Vans with Airbnb Cockatoo Island.


18 FEATURE


marketingmag.com.au

Who’s doing it best? REFINERY29, ‘29ROOMS’

US publisher Refi nery29 created 29Rooms – “an interactive funhouse of style, culture and technology” – to bring to life many of the themes it discusses via its online content. The success of the fi rst 29Rooms event in 2016 led to the concept running annually in New York and Los Angeles, as well as an online store where you can buy 29Rooms branded products any time of year.

SO FRENCHY SO CHIC WITH KÉRASTASE, ‘BRAID BAR’

As a key partner of the French-themed So Frenchy So Chic music festival, Kérastase wanted to offer something that would engage its audiences and provide insight into what women wanted from their hair care. The Braid Bar offers festival attendees free braids (that many then post on their social media accounts), while Kérastase staff utilise the time to discover more about the pain points of their key target market through one-on-one conversations.

LEAN CUISINE, ‘#WEIGHTHIS’

While most ‘health food’ companies promote weight loss and slimming down, Lean Cuisine chose to engage with women on another level via its #WeighThis campaign. Scales were placed at various spots across the US and when women were asked to weigh something, it wasn’t themselves. Instead, they weighed ‘what matters’ such as their college degree, thank you cards after surgery or their wedding rings. This was an emotionally charged marketing activity that saw brand love soar.

WARBY PARKER, ‘CLASS TRIP’

The Class Trip campaign took place in 2012, when the founders of eyewear brand Warby Parker were considering opening up their fi rst bricks-and-mortar store in New York, but didn’t want to risk pouring money into something without knowing it would work. Instead, they fi tted out an old school bus to look like an eyewear store and travelled the country setting up one-off experiences. Not only did they receive love and amplifi cation through attendees’ social posts, they also gained valuable insight into the type of frames best suited to different locations and what people most want when shopping in-store for glasses.



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“We are conscious that many businesses talk aboutsupporting the self-employed, but we wanted to really invest in doing something about it. The insight for ‘Meet the Master’ came from the fact that, while small businesses form the backbone of Australia’s economy, they are often disadvantaged when it comes to personal development and mentoring opportunities. The RedZed team has worked in large corporates as well as in small business. The disparity between the two is stark and we wanted to try and fi nd a way to address this imbalance.”

Going one step further than standard competitions, RedZed’s activity was completely customised for the winner, which took time to receive legal approval. “The initial [legal] feedback was to water down the

Be prepared to have some failures, but make sure those failures are on your terms, not as a result of watering down a concept.

concept and nominate a particular mentor, so it would be easier to communicate the prize,” says Klidomitis. “It would have been much easier to say the winner would meet with Richard Branson, Elon Musk or whoever else might be considered to be an amazing master. This, however, fl ew in the face of everything we believed. It treats all self-employed with the same cookie cutter approach. If you are a luthier who wants to further hone your skills, would you rather meet Richard Branson or fl y to Frankfurt and meet someone like Gernot Wagner?” This insight into whom people most wanted to meet not only engaged its target audience, but enabled RedZed to identify new infl uencers for future content, infl uencer and event marketing.

Clear messaging and consistent marketing While experience marketing is one of the fastest growing marketing activities, its success depends on a consistent marketing approach to drive awareness and engagement. For Mercedes-Benz that meant working

Refi nery29.


20 FEATURE


marketingmag.com.au

closely with its PR agency, Character, to drive awarenessthrough announcements, and a media and infl uencer breakfast on Cockatoo Island. “This provided our key media and infl uencers with a fi rst look at the Marco Polo Activity in an unusual and memorable setting, and has led to further media and infl uencer engagement for the brand.”

For RedZed, “Radio was our mass media tool, but we also used targeted street advertising in areas that have a high concentration of self-employed people.” Klidomitis and his team also invested in targeted online advertising, as well as experimenting with infl uencers on the Tribe platform. “We learned a lot from the campaign, particularly

around the messaging we used… and it validated our view that radio was an excellent tool to generate awareness, but that online advertising was a more eff ective mechanism to get people to enter.”

Given his experience, what advice would Klidomitis give to other brands embarking on experience marketing in 2018? “First, make sure that the experience is consistent with the message about your brand that you are trying to communicate. Doing something amazing might be great, but if there is no connection to your ‘reason for being’ or it does not refl ect your brand values, it can have a negative long-term impact. Second, if you come up with an experience that perfectly aligns with what you want people to associate with your brand, you must be brave. Everything won’t go right all the time, so be prepared to have some failures, but make sure those failures are on your terms, not as a result of watering down a concept, or the execution, to make everyone else happy. Finally, keep a live list throughout the entire process – what worked, what didn’t and what you would modify next time. This will be invaluable when undertaking the review process.”

Doing something amazingmight be great, but if there isno connection to your ‘reasonfor being’ or it does not reflectyour brand values, it can have anegative long-term impact.

Warby Parker Class Trip.


43945_2_Print Focus FP.indd 2 18/05/17 4:23 PM


GENERATION EXA cultural shift has emerged where the Australian population is

eginning to value ex eri s ver ma erial possessions. It’s captained by hared on social.

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at expandi ir perspective th ading

about it online.

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44449_22-23_infographic generation.indd 22 18/01/18 10:27 AM


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23 INFOGRAPHIC

44449_22-23_infographic generation.indd 23 18/01/18 10:29 AM

The great debate

The dynamically evolving world of marketing takes no prisoners when it comes to those who fail to make the grade. But is it better to have formal marketing training to stay ahead of the curve, or is staying on the job the

better way to go? Tracey Porter investigates.

123RF’s lightwise © 123RF.com

44449_24-27_F debate.indd 24 18/01/18 10:32 AM


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25 FEATURE

T he pace of change within Australia’s buoyant marketing sector is virtually unprecedented.

New roles have emerged that didn’t even exist a decade ago. Social media, augmented reality (AR), artifi cial

intelligence (AI) and voice activation are the types of advancements that have given rise to whole sectors that hadn’t been invented in 2008.

To off er an example of the furious pace at which this space is evolving, the ubiquity of digital is such that it has now become a dirty word. In striving to appear at the bleeding edge, marketing teams and their agencies are now banning it from their lexicon.

Traditional print, TV, radio, social, cultural engagement and using media as the message – there are endless ways marketers can reach and engage consumers these days. And those worth their salt retain an open mind on their choice and use of platform.

Which poses the question: is formal education in such a dynamically evolving discipline the way to go, or is real world experience the way forward?

Marketing speaks to fi ve top-fl ight marketers to explore what has worked best for them.

THE UNI JUNKIEGEMMA GILLARD, shopper marketing manager at DiageoIn the normal world Gemma Gillard would be considered a disciple of academic study. A self-described ‘uni junkie’, the 33-year-old today boasts a raft of letters behind her name as a result of completing a fi ve-year masters in European languages, followed by a masters year in advertising and PR.

Currently responsible for bringing brands such as Johnnie Walker, Smirnoff and Bundaberg Rum to life in bottle shops and bars across Australia, she started out in ad agencies, working her way up from a graduate account executive position over eight years ago, before taking the leap client-side in 2014.

During this time she has worked across many facets in the marketing sector – covering everything from CRM (customer relationship management), digital, loyalty programs and experiential to TV, radio and in-store activation.

While conceding her career path has been anything but linear, Gillard says as well as off ering her a solid foundation in marketing theory, her scholastic endeavours

have also given her the business contacts and avenues to help her pursue her fi rst job. The only blight on her career path to date has been her student loan, which sits at around $50,000.

Gillard argues that while her undergraduate degree provided her with more time to defi ne her career choice, the university environment did little to support her to start identifying career options and it was only the single year of marketing study at business school that opened the door to her career.

While she sometimes wonders where she’d be if she’d skipped uni and headed straight to work, Gillard says ultimately she’s progressed quickly in her career because once she was exposed to the possibilities of a role in marketing she’s been single-minded about the fact that this is where she belongs.

“The optimist in me believes my degree has helped me fast-track my career development, particularly since coming to Australia where a degree has always been a requirement for the jobs I’ve done. But seeing others of the same level without the student debt behind them shows it’s absolutely possible to progress without formal qualifi cations. I think the beauty of the marketing sector is that it values skills gained from anywhere, whether formally or through vocational experience. A degree can help you identify your soft skills and the theory to go with them, but there’s nothing more valuable than gaining real world business experience in such a fast-paced and ever-evolving sector.”

THE ACCIDENTAL MARKETERANDREA RYAN, CMO at Unique EstatesAndrea Ryan’s entry into the marketing sector was far from planned. The British expat was busy studying what was then a brand new module called marketing communications as part of a higher national diploma in business, when she found herself presenting an anti-smoking campaign to class and was awakened.

Seeing others of the same level without the student debt behind them shows it’s absolutely possible to progresswithout formal qualifi cations.

44449_24-27_F debate.indd 25 18/01/18 10:32 AM

26 FEATURE


marketingmag.com.au

Since then she has worked for a not-for-profi t, the London 2012 Olympics, jumped the fence to dabble in agency marketing and then returned client-side to try her hand at luxury real estate.

After fi rst obtaining a business diploma through the Chartered Institute of Marketing, she obtained a marketing degree at night school.

Ryan says when she studied, the focus of the curriculum was largely on hard skills and students were left to fi gure out the soft skills on their own.

While her degree gave her a sound platform to work from at the time, Ryan believes the changing pace of today’s sector means there are just as many opportunities available for marketers who have not undertaken formal training.

“I feel – particularly in this now connected world we live in – the rules have changed somewhat. We can be a lot more creative and pretty much just do it with

fewer consequences in terms of spend and impact –unless you really do something stupid and it goes viral. There’s so much more information out there too. People can be marketers on any subject if they want to be; however, the fundamentals of marketing will always remain the same.”

As something of a ‘jack of all trades’, Ryan says if she had her time again, she would still seek to gain formal qualifi cations, but would opt to hone down her degree and specialise in a specifi c area such as social media, event management or publicity to equip her with the skills to consult or set up her own agency.

That said, she says formal qualifi cations in the modern marketing world are refl ected upon favourably, but are “not necessarily” a refl ection of how good the staff member will be in their chosen role.

“I have discovered that professional development, while important, is complemented hugely by personal development. If you know yourself – who you are, your values and what you can off er in terms of skills – this maximises your ability to off er your professional services in the best way possible.”

THE UNAPOLOGETIC CYNICBELLA KATZ, group marketing manager premium brands at Zagame Automotive GroupBella Katz’s marketing career has a distinctive international fl avour. Born in Russia, she was educated in New Zealand, employed in Tokyo and London, and launched her own marketing consultancy in Melbourne.

Earlier this year the 43-year-old was engaged by Victorian group Zagame and began her tenure as marketing lead for its Audi, Alfa Romeo, Abarth and Fiat brands.

The holder of a undergrad degree in English literature, Katz is a fi rm believer in higher education, having also completed a postgraduate degree in marketing at Monash University in her late 20s and undertaken regular supplementary workshops ever since.

Katz says while she has spent “thousands of dollars over many years” studying, she believes her postgrad work gave

her an excellent marketing foundation.“The study gave me the background

that I didn’t know I’d need or value until I developed in my jobs. I’m glad I have that background of analysis and investigation that I can dip into. The courses have kept me up-to-date and exposed to other companies and peers in similar roles, and they’ve given me access to some excellent professors

and experts in their fi eld (professors with world-class consulting experience and case studies).

“I’ve always loved marketing and used those skills to work my way up, across – sometimes down – and learned something new from every role. I highly rate a good education, but it doesn’t have to be from age 18, it can be gained later in your professional life.”

Katz, an unapologetic cynic when it comes to the hordes heralding ‘the next big thing’, says she see real strength in having a classical marketing foundation.

“That means no matter what the latest marketing ‘channel du jour’ I judge it in the context of traditional marketing. Without brand positioning, strategy and understanding where your customers are, you’re wasting marketing money only running press ads, or just focusing on Facebook, or getting excited about an ‘infl uencer’ holding your product. I think formal qualifi cations are even more relevant now because social media gives a lot of faux experts a very prominent and far-reaching platform. We need more cynics in the marketing world who can step back and apply real marketing skill, be neutral to hype and use research wisely to inform their work.”

We can be a lot more creative and pretty much just do it with fewer consequences in terms of spend and impact – unless you really do something stupid and it goes viral.

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THE ALTERNATIVE ADVOCATECOL KENNEDY, general manager brand and customer experience at Country RoadCol Kennedy quite rightly has a foot either side of the fence when it comes to defi ning whether higher education or work experience is better for a marketer’s career success.

A brand marketer with two decades’ marketing, brand, ecommerce and product development experience across big name brands including Target, Cotton On, Walt Disney and Sony, Kennedy came to retail courtesy of a BA Hons marketing degree and a postgraduate diploma in marketing. But while his study taught him many of the fundamental marketing principles he has relied on as his career has progressed, it was the time spent away from educational institutions where he feels he made the most progression.

“I actually did a sandwich degree, which in the UK means after your second year of study you have to do a year’s placement in industry. I found this crucial for my fi nal year of study because you got to try what you had been learning, elements such as strategy that you would not get to immediately work on or use until you progressed in your career.

After completing his studies, Kennedy then completed a gap year, which forced him to grow up and “develop as a human being”.

He argues life experiences like this are just as important, if not more so, as education and work experience in terms of the ‘which is better’ debate.

Fortunate not to be saddled with a large student debt, Kennedy says – like others spoken to for this piece – he was initially disappointed to discover that his postgraduate salary did not adequately refl ect the time he had put into pursuing his studies and the skill level he had obtained.

“It soon began to build, however. Someone once told me that at a point in your 30s it all levels out, which I would agree with. I have had people in my teams over the years who did go to university and those that didn’t.” When it comes to career progression, he hasn’t noticed much of a diff erence, he says.

While he believes that, for some, formal education is as relevant now as it has been in the past, the change occurring within the marketing fi eld is forcing disruption within the education sector.

To help further business education within the sector, Kennedy now sits on an advisory board at Deakin University where, alongside a number of other key industry fi gureheads, he is helping to guide the strategic development of marketing both nationally and internationally.

THE DECORATED ACADEMICLEE TONITTO, CEO at the Australian Marketing Institute (AMI)In a career spanning 30 years, Lee Tonitto has represented major brands including Unilever, Revlon, AMP and the Commonwealth Bank’s Count Financial.

As the head of the peak professional body for marketers, she sees it as the responsibility of her organisation to provide cutting edge marketing theory and practice to fuel progress in the careers of both the 6000-plus membership body and the 60,000-plus marketers dotted around the country.

In addition to attending leadership programs at Harvard Business School, she has a long list of academic achievements including a BComm in marketing and management accounting from the University of New South Wales Sydney and an MBA from the Australian Graduate School of Management. Unsurprisingly then, Tonitto is a key proponent of all marketers gaining formal qualifi cations, irrespective of previous experiences.

She says there are several diff erent approaches to gaining formal marketing qualifi cations, but an AMI-accredited qualifi cation will provide marketing graduates with a “strong practical and theoretical introduction to build upon” when eventually entering employment or seeking to climb the career ladder.

She concedes opportunities exist for people without formal marketing qualifi cations, but notes, “Employers are seeking candidates to undertake formal training and ongoing professional development.

“The quality of a marketing course or an MBA course will ultimately be judged by the ability of its graduates to perform at a high level in a changing and competitive business environment. This requires a fl exibility of approach and a commitment to a lifetime of continuing marketing education.”

We need more cynics in the marketing world who can step back and apply real marketing skill, be neutral to hype and use research wisely to inform their work.

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WORK EXPERIENCEDoes your employer brand ma e actual experience of your employees?

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EXIT

In his early years of teaching, Jared Cooney Horvath was surprised at the amount of hype around the brain. It was, unfortunately, only hype. “The brain was getting really sexy,” he recalls. “Everyone was coming into our school saying ‘you need to know about the

brain and you’ve got to buy this product and you’ve got to teach your kids this’.”

But none of them knew what they were talking about. It was a buzzword. So, he went to school to learn it himself, completing a masters in Mind, Brain and Education at Harvard and a PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Melbourne.

While education still makes up the majority of his focus – he’s now a lecturer at the University of Melbourne – he is interested in how marketing and trying tounderstand how the brain functions can be applied to help brands understand consumers.

He caught up with Marketing before speaking at Initiative’s ‘The Science of Stickiness’ event to explain how the brain really works and how branding must break predictions if it’s going to work at all.

Marketing: What are some key patterns or things marketers and educators should be thinking about the brain?Jared Cooney Horvath: The brain works in the complete opposite way that most people think.

The assumption is: information gets in, the brain triggers off systems and that’s your experience of the world – it’s organising that information as it’s coming in. In reality it is the complete and utter opposite. So we have this system – we call it ‘bottom up’ versus ‘top down’.

‘Bottom up’ is the information coming in. ‘Top down’ means at any one time your brain sends messages to say, ‘Here’s how I think the world should be, so please interpret it that way.’

If you’re looking at something but your brain thinks it should be something else, it will send signals back, change the way your neurons fi re so that you see what you think you should see.

We now know there’s a huge disconnection between the world out there and us, and what’s really driving the brain. Thinking, memory, learning, is essentially you at all times. It is this predictive brain saying, ‘I know this much about the world, so I’m going to set a prediction about how the world should be,’ and that’s what you experience.

So the vast majority of the time, you’re living two seconds in the future, because you’ve already predicted what’s about to come. You’re living in that prediction.

So it’s only when it’s triggered or challenged that your brain switches on?Learning is essentially, ‘I know you won’t have a prediction for what I’m about to teach you.’ Learning about the


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Breaking predictions, building memories

Marketing speaks with Jared Cooney Horvath, Harvard neuroscientist and lecturer at the University of Melbourne, about the brain, and how to make lessons

and marketing communications stick.

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If you’re Amazon, seamlessness is brilliant, because the more people run their prediction and the less they think, the more you’re their automatic prediction.

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31 INTERVIEW


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brain – you won’t have a prediction unless you’ve gone to school to study it. Trying to instil in you enough knowledge so you can start to form your own predictions is almost the entire game of education.

When it comes to marketing, the idea is, ‘OK, you probably already know half, if not 99 percent of what anyone is going to say.’

It’s about breaking those predictions. If you know someone’s living in the future, how do you do something that causes their predictive brain to switch off and bring them back to the present because their prediction failed?

In education, they’re called ‘misconceptions’. If I asked you the question: ‘what resonance does an MRI have to be set at in order for you to take a picture of blood fl ow?’ would you want to take a guess?

No!Exactly, it’s stupid. The answer could be 10, it could be 30 hertz. You wouldn’t know and it wouldn’t matter.

Now let’s get into prediction mode. I’ll ask you an easy question. How many senses does a human being have.

Five?Sight, hearing, taste, touch, smell?

In reality, human beings have 21 senses. In this moment, you’ve made a prediction, your brain thinks one thing, and that prediction fails. I can sit here and teach you, use a misconception, and say, ‘Nope, that’s totally wrong. The thing you thought was locked and loaded is incorrect.’

We can fi nd your misconceptions and trigger them. That activates a secondary network in your brain, which forces you to start rewriting code. Your prediction is off, you’re now in the present, rewriting your prediction for the future.

In education that’s easy: I can just quiz you, talk to you. I’ll know where your misconceptions are, so I’ll know where to angle my lesson. In marketing it gets tricky. How

do you fi nd people’s misconceptions, so you can break their prediction and force them to pay attention? If you can do that right, they will have to rewrite their prediction to incorporate what you’ve just told them.

That’s the entire way the brain works. It says, ‘I was wrong, I must fi gure out what’s right and put that back in as the new prediction.’

A lot of the focus today is about seamless brand experience, making everything streamlined and easy. Would you say brands are doing themselves a disservice focusing on this?Seamlessness is perfect for the few companies that have cornered their market.

If you’re Amazon, seamlessness is brilliant, because the more people run their prediction and the less they think, the more you’re their automatic prediction. Amazon has made it so seamless that it is the only one to turn to. It feeds into the prediction.

If you go back, Amazon broke everyone’s prediction. Google was considered disruptive. It was doing things nobody knew. Now, it is the prediction.

If you’re a newcomer not already established in the prediction world, you must break that.

A lot of people don’t like this concept. They want it to be easy, want people to feel comfortable. That’s great if they don’t want people to know who they are or give two hoots about what they do. But if you have something to get out there and you want people to think about you, you need friction. No friction, no memory.

Today it’s probably even harder to get started because brands like Amazon and Google are so deeply buried in predictive minds.If you fi nd some market where there is no prediction, that Google and Amazon somehow haven’t touched yet, you can build a prediction from scratch.

Otherwise you have fi gure out what people are thinking, then do something that makes it wrong, so they have to start rewriting. It’s not about side-stepping it. You have to take it full-on.

A big shift in thinking, then, is moving from ‘how do we get people’s attention?’ into ‘how do we break people’s predictions?’

There’s a lot of research now. You need your brand to be big, or they’ll pay less attention. You need quick cuts. You need something fl ashy.

If you have something to get out there and you want people to think about you, you need friction. No friction, no memory.



The last few years have seen a lot of brands try to keep messaging subtle, but it seems that is shifting again.If you think about how to get people’s attention, you think about these specifi cs: how big does it need to be? What colours should I use? How fl ashy should it be?

A couple of years ago, subtlety was king. So everyone was thinking ‘how do I be subtle?’ But once subtle becomes the prediction, it stops working, because people predict subtlety. It no longer grabs their attention.

In a world of subtlety, the one loud person gets everyone’s attention. If the whole world gets loud, in two years the joke will be that loud won’t work anymore.

We have an attention threshold. You will only be able to pay attention to things that are powerful enough to cross that threshold.

If a mouse sneezed, that would be too quiet. It wouldn’t break the threshold. If a gunshot went off, that breaks the threshold. You pay attention.

The problem is thresholds always rise. As your predictions get deep, your threshold goes up.

For example: you listen to music when you’re on the train on the way to work. Do you ever notice that the longer you listen the more you start to turn it up? Click by click. You may start at 10, but by the time you get to work you’re at 14. You come back to the train at the end of the day, put in your headphones and say, ‘That’s too loud!’

This is because, as you were listening to it, your prediction was ‘the volume is here, I get it’, so you stop paying attention to it. Your threshold goes up, which means you have to crank more power to pay attention to it.

It’s the same with advertising. If you research what grabs people’s attention, you’re always going to be chasing a phantom, because as soon as you know what grabs their attention, their threshold will adjust to that, they’ll make a new prediction and it won’t work. You’re going to say, ‘Today it’s big, tomorrow it’s super big, the next day it’s tiny, then it’s funny, then it’s sad.’ If your research says your brand has to be big, I’d say, ‘Yeah, today it does, if you want attention. Tomorrow it won’t work, sorry about that.’

So shift to ‘I’m not here to get your attention, I’m here to break your prediction’, then specifi cs like that don’t really matter. Today could be loud, tomorrow could be small, it could be yellow versus red – who knows what it’s going to be? – but it doesn’t really matter because

that’s not what you’re shooting for. You’re shooting for an understanding of how people understand commercials now. How do people understand brands today? What is their prediction of how brands should work? Cool. How do I do something that leads to that prediction and then breaks it?

But not something completely different because that won’t grab their attention anyway? You have to lead them down a path. You have to say, ‘How many senses does a human have? Five? Really they have 21!’

Had I just told you that before, you’d go, ‘Oh, humans have a lot more senses’, but because you made the prediction fi rst, it broke.

Everybody asks: what makes a good commercial?Google did research on this totally accidentally. I wish

I could have jumped through the screen and said, ‘No, you missed the point.’

The best commercial in the world is blackness. You’re watching TV, in the groove, in the middle of a commercial break and it’s cool, and all of a sudden your screen goes black. I guarantee you 100 percent of the time you’ll focus on the TV. Because now you’re going, ‘Is my TV broken? Or is it the network? Is this real?’

Your prediction is loud, fl ashy TV. All of a sudden, that prediction snaps, because now your TV doesn’t do anything.

Google was trying to fi gure out the best commercial. Is it big, is it vertical, is it small? To get a baseline they just put a black screen on for 30 seconds. More people watched that black screen than any of the commercials. They couldn’t fi gure out why.

The hard part then becomes how to work a brand message or call to action into that.How do you link it?

What about the Super Bowl commercial with the potato? The slot may have cost millions. There was no message, just a potato. It went viral, and Cards Against Humanity came out later announcing it was behind the ads. It worked.So step one is ‘if I can break your prediction, I can have you start to rewrite your code’.

Which is what that did.


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Step two, then, is memories. Everyone assumes that ‘the more it comes in [to the brain] the bigger that memory’s going to be’. They think if you see a commercial once, you’ll have a small memory, but if you see it 10 times, you’ll have a bigger memory.

If that were true, I should totally remember the periodic table. I studied that for three months. I haven’t repeated anything more in my life and I still couldn’t tell you anything about it.

The only way to strengthen memories is to bring the information back out. This is yet another example of the brain working totally opposite to what we think. You can put things in all day, it won’t matter. But as soon as you start bringing it out? Every time you access a memory, it strengthens and makes that memory deeper. Put a beautiful Clydesdale on pulling a Budweiser truck. Everyone says ‘that was a lovely commercial’

and never talks about it again. They’re not bringing it up, there’s no memory.

Put a potato on, people start Tweeting about it, people start talking about it, even to make fun of it. Every time they say something about it? Congratulations, it sticks.

How do you do something that forces people to do the hard work for you? To bring it out themselves. That could be on social media, but it could just be a jingle. Jingles get stuck not because you hear them a million times, but because you sing them a hundred times.

Every time you sing it, it gets a little deeper. So how do you get into that without just making an annoying jingle? How do you do something that forces people to recall, to actively bring your thing out?

The third thing you mention after breaking predictions and making memories is personalising. How does this fi t in?In the classroom, this is the hardest thing. It’s when you take an idea or a concept and you use that to form a cornerstone of your identity. That is as deep as learning is ever going to get.

It’s never going to happen across the board. Say you study maths, science and English. Chances are you’re going to love and personalise one of those. You’re going to say, ‘I am a mathematician.’ Every new equation, ‘I actually take that personally; if I mess it up it’s because something is wrong with me.’

But then you don’t personalise English. You can learn it and pass it. But you may not care or take it personally.

Leading learners down that path is long and arduous and diffi cult, but at the end of the day, if you get them there, that’s it. Once they tack an idea to their identity, it takes a lot to get it away.

Once something gets personalised, we become rabid. It becomes us. It’s no longer ‘that’s a product’; it’s ‘that’s a me’.

So how do you do that? The only thing I could conceivably believe is – and you’re starting to see it now

– linking to causes. My wife will drive 20 miles outside the city to buy a very specifi c butter because it does something fancy. I don’t get it. To her, her identity is: these health foods, this type of production. She will go out of her way to shop for that stuff.

Trying to break into that is so diffi cult. ‘All right, you want to be the health food guy? Here’s an all-natural, fat-free organic Coke.’ People will see through that so fast.

Everyone’s looking for the silver bullet. The question I get from teachers is, ‘What do I do?’

If you’re asking, ‘What do I do?’, you’re looking for that immediate answer, and because human beings are an open circuit, it’s just meaningless. It’s never going to work, because as soon as you do it, it’s going to stop working.

I tell teachers to stop asking, ‘What do I do?’ and ask, ‘What’s my objective here? What do I want? What is it that I really hope my students get from this?’ Once you have your prime objective, then how you [approach] that changes depending on where they’re at that day.

This is where I try to link the thinking in. Rather than asking, ‘How do I get people to buy

my product today?’ just ask, ‘How do people think?’ Once you can solve that, then you just adapt it daily. Go ‘today it’s fl ash, so I’m going to break that prediction; tomorrow it’s soft, so I’m going to break that prediction’.

Jingles get stuck not because you hear them a million times, but because you sing them a hundred times.


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36 AI AND EVENTS


A s professional marketers, we are already acutely aware that Artifi cial Intelligence (AI) is going to be big. It will kill off existing industries and create many new ones. It will change the way we live, work and play. Very

few aspects of our lives will escape its impact.IDC predicts that global spending on AI and cognitive

systems will reach US$31.3 billion by 2019.For event professionals, it won’t be long before AI

moves from being a novelty at their next show, to an expected technology solution that will enhance every customer touch point along their journey.

The objective for incorporating AI into event campaigns is no diff erent to that for any other technology – ultimately it should lead to deeper interactions, which in turn lead to better engagement. But what are the key aspects of the event-going experience that AI can solve, both for the delegate and the marketers who’ve made a signifi cant investment in a major conference or exhibition? And how quickly will this new technology be adopted?

Time to switch on your eventsArtifi cial intelligence shouldn’t just be a novelty at your next event. Felippe Diaz says it can enhance every experience at every touch point.

Here are three valuable ways AI can be used at events. The fi rst two enable marketers to enhance the customer experience for their delegates, while the third provides additional insight to help marketers create more successful events.

CHATBOTS AND VIRTUAL AGENTSAI-powered Chatbots are now commonplace online. Most people understand that when they are chatting to the bank about refi nancing their mortgage, they are not actually talking to ‘Greg’; they are more likely conversing with a program that has been created to give the impression of a human-to-human conversation. There is no reason why this simple interaction cannot be transferred to a live event.

Ubiquitous apps like Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp are the new weapon of choice to communicate with event attendees. It means that they are not required to download a bloated native app or log into an event-specifi c website. Chatbots can be used to help delegates with thingssuch as:

navigating through the venue, or wayfi nding – this is especially useful in large-scale events that take placeacross multiple locationsscheduling of personalised agendas – this is great forevents that span across more than one day, and

connecting event delegates with speakers or other subject matter experts. AI-powered chatbots and virtual agents are particularly

valuable for regularly recurring events. Because they are continually learning from previous interactions, chatbots can provide answers with greater accuracy each time they are deployed.

The next exciting progression of this technology is the digital virtual human – bringing the chatbot to life by adding a human face that allows the user to communicate through not only speech, but non-speech cues as well. New Zealand-based tech start-up Soul Machines has recently partnered with global software vendor Autodesk to create AVA, a digital human with the ability to see, hear

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and respond to interactions in an incredibly human-like manner. The interaction between the user and thetechnology will in turn become deeply relational, asopposed to transactional.

PERSONALISATIONOne of the most anticipated applications for AI, in termsof potential to enhance the overall event experience, isthe ability to provide an ultra-level of personalisationpreviously unseen at events. This really comes into its ownfor events on the larger side of the scale. How many timeshave you been to a mega-event where you felt like one of10,000 sheep being herded from one room to another?Everybody’s experience of an event like that is almostidentical – from the lanyards we drape around our necks, tothe food that we eat.

One of the greatest challenges for event professionals isto execute at scale, but also to try and provide each delegatewith a unique experience. With the help of AI, that isbecoming a much easier proposition.

Today, we are seeing AI-powered technology used atevents to support:

a smoother event registration process – AI-poweredfacial recognition APIs can automatically recognisedelegates as they arrive, and have their name badgeready without having to ask anybody who they arehelping match attendees to others with similarinterests, by scanning through their Facebook orLinkedIn profilesassisting delegates by making suggestions around themost suitable sessions for them by providing a ‘Topthree sessions recommended for you’ list, and

tailoring catering off erings to delegates – by providing personalised options based on each delegate’s personality. At the recent IBM Watson Summit in the UK, we

partnered with IBM and British tea connoisseur Teapigs to create the ‘Watson Perfect Blend’ – an AI-powered activation in which IBM’s Watson could match delegates with their own personalised tea blend, based on information provided around their mood and personal habits. The delegates could then proceed to the event tea station to collect their individually created tea blend.

FEEDBACKThe traditional means of gathering feedback from event delegates has always been a cumbersome and manual process: fi lling out a form (sometimes paper-based!), followed by an equally tedious process for

How many times have you been to a mega-event where you felt like one of 10,000 sheep being herded from one room to another? Everybody’s experience of an event like that is almost identical – from the lanyards we drape around our necks, to the food that we eat.

marketers of deciphering the feedback to derive any actionable change from it. AI can play a role in simplifying and automating this process. Imagine if, during a keynote session, video footage of the crowd could be analysed to detect facial reactions, and then used to build a group sentiment profi le that lets the speaker know which part of their presentation was the most engaging?

Another way marketers can understand how delegates feel about their events is through APIs such as Tone Analysers, which can easily scan through social media profi les and hashtags to analyse positive and negative sentiments around your event hashtag.

The B2B event industry is a competitive one, especially in Australia and New Zealand where everyone is competing for a share of a relatively small pool of time-poor business professionals who need a strong reason to take time out of their day to go to your event – and return to your next one.

Given this context, it is critical that event professionals are exploring AI as a key part of their arsenal of tools. In 2018 and beyond, AI will increasingly become the new normal – and will be expected, not only by delegates and sponsors, but also by marketing budget owners seeking the best return on their event investment.

Felippe Diaz is group account director and client services director at George P Johnson Australia.

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W ith almost three decades’ experience at BT (British Telecommunications) Global Services, Millard’s roles have included stints as a human factors researcher, a customer contact

strategy consultant and a customer contact futures project manager.

During a recent Melbourne visit, she spoke with Marketing about the insights found in BT’s ‘Digital Customer 2017’ research. The global study conducted over 10 countries sought to fi nd trends in consumer preferences, expectations and fears, and looked at their satisfaction – or lack thereof – levels over a number of platforms including telephone, online chat and smart capabilities, including bots.

The conversation surrounded the use of personal data in customer experience and business strategy, and touched on why AI isn’t that intelligent, and the importance of building context into what it says.

Marketing: What were some of the main trends and preferences that emerged from your study?Dr Nicola Millard: There are a few things that have improved, but there are also things that are tangibly not improving. Customers saying they’re exhausted from dealing


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Marketing speaks with Dr Nicola Millard, head of customer insight and futures at BT Global Services about human-digital customer service, ‘intelligent’ technology and the difference between digital butlers and stalkers.

with customer service issues, that’s going up. There’s more exhaustion going on. We’ve been looking at easy journeys and frictionless journeys for a while, so you’d think that should be changing, but it isn’t. One of the big issues, I suspect, is that digital customers – when they go into digital – expect it to be easy, and therein lies the problem.

Customers like self-service because it puts them in control. If it isn’t easy and they can’t fi nd what they need and then they can’t fi nd a phone number or any contact because you buried it 63 clicks down into your site? That’s problematic.

That’s been coming out as a problematic trend for a while. Also, there’s a kickback trend off the back of that where customers are serving themselves more. They’re only actually involving organisations for the complex and the emotive stuff. We’re seeing core channels emerge.

Intelligent conversation

44449_38-41_interview nicola.indd 38 18/01/18 10:38 AM


The phone: it’s not new or sexy, but it’s still coming out pretty high in terms of people’s preferences, and has done for a long time. It’s an accessible channel, and it deals with complexity and emotiveness well.

But the real big growth channel is chats. We’re seeing massive growth in chat and, if you’re looking at digital customers, that makes sense. You’re online, you don’t have to fi nd a phone number and a phone. You just click a button and have a chat.

How satisfi ed are customers with chat experiences?It’s all to do with the design, isn’t it? Where are the chat boxes popping up? There are the ones that I call ‘impatient’ chat boxes. As soon as you get to the site, the chat box comes out, and it’s, ‘No! I’m just looking at the site!’

There’s that, and there is that perception that if they know the agents are on multiple chats, and there’s adelay, digital customers get impatient. They want instantaccess to things. Chat is perceived as a much easiest andfaster channel than the phone.

Realistically, I’m not sure that’s true.But it’s a perception – the customer feels in control.

They can go and do something else online, rather than sitand listen to hold music. So we’re seeing growth in thatchannel and, obviously, a link to that is perceptions aroundthings like chatbots, a very hot topic at the moment.

Two years ago they weren’t sure. Now, they’re going,‘Well, if it’s quick, easy and gets me to my goal, brilliant.I’ll have a chatbot please.’

Obviously, don’t make it that they can’t talk to ahuman if things don’t work out.

There’s that ‘IVR’ (interactive voice response) for digital. Like the ‘press one, press two’ that you would go through on a phone. They’re triaging you – seeing if they can get you to the goal – if not, drop in a human agent. You can then see what they’re interested in. You can triage much more intelligently to the right agent with the right skillset.

There’s lot of really interesting stuff around bots, they’re deploying them everywhere. I think they’ve been slightly oversold, because I’ve yet to have a particularly profound conversation with one.

But it’s around appropriateness; have they got the data? They don’t magic data out of nothing. Is there an interactive FAQ? Can we build a process in the decision tree? Can we learn from agents as well? There are a couple of start-ups that we’re looking at – true

machine learning ones – where the agent actually teaches the bot. It’s not cutting the human out. It’s actually enhancing them.

It’s almost like a staffi ng structure or training process?I regard bots almost as children. You need to be a responsible parent, and you need to teach them well.

There are subtleties. For example, bots don’t handle complaints terribly well, because complaints are often very long. They’re complex. How do you pass that into something a machine can understand?

Sarcasm gets deployed quite a lot. I’d say Australia was just as bad as the UK on this one!An example I usually give is when one bot picked up something on Twitter about a UK train company, which was: ‘Thank you to this particular train company – which will remain nameless – for my free sauna this morning.’

Now, of course, you put that through a typicalsentiment analysis engine, that’s going to come out as a positive comment, but we know, as human beings, having a sauna on a train is a bad thing.

It’s not what you want...But why would a machine know that? So a lot is around context. Then, of course, we’re looking at things like emotion recognition. There are lots of really scary start-ups that have started to use the cameras on smartphones to assess micro expressions on the face.

In marketing there are people going, ‘Ooh, that could be interesting!’ But it’s also a little bit scary.

What’s acceptable, what’s creepy? Am I, as a customer, happy that you’re reading my facial expression or taking my personal data and doing something with it?On the personal data side, we have this thing called the ‘me-conomy’. So, I’m actually more willing than I used to be to share social media or location data with somebody but, as a large corporate, I’m not going to do that just for free.

What am I going get back? What’s in it for me? So I will share it, but I want more personalised service

I regard bots almost aschildren. You need to be aresponsible parent, and youneed to teach themwell.

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40 INTERVIEW


or better offers. If I don’t get any of that, why would I share it?

And then if you use it too much, it starts to become creepy. There’s a fi ne line between a digital butler and a stalker. The digital butler is helping me to do things I probably don’t want to do. A stalker is following me, tapping me on the shoulder and I don’t want them.

It will be interesting to see whether or not, in the next few years, businesses that come out and say, ‘We’re only going to use your data to fulfi l your request and will not use it to target you or send you further communications,’ will experience growth in traffi c and loyalty.There’s an interesting test in Europe going on at the moment, because we’ve got the GDPR, the general data protection regulation. It is actually mandating companies. First: obtain consent from customers, but also explain to them what their data is going to be used for.

I think it’s a good thing to be honest, because it’s starting to crystallise conversations around ‘what data do I need from customers?’ Consent is needed to use it for a bot, or for personalisation engine.

It’s going to be an interesting testbed if it works; I suspect a lot of other countries around the world are going to look at implementing something similar.

The human element in digital CX (customer experience) – how do you see that changing in the next fi ve years? What will an effective human-digital CX solution look like?There’s a lot of talk about AI wiping out jobs, and I don’t like the words ‘artifi cial intelligence’, because, frankly, there’s very little that’s intelligent about it. It is dependent on the data.

Plus, machines are good at doing certain things, and we’re good at doing certain things.

I prefer ‘augmented intelligence’ to artifi cial intelligence, because I think our human brain is amazing. There are certain things a six-year-old can do that a

machine is going to fi nd quite hard for a number of years. In the core CX space, a lot of those skills are the ones that add to the brand: empathy, caring, innovation, creativity.

Negotiation is an interesting one, even just basic conversation.

Bots are not particularly good conversationalists, because human language is anarchic. It wasn’t designed to interact with a machine. The really interesting thing is we’re getting all these voice interfaces coming along: the Google Homes, the Alexas. You can’t have a profound conversation with them, but they’re an interesting interface, as the technology starts to disappear into the ether.

The smartphone is now absolutely the portal for the customer. I don’t think that’s going to go away for a while. Smartphones will evolve. People are using PCs less, people are using tablets less. The capabilities of the smartphone we’re only really just tapping into.

For example, geolocation – can I fi gure out where you are, and can I contextualise things from that? You’ve got your digital butler sitting there. They’re a bit dumb at the moment, but they might evolve.

I always say that, at some point, maybe my digital butler will be handling all my service issues for me. So it could be a case of my bots talking to the company’s bots.

That’s an interesting point. If we reach a stage where your bot is talking to a company bot, all the work that’s been put into accuracy, voice recognition and replicating human communications may be rendered obsolete, because bots don’t need to talk to each other like humans.No. But again, I suspect that there are certain things that they can talk about that are easy, and then certain things that are diffi cult. If you’re looking at things like brand, one of the interesting things around digital is it’s actually quite diffi cult to really differentiate your brand from another in the digital space.

It then often comes down to how you handle that as you go from digital to human, whether that’s contact centre, branch or retail store. How do you connect that together? How do you decide where the employee bit comes in? How do you enable your employees to have the right information in order to actually deliver that brand promise?

To be honest, it’s still the people bit that builds the brand.

I don’t like the words ‘artifi cial intelligence’, because frankly, there’s very little that’s intelligent about it.



So where do you invest in training, and the enhancement of jobs? Well, it’s the customer-facing people that make that difference.

We’re starting to see things like contact centres changing. They’re going from a cost centre to a key strategic hub, because they’re where all the information about customers comes in, where you can use analytics to start to really understand the customer. But, second, they make the difference to the customer. Their work is shifting from very transactional, very predictable to quite emotive, quite complex.

For banks, for example – where they’ve got a high penetration of apps – people are doing a lot online. People don’t call their bank unless there’s a real problem and they need advice or reassurance.

Or they’ve been mugged and their card’s gone. When people are in a crisis it’s an interesting one. You can’t put complex technology in front of somebody who’s just been mugged. The chemistry of the brain has changed.

We lose half our short-term memory capacity if we get angry, frustrated or anxious.

So if you’re going to put someone through a complex IVR, for example: ‘press one for this, press two for this or press three for this...’

Our short-term memory is usually between seven and nine bits, so when we’re calm, ‘press three’ is about the limit. If anxious, ‘press one for this, press two for…’ we can’t remember what one is for.

Customers in crisis need to be accelerated to something that solves their problem simply. There’s actually an online bank, a start-up that just has this very big button on the app that says ‘cancel my card’.

That’s smart design.It’s just simple. ‘I’m anxious. Let’s just do this. I’ve just had my cards stolen. Let’s stop it, so I don’t have to go through authentication, because I won’t remember my password.’ Unless we use biometrics, which of course is coming in quite a bit around ‘let’s make it secure and easy’.

It’s on the personal device again, it’s smartphone, it’s got the fi ngerprint, it’s got the camera I can take a selfi e on.

That’s really becoming a reality. Biometrics – that’s quite an old innovation. Even voice biometrics has been around for a very long time. I think it’s now coming of age

simply because the cost has gone down because we’ve got the devices.

Talking about this fl uent integration of technology on the human, customer-facing side of things, do brands recognise this, or are they too obsessed with that next big technological step?Some are coming around. People are often under-investing in their phone channel, because the phone isn’t sexy. A lot of the investment has got into chat. Understandable, because it’s a huge growth channel. Social media’s got a lot of investment as well. The phone still works pretty well for quite a lot of things.

I think a number of companies now are getting completely bewitched by the promise of AI and chatbots, and things like that.

They do work. I’m not saying they don’t. Customers are actually saying, ‘If you can get me to

my answer, brilliant.’ But don’t then underinvest in your frontlines, because actually they are going to be adding quite a lot of difference.

The skill sets are starting to change in them as well. So it’s not a skill around processing lots of calls and the really fast reading of a script, it’s actually having to be creative.

I always describe the role as ‘sticking the fork into the spaghetti of backend process on behalf of the customer’.

How do we make sure they have the skills? Communication skills, problem-solving skills? Caring, empathy, all of those things we undervalue often now. They’re skills we need in the future. Some companies are realising that.

In the industry, there’s a growing awareness that the contact centre is becoming a little bit more strategic than it used to be. Because of that, it’s getting more investment than it used to get. I think that’s a good thing, but there’s still quite a lot of people who may be lured by the attraction of the technology without thinking of the consequences.

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arketingmag

...a number of companies now are getting completely bewitched by the promise of AI and chatbots.


Download the trend briefi ng prepared especially for the marketing managers of Australia and New Zealand at

Should you bot your brand?

What do people really think about interacting with branded AI?

How will AI change the way marketers work?

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44 CONTENT PARTNER: MARKETO


T o succeed today and remain relevant inthe future, marketers need to be changemanagers, technologists, analysts,strategists and advocates. It seems the topexpectations from businesses of marketing

– growing revenue, acquiring new customers andimproving the customer experience – are not possiblewithout also improving operational efficiency, investingin new technology and committing to improving thecapabilities of teams through education and training.

As the complexity of our competencies andresponsibilities increases, so too does the need todemonstrate the value of marketing and an understandingof the behaviours and needs of customers.

In short, it’s never been so important for marketersto be able to demonstrate their value. There are somepositive steps taking place. Our recent survey of 444Australian marketers in B2B and B2C verticals shows thatmarketers are investing in programs to better demonstratethe value of their work.

The downside to this, is that often these programs are unsophisticated. Many marketers still use dated attribution models. Less than half in the survey use a combination of multi-touch and fi rst-touch models, with more relying on traditional campaign metrics like clicks, downloads or customer satisfaction ratings like NPS (net promoter score).

Only 40 percent of marketers rate their organisation’s ability to demonstrate marketing’s impact on revenue as ‘good’ or ‘excellent’.

The result is what appears to be a bit of an identity crisis. Barely 15 percent of respondents say their department is seen as a primary driver of revenue. As many are unable to quantify their results, this is hardly surprising. More commonly (32 percent) say their team is recognised as a support resource for sales functions and sales targets, and many (28 percent) feel recognised as the team that ‘mostly runs events and manages the brand’.

With the tired ‘events and branding’ image, it seems marketers are battling legacy views of the work they do, from a time when there was far less accountability for marketing.

Today, however, the ability to engage with management peers, executives in the C-suite and even the board is paramount to success, and marketers must work quickly to show the value of their work. This will benefit both the individual organisations as a whole and marketers at a professional and personal career level.

“Marketers are tasked with generating interest, not sales,” says Raz Chorev, CMO at Orange Sky. “In an offl ine environment, it’s up to salespeople to close the sale, as opposed to an online environment, where there’s a direct correlation between marketing and revenue.

“We need to empower marketers with revenue-related KPIs to encourage them to think more commercially and less about ‘brand presence’ and general

Internal engagement and demonstrating valueAs the complexity of our competencies and responsibilities increases, so too does the need to demonstrate the value of marketing.

“We need to empower marketers with revenue-related KPIs to encourage them to think more commercially and less about ‘brand presence’ and general noise.”

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“Marketers need to demonstrate that their marketing activity is focused on growing current and new markets, building loyalty and increasing customer value.”

Marketo is a Marketing magazine Content Partner, a leading organisation with which we collaborate. If you’re interested in

learning more about marketing goals for 2018 and demonstrating marketing ROI, download ‘Can you Demonstrate the Value of Marketing? – insights from Australian marketing leaders about meeting and measuring organisational goals.’

as an advocate for customers, a revenue source and a driver of business growth.

Marketers don’t just need their voices to be heard to prove the effi cacy of their work. Many also desire a seat at the table. Playing a larger role in business strategy is the main personal goal for marketers in the survey. Increasing their capabilities and skills through education is the third most popular goal, as many see the expertise they have developed around technology in recent years as providing a path to additional senior executive roles.

Chief digital offi cer, chief technology offi cer and chief customer offi cer are all roles marketers nominate as ones to which they aspire. Interestingly, none in the survey nominate the CEO role, but some do express a desire to run their own business.

“Marketers need to demonstrate that their marketing activity is focused on growing current and new markets, building loyalty and increasing customer value, positioning the brand so it supports the sales and business strategy, as well as aligning the brand, the customer and the organisational team culture,” says Gibbs. “When all these activities are aligned and creating value for the customer it becomes more clear how the marketing activity drives revenue.”

We have our work cut out for us this year, it would seem.

noise,” Chorev suggests as an ideal way to help marketers fi nd their place.

An unfortunate 63.9 percent say they are only ‘fair’ or ‘poor’ when it comes to measuring and communicating their contribution to revenue, and almost a third don’t measure their contribution to company revenue at all.

Revenue growth, customer acquisition and customer experience are identifi ed as the key organisational goals by marketers, but most CMOs see these goals as natural consequences of understanding and fulfi lling customer needs.

“Marketers should clearly articulate how their activity directly or indirectly contributes to revenue,” says Alex Gibbs, senior executive and board director, Wine Communicators of Australia.

“If you don’t, then it’s diffi cult to justify increasing marketing investment year-on-year.”

Technology is, of course, a proven method of showcasing the return on marketing investment, a fact that marketers understand. In 2018, more will invest in automation and data management tools. Artifi cial intelligence (AI) investment will also grow – right now only four percent have AI in their martech stack, but it appears on the wishlist of 17 percent.

In 61 percent of cases, it is the CEO or managing director of an organisation that has the fi nal say on martech purchases, which once again drives home the need marketers have to be able to off er real insight and results outlining the successes, failures and learnings from their eff orts.

Planned increases in technology investment will help marketing professionals provide transparency over numbers and the contribution of marketing to revenue and profi t, and create an important opportunity to embed marketing at the very top of the organisation

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47 PROFILE

C arolyn Hyams is the digital marketing director of leading recruitment brands Aquent, Vitamin T and

Firebrand. For an impressive 16 years, she has been instrumental in shaping these brands to become more than just recruitment companies. With all three specialising in digital marketing and creative recruitment, Hyams learned early the value of being an early adopter and standing out from the crowd. When you speak to heryou can tell that she truly embodies the bold, transparent spirit of these modern recruitment brands. The recruiter profi les of Firebrand’s team not only list in what professional areas they specialise, you’ll also fi nd out whether they like house music or English tea.

Surprisingly, Hyams doesn’t come from a marketing background and was even off ered her initial role as strategic marketing manager for Aquent Asian Pacifi c without any experience at all. She explains, “I used to train people in computer graphics and after I trained them I would put them in touch with people who wanted to employ them.” After eight years as a trainer and working with Aquent through her role, she went to the company to help her fi nd a studio manager role, only to be off ered Aquent’s own marketing role.

“I said, ‘I’ve never done marketing before!’... [But] I knew that Aquent was the only global recruitment agency that specialised in creative. I had a graphic design and creative background – there was such a beautiful synergy there – so I thought, ‘You know what? I’ll just kind of learn marketing along the way’.” She laughs when she says that she actually went out and bought the book Marketing for Dummies and read the whole thing. “I had no idea what I was doing when I started, but I honestly believe that a lot of marketing is common sense… So basically, I thought, ‘I can help creative people fi nd jobs they love. It really appealed to me’.”

While Hyams has been with the brands for 16 years, a lot has changed over that period and she’s needed to constantly rise to new challenges. “When I fi rst started with Aquent in 2001 everything we did was print-based. We used to spend a fortune on print advertising and, quite honestly, you produced stuff and you had no idea if it actually worked.” She is critical not only of her marketing budget and ROI, but also as a one-person team, how she was using her time and resources. A major shift came in 2009 when social media started to take off and websites became more sophisticated, allowing the team to spend less on print advertising. “We could put our time and our resources

Lessons learnedWith a background in training and a career spent marketing for recruitment

brands, Carolyn Hyams offers valuable insight into skills, experience and team development through education. By Michelle Keomany.

I’m not one, but I’m striving to be an expert. Because if I can’t read the data then I’m wasting time. I need to know what’s working and domore of that!

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48 PROFILE


– not necessarily our money – into content and social media marketing, which actually had a far greater impact for our business.”

A key milestone was in 2010, when Hyams was responsible for launching Firebrand Talent, Aquent’s agency that specialises in permanent recruitment. She talks about launching a global business on the smell of an oily rag. Hyams knew she had to use a social and content marketing approach to overcome the lack of budget. “I didn’t know that much about social. I basically did it arse end around… I’ve got the platforms, what am I going to say? I need decent content! Initially, I was sharing other people’s content but, in the end, you need to market yourself. So I launched the Firebrand blog and it really was the cornerstone of everything we did.”

Hyams explains that at the time there weren’t any CEOs blogging and there were no recruitment companies on social media. She mentions an article by Jeff Bullas , a prolifi c social media marketer, who wrote about the importance of leaders being on social media. After meeting him at an event, Hyams decided that the CEO of Aquent at the time, Greg Savage, should launch his own blog and that she would start one for Firebrand Talent as well.

“There were no other recruiters doing this, it was unbelievable. And because we were ahead of everyone else, everyone looked to us, ‘Oh what is Firebrand doing, what is Aquent doing?’ It took a couple of years, but the ability to build trust and reputation through the content that we were doing was instrumental.”

It’s clear that not only did Hyams have a natural instinct for content marketing and the value of thought leadership, she also knew how to cut through and understood the importance of quality content.

“For a blog you need great content, not average. It has to be amazing, it has to be stuff that people want to share,” she says. In exchange for the industry’s best and brightest leaders writing for Firebrand, Firebrand would promote them and their personal brands. While no money was changing hands, Hyams understood the value of the partnership and that she needed to put in time and eff ort to keep the contributors engaged. She explains that the blog is how people came to fi nd the Firebrand website. “It wasn’t necessarily recruitment that they were after.

They were after helpful, educational, valuable content

that would help their career, their industry knowledge, anything to help them in the jobs they were in. This is the industry we were recruiting in, so there was that association that we were experts in the fi eld that we were blogging about.”

Nearly eight years later, some of Firebrand’s original bloggers are still writing for the site today. On top of content marketing, each year Firebrand releases the ‘Firebrand Talent Ignition Report’, a survey of 1200 Australian employees that delves into their concerns and values. It’s taking on this role of educator that really speaks to the brand’s broader mission beyond its day-to-day functional as a recruiter. While all these things help it market itself, it also plays an important role in continually promoting a wider culture of knowledge sharing and generosity.

This content marketing approach resonated with the challenges of the recruitment industry, helping to break through the stereotypes. (Rather fi ttingly, the word Aquent actually means ‘not a follower’.) Hyams says, “When it comes to recruitment the industry doesn’t have a great reputation as a whole. So being able to build relationships through that trust, reputation and that value you add beyond people thinking that you just put bums on seats – that had a huge impact.”

Another advantage was that they were simply just the fi rst brands to be active in this space. But in order to stay ahead, Hyams is very realistic about what needs to be done. “It’s constant learning, reading, looking at trends, following your strategy. But what can we do that’s diff erent, adds value, that’s benefi cial to the customer? So, you just have to keep on your toes all of the time and be open to change.”

Career timeline

JANUARY 2013 TO PRESENTAustralian marketing director, Firebrand Talent, Aquent and

Vitamin T

OCTOBER 2010 TO JANUARY 2013

Global marketing director, Firebrand Talent

SEPTEMBER 2001 TO OCTOBER 2010

Strategic marketing manager for Aquent in Asia Pacifi c and Europe

Employers need to wake up and be aware of what employees really want – what is keeping them in their job and what is driving them away.

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What are your top five tipsfor career progression?

Make constant learning an everyday priority.

Your personal brand is incredibly important. It’swhat people say about you when you aren’t in theroom. Work on it online and offline.

Keep your LinkedIn profile up-to-date and shareindustry content and your professional thoughtsconsistently.

Become an expert at something. Publish a blogand write regularly. Or publish your thoughts onLinkedIn’s publishing platform.

Be generous with your knowledge and connect industry peers where you can.

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training fund we have is unbelievable and it means we haveno excuse not to take responsibility for our own educationnow. I also think that having regular career conversationswith employees, not just short-term but long-term [is vital].‘In three years’ time where do you see yourself and howcan I help you get there?’ It’s those sorts of conversationsinstead of a performance review on what happened in thelast six months that would really help people want to staybecause they feel supported.”

She has a non-apologetic view of what the modernworkplace should look like and thinks that as employeeswe shouldn’t be afraid to have expectations. “I thinkemployees have a right to expect these things – 100 percent, I think that they have a right to demand the conditions that will keep them happy in their job. Employers need to wake up and be aware of what employees really want – what is keeping them in their job and what is driving them away.”

Hyams’ positive energy and simplicity is infectious. It’s clear that her own positive experience working for Aquent, Firebrand and Vitamin T helps to shape her ‘no BS’ approach to marketing. “How do you build trust if you’re not going to be who you are and be honest with your customers? I think it’s about honesty, really good communication and being consultative.” Hyams is truly focused on providing the best experience for everyone that comes into contact with the brands she manages. It’s a true testament to how powerful the combination of the right person for the right job is and the wider digital marketing industry is all the better for it.

* keep it simple, stupid

What are your top tips for employers to attract good talent?1. Offer fl exible working arrangements.

2. Focus on outcomes, rather than clock watching.

3. Implement an annual training budget to help keep employees’ skills up-to-date.

4. Have regular career conversations – both short- and long-term.

5. Live and breathe your company’s purpose and weave it into everyday work.

6. Have a culture of open feedback and ideas.

She also refl ects on what being a pioneer of social media marketing was like. “It was actually easier when it fi rst started, you could do whatever you wanted,” she recalls. “Your reach was huge and you didn’t have any of these platforms limiting what you could say, when you could say it. Everyone saw it and it had a major impact whatever you did. And now, because you have millions of people, it’s a lot harder to get attention and you have to pay.”

Hyams’ approach to marketing is incredibly thorough. Not only is she considering what she is creating and why, she’s also assessing and optimising. She says that one of the biggest learning curves has been understanding data. “It’s one thing to be doing all this digital marketing but what are you actually doing with the data it generates? I’m not one, but I’m striving to be an expert. Because if I can’t read the data then I’m wasting time. I need to know what’s working and do more of that!” There’s no doubt that in an increasingly complicated digital marketing environment, it’s Hyams’ ability to KISS* that has helped her to thrive.

Behind the scenes, the brands are living what they preach and ensuring that good practices start within and then resonate outwards. Every employee of Aquent, Firebrand Talent and Vitamin T has an $8000 per year education. “It’s almost hard to use it all! And it’s every year.” Hyams exclaims. “All our employees are constantly out upskilling, learning about new trends, keeping up with industry. If you are not adopting a constant-learning mentality you will never stay ahead and you will not survive and thrive.”

Through her own experience, Hyams understands the needs of both employers and job seekers. “This annual

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50 CONTENT PARTNER: FORRESTER


A round the world, customer experience(CX) quality has largely stalled – Australiaincluded. According to Forrester’s 2017‘Customer Experience Index’, not asingle industry average improved this

year in the Australian market. Many individual brandsstagnated or even slid backward – mirroring a globalslump in CX quality.

Why did CX quality not improve in 2017?Multiple data sources show that customer confidence

is up, spending is up and expectations are rising, asconsumers interact with brands more than ever before.But the data also shows that trust in companies hasdropped precipitously. This crisis of trust is worsenedby misleading and false statements from executives andpoliticians alike, amplified by the speed and power of theinternet to scale the spread of falsehoods.

As companies recognise this crisis of trust, Forresterbelieves that the leading companies will address the issuehead-on in 2018, responding to this sea change in four keyways. For example:

Brands that own their values will break away from those that merely borrow them. Brands that deliver CX rooted in values – such as Aesop, Muji and Apple – will draw customers, while brands that borrow their values and stage their superfi cial experiences will continue to be called out for all to seeacross social media.Smart companies will deepen customer understanding beyond the low-hanging fruit. CX pros at leading fi rms will move beyond ad hoc initiatives, probe deeper into root causes and work to instil the discipline required for outcomes to scaleand last.B2B fi rms will move from ‘just selling’ to customer success management (CSM). CSM practitioners earn trust by strengthening CX management maturity practices to ensure that promises made to clients in the pre-sale period don’t fall into a post-sale transition gap. For a growing number of B2B companies, the pathway to growth willcome through CSM.Brands will increasingly serve distinct communities rather than the mass market. ‘Jack of all trade’ brands slipped across the board in our CX Index this year – an indication that brands struggle more and more to be ‘everything to everyone’ in the age of the customer. We see speciality brands continuing to raise the bar as new CX leaders emerge by serving narrower sets of customers more deeply.Specifi c to the Australian market, we see two key

changes on the horizon. Companies in ANZ will:

1. DECENTRALISE THEIR CX CAPABILITIESFounded on the philosophy that everyone in the fi rm is responsible for CX delivery, the CX function will move

Ryan HartPrincipal analyst, Forrester

CX quality disappoints amid a crisis of trust CX quality has stalled throughout the world. Here’s how smart brands will react according to Tom Champion and Ryan Hart.

“Brands that borrow their values and stage their superfi cial experiences will continue to be called out for all to see across social media.”

Tom Champion Senior analyst, Forrester

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“Smart executives will intervene to make CX an internal disruptive force, one that is underpinned by the fundamentals of CX management with customer trust at the core.”

Forrester is a Marketing content partner, a leading organisation with which we collaborate to bring exclusive content

to readers. Read more from Forrester analysts at marketingmag.com.au

by the fundamentals of CX management with customer trust at the core; too many executives will continue to ignore evidence of market disruption and procrastinate until the evidence is overwhelming, putting their fi rms at risk as we enter 2019.

out of one department and be spread across many. In terms of skill set, this means CX teams will do less of the operational work and will need to embrace their position as internal consultants, and back it up with the right skills in change management, problem solving, training and stakeholder coordination. Failure to do this could see an explicit CX function wiped off the map.

2. FOCUS MORE ON THE EMPLOYEE EXPERIENCE Some fi rms have already jumped on board the employee experience bandwagon by expanding the remit of the team to fi rmly include culture. CX teams have implicitly covered culture change in the past, but it’s becoming more enshrined in their roles. That’s because the CX skill set transfers well to employees, as metrics like eNPS (employee Net Promoter Score) become more popular, employee journey mapping becomes a norm and CX leaders even take on the traditional HR remit.

Forrester predicts 2018 will be a year of reckoning. For 30 percent of companies, CX performance will decline further, and this will translate into a net loss of a point of growth.

Smart executives will intervene to make CX an internal disruptive force, one that is underpinned

44449_50-51_CP.indd 51 18/01/18 10:50 AM

A fter 15 years in the liquor and hospitality industries, Ben Cairns (pictured centre) joined partners Stephen Wools (left) and Josh Lefers (right) to work on the East 9th Brewing Company based in Melbourne. The three

work across all parts of the business, from management, branding and concept to new products and fl avours. In a crowded craft beer market, the brand ties its product to unique ideologies to differentiate itself from competitors that typically tie their brand identity to geographic location.

This aspirational way to live helps form the brand’s products, starting with Doss Blockos – bottles of which are sold in paper bags – a beer inspired by the squats of Manhattan. More recently, fuck.the.rent and Hempire – Australia’s fi rst beer made from hemp – continue to take the brewing company in interesting directions of taste and teachings.

Shortly after the Melbourne launch of Hempire Hemp Ale, Cairns fi lled Marketing in on the origins and directions of the company.

Marketing: What was the origin of your brewing company, and how did your ideologies eventuate from this?Ben Cairns: The fi rst product we rolled out was Doss Blockos Pale Lager, the iconic beer that comes hand-wrapped in a brown paper bag. We saw a gaping hole in the beer world to connect with a consumer in a totally different way than the norm.

It’s based on – as all our products are – an ideology and an aspirational way to live life. Essentially: not being pushed around and making a stand for yourself. Dos Blockos was a squat home based in the Lower East Side of Manhattan in the nineties. It was a really fertile space for creatives, artists, poets, musicians and whatnot. They were housed there for decades until they were fi nally pushed out when developers took over the site and knocked it down for apartments. That gave rise to the Squatters’ Rights movement and all kinds of things. We took aspiration from that idea that you can just live


mar

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.auBrewed for thought

From a Manhattan squat, to a back fence in Fitzroy, to Australia legalising the human consumption of hemp products, East 9th Brewing Company takes inspirations for its products, branding and ideologies from some

interesting places. And it’s working.

44449_52-54_interview ben c.indd 52 18/01/18 1:10 PM


however you want, and you don’t actually have to answer to anybody.

That was about eight years ago that we launched Doss Blockos, cutting away from the norm. Most beer brands on the market are based around a geographical location, possibly an individual or their heritage. We [don’t really] talk about [that]. That’s what makes East 9th Brewing products quite unique. That’s where we found our space, not only as a brand, but when you delve further into it, even the categories in which we play.

We call ourselves an independent brewing company. We like to push the boundaries as far as the category goes as well. For instance, we have one of the fi rst alcoholic ginger beers to hit the market here in Australia. We’re defi nitely the fi rst alcoholic root beer in the market. With our Fog City red sangria, we’re trying to reposition how consumers see the consumption occasions surrounding sangria. And, obviously, there’s Doss Blockos Hempire, Australia’s fi rst hemp beer.

So, we try and deliver not only interesting brands, but also interesting categories or new spins on existing ones.

When developing new products, which comes fi rst?The fl avour and the product, or the ideology?It can happen either way. The root beer is a great example. We heard about alcoholic root beer existing in the States, and I think we heard it was a $250 million category or something outrageous like that. We tried a lot of the market leaders over there and loved them all, so we had our heart set on creating an alcoholic root beer for the Australian market. We were developing the taste profi le for close to 12 months and, alongside that, developing the brand and concepts around the way that this root beer was going to be packaged and delivered to consumers.

That one really took a long time, so we had the idea and then we – I guess – retrofi tted a brand to it, and the

Everybody has that inner anarchist, for lack of a better term. Everyone likes to think ofthemselves as a bit of a rebel.

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53 INTERVIEW

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54 INTERVIEW


fi nished result is Future Memoirs of a Root Beer, which is a bit like a time paradox, alternative futuristic-type brand that can tie your brain in knots if you think about it too much. That’s one instance.

In other instances, the Hempire brand is a sub-brand of the Doss Blockos mast brand, as is fuck.the.rent. The idea of this came out of a conversation that we had in a bar late at night with a pretty interesting individual. The idea came before the product did. So, we loved the idea of that, and then it took us further down the rabbit hole to a destination that fi tted perfectly with the golden ale that we wanted to bring together with that brand.

How important have these ideas been to your audience and commercial success to date? Does it help you cut through the noise of the craft beer industry?It’s really becoming a crowded space, the independent, craft brewing world. It’s one of the things that we love doing, and it’s one of the things that sets us apart from a lot of other brands. We see it as a really important component of a fi nished product for us, because it’s what makes us different.

As I mentioned, all of our brands are based on a certain ideology. Most of our brands have unique artworks that we’ve worked on with artists all over the world to bring to life. There are a number of different little soundbites that the trade and consumers can pick up on, and go on a bit of a journey of discovery. For instance, the two characters that adorn the label of Doss Blockos Pale Lager, the original skew, were found in a Fitzroy alleyway as illegal street art. We had the idea of Doss Blockos and we were looking for a couple of front men for the brand, and we stumbled upon those two fi gures on someone’s back fence in Fitzroy. We had to track down the artist, which was no mean feat – because it wasn’t supposed to be there – and work with him to bring that to life on a label.

It’s those kinds of stories that really resonate, with not only consumers, but also the hospitality industry and retailers, because a story like that sticks in someone’s mind a little more than talking about things that nine out of 10 of the breweries are talking about.

So you tracked down the graffi ti artist?That was a little story in itself. He’s a Brisbane artist who was residing in Melbourne for a long time. He packed up

shop and became a self-taught tattoo artist in Berlin for a few years. He’s just arrived back in Melbourne and he’s got his own tattoo parlour in Carlton now.

Little interesting snippets like that are littered through each of our brands.

Craft and independent label beer brands tend to occupy the premium part of the market in terms of product price. A lot of people consuming your product would have higher disposable income and come from the professional class, so to speak. Does it fl y in the face of your ethos a little, to have those people consuming your product. Is it something that you think about?I understand completely what you’re saying. It’s predominantly white collar folk, you know, having their Friday knock-off drink. To be honest, it wasn’t initially our target demographic, of course. Our brands are at home in the gritty alleyways or rooftops in Melbourne, in some of those bars that you need to hear about from someone who knows someone who knows someone. That kind of thing.

But I guess, as our brands have grown and consumers have evolved, they’ve kind of transcended demographics. We love the fact that there are white collar consumers that are embracing the Doss Blockos idea. I think that everybody has that inner anarchist, for lack of a better term.

Everyone likes to think of themselves as a bit of a rebel and not being like everyone else, and I think that, come Friday, a white collar worker having a Doss Blockos? It’s almost a symbol of defi ance in itself.

For the Hempire hemp ale, you jumped on the legalisation of hemp products for consumption. Did this come from a desire to be the fi rst, to get onto something quickly? Was it something you’d thought about before?We’ve been toying with the idea for a number of years now – of working with hemp as an ingredient. Obviously, it’s been illegal in Australia for close to 100 years, up until a couple of weeks ago. And then, I think it was announced around April this year (2017) that the laws would change in November. The moment we heard that, we put our heads down and bums up and thought, ‘Finally, we’ve got a go-live date for this’. So we worked through a number of different prototype brews before we got, to the fi nishing line there. And that’s what resulted with Doss Blockos Hempire.

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56 CONTENT PARTNER: UNLTD


I still vividly remember the first time I went to aconcert. It was a cold November night in 1985;the legendary Welsh Elvis, Shakin’ Stevens (akaShaky), was playing live at Blackpool WinterGardens in the north-west of England. It was so

cold that my mother bought me a silk ‘Shaky’ scarf onthe way in – I don’t think the heating bills had beenpaid at the venue! The place was heaving, and the roarthat greeted Shaky as he came out onto the stage wasdeafening. Somebody in the front few rows had broughta life-size painted green door along with them and waswaving it in the air (an ode to one of Shaky’s chart-toppinghits). The scent of ‘Anais Anais’ perfume was sweepingthrough the amphitheatre, and middle-aged women werescreaming and elbowing each other out of the way to getto the front.

I was eight years old and transfixed by the event thatI was a part of. Never had I seen anything like this and Iwas enraptured. From the moment the first note came outof Shaky’s mouth to the encore two hours later, it was thebest experience of my life. I remember wearing my leather

jacket every day for six months after that show and coming second that year at Butlins talent competition in Skegness with my impersonation of the great man.

On a very different note, I also remember vividly the day I came home from school at the age of 13 to fi nd my mum, nana and grandad waiting for me, telling me that my dad had died. He was 33 years old and had overdosedon heroin. Twenty-eight years later I can still hear my mum crying.

There is nothing more impactful than experiencing something for yourself. Whether that be a rock concert or losing somebody, memories – both good and bad – are made by experiences. Experience drives emotion: laughter, tears, anger, disappointment, frustration, resentment, curiosity and so much more. Emotion is the number one trigger for action. The emotional connections that we feel through being involved in an experience are second to none, and this combination is incredibly powerful.

At UnLtd, the emotional connection is something that we think about every day. UnLtd exists for two reasons: to enable our corporate partners (the media and marketing industry) to do good and give back, and to drive value to our charity partners so that they can continue to do the great work that they do to give young Australians the best opportunities in life.

We know that the best way to do both is for us to provide an experience that evokes emotion in our corporate partners and, therefore, unlocks the potential to drive value for our charity partners. I guess this is the not-for-profit sector’s version of establishing a ‘buy-in’.

If our corporate partners are going to feel wholly attached (and therefore drive a massive impact), they must experience up close and personal what the charity stands for. It is essential that they experience fi rst-hand the work that the charity does and the impact it has.

Chris Freel is CEO of UnLtd

Emotion, experience and then impactFace-to-face communication is going out of fashion as technology advances, so we could be forgiven for thinking that real experience doesn’t matter. Chris Freel, however, argues that it is more important than ever.

The emotional connections that we feel through being involved in an experience are second to none, and this combination is incredibly powerful.

44449_56-57_CP.indd 56 18/01/18 10:57 AM


@marketingm

ag

“Experience drives emotion… Emotion is the number one trigger for action”

Marketing is proud to have UnLtd as its Content Partner. UnLtd brings the Australian media, marketing and

advertising industry together to tackle a big issue: undoing youth disadvantage. We urge you to visit unltd.org.au and get involved.

We are fortunate in the marketing community to be privy to some incredible experiences. In my previous roles at both Pandora and Fairfax, I have travelled the world, seen Grand Finals, British Lions series, Ashes tests (good and bad) and much more. I have eaten some of the best food cooked by some of the world’s fi nest chefs and even hacked my way around the Royal Sydney Golf Course. I have been very privileged to enjoy such an abundance of rich experiences.

Three months into my new role, however, I have had my eyes opened wide to another world where these experiences are so far away. There are over 680,000 disadvantaged youths in Australia suff ering from physical, sexual and mental abuse, neglect, mental illness, homelessness and physical disability. This is happening right on our doorstep, and there is not enough government support to go around.

At UnLtd we work with several charities that dedicate their work to making a positive diff erence to the lives of these young people. Our vision is that every young person should be given the best opportunity in life. We also believe that, as an industry, we have the potential to use our fi nancial and cultural infl uence to create signifi cant positive social change to help these charities and the young people with whom they work.

We have the power to make a substantial positive diff erence to our society. We believe that if we work together, we can ensure that every young future is a bright future.

This can happen in a number of ways: It could be hearing the story from one of the many

kids who have come from a history of abuse, neglect and living on the streets to fi nding a family with Musicians Making a Diff erence, which has allowed them to transform their life, get a job and theirown home.

It could be having [youth mental health education organisation] Batyr deliver a mental health session to an entire organisation – enabling over 600 people to talk about mental health issues in a positive light, address the elephant in the room and give practical tipson how to look out for each other.It could also be volunteering on the streets of Sydneywith Youth Off The Streets.

It could be visiting Armidale in New South Wales and welding with the young blokes at BackTrack, who have found purpose and meaning in life and somebody who believes in them, for the fi rst time. This is where the corporate partners ‘get it’.

They forge an emotional connection, and that is when the magic happens. The more corporate partners we can help to ‘get it’, the more kids in Australia will have a better opportunity in life. It’s a simple equation for us.

But this isn’t just about helping the charities and young Australians. It also has a very positive eff ect on our corporate partners. Many of you will experience within your own organisations an overwhelming desire from the workforce to be involved in giving back. Individuals are more purpose-driven than ever before, and companies that can entwine this within the fabric and culture of their organisations are the ones that will succeed. They will attract and retain the best talent, drive positive values and culture and, ultimately, see an improvement in output and productivity.

44449_56-57_CP.indd 57 18/01/18 10:57 AM


GETTING VOCALVoice assistants and smart speakers are opening up new paths of communication

dding to the list of u er x ce marketers must consider.

L: whmmo

Source: Kantar an o i h re

age in Australia

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Top e reasons Austra use voice technology:

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44449_58-59_infographic voice.indd 58 22/01/18 12:36 PM


In the homeSmart speakers are taking

the connected home to new levels and revolutionising

the ways in which users consume content and engage with the world.

A total of

17.1 million sm s eakers were shi worldwide in

the fi rst three quarters of 2017, and a further

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59 INFOGRAPHIC

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44449_58-59_infographic voice.indd 59 22/01/18 2:11 PM

60 CASE STUDY


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Background: With competition tough for tourism dollars, Cook Islands Tourism (CIT) wanted to defi ne its market and expand its reach across Australia and New Zealand.

The independent South Pacifi c state appeals to tourists in both countries, but their interests are diverse, with CIT estimating the Cook Islands are a new destination to the Australian market but a mature one for New Zealanders. Confi rming this assumption was high on the agenda for CIT so it could develop a targeted digital marketing strategy for each market.

Tourism accounts for more than 60 percent of the Cook Islands’ gross domestic product.

CIT wants to set the Cook Islands apart as a South Pacifi c destination that isn’t sleepy or soporifi c, but a vibrant and energetic destination that refl ects the energy of its people and culture. It was looking for messaging that

reflected the Islands’ personality andopened up its shores for travellers looking for a meaningful and experiential experience.

Objectives: The broad objectives were to increase brand awareness in Australia and New Zealand and to change the perception of the Cook Islands. Building out audience insights and understanding where the Australian and New Zealand markets each were at in their awareness of the Cook Islands was integral to the campaign.

Key to achieving this was researching the getaway’s customer segment. Prior to the campaign, it was too restrictive and defi ned as ‘fl y and fl op’ – people aged 30-plus who travel to sunbake at a resort.

CIT chose programmatic advertising by Sparcmedia in partnership with The Core Agency to target audiences in both markets. Sparcmedia’s parent company

Pureprofile used a brand impact study to provide metrics on how the advertising campaign had affected consumer sentiment regarding the Cook Islands.

The purpose of the study was twofold: to ensure ROI was tracked and achieved, and to determine who the customer segments were (with a view to use these insights as a platform to build the main digital marketing campaign). This would ensure that future marketing spend would be directed at the audience that is the best fi t for the market and delivered in a way that heralds premium results.

This insights-driven approach helped CIT understand how audiences related to its messaging, as well as verify preconceived notions about what each market wanted in a holiday destination.

Strategy: Sparcmedia ran a month-long programmatic advertising campaign in March and

Change as good as a holiday

CampaignFrom ‘fl y and fl op’ to ‘soft explorers’

ClientCook Islands Tourism

AgencySparcmedia and The Core Agency

44449_60-63__casestudys.indd 60 23/01/18 11:10 AM


@m

arketingmag

Execution: The advertising included video, search and display ads across web and social targeting of Australians and New Zealanders across all ages and regions.

In addition, custom audience segments were built in a data management platform (DMP) to reach psychographic-based consumer segments interested in adventurous travel. With such a broad demographic, a variety of online advertising including video ads through YouTube and Facebook plus other social and display ads, such as boosted posts and canvases, were used. Benchmarks were set for viewability and click-through and most of the channels exceeded these.

Results: The campaign clocked up 4,726,675 impressions in four weeks and achieved 126 percent over delivery on budget. It reached 2.5 million unique audiences with over 41,000 click-throughs.

It gave CIT valuable insights into its customer segments – broadening the scope from ‘fl y and fl op to ‘soft explorers’ aged 25 to 34 years and seeking adventurous destinations, ultimately uncovering a whole new market segment.

The advertising mix identifi ed the different customer journeys for these two segments – fl y and fl oppers visited the website after engaging with ads, such as video and carousel, four times. On the other hand, soft explorers visited the website after engaging with ads twice. The insight reaped many benefi ts for CIT, allowing it to optimise the media strategy accordingly and save wasted ad dollars, as well as cater to soft explorers. The brand impact study revealed that, in addition to the Cook Islands being seen as an

April 2017, working with The Core Agency on behalf of CIT.

The brand impact study was layered over the campaign to show how sophisticated insights can provide real ROI results on advertising spend.

The online pre and post study measured the impact of advertising in raising the brand awareness and changing the Cook Islands’ brand perception with a representative sample of Australians and New Zealanders. The pre-study was used to understand the current state of the Cook Islands’ brand awareness and destination perception – prior to any marketing campaign.

The post-study, conducted once the one-month programmatic advertising campaign had concluded, asked the same questions to measure how effective the campaign had been in raising brand awareness, and whether the Cook Islands were now being recognised as an adventurous destination rather than a resort island.

The team hit the mark instantly with its target audience on Facebook and YouTube, but refi ned its search during the initial weeks of the campaign to select websites to give both high viewability and strong click-through rate (CTR).

The campaign was the pre-strategy to provide the foundation for a longer three- to fi ve-year strategy that has digital as a major component. This served CIT well as a small destination with a limited budget and low brand awareness in the Australian market.

Trialling its messaging in this way to gain an understanding of how it resonated with the target audiences provided a safe way for CIT to enter the digital space with a solid sense of who its audience is and how they like to be reached.

exploring destination, the perception of it as adventurous increased by fi ve percent among New Zealanders, expanding CIT’s usual customer segment.

In Australia, brand awareness for the Cook Islands increased by one percent, brand recall increased by fi ve percent and preparedness to visit increased by three percent. In New Zealand, post-campaign opinions of the Cook Islands being a place where you can ‘get out of the hotel/resort and do interesting things’ increased by fi ve percent.

From a tourism perspective, the programmatic campaign outlined the competitive landscape for CIT – it uncovered the advertising spend and timing of competitors such as Fiji, Hawaii and Tahiti, and identifi ed the peak season, which in turn drovetimings for CIT’s media schedule.

Online advertising – including social – had a brand recall of 20 percent among Australians and 28 percent among NewZealanders.

YouTube instream ads exceeded the 90 percent benchmark for 25 percent completion – 94 percent in Australia and 95percent in New Zealand.

Facebook short video ads exceeded the 30 percent benchmark for 25 percent completion – 30.19 percent in Australia and 31.64 percent inNew Zealand.

Facebook and Instagram carousel ads achieved 5845 link clicks, 79 post shares, 78 post comments and 1296 post reactions.

Facebook and Instagram boosted posts achieved140,744 engagements.

Canvas ads on Facebook and achieved 85,875 impressions in Australia and 72,403 in New Zealand. They clocked up a view time of 29.82 seconds.


64 CASE STUDY


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Background: It may not be the fi rst race of Spring Carnival, but for the foodie, the fun and the fashion conscious, the Caulfi eld Cup is when things really kick off each year.

In its 2016 event review, Melbourne Racing Club (MRC) left no stone unturned in its quest to reinvigorate the style pillar of its brand.

‘Fashions on the Field’ has been a staple of race days for as long as we can all remember. It drives publicity, interest and ticket sales for the event, and is an important part of the effort to position the Caulfi eld Cup as comprising multiple pillars – entertainment, fashion, food and more. It also has a knock-on effect for ongoing membership numbers.

But times have changed since the fi rst competitions to fi nd the best dressed more than 50 years ago, and both entries and engagement had begun to fall fast for MRC. The format needed a shake-up, and quickly.

Objectives: MRC challenged Neonormal to take a fresh look at the fashion and style experience on course. How could we transform it from predictable to original and fresh. Seventeen- to 30-year-old ‘social explorer’ females were our primary target, but we absolutely couldn’t forget the rest. Men and women alike, from 18 all the way up to 50-plus were telling us that they had felt disconnected from the current offering.

So what did success look like? Measures were twofold: increased

engagement and positive sentiment across the whole spectrum of MRC’s target market, as well as a 50 percent increase in entries.

In short... a renewed love of the on-course fashion experience for all.

Strategy: Previous research conducted by MRC and another agency partner told us not only that racegoers were disengaged with the current delivery of ‘Fashions on the Field’, but why.

Their insights demonstrated an ironic truth. While racegoers were happy to publish photos of themselves online to a potential audience of thousands, the idea of parading on a catwalk in front of an audience of judges and other race-goers was enough to make some shudder.

Revolutionising Fashions on the Field

Campaign Westfi eld Style Stakes

ClientMelbourne Racing Club

Agency Neonormal



@m

arketingmag

In addition, that audience felt strongly that race day is all about creating moments and memories with friends, and that the current experience could be quite isolating. They didn’t want to go it alone.

These factors, combined with the belief that the experience was only accessible to some, led to a need for change.

It was clear that our approach needed to revolve around delivering an experience that was accessible and inclusive, with digital amplifi cation at its core. How could we make our racegoers feel like a million dollars throughout the experience, encourage them to get involved with friends, and share their experience online with those who couldn’t be there?

Execution: All the insight led to one clear vision. ‘Fashions on the Field’ didn’t just need an experience shake-up; it needed an entire rebrand. And so the ‘Westfi eld Style Stakes’ was born, a truly inclusive fashion experience for racegoers in the social age.

We therefore created a once in a lifetime photoshoot experience, which was truly personalised from start to fi nish.

Inspired by the insight that some of our audience found ‘Fashions on the Field’ daunting, we reimagined our entry mechanic, working with MRC to identify four distinct categories of racegoers – from lads, to ladies, to professional milliners, to ‘squads’.

What did this mean? Everyone had a chance to shine – from those who preferred to go solo, to those

who wanted to share the spotlight with their squad, right through to the loyal milliner crowd.

And how did it work? Racegoers selected their preferred category and made their way to the luxurious touch-up station, where professional hair and make-up stylists were on hand to make sure that they felt like a million dollars.

Once they were camera-ready and feeling (even more) fabulous, participants were ushered through to their own private studio for a session with a top fashion photographer.

A session in the edit suite followed, where the racegoer was able to select his or her favourite shots. These were delivered by two methods: a printed copy to act as a physical memento of their experience, and a text message with a call to action to share on social. This created a constantly evolving gallery of organic online content, curated and posted by MRC’s own target market, spreading the word far and wide.

The top 10 selections were delivered to a panel of judges, who (after much deliberation) selected a lucky winner for each category and these were awarded thousands of dollars in a prize pool.After revolutionising ‘Fashions on

the Field’ in 2016, MRC briefed Neonormal to continue this momentum into 2017, making ‘Style Stakes’ even bigger and better than the year before.

To raise the bar, we took our inspiration from the world of fashion and from the latest trends in the digital world, upgrading the photography experience to a cinemagraph moving image style. This created a solution that was not only fresh and beautiful, but could also be brought to the masses and delivered in real time.

In essence, the core of the experience remained the same, with the personalised shoot, professional make-up, hair styling and edit suite experience.

This time round we added a new dimension, however, with roaming fashion scouts and a spectacle stage. The best dressed racegoers were invited to take part in the ‘Style Stakes’ on the spectacle stage, giving them the chance to show off their style, and other racegoers to take a seat and enjoy the very latest looks.

Results: ‘Style Stakes’ was an incredible story of unrivalled brand engagement for Melbourne Racing Club.

In short, the campaign achieved: 500 percent increase in entries

in 2016, and further increase in 2017

180,000-plus social impressions across sharedcontent alone, and

extensive earned media coverage, including Channels 7, 9, 10 and the Herald Sun.

And how did it work? Racegoers selected their preferred category and made their way to the luxurious touch-up station, where professional hair and make-up stylists were on hand to make sure that they felt like a million dollars.


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Background: In a categorythat was all about producteffectiveness, Soothers was seenas tasty, not effective.

Over the years, increasingcompetition from hardcoremedicinal brands with louder voicesand bigger spends had forced ourcore range into a year-on-yeardecline of four percent per annum.

For a struggling brand withlittle differentiation, by 2015,supermarket giant, Coles, madethe decision to delete all of ourSKUs (stock keeping units) exceptone, immediately wiping out ourdistribution by 30 percent. Withthe supermarket having made upapproximately one-third of totalsales in the previous year, we knewwe were in a fight for our lives.

We had one of two choices.Continue as we always did

and try and prove that, despite ourgreat taste, we were just as effective(a fight we had been trying to win foryears with little success). Or we had

Strategy: We knew that we needed to fi nd a way to talk about Soothers and sore throats in a way that was different and unique. So we went back to the start, back to the consumer.

Through focus groups and quantitative research of the target audience, we uncovered a remarkable nugget of gold: of all the people who bought sore throat lozenges, an incredible 34 percent of them didn’t think they were actually ‘sick’ when their throat was sore. They just saw it as a consequence of living life to the fullest.

This was our light bulb moment. While competitors were focusing

on sore throats from a cold or fl u, they were actually turning off approximately one-third of the market. Every time they ran an ad with cartoon germs and stuffy noses, one third of the market didn’t think it was relevant to them. We had found a new audience with an unmet need that Soothers could uniquely fulfi l.

a second choice, which was to find acompletely different race to run.

We chose the latter.

Objectives: With such adevastating loss in distribution, ourprimary goal was to stay alive.

In order to do this, our newstrategy and campaign needed todeliver some key results in 18 months.In order for the work to be deemeda success, by the end of 2016, weneeded to achieve the following:

Halt the projected sales declineand maintain our market shareof 12.6 percent. This was ourmarket position before the Colesdeletion.Halt the sales loss of our herocore range by end of 2016. Anambitious target consideringthe core range had been inconsistent decline since 2010.

Increase consideration from a score of 48 to 54 by the end of 2016 to drive an increase in sales in channels outside of Coles.

Achilles’ heel into greatest weapon

CampaignSoothers soothes any number of sore throatsClientSoothersAgencyOgilvy Sydney



71 CASE STUDY

Rather than just curing sore throatsfrom a cold or flu, Soothers wasgoing to be the solution to all sorethroats. While other brands werecompeting against each other withmedicinal credentials, we were goingto be the solution for every othersore throat.

Execution: This was the start ofthe campaign ‘Soothers soothesany number of sore throats’. Whileour competitors continued to toutclaims like ‘antibacterial’, ‘antiseptic’and ‘triple-action’, with imagery ofbacteria and rainy days, we took acompletely different tack.

Rather than talk about‘traditional’ sore throats, every sorethroat became a creative goldmine.

Whether it was the ‘karaoke-marathon sore throat’, ‘the Godfather sore throat’ or ‘screaming at the footy sore throat’, Soothers could soothe them all.

Brand fi lmSince we needed a big reset in people’s minds, we launched loud and we launched early with a brand TVC that was on-air almost two months before the beginning of winter.

We put in as many sore throats into the 30s spot as we could. From the ‘talking over loud music sore throat’ to the ‘screaming at the ref sore throat’, we covered them all.

In creating the style, we deliberately took a bold approach in colour and tone-of-voice to cut through the clinical world of ‘pharma’ advertising.

ContentTo further capitalise on theconvenience and impulse nature ofthe product, we looked to commutermedia on both mobile and inout-of-home (OOH) to maximisetop-of-mind awareness.

We created 15-second pieces ofcontent that spoke to even more sore throats, which became pre-rolls and video on demand (VOD) allowing us to be in more places, more often. Rather than taking a scattergun approach, this allowed us to be relevant in places other sore throats brands couldn’t play, like sport and music.

OOHWhile our competitors would typically taper off their spends during the end of the winter period, we supplemented our media with OOH to capitalise outside of the typical cold/fl u season.

WeatherzoneWhile we couldn’t ignore the fact that throat lozenges were still a seasonal purchase, when we did need to speak about weather, we did it in places our competitors weren’t doing it.

In the second burst of the campaign in 2016, when competitors were blanketing the airwaves with TV, we rolled out weather targeted digital banners with creative deployed during particularly cold, windy or rainy days.

Results: For a brand that was on the edge of demise, we didn’t just manage to survive, we managed to grow.

While we expected that the market share would show a decrease in 2015, 18 months after the Coles deletion, we had regained share to 12.6 percent, signifi cantly above where we had projected.

While we are unable to share sales fi gures, by the end of 2016, Soothers had grown the value of our core range from a score of 80 to 85. That is growth with only two-thirds of the distribution we had 18 months ago.

By the end of the second burst of the campaign, we had increased active consideration of Soothers from 48 to 56, eight index points above our pre-Coles benchmark and two index points above our objective.

Not only that. After the fi rst burst of our campaign, we saw value increases across all other retail channels. Sales in Woolworths grew by 2.7 percent, Metcash (IGA, Supabarn etc) by 5.3 percent and Impulse/Convenience by 16.1 percent (Nestlé Data 2015).

Consumers were actively seeking out Soothers, outside of just the traditional supermarket channels.

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We put in as many sore throats into the 30s spot as we could. From the ‘talking over loud music sore throat’ to the ‘screaming at the ref sore throat’, we covered them all.



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72 CASE STUDY

Background: Black Hawk isan all-natural dog food brand thatwanted to take a big bite out ofa science-dominated market. Bysniffing around the pet food space,we found a way to get our ‘petpassionates’ to think about theirdog’s food differently and stray awayfrom vet-endorsed science brands.

‘Science-based’ brandsdominated the premium dog foodmarket. They made up a whopping86 percent of the category, withthe ‘all-natural’ market segmentonly being able to grab 14 percentof sales.

Why? Because science isunderstood by vets – the mosttrusted single source for all petcare information – including petfood. Fifty percent of people buybased on a vet’s recommendation,with the other 50 percent buyingbased on fragmented influenceshared between word of mouth,online research, breeders and retailstore staff.

Science-based brandsindoctrinate vets with theirphilosophy before they even leaveuniversity. In fact, Hill’s Scienceteaches the vet nutrition class atseveral universities across Australia.

Most dog owners aren’t awarethat a new food must be slowlyintroduced over a seven-day period,with any sudden changes to adog’s diet resulting in vomiting anddiarrhoea. The barriers to switchwere high.

We developed a 30-questionquantitative survey for 300 dogowners across Australia. We ranfocus groups of dog owners whoshop in pet speciality stores. Wefollowed this up with a ‘face-to-face sell’, where we gave dogowners between $25 and $100and told them they could eitherkeep the money (on top of theirpayment for attending) or leave itin exchange for a bag of BlackHawk. During this process, we’dliterally try and sell the productto them.

We dug up some insightsWe found that people’s love for theirdogs didn’t translate into knowledgeof their dogs’ food. Forty-six percentof pet owners say they love theirdogs more than their family, but70 percent barely knew the firstingredient of their dog food.

Trial without digestivedisturbancesBlack Hawk has a highly trainedvet nutritionist that recommendeda 170-gram sample size – theperfect amount to let a dog trial aflavour without causing digestivedisturbances.

Key influencers at thepoint of purchaseTrade interviews revealed that,although sales staff must remainunbiased in the brands theyrecommend, many speak candidlyabout the brand they use.

Objectives:Grow market share from11 percent within 12 months.Increase awareness levels forBlack Hawk from baseline of17 percent.

Convert and keep over 20,300 households in a 12-month period to achieve revenue targets.

Strategy: The science-based strategyOur strategy was focused on the insight that, although we love our dogs, we know little about what they’re eating. This message prompted the concept of ‘pet passionates’, who shopped in speciality stores to question their purchase behaviour.

We sniffed aroundWe conducted key stakeholder interviews with vets, vet nutritionists, vet nurses, speciality retail staff, dog walkers and dog behaviourists.

Foodie movement hits pet passionates

CampaignTaking a bite out of the premium

dog food marketClient

Black HawkAgency

The Works



This led to our strategy:1. Target nutritionally-aware

‘pet passionates’ shopping inspeciality stores and get themto question their purchasebehaviour. This would beachieved by seeding doubt asto whether their current dogfood was the best for their dogs(without making them feel bad).

2. Prompt them to apply theirpersonal nutritional philosophyto their dog’s diet, by positioningBlack Hawk as a real andnatural alternative – nutritionallybalanced for dogs.

3. Direct them to the free trial,where they could request a170-gram sample. We’d followup with timely emails about ourphilosophy, the health benefits ofthe ingredients, how to transitiontheir dogs’ food and whatnoticeable differences to health,appearance and vitality theywould notice with Black Hawk.

4. In-store displays and educationalmaterials. We made sure salesstaff gave pet owners thereassurance they needed by deploying a staff feeding program – where we gave staff free product with which to feed their own pets.

Execution: There is a real food movement in our midst, but we’ve left our pets behind. We asked pet owners to join the real food movement for dogs. Black Hawk is real, so our campaign had to be as well.

We used fi ve real Black Hawk customers (and their dogs) as part of our campaign. The voiceover helped: “Nothing fake. Nothing artifi cial. Nothing but real” spoke about real ingredients and the bond dog owners have with their pets. This seeded doubt. “You know what’s in their hearts, but do you know what’s in their food?” It spoke directly to the

insight that, although we love our dogs, we know very little about what they’re eating. Our TVC gave theBlack Hawk answer, panning across a table laid with real ingredients.

We then created testimonials, each being an unscripted video that shared stories of the bonds owners had with their dogs, and the real results they’ve seen since usingBlack Hawk – improvements in skin, vitality and weight. The standout testimonial was Gina, the three-legged rescue dog who brought a tear to so many eyes.

TVAlthough we had a tight target of 20,300 households to reach our revenue target, we identified a much larger volume opportunity. Many grocery shoppers aren’t convinced regarding the quality of foodavailable and are migrating across to speciality. TV was also key to getting the trade excited and help secure prime positioning in-store.

Thirty-second and 15-secondspots ran in the following:

Top tier reality and drama: The Secret Daughter, The Wrong Girl, The X Factor, Doctor Doctor, TheBachelor.

Contextually relevant programming: The Supervet, Animal House, Bondi Vet, DavidAttenborough documentaries.

Consistently high-performing programming: The Block, 7 News, The Big Bang Theory, First Dates, cricket broadcasts.

Search and socialUsing Quantium data, dog owners who’d spent more than $100 in pet speciality stores in the previous month were targeted with a schedule of online content between 8am and 6pm, including:

15-second cut of the TVour philosophy video

an ingredients video, and

fi ve testimonials each focusing on a common health condition like skin, vitality or weight.The content schedule then

directed the audience to the free sample.

Out of homeWe continued to trigger the seed of doubt in places where dog owners think about their own diet – like Harris Farm or farmers’ markets, as well as in dog parks and on coastal walks where they’d be with their best friends.

Trial initiativesWe distributed 30,000 170-gram samples via a call-to-action link in our online video testimonials. These testimonials were specifi cally targeting pet owners that had recently spent $100 or more in speciality stores. A brand activation on Moonlight Cinema’s ‘dog nights’ gave away free samples.

In-storeWe had standout displays in speciality retail, and our ‘Staff Feeding Program’ meant our newly educated retail staff could enthusiastically speak about their fi rst-hand experience with Black Hawk.

Results: Market share increased from 11 percent to 18 percent only six months into our 12-month tracking period. Black Hawk moved from the number fi ve player to number two in premium dog food.

In the three months, we achieved an eight percent lift in awareness and three percent increase in consideration. We now lead the category in terms of conversion rates, with double the purchase intent of the most well-known brand Eukanuba.

Black Hawk hit 25,000 households in just six months, with year-on-year sales also increasing by 42 percent.

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Background: Prospan is a naturalcough remedy, suitable for youngchildren, and is marketed by Flordis,a natural medicines company.

For the winter of 2016, wepredicted when children all aroundAustralia were going to have coughsymptoms, on a suburb-by-suburblevel, and turned on our advertisingto their parents only then.

Our approach was driven bythree challenges.

Minimal budgetThe cough, cold and fl u category isdominated by pharmaceutical giantswith huge marketing budgets. The13 major brands that make up themonitored cold and fl u categoryspent approximately $25 million in2016. The total budget for Prospanweighed in at less than one percentof the overall market.

Busy mumsAs they are the primary caregivers,time-poor, hard working mothersof young children were our coretarget. There’s been plenty ofconfusion in recent years regardingeffi cacy and safety, making mumsless willing to consider children’scough remedies. Cutting throughtheir busy day in a low-interestcategory was a challenge.

Unseasonal weatherIncidents of coughs increase in thelower temperatures of the winterand so does the amount of cough

remedy marketing. However, 2016 was the hottest year on record.

Objectives: The overall objective was to maintain continuity of sales, particularly in the peak cold season from May to July. The goal was modest, given it was the fi rst year in which Flordis had acquired Prospan distribution rights for Australia (from Engelhard).

During the key winter season, goals were: achieve an effective reach of one million mums with children under 12, nationwide, with an average frequency of 26 views per individual audience member.

Based on initial projections and budget, our activity was predicted to span from May 2016 to July 2016 – 76 days total coverage.

Strategy: We had to outthink the bigger players – and target people disinclined to buy our product – with a completely different approach.

We sought to understand the existing behaviours of our target market. Instead of bludgeoning them with effi cacy claims, we used data to leverage what they were already doing at the perfect moment. A category insight: mums ignore coughsTo better understand how mums were managing coughs, we analysed the language they were using when seeking solutions. Using social and search data, our analysts found that initial posts in both social media and mums’ forums (82 percent of cough questions) followed two key themes: ‘How long should I wait before…’ or ‘I’ve ignored it for three days but…’. We identifi ed a behavioural norm that many children’s coughs were ignored and going untreated.

We explored this insight further.

Mother doubtQualitative research with our target mums revealed that most coughs went untreated because of a belief that coughs ‘sort themselves out’ over time. But as our language analysis showed, this period of waiting out the cough was riddled with doubt. This waiting period was the window of opportunity for Prospan to join the conversation with our clear message: ‘don’t ignore a cough’.

Perfect timingOur research told us that mums would only be receptive to Prospan

Doubt in a cold climate

CampaignDon’t ignore

a coughClientFlordisAgencyAffi nity


When a chesty cough* strikes, you can trust Australia’s No. 1 children’s coughmedicine^ to bring the family back together. Clinically proven, Prospan forChildren provides triple action cough relief~ by helping to loosen mucus, soothethe airways and ease congestion. Find it at your local pharmacy.

You can ignore a cough,or you can Prospan it.

*due to a cold. ^MAT unit & dollar sales, 21/02/2016, Pharmacy, Aztec sales data. Always read the label. Use only as directed. If symptoms persist, see your healthcare professional. ~Not to be used in children under 2 without medical advice.

prospan.com.au



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when their child actually had a cough. To succeed, we needed to predict when children would have a cough.

Humour as a weapon against inertiaMums hate to be lectured, especially when it comes to their children, so we knew not talk down to them or create guilt. Instead, we used humour.

Execution: Peak doubtWe set about predicting when each child would come down with a cough: ‘peak mother doubt’.

Data breakthroughOur analysts noticed a behavioural trend in search and social data: social posts and search queries were clustered over the span of as little as two days, rather than consistently over the entire winter period.

We could have used this intent signal as a trigger, but the only channel we could use it in would be search, a challenging channel to communicate an emotive message. To expand our reach, we needed to fi nd a way to predict when mums would start to get worried that their child had come down with a cough.

Scientifi c approachWe then worked to get a better understanding of the perfect conditions for a cough. Rhinovirus, a key cough trigger, thrives in colder conditions, which also dampen our immune systems.

We then overlaid various data (including temperature, pollution and Medicare) from across Australia and used a multivariant model to test thousands of inputs to set about building a predictive engine for illness – a Cough Prediction Algorithm.

Following regression modelling, we were able to predict 48 hours in advance when the right conditions

would be met, with an accuracy of p=0.0001 – in layman’s terms, a roughly one-in-9999 chance of the tested algorithm being wrong. We then validated the model to make sure it held regardless of macro factors, such as epidemics or climate change.

The world’s fi rst cough predictorWe found a cold snap is all it takes to get a cough, but how cold that snap needs to be differs based on your location. For example, people in Tasmania need a greater temperature change than Queenslanders because they’re used to colder weather.

This was much more complex than setting our programmatic buying platforms to turn on at certain temperatures by suburb: it was a matter of relative difference on an individual geographic basis. Applying a simplistic temperature trigger would have thrown away around 31 percent of our budget. We developed an algorithm to mathematically express how environmental factors affected actual behaviour of real people. It harnesses ad tech and media in real time, location by location.

With weather data imported in real time, media purchasing decisions could be made every fi ve minutes, to control exactly when to turn our message on and off at a suburb level. We selectively chose to run the campaign in all the suburbs where Prospan had strong distribution.

As the temperature dropped just enough to get kids coughing, Prospan was there, suggesting that mums shouldn’t keep ignoring that cough.

We kept our message simple, with a charming, direct problem/solution approach. ‘Coughees’ were made to be victims of the cougher as everyone tried to get on with life.

The levity of each of the exaggerated scenarios worked to offset the seriousness of the call to action. Our highly targeted digital media plan included banners, search and social (92 percent of media budget), as well as a small amount of trade print and in-store (eight percent).

Results: Unbeknown to us atthe time of planning, 2016 was the warmest year on record. The recorded average temperatures didn’t reach the ‘peak illness zone’ across Australia. As a result, the entire cough medicine market declined by 8.5 percent in the six months to October 2016.

Still, the perfect message was delivered at the right time through a combination of fi nding and leveraging existing behaviours, and using big data to build a predictivealgorithm.

Having only just taken over marketing with no historical data or assets, we achieved a 27 percent increase in retail salesduring the cold season.

Over six months, sales of Prospan grew by 10 percent, while the total market declined by 8.5 percent, giving Prospan an 18.5 percent growth inmarket share.

There was an effective reach of 1,140,000 mums with children under 12, with an average frequency of 42.6, an increase of 14 percent and 63.8 percent,respectively.

A weather-polling app and predictive cough algorithm enhanced engagement with a 54 percent increase in CTR (click-through rate).

Media costs were reduced by 67 percent. This enabled us to double our coverage over the entirety of the winter months – 138 days in total.


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80 SPONSORED


Great customer experiences don’t happen by accident. They require a vision, a plan and fl awless cross functional execution. In Avanade’s ‘Is your customer experience making an impact or not?’ this plan is broken

down into a three-step ‘CX Trek’ of digital foundation, digital empowerment and digital innovation.

GETTING STARTED: DIGITAL FOUNDATIONToo many companies have CX (customer experience) strategies that are reactive and opportunistic. Before developing your strategy, have a clear vision in place. The best strategies build CX from a human-centred design approach. Think of the future. How will you reduce customer pain and friction across their entire life cycle?

You’ll need to call on and consider other functions of the business to get there – marketing, sales, service/support, s upply chains and operations, even partners. You may also need to modernise your marketing platform, data and sales systems. Good CX platforms today provide capabilities including content management, personalisation, testing, ecommerce, data capabilities and deep reporting. Well implemented tech solutions will improve results and ROI, but updating these is a big operation. Invest time early on as opposed to entering the struggle of implementing after the fact.

Can you build a strong business case for your CX strategy? A good one should articulate impact and is tied to both hard metrics – like increased opportunities, sales, reductions in costs, increased ROI – and soft metrics – increased NPS (Net Promoter Score), higher search term rankings and social sentiment.

Data is crucial to informing your vision, strategy and roadmap. Start by reconciling those disparate data silos – building bridges across divisional lines of data. Assess what data you have available to better understand your customers’ perspective. What do you already measure, and what do you want to measure in the future? Ensure you’re collecting the right data on a continual and comparable

How to lead the market in CXFoundation, empowerment and innovation: it’s experiences, not products, that sell. Here’s how to make compelling customer experiences a reality.

basis to help these measurements. But, most importantly, use the data to benefi t the customer. Save them time, give them more relevance, ultimately improve their experience.

INCREASING MOMENTUM: DIGITAL EMPOWERMENTOnce your data’s at the stage where it can begin to inform signifi cant decisions around CX approaches, you can start to work towards strong performance and challenging your market.

Your use of data should not slow down. At this stage, you can begin leveraging the advanced capabilities of your CX platform like multi-channel and multi-departmental analytics, A/B multivariate testing, further personalisation, campaign management, and better understanding your customer.

Seek to understand what’s driving customers to your site, your content and your brand. Which solutions and products are gaining the most attention? Use data to answer these questions, then create tailored, more personalised content for them.

A/B testing runs test cycles over time to identify incremental changes and measure which variable is more successful. Multivariant testing often uses a sample of data and requires more sophisticated analytics. It takes more time between test, trial and production, but is a powerful way to target redesign eff orts of landing pages and designing overall seamless integrated campaigns that convert.

Tips for testingStart with a hypothesisBefore asking designers to create a handful of buttons and calls-to-action, start with a hypothesis you wish to test. Without some idea of possible outcomes, testing becomes guessing.Take a granular approachTest one element at a time so you’ll know which change was

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responsible for which result. Once you’ve determined the winner, test another single change. A common mistake with A/B testing is creating two landing page layouts that are radically diff erent from one another. It’s tempting to test the eff ectiveness of two completely diff erent pages, but it may not yield actionable data.Ensure statistical signifi canceRely on this principle to identify and interpret the patterns behind the numbers. Without statistical signifi cance you run the risk of making business decisions based on bad data.

Infuse experience designA great concept is only as good as the time you put into the design. Design thinking helps create breakthroughs in CX innovations as organisations step into the shoes of their customer. It helps refi ne concepts, experiences, products and innovation. Combined with a modern CX platform, data and testing, a design-thinking approach will help optimise your brand and every single experience under it.

LEADING THE MARKET: DIGITAL INNOVATIONIf you’ve reached a stage where you’re using real-time feedback, analytics, testing, personas and segmentation, don’t stop there. With advanced analytics platforms, cloud processing, machine learning, and an abundance of data, you can embrace predictive analytics to generate true personalisation and fi nd new business opportunities. But is your organisation ready to realise the vision for CX? The most common reason companies miss out on the ROI of CX is due to under-investing in organisational change including stakeholder alignment, cultural constructs and internal capabilities. Engaging employees as brand ambassadors and advocates at every step of the customer journey is often overlooked. Consider the employees that encounter or interact with your customers in any way. Think about their needs as well as those of your customers. They may need training. Do they realise your vision? Managing the changes to your internal teams will accelerate the impact with your customers.

Driving innovation at speedNew technologies open new avenues to tailor CX, driveinterest and gather new data. Automated innovationanticipates and tees up unexpected delight for customersthat makes them fall in love with your brand over and overagain. Companies innovating at speed can connect allthe CX dots and realise the full capacity of personalisedrelationships. They know their customers so well that theycan build new revenue streams for the organisation as anatural act of satisfying latent customer needs. They’re outin front and not looking back.

This article was sponsored by Avanade, the leading provider of innovative digital and cloud services.

“Even the big brands don’t always get it right. Especially with expectations continuing to heighten through technology innovation, from augmented reality fan experiences in sport, to immersive training to avoid danger in fi eld work like surgeon mistakes, to campaigns that convert on and offl ine. The point of any digital improvement is about improving and delighting overall customer experience.” – Camille Baumann, executive CMO and digital customer solutions lead, growth markets, APJ and Latin America, Avanade.

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82 BEST OF THE WEB: EDITOR’S CHOICE

producing enduring content heavily promoted with paid to last even longer. With Snapchat’s arrival on the social scene, one thing we can’t deny is the disruption to the way people want to consume social content. Snapchat has proven that ephemeral content has an important role to play. This has been quickly followed by Instagram Stories, Facebook Stories, WhatsApp Status and most recently Reels by YouTube, which mimics the 24-hour ephemerality of Snapchat content.

Users crave the short-lived nature of ephemeral content. Only being available for a few hours creates a sense of exclusivity, even a sense of urgency to consume it – #FOMO (Fear of Missing Out). By using the different tools available (stickers, fi lters, Boomerang, Superzoom, polls…) the content also feels more raw, authentic, personal and playful compared to the extremely polished ad-like content users are accustomed to seeing in their social feeds. Today, both Instagram Stories and WhatsApp Status have 300 million daily active users, having gained 50 million new daily users each in just a few months.

This surge doesn’t look like it’s going to stop anytime soon.

Five things that will shape social media in 2018Amaury Tré uer’s predictions for 2017 turned out to be pretty accurate. Can he do it again for 2018?

F or the third consecutive year, I’ve been honoured with the task of predicting what’s to

come in the fabulous world of social and digital. For the last two years my predictions have been pretty accurate, so here’s hoping this time around will be the same.

If I had to summarise what’s to come in 2018, I would say technology is defi nitely ramping up in the social and digital landscape. Artifi cial Intelligence (AI) is not something of the future any more – it is very current and companiesneed to start embracing it to deliver more personalised experiences to their customers. Search will enjoy a renaissance with voice and facial recognition providing new ways to communicate online. Enough spoilers, here are my fi ve top predictions for this year:

1. VOICE IS THE NEW SEARCHWith the advent of personalised assistants like Siri, Google Home and even Amazon Alexa, users have a new way of interacting with their devices: by talking to them. For example, with Google Home, if you ask for the nearest petrol station, you will automatically receive the address, the distance and opening hours. Apart from this ‘simple’ task,

Amaury Tréguer is head of social and content at Hausmann Group.

you can also ask the device to tell you what your day is looking like, to play your favourite music on Spotify and even switch your lights on or off without touching a button. Such an effortless and intuitive way to interact. No wonder 20 percent of Google searches are now voice activated and, according to comScore, this fi gure is set to grow to 50 percent by 2020.

Voice search queries are more conversational than traditional searches and provide a better understanding of the user’s intent.

The traditional SEO (search engine optimisation) keywords strategy will no longer be suffi cient. Those who revisit their digital properties and work effectively on optimising their voice-oriented SEO strategies should expect spikes in traffi c and increases in ecommerce revenue. Interestingly, voice activated command is already spreading to social. Platforms like Facebook are offering certain users the ability to send private messages to their friends by talking to their devices.

Should we expect the death of keyboards by 2025?

2. LONG LIVE EPHEMERALCONTENTTraditionally, marketers have concentrated their efforts on

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and Content section on Marketingmag.com.au

3. TRIBES ARE THE NEXT BIG THING IN INFLUENCER MARKETINGWith more marketers tapping into the potential of infl uencer marketing, the debate has turned to the power of micro versus top-tier infl uencers for brands. Unfortunately, there isn’t a simple answer to this question, as it really depends on the available budget, the objectives of each brand and the way marketers work with these infl uencers.

A recent report by data and insights company L2, however, highlights that while celebrity infl uencers may work best with product launches and tentpole campaigns, the network impact of micro infl uencers can increase brand awareness and engagement with new consumers. The study also broke down the level of engagement to expect from each type of infl uencer. Infl uencers with fewer than 5000 followers on Instagram were found to receive eight percent engagement levels, while mega infl uencers with one to seven million followers were found only to receive 1.6 percent. This clearly demonstrates that working with an army of micro-infl uencers has its advantages.

Now, imagine if this army of consumers consists of real

advocates who share a strong commitment to your brand, who want to engage with each other, and your brand is the catalyst for this engagement. The dream of every marketer… In a recent guide by RhythmOne, Dr Peter Steidl, neuroscientist and principal at Neurothinking, identifi es this as a ‘brand tribe’. Brand tribalism is not new, but digital and social channels have been accelerating the movement and helping marketers measure success. For example, one of the key success metrics is the volume of branded content shared by a tribe member.

Interestingly, sharers are nine times more likely to convert than non-sharers. All in all, in 2018, marketers need to stop meaningless one-time arrangements with infl uencers and start getting their tribe together.

4. ANIMOJIS, THE NEW FACE OF EMOJISWhen Apple launched the iPhone X in September, the main feature everyone was talking about wasn’t the revolutionary wireless charging or the facial recognition technology, but the new Animojis. Using a combination of facial recognition and 3D camera technology, Apple has created a new way of communicating online: Animojis, animated emojis. This functionality allows users to create short clips of their own emotions and send them as emojis to their peers.

Based on the past and current success of LOLs, smileys, emojis and even Facebook Reactions, Animojis are defi nitely here to stay. Animojis will help users communicate non-verbal cues when talking to other users or interacting with content. Animojis will bring another level of personalisation and a more ‘human’ face to the digital world.

5. PERSONALISATION AT SCALETechnological innovations and advancements such as AI and facial recognition are going to disrupt the way marketers plan and execute their brand campaigns. The one-size-fi ts-all type of messaging will not be suffi cient any more. Consumers are already expecting more proactive, personalised and tailored messaging based on where they sit in the customer journey. According to a study by Salesforce, 66 percent of consumers say they are extremely or somewhat likely to switch brands if they feel as if they are being treated like a number rather than an individual.

There’s never been a better time for marketers to work closely with data scientists, analysts and creatives to deliver more personalised and hyper-relevant content and ads to users. Video personalisation is by far the most challenging format to crack, but some marketers have already succeeded (e.g. UK’s Channel 4 for the release of Alien: Covenant). It is only a matter of time before consumers will expect this type of personalisation from every brand. In order to be one step closer to perfecting the customer experience, the ultimate goal should be for marketers to achieve personalisation at scale.

So there you have it! These are my top fi ve predictions for 2018 in no specifi c order of importance. There are obviously plenty of others that could have made the cut. Keen to hear your thoughts!

Artifi cial Intelligence (AI) is not something of the future any more – it is very current and companies need to start embracing it to deliver more personalised experiences to their customers.

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The realbiggest threatTrying to prepare for disruptors is a fool’s errand,says Jarther Taylor. Concentrate on understandingyour customer more intimately to avoid beingbeaten out by the visible threat – big data giants.

84 BEST OF THE WEB: MOST SHARED

P reparing for the next Uber to minimise the risk of disruption is a

mistake, because real disruption – by defi nition – is unknown andunexpected. Disruptors aren’t your biggest threat anyway – it’s the big data companies you should be worried about. The only way to protect your business from any competitor – known or unknown – is to connect with your customers more deeply.

Every business in every age has had to deal with disruptors that threaten their territory, although major revolutions that shook up societies and caused entire industries or ways of life to disappear used to take ages.

Our ancient ancestors took their sweet time adopting Agrarian Age practices; the fi rst big Industrial Revolution (powered by steam) took 60 to 80 years; the second Industrial

Jarther Taylor is CEO of Datarati.

Revolution (powered by electricity) ran for 50 or so years from the late 1860s to WWI; and the Computing Age has been dragging on since at least the 1960s.

The winners in each age aren’t necessarily the fi rst people to think of a new thing, or the fi rst to build a new business model around an innovation: they’re simply the best at persuading people to adopt a new way.

So, if we want to succeed in any age, we need to win at marketing and customer relationships.

At the Dreamforce conference in San Francisco last November, we explored the opportunities and risks of the current revolution: the Intelligence Age.

The host company for this event, Salesforce, is clearly committed to seeing businesses adapt Intelligence Age thinking and methods, including smart ways to collect and organise

information (or data), and analyse it (with AI) to gain competitive insights.

CAN ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE OFFER REAL INTELLIGENCE?The powerful AI component at the heart of it all makes knowledge plus thinking (processing) plus insight happen at lightspeed – so we can give our customers the answers they want as soon as they’re ready for us to help them.

It’s genius intelligence, if we get it right. It’s not just about having lots of customer data: you also need to know which patterns matter so you can correctly anticipate your customers’ needs. Clients at Dreamforce said they see AI as a signifi cant advantage in making their customer communications richer. And, oddly, more human.

A few years ago, when content marketing was the hot topic, we

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talked about the emergence of H2H communication (human-to-human, versus B2C, B2B or the various combinations those symbols provide) and, really, what it showed, was that we just want to communicate with each other.

When I previously wrote about the value of content marketing I suggested that smaller servings of ideas taste better. While maybe not a trending topic any more, it still holds true: it’s all about the customer, because it is about real goods and services that we – humans – need.

AI is one of the hottest topics for marketers, but again it’s about what humans need, more than other perceived challenges such as robots taking marketing managers’ jobs (only a 1.4 percent chance, according to Willrobotstakemyjob.com, so don’t worry about it).

WHO WILL YOU LOSE SLEEP OVER?As with previous revolutions, the winners in the Intelligence Age will be those who know the people they’re selling to best. So, I propose it’s not worth worrying about the next upstart disruptor in your industry.

Worry about Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple instead. Why?

Because these tech giants control massive amounts of the world’s most valuable resource: people’s data. It’s worth more than gold.

That precious data gives them such an incredible customer intimacy, which, when combined with attractive CX (customer experience), means they can sell just about anything. So that’s the simple answer: focus on the customer to secure your future.

Know your customers’ ‘jobs to be done’. It’s my current favourite model for building a genuine understanding of what a customer wants, because it explores what they are trying to do and helping them do it in a way that is seamless and invisible.

KNOWING THE CUSTOMER BETTER Everybody talks about this, so how do you do it? The answer is a combination of:

strategy: what to do, what not to do with the business

marketing: knowing your customers, fi nding out what each

The only way to protect your business from any competitor – known or unknown – is to connect with your customers more deeply.

segment wants to do and ways you can deliver the service better than others, and

technology: the means to deliver great strategy and marketing at scale.How you shape and evolve that

combination is up to you. Much like my experience at Dreamforce, where there were thousands of options to learn, you can’t do it all. Figure out which customer experience you can easily improve fi rst.

Nail it, then scale it.You don’t need to deploy

every new shiny technology – your customers don’t care about what technologies you use unless they get in the way – but you do need to focus a lot more on each customer’s jobs to be done. If you’re not losing sleep over your CX, you’re not doing it right.

No pressure.

@ For more on AI, check out ‘Artifi cial

Intelligence: A Marketing Manager’s Defi nitive Briefi ng’ at goo.gl/PfFmXc

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86 BEST OF THE WEB: MOST READ

F or many years now, academics and agencies have been developing scientifi c

models to measure the strength of the brands we build. This is based on the prevailing wisdom that a good brand is one that grows in equity over time. The result is a (very rewarding) sense that the brands we build have intrinsic value in the world – and on company balance sheets.

Building ‘brand equity’ has served us well to this point. There’s some good logic to it that we’re not about to challenge. However, there is something here that’s worth shaking up. It’s the style of brand management practice that has evolved from this prevailing wisdom.

Growing equity in brands has historically involved building brands steadily and carefully, with preservation fi rmly in mind. We build brands as fi xed propositions and fastidiously govern their presence in market. This way, we never risk misattribution or misperception. We gain and retain consumer

trust (people aren’t keen onchange, so conventional thinkingtells us) and thus we safeguardfuture ‘brand equity’.

This practice developed at atime when markets and consumerswere more static. There were fewerseismic shifts to navigate annually– let alone monthly, weekly or daily.Being structured and disciplinedfitted with rigid organisationalstructures, industrialised ways ofworking and the business rhythmsof the day.

BUT THE TIMES HAVECHANGEDMarkets are now constantly insome kind of flux, consumers are aperennial flight risk, and productsand services can be de-positionedin an instant or rendered obsoleteovernight. In this setting, all brandowners have an obligation to managetheir brands differently to enablethem to evolve, adapt and insulatethemselves from disruptive forces.Brands as they’re managed todaycan be a handbrake on progress or,

Nick Davis is managing partner at Landor Melbourne.


worse, a liability for their owners. Any brand that doesn’t show agility in the face of shifting external dynamics can lose relevance in a moment.

A brand that loses relevance becomes fairly pointless if not worthless. See that over there? It’s your brand equity turned upside down in a ditch. So, what now? Is brand management a redundant discipline? Is the brand guideline an obsolete tool?

Should we give up on building brand equity altogether?

No, no and no. Brand equity is still a good metric of value – but we must see it as more fl uid and less fi xed. The brand guideline still has a role to play, but should only be one way of guiding a brand’s expression. Brand management isn’t a redundant concept – it just needs a change in practice.

SO, HOW EXACTLY DOES BRAND MANAGEMENT NEED TO CHANGE?We recently asked exactly this of brand leaders from various

Your structured approach to brand management is killing you The times have changed and brand owners must manage their brands differently or lose relevance entirely. Nick Davis on fl exible brand management.

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organisations. All spoke of a changed world where brand fl uidity and fl exibility is becoming mandatory. And where strict direction around visual assets has become a futile exercise, or at least one of greatly diminishing returns.

Together we uncovered some key insights:

STOP POLICING, START EVOLVINGBrand used to be – and often still is – directed and policed by the marketing department. It was cast in stone and enforced thereafter. However, your brand is evolving faster than your guidelines can be updated, so strict policing is no longer effective.

Instead you need to guide its evolution with a more fl exible framework. This could involve ensuring alignment with your purpose over and above adherence to guidelines.

Suzy Nicoletti, managing director of Twitter Australia, says alignment to a strong and clearly communicated purpose allows Twitter to develop and evolve while maintaining its integrity and intent. For Nicoletti, this encourages expression rather than restriction.

Etsy leans on its brand vision in a similar way. Country manager Paul Hoskins tells us that brand management at Etsy is focused on commitment to the company vision and values.

If everyone is creating brand expressions with these things in mind, it’s on brand.

STRIVE FOR COHERENCY NOT CONSISTENCYBrand and consistency are peas in a pod. Consistency has long been desirable for brand owners because it drives recognition, creates a sense of reliability and builds consumer trust. But, in an agile age where

brands have to be shape-shiftersacross channels and contexts, consistency is not the holy grail it once was.

Coherency, which places a greater value on relevance, is the new high bar. Today, if you’re not relevant, you’re dead. Make that your mantra and curtail the focus on consistency.

Jessica McCartney, head of brand at Deakin University, embraces this approach. “We’ve consciously freed our brand up in certain contexts so it can connect better with our audiences and not present as a corporate badge. Not everything you do has to be an equity driver; sometimes it’s OK to create value in some other way.”

LET GO AND EMBRACE RISKBranding has become an infl exible practice in a world where fl exibility is essential. Take the shackles off. Free your brand to be the dynamic, living, breathing asset it needs to be.

Allow different people to express it and experience it in different ways. Defi ne what’s sacred and preserve it; defi ne what’s up for exploration and make it a platform for expression. Take some risks.

Derek Oliver, global marketing director for Jacob’s Creek, shares how he encourages fl ex to be built into the brand so it can optimally serve individual markets. This brand fl ex informs ranging, communications and future product pipeline. Brand owner Pernod Ricard has aimed to genuinely empower local markets while maintaining core integrity at

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a global level. For Oliver, the core brand story that cannot change is the heritage and product quality.

ENGAGE EVERYONE, BUILD BRAND AS A COMMUNITYMost brands today are shaped by many people across multiple channels and experiences. These people include employees, partners, agencies, third-party infl uencers and customers. These aren’t passive audiences, but active participants to be engaged. They can help you to build a more agile and future-proofed brand than your marketing department.

But we need to give them the tools. Who plays a role in your brand’s community? How you can empower them?

Sam Moore, head of brand and marketing at product design company Knog, believes your internal brand community is most critical to engage. “The most important thing is to properly engage your employees. If all you give them is a guideline they won’t understand the brand; they’ll just know where to put a logo. You have to embed brand in the psyche. Get your people to understand and respect it. If you can achieve that with your employees, you’ve engaged your most important community.”

LET’S EVOLVE THE THINKINGBrand management needs to change. Build brands in different ways, with different people. Don’t stop there. The key will be to keep moving and keep evolving.

Any brand that doesn’t show agility in the face of shifting external dynamics is a brand that can lose relevance in a moment.

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88 BEC BRIDESON

WTF is FX?No, this is not about the special eff ects that make superheroes look realistic. Bec Brideson on the female experience...

W omen are the largest growing consumer economy, so there’s one big reason FX

should matter to your business. Heritage organisations are

entrenched and limited by their traditional approaches to market. Historically, businesses were founded and structured by men, while women were the minority in the workforce, given that for decades they were labouring in the home.

It is in no way men’s fault that our workforce and dominant business hierarchies were not initially designed to best meet the needs of women. Our hangover, however, continues to constrain the processes used in business to create products and services for women, and also to recognise their rising contribution. It’s a bit like the local football clubs that only built male change rooms because women didn’t play. Well, now women do play. We need to cater to their experience too.

So for those who recognise a need to expand their business functions to include the FX – remove your monocle and let’s get bi-focused.

FX in the workforceWhen I think about every senior executive with whom I have worked, maybe one in 20 of these professionals lived in a domestic

situation where both partners worked. That’s not to say this isn’t changing, but there still exists a high number of white collar business leaders who have a stay-at-home partner and considerable income. ABC journalist Annabel Crabb refers to this situation in The Wife Drought as men having an executive assistant in the workplace and at home. By doling out the ‘minutia’ to their work-wife and home-wife, they have shifted most of the purchasing decisions to a new infl uencer. Ask them which insurance provider, what brand of olive oil or where their next business trip hotel is – they likely wouldn’t know. Men have been habitually taught to outsource their purchasing decisions to the women in their world.

Business today still refl ects many outdated attitudes. The cumulative effect of this perpetual ‘male-only architecture’ means that business fails to thrive because it is not adapting heritage-thinking to the modern experiences of busy working women who are making the lion’s share of purchase decisions.

Take my life. I am running three businesses: an agency, a consultancy and a family unit at home. I am constantly making purchasing decisions – lavishing money on brands I love and making my community aware of the ones I abhor. I check in with my husband

Bec Brideson is a gender-intelligence entrepreneur driving innovation and exponential growth for business and brands with an overlooked market opportunity. Her foresight and new lens on business has seen her become a much sought after speaker and consultant worldwide.

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on major fi nancial decisions, but day-to-day selections and brand choices are at my discretion. In fact, according to EY, women will be responsible for up to 75 percent of discretionary household spending by 2028.

The World Economic Forum reports that every day, on average, women around the world perform one hour more unpaid labour than men. That’s a staggering 39 days extra a year where women are racing around and getting things done. Organising food, kids’ gifts, health insurance, medical visits, pharmacy pick-ups, school lunches, dinners, weekend entertainment, kids’ parties, holidays, education, new tyres, TV subscriptions, school supplies, car washes... The list goes on.

This makes her a busy motherFXing woman. And as a market with fast-rising economic clout – she wants understanding, deeper insight and help.

So why don’t we all try a bit of FX?Is it time for your business to consider slipping into her orthotic Crocs and deep diving into her laundry load of emotional and mental issues?

Recently my husband and I agreed he would take on my usual task of organising our kids’ schedules over the entire seven-week summer holiday. This included coordinating all of their activities and playdates and prepping their daily menus and goings-on. By exactly Week One, Day Four, 12.32pm, he was exhausted.

“Keep going,” I encouraged. Especially since I’ve been doing it now for 10 years plus. In the end, my husband learned more about my FX and fi nally understood what a massive juggle-naut parenting is.

qualitative research group is clearlynot enough to make the necessaryseismic shifts that business needsto better engage and leverage theFX. Reading the ethnography studyis a great start, but not ifthe insights are experiencedsecond-hand, and the researchis designed with a traditionalapproach. The first-hand embraceof the female load for a longer

period of time will help you start tosee how the FX is an opportunity toreinvent, reinvest and re-examinethe very essence of how you havebeen approaching your business,service or customer solution.

Some questions to start you offon your journey:

Can you save her time?Can you make the experiencepleasurable by even one smileshe hasn’t yet experienced inyour category?Do you know her pain points?Can your team think likea woman experiencingmotherhood, puberty, careersuccess, community etc?Can you empathise with herneeds for safety and security?Are you immersed in her currentworldview and real-worldworries?Does your inherited culturepervade the potential unseenmarket opportunity?

It is in no way men’s fault thatour workforce and dominantbusiness hierarchies were notinitially designed to best meet theneeds of women.

“”

In Japan, women do an average of fi ve times more housework than men. When shown this data, three regional governors agreed to better understand the experience of women by donning a seven-kilogram vest that simulated the extra weight seven-month pregnant women take on. These men then attempted everyday tasks and housework. One was shown as he tried – and failed –

to put his socks on. The outcome of this physical experiment was twofold – fi rst, it wasn’t token research, it was the real deal in male leaders experiencing the complex FX. Second, it led to them seeing that men have a massive role to play in changing and equalising the current dynamics.

It is still de rigueur for C-suiters to step out of their ivory towers and, with sleeves rolled up, get down and dirty in every layer of the business. Brett Godfrey, Australia’s fi rst CEO of Virgin Airlines Australia, worked with his baggage crew unloading suitcases on and off Boeing jets. At this experiential level, he saw how the system operates up close and fi rst hand. It’s like that reality show Undercover Boss – challenging you to experience your product and service in a new way with new eyes.

Currently, walking in her shoes for the length of your average

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90 SAMMARTINO ON SHIFT


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Their brand not yoursForget developing your brand. Focus instead on building experiences that help your customers enhance their own, advises Steve Sammartino.

T he human experience is a curious one. A life is a continuous process of collecting things. The fi rst

things we collect are the most basic of survival skills – learning to eat, walk and communicate. But as we grow, we learn to collect far more intricate skills and life experiences, we start to collect stuff. We’ve done it for millennia. As a survival necessity, we initially gathered food and resources to survive the winter. But as we industrialised, this basic behaviour spilled over into other areas where what we gather was beyond necessity.

Today, the indoctrination of the process starts when we’re young. Early childhood TV shows are stealthily developed with merchandising in mind. Cereal packets with surprise collectable widgets inside compete with a barrage of advertised ‘must have’ toys with a deep fad orientation. The brand marketer wants to ensure children want the new toy just as much as they wanted the – now unloved – toy of last summer, or even last month.

This is something we don’t really grow out of. The major part of the past 70 years has been about conspicuous consumption and it has been a physical manifestation of our desire to display the skills and abilities we have. Consumption became a cognitive shortcut to tell

others that we are worthy. We have skills, and this stuff we’ve collected proves it. This is not surprising, given our entire economic system was built around the production and consumption cycle. We all got paid for making, selling and fi nancing stuff, or teaching our kids the skills they need to be able to acquire stuff as grown-ups.

The ultimate proof point at how good we became at this process, was at the peak of industrialisation when self-storage boxes started to appear in the Western world. In the US, these are worth more than $25 billion in annual revenues and have been the fastest growing form of commercial real estate in developed markets for the past 38 years. Let’s add to this the fact that 70 percent of people using self-storage facilities live in a free-standing house that even has a garage. Our houses are so full, we’ve started fi lling up other spaces. But the end is near as we enter the ephemeral economy, one where what we do is far more important than what we have. In fact, we’ve fi nally started to realise that the having is really in the doing, and we don’t need a quarter-acre block to store and do things any more.

The truth of what humans want is really simple. We just want to be loved. We want to know everything is going to be OK. We want respect and to live in the belief that we

Steve Sammartino is an author and futurist who sees the world through marketing eyes. He has held many senior marketing positions and has also built and sold his own start-ups. His latest venture is Sneaky Surf, which is bringing technology into the surf industry. His new book The Lessons School Forgot: How to hack your way through a technology revolution is out now through Wiley. Connect with him and see his latest projects and blog at stevesammartino.com.

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have value as a person and that our society cares for us, and to be part of something at a social level. Historically, our lives have been linear and local. Our value and success could only really be displayed to those in our immediate peer group. But once we start to think about all the technological tools arriving and what they allow us to do, much of it revolves around creating a new era of mobility. We’ve developed a new sense of geographic independence and, in doing so, we can display our worth and value in ways that were not previously possible in the cycle of consumption.

Let’s think about all the new forms of mobility available to us. Smart devices and mobile computing in all its capacities

mean everything that can be communicated is. Wikipedia, blogging and vlogging have created a new era of mobility of information, ideas and creativity, because content is not locked down to the physical location of books or other data sources. Social networks have invented the mobility of connections to people. What we are doing and saying flies across the globe at the click of a button, and it can now fly to people who care about what we care about. The hashtag itself has become a kind of collective sentience that helps us find our cohort. All of a sudden, the best

the malleable market – a market where what we sell isn’t fi nished until the end user has interacted with it. This means brand stewards need to have the courage to sell unfi nished products. While it sounds a bit crazy, we need to remember that many of these already exist: my phone, although the same model, is different to yours the day I get it home. My Netfl ix display is different to yours. My Tesla changes its physical disposition based on where I drive and Alexa has a bunch of different answers based on the data it has about me.

It used to be that a brand either lived in the product or service space. Now, every brand is in the service arena, regardless of how physical the product is. The service element – the personal experience – now becomes a function of the algorithmic response to my interactions with it and the potential for customisation. But it goes even deeper than that. With every consumer now the CEO of their own personal media corporation, their fi rst question is ‘how will this experience translate if I post it to my people?’

The thing people now want to accumulate more than anything is peer group validation. All brands must ask themselves a new question: how does what we sell enhance the brand of the person who purchased it? All of a sudden their brand is more important than yours. The greater the experience orientation of the spend, the greater the chance you get featured on the front page of their digital ‘Life Magazine’. It seems the modern day essential has evolved from food, shelter and a cave full of widgets to the experiences we have. And all people want to do is send a metaphorical postcard of how good they want people to believe their lives have become.

Brand stewards need to havethe courage to sell unfinishedproducts. While it sounds a bitcrazy, we need to remember thatmany of these already exist.

“ ”

way to display who we are is no longer what we have, but what we did. What we create and where we go now has far more social currency than what we accumulate. We’ve transitioned from the era of conspicuous consumption to one of ostentatious experiences. And even if we buy something, the first port of call for the modern day maven is to put it all on display. This shift has massive implications for all brand marketers, regardless of industry.

The emerging experience economy is a function of many things. In the fi rst instance, we shouldn’t forget that making stuff and getting it to consumers used to be a hard slog. The company that owned the factory, created a

supply chain and could afford to shout it out in mainstream media had an unfair advantage. But with the emergence of a permanent informational connection to everything that makes up the physical economy, anyone can make just about anything without a supply chain. Everyone is just a few clicks away from more than four million factories on AliExpress and widely distributed brands are having their equity competed away one discount at a time.

The future of brands is now moving swiftly away from homogeneous products, and quickly towards services, experience and

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92 VALOS & LLOYD

Michael Valosis director of industry engagement in the Department of Marketing at Deakin University and chair of Marketing’s industry advisory board.

Warwick Lloyd is Marketing Research associate at Deakin University.

Segmenting Baby Boomers: traps for young playersIn part one of their two-part exploration of Baby Boomers, Michael Valos and Warwick Lloyd hear from some experts in the sector about their segmentation strategies and explore media consumption habits of the demographic.

A s a wealthy but still value driven group, Baby Boomers are key for any smart travel retailer to

target,” says Jodie Rochetich, regional manager of marketing and PR, Australia and New Zealand at Jetstar.

“As well as wanting to explore the world, they are also available during off-peak periods and can secure great deals. Targeting this group is very important to Jetstar.”

According to Chris Benz, managing director at Brave, “Boomers are actually our favourite segment. They control most of Australia’s wealth (a situation that is actually growing), are the most prolifi c online users by hours online and respond well to creative messaging.

“Most of the assumptions about this segment are not true. Marketers, who panicked about Millennials deserting broadcast TV and traditional channels, have tended to correlate young demographics with social media – and somehow missed the biggest online market in the country.”

Segmentation is a key foundation of marketing. It’s an effective approach to resource allocation and facilitates customer intimacy. Recently, one segment touted as having untapped and ignored potential is the Boomer (5.5 million people born between 1946 and 1965) segment. The argument is that this generation has been ignored by marketers despite their undoubted wealth. Websites and advertising consultancies have been set up purely based on offering services and insights to this age-based target segment.

The aim of this article is to examine the validity of claims that this segment has signifi cant differences in terms of personal values, needs and media usage, and requires a tailored approach to message execution.

Are these alleged differences being hyped out of all reality, or do they have substance and offer signifi cant potential providing the marketing mix is modifi ed for these unique segment characteristics?

“

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Baby Boomers as a homogenous groupJac Phillips, head of marketing for Visa Australia, New Zealand and South Pacifi c, says, “Age is an attitude, not a number. When it comes to payments, Visa targets a segment we affectionately call ‘ageless progressives’. These are achievers, early adopters, creative types and social infl uencers. These people are in continual pursuit of things that move the world forward. They are modelled on the infl uential traits of Millennials – without the restrictions of age. Whether in their 20s, 40s or 60s – ageless progressives never stop being open to new solutions and experiences,” she says.

Bill Callaghan, ex-RMIT University and with a track record of segmentation design and analysis for companies including Telstra, Cadbury and Pepsi, agrees with Phillips.

He argues that a purely age-based segmentation approach has limitations. Callaghan believes segmentation needs to look at multiple variables with the importance of age depending on the product and industry sector. Deakin Associate Professor David Bednall stresses, “Don’t forget family structure (i.e. grandkids, children’s mortgages) and location as determinants of segmentation strategy.”

Col Kennedy, general manager brand and customer experience at Country Road, says, “At Country Road, while we have a great understanding of our customers through the loyalty program, we don’t generally work on demographics or generations.

“We have segmented using attitudes and behaviour that transcend generations to avoid potential stereotypes. Therefore, when we target, we focus more on attitudes to identify ‘lookalike’ new customers, and keep messaging consistent with this too.”

Differences between male and female BoomersProfessor Tony Worsley of Deakin University is a highly published academic of international standing and recognised for understanding how personal values infl uence buyer behaviour. Worsley’s research has revealed consumers’ motivations and drivers affect lifestyle and consumption. He believes, “Personal values, attitudes to ageing, gender and income are central to understanding Baby Boomer behaviours (and hence appropriate digital strategies).”

Digital media useBoomers’ media use is not static. Every year, their digital media use is more closely resembling that of younger consumers. However, Baby Boomers do use digital media differently, with one example being that they are less likely to interact with social media while watching television. In fact, Baby Boomers spend more time online than Millennials per week – 27 hours. However, Millennials and Generation X make far more frequent checks of social networks per day than Boomers.

The least used (compared to younger generations) Boomer channels are Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat and WhatsApp. Facebook use is very similar across Boomers, Xers and Millennials.

While part two of this article will look more deeply at creative execution, one relevant comment is made by Jetstar’s Jodie Rochetich. “From a top-of-the-funnel or above the line (ATL) perspective, we ensure we feature Baby Boomers in our communications – be it ATL, digital display or in social content – to drive engagement with our site, allowing us to contact them during the inspiration through to booking phase,” she says.

An important difference in terms of channel use is made by Chris Benz of Brave, who recently completed a successful campaign targeting Millennials. “In contrast to Millennials, Boomers tend to be only regularly active on two platforms, with one being Facebook (the fi gure is around 80 percent usage). Millennials tend to hop between seven and nine platforms, which actually makes them trickier (and more expensive) to target.”

Digital search and online complaint behaviourApproximately 70 percent of both Millennials and Baby Boomers started an information search after seeing a product in-store. In contrast, a difference between generations is that Boomers are less likely to share negative feedback on social media sites.

Device usageIn the same way that over time Boomers’ digital media use is more closely resembling that of younger segments, their device usage is also becoming more similar. Nevertheless, there are still differences – one being that Boomers are more likely to use a desktop rather than a mobile for search.

PrivacyAnother generational difference relates to online privacy. Just 20 percent of Boomers are confi dent that their online data will remain private. Younger demographics are less concerned with privacy and are more comfortable to have personalised information in the public domain.

Part two, to be published in the next issue, will examine implications of the Baby Boomer segment for creative message execution.

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94 SÉRGIO BRODSKY


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Shared value meets citizen-consumersBusinesses that address the real wants and needs of citizens will unlock new ways to build powerful relationships with communities. By Sérgio Brodsky.

citizens, and their revenue model from sales to the creation of shared value, will be the game-changers driving our industry forward. This is the type of thinking required to embrace Urban Brand-Utility, an approach to brand communications I’ve been advocating for a couple of years now.

New Zealand beer brand DB Export wanted to communicate its sustainability credentials and what better way of doing it than by upcycling yeast waste (a byproduct of beer) into fuel? An initial batch of 300,000 litres of ‘Brewtroleum’ was formulated using 30,000 litres of ethanol, which was extracted from more than 58,000 litres of leftover yeast slurry that would otherwise be discarded.The biofuel has eight percent less carbon than traditional petroleum at the same performance, which compelled ethical consumers to buy into the brand, representing a 10 percent increase in bottles sold. Drivers using 30 litres of biofuel a week would save more than 250 kilograms of carbon dioxide emissions every year.When 80 percent of urban diseases are a result of air pollution and climate change will be the biggest cost for business and society in the

B etween 2001 and 2002 Brazil went through an energy crisis. The lack of infrastructure planning

combined with economic growth forced the government to ration the energy supply in its main urban centres, for intermittent periods of time.

As a student in São Paulo, I remember streets darkening as the sun went down. One evening, walking home, two men riding a motorcycle stopped in front of me. One of them jumped off the bike and, before I knew it, I had been hit on my head with the back of his gun and had my backpack stolen.

São Paulo is one of the many emerging megacities feeling their ‘growing pains’ due to an increased demand for ever more comfortable lifestyles. For someone working in marketing, media and advertising, this is an important insight. If value is created from a need or desire, why aren’t our civic interactions populating journey maps aimed at optimising the customer experience?

Markets, choice and competition are not just a consumer’s best friend, but their political representation. Brands with the foresight to broaden their audiences from customers to

Sérgio Brodsky is an internationally experienced brand marketing professional and scholar of The Marketing Academy. Having worked for the world’s leading strategic communications agencies, he is a proven thought leader, regularly being published and featured in high-profi le conferences and festivals worldwide. He is passionate about cities and culture, and the role of brands and technology in society. Sérgio is multilingual, holds a BA in IP law and an MBA in global brand strategy and innovation. Follow him on Twitter: @brandKzar

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well-being is an opportunity for brands to establish relationships at scale and enable the creation of shared value. Project Decode speaks directly to this. By putting individuals in control of whether they keep their personal data private or share it for the public good, Decode could be the information bridge allowing brands to become more relevant in people’s lives.

Most sensible people agree that climate change is affecting the planet. But virtually everyone – climate change fundamentalists and deniers alike – has trouble visualising how climate change will affect their own neighbourhoods. This is a

behavioural bias called ‘hyperbolicdiscounting’ where people tend tovalue present conditions over futureones, making us complacent.

City-based visualisations hit home when users can see what is occurring, distinctly, at home. At last year’s Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos and at TEDGlobal 2017, the Earth Timelapse – a digital platform that tracks urban risks on a planetary scale – was revealed as a way to turn awareness into action and potentially close the public-private-people gap.

We all have infl uence over what is produced and how communications are deployed. Turning useful tactics into a new way of doing business will trigger some meaningful innovation in the brand experience space… I hope.

coming years, it becomes a matter of demonstrating how the private sector can fi x what big government is failing to address.

Heineken has not (yet) gone the full length of quantifying the economic value of its brand impact in return for tax rebates or other fi scal incentives; however, its Cities Project may give a hint of things to come. A current initiative is the +Pool in New York City’s East River – the world’s fi rst fl oating and fi ltering pool, which will clean around 600,000 litres of water a day when it offi cially opens.

Despite Manhattan Island being surrounded by water, New Yorkers are unable to swim in the river. To address this situation, Heineken is asking them to sign a pledge to swim in the +Pool, offering $100,000 in support when the goal of 100,000 pledges is reached.

The pool is estimated to cost a US$20 million and, although the projected ROI has not been disclosed, one can envisage how this initiative may not only reduce city costs, but also unlock economic value from underutilised assets.

From creating a new public space, strengthening the river’s local economy and fuelling tourism, it will also alleviate conservation efforts with the potential to generate revenue from the licensing of the fi ltration system that would then fund more public benefi ts. It also creates a clutter-free, immersive new channel for Heineken.

In 2005, JWT CEO Craig Davis said: “Stop interrupting what people are interested in and be what people are interested in.” It has taken almost a decade for brands to understand that this imperative means more than just creating ‘interesting’ content that only adds to the clutter.

People are interested in their well-being and the factors enabling or blocking it, which can take form in various ways.

In Moscow, Sberbank was approached by major Russian real estate developers to collaborate on better infrastructure planning in residential areas. People’s opinions on local needs fuelled targeted campaigns, promoting loans for small businesses. The ‘Neighbourhoods’ campaign generated nine times as many small business responses as traditional loan advertising.

Neighbourhoods became more attractive. The city increases tax collection from the new businesses, which also reduces the costs related to having to deal with derelict areas. For the biggest Russian bank, caring about citizens is not just a nice thing

to do, but also an effective way for Sberbank to have a positive impact on its bottom line.

Consumers may not hold the answers for everything, but that doesn’t mean they should be treated merely as individual shoppers in the market. Citizen-consumers are important players in enabling business to tackle the issues that matter most. As important as it is to reduce the clicks on a consumer journey, reducing violence in the streets, pollution and unemployment, or enhancing opportunities for entertainment, human connections and so much more is what people are interested in.

A fundamental lack of trust is what could be hindering data-driven innovation. Creating a ‘social contract’ around data use that improves our

Brands with the foresight tobroaden their audiences fromcustomers to citizens, will bethe game-changers.

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96 PHILLIPS ON LEADERSHIP


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That was what he meant. I needed to practise enough to demonstrate I was committed to learning, committed to investing the time and improvement I would need to become good enough to get the opportunity to do my fi rst on-air shift.

It’s a conundrum for the young and for the not so young, this ‘experience required’ expectation when it comes to employment.

For the young – those who have not yet entered the workforce or who have only limited after school and part-time university jobs. The only way you can gain experience is by someone taking a punt on you and allowing you to practise (or ‘fail’) so you get the experience.

For the not so young – those who have entered the workforce and

Jac Phillips is senior director and head of marketing, Australia, New Zealand & South Pacifi c, at Visa.

I remember preparing for my fi rst ever job when I left school a zillion years ago. It wasn’t your typical job back then and

I guess still isn’t considered ‘typical’ today: I was determined to be a radio announcer.

I marched into the FM station that had only launched a year or so prior and asked how I could ‘get on air’. The program director managed to stifl e his laughter and suggested I would need experience… “you can’t just decide to start in radio because you like music” were more or less his exact words.

OK, so I would need experience. But how would I get experience if they weren’t prepared to let me loose on the airwaves?

Practice.

How can we get more experience in less time?Experience can’t be faked and we can’t travel forward in time, so where do we focus our eff orts right now to better our careers in the long run? Jac Phillips asks for pearls of advice from friends with longevity in the fi eld.

maybe been around a while. If you are looking to try a different role, switch careers or work in industries that are new to you, you too are likely to be met with ‘you need experience’.

So why is experience important?It says you’ve put in the effort and time. This provides confi dence to others, confi dence you won’t fail (or fail as big or as often), which ultimately means you won’t let them down.

One of the few advantages people with a few years ‘behind them’ have is ‘time in’ and therefore ‘experience at’. Every day is a learning experience and when you’ve been working for 20, 30, 40 years or more, you’ve learned a bit.

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Knowing yourself, knowing how you learn, knowing an industry, knowing what you love, knowing the skills youhave, knowing the areas at which you excel, knowing the types of people that bring out the best in you and, conversely, those you should avoid is what time and therefore experience gives you.

How do you get it?But how do you get experience, especially if you’re just starting out or keen to move into new fi elds? While you can’t fake experience – and we can’t instantly travel forward in time – there is another way you may be able to ‘cheat the experience system’ slightly. Offer yourself up for work experience – free of charge.

“We learn by example and by direct experience because there are real limits to the adequacy of verbal instruction,” says Malcolm Gladwell.

I recently had the very good fortune to spend some time with Gladwell, who spoke to us at our newly created ‘Visa Leadership Series’ my Marketing team conducted across Australia and New Zealand in December. Described by Time magazine as one of the world’s most infl uential people, Gladwell is a journalist with The New York Times, an author of fi ve books and a global speaker. In his 2008 book Outliers, in which he examines the factors that contribute to high levels of success, he speaks of the 10,000-hour rule (based on a study by Swedish psychologist Anders Ericsson) which is, if you simply practise a specifi c task that can be accomplished with 20 hours of work a week for 10 years, you will have racked up 10,000 hours and therefore be very successful. Greatness requires persistence, consistency and enormous amounts of time. Best to get started now then!

So while I can’t expedite yourpersonal experience, I can encourage you to practise yourcraft and continue to developyour techniques. I can encourage you to learn a new industry and put yourself forward to do work experience pro bono. You can do these things today.

The other thing I can provide you with today is advice from a few very experienced thought leaders and marketers I am fortunate to know. Their experience comes from being in the workforce for a number of years, so I asked each of them one question: ‘In your 20 years or more of experience, what is the best piece of advice you can offer?’

“Be wary of the word ‘no’. When you hear that something can’t be done, it often means ‘it’s too diffi cult’ or ‘it’s too much work’. Don’t let others’ lack of energy or commitment defeat great ideas!” – Ken Segall, former agency creative director for Steve Jobs and author of Insanely Simple.

“Read a lot. Read everything that you can get your hands on. Knowing what’s going on is the fi rst step to knowing what’s relevant in today’s world. And ask questions. Of clients, of team members and of people in general. Talk less, and ask more.” – Vanessa Stoykov, founder and CEO, Evolution Media Group.

“You are never the customer. The very fact you are being paid to work on a brand or a channel or a product means you cannot and should not use your own opinion to derive insights. We do research in marketing not because it’s a nice thing to do, but because we literally have no idea what the actual customer thinks!” – Mark Ritson, Associate Professor of Brand and Marketing, Melbourne Business School.

“Embrace your humanity in the age of data analytics and artifi cial intelligence! What sets us apart from machines is not our ability to analyse data and trends, but our ability to bring data-driven insights to life with imagination and intuition. Brilliant marketing is a blend of science and art.” – Anny Havercroft, head of brand, Yahoo!

“Work on making your genuine strengths even stronger. It’s your point of differentiation and probably something that you love to do because you are good at it. We are often told to fi x our weaknesses; however, I’d put more energy into focusing on excellence in things you already excel at.” – Scott Tanner, chief digital offi cer, Westpac Group.

And one fi nal, very inspiring piece of advice from the legend himself: “If you work hard enough and assert yourself, and use your mind and imagination, you can shape the world to your desires.”

Malcolm Gladwell, we thank you for your expertise – those who put in the hours gain the experience.

The very factyou are beingpaid to workon a brand ora channel or aproduct meansyou cannotand shouldnot use yourown opinionto deriveinsights.”

“

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98 WAYOUT


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Associate professorCon Stavros is theprogram director ofpostgraduate marketingstudies at RMIT Universityand one of Australia’sleading commentators onmarketing matters.Tweet him @constavros.

WayOut

My suggestion for a fi rst foray is the Sony PlayStation VR – affordable, accessible and easy to integrate. Every marketing offi ce, consultancy and operation should have one of these just for staff to play around with so the prospect of what is possible starts to ferment.

VISIT THE US If you haven’t ventured to the US recently, check the bank balance and, if all is good, book yourself on a trip that includes both the bigger cities and some of the smaller ones. Clichéd it may be, but the land of the free is also the spiritual home of marketing, with constant competitive pressures bringing out the best in business, marketing and innovation.

INTERNSHIPS AND ROTATIONSIf you don’t have a marketing job, seek out internships, which have fi nally caught on in Australia after long being the starting platform for North American and European students. More importantly, for those already in marketing positions, consider a ‘rotation’ into another

part of the business. I was fortunate that in one of my fi rst jobs such movements were built into the management program. My time working with the company’s ad agency, the budgeting team and among the operations staff was incredibly helpful.

MARKETING 24/7While the temptation is to stop ‘marketing’ when work stops, a modern marketer should never rest from thinking about the process of exchange, treating it as nourishment for the mind. Keep a little notepad if it helps, but start to notice marketing even when you are not marketing yourself.

CONSTANTLY ASK WHYThe childlike fascination with questioning why actions are performed is intrinsically lost as we age and have inquiry-based learning pushed aside by what are assumed to be expedient social and business norms. All marketers should question every action, from how they plan the strategic process through to how customers experience the resultant journey. It’s not about pulling things apart for the sake of it – a common complaint – but recognising that actions sometimes become routine without any cause beyond inertia.

ACCEPT THAT NOT EVERY EXPERIENCE IS YOURSTake heed that not every experience you have is relevant to everyone else, particularly those customers you are trying to reach. True experience comes from getting outside increasingly resonant ‘feedback loops’. Having a child changed my entire perspective on marketing. You don’t need to go that far in 2018, but don’t stay constrained to one mindset, no matter how convincing you think it is.

T The axiom that there is ‘no substitute for experience’ holds fi rm in marketing. The closely related concept

of ‘hindsight’, both a consequence and form of experience, remains especially valuable.

As a marketer, a manager or simply an aspiring graduate, it is often assumed that time is the currency of experience – its accumulation bringing value with consistency. While there is truth in that, there are ways to accelerate that process – in effect to extract the value of experience in higher quality and thus create greater immediate benefi t.

With almost a whole new year ahead, here are my 2018 experience acceleration tips for all marketers.

GET INTO VIRTUAL REALITY (VR)If you haven’t yet experienced VR make sure this year is when you do. While we are still in the nascent generation of this tech, the future applications to marketing will be immense, and your understanding and planning for it should begin now.

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the experience issue - نیما شفیعزاده · the experience issue february/march 2018...

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