What Marketing Research Needs to Know

About Brand-Building in a Digital, Social,

Mobile Age

Joel Rubinson, President

Rubinson Partners, Inc.

joel@rubinsonpartners.com

Blog.joelrubinson.net

@joelrubinson

MRIA Netgain Conference

Toronto, Canada

January 27, 2015

Media has always been the way marketers connect brand ideas to

consumers.

As media fast evolve to become digital, so do the rules of brand-

building.

…so how can the picture of brand success remain the same?

The digital, social, mobile (DSM) world

changes everything

“Though social and digital media are rapidly transforming marketing and new tools emerge daily, in most firms the organization of the function hasn't changed in 40 years. How should marketers revamp…to meet the new realities?”

The Ultimate Marketing Machine

by Marc de Swaan Arons, Frank van den Driest, Keith Weed

Source: Harvard Business Review

Publication Date: Jul 01, 2014.

Change is not an option

The triple play of marketing disruption

AOL “Buying at Speed” findings across 20+ product categories:

• We live in an always connected world where we browse daily…engaging in shopping behaviors without shopping purpose

• When we ARE shopping, up to 80% of purchases (depends on category) involve digital, lean-forward behaviors

A push-pull media world has changed

the way we encounter brands

McKinsey Consumer Decision Journey

AOL: Buying at speed: how technology empowers

the always on shopper. Jan, 2014

1

2Brands must become media…the

essence of always on marketing

Data dividend

Targeting

Amplification

Insights

The majority of digital advertising placement will be affected by behavioral data and predictive modeling algorithms, much of it as part of search and real time bidding systems

According to AOL, 90% of advertisers are now using programmatic

Advertising has become a naturally occurring conjoint experiment so campaigns can be optimized in-flight

The lift in advertising ROI from Math men is significant and repeatable

The rise of math-men in advertising3

In a math-men future, programmatic messaging becomes

key…

As a user requests a webpage, the marketer’s goal is to serve the most relevant ad that has the greatest chance of response and to win that impression at the right price. And to make this work at scale.

In a math-men future, programmatic messaging becomes

key…but research is MIA!

So how does research help achieve this goal? We don’t! Lack digital metrics-

bases guidance system

Post mortem mindset in a predictive, real-time game

Failing to change the way that marketing works

As a user requests a webpage, the marketer’s goal is to serve the most relevant ad that has the greatest chance of response and to win that impression at the right price. And to make this work at scale.

The most important thing researchers can do in the

coming year is to get serious about integrating digital

Why isn’t it happening?

What the heck does this really mean?

Move digital into your comfort zone

surveys

digital

Mobile

research

Step one: take the traditional array of tracker metrics

• Outcomes Sales, share

Equity

ClicksBrand

lift

ConversionsViews

attributessocial media

listening

Brand audience

Ad aware

P’views,

UVs

• Equity

• Marketing activity

…and integrate digital and social behaviors

• Outcomes Sales, share

Equity

ClicksBrand

lift

ConversionsViews

attributessocial media

listening

Brand audience

Ad aware

P’views,

UVs

• Equity

• Marketing activity

Step two: stop treating social media like a hobby!

• Understand how people articulate concerns and brand feelings

• Cut your tracker expense by replacing continuous tracking of attributes with social media monitoring.

• Incorporate online and offline WOM as variables in your marketing mix modeling, now proven to drive sales

Step three: bring in data you can’t get from a survey that has action value

• Certain online panel companies are using social log-in. That comes with something called “oauth permissions”.

• Now Social data on likes, interests, audience classifications etc. can be integrated into survey results, blending brand profiling and ad targeting

• Go even further: it is now possible to link in display/video ad targeting profile data to survey results

• Link ad serving to shopper data to measure advertising impact

Imagine a future…example: Starbucks

• What Starbucks marketing COULD do

• Match multiscreen clickstream behaviors to transactions to create better customer knowledge and segments

• Scale up with third party data• Target advertising in Facebook, Twitter, and display to

customer segments defined by a mix of digital behaviors and attitudes• Database of all ad results so Starbucks can use

data science to understand what works

• Analyze this in real time for in-flight campaign adjustment

• What Starbucks research COULD do

• Extend the mobile app to include an “in the moment” survey capability.

• Match survey results to clickstream and transaction behaviors to create better audiences

• Target users for new offerings• Be an agent of change…prove to the enterprise the

value of first party data to encourage new marketing priorities and actions

Note: these ideas I am suggesting are not based on any conversations or work with Starbucks or any of

their agencies

So, what does marketing research need to know about brand-building in a digital, social, mobile age?

• The way brand meaning is created has fundamentally changed

• The way brands activate and win purchases has changed

• The way we manage Marketing ROI has changed…now based on programmatic and data-driven marketing

• By and large, research has NOT CHANGED. It must get in step and even become an agent of change. To do so, it must reinvent brand tracking, consumer segmentation, and new product forecasting to leverage digital data.

In 2015, think digital and do something big!

• Integrate digital into KPIs

• Shift half your money from long form trackers into digital and data science

• Add in data integration (frequent shopper data, facebook oauth permission)

• Redesign an upcoming segmentation study to be targetable

• Conduct “in the moment research” via smart phones

• Commit to creating and mining digital ad results data

To help you along…

• “Brandbuilding in a Digital, Social, and Mobile Age” available on Amazon.

• Free pdf as a courtesy to attendees…

• E-mail me joel@rubinsonpartners.com

Parting words…

The marketing insights team mission must become how to deliver

more for less. There is so much waste and so much research

that under-delivers, if we can't achieve more for less, shame on us.“

Stan Sthanunathan, SVP CMI Unilever

January, 2014