Category: Talking Ideas

Last Wednesday evening saw the launch of a new, and I think a rather brilliant initiative by Victoria Ryan, Chair of the IAA Young Professionals Committee. The first of the IAA’s Learning and Drinks evenings. For the audience, of some 40 young professionals, the topic of ‘Gender in Media’ clearly resonated, but so did the opportunity to learn something which would enhance careers.

Rather than making it a moaning session or rehashing the data from media’s gender pay gap, we wanted this to be about how women, men and the industry as a whole can move forward. The panel, which I was honoured to chair, was made up of experts from across the media and marketing industry including; Fran Cowan, Chief Marketing Officer at Inskin Media and VP Marketing at IAA UK, Amy Laurence, Joint Head of Media Investment at Mediacom, Jon Hook, Founder of Mallory Ventures and an expert in gender, leadership and neuroscience in business, Jan Hills, (yes, the name is familiar… she’s my mother!)

Jan and I wrote a book last year on gender in the workplace, Brain Savvy Wo+man, which looks at how women and men can thrive in their career by understanding how the brain works. Everyone at the session received a copy so we now have 40 people set up to manage their career.

We asked the panel to comment on a number of questions including their reaction to the pay gap results, how companies should address the results, their advice to us as individuals and (perhaps most importantly) how we keep the conversation and momentum going so that the results are better in 2018. Our panel had lots of advice, stories, and anecdotes and the audience contributed their own questions too.

My key takeaways were:

1. No one was surprised about the gender pay gap data, but some were outraged, especially about the gap in bonuses paid to men and women in some companies.
2. Companies need to pay more attention to hiring and promoting the best talent irrespective of gender, or any other characteristics. Things like men taking paternity leave and more acceptance of flexible working for everyone will help.
3. Young professionals need to understand the standards expected in a role and do a great job not just seek promotion on a time served bases. The panelists also felt it was important to follow areas of interest and passion not just seek to climb the corporate ladder.
4. Women should not be afraid to state their ambition, engage their boss in a discussion about advancement and seek to be known in the company and the sector.
5. Progress on gender equality will only happen if men are on board and going forward there needs to be a focus on engaging men and helping the current leadership understand what is needed to lead companies in the future. We can’t wait for the current generation to retire. Initiatives like reverse mentoring are powerful tools in helping current leaders.
6. We need to keep the conversation going, be challenging and point to the benefits of a more diverse and inclusive workforce. The companies that make headway on this will reap benefits in terms of reputation, retention of talent and ability to hire the best people.

Considering the above, at OMD EMEA’s headquarters in Kings Cross, we are focusing on four key areas to address these challenges:

1. Bringing a wide range of ‘bigger picture’ culture into our agency through inspiration speakers and thought leadership
2. Creation of a diversity OPCO aiming to inform leadership and bring a broader set of opinions to making decisions and driving change
3. Placing emphasis on Emotional Equality, throughout our business and our individual client teams through new training
4. Keeping ourselves informed and open to change through regular check-ins on our pay gap data, new hiring policies and selection process, while still hiring the best talent

The IAA Young Professionals Committee will be organising more learning and drinks sessions. They are a great benefit and I’d encourage my colleagues to attend future sessions. If you’d like to find out how you can join the next IAA session please contact us at [email protected]

What is the Amazon Treasure Truck, and does it stack up as a crossover online-to-offline retail experience?

At 9:30am this morning, I received an SMS that triggered an exciting eCommerce-adventure-slash-experiential-retail-investigation.

You’d be forgiven for not having heard of Amazon’s Treasure Truck, launched in the UK with relatively little fanfare and light PR mid-December 2017 after 2 years of operation in the USA. Have a look at #treasuretruck and you’ll see a moderate, but not huge, volume of tweets and selfies with the ‘gram-friendly funfair truck.

So what is it? Amazon Prime members sign-up for notifications near a given postcode, and then receive SMS notifications of offers when the pop-up truck is going to be near that location – for one hour only. The offers vary in their must-buy-this-now factor, but luckily, in this case, I was already in the consideration phase of the funnel for a Fitbit Ionic, and the free headphones deal (and chance to blog about the truck!) was too good to miss!

In this case, I signed up a couple of weeks ago, and the Truck was going to be near Baker Street tube between 10am and 11am, or much further afield at two other London locations later on Friday. I duly checked out within 5mins of receiving the text and set-off within 10mins. Everything about the checkout process was as per the normal Amazon Prime experience, other than the prompt to head off to the location before 11am, links to mapping and directions and a QR code emailed to me.

After 25 minutes on the Google Maps treasure trail, I arrived and was presented with a scruffy grey car park, unexceptional other than for the illuminated truck parked up in its midst with dance music belting out at a decent volume.

On approach, the truck itself is a cheerful and exciting thing (I subsequently learned this particular truck is called ‘Tallulah’ by her crew.) As well as the funfair lights, suitably ‘cardio’ dance music was blasting out and a Fitbit Promo video running on the central screen.

I was warmly greeted by Simon and the rest of the Treasure Truck team, plus David from Fitbit who was there to offer advice on the product. As I was the only customer they’d had 10mins into their hour at the location, they had plenty of time to chat, answer my questions and pose for photos.

I learned that this team covers the area inside the M25, running the experience a few days a week; they are a dedicated Treasure Truck team rather than being pulled from duties elsewhere at Amazon.

In my whole 20mins at the truck, I saw only one other customer, who arrived and left within seconds before I could grill him for his thoughts. “It varies a lot depending on the offer that day and the location,” Simon tells me. “We had a Taittinger champagne offer recently and we were mobbed with people after £27 bottles [60% off] and wanting to take selfies.”

“Do you get mainly people coming from work or from home?” I ask. “Again, it depends on the location, but in Central London, it tends to be office workers” says Simon. He agrees that buyers tend to be from a segment who are looking for a novel, made-for-social experience rather than pure convenience.

At one end of the Truck is a hatch with pre-packed bags with the treasure. The team simply scanned the QR code I’d received on my email receipt and handed me a bag. If I hadn’t stopped to chat the complete experience would have been under 30secs.

Also to one side was a hastily assembled trestle table of free Fitbit merch for me to take, and I bagged a water bottle, towel, coloured pencils, stickers and Oyster card holder (purely for research purposes of course!). I also spoke briefly with David from Fitbit, who was there to offer advice on setting up my new Ionic, or to pitch anyone who just happened to see the truck and walk-up.

The deal is hard to miss and available to those who walk up and order on the spot, which today seemed to be nobody, at least at this location. As well as the hashtag, I did ask if there was a Treasure Truck Snapchat filter, but the crew told me they’d had to drop that idea as Snap couldn’t accommodate the fluid location requirements.

So here I am, treasure in hand, internally reconciling the loveliness and novelty of the purchase experience while being aware I’m a grown man stood having photos taken with a funfair truck in a windswept car park.

About an hour after getting the notification, I’m back at base with my new stash.

So what do I think of Treasure Truck?

• The checkout process was as simple and slick as anything else that Amazon do, but I was a little disappointed that the piratical ‘treasure’ and carnival themes (a little bit of indecision on the creative direction there perhaps?!) didn’t carry through into any of the copy or design of the notifications, emails, product pages or checkout. It was all Amazon standard.
• The actual location of the truck was not very convenient (nor attractive) and I ultimately had to leave my desk for an hour at short notice for a free pair of decent headphones, when I could have got the watch delivered free of charge through Prime.
• What it absolutely did achieve was triggering a purchase decision where I had already been close to buying, but needing that final push.
• I enjoyed the theatre of the truck itself and the staff was as friendly, helpful and enthusiastic as you would hope. The extra Fitbit freebies and support were also nice touches.
• Did Amazon target me because I’d been considering an Ionic in December? Were the offer and location today created by an algorithm based in part on my individual purchase intent? Did they know I was near the location when I got the text? Understandably the team on site was not able to answer on specifics, nor tell me how locations and timing are decided other than ‘by data.’ However, they did tell me that I was likely to be notified of any and all offers ‘inside the M25’, implying that there isn’t a lot of targeting going on in the background.
• I felt the mechanics of ‘we will be in your area for 1hr’ added a bit of urgency and excitement to the experience, but ultimately were inconvenient and limit how this concept can scale. Rather than the logistics of setting up a truck for one hour 3 times in a day, I’d prefer to see the truck parked at a (more aesthetically pleasing) single location for a whole day. This would allow social and word-of-mouth to build a bit more buzz and FOMO around the truck with enough of a time window for new customers to get involved, probably making a trip from their offices at lunchtime or after work. Also, the logistics would allow a lot more props and theming to get those pirate-y Instagrams (or is it funfair-y tweets?) flowing.
• The relatively low awareness and need to pre-register are also stopping Treasure Truck reaching its intended zeitgeist quotient I feel; this would work better as a buzzy talked-about experience rather than a well-kept secret.

This is an interesting move from Amazon, a brand that is ‘operational excellence’ and ‘slick customer experience’ to the core but rarely indulges in fun or socially-engaging activity. And this was definitely a fun experience, albeit one that I wouldn’t repeat unless it was an offer I was desperate for or the truck was parked right outside my location.

Or for a pirate Snapchat filter…

#treasuretruck

The Consumer Electronic Show is back next week and the hype machine is already in full flow. Want to know what’s planned for Vegas? Read on…

The Christmas decorations are only just down and the New Year hangover migraine is now just a dull headache, so that means it must be time for the annual techfest that is CES. Over 170,000 tech heads will descend upon the bright lights of Las Vegas for four days starting on Tuesday 9th January. There will be almost 4,000 exhibitors at the World Trade Center Las Vegas (WTCLV) all plying their all-new electronic wares across the 3.2 million square feet of floor space.

Since its inception in 1967, CES has showcased some groundbreaking technology such as the VCR (1970), DVD (1996), IPTV (2005) and Autonomous Vehicles (2013). So, what is the latest buzz on the shiny new kit that we are likely to see next week? And will there be anything truly game changing?

Artificial Intelligence

Last year we saw Hong Kong based Hanson Robotics demonstrate their Sophia Bot and although it was a huge leap forward in the development of animated expressions and emotional intelligence it still looked somewhat creepy. Or was it just me? Sophia has a sophisticated level of artificial intelligence and will respond to open questions. I’m guessing we will see an updated version of Sophia this year at CES albeit with a few tweaked algorithms – I’m not sure Hanson want a repeat of her infamous comment that she would like to “destroy humans”.

Automotive

Given that around 25% of the WTCLV is dedicated to cars, you might be deceived into thinking that CES was a motor show. Over the past few years the presence of all the auto giants has accelerated as they focus on their connected, electric and driverless product. Rumours include four new ‘robotics’ concepts from Honda (including an autonomous off roader), a sexy new infotainment system from Mercedes and a new solid state battery by Fisker which promises a range of over 500 miles and a recharge time of just one minute.

This years’ keynote will be from Ford’s new CEO Jim Hackett following on from Carlos Ghosn from Renault Nissan last year and Mary Barra from General Motors the year before – a clear sign that automotive is critically important to the event.

Internet of Things

In recent years we have seen more and more kitchen appliances being connected and this year will be no different. Although we saw Bixby voice assistant on a Samsung fridge last year, I predict there will be a lot more Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant integrations. I also expect to see a whole slew of connected gadgets, although given that in recent years I have seen items such as underpants, toothbrushes, cutlery and even bras all being hooked up to the internet I’m honestly not sure what there is possibly left to connect.

TV’s

Bigger (100 inch plus), thinner (the thickness of wallpaper) and even higher definition (up to 8k). News on the grapevine is that LG have an 88 inch 8k unit that will be presented in all its HD glory in Vegas. Naturally, all of them will be connected and increasingly voice activated. I just wonder if we will witness anything really revolutionary (like the curved screens from 5 years ago) or it will just be improvements of existing technology? I’m predicting more of the latter than the former.

Virtual Reality

Google don’t often have a particularly large presence at CES but this year they have got plenty of space booked. I’m guessing that a decent chunk of that will be to showcase their new Daydream VR product. Even though it’s already launched, Oculus Go will likely have some space dedicated to it and there is some noise around a new VR headset from Lenovo called the ‘Mirage’ which might make its debut at CES.

On top of all that there will inevitably be plenty of new drones, wearables (predominantly health-focused), smartphones, robots and crazy one-off gizmo’s that will almost certainly entertain but probably never make it to the mainstream.

As usual I will be trawling the floors (in a comfy pair of shoes) to bring you details on the latest and greatest kit so don’t forget to check back later next week when I will be providing a full review of CES and analysing whether any of my predictions actually become a (virtual) reality.

TV viewing has dramatically changed over the past few years. New companies, new formats, new devices and new subscription models have all impacted what we can only very loosely still call ‘TV viewing.’ At a recent evening organised by MTM, we heard some of the brightest and the best from Sky, BBC, YouView and Google debate how our beloved googlebox experience may change even more over the next decade.

The biggest changes we can expect are around data, voice search, the user experience and ultimately the battle for YOUR living room.

Firstly, the opportunity with data is huge, and TV content providers are only just getting started. Everyone has taken note of the success Netflix had, and they are looking to improve the user experience through data to understand and personalise the viewing experience. This makes the EPG critical. In the UK, given their data capabilities and reach, Sky and BBC should be able to go toe to toe with Amazon and Netflix. Everyone else is in the uncomfortable position of playing catch-up.

The challenge is, viewers want content suggestions tailored to them and their viewing habits, but also want completely left-field suggestions they would never choose themselves and might love! No small task.

Voice search and command is highly significant, but also the great unknown. Searching via voice is twice as popular amongst 18-34s compared to all adults. Understandably, people are far more comfortable talking out loud from the comfort of their own house than in public. This means TV content is some of the most searched for via voice. Currently, content providers are trying to work out how to balance users switching between remote control use and voice.

Amazon’s Alexa’s technology is moving into more smart TV, offering Alexa as a catch-all assistant for viewing content on your TV, provided it is connected. Unsurprisingly, Google is not far behind in linking assistant to your TV alongside other household devices, and Apple TV already utilises Siri.

So rather than a battle for your TV, or perhaps your living room, this is quickly escalating into a battle for the OS to your home!

The engineers in the room were getting very excited about UX. Known to people like me as the user experience. It seems everyone is developing, learning from and improving upon everyone else’s UX. This amalgamation, where data meets the interface, meets navigation, and crucially gets you to compelling content fast, is the utopia moment for all broadcasters.

Interestingly, most are already testing different layouts, messaging and content. So, no-one’s Netflix or Sky interface will look the same as anyone else’s.

This brings us neatly onto the next significant development: The TV as an entertainment hub in the future. As voice interface more readily controls your TV, lights, curtains and thermostat, the TV may well become your main household interface. Whilst we may then spend more time with the big screen, TV content will be elbowed out the way by a plethora of other uses.

As TVs integrate a camera and movement recognition, we will more happily use the main set for video calls and games taken straight from apps. Games consoles can already be integrated into the main set. Photo albums and video clips can happily be called up from phone or Facebook with a simple command, and the TV becomes a social hub too. Snapchat lenses are far more fun when there is room for the whole family to be turned into rainbow-spewing trolls!

Where does this leave today’s content creator and provider? Interestingly there were some truisms that remain. The power of channel brands still exists, and their heritage makes them a default viewing option for years to come. Additionally, linear scheduling was still seen as important. Releasing an episode a week creates talkability over time which binge watching cannot yet compete with.

And finally, we may never rid ourselves of the power of Saturday Night. Families and friends still want to congregate together, to watch the biggest shows as a collective, connected mass. All the voice-controlled, Alexa-powered technology in the world cannot deter us from tuning into a bit of Ant n’ Dec.

In recent years we’ve witnessed the rise and rise of purpose-led marketing and, in 2017 – a year when half of the Grand Prix winners at Cannes were purpose-led – we have reached the cusp of the revolution. Purpose is no longer a nice-to-have, adjacent marketing strategy; for a brand to succeed, purpose must now form the core of a brand’s essence and behaviour, thus informing all communications.

Why are we seeing this shift? As ever, it comes down to the consumer, who is increasingly aware of the impact their decisions can have on the world. According to Nielsen, 66% are willing to spend more on a product from a sustainable brand, rising to 73% of millennials. This clearly means that ‘responsible consumption brands’ will enjoy sustained growth – a LinkedIn study showed that 58% of companies with a clearly articulated purpose enjoyed growth of more than 10% over a three-year period. Unilever’s ‘sustainable living brands’ like Ben & Jerry’s and Dove grew 60% faster than the rest of the business in 2016 – CMO Keith Weed says ‘to succeed globally…brands must act quickly to prove their social and environmental credentials and show consumers they can be trusted with the future of the planet and communities’. Doing good is cool and there is huge opportunity for brands who understand and enable this.

It’s not just the bottom line that benefits from putting purpose at the core of brand essence: workforce happiness and efficiency improve too. There is increasing demand from workers that their employers demonstrate a higher purpose than just profit. According to a Deloitte study, 90% of millennials want to use their skills for good, while more than 50% would take a pay cut to find work that matches their values. This translates into efficiency for the employer: 53% of workers would work harder if they felt their organisation was making a difference. As we approach 2025, when millennials will account for 75% of the workforce, focusing on keeping them fulfilled is crucial.

So it’s crucial to keep purpose at the heart of your brand behaviour – but it’s also crucial that the resultant marketing campaigns are executed in the right way. The key here is authenticity: consumers see right through ‘purpose washing’. Of course, it’s easy for brands like Toms or Warby Parker with social profit as their raison d’être to have authentic, purpose-led storytelling driving their communications, but any brand can be authentic in this space: credibility is found at the overlap of what society needs and what a brand is best at. The Bank of Aland’s Grand Prix-winning Aland Index project and OMD Ireland’s Pure Love campaign for Water Wipes are great examples of meaningful communications resulting from total alignment of purpose, brand personality and values.

Delivering on promises is also crucial; a Trinity Mirror survey revealed that 58% of adults do not trust a brand until they have seen proof that it has kept its promises, while 40% would stop using a brand because of its behaviour. US brand Boost’s Boost Your Voice campaign, another Grand-Prix winner, delivered on its pledge to increase equal voting access by turning their stores into voting booths in the 2016 presidential election: Boost precincts saw 23% higher voter turnout than in 2012.

To ensure authenticity, we need to plan for the human and what they want from brands, not the consumer. Harnessing data to inform rich insight is the only way to do this, and it’s why OMD’s dedicated purpose unit puts human data and insight at the heart of all its work. It enabled us to forge the partnership between our client Cisco and National Geographic. We fully leveraged mutual beliefs and each brand’s assets and equity, creating the Emerging Explorer campaign which demonstrated how technology can improve people’s wellbeing. Data also allows us to deliver localised campaigns – highly desirable in a globalised and sometimes impersonal world. And, of course, it enables us to measure how purpose affects a brand and to make informed decisions.

Pairing data-fuelled insights with the latest technological innovations will inform the future of purpose marketing. Brands are already looking at new ways to harness their data creatively to strengthen their social impact: Whirlpool’s US Care Counts campaign collected data from its washing machines in schools to help teachers understand the effect of clean clothes on pupil attendance, winning them the Creative Data Grand Prix at Cannes.

Using VR as a tool for empathy is also an exciting opportunity – careful use of the technology, perhaps to enable consumers to ‘live’ in a post-climate change world or to experience life as a refugee, could increase engagement with the cause a brand is championing. According to a YuMe survey, VR received a 27% higher emotional reaction than 2D and engaged the viewer for 34% longer.

As marketers we can no longer afford to overlook the potential of artificial intelligence to help us optimise marketing activity and ultimately ensure healthy growth for our brands into the future. This has been the focus of major research at OMD over the last year, with learnings incorporated into our clients’ campaigns. As more brands put purpose at the heart of their communications, it is inevitable AI will have an impact on purpose-led marketing too. We’re just at the beginning of the AI revolution and the possibilities are endless.

It is evident that there is a huge opportunity to engage consumers and talent in a meaningful way by making purpose the core of the brand’s essence. Authenticity must be the mantra, achieved by aligning that purpose with core values and delivering on promises. The wealth of data at our fingertips and the power of new technologies can only enhance the power of these campaigns and our ability to understand the positive impact they have on society and brand equity. With purpose at the heart of authentic marketing, the future is bright – for both brands and society.

What if I told you that there is a social platform which shows you the products you want, which are the perfect size, the perfect price and at the ideal time on the right device? A platform which allows you to buy this product with just one nod of your head? Well, whilst I can’t provide this at the nod of my head, I can tell you it’s within reach…

Social commerce has evolved a great deal based on what people want and the fantastic and dynamic social media platform capabilities. It is therefore increasingly important for retailers to continue to make the best use of this huge opportunity for growth.

In recent months and years, we have seen an explosion of e-commerce on mobile phones. We now expect that mobile retail will make up a whopping 50% of the retail e-commerce by 2020. With mobile becoming the main source of retail e-commerce, the way people purchase online has changed.  Mobile shoppers now spend less time buying products and peruse less products before purchasing, than ever before. The limitations of mobile platforms certainly help explain why customers are investing less time into shopping online, but this is not the only reason. Ads are becoming more and more relevant. Technologies, like Facebook Dynamic Ads aid product relevancy using Artificial Intelligence, as well as more first and third-party data. By adopting this approach and using Dynamic ads on Facebook, OMD increased Levi’s ROI by five.

Ad relevancy helps advertisers showcase the right products, but ad formats also help the mobile retail journey by providing a more seamless shopping experience – from inspiration via a video, or even 360-degree, video (MG OMD run this on John Lewis ads) to selecting your product via the catalogue ad which loads on to Facebook. All without visiting the retailer website.  In the US, shoppable posts (you can click on the post and the price, the name and link will pop-up!) are starting to be more widely used. It is now even easier to have a multi-purpose ad, from awareness and consideration to DR.

Although social media platforms make it easier for you to select the relevant product, you still need to go the retailer website in order to add to basket, provide product specs (such as size, colours, option), provide your contact info, as well as paying.  This will eventually change as social media platforms try to personalise your shopping experience even further, as well as making it simpler for you to buy.

Through knowing your size, budget, delivery address as well as favourite payment method, it’s not hard to imagine a new and different type shopping experience through social media. The ad will only show you products within your budget, with the right options (size or other) and with “1 click ordering” you will be able to buy a product from the ads without going to the retailer website.

With this extra data, artificial intelligence will also make it easier for the platforms to predict what products you are likely to buy. This will, in turn, make it easier for the buyer as well as for retailers, who will only be managing a feed to the social media platform.

In conclusion, the social commerce environment is changing rapidly and for any retailers, whatever the size, it is becoming more and more important to work with your paid social team to make sure that latest social media functionalities, such as retargeting and cross-selling Dynamic ads and Facebook Video Catalogue, ads are implemented in order to retain market share and business.

For more information about the possibilities within social commerce, please contact us at [email protected]

What if I told you that there is a social platform which shows you the products you want, which are the perfect size, the perfect price and at the ideal time on the right device? A platform which allows you to buy this product with just one nod of your head? Well, whilst I can’t provide this at the nod of my head, I can tell you it’s within reach…

Social commerce has evolved a great deal based on what people want and the fantastic and dynamic social media platform capabilities. It is therefore increasingly important for retailers to continue to make the best use of this huge opportunity for growth.

In recent months and years, we have seen an explosion of e-commerce on mobile phones. We now expect that mobile retail will make up a whopping 50% of the retail e-commerce by 2020. With mobile becoming the main source of retail e-commerce, the way people purchase online has changed.  Mobile shoppers now spend less time buying products and peruse less products before purchasing, than ever before. The limitations of mobile platforms certainly help explain why customers are investing less time into shopping online, but this is not the only reason. Ads are becoming more and more relevant. Technologies, like Facebook Dynamic Ads aid product relevancy using Artificial Intelligence, as well as more first and third-party data. By adopting this approach and using Dynamic ads on Facebook, OMD increased Levi’s ROI by five.

Ad relevancy helps advertisers showcase the right products, but ad formats also help the mobile retail journey by providing a more seamless shopping experience – from inspiration via a video, or even 360-degree, video (MG OMD run this on John Lewis ads) to selecting your product via the catalogue ad which loads on to Facebook. All without visiting the retailer website.  In the US, shoppable posts (you can click on the post and the price, the name and link will pop-up!) are starting to be more widely used. It is now even easier to have a multi-purpose ad, from awareness and consideration to DR.

Although social media platforms make it easier for you to select the relevant product, you still need to go the retailer website in order to add to basket, provide product specs (such as size, colours, option), provide your contact info, as well as paying.  This will eventually change as social media platforms try to personalise your shopping experience even further, as well as making it simpler for you to buy.

Through knowing your size, budget, delivery address as well as favourite payment method, it’s not hard to imagine a new and different type shopping experience through social media. The ad will only show you products within your budget, with the right options (size or other) and with “1 click ordering” you will be able to buy a product from the ads without going to the retailer website.

With this extra data, artificial intelligence will also make it easier for the platforms to predict what products you are likely to buy. This will, in turn, make it easier for the buyer as well as for retailers, who will only be managing a feed to the social media platform.

In conclusion, the social commerce environment is changing rapidly and for any retailers, whatever the size, it is becoming more and more important to work with your paid social team to make sure that latest social media functionalities, such as retargeting and cross-selling Dynamic ads and Facebook Video Catalogue, ads are implemented in order to retain market share and business.

For more information about the possibilities within social commerce, please contact us at [email protected]

We can all feel how the search landscape is changing. Every day I hear a new stat – 50% of search in 2020 will be voice, search queries are getting longer with 50% now over four words, and using an image within search results increases the likelihood of conversion by up to 40%. I could go on.

Search is the primary indicator of changing consumer behaviour. It is estimated that people today interact with up to 200 digital touchpoints before visiting a store or completing a purchase online. The conversion path is now so dynamic that when we consider partners, we need to react with it. The stat that even some of my most sophisticated clients raise an eyebrow at is that 40% of product searches are direct to Amazon vs. Google, which receives 30%.

So what does this mean for the brands and advertisers? How do big and small players prepare for the battle? How do they make sure they stay in the search game and win the consumer amid the digital pollution and noise of the competition?

Shopper marketing vs. channel marketing

The answer, first and foremost, lies in focusing on shopper marketing vs. channel marketing.

One way to achieve this is to embrace the ‘holistic search’ approach, not only by integrating paid and organic search into a single search strategy, but also by rolling it out into the broader search ecosystem beyond ‘traditional’ search engines.

For example, OMD has delivered this approach for Bacardi by expanding its search activities directly into its retailer domains using Criteo’s machine learning technology (formerly known as HookLogic). The campaign helped the brand to overcome the fierce competition on the retailer sites and delivered outstanding results – over 700% ROAS and gaining half of the market share for the promoted products.

Levi’s closely follow suit, and has taken a step further to penetrate the ‘walled gardens’ of Amazon Search (AMS) in a bid to overcome the crowded organic space and firmly establish its dominance on Amazon. But despite endless commercial opportunities on Amazon, the challenges for search marketers are immense – AMS activation and management is fundamentally different from that on ‘traditional search engines’.

To overcome this challenge, OMD teamed up with Levi’s and Kenshoo, as a product design partner, to help the development of the AMS management solution which allows for AMS campaign management on scale. Within a month of on-boarding, OMD managed to scale up Levi’s AMS campaigns increasing traffic by 500% and delivering 4x more sales. As a result, Levi’s is now considering including AMS into the framework of its always-on search strategy.

So while media players continue the race of innovation to meet the modern consumer’s expectation of immediate access to information and goods at the snap of their fingers (or voice!), search evolves as an organic part of daily life.

Approaching search holistically

It is therefore important that brands and marketers start approaching search holistically in the context of the consumer path to purchase. Multi-channel API integrations, pursued by marketing software companies, marketing analytics and attribution solutions, can help in providing adequate measurement framework to understand the impact of each channel on overall search performance.

This may not be achieved overnight while many brands still operate in silos with little collaboration between brand and performance marketing, and a lack of coordination between marketing and merchandising or the online and offline. However, marketers are best positioned to lead clients towards consumer-centric strategies using the wealth of cross-vertical expertise and technology solutions they possess.

The last decade has seen some real challenges on the high-street. As the continuous advent of new technologies shift and create consumer behaviours, retail businesses have had to pivot their approach to in-store and online engagement. Not everyone has been successful in doing this, and the loss of over 400 medium-to-large UK retail businesses in the last decade can attest to that. However, many legacy retailers have transformed their businesses to become major disruptors in their sector, creating new engagement opportunities that surprise and excite both new and established consumers.

CREATING CONSUMER BEHAVIOURS

However, it’s not all bad news for retailers. By capitalising on the power of this disruptive force, and understanding the role that technology now plays in consumer engagement, many companies are riding the waves of success in this evolving era. As PWC reports, Uber dropped off its billionth global ride within six years, Netflix streams 125 million hours of content worldwide each day and 90% of US respondents surveyed claimed to be Amazon shoppers. These companies succeeded not by adapting their businesses to adhere to consumer demands, but actually changed the way consumers engaged with businesses by creating new consumer behaviours.

LEGACY REVOLUTION

Bricks-and-mortar stores are different, and creating new consumer behaviours are harder to achieve where legacy demands that stores act in a certain way – often brand heritage can be a disadvantage in a way that newer brands such as Uber, Netflix or Amazon aren’t as impacted by. According to PWC, shoppers want a seamless shopping experience both online and offline. However according to their findings, how this is delivered to them differs. In-store, consumers expect experiences, with knowledgeable staff to guide them through their purchase decisions, whereas online they are looking for convenience. Some of our clients have begun addressing this, such as Starbucks with their ambient, in-store experience with accessible Wi-Fi and extended menu, paired with an app to expedite your coffee purchasing for those on the move. Nike offers a running club, where consumers can join other like-minded athletes to jog around the city together, paired with a popular fitness tracking app that in itself has created a new type of consumer behaviour.

THE OMD RETAIL EXPO

Throughout October, OMD EMEA is running an internal initiative at our headquarters in London, aimed at addressing these challenges and capitalising on the opportunities within the retail sector. The OMD Retail Expo is a four-week programme of talks, training initiatives and thought-leadership sessions, designed to empower our agency teams, and subsequently our clients, to become disruptors of their respective industries. We will be tackling some of the most pertinent trends in the retail industry, presented by some of the leading experts in the market. We will also be running our very first Retail Expo Start-Up Village, focusing on shoppable customer content, in-store experiences online, and utilising neural networking to optimise consumer feedback. We will welcome behemoths from the digital world who are already disrupting the retail sector, including Google, Amazon, Oath and Facebook and bring together our very own OMD and OMG specialists to inspire everyone to become disruptors in their field; including social commerce, affiliate marketing and mobile retail. Stay tuned for more updates throughout October and November!

DISRUPT OR DIE

With Business Wire predicting that the global retail industry will be worth 28 trillion USD by 2019, the size of the prize is huge. As new, bolder companies come into the market and disrupt the legacy thinking, slower brands are missing the opportunity to pivot and failing. But with that comes even greater numbers of these new, bolder companies and consumers’ expectations are continually evolving with technical transformation. Only those that adapt and disrupt will survive.

Influencers are an adaptive and rapidly evolving content resource, offering brands opportunity to directly connect with customers in an authentic way by utilising and amplifying brand messages via each influencer’s specific style of content, rather than making them change their look to suit a brands natural environment, but with so many new influencers emerging daily, how can brands identify the most relevant? The buzzword in branded content is no longer the big-budget celebrity bloggers or vloggers, it’s the micro-influencer. They are more authentic, have access to niche fan groups and are inspiring without being alienating. And often, they are less expensive than mass-celebrity names.

Over the past five years, thousands of new, niche influencers have globally careered into our social feeds. Seemingly, even those ordinary people next door evolved overnight into a Justice League-esque group of media savvy, “super relatable” people with extraordinary photogenic abilities. From couples travelling the world to musically-inclined teenage boys to gender fluid make up artists, there is an influencer for everyone.

What makes influencers so alluring to consumers?

In short, influencers – especially fashion lifestyle influencers – live the lives of the people we aspire to be; they are the friends we wish we really had; they cook and create delicious, shareable content; stay in the best hotels, and attend the best events; all whilst using the latest mobile phones, wearing perfect eye-liner, and toasting to their social media success via Pinterest-perfect cocktails, against a backdrop of never ending summers, glossy marble counter-tops and eerily quiet and serene cityscapes. It’s clear from all the activity on social that more brands are using influencers that ever before.

Once we’ve stopped revelling in a world of self-pity, jealousy and FOMO, we use these beautiful social feeds to motivate us to lead better, more wholesome lives. And of course, every single product or service they promote seamlessly facilitates the dream life that we would like to have.

So, by effortlessly building genuine, relatable relationships with consumers, and by their inherent tech and media savvy nature, micro-influencers have permeated every aspect of media and advertising. They’ve fast grown to become a $1-billion media industry, establishing themselves as a serious, heavy-weight media channels in their own right.

At OMD EMEA, we try to anticipate our clients’ needs by using a combination of storytelling and creative thinking along with data insights to help bolster campaigns: blending art and science to create memorable and high-performing content. Our in-house creative team, Create, helps activate influencer programs that bring added value.

When should brands use influencers?

Firstly, as with any media channel, just because you can use it in your connections plan, doesn’t necessarily mean you should. The value and power of influencers is, unlike the top-down distribution model of traditional ATL channels such as print, TV, and radio; they offer an agile and scalable model for connecting with younger consumers. Influencers exist in new media services that resonate with people because it shifts the power of content creation and curation to their fellow peers. This decentralisation of content ownership appeals to Gen Y and Gen Z in particular as it allows them to source live content and news stories direct from a source, rather than relying on traditional news sites that many feel bias or skew information (for example, only 29% of Gen Y’ers trust traditional online news channels).

Here are five key steps to help tap into the influencer-consumer relationship:

1. Develop an Influencer Framework
2. Discover – identifying relevant influencer for objectives to be met, including audience definitions and setting campaign goals. Will your customers be receptive to influencer content?
3. Establish how content will be created, are influencers creating their own position, or are we asking them to regurgitate core brand messages? Set expectations, what do we expect influencer to do in return for money, VIP invitations or event access
4. Act on opportunity: budget channel allocation and planning required to meet goals. Plan the amplification of organic reach.
5. Measure: Test, learn, and optimise

To learn more about how OMD Create can activate influencer programs that bring added value please contact [email protected]