Consumers are in a tremendous state of control when it comes to everything from brands to media choices, and marketers should celebrate that fact rather than fight it.
So said Allie Kline, chief marketing officer at AOL, who was one of the participants in a panel discussion on the future of consumer engagement during the first day of the annual C2 Montreal conference, co-created by Montreal agency Sid Lee.
Since consumers’ attention spans are shorter than ever, it is increasingly important to create compelling media content.
Kline also said while the amount of time consumers spend with specific media is declining, their engagement is going up. She noted, for example, that millennials have made AOL’s Huffington Post the most social news brand in the world.
She added that “today, engagement is the metric,” and that investments in brands and affinity are going to be life-lasting for marketers. “Affinity is what is going to pay dividends.”
Jon Potter, chief marketing officer and executive vice-president, brands at Moët Hennessy USA, said the company’s number one job is to reach more customers and to protect the DNA of its brands, some of which are centuries old.
Forget about consumer loyalty, Potter said. “If you want loyalty, buy a dog.”
The company has had to become more consumer-centric in recent years and create different touch points for consumers, he said.
Consumers are engaging with ideas and when it comes to ideas “I don’t really care where they come from,” Potter added.
He said there are two core metrics for Moët Hennessy – reach and engagement – and that it gets bombarded by a lot of other data that is screened out.
Christopher Ratcliffe, senior vice-president, marketing for core technologies at EMC, said consumers determine what media will be popular and it is the job of marketers to find innovative ways to draw them in.
Elsewhere at C2, Adam Garone,CEO and co-founder of the Movember Foundation, noted that email remains by far the most important fundraising channel for the men’s health not-for-profit. About 80% of the money raised by the moustache-growing organization comes via email, with Facebook far behind at 15%. “For us, email is king.”
Garone also noted that Movember is shifting its focus from its initial emphasis on prostate cancer to other areas of men’s wellness such as mental health and sedentary lifestyles. “Sitting is the new smoking,” he said.
Fundraisers constantly have to innovate, he added, noting last summer’s ice bucket challenge for ALS hit organizations like his hard.
