It had been a few years since I’d been able to attend Digital Religion. The last time I was called in to cover the conference, it was known simply as Digital Day and the theme of the event was “will this be the year of mobile?” This year, I got front-row seats to 14 top-level speakers who shared remarkable insights into a future of marketing that is very much mobile-reliant and informed by more than a decade of research and experience.
Every time I’ve been lucky enough to attend the Marketing/Canadian Marketing Association event, it’s been an eye-opening experience. But, this year’s conference combined the promise of what’s possible with the wisdom learned over more than a decade of investment — hope with a dash of realism. Yet, when trends emerged across presentations, they tended to focus on missed opportunities.
Birthdays are a bad way to understand consumers
Sasha Strauss, managing director and founder of Innovation Protocol, opened the conference with a level of energy that took the still-caffeinating crowd by surprise. Presenting his perception of the modern consumer with a combination of data and hand-drawn illustrations, Strauss outlined his idea of the “Herogen,” a principled generation who are endlessly curious and skeptical of being sold-to, preffering instead to indulge their curiosity at every whim thanks to a deep understanding of online culture.
But Strauss was the first of several presenters who made sure to distinguish this group of people from “young people.” Marketers, he said, are wrong to target customer groups by something those groups have no control over: their age. Instead, it is far better to target and classify them by their actions. Members of Herogen touch their phones, on average, 100 times a day; that behaviour is not limited to people born after 2000, so why treat it as such?
“I don’t even know what ‘millennial’ is supposed to mean,” he said, given that its definition varies depending on which media outlet you subscribe to or what researchers need from a given poll. Limiting a marketing strategy to an age range leaves money and engagement on the table, as behaviours move across age boundaries.
Later in the day, Natasha Walji, a head of industry for CPG at Google Canada, expressed this idea thusly: “Intent trumps identity… As marketers, we always think about trying to target an 18-34 year old who’s in college and has a certain income level. But, what’s more important is to be there in the context of the moment that matters. For example, is it important [a consumer is] a 25-54-year-old female, or that she’s online trying to buy a house?”
And speaking of Walji…
Canadian marketers are missing big opportunities in search
Natasha Walji is pregnant. As a result, she’s seen her search habits change to include baby clothes, different hygiene products and car seats. Given that she works at Google, she has been keen to observe changes in her online behaviour and those of the marketers surrounding her online actions. Frankly, she said, marketers are missing a ton of opportunities.
Every time she searches for pizza places that deliver late at night or creative ways to tell family members she’s pregnant, “those are powerful, meaningful moments for brands to be present. And I’ll tell you, in Canada, brands are not present.
“If you think about a new mom about to deliver, that is a person about to buy a lot of products. It would have been great for Lululemon to be present when I was searching for yoga classes. It would have been great to see a branded pregnancy calculator… things like that of great utility. Being present is very important.”
To illustrate her point, Walji showed research Google conducted for shampoo brands to see how often they appear in relevant positions during certain searches (in this case, it used the 10 most-used searches for “best curly hair shampoo”). Walji said the biggest brand in this very saturated category was only present in 10% of relevant searches. “That means nine out of 10 times, nobody is showing up. That’s a huge opportunity to be there in a moment that matters to your consumer.”
How much money is being left on the table? Google’s data shows 93% of Canadians who use a mobile device to search for a product go on to make a purchase in that searched-for category, but Canadians are spending less time conducting those searches. “They’re doing fewer searches in a tighter timeframe, which means as a brand… you have a shorter time window to be relevant and show them things that matter to them.”
Branded Content is almost 15 years old
To close out the conference, Derek Westerlund, the founder of Freeride Entertainment (which has been making incredible branded films for Red Bull, Hitcase and others) reminded the audience that BMW Films, the project that birthed the much-admired “The Hire” film, came out in 2001. A few folks gasped, likely feeling a bit dated.
I’m not sure how much more there is to say about this, other than how the heck are we not better at this yet? Media options have multiplied since Clive Owen toured his BMWs through various intrigues. Production has gotten cheaper. There is way more talent in this space than ever before. And yet somehow this 15-year-old work remains more-or-less the high water mark.
That’s not to say there has been no good branded work since (Philips’ “Parallel Lines” still stands out) , but as a sector of marketing, the sentiment remains that this field is underdeveloped — generally earning more scorn than praise. We love when work pops above the line and shows creativity, talent and a reasonable level of brand involvement. But by evoking BMW’s bravery so early in his presentation, Westerlund shaded his talk with a sense of “we could do so much more.”
