Your old digital marketing playbook won’t work any longer

Those brands which put the convergence of data and technology in service of what their brand needs to win with consumers are leading the way. This means connecting data, AI, product and commerce creatively in service of brand goals.

This gives an inherent advantage to brands which own their route to consumer in whole or in part, and maybe why some many FMCG food and drink brands, once the darlings of marketing, are being left in the dust.

We are in a new, or at least an evolving era, in reaching, engaging and selling to consumers digitally.

Amidst these shifts, one thing stands out: brands are back. In this complex, non-linear world, it strikes me it is those brands which most readily come to mind, fulfilling needs holistically and differently which benefit the most if they can manage how and where they show up in the world. So, what’s going on and how are brands responding?

1) Attribution is on its last legs

Already significantly weakened by walled gardens and the loss of cookies, Apple’s privacy features and those of mainstream browsers means marketers are finally admitting they are tracking customers with one hand tied behind their backs.

This means marketing mix modelling is back on the agenda as the only way to truly understand incrementality and make decisions about where to invest for growth.

Finally, brands are asking what helped sell more not just what got clicked through.

2) Search has changed beyond recognition

Consumers no longer say ‘Google that shit’ as finally there is an alternative with AI engines having already captured some 20% of ‘search’ behaviour and more queries now being resolved quickly and conversationally in platform, versus on organic or promoted links.

Platform knowledge and authority already matter more than the amount of keywords you pay for. No wonder Reddit, the ultimate digital brand advocacy tool, has been growing so fast in the last five years despite being nearly 20 years old.

3) Influencers are being left out in the cold

Brands using influencers like media will get left behind by brands who behave more like media companies forging long term partnerships balancing reach and relevance.

For start ups this means the founder is the brand – think about how Gymshark was built through its community and values, and how the hype of Prime came before distribution, or how Loop builds its brands in music, fashion and experience culture, most recently with Harry Styles.

For brands with scale, ‘meaning’ will be built with long term creators and partnerships which build shared cultural meaning through a shared ecosystem.

4) The marketing funnel’s collapsing

This has been the case for some time on Douyin, Xiaohongshu and WeChat in China, and we should expect to see the frictionless combination of community, content, and commerce grow on Western platforms likely to adopt livestreaming, in-feed purchasing, and more easily shoppable assets.

Brands need to be simultaneously mentally and physically available. Yes, that’s right the QVC model is right back in fashion, even embedded into the brand experience of ‘My Sephora’.

5) Personalisation at real scale

For brands which curate first party data at scale through a customer data platform, the level of personalisation they can achieve is insane.

Websites can be configured to deliver a truly individual experience right down to assortment, pricing and promotion supported with relevant creative beyond that which can be achieved through applying segmentation.

It’s not just Amazon and Spotify where every page is unique but also brands like Starbucks where a consumer’s location and purchase history can be combined with weather and daypart to create unique recommendations and offers.

6) Interactive storytelling across touchpoints

Brands pushing this furthest are starting to create interactive storytelling, to integrate augmented reality to showcase how a product might work in a prospective customer’s life, as L’Oreal or Ikea already do, and to adopt AI influencers like Lil Miquela who’s working with brands such as Prada and Samsung.

If you think how successful Red Bull has been in creating a real-world brand world for their consumers to experience in extreme sports, brands like Lego are pioneering how to do this digitally and in the real world through paid experiences, content and partnerships, while brands such as Nike are showing up on platforms like Roblox – a bit like the ‘metaverse’ but somewhere people actually want to hang out.

7) AI is the system

This means AI is moving quickly from a tool to drive productivity in creative assets to an engine which both drives and influences the whole consumer brand experience in real time.

My Netflix experience feels as fully tailored as my Amazon experience – with recommendation, creative, trailers and comms all keeping pace with the decisions I make about what to watch and when.

It results in me spending less time searching and more often offering up something which matches my mood when I fire up the platform.

It’s easy to see this on other platforms such as Spotify, but even Coke’s ‘Create Real Magic’ campaign shows analogue brands can apply this to the creative collaboration work they have been doing for a couple of decades.

If these examples are starting to sound eerily familiar, they should be – if there is anything in common it is that they start with a deep alignment of brand and consumer insight with data and tech and not the other way around. Put simply, the smartest brands use digital to overcome barriers and capitalise on triggers to purchase.

All this means there is now a great divide between brands which own the relationship with the consumer and brands, like the FMCG darlings of the past, which don’t and probably never will.