Brands are not only learning to share control with their stakeholders, but they are changing their business processes and times when they operate, to deal with different consumer behavior. The main reason for this is that brand planning – the process of analyzing data, coming up with insights and ideas, planning, executing and measuring results before re-planning – is getting out of synch with the way people act.
People today live in a world that is increasingly 24×7x365. With globalization, shift work, retail outlets that are open around-the-clock, and digital, consumers are “always on”. While brands are planning campaigns, people are operating on their own schedules, continuously working, communicating, connecting and shopping. If brands are not there to immediately meet their request for sales support, or to respond to a complaint, consumers will move on in the click of a mouse.
1. Continuous communications
To better deal with consumer demands, brands are shifting more from campaigns to continuous communications, including:
- Analytics – brands need to better understand how their consumers live, work, and play, around the clock. This information can then determine the type of content that will help tell the brand story, as well as the order and timing that messages should be delivered.
- Content development (on-going) – local, regional and global news, as well as compliments or criticisms from a customer or consumers, all present opportunities for brands to communicate with their audience. Brands need to better utilize the events and trends around them to help amplify their stories. This means more continuous content generation which is both faster and more economically feasible with digital communications. One way to do this is to appoint a Chief Content Officer to help manage the process of generating on-going content - starting of course with listening to the market daily and identifying opportunities for the brand.
- Immediate response – today’s consumers are impatient. They can barely wait for a webpage to open up let alone wait for a full day before receiving a response to a compliment or complaint. Increasingly, brands need to respond around the clock to consumer stimuli. This is where global networks can help for a company can use its overseas office to provide 24 hour coverage.
- Media selection – brands need to select more “continuous” media in the owned, bought, shared, and earned spaces including CRM, digital, public relations, retail and social – that are always on.
2. Continuous marketing
The idea of “Continuous” is also important for activities beyond marketing, including:
- Budgets – while budgets are important for shareholders, analysts, and for setting annual targets for growth, they are based on “campaign thinking” where brands controlled most of their actions over the course of a full year. In a rapidly changing environment it’s important to always keep an eye on market changes and project how the brand can take advantage of the opportunities and challenges. That’s why marketers should work up budgets and run continuous forecasts, looking one to three years into the future, each month. (In a rapidly changing world it is difficult to forecast further into the future.)
- Employment – companies generally think of employment in terms of campaigns. They hire for a particular job for a specified amount of time and consider promotions when our needs arise or when the employee tires of this position. This way of thinking does not take into consideration the need of today’s employees to have a broad range of learning. Rather that recruit for a 3 year cycle, companies should be looking for more continuous employment and building a career around a number of disciplines. This is very possible with multinational, multi-brand and multi-faceted companies on both the client side and agency side of the business. These companies can swap employees and develop a continuous career path to retain good employees.
- Production outsourcing – agencies can improve their response rate by thinking more in terms of continuous operations using geography to be a 24 hour a day operation. Account management teams, planners and creative directors can meet clients and develop plans during regular office hours. Then production work can be outsourced to another part of the world, or a second shift, to take advantage of a 24 hour clock. Further, cost savings can be gained by outsourcing to a cheaper market. (Concern for people is also growing so this is not a call to stretch our employees’ days any longer than they currently are.)
- Training and education – companies increasingly need to think in terms of continuous education and reinvention. The world changes so rapidly that we can no longer rest on our formal education and on-the-job training. Rather we must continuously upgrade our knowledge and skills, drawing in thought leaders on a continuing basis. This will involve both personal commitment and commitment from companies to share learning from the brightest people, and from different sources, both inside and outside the organization.
Tags: Campaigns. Continuous communications. Always on. 24x7.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 1st, 2009 at 10:02 am and is filed under Brand, Uncategorized. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
The Rising Sun
December 15th, 2009 at 9:28 pm
Well put.
One thing I’ve noticed a lot in Asia is that brands tend to go for short term campaigns not comprehending that “people are operating on their own schedules, continuously working, communicating, connecting and shopping”. Coming from a Search point-of-view, marketers need to grasp the understanding of long-term Search activities and the benefits that come with it. It’s not about running short term Search campaign and expecting to fully understand the consumer nor is it to be satisfied with a spike in traffic. It’s about finding bigger and better opportunities to magnetize the consumer down the purchase funnel.
I must say, Blair, what you’ve put out here is true to the very core. Why should we be closing doors on people when it can be open continuously in the digital world.