Warc’s Toolkit 2016 Summary

TOOLKIT 2016 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

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2 Warc: Toolkit 2016 – Executive summary © Copyright Warc 2016. All rights reserved.

Six questions for marketers in 2016

WHAT ‘MOMENTS’ ARE YOU TARGETING?

Brands are using data to build strategies and teams around potential consumption moments.

WHAT SKILLS DO YOU NEED IN-HOUSE TO BLEND DATA WITH CREATIVITY?Data-driven creative development poses a structural challenge to marketing departments.

DO YOU NEED A CONNECTION STRATEGY?

Developments in analytics allow creative and media plans to be rooted in sophisticated models of consumer behaviour.

IS YOUR DIGITAL INVESTMENT BEING WASTED?Issues such as viewability, ad fraud and ad blocking are challenging the way brands approach digital.

ARE YOU USING VIDEO FOR MORE THAN SHORT-TERM CAMPAIGNS?An explosion of formats and platforms allows brands to take a more strategic approach to video.

DO YOU NEED A STRATEGY FOR GEN Z?

Today’s under-18s influence purchase decisions in a growing range of product categories.

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Executive summary

Warc’s Toolkit 2016 report looks at six marketing challenges for the year ahead. The report, produced in association with Deloitte Digital, distils the best of Warc’s content over the past year – the latest ideas, research, data and examples. The result is a guide to the latest thinking in each area, and the implications for marketers.

The full report is available to Warc subscribers. This summary pulls out the major takeaways from each chapter.

But it is also worth noting some overarching themes. It is no surprise to find digital and data underpinning many of the ideas in the report – both have been major drivers of change in marketing for several years. And in both areas change is rapid.

1. Digital is at a crossroadsDigital adspend continues to rise, but there are clouds on the horizon. 2015 saw issues such as viewability, ad fraud and ad blocking come to the fore, raising serious questions about the online ad ecosystem and the value brands are realising

from it. At the same time, brands have more options for creation of content, particularly video, than ever before. Many commentators predict an even greater emphasis on content in digital strategies.

2. The data revolution rolls onSeveral chapters in the report deal with the implications of data, particularly data from digital platforms, for marketing strategy, creative work and ROI analysis. The upshot is that data-driven thinking is creeping into all aspects of marketing.

Interestingly, several of the chapters in this report touch on the interplay of a data-driven approach with the need for creative thinking. Marketing success, it appears, increasingly lies in a combination of digital expertise, data analysis and creative excellence – the challenge is delivering on all three.

STRATEGY: FINDING THE RIGHT MOMENTThere is growing interest in ‘micro-moments’ – brief opportunities to put the right message in front of the right consumer. This reflects

two developments: the ability to identify moments through various forms of data analysis, including path-to-purchase data and monitoring of social media; and the ability to target consumers in those moments through technology – for example through programmatic buying or through location-based messaging.

Major names such as Johnson & Johnson, Pernod Ricard and Heineken now talk about ‘moments’, and are experimenting with different approaches. A good example comes from Johnson & Johnson, which used social media to identify an opportunity to target mothers of small children awoken in the middle of the night. It responded with a campaign that ran only on tablets, the favoured device for browsing in the small hours.

Key to achieving this is having the right data – not just to spot the opportunity, but also to serve ads to consumers at the right time.

DATA: THE CREATIVE LINKThe relationship between data and creativity is also developing fast. The two may not always have been natural

“It’s not just the medium on which we watch video that’s changed, but also the platforms on which we watch it. Whereas YouTube used to be almost the only game in town, it now has serious rivals, notably Facebook”Ben Phillips, MediaCom


Executive summary

bedfellows, but are now being fused effectively in a number of different ways. For example, an Australian case study, from cough remedy Bonnington’s Irish Moss, demonstrates how powerful a creative platform built around a real-time data feed (in this case a ‘flu tracker’) can be.

However, one challenge for clients is the building of both skillsets within a marketing function, especially given the

growing array of marketing tech. As a senior executive from Frito-Lay points out, marketers need to be able to understand the tech if they are to distribute content effectively. That means data and creativity have to sit together.

ROI: PUTTING A VALUE ON CONNECTIONSThe availability of more data is opening up new opportunities for marketing attribution analysis. For example, some brands are generating fast-turnaround analysis on user-level data, to complement their bigger-picture analysis of the role of different media.

The result, for brands sophisticated in this area, is analysis that can be used to optimise campaigns as they’re running.

That possibility is helping to drive the rise of connection planning, which roots media and creative strategies in data on consumer purchase paths and media habits. To achieve this, brands should involve data scientists and researchers as early in the campaign development process as possible.

The report includes examples of studies from UK telcos Vodafone and O2. But this is not just an approach for brands in data-rich sectors such as telecoms. Mondelez International and Hershey in the US have both invested in forms of attribution analysis as they seek to understand the web of influences around their target groups.

MEDIA: THE DIGITAL BACKLASHAs digital adspend grows, issues such as viewability and ad fraud are becoming more pressing. A growing number of clients are asking whether their online advertising is actually being viewed by human beings. And trade bodies around the world are looking for ways to bring agreed standards to the digital sector. The report looks at work by Kellogg to improve viewability rates, and the improved sales it has seen as a result.

These concerns are being compounded by the baffling variety of intermediaries emerging in the ad tech space. One commentator has argued that inconsistency between

Image caption to go here

Frito-Lay is looking for smarter data to inform its content strategy

89%of respondents to a World Federation of Advertisers survey said they planned toincrease analytics and insights budgets


Executive summary

ad tech vendors is creating an atmosphere of “fear and mistrust” among marketers.

These client-side concerns coincide with the rise of ad blocking technology – arguably a consumer response to poor experience of advertising online. Ad blocking will remain a significant industry issue in 2016, particularly for publishers whose revenues it threatens. Many commentators believe brands will shift budget into online content, which is harder to block, and the report looks at a ‘native advertising’ initiative by Xerox.

VIDEO: BEYOND A CAMPAIGN APPROACHThe growing interest in content will drive greater investment in video. 2015 was a significant year for online video, as several social platforms raised their game as distributors of video, and offered fresh advertising options for advertisers.

Advertisers interested in video should study the strategies of brands such as adidas, which has used in-feed videos targeting niche audiences, and Clean & Clear, which has worked with

Google’s BrandLabs on a three-part video strategy that balances ‘hero’ campaign content with ‘pull’ videos such as product demonstrations.

CONSUMERS: ENGAGING GENERATION ‘SWIPE’Online video is also key to engaging Generation Z, or Gen Z – one study has even found that teenagers prefer YouTube to TV. Their high usage of tablets and mobiles means that content developed for those platforms

is important. Advertisers such as Mondelez International have experimented with online video content featuring vloggers and online celebrities, who wield significant influence with this demographic.

Gen Z, generally classified as those under-18, has a surprisingly high purchase power, and one notable trend is how quickly, versus their predecessors, they graduate from children’s products to adult categories such as fashion and tech. This makes Gen Z of interest to a broad range of marketers.

In most markets, regulatory challenges exist to marketing to under-18s. But one of the biggest challenges is the attitudes of this cohort: an insistence on authenticity means brands may find they need to earn the right to communicate with them.

The chapters in this report highlight the pace of change, as marketing departments realise the full implications of digital and data. But it is also clear from this report that creative content, in all the forms it now takes, remains a key driver of success.Clean & Clear brand has developed a three-part video strategy

35%of consumers aged 18-24 in the UK use an ad blocker, according to the IAB UK


Viewpoint: The creative revival

We are once again delighted to be collaborating with Warc to examine the challenges marketers will face in the year ahead. We have used Deloitte’s own research and wealth of experience to provide our perspective on how to approach these effectively.

Last year, the Toolkit report focused on the need for agility in marketing in order to meet the diverse needs of consumers and seamlessly communicate across channels. This theme continues to be relevant, but with a renewed focus on creative and content. Technology, data and analytics have dominated the marketing conversation in recent years. While these remain core threads in this year’s report, there is an increased focus on content in a multitude of formats to penetrate the ever-decreasing attention spans of connected consumers.

We live in a distracted society. In the UK, consumers collectively check their smartphones over a billion times a day, according to Deloitte’s 2015 Mobile Consumer Survey. Consumers are taking shortcuts to absorb information and gravitating towards rich

media, most notably video. We touch on the use of innovations like vertical video to capture consumers’ dwindling attention, and the importance of exploring virtual video in order to stay ahead of the curve.

And we look at the importance of capturing the attention of the increasingly digital-literate and ethically conscious Generation Z, while remaining mindful of the need to protect this vulnerable demographic.

In this content-focused environment, it is a challenge to create cut-through and engagement with customers. Moment marketing, the ability to deliver relevant and seemingly spontaneous interactions to the customer, is a key trend. We look at the changes organisations can make to structure teams around consumption moments instead of products, to capture consumers’ attention at the right time, and win in moment.

This need for richer content is being driven by broader trends. The rise in ad blocking technologies, which promise to improve the user experience, may necessitate a more creative

approach to online advertising. Rather than interrupting the user experience, ads must feel frictionless and relevant to the consumer in a given time and place; yet another reason to focus on enriching content.

To stay ahead, marketers will need to pay attention to both ‘art’ and ‘science’ – looking upon data and content as a symbiotic relationship. Data and technology will continue to grow in prominence; for example, we touch on the light that digital marketing attribution can shed on the customer experience, providing the context to generate content opportunities with utility and meaning.

But to work effectively, marketing can no longer be confined to the marketing department; support and collaboration will be needed from the Chief Information Officer and other board members. We look at the emergence of the role of the Chief Marketing Technologist in bridging this gap.

We look forward to hearing your views as you tackle these issues in the year ahead.

NICK TURNERPartner, Digital Marketing, Deloitte Digital

© Copyright Deloitte MCS limited 2015

CHAPTER SUMMARIES

In association with


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Moment marketing

BRANDS ARE LOOKING FOR MICRO-MOMENTS

PATH-TO-PURCHASE ANALYSIS CAN HELP IDENTIFY MOMENTS

BUY BUTTONS CAN CREATE SHORTCUTS TO PURCHASE

Many brands, including big names such as Johnson & Johnson, are seeking to identify specific ‘micro-moments’ – brief opportunities to put the right message in front of the right consumer. The interest in moments is driven by a number of factors, including more sophisticated consumer behaviour data and targeting opportunities. If brands can identify micro-moments, programmatic buying and location-based targeting offer opportunities to serve online ads so that consumers see them at that moment.

Advertisers such as Heineken and Pernod Ricard have used path-to-purchase analysis to identify common triggers for a purchase decision – for example, in Heineken’s case, shopping for meals versus shopping for parties. Identifying common purchase moments can help brands prioritise marketing investment.

Mondelez International is an example of a brand experimenting with technology that shortcuts the path to purchase and takes consumers direct from the moment of interest to an opportunity to buy. It is looking to build a billion-dollar e-commerce business by 2020. The roll-out of ‘buy buttons’ on social media websites offers a good opportunity to experiment with such opportunities.

Read the full chapter

Allianz highlighted specific moments in people’s lives via its advertising

Adidas responded to communal moments during the 2014 World Cup

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Data-driven creativity

DATA CAN FUEL BETTER CREATIVE OUTPUT IN AT LEAST FOUR WAYS

CLIENTS ARE RETHINKING MARKETING STRUCTURES

CREATIVE INSPIRATION CAN COME FROM OUTLIERS IN DATA

The emerging partnership of data analysis and creative thinking is taking a number of forms. Smart analysis of data is bringing better insights around which to build creative work, including behaviour-based segmentation. Programmatic buying allows brand-building creative to be tailored to audiences at scale. Campaigns or platforms are being built around real-time data feeds. And campaigns can be tested in real life quickly, allowing optimisation.

The need to combine data and creativity is leading some clients, such as Frito-Lay, to rethink the skills they need internally. There is a growing call for ‘marketing technologists’, but also an emerging need for content production and distribution expertise. Several studies on the future marketing department combine variations of these two skillsets.

One way to use data analysis to spark creative thinking is to examine ‘outliers’ in data, rather than the main trend line. The core trends will also be visible to the competition, and will often be where competitors focus their attention. Studying so-called ‘outliers’ can provoke fresh ideas for creative teams to play with.

Bonnington’s Irish Moss built a flu tracker powered by real-time data

Mastercard turned social listening into actionable information


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New thinking in attribution

PROMISE TRUMPS PRACTICE

THE RISE OF CONNECTIONS PLANNING

UPSTREAM AND DOWNSTREAM MODELLING

Although the emerging slate of attribution tools holds rich promise, there are many hurdles to overcome – from difficulties in identifying mobile users, constant change and the residual force of legacy thinking. This will be an area of experimentation and test-and-learn for many brands.

Major advertisers, including Mondelez International, are moving toward a ‘connections planning’ framework, which draws from disparate sources of data on consumer purchase paths and media habits to inform media and creative strategies. This requires input from researchers, media planners, data experts and creative teams from an early stage in campaign development.

Big-picture modelling work remains important, but is now being complemented by user-level analysis, or ‘test-and-learn’ projects on small samples – a study by Vodafone in the UK has balanced big-picture analysis with user-level data. Such ‘downstream modelling’ can produce quick results and is useful for optimising work once it has been launched.

O2 analysed brand-led and direct-respons ads to assess their impact

Hershey analysed the influence of different consumer touchpoints


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The digital backlash

AD TECH IS DRIVING ‘FEAR AND MISTRUST’ AMONG MARKETERS

VIEWABILITY WILL REMAIN A WORK IN PROGRESS

AD BLOCKING IS AT AN ‘INFLECTION POINT’

As digital adspend grows, client-side marketers are becoming increasingly concerned about issues such as viewability and ad fraud. These concerns are being compounded, some argue, by lack of consistency and transparency in the highly competitive ad tech space. One survey found inconsistency between vendors to be the biggest headache for digital marketers.

What constitutes a ‘viewable’ ad remains a hotly debated topic, though it is clear that many big brands want the digital marketing industry to push towards tougher standards, and to extend those standards to non-traditional ad formats. Evidence from Kellogg suggests that improved viewability scores can lead to better sales results. However, there is an argument that brands are becoming fixated on viewability at the expense of other important factors.

Use of ad blockers is growing quickly, particularly among mobile users and younger users. This poses a threat to the revenue streams of online publishers. For brands, if use of ad blockers continues to grow, the issue will be whether they can still reach target audiences at scale. Evidence suggests that providing more ‘relevant’ advertising to consumers will not be enough to prevent their use of ad blockers.

Xerox has adopted a ‘test-and-repeat’ approach to native advertising

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The video revolution

THE VIDEO ECOSYSTEM IS DIVERSIFYING

FROM HERO TO HOUSEKEEPING

PREPARE FOR PROGRAMMATIC

As the number of video properties and formats rises, brand strategies in this space must evolve at similar speed. YouTube’s dominance is coming under pressure from Facebook, while services like Vine, Instagram, Periscope and Snapchat all demand bespoke solutions. Greater opportunities for reaching niche audiences also exist on platforms that appeal to specific groups.

Marketers’ video efforts have often appeared to be piecemeal, and based on a campaign-by-campaign logic. As consumers watch increasing amounts of content across a diverse range of outlets, brands may benefit from following YouTube’s framework of ‘hero’, ‘hub’ and ‘housekeeping’ content – essentially this means striking a balance between ‘push’ and ‘pull’ content.

Programmatic video is a growth area – and is rapidly extending into addressable television advertising, too. Leveraging this technology in its current form is undoubtedly challenging. But if utilised correctly, it can help to deliver the right message to the right consumer at the right time.

Adidas tested ‘in-feed’ short-form video ads optimised for mobile

Pepsi produced YouTube content for men in a digital-first strategy


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Generation ‘swipe’

GEN Z HAVE SIGNIFICANT PURCHASING POWER

MOBILE IS CENTRAL TO THE GEN Z MEDIA EXPERIENCE

ONLINE INFLUENCERS ARE A KEY AUDIENCE

Sour Patch Kids developed a web series starring celebrity vloggers

Taco Bell developed a taco ‘emoji’ as part of its Gen Z-focused strategy

Generation Z (generally defined as consumers aged under 18) are being given greater financial independence than previous cohorts of children, are maturing into ‘grown-up’ product categories more quickly, and are influencing a greater share of family purchases. Euromonitor estimates that under-12s in the US alone have a spending power of US$43 billion.

This generation has been named the ‘swipe generation’ with good reason: tablets (from an early age) and smartphones (in teenage years) are core to their media consumption. Data from the UK shows that tablets are important in early years, but mobile becomes key in teenage years. Taco Bell’s decision to use emojis to communicate with young consumers is a reflection of their media habits and communication style.

The rise of ‘microcelebrities’, on YouTube in particular, is a key development for marketing to this age group. These ‘vloggers’ can wield significant influence on purchase decisions. Mondelez International has responded by developing a series of webisodes starring well-known faces from YouTube.


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NICK TURNERPartnerNick is a partner in Deloitte Digital where he has responsibility for digital marketing and broader marketing effectiveness services. Nick specialises in large scale commercial effectiveness and operational efficiency initiatives encompassing

digital marketing transformation, operating model design, customer experience definition and consumer loyalty. Nick is a professional marketer by trade with considerable marketing line management experience. He is a Fellow and past Advisory Board member of the Chartered Institute of Marketing, a Fellow at the Institute of Direct Marketing and in 2011 Nick was voted the Management Consultancies Association Marketing Consultant of the Year.

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Lucy CampionManagerLucy is a Manager in Deloitte Digital, focusing on Digital Marketing transformation in B2C and B2B organisations. She has worked across multiple industries for some of the world’s largest brand and marketing functions, leading programmes to

deliver marketing organisational change. This has included brand development, marketing technology implementation and marketing data analysis. She has a diploma in Marketing from the Chartered Institute of Marketing.

+44 7880 162 [email protected]

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