Commerce is being embedded into more channels, platforms and touch points. Destinations once focused on education and inspiration are now shoppable, which means brands can transform every piece of content and point of engagement into a conversion opportunity.
The collapse of the traditional marketing funnel was a central theme of this year’s Advertising Week New York (AWNY), which brought thousands of executives from across the industry landscape to New York City for four days of sessions exploring the convergence of marketing, advertising, media and culture.
Consumers now spend an average of 8 hours a day online, and as a result, “there’s extremely high expectations of the content consumers choose to engage with online,” said Rema Vasan, Head of North America Business Marketing at TikTok. The platform has undoubtedly influenced these heightened expectations, largely because consumers use TikTok to receive content, and ultimately products, specifically “For Them.”
“You know your ‘For You’ page looks very different than mine, and that ties to the hyper-personalized experience that we’re innovating a marketing ecosystem around, with solutions that are brand-building but also drive performance, search, commerce and so much more,” Vasan said.
TikTok is bringing the power of its community and content-powered platform to billboards, cinemas and even retail environments with the launch of Out of Phone Retail. “It’s a way for the organic and branded content experience to be brought into other locations beyond the phone,” Vasan explained. “This leads to a really cohesive experience in terms of discovery all the way through to purchase, in one seamless solution.”
Sephora Canada rolled the solution out in select stores to bring beauty content, from “get ready with me” videos to product tutorials and reviews, to store aisles — especially because all of the products featured in these videos were available for sale in these locations. “It’s another demonstration of how we’re driving commerce everywhere,” Vasan added.
Even travel companies like United Airlines are seizing new commerce opportunities, creating more connected media and commerce moments that drive one-to-many and one-to-one engagement. For example, the large digital screens in United Clubs and gate information displays are one-to-many, while individual plane screens and even mobile phones create opportunities for more individualized engagement moments.
“We’re thinking about the ways we can provide the best opportunity from an engagement standpoint,” explained Mike Petrella, Managing Director of Strategic Partnerships at United Airlines. “We’re going to enhance the way we think about the ability to message an individual. We do not do in-seat targeting today, but as we expand our Starlink offering, it’s going to be a free, personalized and an incredibly fast WiFi experience that’s going to bring that messaging there, coupled with the right content that also adds commerce opportunities. It’s going to be a living room experience in the sky and take the hassle out of travel.”
Advertising Can Both Build Your Brand and Increase Conversion
Another big theme at AWNY was the ongoing conflict between advertising’s role in brand-building and its ability to support conversion. Several speakers actually see this as less a conflict than a blurring of the lines in terms of media campaign goals and strategies. In fact, Analytics Partners research indicates that brands with the highest media ROI invest at least 30% of their budget into marketing efforts and campaigns that focus on building brand equity, not driving revenue performance.
“Do branding and performance marketing need be at odds with one another?” asked Cara Pratt, SVP at Kroger Precision Marketing at the session titled Pick One: Are we Branding or Selling Today? The answer seems to be “no,” with some caveats.
While a lot depends on how the consumer is experiencing the brand, “moments that are intended to spark [the consumer’s] heart or mind can also spark purchases,” said Whitney Jones Rifkin, VP of Client Service at The Trade Desk. “It’s brand AND performance, not brand OR performance.”
As with many aspects of marketing, it “all starts with understanding the audience, and getting smarter about harnessing the signals,” said Pratt. Brands can glean many of these signals by examining consumers’ purchase behavior in grocery or other retailers, said Jones Rifkin: “They’re indicative of what’s happening in other parts of [the consumer’s] life, and they can paint a picture outside the lens of what can be seen from inside their own brand. By identifying consumer priorities, [marketers] can activate against that in a data-driven way.”
Amy Lanzi, CEO of Digitas NA, gave the example of basket analysis revealing that a consumer is buying diapers for the first time, or is switching to larger-size diapers for a growing child: “This person might be buying a bigger car to accommodate a growing baby or a new baby. Analyzing these signals gives you a better way to invest.”
To some extent, all marketing needs to have a performance element. “Success is sales,” said Lanzi. However, “a well-rounded scorecard should be balanced across short-term and long-term KPIs. You also want to ensure that the organizations you’re working with are using the same set of KPIs and the same set of data.”
(Advertising Week and Retail TouchPoints are both subsidiaries of EmeraldX.)