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THE 4 PILLARS OF INTELLIGENT CONTENT

Foreword Overview Create Once, Publish Everywhere Respond in Real Time Enable Content Control Right Person, Right Time, Right Content 02 04 12 24 36 48

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The 4 pillars of intelligent content

FOREWORD CHRIS CHRISTODOULOU CHIEF EXECUTIVE, SADDINGTON BAYNES

Engaging consumers has never been more challenging, especially when they are exposed to over 5,000 brand messages a day. Consumers now have more control of their conversations with brands in the wake of the social media revolution. Achieving consumer engagement, in the midst of this explosion of content, demands that we set the content creation bar higher in terms of standards of excellence if we are to build a direct path from the consumer to the brand. At Saddington Baynes we believe this marks the emergence of a new visual culture. A culture in which everyone is now an expert at curating content. This awareness has helped us to understand what is required to produce engaging creative work. As people get better at reading visual language weve found that its not just the idea or the artistry that counts, its quality and consistency across all brand touchpoints. So now brands face the difficult task of distributing their creative strategy

with coherence and consistency across multiple channels. The challenge is to avoid fragmenting production and messaging across network communication partners. Creating seamless brand experiences requires a new and more effective approach a production strategy that delivers and distributes Intelligent Content. When briefing in a requirement, brands need to consider using more versatile assets, creating the need for a strong strategic production partner to develop a visual identity. This will ensure the right solution is routed to the right brand touchpoint without compromising on quality or clarity. Thinking about the production strategy earlier in the creative process better enables marketers to create image-based brand assets with real efficiency across all channels; using image techniques like CGI, VFX and video to push the boundaries of production and to deliver differentiated visual brand experiences on all touchpoints.

Platforms like Adobe Marketing Cloud mean that marketers require more visual content then ever to engage their target audience. Its no longer simply about reacting to demand, its about building a smart content strategy in the first place. These pillars of Intelligent Content are by no means prescriptive but are what I feel are integral to a successful production strategy. Our report explores them in more detail, supported by insights and case studies, to demonstrate how adopting an Intelligent Content approach allows for betteroptimised campaigns. The brands and agencies that have grasped the potential offered by a more joined-up approach to production have benefited greatly. The next major step will be the rise of Intelligent Content - designed and produced at the outset to be consumed by anyone, on anything, in real time. This will only be possible by employing an effective production strategy to deliver on your creative approach.

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APPETITE FOR CONTENT

Whilst a huge transformation of media has taken place over the past decade our appetite for content, wherever and whenever we want it, continues to grow rapidly. This is nowhere more apparent than in the way we consume online video. One hundred hours of video are now uploaded to YouTube every minute and more than six billion hours of video are watched each month 50% more than in 2012. Whats more, mobile now makes up almost 40% of YouTubes global watch time. But its not just YouTube monopolising our attention. On one hand, 2013 saw the growth of long-form binge-viewing driven by original online programming such as Netflixs House of Cards and Arrested Development. On the other, bite-size online

OVERVIEW

video content in the form of six-second Vine clips and 15-second Instagram videos also surged in popularity. Testament to our hunger for this kind of snackable video content, Vine surpassed 40 million users in less than a year and five tweets per second now contain a link to a Vine. In the context of this explosion of content consumption and creation, brands need to work especially hard to stand out, and produce content that is not only engaging, but engaging however people choose to view it. And the ways people are choosing to access content continue to proliferate. In the UK, the average household now owns 11.4 media consumption devices. Thats up from 9.7 in 2011 according to research from consultancy Deloitte, which points out: Despite the frosty economic climate, UK consumers still seem besotted by high quality, professionally-produced media and the devices on which they consume it.

Hours of video watched each month on YouTube (YouTube)

6 bN

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WHAT IS INTELLIGENT CONTENT?

Intelligent Content adapts and evolves for the always-on consumer. Its content that delivers emotionally engaging experiences, for everyone, everywhere. Combine Intelligent Content with customer data and it becomes content that can be tailored according to the audience. As the demand for complex content grows, so does the requirement for a strategic production partner. Its not enough just to have a content strategy; you also need a production strategy.

WHAT ARE THE bENEFITS?

Future-proofed assets A higher volume of assets decreases time to market, increases reach and provides greater long-term value. Better execution Improved visual consistency of assets and reduced fragmentation of production across a network of agencies. Greater efficiency Minimised duplication of effort and budget when ideas are conceived and produced in one place. Infinite variables Endless content variations. Combined with customer data these help to improve targeting and campaign success.

CLOSER TO CONTENT
In or out of home, the screens that deliver a steady supply of entertainment, games and social networks are now a constant presence in our lives. Mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets are becoming ever-more ubiquitous. Research company eMarketer predicts the total number of UK smartphone users to reach 34.6 million in 2014, representing two thirds of mobile phone users and more than half of the total UK population. But digital outdoor sites and connected cars also serve to ensure that, as we go about our everyday lives, information and entertainment are available wherever our gaze should fall. If that wasnt enough, were now set to get closer to content than ever before. When Samsung launched its Galaxy Gear Smartwatch in August 2013, it joined Google Glass on the new battleground for the worlds leading consumer technology companies: the body itself. Consultancy firm Markets and Markets estimates that the wearable technology sector will be worth

$8.36bn by 2018, shipping 130 million units globally. Meanwhile, eMarketer estimates that the overall time people in the US spend with media each day will rise from 11 hours and 39 minutes in 2012 to 11 hours and 52 minutes. Wearables are likely to push that figure higher still.

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CREATIVE OPPORTUNITIES
The proliferation of democratised technology and pervasive information networks brings limitless creative opportunities for content creators. Last summers @Summerbreak was a standout example. The telecoms giant AT&T, along with Hollywoods The Chernin Group and BBDO, New York, set out to raise awareness and improve its brand perception among young people via an unscripted reality series featuring nine LA teenagers. Instead of traditional network broadcast, @SummerBreaks stars used Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and Tumblr to distribute content, keeping viewers in the loop on a near-constant basis. Meanwhile, AT&Ts crew of 45 editors and producers cut footage of their exploits into short video episodes that

aired on YouTube. The series clocked up 644 million views of the content across the various platforms. Alongside viewers platform- and device-agnostic approach to content, personalisation is also becoming a significant feature of media. Online news and content curators like Zite and Prismatic learn about their users and deliver relevant, real-time information based on their interests and social data. Meanwhile, Google Now, a predictive personal assistant service from the search giant, analyses a variety of data from your browsing history, location and time of day to make planning your life easier, from your daily commute to your fitness programme. In this emerging media world, all sorts of variables can influence the context in which a message is received: the weather, traffic, biometrics. Intelligent Content is the strategy that helps brands plan and adapt their communication to these.

40%

The proportion of YouTubes global watch time that is via mobile (YouTube)

Number of tweets per second containing a link to a Vine video (Vine)

11.4

Number of media consumption devices owned by the average UK household (Deloitte)

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BUSINESS DEMANDS WAYS OF WORKING

These factors point to a future of high fidelity content across a wide number of devices and channels, personalised and responsive to the user. Recognising this, advertisers are keen that their communication and content strategies keep pace. Referring to digitals impact on business, Marc Pritchard, CMO of P&G, has famously stated that Our vision for P&G is to harness these forces to build our brands through lifelong, one-to-one relationships, in real-time, with every person in the world. Its a bold aim. Delivering specific messages to the right person, at the right time is an ambition for many in the age of Big Data. But it also places considerable demands on resources. As Kevin Lindsay, director of Conversion Product Marketing for Adobes Digital Marketing Suite, explains: We talk about rich consumer profiles. The richer the consumer profile, the deeper the personalisation. The problem is, do you have the content to keep up with that data-driven personalisation strategy? This is about more than sheer quantity of content though. Smart agencies and brands are working together in new ways to ensure that as well as creating meaningful experiences, their effectiveness is matched by their efficiency. This report is broken into four key parts that illustrate how an Intelligent Content strategy helps marketers adapt and thrive. Create Once, Publish Everywhere shows how it allows brands to publish across devices and countries in a consistent and efficient way. Respond in Real Time explores how brands must adapt and optimise to be as relevant and effective as possible. Enable Content Control looks at how technological developments in both inputs (gesture, touch) and outputs (large or flexible screens) are enabling more interactive experiences. Finally, Right Person, Right Time, Right Content shows how perceptive media are beginning to identify individuals. The result? More targeted content that is personalised to who you are and what youre doing.

Our vision for P&G is to build our brands through lifelong, one-to-one relationships, in real-time, with every person in the world. Marc Pritchard, CMO, P&G

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CHOICE AND DIVERSITY

CREATE ONCE, PUBLISH EVERYWHERE

Advertising used to be pretty straightforward. For decades creatives had the luxury of perfecting the art of brand storytelling, plotting linear narratives conceived and designed to unfold sequentially across the traditional broadcast media. The ubiquity of digital has changed everything. An industry that built itself around a beginning, a middle and an end is struggling to reimagine itself for a more challenging, complex and diverse media landscape. A landscape that is reorganising around the needs

of individual consumers, not corporations. A landscape that is optimised for choice, not one-size-fits-all. For marketers, learning not only to accommodate, but play to this demand for choice and diversity is vital. It also requires a new approach to the creation and distribution of content. For traditional agencies the challenges can be daunting. The logistics of identifying the right partners, then aligning everyone around timescales and budgets are complex enough. Add in the difficulty of maintaining a sense of brand consistency and consumer experience across not just multiple markets but multiple touchpoints and you begin to see why many struggle to adapt.

KEY bENEFIT

Intelligent Content allows brands to publish compelling content for everyone, everywhere, in a way thats both consistent and efficient.

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CREATE ONCE, PUbLISH EVERYWHERE

The world of broadcast journalism has been dealing with similar issues, and a key response bears direct relevance to the situation now facing the increasingly content-dependent advertising and marketing industry. Create Once, Publish Everywhere (COPE) is the strategy coined by National Public Radio to ensure that their news content is used as widely and efficiently as possible. At the heart of this idea is the need to establish a system for the creation and storage of content that can provide the appropriate building-blocks of information, images and data no matter where or how you wish to display it. Dennis Publishing has been quick to see the benefits, releasing mobile versions of a range of its popular magazines (The Week , Mens Fitness and

Auto Express) using a set of proprietary tools and processes devised in line with COPE. According to Alex Watson, product director for tablet and apps, In 2012, these three apps alone served 3.13 million digital issues to readers worldwide. Theyve attracted 444,184 new users, racking up 7.6 million reading sessions. One payoff has been the emergence of brand superfans who engage with Dennis content across print, mobile and tablets. This group shows significantly higher subscription renewal rates, racks up longer dwell times with the publishers content, and is catching the attention of advertisers eager to connect with a deeply engaged audience. Transposing a similar approach to the creation and production of marketing campaigns offers compelling benefits and efficiencies. Forward-thinking brands and agencies are already taking an early, holistic look at the asset needs of specific campaigns and planning how best to create and deploy them with maximum efficiency.

JOHN LEWIS / THE BEAR AND THE HARE

British department store John Lewiss emotionally-charged Christmas commercials have become seasonal talking points, and the 2013 campaign was no exception. The animated TV spot featuring Bear and his faithful friend Hare, against the soundtrack of Lily Allen covering Keanes Somewhere Only We Know, racked up over 11 million views by January 2014 and contributed to the store achieving a 6.9% increase in sales over the festive period. This was helped by an intelligent content strategy behind the campaign. Alongside the centre-piece of the TV commercial, London-based agency

Visionary clients have the foresight to bring all parties together to form a larger creative and production team to deliver on the big idea. Companies that want to centralise visual content creation will struggle to get there without an effective production strategy. Chris Christodoulou, CEO, Saddington Baynes

adam&eveDDB and production houses Blinkink and Hornet pre-planned an array of content that allowed for additional interaction, all hosted on the brands microsite. An interactive ebook, produced by London-based Supergoober, told the story of The Bear who had never seen Christmas and included touch to activate games and features. Visitors could also view a behind-the-scenes video to find out how the animation was made. The site featured a Christmas Card Maker, enabling people to create a personalised card featuring the characters from the ad. Users could share their design on social media or attach it to an email. Bear and Hare also manned Twitter accounts which conversed with followers, often using stills from the ad with speech bubbles to (comic) effect.

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SMART DELIVERY
Honda Motor Europe, for example, has worked with Saddington Baynes to streamline the production process and maintain brand consistency, with the most effective example being the rollout of the Do More New campaign for the CR-V across 30 European markets. As gatekeeper of the 3D CAD data and the single source for all content assets for all channels bar broadcast, Saddington Baynes liaised with four partner agencies to create 279 individual cross-media assets within 16 weeks. As well as the assets themselves, the agency built an online localisation tool that feeds in a vast range of variables, including model, colour, parts, price, language etc. for each market to easily publish their own version of the brochure and microsite. A key component was not just the multitude of variables, but also the logic and dependencies incorporated into the tool, so that different markets could not pull in options that werent available to them.

The platform we built for Honda means that local teams can easily select the combinations that are relevant and available in their market and deploy quickly taking pressure off the central team without risk of delay or fragmentation. This kind of deployment engine is the future for the delivery of adaptable content. Duncan Hart, head of digital, Saddington Baynes

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MOVE TO THE BEAT

Coca-Colas Olympic 2012 sponsorship campaign Move to the Beat was also notable in the way it was geared to create assets that could be re-used and adapted. One strand of the campaign saw GRAMMY award-winning producer Mark Ronson embark on a global mission to capture the sounds of sports, using these percussive beats as the basis for an Olympic Anthem. Ronsons track was debuted at a live event in London that brought together the featured athletes and thousands of athletically-inclined teens. This was the basis for a range of content designed to adapt to Cokes regional markets with green screens deployed throughout the venue so that those markets could drop footage of their own athletes into the action. A series of mobile apps allowed users to compose their own version of the track, with a staggering 3.5 million unique versions created. Altogether, Move to the Beat ran in 110 markets and saw the brand generate more than 120 pieces of content.

Its not just about having multiple assets, but the approach you take to creating the content in the first place. If you have an intelligent approach, you can make the content dance afterwards. The system we put in place for Strongbow meant the client had more control to tweak the content plus it was flexible enough to accommodate new content (such as new bottle types) afterwards. James Digby-Jones, ECD, Saddington Baynes

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Todays culture demands a continual dialogue with consumers, meaning more content, more often to feed the conversation that is 24/7, always on. We have to be more efficient than ever to get the content that we need to feed that dialogue. David Campbell, global content director, Coca-Cola (quoted in Contagious, issue 32)

Stephen Butler, founding partner of Mother, London, which masterminded the campaign, explained to Contagious (issue 32): We created a toolbox of interesting components that could be adapted or taken in their single bits and pieces, which still held the idea without that becoming fractured.

For David Campbell, global content director, the case is clear: Todays culture demands a continual dialogue with consumers, meaning more content, more often to feed the conversation that is 24/7, always on. We have to be more efficient than ever to get the content that we need to feed that dialogue.

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RIGHT FROM THE START

But its not just a question of corralling assets and ensuring you can distribute them efficiently. An Intelligent Content approach is about the very way you create those assets in the first place. When London-based agency St Lukes approached Saddington Baynes to collaborate on a campaign for Strongbows new Dark Fruit cider product, what started life as a simple print campaign quickly became a multi-channel, multi-format production piece. Saddington Baynes devised a CG workflow that provided a time-saving and flexible alternative to multiple photo shoots and post-production sessions. The result? This Create Once approach meant additional animated assets could be used in other channels such as digital outdoor and ambient. And the launch campaign helped Strongbow achieve cider sales 230% higher than the original target.

You cant photograph an image at 30,000 pixels for large format display, then easily turn it into a 30-second animation plus create all online and mobile assets with complete visual consistency. Knowledge of what production tools like CGI can do as well as how to apply the rules of photography and colour theory in eliciting emotion are the skills needed from a strategic production company. Chris Christodoulou

THE bOTTOM LINE

A content-first approach is necessary to deliver the kind of experiences people want, wherever and however they want them.

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THE TIME IS NOW

Brands used to be perceived in narrowcast fashion. They were judged by consumers encounters with their products, or moments of sporadic one-way communication. The brand spoke and the audience listened. Or didnt. Today, brands need to consider how they can be delivered on demand and in the precise format specified by the consumer. This unprecedented shift of access and control from brands to their audiences is still only in its nascent period. However, developments like the Internet of Things and Big Data are set to accelerate the trend, ushering in an era of what McKinsey has termed on-demand marketing not just always on, but always relevant and responsive to consumers needs.

RESPOND IN REAL TIME

As audience empowerment has grown, so in turn have our expectations of brand interaction. Increasingly this has come to mean one word speed. More than half of consumers complaining on Twitter expect brands to respond within an hour, according to a 2013 survey by Lithium/Millward Brown. And Harry Shum, a Microsoft computer scientist, claims that users will visit a website less if it loads 250 milliseconds slower than its competitors. Thats less time than it takes to blink. For audiences in developed markets, locked in a self-fulfilling loop of raised expectations driven by ever-increasing digital bandwidth, the right time is no longer next week or even within 24 hours it is NOW (or preferably a bit quicker please).

KEY bENEFIT

Reducing the time to market means brands can capitalise on the zeitgeist and more rapidly improve performance.

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ZEITGEIST HUNTERS
But of course speed is useless without context. Not only must brands operate in the moment but they must also harness the power of cultural relevance to supercharge their campaigns. Topical or tactical advertising isnt a new phenomenon, but the rise of social media and the freedom of the web have released advertisers from traditional logistical constraints. Todays most effective campaigns are no longer hermetically sealed they rely instead on fluidity according to need and adaptation to real life events. In this new reality, newsjacking (to describe the hijacking of newsworthy events) has become a staple brand tactic.

One of the best examples came from cookie brand Oreo during the 2013 Super Bowl. When the lights failed midway through the game at the New Orleans Superdome, tens of millions of television viewers looked for something to do during the blackout. Oreos social media team tweeted a single execution reminding fans that they could still dunk in the dark. It generated 16,000 retweets and had many in the media lauding it as one of the best Super Bowl ads ever. Oreo had built up considerable experience on social media thanks to its Daily Twist effort in 2012 which celebrated the brands centenary. This saw the brand reach out to people on Facebook every day with an Oreo cookie-themed doodle and generated 231

53%

Consumers complaining on Twitter who expect brands to respond within an hour (Lithium/ Millward Brown)

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million media impressions. Whereas this campaign looked delightfully offthe-cuff, behind the scenes at Oreos agency, Draftfcb, New York, 700 Daily Twists were created; 600 wound up on the cutting room floor. That suggests a lot of upfront planning. According to Whitney Whipple, global brand manager for Oreo, this approach demands much of the content to be developed in advance, and building in flexibility is vital. If we see a topic gaining momentum that we think is a good fit for Oreo, we will quickly make the decision to move around our content and create something relevant at the moment. Low latency responses arent confined to social channels, though. For the 2012 Olympics, US telco AT&T managed to create TV commercials with storylines that were influenced by the outcomes of action in the swimming pool. When swimmer Ryan Lochte took gold on the opening weekend, within 24 hours the TV ads referenced his winning time.

LEVERAGING REAL-TIME DATA

Another growing trend in real-time relevance takes into account the single biggest driver of many of the worlds largest product categories the weather. On humid days in the USA, Pantene, a haircare brand owned by Procter & Gamble, places advertisements for its anti-frizz serum next to the daily report on the Weather Channel mobile app. And when the forecast is for hot and dry weather, it advertises the Moisture Renewal Collection instead. Masterminded by agency Arc Worldwide, Chicago, and working with pharmacy chain Walgreens, the campaign also uses location data to alert people to their nearest Walgreens store. The use of real-time data to influence creative is driving innovation in outdoor advertising too. A standout example is the digital out of home (DOOH) campaign for Tate Britain conceived

Pre-planning is key to real-time reaction take the Tate outdoor campaign. The content already exists and has been lined up, but is used according to real-time variables. Emerging tech is enabling people to do things on the fly in ways they couldnt before. Joshua Robertson, new business director, Saddington Baynes

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by London-based agency Liveposter, with Total Media and Posterscope. The campaign concept combines real-time data such as weather, time of day, flight information, traffic and social media activity with Tates archive of iconic artworks to deliver relevant outdoor advertising to drivers coming in to London from Heathrow. For example, if the weather forecast is snow, the billboard might bring in an image of J.M.W. Turners epic Snow Storm. Or it might display paintings that visitors in the gallery are currently tweeting about. The concept won first prize in Ocean Outdoors DOOH new techniques category at the Art of Outdoor awards in October 2013, netting it 100,000 of Ocean media space to use when the campaign rolls out later this year.

QUICK TO ACT
With the reality of tooling up to respond to this 24/7 culture come a few practical roadblocks. Not least the question of how companies can control and

We now have to turn around content at much faster speeds, so the key is investing in the kind of technology that allows you to create more efficiently, without compromising on creativity and quality. If you have the right people in the room at the very beginning, you can work smarter and turn things around faster. James Digby-Jones

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protect brand equity while maintaining the flexibility required to approve messaging much more quickly. A key development in the evolution of real-time brand engagement was the invention of the brand war-room, an idea co-opted from American Presidential campaigns. One of the first brand war-rooms was set up by sports drink company Gatorade in 2010. Named Mission Control and built as a physical room in the global HQ in Chicago, the facility was designed to monitor, analyse and respond to external events with far shorter lead times than the usual corporate approval process would allow.

REFINING ON THE FLY

While the concept of real time has certainly driven a rise in the impact of digital marketing content, it has had no less of an effect on how and when that content is delivered. Advances in analytics now mean that real-time optimisation is a mandatory skill for any brand looking to efficiently leverage

For strategic planning to be effective you need a cross divisional team a mixture of analytics specialists, creatives, social media managers, decision makers, and people from the brand, the agency, as well as the production company. David Atkinson, creative director, Saddington Baynes

250

milliseconds, either slower or faster, is close to the magic number now for competitive advantage on the web. Harry Shum, computer scientist and speed specialist, Microsoft

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BRITISH AIRWAYS / #LOOKUP

To drive traffic to the airlines website and encourage people to explore the new destinations on offer, British Airways used custom-built surveillance technology to respond to its environment in real time.

The #lookup campaign, via OgilvyOne, London, featured two digital out of home sites in Londons Piccadilly Circus and Chiswick. The billboards were able to detect BA flights in the area, and when one flew overhead they showed a video of a child pointing directly at the plane and tracking it as it progressed. The flight number and destination were also displayed along with the URL ba.com/lookup.

its inventory. Analytics tools, like those provided by Google or Adobe, can now help brands analyse user interactions, test effectiveness and adjust copy and creative to maximise conversions faster than ever. Adobe helped earphone brand Skullcandy, for example, double conversion rates and massively increase efficiency in the process. As Bob Meacham, manager of web analytics and testing at Skullcandy, notes: Optimising recommendations used to take about ten hours a week. Now it takes just half an hour, which frees up staff to do other important work. As brands understand what content is and isnt working quicker than ever before, they are also realising the power of multiple assets to personalise experiences in a cost-efficient way. The importance of creating multi-usage assets for quick deployment according to individual user history and taste has long been known, but today we have the technology to be able to make the process faster and better. Kevin Lindsay, from Adobes Digital Marketing Suite, describes the change: In the old days, and I mean even a year

or six months ago, I might have needed 20 different versions of creative for my UK customers vs my US customers, for my enterprise vs mid-market etc. The reality is that today I can have one template and based on all those different variables we can swap in the appropriate assets depending on the combination of variables I am planning for. He goes on: Within the Adobe Marketing Cloud we have digital asset management. Whether using our own method of delivery or relying on some other bank of assets that the client has, we can serve that up dynamically, in real time. In todays increasingly fragmented and noisy marketing environment, personalised relevancy could be seen as one of the most powerful competitive advantages a brand can engineer. This idea of dynamic creative continues to evolve at breakneck speed into predictive creative from a world where bespoke messages are delivered according to individual users interests, context and past behaviour, to one in which brands can anticipate what a user will want to see, perhaps even before they know it themselves.

THE bOTTOM LINE

Real-time marketing is not an excuse not to plan; a well thought out strategy is required. Brands that excel at this dedicate time and energy to laying the foundations that facilitate this activity. Thats an Intelligent Content strategy in action.

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THE NEW PURCHASE PROCESS

Online stores, click & collect, peer reviews, price comparison sites, showrooming, barcode scanning: our familiarity with these relatively new tools and behaviours demonstrates how drastically the shopping experience has been disrupted by the web. But while online has, of course, affected offline elements of the customer journey, its impact has not been entirely detrimental (despite death of the high street finger pointing). Take car buying. Where once the showroom and a salesman were pivotal to product exploration, today a multitude of information sources is available, accessible at our fingertips, wherever we might be. Manufacturer Nissan has reported that more than 71% of US consumers shopping for a new car go online to compare brands, explore model and colour choices and investigate incentives and financing. Furthermore, Capgeminis latest global automotive study reveals that

ENABLE CONTENT CONTROL

94% of car shoppers browse online first, and the purchase cycle is being squeezed as people research longer online upfront, and spend less time visiting the dealership itself. The research also discovered that buyers can be highly influenced right up to the last moment. 67% of car buyers are undecided about what to buy two weeks before purchase. 40% of buyers only visit a dealership for the first time four weeks before they purchase. The implications of this are two-fold: first, manufacturers have to provide as much information online as they can for people to research themselves in the run up to buying a car. Second, the dealership itself is a hotbed of opportunity. According to Capgemini, the dealer is now considered to be the number one source of information by buyers in both mature and emerging markets, many of whom are overwhelmed by a deluge of opinions, data, and reviews online. This story is, of course, relevant beyond the automotive industry. Retail is continuing to evolve as shoppers use more digital tools to get their fashion fix or find the perfect fit.

KEY bENEFIT

Emerging technologies enable immersive, controllable content environments that provide deep consumer experiences.

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GROWING THE STOCK OPTIONS

From a content perspective, digital experiences allow people to explore a wider array of stock options than might be available to buy in a physical store. Advanced computer graphics let people explore and examine products up close before theyve made it off the product line. And they can select preferences or even customise them using a vast array of variables at just the click of a few buttons, as Nike has shown with NikeID and more recently Burberry with its Bespoke trenchcoat customiser. Burberry has been particularly adept at integrating technology into its flagship Regent Street store, transforming it into a retail destination. Designed as a bricks and mortar manifestation of its online hub, Burberry World Live blurs the distinction between online and off. RFID tags in the garments trigger bespoke multimedia content relevant to the products, with mirrors turning into screens when entering changing rooms.

In the months leading up to buying a car, people dont know what they want until just a couple of weeks before. So you need to give them detailed online control of the choices they can make. BMW in the UK, for example, carefully tracks what you do on the website right up until you walk into the dealership, meaning theres less drop off. Joshua Robertson

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On the main shop floor, RFID tags in items such as handbags are used to trigger making-of videos when certain screens in the space are approached. More than 500 speakers and 100 screens are built into the environment. The next big thing for retail looks set to be Bluetooth Low Energy Beacons. Beacons can be strategically positioned in stores, connecting to smartphones via Bluetooth as customers come in and out of range. When in range they can share contextually relevant information such as product details, emotive content and personalised offers. These emerging immersive technologies can combine with content to improve customer experience, but they can also help to save on space and improve conversion. Poster child for this approach has been Audi City, in London. The German car giants central London showroom was given a dramatic overhaul in 2012, replacing a handful of shiny, top-of-the-range cars with floor-to-ceiling multi-touch screens. These allowed customers to explore 3.5 million possible car configurations, delivered on demand by a

58%

Rise in car sales at Audi City in first five months (Audi)

71%

US consumers shopping for a new car who go online to compare brands, explore model and colour choices and investigate incentives and financing (Nissan)

67%

Car buyers who are still undecided two weeks before purchase (Capgemini)

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powerful digital service layer, in life-size on a high resolution video display. Hans Thurner, director of digital sales formats, Audi AG, describes the two types of content at play: A technical/objective layer visualisation and copy for Audi models and their respective configuration items and an emotional layer videos showing brand content or technical feats that add a real live feeling and excitement to the experience. These two content types are presented against the background of landscape panoramas that give the impression of standing in a vast virtual environment in the showroom. Integral to delivering the content system was the creation of a special Content Committee at the start of the project. Its task was to draw up an inventory list of content already available to Audi, identify potential assets and verify that the quality and context was relevant for the Audi City initiative. The committee was also in charge of the new content that was created specifically for Audi City. The impact of the final format? Audi City saw a 58% rise in car sales

in the first five months, compared to the conventional Audi retail space that had stood in the same location. Of the people buying vehicles 94% were new customers and 1,000 people visited the dealership per week. The format has since opened in Beijing and Dubai.

VISUALISING THE UNREAL

Meanwhile, Nissan in the US used an approach featuring the tools of gamers. It installed Microsofts motion-sensing Kinect technology at several of its US dealerships to allow customers to virtually explore its 2013 Pathfinder model, before it had been released. The Kinect technology allowed people to use voice commands or gestures to explore the cars various features, for example looking up to see what the car roof looks like, moving their hands to open doors or push seats back, or asking the system to display the vehicles exterior or interior in different colours. The challenge for all auto makers is that cars are large, vehicle options are growing and showrooms and real estate in cities is more expensive, explains Daniel Bonner, global creative officer for Razorfish which was amongst eight agencies that bought Audi City to life. Therefore brands are being forced to consider solutions that allows them to remain in the heavy footfall, urban environments while still being able to provide an entire breadth of their product for customers to review. Japanese fashion retailer Uniqlo has also been experimenting with Kinect, hacking the system to create a magic mirror in its San Francisco store. Shoppers could try on one of four garments, using touchscreen controls on the mirror (in reality a full-length monitor showing a live feed of the area in front of it), to change the colour of the product reflected back at them. Developed by Dai Nippon Printing, the mirror made use of Xbox Kinects colour-changing engine to allow people to virtually try on a range of colours before uploading pictures of themselves to Facebook or Twitter, allowing their friends to comment on which look they preferred.

Its about experience before technology. You need to apply technology correctly otherwise theres no point in doing it. While we are exploring new technology such as Oculus Rift, were still coming to understand how we can use it to deliver meaningful experiences. One of the things that clients like about gesture-based tech such as Leap is the hygiene factor at events relative to touch screens! Duncan Hart

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Vehicle options are growing and real estate in cities is more expensive so brands are being forced to consider solutions that allows them to remain in the heavy footfall, urban environments while still being able to provide an entire breadth of their product for customers to review.

UNIVERSAL PICTURES / INTERACTIVE MINIONS

Universal Pictures launched an interactive outdoor campaign to promote the release of the animated feature Despicable Me 2. The ads allow people to use their mobiles to control the characters from the film displayed on-screen. When standing in front of the screens, people could text (on feature phones) or use a web app (on smart-

phones) to issue a command to the Minion Despicable Me characters displayed on screens. Participants sent their name, location and command, for example swim or kick, to a number, at the cost of a standard text message, or email address. The on-screen characters then do as they are told, and the display showed a personalised thank-you message. The phone owner then received a digital copy of their sequence through their phone or email. Media agency TED@MediaCom, London, developed the campaign, which ran on Clear Channels network of digital screens in shopping malls across the UK, France, Spain, Norway, and Finland.

Daniel Bonner, global creative director, Razorfish

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TAKE THE SHOWROOM HOME

Kinect has paved the way for advanced gesture control and immersive, responsive content far beyond the showroom. Since its launch in 2010, Microsoft has sold over 24 million units of the hardware, which complements its Xbox 360 console, and is the harbinger of a new age of hi-tech wizardry competing for the in-home entertainment space. Amongst the key players are Leap Motion and Oculus Rift. Leap Motion controllers are designed to sit in front of your PC and, using two cameras and three infrared LEDs, create eight cubic feet of 3D interaction space. Put simply, it allows you to use hand-based gestures

to control your computer. Leap Motion is capable of detecting individual finger movements to 1/100th of a millimetre. Meanwhile, Oculus Rift is a virtual reality headset which has the potential to transform gaming and entertainment. The goggles place users within a virtual environment and the content displayed responds to movements made by the users head. Both devices are targeting mass market appeal. If successful, theyll bring with them new challenges and opportunities for content creators. Brands may need to consider what gestures could be unique to them in a world beyond touchscreens, or what a virtual brand environment designed to be experienced in the home could look or feel like for customers as well as what purpose it might serve.

THE bOTTOM LINE

Brands that seek to embrace these new technologies need also to embrace the complexity involved in delivering the experience to market: that means briefing the right content partners early enough to help them plan with other stakeholders.

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PERCEPTIVE MEDIA
The media channels through which we receive content are starting to recognise us, providing opportunities for brands to serve up more personalised responses. One side of this trend is the growth of Big Data the trail of personal data generated by our fragmented digital lives as we shop, search and socialise online. The other is the proliferation of sensors and cameras that look back at us, identifying the age and gender of the people in front of them. Microsoft, for example, has filed a patent that would see its Kinect camera spying on people as they watch TV, and rewarding them with discounts and services. And Intel is planning an internet TV service delivered via a set-top box loaded with facial recognition technology. The goal? To enable targeted programming for individual family members, as well as dynamic ad insertion of more user-relevant ads when a show is watched on-demand.

PRIVACY CONCERNS
The range of new data sources available is helping brands to build unique pictures of individuals and tailor content accordingly. But with great data comes great responsibility, and the easier it is for brands to access that information, the more important it is for them to be transparent about what theyre collecting and how theyre using it. In the wake of the NSA and Snowden revelations, iPhones accidental tracking and countless password leaks, privacy became one of the hottest topics of 2013 and is only set to grow as an issue. A Harris poll conducted on behalf of software vendor ESET last November in the US showed that more than half of the 2,089 respondents had made changes to their web privacy settings in the last six months. And a study from Forrester found that 62% of people are not at all likely to repeat buy from a company that shares their data with a broker.

RIGHT PERSON, RIGHT TIME, RIGHT CONTENT

KEY bENEFIT

With media channels increasingly able to recognise us, Intelligent Content helps brands create messages and experiences based not only on identity, but context too.

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Such clear signs that privacy concerns are growing for consumers suggest that advertisers may find their ability to mine and use data effectively is throttled in the future by regulators acting on the publics fears. Using data to create better, timely and more relevant content intelligently for individuals could help to prevent that.

years with the help of an OZU degree. The Game of Your Life app asked prospective students to choose the subject they wanted to study and make a series of decisions about their university life, Based on this, content was drawn from a library of more than 5,000 videos and photos and more than 1,300 posts and comments to create personalised future timelines in the form of a video CV.

PREMIUM SOCIAL
Social media offers a rich seam of data for brands to draw on to create personalised content that better connects with people by weaving them, their friends and their interests into the narrative. There has been a wave of personalised Facebook films, spearheaded most notably by Intels compelling Museum of Me, which became a viral hit when it launched in 2011. Since then, weve seen brands build on this in other innovative ways. OZU, a new university in Istanbul, used Facebooks Timeline feature to predict what peoples lives would look like in five

PROGRAMMED FOR YOU

While such initiatives involve people proactively submitting or releasing their own information, a more significant shift is taking place behind the scenes. Premium creative is coming together with cleverly targeted, personalised advertising in the growing world of programmatic marketing. Programmatic marketing uses software to analyse vast amounts of data to target individuals more effectively. Its a burgeoning industry. Programmatic

Personalisation needs to be based on opt-in preferences that people sign up to, rather than data collected from them without their knowing. You need to have rules of interaction in place a digital manifesto that outlines what you collect, how you collect it, and what youre going to do with it. David Atkinson

62%

People who are not at all likely to repeat buy from a company that shares their data with a broker (Forrester)

Estimated value of programmatic ad buying industry by 2017 (Magna Global, IPG Mediabrands)

$33bN

150%

Programmatic ad buying is up to 150% more efficient than selling media by hand (International Data Corporation)

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For us its all about how you can use data intelligently. The content that people receive is the icing on the cake; its what drives real engagement. Adrian Pearmund, founder, Intelligent Futures

ad buying, in which online ad space is exchanged in real time, often via real-time bidding (RTB), will triple in value over the next four years, according to recent estimates from Magna Global, the advertising research arm of IPG Mediabrands. Thats an increase from $12bn in 2013 across the nine markets surveyed to $33bn by 2017.

REAL-TIME CREATIVE
The next big frontier for programmatic marketing is the marriage of real-time buying with real-time creative. A number of organisations are acting now to capitalise on the opportunities of this union. For instance, buying agencies and creative agencies are joining forces to serve up enhanced creative, in real time. This is the approach being taken by UK-based programmatic RTB agency

Intelligent Futures. Founder Adrian Pearmund argues that, so far, dynamic creative (used for example to retarget people once theyve shown an interest in something) has been quite a poor experience, with little in the way of branding or engagement, mainly product shots with a price inserted underneath. Intelligent Futures aims to change all that, working strategically with partner agencies such as Saddington Baynes to deliver dynamic, personalised creative that is more emotive. For us its all about how you can use data intelligently, says Pearmund. The content that people receive is the icing on the cake; its what drives real engagement. If we can talk to people in a personalised way that is really going to get them excited, so they dont feel like theyre being inappropriately targeted, but theyre receiving a great brand experience, then weve done it. Its about a combination of technology, data and content.

Connecting with people isnt just a question of managing data or having the systems in place to swap in the right variables for the right people. Its also about creating content that will trigger an emotional response. We mustnt underplay the artistry, training and years of experience that go into making compelling content. James Digby-Jones

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PREDICTIVE PLATFORMS
Machine-learning algorithms are increasingly being employed to power brands owned consumer-facing platforms, creating unique experiences for each visitor, anticipating their needs and even learning from their behaviour. AudiUSA.com, for example, built by agency AKQA, San Francisco, uses 27 different self-scoring algorithms to define and dictate the user experience. From the moment you come to the site, Audi knows who you are, what you last bought on other websites, where you live, how many kids you have, your rough income, Ben Jones, chief technical officer, AKQA, explained to Contagious (Automation vs Creativity, issue 36). What this means is that instead of having to search for their perfect car, the user is automatically presented with it. Even errors act as data points: when the site is wrong, and you click from the car the site has selected for you to a

INTEL / AIM SUITE

Intel is at the forefront of developments in real-world perceptive media. Its Audience Impression Metrics (AIM) Suite uses (anonymous) sensors, recognition technology and algorithms to capture information about shoppers moving through retail environments. It profiles viewers by variables such as age and gender, as well as tracking what they looked at and for how long. It then delivers this data in real time to enable the appropriate response,

whether the delivery of content, offers or even samples. Intel worked with adidas to create the adiVerse virtual footwear wall, which not only allows shoppers to check out a vast range of styles, colours and models, but also uses facial recognition to identify whether users are male or female, making recommendations accordingly. A collaboration with Kraft Foods, meanwhile, saw the creation of special vending machines equipped with age-detecting technology rigged to serve free treats of JELL-O Temptations but only to grown-ups.

different one, the algorithm will reverse correlate and update itself. It self-learns. And for brands that dont have the required algorithm-formulating data scientists in-house, services such as Adobe Marketing Cloud and IBM Marketing Center are stepping in to help them make sense of the data and build nimble content strategies off the back of it. Adobe Marketing Clouds Decision Engine, for example, takes the different elements of a web page a merchandising spot or headline or recommended product or articles and then serves up different combinations to visitors based on their past behaviour, their location, their device, or a host of other variables. The end goal, says Kevin Lindsay, director of Conversion Product Marketing for Adobes Digital Marketing Suite, is that we dont talk about a web page ever again but about delivering an experience that is unique, made up of the assembly of all the right assets, messages and pieces of content that are appropriate for that individual in that moment in time. Thats how we envision the future at a high level.

THE bOTTOM LINE

Were looking at a future where Intelligent Content delivers uniquely engaging experiences for every individual. But as personalisation becomes more prevalent, brands need to be transparent about what data theyre collecting, and what they are giving in return.

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PUbLISHED bY SADDINGTON BAYNES IN COLLAbORATION WITH CONTAGIOUS

Saddington Baynes is a creative production agency, integrating production strategy, cross-platform visual content creation and technology in order to create versatile content that delivers eye-catching and engaging brand experiences wherever your customers are. www.saddingtonbaynes.com Contributors David Atkinson, Chris Christodoulou, James Digby-Jones, Duncan Hart, Joshua Robertson Project Manager Sanna Pearson Contagious Communications is the global news and intelligence authority on the intersection of marketing and communications, consumer culture and emerging technology. www.contagious.com Authors Katrina Dodd, Arif Haq, Georgia Malden, Dan Southern Project Manager Sammi Vaughan Designer Charlotte Sallis

Where source material has been reproduced the copyright remains the property of the copyright owner and material may not be reproduced in any form without the owners prior consent. Published February 2014