Strategy in 2014 - Post-digital marketing

David Tiltman
Warc Trends
February 2014

Strategy in 2014 Post-digital marketing
David Tiltman
Warc
This article comes from Warc's Toolkit 2014 report, a review of the key challenges facing brands this year, and how the
smartest marketers are responding. Download the full report
At a glance: A fresh approach to digital
Key arguments in this article:
1. OrganisationssuchasUnilever,Procter&GambleandNestlarerethinkingtheirapproachtodigital.Thereisashift
away from digital as a separate discipline, and a renewed emphasis on core brand-building programmes.
2. This shift is supported by a major piece of research on long-term versus short-term effectiveness.
3. However, this is more than a 'back to basics' approach. Digital has transformed the range of brand-building techniques
now available. For example, there are at least four models for combining TV and social media.
4. Post-digital marketing is about more than communications. Some brands are taking a fresh look at product or service
innovation. Others are looking to build better service offerings, or forge relationships with other, complementary brands.
A return to marketing fundamentals
Digital should no longer be regarded as a separate discipline.
Marc Pritchard, Global Brand Building Officer at Procter & Gamble guaranteed himself headlines when he declared: "The era
of digital marketing is over. It's almost dead."
His point was not that marketers should stop using digital channels. Far from it. He was arguing that digital should no longer
be seen as something separate a collection of technologies that require specialist knowledge to crack. It should instead be
integral to all marketing.
Title: Strategy in 2014 - Post-digital marketing
Author(s): David Tiltman
Source: Warc Trends
Issue: February 2014

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Procter & Gamble's emphasis, he said, is "now just brand building; it's what we do." The key to success is not the channel
itself, but the ideas and the insights brands bring to it. The role of digital channels is to provide a fresh platform to reach and
engage consumers, plus new ways to use 'traditional' media.
Pritchardisnotalone.PeteBlackshaw,GlobalHeadofDigitalandSocialMediaatNestl,recently argued that too many
brands "ignore the fundamentals" as they rush toward new digital platforms.
At Unilever, meanwhile, digital is becoming part of a framework which aims to 'craft brands for life'. "A bad idea based on a bad
insight on a great platform sucks. But a great idea rooted in a powerful insight will find every platform and exploit consumer
engagement," said Rob Master, Unilever's VP Media for Americas and Europe.
This is the right approach, according to a major piece of research on long-term versus short-term effectiveness. It argued that
marketers who focus their attention on the ability of digital channels to deliver instant results are less likely to achieve longterm
success (in the form of profitability or pricing effects), unless they also pursue longer-term activity to strengthen the brand.
Social media, said the paper, could deliver long-term strategic opportunities (although it is often "misused as an activation
channel"). More suitable as activation channels are search, online display, mobile and email marketing.
A good example is McDonald's. The fast food giant has used tech such as gaming, mobile and social to share the brand's
story, generating not only short-term buzz, but also to aid the brand's image in the long term and shift negative consumer
perceptions and associations.

McDonald's created an app that allowed users to find out the provenance of their meal
Post-digital marketing, then, will involve a smart balance between long-term brand direction and use of short-term, or real-time,
opportunities. Kristen Cavallo, Chief Strategy Officer at Mullen, recently noted the rise of the mini-campaign, as brands look to
win short-term battles around holidays or events such as 'back-to-school'. Cavallo compared modern planning to "writing a
book in chapters." It can pose fresh challenges for both brands and agencies.
but 'back to basics' is not 'back in time'
While there is a sense of 'back to basics' around some of these arguments, it is clear that 'post-digital marketing' is much more

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than a return to pre-digital techniques. There are many brand-building strategies that have emerged that were either
impossible or unfeasible before.
For example, digital platforms allow brands to do something small and focused, then push it to a mass, even a global level. An
example from India is 'Help a Child Reach 5' from Unilever brand Lifebuoy. The brand 'adopted' the village of Thesgora, which
had a high rate of diarrhoeal child deaths, and told the story of its children through online content that could be shared
worldwide.
This approach works well for focused CSR activity, but brands in other categories are taking similar steps. The Philippines
Department of Tourism, for example, used social media to enlist the help of Filipinos in a tourism campaign that drove
impressive results from a far lower budget than the nation's competitors.

A tourism campaign for the Philippines was co-created through social media
This theme was clear in this year's Warc Prize for Asian Strategy. The 2013 competition saw a jump in the number of entries
using social media and online video, and also a jump in the number of entries with a budget of under $500,000 making the
shortlist. The implication is that digital channels, and the increased focus of brands on 'earned media', are enabling smaller
campaigns to achieve greater scale.
It is also clear, however, that post-digital marketing is about more than communication and touchpoint strategy. Writing in
Admap, Guy Murphy of JWT argued that brand-building is evolving in three ways. First, the quality or usefulness of a product
is now more important than ever before to the health of the brand. That puts an emphasis on design, functionality or sensory
experience. Second, more brands are adding value by developing service offerings. The third development is 'brand budding',
or forging relationships with other brands. The tie-up between Kit Kat and Google's Android is an interesting example of this in
action. Murphy argues that marketing needs to convince consumers choose to 'opt in' to a relationship with a brand.
Not everyone will agree. Murphy admits some of his arguments fly in the face of analysis by the likes of Andrew Ehrenberg
and, more recently, Professor Byron Sharp. They argue that brands grow bigger by increasing penetration, and attracting lots
of light users, rather than loyal repeat purchasers. Expect this discussion to be a major theme of 2014.
The perpetual experience engine
Two approaches to brand-building
A recent Admap paper looked at brand-building through three lenses: advertising and communications, product and service
experience (the consumption and engagement moment throughout the entire product ownership lifespan), and the cultural

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imprint of the brand in broader society, including its language and the values it holds.
It compared two approaches to brand-building. An advertising and communications-led approach is tried and tested. It is a
powerful way to reach a mass audience, inviting consumers to take part and engage and/or to drive product purchase and trial
with direct calls to action.
An alternative approach focuses on the product or service experience and the social culture created around the brand. The
result is an 'experience engine' that can drive growth. This growth can be accelerated using advertising or communications,
but it does not rely on it.
Experience-led brands tend to be built around a specific purpose, have a differentiated product and engage consumers in a
direct way.

Source: 'The Perpetual Experience Engine'
Omaid Hiwaizi (Geometry Global), Admap December 2013
Four ways to combine TV and digital
1. 'Top-down' model
In this model, television is used as the primary launch platform for a campaign message. Digital media provides a 'social
extension' of the campaign theme.
2. 'Bottom-up' model
This is the opposite to the top-down model: a 'bottom-up' approach where significant levels of social/online activity are
generated (usually with direct consumer participation/ co-creation). This activity is then selectively 're-broadcast' via TV to
a wider audience.
3. 'Prequel/teaser' model
The third model uses digital channels as a 'prequel' to TV launches, seeding often longer-form video to establish some
buzz around campaigns before they launch more 'traditionally'. This is a new spin on the very well established 'teaser'
model, but differs to 'bottom-up' as it doesn't involve online consumers directly in content development.
4. 'Recruitment' model
The fourth model sees TV take on a very specific role in relation to digital, which is to recruit viewers to online/social
programmes and activities, thereby maximizing the levels of participation.

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Adapted from 'TV and digital Are we there yet? Or do we event have a map?'
Phil Danter, Advertising Works 21 (IPA)
Case studies
1600 Quitline: The Smoking Kid
A small-budget campaign built on consumer insight used digital platforms to gain international
reach.
Advertiser: Thai Health Promotion Foundation
Agency: Ogilvy & Mather Thailand
Market: Thailand
Source: Warc Prize for Asian Strategy, 2013
Read the full case study
Samsung Galaxy SII: The Next Big Thing is Already Here
Samsung showed how digital platforms allow brands to respond to events with 'mini campaigns'.
Advertiser: Samsung Mobile
Agency: 72andSunny
Market: US
Source: North America Effies 2013
Read the full case study
Viewpoint: Post-digital brand-building
William Grobel
Manager, Deloitte's Marketing & Insight Practice
Digital is not a distinct channel, but an enabler to building consistent, relevant and desirable brands with which people can
have a personal relationship. It supports and connects all other channels and is increasingly part of each. Its maturity has
effectively killed it. So embraced has it been by all other channels that digital is effectively dead as a standalone concept.
2014 will see an even greater integration of digital and technology within marketing channels, building on some great
examples from 2013.
BA's outdoor execution of its 'Magic of Flying' campaign is a great example of one of the world's oldest advertising channels,
outdoor, integrating with one of the newest, digital. When a BA plane flies above the digital billboard at Piccadilly Circus in
London, the screen reacts. It shows a boy pointing to the plane as it flies overhead, with the flight's actual number and
destination or origin featured, for example: 'Look, it's the BA475 from Barcelona'.
Burberry is a much-quoted example of a brand whose storytelling and brand building is digitally-led, from live streams of
catwalk shows on social media to its in-store retail experience with synchronised digital screens, 'disruptive digital takeovers'
and RFID tags on clothing prompting relevant films to play when taken into changing rooms.
There are many other examples. Mobile network EE and outdoor specialist Posterscope joined forces to provide advertisers

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with consumer mobile usage habits in proximity to media space. Giffgaff, the mobile network, rewards its members for
answering customer service questions, recruiting members or helping promote the brand. Giffgaff, incidentally, has a Net
Promoter Score of 74, on a par with Amazon and Apple.
Mobile technology will continue to drive this change. Consumers in developed markets and urban professionals in developing
markets on average own or have access to between four and eight mobile devices. By the end of 2013, more the 2 billion
smartphones, 300 million tablets and 1 billion laptops are expected to be in use globally.
Digital comprising technology, mobile, social, online and data is the enabler for channel convergence. It amplifies
messages and enables brand owners to act as curators of content created by its audiences. This always-on approach forces
marketers to lose the short-term campaign in favour of a long-term brand-building platform. It runs through every
communication channel and all business functions, and this is how it should be treated in the post-digital world.
Marketing's challenge is to ensure the right structure is in place to facilitate the integration of digital into all brand-building
activity both internally and within a brand's agency partners.
Implications: Post-digital marketing
1. Rethink digital structures
Major organisations are moving away from treating digital marketing as a separate discipline. That means ditching silos
and ensuring digital expertise exists across an organisation. It also means aligning brand performance objectives
between 'digital' and 'non-digital' activities.
2. Retain long-term metrics
A key challenge is balancing the long-term needs of the brand with the growing range of short-term, even real-time,
opportunities. There is now a strong argument that a focus on short-term measures will not deliver true long-term
success. As the Samsung example shows, it is worth considering how these two demands can be aligned.
3. Look for new models
There is a growing range of models for combining digital and non-digital activity. It is important to identify the most
appropriate model, particularly with regard to the different roles social media can play within a brand strategy. Marketers
should also consider the growing importance of non-communications activity, such as a service offering around the
product.
4. The 'opt-in' brand?
There is an argument that digital technology places fresh emphasis on consumers' relationships with the brand. This
would mean a shift in marketing theory away from penetration as the key to success. This discussion may become a
major theme of 2014.
This article comes from Warc's Toolkit 2014 report, a review of the key challenges facing brands this year, and how the
smartest marketers are responding. Download the full report
About the author

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David Tiltman is Warc's Content Development Director. He has been writing about media and marketing for
more than a decade, including six years at Haymarket Media Group. There he was features editor on
Marketing magazine, based in London, before moving to the Hong Kong Office to become Managing Editor
of Haymarket's Media magazine (now Campaign Asia), covering marketing and media across Asia-Pacific.








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