Digital marketing sells experience, not just products

It takes years for a brand to build its reputation, but with the way digital media is emerging across the globe, it only takes 140 characters to tear it down. At the fifth staging of the Internet and Mobile Marketing Association of the Phippines (IMMAP) Summit on Wednesday, industry speakers agreed that with the emergence of mobile and social media, consumers —and not companies— are now in control of public perception towards brands. "Customers simply don't want marketing anymore," said Will Sansom, at Contagious Communications during his keynote speech at Wednesday's summit. "We are in the midst of a quick-fix culture. People can and will tune out of anything that feels and looks like marketing," Sansom added. He said this is a call to action for companies to stop the age-old ways of brandishing their products, and to think of real and meaningful experiences they can share with consumers to promote engagement and dialogue. Sansom shared with summit attendees the example of telecom firm Starhub in Singapore, which wanted to promote its online music download service to young Singaporean consumers. In the campaign, Starhub partnered with clothing brand Topshop to set up what Sansom called musical fitting rooms, where music from the telco's online collection will be piped into the store's fitting rooms depending on the type of clothing that customers are trying out. The system uses RFID tags to identify the particular outfit's category, and Starhub closes the sale by sending proximity text messages to customers encouraging them to download the song that suits their personal style. Technology for technology's sake Sansom cautioned, however, against jumping onto the digital bandwagon just for the sake of having campaigns directed toward this particular medium. "I call it the 'Dude, we should do...' mentality. Some companies get so hung up with the technology that they forget what's important: the consumer," he pointed out. But when it all comes down to it, Sansom said, digital media is something that brands could no longer ignore, especially with the explosion of real-time media brought by the social networks. "Before, it used to be that when consumers talk, it feels like they're staring into the abyss. Now, people are expecting brands to stare back at them, to respond to them," he said. Companies need to be in a position to respond to customer queries, especially since customers are getting more and more impatient these days. "People can make or break brands with just 140 characters, so brands should be prepared to react and respond to them in meaningful ways," he added. Taking the marketing out of marketing Since building customer experiences is the key to winning in digital, Sansom said brands need to make sure that their projects or campaigns don't easily come across as marketing efforts. He noted that in ordinary circumstances, when the brand is taken out of the equation, people will start to act normally. This was a view shared by Johan Vakidis, executive director at interactive marketing firm AKQA: "The best advertising is not advertising. It's not necessarily about creating the best advertising that sells products, but those that sell experiences." Vakidis said that in the traditional sense, companies usually took their brands and made efforts to communicate their brand. In the new landscape, however, where digital is driving consumer perception, the intersection between the product and its communication—where consumers have dialogues with brands—is the next frontier for marketers. "Companies need to move from mere storytelling and into story-enabling," Vakidis said. "The approach should be that advertising doesn't necessarily come across as advertising. It's all about experiences." Vakidis, who does most of his work for the China market, said the ongoing shift to digital is a potential opportunity that companies should take advantage of. He noted that in China, for example, advertising budgets set aside for digital marketing have doubled over the last four years. "It's so overwhelming how many people want to go digital," he stressed. The challenge, he said, is to go from a mentality wherein companies would want to tap into the digital market for the sake of having a presence there, and into a conscious effort to craft strategies that will work with the digital audience. — TJD, GMA News