WGM attended the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management “Brand Matters” session on May 7th with featured speaker Abbey Klaassen, Editor of Ad Age. Abbey is a native of Buffalo, MN and has rocketed to the top floor of the leading trade publication for advertisers and marketers around the world, presumably with her digital media savvy as a key asset in that career progression.
Abbey’s presentation was entitled “What’s news to what’s next — How data, digital and direct access have changed marketing, content and entertainment forever.” It was a very compelling summary of the digital, social and mobile transformation that is overtaking the consumer targeted business landscape.
The full video of her presentation can be found here: http://mediasite.csom.umn.edu/Mediasite/Play/2b1fdc37eb4f48a6b1ff683332bb606f1d
My headline takeaway from the presentation is that digital, social and mobile are increasingly becoming intertwined and that is transforming the way companies interact with their consumers, placing an even higher premium on original and value-added content. Marketers are recognizing this and a 2013 Ad Age perception study showed as much with marketers listing their top priorities as:
- maximize ROI
- improve digital marketing efforts
- understand and leverage social media
- develop original content to market to consumers (big jump up from #11 in 2012)
As further evidence of the mobile explosion Abbey presented some stunning statistics, both domestic and global:
- # of mobile smartphone users expected to double in 5 years by 2017 with 2.3 billion users
- 1/3 of Google searches now coming from mobile
- 30% of facebook revenue now coming from mobile
- 70% of Pandora listener hours are from mobile
- 300 million people using WeChat (Chinese version of facebook) 2 years after introduction
- $320 million in mobile payments running through Kenya
Value-added interaction and content is now the key to this digital-social-mobile world and Abbey gave several excellent examples of ways in which companies are leveraging this dynamic:
- Tesco Home Plus Virtual Subway Store in South Korea — leveraging the insight that Koreans are one of the hardest working people in the world and see grocery shopping as a very frustrating and time-consuming chore. Here they can scan QR codes from a virtual ‘store’ in the subway and have their groceries delivered when they get home.
- Coca-Cola’s 2020 Mission Statement around creating excellent stories and ideas that provoke conversation
- McDonald’s Canada addressing consumer questions in an honest and entertaining way, such as “why our food looks better in ads than in real life”
Finally there were some stats on advertising agencies changing their organizational focus to reflect this focus on digital/social/mobile as digital now accounts for about 1/3 of revenue at the largest agencies.
In summary it was a very informative and entertaining presentation on the growth and importance to marketers of the new digital landscape with some great examples of how companies are marketing to it successfully. If you have the time it’s definitely worth watching the full video.
