Ben Jankowski (Group Head, Global Media at Mastercard) and Gerry D’Angelo (Global Media Director) held a very interesting fireside chat. When asked about what they see as the biggest challenge, both agreed it’s gaining customers and keeping them by staying relevant. No longer is B2C marketing purely about biggest reach at the lowest cost. It is crucial for brands now, to be contextually relevant and specific to that given customer’s need at that point in time.
Chad Stoller (EVP, Global Chief Innovation Officer at UM Worldwide) spoke about the three pillars of success in modern (digital) marketing:
When asked about which buzzword she would like to delete, Jean Lin (Global CEO at ISOBAR) quickly noted the word technology. She no longer differentiates between tech and no tech. Every experience is technological in some way and technology is simply an enabler of that given experience. She agreed with Ben Jankowski and Chad Stoller that agencies have to change. They must have experts on various technologies and enable brands to create the best and most unique experiences for their customers. At the same time, certain tasks, traditionally done by agencies now have to move in-house. Deep customer understanding using data analysis is no longer an outsourceable project but an ongoing live-or-die core competency of the brand.
Sheryl Sandberg (Facebook’s legendary COO) killed her presentation, which was by far the most visited keynote of the conference, with over two thousand people filling the Speaker’s Hall. She spoke about the future of social media and ways for companies to grow on digital. Focus on mission, building communities and authenticity are key. Don’t try to be something you are not or something your customers aren’t expecting you to be. But as Stoller said, be there to exceed expectations for them.
We strongly believe that start-ups should specialize in one challenge (which, by the way, is the suggested approach of Margit Wennmachers from Andreessen Horowitz). At ROIHunter, we know digital marketing is an enormous field, that doesn’t have one single silver bullet to solve all the challenges. We believe, we can help brands and e-commerce brands create relevant and personalized creatives for huge target markets at scale. Whether that’s using Dynamic Product Ads, Dynamic Creative Optimization, CRM connectors or other solutions we have or others we will develop in the near future.
To finish off, here’s a couple interesting data points from Dominik Woeber, Google’s Head of Performance Sales for Central Europe: