We’ve heard time and again that digital has changed the media landscape drastically. Although there have been massive benefits for brands, it has also raised a lot of questions about transparency, privacy and fraud to name a few.
Why? Simply because the nature of digital means that all the data to which we have access can be heavily scrutinised and brands are holding agencies, and media, accountable for this.
There is plenty of talk about our industry being at a crossroads, with new players and different business models competing for market share. Whether it’s automation, consultants or in-house teams, some would have you believe agencies, the original brand stewards, are facing a challenge that they haven’t seen before.
More fundamentally perhaps, the notions of value and success are being altered as rapidly as the ways to procure them.
What is true is that the goalpost keeps moving and we’ve all adapted to a new reality. The focus is less on paid media and more on brand experience, while the game plan is less about media performance and more about business results. The fact is that consumer habits have changed rapidly in the last few years and marketing has had to evolve equally fast.
Push marketing just doesn’t work as well as it once did and neither does the one-size-fits-all approach. Consumers have always been wary of advertising, and given the proliferation of devices and platforms, brands must change as does the media agency model. We must transform if we want to keep pace with this agile, tech-driven client and consumer duo.
What was rule of thumb 10 years ago doesn’t necessarily apply any more. So what does every head of business and CMO need to watch out for? If you think it’s confusing now, get ready for marketing to become even more complex in future.
Businesses must invest in layers of expertise like CRM, data infrastructure, programmatic trading and customer experiences to name a few. These will require new talent, like data architects, engineers, statisticians and consumer behaviour experts, among many others. With changing paths to purchase, these new experts will have to identify and activate the most effective customer engagement channels at scale in order to succeed.
Whether they internalise or outsource these functions, they will count on the support of their agencies.
Remember the old saying “don’t put all your eggs in one basket”? Well, as important as Facebook and Google are, any brand will see a point of diminishing returns when using them. These walled garden platforms’ control in the Middle East is going to start to dissipate with the imminent launch of Amazon’s advertising platform.
Google knows what you’re searching for, Facebook knows what you like, but Amazon knows what you buy. We will soon see the integration of retail, e-commerce and everything in between, making Amazon a powerful tool in your strategies moving forward.
These tech behemoths are making everyone shake in their boots, simply because they are making the best use of all the data they have access to. Competing publishers are rushing to build data co-ops with each other to secure larger shares of advertising budgets and therefore, we predict large-scale data deals will become more common.
The collaboration with these walled gardens to make them more accessible is inevitable and understanding the technical and legal aspects of data is vital to stay on top. With all this talk of data, technology and e-commerce, it’s important to remember one thing: brick-and-mortar retailers are not going to die. Consumers still want to go in-store to make certain purchases. Brick-and-mortar organisations are simply being reborn, to adapt to the digital space.
The omnichannel experience has never been more important and we will see strategies that worked in silos merging into one.
So, take a leaf out of Amazon’s book: use digital to your advantage, collect the data your business requires and make sure that building relevant and consistent customer experiences is the heart of every part of your business.
Do you still need an agency?
Given all the changes, challenges and new entrants, it’s perhaps no surprise that marketers are increasingly scrutinising agencies, with a few even moving some media capabilities in-house. Faced with the perceived threat of agile consultancies and digitally-led start-ups, the agency world is also evolving.
In this exceptionally competitive market, some will ask what agencies, today, bring to the table.
Internalising some marketing functions may work for some businesses, but it also comes with its own drawbacks. First, agencies bring a variety of experiences, since they work across different verticals and have a keen understanding of different industries.
Second, a brand risks having tunnel vision about what’s working and what’s not. By cutting out the objective middlemen and going directly to publishers, there’s a risk that the neutrality of advice and independent assessment of performance will go straight out of the window.
Finally, agencies have access to a wealth of data that they’ve invested in and learnt from for years. There are opportunities to capitalise on this intelligence for mutual benefit, something that should be a key consideration for any company moving forward.
There is no magic bullet, no one-size-fits-all approach, and taking capabilities in-house might make sense for some organisations and we’ve seen several global players make this move. But where there is disruption, there is also opportunity and, in this space, media agencies could find a way to expand their offering and provide a consultancy approach.
Even if agencies aren’t going to execute media plans for clients, we can still advise them on how to develop their technology stacks, set up their teams and build their strategies. This is how the industry must adapt to survive, and thrive, in this rapidly changing business world.
— Raouf Ketani is head of Annalect MENA, an OmnicomMediaGroup company.
