Image provided by Benjamin Schoderer.
This column originally appeared on LinkedIn. It has been republished with the author's permission.
I was very fortunate to attend the 2018 Global IAB Leadership Meeting titled “How to build a 21st century Brand” in Palm Desert, Calif. last week. The sheer size of this event was impressive, having more than 1,000 advertising, digital and tech leaders convene in one location to debate the agenda for the next year in digital advertising. While you will find the key highlights and take-aways of the three days on numerous websites (such as Brand Channel), I’d like to share some of my personal observations and impressions of my three days at the JW Marriott Desert Springs Resort & Spa:
1. From the start (and immediately visible when entering the IAB summit), the number of players in the digital advertising industry was quite simply astonishing. The amount of brand representatives with sophisticated digital titles, digitally focused agency executives (media and creative), ad tech companies (I don’t even know where to begin to name them) and, of course, big digital players such as Google, Facebook, Twitter etc. is nothing short of overwhelming. This also means that there are more players trying to take their share of available budget along the digital media value chain and how this will pan out over the next couple of months will be very interesting. Will the advertiser have to pick up all this additional cost? Will it reduce the ROI from of digital spend or actually provide more value? It's certainly a question of balance and not easy to comprehend, particularly for non-digitally savvy marketers. This will be an interesting space to watch.
Undoubtedly digital has grown up from a niche field within marketing to a fully-grown function in the corporate world today — less so in Africa (I feel anyway), but gauging from the discussions I had at the IAB summit (“Oh we are looking in to Africa, too”) and, to my knowledge of home grown players in Africa, not a too distant future on our continent, either.
2. Brand safety and ad fraud is a huge theme across the entire value chain and won’t go away anytime soon. From the townhall debates I took part in, there is clearly no satisfactory solution yet for anyone, and this is already a big issue for the industry requiring urgent attention. Particularly in the African context, marketers are only now waking up to the “power of digital” shifting more and more spend into this space. The risk of disappointment, non-performance and budgets cuts as a result is real. Advertisers need to and will ask more questions of their agencies as to where exactly their ads are ending up and who is actually looking at them. Not to mention the omnipresent question of who should pay for ad services such as verification (“Why do I, the advertiser, have to pay the publisher on top of the media spend?”). Have a look at this article summarizing Keith Weed’s (Unilever global CMO) keynote addressing this by threatening to withdraw budgets from online platforms such as Facebook and Google if they fail to eradicate certain content.
3. Trust was not only discussed in the context of the advertising value chain but also as key requirements consumers are looking for from 21st century brands. Keith Weed’s “a brand without trust is just a product” statement particularly stuck with me. In times where supply chain efficiencies and product are not enough anymore to provide a competitive advantage, brand experience and creation of value from customer needs will determine success. Digital tech such as cloud technology (for exponential scale) and digital products as the enabler of brand experiences will provide the next competitive advantage for 21st century businesses. In line with this, there seems to be a trend of the titles “Chief Digital Officer” and “Chief Marketing Officer” collapsing into a “Chief (Brand) Experience Officer” (or similar) type role, judging by a look at the attendee list of the conference.
4. Lots of tech partners in this space also mean lots of specialist services. One that particularly caught my eye was MikMak, a platform specializing in mobile and social video content to drive conversions. While sounding simple, the science behind creating video particularly to drive conversions is fascinating. It's something I’d love to explore more in the African context.
5. As with all digital conferences, hearing from actual brands that do inspiring work is amazing. I won’t go into too much detail here, but hearing from the Away.com president about its business selling luggage and communicating travel was exceptionally insightful. Similarly, Mars Petcare’s approach to innovation and disruption ("We want to be the partner of choice for any disruptor in our category”) and Beauty Brand Glossier (“Do you really want to be like Amazon in your ecommerce experience as a brand?”, “Ask yourself, who would play your product in a movie?” and “Customer engagement is the antidote of commoditization”) were remarkable talks with a lot of golden nuggets for me to take home. Last, Google’s take on “marketing strategies in the age of assistance” gave some great examples on who is creating the right experiences catering for consumer needs and expectations (Starbucks, Domino's) using one simple question: “How can I assist my customer better?” (as opposed to “How do I sell my customer more product?”).
One key learning from these sessions: It’s not about digital vs. retail or other media; it’s all about integration with lots of online retailers now opening retail stores. While in the US, I got to visit a Tesla “dealership,” which is designed not to sell any cars, just to showcase them. The purchase happens afterwards online. In my eyes, this is a big mindset shift a lot of (particularly retail) marketers will have to get used to. Traditional retail models are under threat and brands will more and more have to go to the consumer directly.
Summary:
As always, it is clear that this industry is continuously changing. According to the Centre for Digital Future's presentation, we will see more consolidation (e.g. media companies, movie studios), more disruption (e.g. Netflix/Amazon streaming sports) and more changing media consumption patterns (your car will become the space you consume the most after your couch) just as dinner and movies have already become Uber Eats and Netflix.
Finally, in terms of retail, subscription models are on the rise and virtually penetrating every industry (cinema, shoes, lenses, toothpaste, pet food, etc.).
In my view, it’s not a question of whether digital will be important for your brands survival anymore. That is obvious, and most people have realized it. It’s the how that will be crucial. Just doubling your digital media spend will not suffice to survive. Is your brand ready and more importantly, are you ready?
The next event on the SA IAB calendar is the IAB South Africa Digital Summit on March 1, 2018 in Johannesburg where marketers, advertising executives, publishers and technologists will convene to share insights about media, platforms, creative and business models while exploring the latest thinking and innovation and digital. Check https://www.iabdigitalsummit.co.za/ for details.
