Inspiring and preserving emotional connections in a tech-driven world

You can’t talk about marketing without tech today. Technology has a key say in any and all parts of the marketing funnel from awareness to purchase.

While technology now has a massive say in marketing, experts on MARKETING-INTERACTIVE’s recent webinar shared that it would be unfair to think it’s only tech that is driving the conversation forward.

In fact, what is really driving the adoption of tech is the desire to better understand consumers, said panellists. For purpose-driven brands such as Love, Bonito, investment in tech has to be rooted in meaning and relevance to the customer experience, said Vanessa Yeo Barger, VP of Brand at Love, Bonito. 

“I think one of the things we really learned at Love, Bonito is in making sure that our tech investments were meaningful and that data science is applied across various functions including design, buying, inventory, sales as well as customer care. We were not incorporating tech for the sake of tech and we think about bringing value to customer interactions and experiences that cater to their needs,” she said.

Prakash Chandrasekar, a regional marketer with expertise in the CRM and loyalty space in Asia Pacific, said that in the retail industry, while marketers were making great progress in data-driven marketing in 2019, unfortunately COVID-19 derailed some of those advancements.

“When it comes to customer data, and data-driven marketing, I think most people would like to get out of the room for a coffee at that point,” he said.

However, in 2019 marketers were making “a great start for the data-driven marketing conversations”. However, when the pandemic hit, those conversations were “shelved” and more conversations emerged on topics such as video streaming, and selling products online.

“To be honest, I think when the pandemic hit, everyone wanted to survive. So I think at that time, all that hard work done in the data arena was sort of put on a shelf,” he said. Fast forward to 2022, Chandrasekar added that many brands were doubling down on the data conversation.

“I think in 2022, everyone is going to drill down more on cookies, and customer privacy is going to get more and more important. Brands who do really well are the ones who have a clear data strategy and use the data to connect multiple channels,” he said.

Adding to the conversation, Chris Wiseman, head of marketing technology practice at ADA, said the conversation shouldn’t be about too much or too little tech, but rather about bringing the balance back.

“I think a lot of marketers are now trying to bring in a balance and they are doing it in different ways with different channels,” he said.

Echoing Barger, he said: “Tech shouldn’t be there just for the sake of tech. It needs to have an ROI, and it needs to have a brand impact.”

Working in collaboration

While the fragmentation of media has no doubt taken a toll on marketers, silos within organisations also stand in the way of brands having a unified brand message.

Panellist Soyeon Kim, CMO of UT (Uber and SK Telecom Joint Venture) shared that in her role, which she took on six months ago, she looked over three different functions from top of funnel brand marketing, to performance marketing and CRM after the acquisition. However this wasn’t always the case, and the teams which are currently under her used to operate as individual entities.

“I have only been in the team for six months and what I realised is many times, such teams work in silos. For us, while we were all under the same umbrella brand, we had a different identity when speaking to our audience. We need to have one voice, one tone and not compete against each other,” she said.

She added that in such instances, communications simply weren’t effective enough, and as such, a holistic strategy was a miss.

Having someone bridge the different branches of marketing and IT is now more crucial than ever, added Sean Valencia, marketing strategist at Treasure Data.

“This person can come from any background, sometimes we see it from marketing, sometimes it’s the CMO, sometimes it’s the IT side,” he said.

Valencia added that at the end of the day there’s going to be an increasing trend of utilising data in all departments, even going beyond marketing.

“Finding someone that can work with, and can advocate tests to get some quick wins to get the rest of the business units on board is going to be the key driver to that unified brand messaging,” he said.