Watch as Jeff Fagel, Head of Marketing at Epsilon-Conversant, takes the stage at Adverting Week New York, to discuss the future of marketing, how to win at brand building and how to turn a Goliath brand into a David.
Alternatively, read the transcript of the 7-minute presentation below.
Announcer: Good morning and please join me in welcoming Jeff Fagel.
Jeff Fagel: Hey thanks hello everyone, so I've got seven minutes. I've gotta move fast here, seven minutes to walk you through the future of marketing and advertising.
A lot has changed, but then a lot also has stayed the same. So in the end, what are we trying to accomplish? How do we get people to pay attention, hear about us and act?
Even though the landscape has changed, we as consumers and what we're trying to accomplish as marketers, really it has stayed the same.
But with that said, more screens, more content, less time the world around us has transformed. Attention is fragmented and it's pulled us in, hundreds of different directions.
So what does the future look like? This is the future.
Literally, this is the future, so if you go onto Google and you do a search for future, we'll do this right now, see what comes up for “Future.” Even the meaning of the word “future” has changed.
So, as we look at where the industry is going words have changed, media
consumption has changed, a show of hands for those who have been at a restaurant recently and taken pictures of their food? All of us almost. And there’s 173 million posts of #foodporn right?
As well as video is unstoppable. If you just take a look at the platform Tasty which is distributed by BuzzFeed, this video here, how to make a pretzel, in 24 hours, 37 million views; almost a million shares—it's crazy. And if you look at the audience as a whole? 500 million views per month, for Tasty. Compare that to network and cable TV.
The growth is just incredible, we have a personalized experience in our pockets with our phones 24/7.
Now let's do a search on YouTube for mattress reviews, has anyone bought a mattress recently?
It's changed quite a bit, well you're not only gonna get thousands of mattress reviews, you're also gonna get pretty cool content like this, from Purple. Almost 200 million views.
New ways of marketing, new ways of selling, niche companies are delivering, literally I mean who would have thought that there's gonna be a billion-dollar-plus industry for mattresses delivered to your home, next day?
So what does all this mean?
Well it's not just in niche categories, look at the travel industry and look at the success of Airbnb, in Q1 this year they've surpassed the big brands when it comes to traffic, what used to be a small industry.
Now, Airbnb is taking over some of the big boys, and it's not just in travel. Financial services, let's take a look at E-Trade, established in 1982, versus Robinhood, which offers free trades, only three years old and has already surpassed user numbers against E-Trade.
These are the new Davids, Purple, Airbnb, on demand, the Uber of, the Amazon of, we've all heard the terms before digitally native, direct to consumers, across all categories from beauty, to fashion to food.
This is what's disrupting our industry, and when asked about Amazon, Reed Hastings the CEO of Netflix said, sleep is our greatest enemy, I'm not that concerned about Amazon. So in the end it's really about competing for time and attention, and that's where the challenge lies.
So what do we do?
There's a new way, Goliaths are challenged, and it starts with knowing the individual. How to market to them it, starts with knowing them in a privacy protected way, and understanding where he goes, what he buys, what moves him.
Why? Because the competition is so much greater and the opportunity exists from what he's searching, what he buys when he's
thinking about a trip. So scuba gear as an example, and what moves him, and ultimately knowing him in real time is what's important.
So content then becomes relevant and in a way that allows brands to market like a David. Because we know the industry has changed. It's about lifetime messages, persistent across the entire lifecycle, throughout the year, cross-channel, being able to first and foremost know who that individual is. As well as understand what he might be searching for or buying next.
With that said it's about no guesses. No waste, streamline, and ultimately this is what brand building is now and needs to become for all of us to compete.
We're not building a skyscraper—a big inflexible structure where you're looking up and it looks the same for everyone.
Really it's about people aren't looking up anymore, why they're looking down on their phone and we have in our pockets, 24/7, we've got a personalized experience. This is what we're competing against, and this is what we need to figure out.
We’re building a relationship simply and that relationship is millions of relationships, individual conversations, unique conversations.
Now when I said that industry hasn't changed much, this is a quote from the founder of FCB so a long time ago.
Good advertising, is written from one person to another. That was the intent back then, we have the ability to make it happen now, so if niche is the new norm, ultimately then we have to focus on segments of one.
In the end it's about accuracy, efficiency, one to one, so you can market like a David.
Thank you.