Brand value increases across categories

Thought Leadership The Era of Adaptive Marketing
ThE ERA Of
ADAPTIVE
MARKETING
Using real-time data to
sharpen brand relevance
Norm Johnston
Chief Digital Officer
norm.johnston@mindshareworld.com
ACROSS THE globe, privacy has become a political
hot button and governments are collaborating with
industry leaders to come up with sensible solutions that
balance understandable consumer privacy concerns
with legitimate marketers’ wishes to create a more
effective and impactful online experience.
Why is this important? At the very heart of this issue
is arguably the future of marketing itself. Without
a proper—simple, intuitive, legal, ethical—online
exchange of data, both consumers and brands will find
far reaching implications to the way they buy, sell,
create, and configure products and services.
The majority of consumers already realize that in return
for some of their personal information, brands can do a
much better job adapting their products and associated
marketing to meet their unique needs. According to the
data from the UK Direct Marketing Association: 75
percent of consumers would share personal information
with a brand with which they have a relationship; 62
percent would share if they were simply in the market to
buy something.
At Mindshare we have a name for this accelerated
data-driven and consumer-focused mentality: Adaptive
Marketing. It’s an approach that enables marketers
to truly adapt every part of a brand’s marketing mix
to meet its consumers’ interests and needs. And it all
depends on data.
Optimizing advertising
Using Adaptive Marketing, advertisers can now optimize
both their media and creative to ensure consumers are
getting more relevant content both online and offline.
TV advertising can be optimized based on assessing how
viewers respond to a TV spot with their Twitter activity,
Google searches, and Facebook posts.
For example, to maximize the impact of Kleenex’s TV
ads, our Mindshare UK team adapts the TV media plan
to local markets by using Google search terms to identify
locations experiencing flu outbreaks. A recent GroupM/
Thinkbox study in the UK found that 20 percent of
the total online response to a TV ad happens within 10
minutes after the ad is aired. That response rate is likely
to rise with the growing second screen trend, in which
people view TV while communicating with their social
network on a tablet or other device.
In addition, content itself can be shaped instantly.
With technology like WPP’s Xaxis, Collective’s Tumri,
and Google’s Teracent advertisers can assemble ads in
real-time based on a target audience’s behavior and
preferences. Mindshare is even using social data to adapt
ad units. Our Shanghai office recently launched Social
DNA 1.0, a digital display ad unit that dynamically
syncs with users’ public profiles from qq, Ren Ren
and Sina—Chinese messaging, social media and
micro blogging sites—to create a personalized branded
experience for users.
Dynamic, effective, pricing
Advertising is of course only one element of Adaptive
Marketing. Consumers are using their personal data to
adapt brand relationships in a variety of ways.
Pricing, for example, has become infinitely more
dynamic. Companies like Staples adjust prices on their
online shop based on a person’s physical location and
whether one of its competitors has a physical store
nearby. Sporting teams have also started using online
data, such as search volumes, weather forecasts, and
player status to adjust ticket prices in real-time.
Marketers are using digital data to adapt their actual
products. Nike lets runners customize their trainers via
Nike ID, while Coca-Cola has introduced Freestyle
vending machines, which enable consumers to create
their own beverage by mixing together existing Coke
products and then sharing their favorite creations
via Facebook.
Is all this adapting worth it? It depends. Some luxury
brands may actually benefit from their inflexibility
and elusiveness. For others, the benefits of Adaptive
Marketing can be enormous: many of our clients are
seeing a dramatic increase in sales with lower cost-peraction
(CPA), while others are building a powerful army
of Facebook fan advocates.
Serious structural changes
What all marketers should consider is the threat from
new companies with adaptability built into their DNA.
In an age of margin pressures and the constant threat of
commoditization, some level of Adaptive Marketing may
be a necessity rather than a luxury or one-off experiment.
Becoming an Adaptive Marketer can require serious
structural changes including rethinking the entire media
process to make it more fluid and “always-on” and
developing a library of creative assets—images, callsto-action,
applications—that can instantly be deployed.
Processes need to be revised to reflect the need for speed
and rapid iteration. New technologies and new talent
also may be required.
Finally, data must be ethically harnessed, liberated,
and applied. Some of these changes are not easy, but
the rewards can be enormous, indeed essential. As Jack
Welch, the former CEO of GE once said: “There are only
two sources of competitive advantage: the ability to learn
more about our customers faster than the competition
and the ability to turn that learning into action faster
than the competition.” Who knew Jack was our first
Adaptive Marketer?
Mindshare is a global media and marketing services
network with 113 offices in 82 countries.
www.mindshareworld.com
40 BrandZ Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands 2013 41