Marketing Excellence Conference
Bisnode Interact was the main sponsor of the 360° view conference. This conference, took place in May in Amsterdam, has gathered about 70 persons around the importance of achieving a true consumer centricity.
From theory to practice, all the presentations helped the audience to realize how crucial it was to have an in-depth knowledge on consumers. Even if our consumers haven’t that much changed, times are changing.
The consumer doesn’t trust advertisement anymore. He trusts his peers. When he wants to get information before buying, he prefers consulting on-line media (26%) and peers such as friends and familly (20%) to other information channels (shop employees (13%), articles in newspaper/magazine (12%), company website (11%), TV or radio show (9%), advertisement (9%). Thus, marketers can’t talk anymore of advertisement since advertisement impact is completely decreasing. We should move from information to conversation, from advertisement to content, from communication to engagement. We are now in a Conversation revolution. This revolution requires change. According to Steven Van Bellegem “Now it’s time to listen and talk with the consumers, to develop an on-going dialogue, to create leverage by engaging consumers”. To be able to converse with the consumer, companies needs to know their consumer and be able to adapt tone and speech depending on individuals. Therefore, having a 360° view on the consumer has become crucial.
This revolution implies a mindset shift. Are we ready to change? How can we fit this new world? How to become conversation driven?
How to change? – Success stories
Some companies have shared with the audience their successful experience. Those cases illustrated well how important it was to achieve a true consumer centricity and to start a conversation with their consumers.
Adapt or die?
The Kodak case was one of the most impressive stories presented. With the emergence of the digital, Kodak business was dramatically decreasing. No other option for them: they had to surf on the digital world to avoid the crash. Kees Mulder, VP Consumer Digital Group of Kodak explains “it was digital without compromise, changing or dying, Kodak has made the decision to change”. Thus, they have developed a new image around their digital products, and promoted a sharing mindset within their consumer. They have also settled a strong social media strategy operating their presence in most of the Social Platforms. According to Kees Mulder “You can drive your revenue and sales by efficiently combining emerging channels with traditional media”.
Integrate the new channels in the marketing strategy
Popke Rein, innovation Manager, Dialogues incubator at ABN AMRO, also highlighted that new channels have emerged. Companies have to integrate those emerging channels into their marketing strategy. According to him, it’s time to “collect data through effective aggregating platforms and to change financial business model through online customer interaction”.
Adidas shared a good example of new channel integration. Olivier Hempel leads the E-commerce team to operate Adidas E-commerce business in Europe. According to him “eCommerce communication requires much more consumer focused communication”. Online channels such as social media enable the dialogues. It’s also a good traffic driver but it’s crucial to “target consumers”.
For Lufthansa, the real question is how to benefit from consumer knowledge that is available within the social network. Dr Torsten Wingenter, Global Coordination Social Media Marketing at Lufthansa, declares “you have to leverage your social network activities”. They enable this by providing a “social” travel experience. They offered a platform allowing consumer to tell where they were traveling, to share with friends. “MySkyStatus is a unique digital innovation with clear customer benefits reflecting the brand values. With this product we become a benefit provider, a platform, not a community”. Engaging a conversation and bringing benefits to the consumer in the meantime is a good example of successful new channels integration!
Customization is the future
Targeting, Consumer interaction, collecting data, creating a dialogue... The P&G case presented by Wouter Coox, senior Direct-to-Consumer and Interactive Marketing Western Europe at P&G and Kathleen Peters, Bisnode Interact Marketing and communication Director, was a good illustration of this revolution. To engage their consumers, P&G decided to create a dialogue by customizing off and online communication. Bisnode Interact helped them with tracking the surfing behavior and combining the collected data to the existing database. For Wouter Coox “Since we don’t have any transactional data, being able to capture our online consumer behavior is a real treasure.”
Kathleen Peeters explains “By helping P&G to achieve a true consumer centricity, we enable them to segment, target and implement off and online customized communication. And customization is the future considering the conversation implies knowing the person you are dialoging with”.
The personalization benefits have also been demonstrated by Bob McNinch, Head of e-commerce at Vodafone. He explains “The personalization is the right content delivered to the right person at the right time through the right channels”. So the benefits are clear: from creating customer loyality to developping more effective campaigns, from enhancing lifetime consumer value to gaining greater consumer insight. Moreover “You can reduce operating expenses and thus maximize your ROI!”
So yes, customization, is the future!
The revolution has begun and some companies have already jumped in the train of the evolution. True consumer centricity is more than ever key to be able to engage the dialogue with consumers. Bisnode Interact, by offering solutions to enable the creation of this true consumer centricity, is able to lead those companies who want to take this train to get a better knowledge on their consumer, to start the conversation.
