The marketing trends for 2014 part two

Read part one here

Immersive experiences

“Why limit the brand experience to one or two senses?” asks Pernod Ricard chief marketing officer Martin Riley. By providing an experience that embraces more than one sense, brands will have a much better chance of  “engaging consumers by bringing something more meaningful, memorable and satisfying to them”, he says, adding that an experience will manifest itself in different ways depending on the brand or service in question.

Indeed, considering how people experience a brand in multiple senses could be worth millions according to Millward Brown research on Unilever ’s Dove soap brand. 

Engaging the senses is something Starwood tries to do through its W brand (pictured above), which looks to integrate music, fashion and design into the hotel experience.

As part of this strategy, the company has appointed Michaelangelo L’Acqua as global music director – the first hotel to create such a role, it claims – to help develop the sound of the brand and curate the music programme.

And in his new book Stuffocation, journalist and trend forecaster James Wallman suggests that rather than possessions enriching consumers’ lives, they are actually being suffocated by them,  sparking a shift towards the need for experience. He cites a shop launch by Louis Vuitton that took the form of an immersive play put on by production company Punchdrunk that helped the brand stand out in a cluttered world, saying that people “are not bothered about the quantity of stuff any more, but they are excited by quality of life – they don’t want more material possessions, but they do want status”.

On a more practical level, for the brands whose budgets don’t stretch to creating entire sensory events, marketers should simply focus on providing a good customer experience every time, says the Direct Marketing Association’s executive director Chris Combemale. 

“In 2014 the traditional roles of brand advertising, response marketing, retail promotions and customer service will be broken down and replaced by a focus on creating great customer experiences that add real value,” he says.

Combemale suggests that initiatives such as Nike Fuelband will redefine the role brands play in people’s lives and that these experiences will be powered by data, adding that brands of the future need to create “life-enhancing value” that goes beyond what their products offer.

Native content 

As consumers become increasingly jaded with traditional, more aggressive forms of advertising, using ‘native content’ looks set to gain traction in 2014. There is much debate about what native advertising is, and it can take many forms, but generally speaking it is paid-for content that is designed to look and feel like the editorial content in which it features.

Insurance company Standard Life has been experimenting with native advertising on Facebook, which digital manager Mickael Paris says has resulted in a 100 per cent increase in click-through rate compared with normal targeted ads on the platform, so it is a concept it will continue pushing into 2014.

“The nature of native advertising is putting relevancy in context, meaning that advertisers change their mindset from push to pull marketing by creating demand rather than advertising a product,” he says. 

Ellis at Belron says there is no substitute for good content. 

“Everyone is retargeting and chasing the same cookies, so that in itself will not be enough to cut through,” he says. “What we’re trying to influence and buy is the attention of the audience. At the same time media owners are seeing a depreciation in the value of their content as audience and action become more important.

“Native advertising may be a solution for both sides, but only in some situations and only when it’s done [well]. For the majority of brands it will be a question of doing all those things better and maybe the focus will shift back to getting the message right – great creative can’t yet be automated.”

Content has been an increasing focus for Coca-Cola as part of its ‘liquid and linked’ strategy, as Great Britain and Ireland marketing director Bríd Drohan-Stewart explains: “Our focus is on creating ideas so contagious they can’t be controlled. It’s what we refer to as liquid content, set against the backdrop of our business objectives, brand agenda and consumer interests.”

She adds: “All marketers require more content to keep their engagement with consumers fresh and relevant due to greater connectivity and more interaction than ever before.”

The Committee of Advertising Practice (CAP) recently warned marketers not to “camouflage advertisements” in an attempt to clarify what native advertising actually means and advise brands on best practice.  

Meanwhile, in the US the Internet Advertising Bureau is looking to form a Native Advertising Taskforce to provide further guidance on the use of the format.

David Deakin, consultant at law firm Wiggin, says the biggest risk with native advertising is not having adequate content clearance.

“As marketing becomes more editorial in style and native in execution it may mean the rigour of the editorial process is overlooked – this can create some risks,” he says. “Standard pre-publication copy clearances should check for issues such as inadvertant misuse of third-party copyright, including music, along with privacy and defamation issues.”