Content marketing to define 2014

Missy Devlin
Marketing director Asia
Subway

Providing relevant content that delivers insights and entertainment will be the challenge for 2014.

Brands that succeed at this will benefit from deeper and more meaningful bonds with their customers. This is not unique to either B2B or B2C brands, as both will benefit from producing content designed for a specific audience through social media, articles, case studies, videos and much more. The technology platform (most likely mobile) that helps brands deliver this content in a simple, easily digested way will lead 2014.

Furthermore, the steps by clients and agencies to develop and deliver this content will have a big impact on the people they hire, their structure and roles, as well as their marketing priorities.

Johnny Zhu
Marketing manager, Anchor Brand
Fonterra China

CONTENT MARKETING ASIA April 8, 2014 | Singapore Issues and tools for deploying the power of content

The greatest impact on advertising in 2014 will be from mobile payment and video production technology. Online video sites such as iQiyi/PPS and Youku Tudou will further explore producing self-owned video dramas or reality shows that marketers will not be able to ignore.

Also, in-app payment services inside the WeChat ecosystem will extend advertising to the e-commerce and search arenas. Brands that enter quickly will probably enjoy a first-mover advantage.

Marketers will gradually realise there is no so-called ‘digital marketing’. Marketing is still marketing, which requires deep consumer insight and ideas with a human touch, while technology offers the ability to achieve the targeted reach and engagement.

Sridhar Ramaswamy
Branding and ad director, APAC
Lenovo

Two somewhat intersecting technology trends will affect advertising in 2014. These aren’t new trends, just that their impact will be significant.

The first trend is advertising consumption on mobile platforms will grow strongly. The second is that an increasing amount of media spend will be auction mediated.

With the rise of the semantic web, rich data is available on both the supply and demand side of online media. The sheer quantity of data can be a barrier to some, but to the larger, more sophisticated buyers of media, this same data provides a high degree of transparency. Many of the larger online publishers now allow bidding for media buying, which makes for efficient price discovery, which advertisers love.

John Sinke
AVP, digital marketing and e-commerce
Resorts World Sentosa

Wearable technology will be one of the hottest tech trends around in this year. Most of us were laughing when Sergey Brin first demoed Google Glass about a year and a half ago. Fast forward and how things have changed. Today, many already expect electronic accessories to be as common as smartphones within the next six years.

The trend for wearable technology started in the fitness and health sector when companies such as Nike, Jawbone and Fitbit launched their popular fitness wristbands.

With companies such as Google, Samsung and Sony all promoting their wearable devices, the battle for [advertising] space on your body is under way. Google’s recent ‘pay-per-gaze’ patent is just the beginning.

Laura Crampton
MD, brand and communications,
FedEx Asia Pacific

This is shaping up to be an exciting year for advertising that harnesses the power of technology.

Firstly, native ads (sponsored stories, tweets or images that appear within the context of an app or content site) will challenge advertisers to develop compelling content that is not just distinctive, but that is both welcome and relevant on their social media feed.

Second, responsive ads — ad formats that adapt to desktop, tablets and mobile screens depending on the medium, and ensure that ads are optimised across devices. Real time marketing will also be key — as we get more efficient at targeting the right customers we also need to become more relevant and consider what they would wish to engage with and share.

CASE STUDY How MediaCom used econometrics to turn P&G hair care sales around

In 2012, P&G’s hair care brands, which include Pantene and Vidal Sassoon, in Japan faced fierce competition from new, niche brands, offering new non-silicon hair care products targeted at women. The popularity of these products took P&G and the other main category players by surprise. The challenge was to end the sales decline with a smaller media budget.

Traditionally, P&G used absolute sales of each hair care brand to determine media spend and success. However, this approach ignored both profitability and portfolio.

P&G needed to outsmart both its traditional rivals and new competitors, so Mediacom shifted focus to the profitability of each brand, as opposed to using the tried-and-tested method of absolute sales. Taking into consideration the ROI derived from each media, the agency believed it could maximise profit for P&G, as well as the potential of each brand across the portfolio.

It examined the historical data for each brand and selected key touch-points based on its target audience of affluent Japanese women. This helped create a non-linear optimisation system which reallocated budgets from lower-response activities to drive overall category growth.

As a result, P&G reduced its TV budget from 76 per cent to 72 per cent, and increased spend toward digital and magazines. P&G’s online video spend shot up 200 per cent.

The company eliminated outdoor marketing as it was not effective in driving awareness. Overall, five per cent of the media budget was shifted from low profitability brands to higher-profit-generating brands. The new data-driven planning approach ended P&G’s 10-month sales decline in Japan. This approach to media planning resulted in a nine per cent media efficiency increase.  

P&G is now using this method across other categories, including face and body care, fabric care, home care, family care and prestige,  spanning 30 brands and markets.