Musings from GroupM: It's Time to Delete "Digital Consumer" Label - Sloan Broderick - MediaBizBloggers

As digital marketers we increasingly face a conundrum The more we focus on mastering technology capabilities the less we focus on consumer understanding Both are critical for successFirstly there is no such thing as a quotdigital consumerquot Consumers do not define their lives values and behaviors by what communications channel they39re engaged with at a particular moment Marketers need to understand the full dimensions and context of a consumer39s life and only then can they link a brand offering to a consumer39s wants and needsIn order to achieve that end marketers need to gain illuminating insights into their consumer Not product facts or digital metrics overloadamp8212digital marketers have got the quantitative analytics covered in spades What I39m talking about is a fundamental understanding of motivations and aspirations that give real meaning to the data through which we increasingly must sift By doing so we liberate agency solutions so that they are both relevant and effectiveToday more than ever the consumer is a device agnostic multichannel overdosed selfish selfless confused laser focused always on the go fearful individual We develop plans and deliver against the target in our daily vernacular of CPMs CPAs etc But does buying on an exchange driving a social activation campaign leveraging cookie data working site path data etc really work if you39ve missed the key insight about the consumerThey path to winning consumers39 trust and confidence must start with deep insights about factors that give meaning to their lives It39s not enough to simply get your message in front of consumers If you lack critical insights about how to influence behavior change then nothing else matters How many inputs can we effectively leverage before we hit analysis paralysis Conversely can we afford to not consider all the sources to get a great insightThere are an abundance of tools we access today to target and understand the quotwhoquot and the quotwherequot They include the followingamp183 Syndicated researchamp183 Social trends data Twitter just launched location based trendsamp183 Primary MediaCom39s RealWorld Streetamp183 Media performance dataamp183 Gut marketing instinctAll of these are useful and can help us reach our goals of understanding the consumer But ultimately we must build communications plans grounded in the real world and make sure our teams take the time to develop ideas based on the insight We can39t let calendars budgets and business cycles drive our agenda and we also must ensure that our clients are on board with the insights process The insight is the key and the touch points that surround our consumer39s daytodaylife will drive activationamp8212not the labels we readily assign to them RealWorld Streetamp8482 is an innovative spin on qualitative research It is a MediaCom proprietary panel of neighboring households in Collingswood NJ that allows our agency to uncover deeper insights about what consumers actually do in and around their homes versus what they say via ongoing lines of qualitative inquiries with the same consumers over a period of timeSloan Broderick is Managing Partner and Managing Director for MediaCom Interaction Read all Sloan39s MediaBizBloggers commentaries at Musings from GroupM MediaBizBloggersFollow our Twitter updates MediaBizBlogger

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Musings from GroupM: It's Time to Delete "Digital Consumer" Label - Sloan Broderick - MediaBizBloggers

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