Como el evento de tecnología más grande y, posiblemente, más influyente del mundo, no podíamos dejar pasar la oportunidad de visitar el CES este año, y en esta ocasión vinimos con todo la familia, incluyendo a nuestra empresa hermana MightyHive y a nuestra empresa matriz S4Capital. Al comienzo de esta nueva década, el CES colocó a las industrias en una encrucijada, destacando los retos y las oportunidades que tienen enfrente.

El CES ha crecido tanto en los últimos años que ha dado lugar a varios eventos paralelos, incluyendo C Space: Marketing and Advertising (dedicado a tendencias disruptivas que dan forma al comportamiento de los consumidores y a los medios publicitarios) y la cumbre Brand Innovators’ Mega-Trends. MediaMonks estuvo presente en ambos eventos a lo largo de la semana, con Sir Martin Sorrell, Director Ejecutivo de S4Capital, llamando a Brand Innovators “un CES dentro de CES,” destacando su ambiente más íntimo. A continuación, veamos a fondo algunos de los insights que surgieron en ambos eventos.

El Surgimiento de la Mentalidad del Retador

Al inicio del año nuevo, Raja Rajamannar, CMO de MasterCard, dio algunos consejos en Brand Innovators: “Adáptense pronto, o corren el riesgo de quedarse atrás. Los mercadólogos deben ser siempre curiosos, tomar riesgos bien pensados y crecer con rapidez, ya que el ritmo de la tecnología y la innovación no se va reducir en el futuro cercano.”

Hablando del papel de los especialistas al imaginar la experiencia de marca infundida con tecnología, Silke Meixner (Partner, Digitial Business Strategy en IBM Global Business Services) destacó como “a medida que MediaMonks piensa cómo poner la emoción en la marca como socio, los mercadólogos también deben hacerlo,” señalando como la realidad aumentada presenta una oportunidad para lograrlo.

Ya sea ser más decidido en adoptar la mentalidad retadora, elevar la relevancia con la ayuda de nuevos modelos de socios, o construir valor en experiencias guiadas por las emociones, el CES de este año ofreció muchas oportunidades para las marcas de construir conexiones más fuertes con los consumidores a través de la tecnología. A medida que se embarcan en una nueva década, las discusiones en el CES parecen optimistas para las marcas, y no podemos esperar para ayudar a redefinir las grandes ideas y darles vida.

Es una mentalidad compartida por Kimberly Gardiner, VP y CMO de Mitsubishi, quien busca aprendizajes e inspiración fuera de su industria. En plática con Nick Fuller (SVP, Growth en MediaMonks) frente a una chimenea en la cumbre Brand Innovators, dijo “No buscamos inspiración en nuestros competidores de la industria automotriz, sino en compañías que van directo al consumidor. Queremos ser una marca que desafíe lo convencional.”

Este enfoque de desafío ha ayudado a Mitsubishi, que ha disfrutado su segundo año consecutivo como la marca automotriz asiática más rápida, a concentrarse en una audiencia dedicada. “No podemos gastar más que nuestra competencia, así que nos enfocamos en una audiencia muy específica y enfocada,” dijo Gardiner. “Queremos apuntar a personas que no son como todas los demás.”

En su propia charla junto a la chimenea con Wesley ter Haar, Fundador de MediaMonks, Sir Martin también adoptó la mentalidad disruptiva y retadora al crear una conexión entre la misión de S4Capital y el festival Burning Man. “Burning Man refleja una creatividad disyuntiva, se trata de crear algo y destruirlo cada año,” señaló.

Lograr Crecimiento y Personalización a Velocidad y Escala

Para desafiar convenciones con éxito y adaptarse al acelerado paso de la innovación tecnológica, las marcas deben tener las capacidades bien establecidas para escalar o dar giros con rapidez. Esto es de particular importancia si tomamos en cuenta el incremento de la hiperadopción del consumidor, es decir, la velocidad a la que cambian los comportamientos de los usuarios, y así desafiar aún más las métricas tradicionales de éxito.

En la sesión de storytelling the S4Capital en C Space, moderada por Marta Martínez (Directora de Plataformas de Marketing de Google), el liderazgo de S4 se reunió para discutir algunos de los principales retos y oportunidades que enfrentan las marcas al avanzar la nueva década. Louise Martens, Global Head of Embedded Production en MediaMonks, señaló cómo el aumento en la conversación social y en la adopción tecnológica ha acelerado el ritmo al que las marcas deben entregar resultados.

“En el pasado, podrías haber tenido cuatro grandes momentos en el año, pero ahora los mercadólogos tienen que entregar miles y miles de activos en diferentes formatos y canales.” ¿La solución? Nuevos modelos de sociedad que satisfagan la necesidad de las marcas de tener velocidad y escala. “Esa presión sobre las organizaciones ha generado nuevos modelos como la ubicación conjunta, el trabajo interno y la integración.”

Y a medida que las plataformas digitales se saturan cada vez más, la propiedad y la implementación de datos se vuelve clave para el éxito. “Para ganar, las marcas deben voltear a su ecosistema: medirlo, hacerle pruebas y enviar esos datos de vuelta hacia la creatividad,” dice Martens.

Al señalar que la personalización es una apuesta importante en 2020, Pete Kim, CEO de MightyHive, también mencionó la batalla por los datos ‘first-party’ e integrarlos de forma más cercana con la estrategia creativa de la marca. “Espero ver crecimiento continuo a medida que forjamos los procesos del futuro, poniendo el mensaje correcto y la creatividad adecuada frente a la persona indicada a escala.”

Reconociendo el Valor en la Tecnología Emergente

El piso de la sala de exposiciones en el CES ofrece una buena cantidad de aciertos y errores, lo que presenta a las marcas un recordatorio para asegurar que su inversión en tecnologías nuevas y emergentes otorgue un valor real, tanto para los negocios como para los consumidores. Olivier Koelemij, Managing Director d MediaMonks LA, participó en un panel como parte del tema Hollywood Digital en CES que buscaba destacar el valor que una de esas tecnologías, la realidad aumentada, puede ofrecer a las marcas. Títulado “La Experiencia de Realidad Aumentada/Mixta,” el panel incluyó a expertos de la industria como Magic Leap, Microsoft, IBM Global Business Services y más.

Uno de los retos clave para la realidad mixta que destacó el grupo, tal vez de manera contra intuitiva, es su acelerada madurez. Mientras que los saltos tecnológicos han facilitado el diseño y la implementación de experiencias digitales impresionantes, por ejemplo la adición de Depth API a ARCore, también elevan el listón de cómo se ve una experiencia verdaderamente de ayuda y valor agregado. Para marcas con una menor madurez digital, el panel destacó el papel que pueden jugar las alianzas para centrarse en ese factor de valor y transformar las ideas en realidad.

“Hay muchas formas de definir el valor,” dice Koelemij. Habló sobre el Dark Knight Dive, una experiencia de 4D VR que permite a los usuarios “volar” a través de una ciudad Gótica virtual mientras están suspendidos en un túnel de viento de paracaidismo, como un gran ejemplo de lo que pueden lograr las marcas al aventurarse con la realidad extendida. “Con este proyecto, pudimos conectar a AT&T con la IP de Batman que habían adquirido poco tiempo antes, y la prensa estaba fascinada. Los mercadólogos deben pensar sobre cómo medir y definir el éxito.”

As the world’s largest and arguably most influential tech trade show, you know we wouldn’t pass up the chance to visit CES this year—and this time we brought the whole family along, including our programmatic sister company MightyHive and parent company S4Capital. At the dawn of a new decade, this year’s CES placed industries at a crossroads, highlighting the challenges and opportunities that stand before them.

CES has become so big in recent years that it’s also sparked its fair share of side events, including C Space: Marketing and Advertising (devoted to disruptive trends that shape consumer behavior and advertising media) and the Brand Innovators’ Mega-Trends summit. MediaMonks had a presence at both events throughout the week, with S4Capital Executive Chairman Sir Martin Sorrell calling Brand Innovators “a CES within CES,” noting its more intimate feel. Below, let’s dive into some of the insights that surfaced across these events.

The Rise of the Challenger Mindset

At the start of the new year, MasterCard CMO Raja Rajamannar gave Brand Innovators some choice advice: “Adapt quickly, or you risk being left behind. Marketers need to stay constantly curious, take thoughtful risks and scale fast, as the pace of technology and innovation will not slow down anytime soon.”

Speaking of marketers’ role in envisioning the tech-infused brand experience, Silke Meixner (Partner, Digital Business Strategy at IBM Global Business Services) noted how “As MediaMonks thinks about putting emotion into the brand as a partner, marketers need to, too,” mentioning how AR presents an opportunity to achieve that.

Whether being more purposeful in adopting a challenger mindset, raising relevance with the aid of new partner models, or building value in emotion-driven experiences, this year’s CES offered ample opportunities for brands to build stronger connections with consumers through tech. As they embark on a new decade, the discussions at CES look optimistic for brands—and we can’t wait to help refine their big ideas and bring them to life.

It’s a mentality shared by Mitsubishi’s VP and CMO Kimberly Gardiner, who looks outside of her industry for learnings and inspiration. In conversation with Nick Fuller (SVP, Growth at MediaMonks) in a fireside chat at the Brand Innovators summit, she said, “We don’t look at auto competitors for inspiration—we look at DTC companies. We want to be a brand that challenges convention.”

This challenger approach has helped Mitsubishi—which enjoyed its second year in a row as the fastest Asian-owned auto brand—zero in on a dedicated audience. “We can’t outspend our competition, so we focus on a narrow, focused audience,” Gardiner said. “We want to target people that aren’t like everyone else.”

In his own fireside chat shared with MediaMonks Founder Wesley ter Haar, Sir Martin also embraced the disruptive, challenger mindset by building a connection between S4Capital’s mission and Burning Man. “Burning Man reflects creative disruption—it’s about creating something and destroying it every year,” he said.

Achieving Growth and Personalization at Speed and Scale

For brands to successfully challenge conventions and adapt to the quickening pace of technological innovation, they must have the capabilities in place to scale up or pivot with speed. This is especially important given the rise of consumer hyperadoption, or the speed at which consumer behaviors shift, and further challenges traditional metrics of success.

At the S4Capital Storytelling Session at C Space, moderated by Marta Martinez (Director of Google Marketing Platforms), S4 leadership met to discuss some of the reigning challenges and opportunities that brands face while moving into the new decade. Louise Martens, Global Head of Embedded Production at MediaMonks, mentioned how the uptick in social conversation and tech adoption has quickened the pace at which brands must deliver.

“In the past, you may have had four big moments in the year, but now marketers have to turn around thousands of thousands of assets across formats and channels.” The solution? New partner models that satiate brands’ need for speed and scale: “That pressure on organizations has sparked new models like co-location, in housing and embedding.”

And as digital platforms become increasingly saturated, ownership and implementation of data become critical to success. “To win, brands must look at their ecosystem: measure it, test it and feed that data back inside to the creative,” says Martens.

Noting that personalization is table stakes in 2020, MightyHive CEO Pete Kim also mentioned the battle for first-party data and integrating it more closely with a brand’s creative strategy. “I hope to see continued progress as we forge the processes of the future—putting the right message and the right creative in front of the right person at scale.”

Recognizing Value in Emerging Tech

The showroom floor at CES offers its fair share of hits and misses, which presents brands with a sober reminder to ensure their investment in new and emerging tech provides real value, both to the business and consumers alike. Olivier Koelemij, Managing Director of MediaMonks LA, participated in a panel as part of the Digital Hollywood track at CES that sought to highlight the value that one such technology—augmented reality—can offer to brands. Titled “The Augmented/Mixed Reality Experience,” the panel included industry experts such as Magic Leap, Microsoft, IBM Global Business Services and more.

One of the key challenges to mixed reality that the group highlighted, perhaps counter-intuitively, is its fast-growing maturity. While tech leaps have made it easier to design and implement impressive digital experiences—take Depth API’s addition to ARCore, for example—they also raise the bar on what a truly assistive, value-added experience looks like. For brands at a lower digital maturity, the panel highlighted the role that partnerships can play in homing in on that value factor and bringing ideas into reality.

“There are many ways to define value,” says Koelemij. He discussed the Dark Knight Dive, a 4D VR experience that lets users “fly” through a virtual Gotham City while suspended in a skydiving wind tunnel, as a best-in-class example of what brands can achieve when going big on extended reality. “With this project, we were able to connect AT&T with the Batman IP that they’d recently acquired, and the press was all over it. Marketers must think about how they measure and define success.”

This week, New York welcomed not only foreign leaders and dignitaries at the United Nations headquarters—the city also embraced some of the best and brightest in the world of advertising, marketing and technology. Yes, Advertising Week New York—one of six Advertising Week events held around the world—came to offer thought leadership, workshops and more with 1,216 speakers and over 290 different events.

There was much to ponder and celebrate throughout the week. At the Clio Awards, eight awards were distributed among three projects that we contributed to: the Uncensored Playlist, Mind the Gap and the geolocation-based revamp of the “Runaway Train” music video. We also made placement on Adweek’s 100 Fastest Growing Agencies list, and our VP of Marketing Kate Richling was shortlisted for Advertising Week’s Future is Female platform.

But that’s enough patting ourselves on the back. What were the brands up to in all the fray? Our recap explores three big topics from one of the biggest weeks in advertising—namely what’s driving the in-housing trend, how brands are working creatively with data and the new collaborative partnerships that are helping brands respond to both those opportunities.

Getting Closer to Consumers through In-Housing

One thing that’s become undoubtedly clear across the course of the week is that brands are seeking ways to take back control. For many, this has manifest in a trend to take their creative and media capabilities in-house. Often attributed to goals like lowering cost or time to market, there are in fact many reasons why brands feel they can do creative better on their own terms and turf, as explored at the Brand Innovators summit, which coincided with Advertising Week.

A major goal behind the in-housing trend is a need to get closer to the consumer. As traditional brands grow with widening product lines and more channels to communicate through, they risk losing coherence or consistency within the brand-consumer relationship.

At a panel on in-housing, Spencer Gordon of Anheuser-Busch discussed how going in-house ensured that a dedicated team in the brand would always be thinking about creative. This enabled them to pursue consumers with greater relevance and brand understanding. But Gordon noted that the initiative achieved big results by first starting small; with four employees focused on providing social assets solely for the Michelob Ultra product, the team has since scaled to 63 members that deliver for all of AB InBev’s brands.

In the same panel, Ryan Riess, Director of Social Strategy and Content at the Hershey Company, similarly discussed how supporting such a large variety of brands (15 of them!) drove them to become more consumer-centric. Hershey felt they could do creative better on their own—particularly in creating platform-specific content that would better connect with their customers. That’s a very specific way that brands can better drive relevance by maintaining an always-on relationship with their consumers, requiring brands to have a clear idea not only of themselves, but their consumers as well.

Purposeful Use of Data for Empathy and Impact

How brands can gain that understanding of the consumer was another major topic of discussion throughout the week. But businesses have come up with interesting ways to accomplish this; a notable example is Target’s internal media company Roundel. In the Advertising Week panel “Climbing Over Walls: Real People Data in an Automated World,” Roundel’s VP Dave Peterson noted: “The data is extremely important, but it’s as much on the human side as it is on the data. We call it the IQ side for data and the EQ for the human side of things.”

This purposeful interplay between both the technical and emotional sides of data provides Roundel with learnings they can use to strengthen the relationship between the retailer, their customers and the CPG partners whose products line the shelves. “Going back to our enterprise view at Target about putting our guests at the center of everything we do, our goal really is to enhance the shopping experience,” Peterson said. “Media works best when it’s in everyone’s benefit.”

And that’s a point that resonates well with MediaMonks founder Wesley ter Haar, who gave a keynote address at the Brand Innovators event on Tuesday afternoon. Exploring the challenge between what he calls “personalized pleasure versus personalized panic”—that delicate balance between consumers’ desire for relevance and concern for privacy—he honed in on the need for empathy to become a driving force in everything you do. “We can never stop prioritizing empathy,” he said. “Empathy and engineering must work hand-in-hand in the future.”

Closing the Creative and Data Divide

While Roundel is an interesting example of bridging together the intelligent and emotional quotients in data, they’re not alone: several brands noted the need for marketing and IT to come together to deliver unforgettable customer experiences that build brand love. On the panel “Rethinking TV: Driving Growth, Relationships and Experience Through Data,” Sir Martin Sorrell joined GM’s Global CMO Deborah Wahl, where the two examined how brands must look beyond the typical TVC approach for more scalable, personal and relevant creative.

Wahl gave her brand’s perspective on how impact and effectiveness are table stakes today, and how she works closely with data to achieve it. “We have a chief data officer at GM. We spend a lot of time together, really understanding: ‘What are you learning, what are the insights, how are we going after it?’” she said. “That helps you form better creative briefs so you get a big idea, and then really make sure we can execute that across different channels.”

It sounds like GM has a good rhythm going, but for many brands, closing that IT and creative gap can feel like a struggle. Showing teamwork in action, the S4 family—Sir Martin, ter Haar and Emily Del Greco (President of the Americas, MightyHive)—came together the following day to join Joana Coles (Founder and CCO, Boudica) in a panel discussion about the S4 Capital model and its place within the future of advertising. Coles set the scene for discussion: if you’re not a holding company, she asked, “What the hell are you then?”

The trio’s responses became a multi-faceted examination of collaboration and partnership. Sir Martin drew a line between how S4 operates versus holding companies that impose constraints around the businesses they contain. Instead, he suggested, S4 took inspiration from tech companies who are disruptive by nature. Ter Haar added: “With traditional work, there’s a conservatism that you can’t marry data with being creative.” It’s precisely that challenge that brands are grappling with now, driving that need for control examined above.

Del Greco noted how aligning data and creative so closely together enables brands to take more risks with confidence. “MediaMonks is about taking the risk, and MightyHive comes quickly with feedback [backed by data],” she said. As iteration and agility have become key to success in today’s always-on environment, this ability to experiment and take learnings will become crucial for future-focused brands.

As Advertising Week draws to a close, we’re energized by the creative wins that brands have have been able to share. Looking at the next year into the future, it will be interesting to see how the landscape further evolves—and how new partnerships will enable brands to achieve a more customer-led focus by closing the gap between data and creative.

Hosted this week in Cologne, Germany, the DMEXCO conference examined the challenges in advertising through its theme, “Trust in You.” This subject is multilayered and holistic, focused on instilling trust between consumers and brands, between brands and their partners and regaining trust in digital technology’s benefits to society overall.

Trust is earned, and brands know they can’t take it for granted—what’s built up over months or even years can vanish overnight. With consumers’ scrutinizing how data is handled more now than ever before, these growing tensions highlight an imperative for brands and agencies alike in a new era of advertising: establish new partnerships that are equipped to recognize and react to shifting consumer priorities at speed in a way that provides value to consumers.

Responding to Shifts in Consumer Expectations

One of the greatest paradoxes in advertising is that consumers expect and desire highly relevant, tailored creative that fits within the context of their lives and everyday activities—but at the same time, there’s a mistrust around the use of data that powers these experiences. Earlier this year, MediaMonks founder and COO Wesley ter Haar spoke to Ad Age about where data falters and where it thrives. “Personalization that makes sense and adds value is super powerful: think a handwritten card, knowing my name or my order at a restaurant,” he said. “In the digital space we’ve become resistant to it, perhaps because it needs to show some empathy instead of this relentless data mining.”

Instilling trust in consumers amounts to making a clear value exchange, often playing off contextual triggers that infer what a user is trying to achieve. In their talk “Making the Web Work for Everyone in a Privacy First World” at DMEXCO, Googlers Matt Brittin (President EMEA Business and Operations) and Emily Henderson (Head of Media) gave an insightful look at how Google hopes to build trust through offering personalized experiences by using as little data as possible. 

In fact, their example used no personalized data: by working with the Guardian to tag the newspaper’s recipes with contextual information, including what ingredients they call for, what time of day they’re most likely to be made and eaten, and frustration level based on how long it takes to make each dish. Knowing that cooking is a key use case for Google Home users, the team was able to offer Google Home ads that fit the context of recipes when users visit them on the web, with copy like “Hey Google, add ginger to my shopping list” for making lemon and ginger friands.

The presentation demonstrates a key point: that a shift to interactions over simple demographics is needed, and brands should instead adopt a more consumer-led approach that is capable of understanding the interactions and intents that customers have in the moment. 

Differentiating Beyond Convenience

Part of that idea above on becoming consumer-led involves aligning your brand with the values that are important to your audience. As consumers look toward brands to represent their values, brands find a great opportunity to instill meaning in themselves and build trust through shared interest.

Speaking at the conference, Julian Blessin, co-founder of Tier Scooters, noted that “People used to want what was easy and safe, but now mobility also has to be conscious” of things like environmental impact and territorial inequalities. In essence, the convenience alone no longer cuts it; with consumer values and priorities in mind, brands must deliver on brand promise in the experiences they offer to consumers. 

In our activation celebrating International Women’s Day with BVG and ServicePlan, we installed facial recognition capabilities into ticket machines to determine whether a purchaser was a man or woman. Women received a discount that reflected the gender wage gap, demonstrating a small effort to balance the scales and acknowledge a problem that the brand recognized in society. 

Facial recognition is a technology with a bit of unease for some; it conjures up worry about deepfakes at worst, and is wrapped up in conversations about surveillance and catching criminals at best. But this project, which won an FWA award and Bronze Direct Lion at this year’s Cannes International Festival of Creativity, provided a delightful surprise for women commuters and an obvious benefit of the technology by highlighting the real value it can have toward everyday life.

Another example of how a brand has looked beyond convenience to make a difference in users’ lives is Lyft’s Grocery Access Program, which offers families living in food deserts round-trip rides to and from a grocery store for just $2.50. The program directly applies the promise of the brand—convenience in mobility—to a real-world problem felt by a vulnerable community, and instills a deep sense of brand trust in the process.

Establishing Stronger, Trusted Collaboration

DMEXCO didn’t focus just on trust between brand and consumers; there was talk around trust and transparency between partnerships as well. Accuracy of data, for example, has been a contentious issue of late, as has a lack of transparency, which have both led to the rising trend in in-house agencies. In an interview with Sir Martin Sorrell at DMEXCO, the S4 Capital founder and CEO put it simply: “What is happening now is clients are taking back control.”

But even in-house brands require partners, and entrusting a partner that can help propel them into the future is an important decision for these organizations. Citing a need to deliver faster with diminished budgets, these brands are drawn toward forward integration: cutting out the middleman to retain a stronger control of production, scale up and achieve faster delivery themselves. Agencies must pivot their offerings to conform to these new market priorities, like with the dedicated teams we implement to directly augment brands’ capabilities and production over the long term.

“They’re starting to see in digital transformation: what are the things they can do in 24/7 always-on content?” Sir Martin noted in his interview. With much at stake and a constant craving for conversation from consumers, brands require teams that can iterate quickly and without indecision—highlighting the need for partnerships built around a clear understanding of what the brand stands for. 

With all the talk around shifts in trust and privacy at DMEXCO, it’s clear that these challenges are resonant with brands, agencies and the marketers who bring them both together. Key to building trust across them in the age of the consumer are new partnerships that allow brands to take back control through a flexible, agile process. This way, they can future-proof by recognizing and reacting to changing consumer priorities in a way that builds trust, respect and empathy.

Header photo ©Koelnmesse