Adweek Commerce Week’s Day One theme focused on what’s new and next for managing customer relationships. Marketers, agencies and technology partners talked about how, in this constant world of instability, we must continue moving from transactional to transformational, using all the tools within our resources to deliver on customers’ needs. A few key directives emerged:
Activation Innovation via Partners and Formats
Throughout each session, the theme of innovation was front and center in relation to how we could innovate with media rather than product. With so many new partners popping up, there are more ways than ever to reach consumers. And while many platforms have performed well in the past, marketers referenced Leonard Sweet’s famous quote “stagnation is death.” So, the question is, how do we allow marketers to be innovative?
According to some, the key is:
Structuring a team and workload in a way that allows marketers enough headspace to be curious.
Creating an environment that encourages risk and potential failure. Different companies offered multiple approaches to putting activation or media innovation into practice:
The 80/20 rule: 80% of budgets dedicated to tried-and-true tactics and/or partners and 20%going to test and learn opportunities
The 50/30/20 rule: 50% to proven methods, 30% to calculated risks, 20% to unproven experimentation (which may be likely to fail)
Regardless of the method employed, what’s most important is the ability to quickly analyze the results, share them within an organization and across brands then determine if and how that innovation is activated in the future.
Data Into Insights
Data continued to be a huge topic throughout the day. As marketers have faced data overload in the past, they’re now looking to ensure that data turns into actionable insights. Marketers highlighted a few ways that they’re using data more innovatively.
Data for loss prevention: Understanding what items need to be under lock and key, where they should be positioned in the store and which high risk geographies may require more security.
Data for total box optimization: Some retailers have been optimizing their offerings by geography for a long time, but they can get more precise than ever before, really delivering on consumer needs.
Data for innovation: This applies to product as well as tactical innovation mentioned above.
Data to win over competition: Marketers should be using data to go beyond conquesting to optimize their media spend. Determine which competitive products have negative reviews or consistent out of stocks and target those shoppers.
Data to drive creativity: DCO has been a topic of conversation for years, but with creative constraints it’s not always been put to use effectively. There are more ways than ever to use UGC combined with data to serve customers the right content that will inspire action.
Together, using data-driven insights in a multitude of ways transforms how we deliver truly curated experiences for customers that build relationships, loyalty and sales over a lifetime.
This article is part of the Adweek Commerce Week Trends Report 2022 – download the full report here.
