DM Magazine April 2019

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Knowing who’s at the party

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Creativity: A fading spark we must reignite PM 4 0 0 5 0 8 0 3

vol. 32 • No. 4 • April 2019

The Authority on Data-Driven Engagement & Operations

The direct blur ❱4

How to create more meaningful customer engagements

❱ 11 The case for omnichannel marketing Carl Boutet is executive director of CloudRaker’s retail strategy, data and insights practice.

Courtesy Cloudraker

❱ 7 Reinventing retail

// 3 On the cover Vol. 32 | No. 4 | April 2019

Customer Centricity

EDITOR Brendan Read - brendan@dmn.ca

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PRESIDENT Steve Lloyd - steve@dmn.ca

The direct blur

DESIGN / PRODUCTION Jennifer O’Neill - jennifer@dmn.ca Advertising Sales Mark Henry - mark@dmn.ca CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Sergey Kostikov Adriano Almeida Rytis Lauris Carl Boutet Zander Mabin Paula Courtney Alon Melchner Kenneth Evans Stephen Shaw Agostino Guastella Paul Tyndall Janil Jean

Retail

Relationship marketing

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Understanding tomorrow’s Canadian consumer

Developing relationship marketing Feature

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Reinventing retail

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Why web-based AR

Knowing who’s at the party

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Mixed Reality: the next revolution

News | Events Fundraising Day

E-Commerce ❯❯11

The case for omnichannel marketing

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Creativity: A fading spark we must reignite

Why DIY your logo

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Images: the currency of e-commerce April 2019

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Customer Centricity

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The direct blur A

s the lines of physical and digital commerce increasingly blur, does our ability to directly connect with consumers also fall out of focus? Can even the faintest line of differentiation be discerned? Are those differences still relevant?

There are so many questions as the channels with which we can connect and engage multiply. I would suggest that this intersection creates greater opportunities to create more meaningful engagements.

Let’s see how.

Carl Boutet is executive director of CloudRaker’s (www.cloudraker.com) retail strategy, data and insights practice. He is also lead advisor, Bensadoun Retail School of Management Lab at McGill University.

The importance of personalization One can easily argue that it’s all the same consumer and attempting to address their needs differently is irrelevant. They are the same buyer and their needs have to be addressed with consistency above all else. But do they? It is possible that the consumer’s online behaviour emphasizes research, discovery and convenience. On the other hand, their in-store needs might be more focused on experience and customer service. Is it even fair to generalize with all the data we could potentially access (with their clear permission) about their browsing and shopping behaviours? We should have clear strategies to address the different ways consumers engage with us depending on the social platform, mobile, in-store, in person or in chat.

With so many channels, touchpoints and opportunities to connect and, dare I say, “personalize”, direct contact in a meaningful and measurable way is no longer just a “nice to have”. The key is figuring out what those contacts are and creating a company culture of iteration to constantly improve upon them.

Avoiding internal disconnects Gathering the best data and building correlations around specific behaviours is one thing, making them actionable in order to execute personalization programmes is an entire other skillset. This requires a near-perfect integration between all your operational assets. As the new saying goes, “silos belong on farms”.

Your company can no longer afford any operations, IT and marketing disconnects. The complexities can seem overwhelming of integrating so many systems (think point of sale or POS, CRM, enterprise resource planning or ERP and digital analytics for starters). A disciplined approach, and a clear focus on what matters to your customer and bottom line, remains critical.

The important question that arises is which departments now own this complex intersection of customer engagements that provides the raw material for personalization. As the focus of its output should be squarely focused on meeting consumer needs, it seems clear that marketing leaders need to lead this integration in close collaboration with other strategic leaders.

This means the marketing lead (e.g. chief marketing officer or CMO, vice president of marketing) is not only accountable for meeting customer expectations, but also for determining strategic go-to-market

❱ DMN.ca

priorities and resource allocation. For this reason, it is no surprise that an increasing number of companies now have IT and data science reporting into senior marketing leaders.

Personalization examples So which companies do personalization right? Sephora is often cited as being among the best at creating strong personalized content both online and in-store.

It’s a near-complete blur of physical and digital, with in-store digital assistants and live in-home tutorials.

We can also look outside of the retail industry. For example, the latest hospitality and entertainment trends can always inspire. Those lines are also blurring with retail. A hospitality brand that is worth following with its interesting predictive work is Airbnb as it expands its “experiences” offering. China is also a hotbed of retail innovation. We can think of the e-commerce behemoth Alibaba with its now hot Hema grocery store or FlyZoo hotels that elevate the possibilities to an entirely new level, mostly thanks to sophisticated uses of anticipatory fulfillment, computer vision and natural language processing.

Adding context to relationships Let’s face it, most of what we’ve called loyalty programmes for many years have lacked a key ingredient: something of actual contextual worth for the customer. They were willingly sharing in their every action and purchase, in return for 10x points programmes or worse, irrelevant offers.

There are now so many opportunities to personalize those offers with the support of predictive algorithms that go well beyond the traditional “people who bought this, also bought that” suggestions. Consider how good content might create greater customer lifetime value (a top metric for all retailers and brands) if true value beyond simple transaction is created through a better understanding of needs in context. A favourite example of mine is how AliExpress will suggest guitar lessons for customers who recently bought guitars rather than the picks and strings (or even other guitars) that Amazon would typically suggest. That’s smart personalization.

Is building a meaningful relationship with your customers part of your value proposition? Then your company culture will be your core competency, built around this notion of an integrated yet personalized approach based on tight customer feedback loops.

Data science (i.e. the proper use of data in context) will also be a critical skill at levels we have yet to begin to appreciate. Today, we can still get away with some convenient generalities around “generations” and “regions”. That will change as it will become clear to customers which companies best anticipate their needs and meet them and be rewarded with their business.

Like our blurring communication channels, our clients’ individual needs are not static. We can’t afford to be either.

April 2019

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// 6

Retail

Understanding tomorrow’s Canadian consumer

By Paula Courtney

W

hat motivates the consumer of today and what will motivate them tomorrow? This is the eternal question that, in retail, we must be continuously mindful of.

In partnership with the Retail Council of Canada and Google, WisePlum recently launched our second annual study: Understanding the Canadian Consumer, an exploration into what consumers truly want and need. The goal was to gain a better understanding of the attitudes and experiences of Canadian consumers across the entire shopping journey, regardless of channel. The study, consisting of an online survey, analyzed data from the responses of over 5,000 consumers in fall 2018.

Needless to say, some of the results surprised us.

Takeaway #1: Omnichannel shoppers are all shoppers Just because someone is fond of the bricks-and-mortar (B&M) experience, it doesn’t mean that they make their purchases wholly in-store. Findings from the study support the need for this shift in thinking. Retailers need to view consumers as omnichannel consumers, because in today’s marketplace, that’s exactly what they are: ❯❯ 61% of shoppers did at least one online activity prior to an in-store purchase; ❯❯ 65% of shoppers did at least one offline activity prior to an online purchase, and ❯❯ On average, shoppers engaged in more than two cross-channel activities before making a purchase.

Before a consumer even steps foot in a store, or opens a web site to make a purchase, there are many forces at work. Consumers compare prices, browse products and online flyers, check out reviews and ask friends and family ❱ DMN.ca

for input. Retailers must meet their customers in their desired channels throughout the purchase journey, particularly during the research phase as 80% of those surveyed had already decided which retailer they were going to use before making the decision to purchase.

Takeaway #2: Customer friction abounds throughout the retail experience Retailers should be worried.

Why? Because despite the large investments that most of them have made in improving the customer experience, consumers continue to experience friction during their purchase journey. We found that half of all consumers surveyed reported experiencing problems at some point during their last purchases. And it’s not a single isolated issue. Those surveyed reported having, on average, 3.4 problems during their last shopping trip.

made a purchase online reported issues, with being “forced to login/ sign-up to complete purchase” being the top complaint.

Why should retailers care?

Our findings show that when consumers experience a problem they become less loyal. But we were surprised to learn that the degree of loyalty suppression varies by purchase channel.

When in-store shoppers don’t experience friction, 51% will

There is a stark contrast between purchase channels. Those who made their purchases online were more likely to report problems than those who made their purchase in-store: 67% to 41% respectively. This is the second year in a row where we found that the online experience resulted in more friction than the B&M experience.

For online purchases, it’s not the slow-loading photos or the lack of inventory that’s the problem: it’s the finish line. 55% of those who

definitely recommend that retailer to a friend or colleague. But when friction occurs only 44% will definitely recommend that retailer: a difference of seven percentage points.

We see more extreme results for online shoppers: 59% of those without friction compared to 41% of those with friction will definitely recommend that retailer to a friend of colleague, which is a difference of 18 percentage points.

The upside is greater when retailers

deliver great online experiences, but unfortunately when friction exists, so is the downside.

Takeaway #3: Customers want improvements that make shopping easier The shopping experience doesn’t necessarily have to be personalized, but it must be easy.

Sure, there’s a lot of focus on the use of technology to jazz up the shopping experience. But at the end of the day, today’s shopper still cares about the basics: faster check-out and improved product availability and assortment, regardless of whether it’s an in-store or an online purchase.

These types of improvements save consumers time and make it easy for them to find the products they want, how they want it.

An area for improvement that we were surprised to learn is low on a consumer’s list pertained to sustainability. We explored consumer opinions on the topic of packaging with online purchases. We were shocked by what we discovered. When asked to describe the packaging used for shipping, a vast majority of consumers, 81% to be exact, said they found it to be just the right amount.

Perhaps we would see a different insight if we cross-referenced this question with frequency of online orders. Someone who shops online once a week certainly won’t have as Continued on page 21 April 2019

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Retail

Reinventing retail

By Adriano Almeida

April 2019

Courtesy Nike

T

Converse flagship store, Lovejoy Wharf, Boston MA.

Retail developments: are they enough?

Most of us have seen a pop-up store in our local mall or in public spaces. These can be either purely seasonal or they might move from market to market, chasing consumer shopping patterns like a mariner following ocean currents.

For example, Montreal, Quebecbased landlord Ivanhoe Cambridge recently announced that it would be launching a pop-up initiative, marketing specific retail space in ten of its properties for the exclusive use of short-term pop-up retail clients.

We have also seen a huge increase in the use of interactive and experiential activation at retail. Brands understand that great experiences lead to brand affinity, loyalty and increased sales. You can walk into a Converse flagship store and watch custom laces being woven while you select from bolts of fabric to create your own one-of-a-kind Chuck Taylors.

Meanwhile New Balance installed their 3D scanning experience, NB

Courtesy Nike

sporting events, to mobile crosscountry tours and to private customer events just off-site from established trade shows. However, one of the more unique paradigm shifts that we are seeing today comes from the world of retail.

Courtesy Nike

hink about the last time you attended a trade show. You probably registered online and then travelled to some conference centre or hotel for the promise of receiving education, insight and experiences that were tailored to your particular field of interest.

Whether for business or pleasure, these frenetic gatherings of like-minded individuals have been a mainstay of the marketing world since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, covering a dizzying array of interests and fields. There is a trade show for everything!

However, attendees are not the only ones who benefit. Brands of all shapes and sizes eagerly jockey for floor space and position in an effort to directly market to a dense and targeted collective of their desired demographics: and they pay dearly for the privilege.

For those of us who have worked behind the scenes in the world of experiential event marketing, the Herculean effort required to design, develop and execute a successful exhibit or event marketing programme can be daunting. And they can take on the cost and complexity of a major Broadway production. It is no wonder that, as marketing budgets and return on investment (ROI) continue to fall under greater scrutiny, marketers are being pushed to find new ways, and new places, in which to activate experiences to reach their audiences.

This is nothing new. Many brands employ a variety of methods to break from the visual noise and competition of the trade show hall in the hopes of standing apart. It can be a difficult decision to pull away from an established event, with its dense and targeted audience, and strike out on your own.

Even so, we have seen this strategy successfully executed in varying degrees and forms: everything from sponsorship activations at festivals and

Stride ID, into partner SportChek locations to help pair runners with their perfect shoe.

While both of these retail trends are noteworthy in their own right, pop-up and experiential store activations are both still very much tied to traditional retail practices. Meaning that they are both intended to facilitate on-site sales. But as the e-commerce juggernaut continues to push more and more transactions online, the practicality of a bricks-and-mortar storefront keeps coming into question for many retailers.

Applying show experiences to retail But‌what if the primary function of these retail spaces were to change? What if, rather than driving pure sales on-site, these floors were instead used to generate positive brand experiences, to open dialogues with new customers or even to simply help facilitate future online purchases and interactions?

These are goals that we would expect to find in a trade show hall, not our local shopping mall. While e-commerce may be having a detrimental effect on DMN.ca â?°

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Courtesy Sonos

Courtesy Sonos

Courtesy Sonos

Retail

Sonos New York City flagship location.

physical storefronts, these spaces may very well be providing new opportunities for brands that want to activate in less competitive environs while reaching audiences in new and creative ways.

Enter the enterprising experiential marketer! They have been creating experience stores that focus on providing show-like experiences. These stores then shift most if not all transactions online, where they can be conducted more efficiently and take up much less footprint than in-store, while enabling them to focus staff on assisting customers.

assistance. While you can still buy the latest Galaxy device at 837, you won’t find shelves and displays full of Samsung product. The whole “store” is meant to be a physical personification of the brand and its possibilities.

A similar approach was taken

by Sonos for its New York City flagship location (101 Greene St.). The environment features beautiful sound-themed art and furnishings while the experience centers on a series of soundproofed rooms. Each room resembles a miniature clubhouse and is themed after different areas of the

store. Again, no obvious sign of a sales counter and the staff are more musical curators than sales agents.

One more noteworthy space we visited was the STORY Store at 144 10th Ave. This entirely unique concept is the brainchild of Rachel Shechtman. The creative team at STORY provide a transient magazine-themed retail experience that tells the story of just about anything.

Past themes have included Color, Making Things, Love and Made

Show-like experience stores shift most if not all transactions online, enabling them to focus staff on assisting customers.

A recent visit to New York City offered unique and exciting glimpses into some unique and creative experience stores. At Samsung 837 (837 Washington St.) you can walk on the moon, draw a caricature, ride a surfboard or learn how to automate your home with your phone. You can even bring in your device for tech ❱ DMN.ca

home. You simply step inside, sit down and the room prompts you to play your favourite tune or help explore new artists. The immersive experience is powerful and highly individualized to each visitor. Each room is outfitted with an array of Sonos products, but the only wall of speakers here was a two-storey sculpture along the rear of the

in America. STORY has also partnered with brands to create bespoke experiences and spaces that you would never expect. These experiences last just four to eight weeks and then the store shuts down for three to four more weeks to re-imagine itself with an entirely new theme. There are usually items for sale, but the real buzz

is caused by the team’s creativity and collaborative approach at bringing ideas and brands to life in a physical gallery environment.

Some may consider it a pop-up, but it feels more like art installation.

Working with clients on trade shows, museums, retail and event programmes has exposed our teams to a variety of trends over the years, but this is one of the few times where two of these areas have begun to cross over into each other. I look forward to watching and helping this trend evolve and seeing how it might further disrupt the worlds of event marketing and retail alike.

So, the next time you’re out shopping, keep your eyes open.

You may be in for an unexpected experience.

Adriano Almeida is head of creative services

and strategy at Kubik Inc. (https://thinkubik.com). Blending his background in architecture and fine arts with a degree in industrial design, Adriano focuses his talents on creating unique environments and events for the world’s top brands. He has spent the last 18 years developing experiential programs and face-to-face marketing initiatives for a global list of clients.

April 2019

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Retail

Why web-based AR

By Zander Mabin

I

n the last decade, augmented reality (AR) has quickly changed how all manner of industries reach and interact with their audiences. AR has found strong footholds in sectors like marketing and retail and the technology thrives in them for two reasons: one, because it engages customers to connect with the brands and products they enjoy and two, it gives new options for customers to exercise purchasing power.

AR’s development started in research labs in the 1960s, but only in the 2000s did it emerge as a practical technology option for companies and organizations. A decade later AR was cropping up more and more frequently, from sportscasts to advertisements.

Today, AR is seeing its biggest growth yet. The enterprise embrace of it is on pace with other high-tech innovations like 3D printing and artificial intelligence (AI).

Estimates suggest that there will be one billion users of AR by 2020 and that the global AR market will grow to USD $94.4 billion by 20231.

Understanding and enabling AR With these encouraging statistics, it makes sense to want to adapt a business strategy to include augmented reality. But before adopting AR, it is important to first understand what AR is, why it rose so rapidly in popularity and how it will be deployed in the coming years.

Put simply, AR is any interactive experience that overlays computergenerated information (most commonly visuals or sounds) onto a real-world environment. The results are stunning use cases that merge digital and physical spaces.

AR delivers experiences unlike anything seen before.

The hardware required to support AR was once a major investment: something that only corporate giants like Disney or BMW could afford. While this led to exciting theme park rides and never-before-seen advertising, there was still another big barrier keeping most organizations away from implementing AR and April 2019

that was the lack of accessibility by customers. Consumers (and business buyers) had to go somewhere to experience AR. The arrival of smartphones with advanced processing power solved that issue. These devices untethered AR from fixed spots and made it available in new and exciting locations. This market trend, along with advancements in software, have made apps a cost-effective way to bring AR to millions of people. Today, companies can produce custom AR experiences that can be situated nearly anywhere and activated by a person’s phone.

And while other AR devices exist, like AR-enabled headsets, they constitute a niche section of this technology. Overwhelmingly, individuals choose their smartphones to run mobile apps with AR features.

AR examples The most recognizable reference point for app-based AR is the video game Pokémon GO. Premiering in 2016, it was the first AR experience for many people. But because of its immediate and widespread success, this game changed the public conversation about AR and brought it into the commercial spotlight.

But even before Pokémon GO became an overnight sensation, retail companies had produced AR applications of their own to improve the e-commerce or in-store experiences. Here are some of the best examples. ❯❯ IKEA, the Swedish home goods company, led the charge on embracing AR. As early as 2013, the conglomerate offered a mobile app that brought 3D models of their furniture into a user’s home. Known today in an updated version called IKEA Place, the app allows customers to see how a product will fit in a room or match with the pieces they already own; ❯❯ In a similar way, Lacoste’s app enables customers to “try-on” shoes within the comfort of their homes. Virtual sneakers “fit” over a user’s foot, giving an

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instant impression of what option is the right choice for them; and American Apparel’s app encourages shoppers to scan in-store signage to discover product details and online customer reviews. This feature is aimed at the 60% of shoppers who use phones to find information about products while shopping in-person2.

As shown in the examples above, AR is driving convenience and useful information to the forefront of the customer experience, whether they’re shopping in-store or online. People can more easily find what product is best suited for their lifestyle and budget with AR integrations.

Moving to web-based AR While an app-based approach has been commonplace in the retail sector, there is now a glut of AR-enabled commercial apps on Apple’s App and Google’s Play stores, forcing users to download a separate app for every AR experience. Even worse, one out of every four users only open an app once after download. They either let the app sit unused or they soon delete it for another3.

This happens for many reasons: whether a user’s phone storage is full, if the app is buggy or drains battery life or if the novelty of the app simply wears off. But this rate of “app turnover” poses an issue for businesses looking to incorporate AR into their strategies, particularly retail companies as they are among the most prone to it.

Web-based AR offers solutions to the problems inherent to an app-based approach. It requires no downloads, eliminating the anxiety of app turn-over. Instead, a customer visits a web page on their mobile browser, positions their phone camera and instantly connects with the augmented content. Because of its ease of access and customizability, webbased AR is on the rise4.

Augmented reality needs to be seamless, immersive and easily accessible. By removing the barrier of app downloads and bringing web-based AR to mobile devices, AR is poised for rapid mainstream adoption.

Zander Mabin is founder and CEO of InnovatAR

(https://innovatar.io/) an emerging tech startup that specializes in developing webbased AR experiences. InnovatAR is prepared to serve all manner of North American clients and help them integrate augmented reality solutions into their business strategies.

1 Prescient & Strategic (P&S) Intelligence Private Limited, “Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality Market by Devices, by Component, by Application by Geography - Global Market Size, Share, Development, Growth, and Demand Forecast, 2013 – 2023”, report, June 2018.

2 Sandy Skrovan, “How shoppers use their smartphones in stores [Report]”, RetailDive, article, June 7, 2017.

3 Amartya Baidya, “Mobile App Retention Challenge: 75% of Users Uninstall An App Within 90 Days”, dazeinfo.com, report, May 19, 2016.

4 Hermes Frangoudis, “Web vs App (AR edition), Agora. io, blog, January 30, 2019.

DMN.ca ❰

// 10

Retail

Mixed Reality: the next revolution

By Alon Melchner

L

et’s look back ten to 12 years and consider if anyone could imagine just how smartphones would change our lives or the effect it would have on our social life, leisure, finance and our consumption of data and sales.

Just consider that nearly half of holiday shoppers had planned to use their smartphones and a fourth said they would use their tablets for the 2018 holiday shopping season1. Black Friday last year racked up USD $6.2 billion in online revenue, with over 30% of sales on the traditionally bricks-and-mortar shopping day were conducted using mobile devices2. Now imagine what would have happened if we combined this experience in a more realistic, natural way?

The beginnings Up to now, content has been consumed unnaturally in 2D format, first in print, later on radio and TV and more recently on the Internet and digitally in both fixed locations and now increasingly on mobile devices. But we live and interact in a three-dimensional world.

So why have we interacted on 2D screens until now? Technology had not yet been developed despite some attempts. The catch is that in all cases the content has been viewed on square and relatively limited screens.

Augmented reality (AR) led to some improvement providing 3D content in front of cameras or maybe in newspaper online ads that were brought to life with AR. But we still watched the content on 2D mobile device screens.

Virtual reality (VR) allowed us to immerse ourselves in 3D virtual spaces, which bear a greater resemblance to the 3D experience. With a headset we could experience and interact with content and feel as if it were really there. Despite the novelty, the user was taken into a virtual environment that was not connected with the real world.

But the aim of both AR and VR

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was to change reality, improving on it and to create new experiences.

What we’ve seen is a preview of what is coming and it will be much sooner than anyone expected. The digital world will then become part of reality.

Enter mixed reality Mixed reality (MR), as opposed to AR and VR, is where digital content understands the real world, makes use of real locations and is part of the actual or physical worlds, in a natural and realistic way. MR remains constant until it moves, just like a real object, easily viewed by anyone who is at the location. In effect it becomes part of reality.

The MR revolution will begin on mobile phones. The users will activate the cameras and see the world covered accurately with digital content. The market is estimated at more than $200 billion by 20223.

The next stage will be the introduction of smart glasses by all of the leading manufacturers.

Apple will probably release their product by 2020 and this is likely to be the next wave in technology similar to what the iPhone was for the smartphone market.

Some companies like Mixed.Place are developing an infrastructure that will enable the business world to easily adapt locationbased MR content. By developing the necessary technology now, retailers will be ready for the revolutionary changes in stores: similar to what happened more than a decade ago with the introduction of e-commerce web sites and mobile apps.

How can the retail world take advantage of MR? ❯❯ To increase sales, engagements, loyalty and foot-traffic experiences; ❯❯ Combine personalized, digital products on shelves inside real stores or shopping malls. No need to offer pop-up tables in stores with just a few products as MR allows retailers to offer products according to different

Alon Melchner is CEO of Mixed.Place

❯❯

❯❯

❯❯

parameters like gender, age or colour; Use interactive mannequins that can have one’s gender, body size and wearing a favourite colour.

Artificial intelligence (AI) will be used to answer any questions, give directions and lead to increased sales; Create foot-traffic and engagements at real locations in the stores. Attract customers to specific brands or locations within the stores; and Interactive window shopping: enabling customers to “magically” remove products from the display windows, see how it looks on them and experience the products’ feel. The products could then be bought in the store or in MR-enabled e-commerce.

E-commerce will enter a new era when the consumer will have a virtual closet or shelf in their own home. When it is opened, the customer will see personalized offers using 3D realistic technology that can be bought by just dragging the product into one’s own room.

How will marketing change?

Advertisements, billboards, mass transit ads and points of sale (POS) can be brought to life by changing the concept of the street, room or the world at large; ❯❯ Marketers will be able to equip customers with tools to change the world by enabling them to colour the streets with ❯❯

❯❯

❯❯

companies’ colours, products and/or logos. The digital content will remain at the locations and be visible only with the use of mobile devices or smart glasses. Pokémon Go did it with predefined Pokémons on a map; Virtual collectibles and loyalty programmes will be upgraded and become global experiences that are interactive, infinite, exciting and viral. They merge the digital and real worlds; and Social experiences and content will grow exponentially as a result of new innovative technologies, and this will be accompanied by an increase in creativity. Snapchat was the first to try this, but the trend will explode in the future and can be used to highlight any brand.

Be prepared for the Mixed Reality revolution, which is coming within one to two years.

Everyone will be taking part in the MR world. Billions of dollars are expected to be invested in this new revolutionary medium.

Consumers are looking for new and innovative experiences. Jump on the bandwagon.

Alon Melchner is CEO of Mixed.Place (www.mixed.place).

1 Rod Sides, Bryan Furman, Rama Krishna V Sangadi and Susan K. Hogan, “2018 Deloitte holiday retail survey,” Deloitte, article, October 23, 2018.

2 Ingrid Lunden,” Black Friday hits $6.2B in US online sales, smartphones accounted for $2.1B”, TechCrunch, article, November 23, 2018.

3 “Forecast augmented (AR) and virtual reality (VR) market size worldwide from 2016 to 2022 (in billion U.S. dollars)”, Statista, 2019.

April 2019

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E-Commerce

The case for omnichannel marketing

By Rytis Lauris

D

igital marketing is evolving, and it’s not hard to see why.

The digital consumer of today is more demanding than ever before, and they aren’t willing to negotiate on the kind of experience they’re looking for. We see customers reaching out on several different channels and expecting the same personalized experience on each channel. This is why a single channel or even multichannel strategy just isn’t enough anymore.

As opposed to multichannel, which is a brand reaching out on as many channels as possible, omnichannel puts the customer at the center of your marketing strategy and creates a seamless experience around them. Because omnichannel marketing is about supplying a better customer experience it means putting the customer at the center of everything you do.

Consumers expecting an omnichannel experience is far from a passing fad. Marketers who are succeeding today are the early adopters; they saw the need for an omnichannel experience and they have adapted their entire business models around providing it.

When you as a marketer put the customer at the center of your strategy, you’ll not only improve your return on investment (ROI) and increase your revenue, but you’ll foster a more loyal customer.

For proof, you only need to look to the data.

Omnichannel vs. single channel At Omnisend, we regularly examine the data surrounding our marketers for insights that might help them succeed. As an omnichannel marketing automation platform, we are lucky to have a firsthand look into how consumers react to omnichannel and what best practices to follow.

In research we published in January 2019 we looked into how online marketers adapted their strategies to the post-holiday April 2019

season. We studied key marketers across the globe using Omnisend who set up automation that involved more than two separate channels. These channels could be, as examples, e-mail, SMS, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Viber and web push notifications.

Many marketers start off using e-mail marketing, possibly SMS marketing within the same campaigns. However, we hypothesized that those who used more channels would have better campaign performances. So we decided to compare marketers who employed an omnichannel strategy to those who sent single-channel campaigns.

We found that those who were taking advantage of an omnichannel strategy had the best results of all of our marketers. For marketers who employed three or more channels in their marketing campaigns, both engagement and purchase rate were upwards of 250% higher than those who used just e-mail.

After learning about the impact on revenue, we decided to look at the customers who were receiving these campaigns. In fact, the customers who interacted with campaigns using three to four channels spent 13% more on average than customers who engaged with just one or two channels. Not only were customers engaging with and purchasing more often from these campaigns, they were spending more per purchase.

Finally, we wanted to see if these kinds of campaigns had any impact on customer loyalty. In our comparison, we found that repeat purchases were higher for the marketers using omnichannel campaigns: they enjoyed a 90% higher customer retention rate.

These results ultimately supported our thinking. E-mail is such a powerful channel, but the ROI of e-mail campaigns can be improved by reinforcing those campaigns with other channels.

Valentine’s Day and SMS marketing We then decided to check the results of Valentine’s Day campaigns for these same marketers. While Valentine’s Day is not as colossal a holiday as Black Friday or Christmas, it still presents a significant opportunity for many online retailers.

We compared Valentine’s Day campaigns between the 13th and 15th of February: a time when many online brands like to give special gifts or promotions to their customers. As it turns out, in comparing 2019’s Valentine’s Day campaigns to those in 2018 we found that our marketers sent twice as many campaigns this year.

However, e-mail was far from the big winner for this holiday.

Compared to 2018, orders from e-mail campaigns fell by 12.9% in 2019.

A bit shocked by this data, we decided to dig a little deeper. It turned out that orders fell from campaigns that were e-mail exclusive, meaning that these marketers sent many more e-mails, but they failed to include any other channel into their promotions. But when we looked into marketers who included at least one other channel, the results were much different. Marketers who opted to include SMS the most often into their automation workflows (combining SMS with e-mail marketing), earned 38% more revenue than their e-mail-only counterparts.

If this data tells us anything, it’s this: e-mail marketing is not enough on its own anymore.

Especially around significant online shopping holidays and events, using an omnichannel strategy is more important than ever before.

Opportunities for Canadian marketers Throughout our research, we noticed that our Canadian customers weren’t taking advantage of the omnichannel

marketing automation features that we offered. This came as a surprise, so we looked to external studies to see if others had had the same results.

According to a study by OrderDynamics, North America, and Canada, tends to lag behind Europe in omnichannel marketing implementation1. This presents an amazing opportunity for Canadian marketers to differentiate themselves from others who aren’t adopting this strategy by providing an even better customer experience.

Canadian brands have room to grow in the omnichannel sector.

Only 4% of all SMS messages in Canada are sent between a customer and a brand, according to a survey published by TTAG Systems2. We’ve already seen what adding just SMS to an e-mail automation workflow can do. But that same survey also mentioned that 75% of Canadian consumers said they would opt-in for SMS communication with a trusted brand. This means that there is a real demand with Canadian consumers for more options to engage with brands.

Online customers today are demanding an omnichannel experience, and the brands that cultivate such an experience are those that target a long-term strategy.

Customers are willing to reward the brands that provide this experience with loyalty, and higher, more frequent purchases.

But this window of opportunity won’t last, and it will only become narrower as this strategy becomes more mainstream. Canadian marketers would be wise to begin implementing their omnichannel strategies today.

Rytis Lauris is co-founder and CEO of Omnisend (www.omnisend.com).

1 OrderDynamics, “OMNI-2000 Research: Canada”, January 30, 2019.

2 Vahagn Aydinyan, “Canadian Text Messaging Usage Preferences: What Marketers Need to Know”, TTAG Systems, blog, January 9, 2018.

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E-commerce

Why DIY your logo

By Janil Jean

E

very day more and more businesses are moving online just to meet consumer demands.

Unsurprisingly, this demand confluences with the rise of mobile device users by as much as 61% in 2018, according to research gathered by Statista1; it also reports there will be a 17.5% sales increase worldwide by 20212.

Let’s take a step back and analyze what these numbers mean for e-commerce startups. And how a do-it-yourself (DIY) logo tool will be key to e-commerce success.

Digital buyer demand Just like in any economy, a swing in demand means there will be an increase in tertiary and related products and services. This is why there has been an increase for PayPal accounts worldwide, up to 220 million in 20173. Retail e-commerce sales is estimated to increase up to $4.9 trillion by 2021, according to the Global Ecommerce Playbook4.

The influx of digital buyers means that there will be more e-commerce startups sprouting up to meet their needs from retail consumer products to supplemental health care, real estate, banking and other services.

And they will need brand identities for their businesses.

Importance of visual identity A logo is the face of your brand.

It identifies your business from

among the plethora of other e-commerce portals. While a logo is not your whole brand identity, it is a cornerstone emblem worth investing your time and money in. That is why brands like Accenture, Symantec, BBC and Pepsi spend millions of dollars on their logo design5, and you may be wondering why.

One of the most important roles of a logo design is in branding.

Branding involves the use of elements of the logo design for creating visual identities. This may include marketing materials, stationery, flyers, brochures, e-mail signatures, web sites, social media images, videos, SlideShares and any other form of content used by e-commerce firms.

According to HubSpot, marketers use approximately 80% of visuals in their social media marketing6, and guess what makes these visuals distinctive? A logo of course!

Custom or DIY logo design?

Once upon a time logo designing had been the exclusive domain of high-profile design agencies (it still is, which take days to come up with a couple of concepts to present them to the clients. But today with the rise in the gig economy and freelance graphic designers, getting a logo design is not as much of a problem. In fact, there is a great many agency graphic designers who’ve turned to freelance because of the freedom this mode of work offers and the great pay they get

from gig projects.

Now the question is whether you should go for a custom logo or logo maker software for your brand?

Cost is a key factor. A conceptualized custom logo can range anywhere between $100 to $1,000 depending on the experience, package and complexity of the design. Then comes the costly agencies which may charge between $1,000 to $2,400 for a logo design with multiple file formats, dedicated support staff and creative directors working with you. And if you can afford even more high-end logo designs beyond $2,500 then there are the established famous brand agencies like Meta Design, Project 6, RSM Design, Pentagram, Interbrand and Landor.

On the other side of the spectrum you’ll see a multitude of logo makers like LogoDesign.net offering DIY logo design solutions. Some offer simple icons with options for company names while others have complex design studios that resemble graphic design software, such as Adobe Illustrator. You can customize elements including fonts, colours, taglines and graphical effects. And the best part of using a logo maker is that you don’t need to have graphic design skills to get one. You can design your logo and download for use in minutes for as much as $30. You can even get some for free!

Final thoughts So, what’s the verdict? The truth

of the matter is as an e-commerce startup, you have a whole lot to take care of, even though everyone else may say “it’s just a web site”. Hosting, web design and development, maintenance, search engine optimization (SEO), merchant accounts and customer interaction applications and staff time to engage with customers cost serious money.

A startup or small business owner can’t afford thousands of dollars for a logo design.

More importantly, what if the e-commerce site doesn’t even pick up speed and earn? In such instances, it’s best to go with a logo that is less costly, sits well with your brand message and which can be effectively used for branding materials.

When you are rich and famous then go for custom logo design agencies. Until then a logo maker is your best bet.

Janil Jean is a top management executive at

LogoDesign.net (www.logodesign.net). She oversees marketing, operations as well as graphic design teams. You can contact her at 844-232-4816 for any branding and design related queries, or connect with her via Twitter or LinkedIn. 1 “Number of mobile phone users worldwide from 2015 to 2020 (in billions)”, Statista, 2019.

2 “E-commerce share of total global retail sales from 2015 to 2021”, Statista, 2019.

3 “Number of PayPal’s total active registered user accounts from 1st quarter 2010 to 4th quarter 2018 (in millions)”, Statista, 2019.

4 Shopify, “Global Ecommerce Playbook”, web site.

5 Inkbot Design, “Top 10 Most Expensive Logo Designs & Rebrands Ever”, blog, March 5, 2017.

6 Jesse Mawhinney, “45 Visual Content Marketing Statistics You Should Know in 2019,” HubSpot, web site.

Do you make decisions about your marketing operations?

Are you responsible for customer acquisition, retention or loyalty?

Is your department in charge of fulfilling orders or customer service?

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April 2019

// 13

E-Commerce

Images: the currency of e-commerce

By Sergey Kostikov

What works: Tim Hortons and Apple The response by a company need not be reactive, not when a company can infuse its image with creativity. Not when it can personalize its image with a series of iconic images. For example: Tim Hortons is not just the namesake of a Canadian institution, of a Canadian who is an institution unto himself but of institutions worldwide. From North America to the United Kingdom and from the Middle East to Southeast Asia, the brand is popular and profitable.

With its handwritten-style name, with the slant of its white-on-red signature on its coffee cups and with its photogenic appearance— with its photographs of primary colours and bright pastels—Tim Hortons has become a global and online brand phenomenon. Its April 2019

Instagram account complements the brand’s esthetics.

Put it a different way, Tim Hortons is an e-commerce company in the guise of a brewer of coffee and a baker of donuts, bagels and muffins that also offers other food items. Its mobile Order & Pay app allows users to customize and complete their orders and it recently launched a rewards programme.

My advice is to emulate that strategy, to extrapolate from what works. To make that strategy work, look (again) at what an effective image looks like. It is simple and selfexplanatory. Like the “bitten apple” of Apple whose logo is a constant in an industry of constant change by an industry that necessitates changes in technology, commerce, entertainment and trade.

The Apple logo is an image on behalf of a company that eschews focus groups—that avoids forced conversations—in favour of what it is natural. Of what comes naturally to consumers when they see that logo and view a set of related images of silhouetted dancers with white earphones against a monochrome backdrop of green, yellow, pink or blue.

Consider, too, the power of a photograph as a billboard: a fixture in Shanghai, Singapore, Thailand and Toronto in which the picture advertises a camera—the camera on an iPhone—with a three-word caption, Shot on iPhone.

That Apple acknowledges the photographer proves the point about why a brand should pay attention to its consumers. That the photographer is active on Instagram, that the picture is a snapshot of his niece and that the photographer promotes Apple by posting pictures from his iPhone: all of these things personalize the business of doing business online.

Where a girl’s face is the face of e-commerce, accounting for $120 billion in sales (since 2008) for app developers from Apple’s App Store1. In so many words, the right picture sells itself.

Apple did not hire a market researcher to tell its executives

what they already knew. Tim Hortons did not hire copywriters to invent a backstory when consumers already knew (and loved) the true story about the company.

Neither company struggled to find the right logo, the right images or the image of rightness they sought to project—that they continue to project—on billboards and the sides of buildings throughout the world. Images that appear on social media too: photographs and videos that people share, tag and post among fans of these respective brands.

Knowing customer motivations Where online research is effective is in real-time, where companies process enormous amounts of data to present customers with advertisements­—on Facebook or Instagram or by and for Amazon—about products that, according to this or that algorithm, these customers may also buy.

The advertisements contain images and copy that correspond (presumably) to the right customers. Is the process a science?

No. Will it be? I doubt it. But will it be more accurate? About that I have no doubts.

When data is so accessible, there is no reason not to know what motivates consumers. When it is more economical than ever for a company to do its own research, when it does not take a lot of research to know how to appeal to consumers and when it is easy to see how appealing a specific photograph or advertisement is, that is when retailers should seize

Jennifer O’Neill

W

hat a brand says— visually—is more powerful than what it tries to say verbally. But for a brand to express itself in images rather than words, for it to use the fewest words possible, to know what words to say and what images to display requires data: instant intelligence about the names, likes, passions and professions of its consumers. That this information is available online, that it is the essence of Instagram, Facebook and Pinterest, that these sites have the data to determine what a brand should say speaks to the power of having the right photograph, logo and video.

Data not only allows a brand to make an impression but to also increase impressions: to have consumers do just that, namely consume goods and share content so that a brand can do more business online. The good news is that so much information is at the ready and for free. If a company invests the time to learn about its consumers and if it follows its followers, it can answer (or come closer to answering) what its consumers want.

the moment. Now is that moment.

Now is the time to research what resonates with consumers, so companies can better communicate their values, so consumers can see the value a company offers and that so everyone can agree to what is valuable.

Sergey Kostikov is the founder and CEO of

FD Photo Studio: (www.fdphotostudio.com) a source of positive disruption within the photography industry that eliminates a series of logistical and financial challenges for photographers, marketers and all manner of business owners.

1 Kevin Kelleher, “Developer’s $34 Billion Earnings from Apple’s App Store Rose 28% in 2018,” Fortune.com, January 29, 2019.

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Relationship Marketing

Developing relationship marketing A: I Stephen Shaw is the chief strategy officer of Kenna, a marketing solutions provider specializing in customer experience management. He is also the host of a regular podcast called Customer First Thinking.

Stephen can be reached via e-mail at sshaw@kenna.ca.

n 1983 a professor at Texas A&M University by the name of Leonard Berry coined the term “relationship marketing” in a paper he presented at an American Marketing Association event. His premise: businesses should focus more of their marketing resources on serving existing customers.

Professor Berry never actually thought his paper was “any kind of breakthrough”; he just figured it was “foolish”, as he put it, that marketing only thought about winning new customers, rarely about retaining them. Yet at the time his argument was so far out of the mainstream that nearly a decade went by before marketers warmed to the idea.

What happened to revive interest was the unraveling of the mass market by the late 1980s. Relationship marketing became recognized as an answer to audience fragmentation.

One of the earliest proponents was Jagdish Sheth, professor of marketing at Emory University. Last year in a paper he authored called Revitalizing Relationship Marketing, Professor Sheth wrote that relationship marketing today was suffering from an “identity crisis” and that marketers needed to stop treating customers as “ID numbers”. For relationship marketing to mature into a higher-order business strategy, he suggested, marketing must shift toward “bonding with customers on an emotional plane”, where “the brand itself acts as a moral compass”, seeking to win a greater “share of heart”.

Jagdish Sheth, professor of marketing at Emory University. He is co-author, Firms of Endearment: How World-Class Companies Profit from Passion and Purpose.

The creative destruction we’re seeing today is actually making marketing more relevant than ever. Back in the ‘90s none of us imagined the impact of the Internet. With video, voice and print coming together, it has become a very powerful medium. So it’s fascinating to see how much bonding is taking place now between companies and their customers.

Q:

Notwithstanding the progress we’ve made since the 1990s, is it still tough to convince businesses to adopt relationship marketing principles? To put the customer ahead of the shareholder and not the other way around?

The idea of putting shareholders first dates back to the energy crisis in the 1970s and I’ll tell you why. The equity market collapsed. The corporate debt ratio became outrageous. Big companies became easy takeover targets because they were cheap assets that could be bought and turned around by breaking them up or by “right-sizing”. That was when the interests of the shareholder became almighty compared to customers, suppliers, community and employees.

Prior to then, capitalism was always more community oriented. And let me tell you why: the great companies in the world always started in small towns. Even though you might be head of a wealthy founder family, you cared about the community around you. But then companies began to move to capital markets like New York City. The hostile takeovers of the ‘80s really amplified this trend. Capitalism started serving just the shareholders instead of all stakeholders.

A:

1:1 challenges

Q: Professor Sheth favours a new “purpose-driven relationship” where customers feel connected to brands based on shared values. He reasons that people today are drawn to brands offering a “transcendent” experience, a theory he first advanced 12 years ago in a book called Firms of Endearment. This more humanistic definition of relationship marketing shares many of the same thematic overtones as the brand purpose movement, which is all about businesses making the world a better place.

The convergence of relationship marketing and brand purpose might end up becoming a whole new branch of academic study. And there is no one more qualified to lead that conversation than Jagdish Sheth, given his renowned scholarly work over the years, his many accolades and awards and his widely acknowledged contribution to the advancement of marketing theory and practice. Here is my conversation with Professor Sheth.

Q:

In Firms of Endearment, you quote a line from a Tom Stoppard play, “It’s the best possible time to be alive and almost everything you thought you knew was wrong.” Do we need to forget everything we ever learned about marketing and hit the reset button?

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You began by referencing the Internet and how it enables a closer bond with customers. But it seems to me that most marketers still default to a broadcast mode of thinking. Why do you think they’re still struggling with the idea of one-to-one (1:1) relationships?

The answer is historical. Until very recently, technology was not a great enabler of 1:1 marketing. So companies struggled to make the transition. But now you see companies converting to a subscription model where they do have relationships [with customers] and can personalize the experience.

A:

Q:

Yet if we look at telcos, or banks for that matter, which have had data-driven 1:1 customer relationships going back more than 30 years, you could argue that many of these are still widely viewed as predatory. Does it come back to this idea of having the right values and principles to begin with?

I totally agree. The way to get there is to prove that being customer-centric is more cost efficient, or if you don’t do it, you put yourself at a competitive disadvantage. If you understand what customers want, their aspirations, their frustrations, their frictions in life—if you just listen to them—they will become brand promoters.

A:

April 2019

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Relationship Marketing Redefining role of marketing

Q:

Is another challenge in that marketing still sees itself as a spear carrier for the brand? In some companies, it’s still perceived as the pretty picture department. Does marketing need to redefine its role as an advocate for the customer?

Marketing has always been organized around buying behaviour. So how does marketing become more customer-centric?

Consider that a customer is a seeker, a buyer, a payer and a user. This is what call the 4A model and it is a powerful way of shifting thinking from brands to customers: ❯❯ Accessibility is what the buyer wants: whether the product is easily and readily available; ❯❯ From the payer viewpoint, the question is Affordability; ❯❯ For the user, it is about Acceptability. Does the product perform as expected, and does it conform to the right brand image, and; ❯❯ Awareness is whether the customer has enough knowledge to make a purchase decision.

A:

Q:

Can I offer you up another “A” which is the idea of “Assistance”?

Because increasingly the job of marketing is to provide help at the exact moment of need.

I think from the customer’s viewpoint, assistance is a great idea. Some people have also suggested Accountability as another “A”. Someone else suggested the term “activation” but that’s really from a brand point of view.

A:

Winning “share of heart”

Q:

I would argue the only thing that the customer really cares about is that the company actually cares about them.

You’re so right. To me, brand reputation, product quality, those are now table stakes.

The goal should be to win the customer’s “share of heart”, not share of wallet. How can a brand appeal to the heart as opposed to the brain?

A:

April 2019

Q:

People are seeking more meaning in their lives.

Brands have to connect with that greater meaning.

Absolutely. People are into self-actualization. Basic needs are taken care of. Just take the share of how much we spend on food: it is the lowest in the world.

And that’s why every brand that I know—especially in consumer products—are all latching on to the concept of brand purpose.

A:

Q:

And you see that with Unilever specifically.

The CEO really advocates for companies having a social purpose. Yet he still struggles with his activist investors.

That goes back to our earlier discussion about shareholders.

An example of their commitment is Unilever’s handwashing campaign in India.

It’s a phenomenal success. A high number of children there die of diarrhoeal disease because most young people don’t wash their hands properly. Lifebuoy runs one of the largest handwashing behaviour change programmes in the world.

A:

Q:

Unilever is an interesting example. As much as I admire them, they do struggle with the balance between social good and commercial interest. For example, they have a skin lightening product, quite popular in India. But that is inconsistent with the brand purpose of Dove, which is all about female self esteem.

That’s Fair & Lovely. It’s very successful product. If you’re a purpose-driven corporation, the question of which brands to keep and which brands to let go is a tough one because customers will connect the dots.

A:

Owning the customer

Q:

We’re now in this age of platform ecosystems with its walled gardens. Is it going to be increasingly difficult for brands to own the relationship with the end-customer when an Amazon can outflank them and even introduce their own products at will?

There is a strategy book I published many years ago

A:

called The Rule of Three. If you want to be a volume-driven player, there is usually only room for three [companies]. In the automobile business at the turn of the last century there were 125 brands in North America. Now we have three [North American-based brands]: Ford, GM and Chrysler. In cloud computing, you have Amazon, Microsoft and IBM. If you’re a volume-driven company, you must have scale. Or you can be a niche player, in which case you will have to be margindriven. As a niche company, you will go direct to the consumer. But if you’re a manufacturer reliant on scale, you’ll want to sell through Walmart or Amazon. Once you have three brands in an industry, the market begins to break up into niche brands. Right now, the beer industry is going through that.

All three big beer companies are struggling to survive financially.

So now you see all of these craft breweries growing.

Q:

So, you’re saying there’s a long tail [when all product sales are plotted along an axis they often look like a long tail, with the most popular at the thickest end and the rest stretching out along the tail] to exploit here. And, given that technology is cheaper than ever, it’s actually feasible to serve that long tail, whereas in the past, it wasn’t really.

Yes. Wherever the big boys are struggling, the niche players will come out of nowhere.

A:

From “twilight zone” to “golden age”

new theory of some sort, whether it’s created by marketing scholars or practitioners.

Q:

But unless the return on investment (ROI) equation is resolved, the CFO is still sitting there crossing out marketing budget line items that are intangible. How do we crack the code on the funding formula for socially-conscious marketing? Or what Phil Kotler calls “holistic marketing”?

The problem is not with the marketing department. The problem is with generally accepted accounting principles: the GAAP formula. What marketers need is a shadow accounting system.

Often what you find is that if 20% of your customers control 80% of your revenue, 10% of your customers will deliver 90% of the profit. You then have crosssubsidization of customers going on. The lower-revenue-generating customers are costing you more.

So you want to allocate your resources more selectively. You do account by account budgeting, if possible. I did it for one of the large accounting companies which had 4,000 clients. Only 400 were profitable. They decided to relocate their offices around those clients, to be closer to them, and they said goodbye to hundreds and hundreds of unprofitable clients.

A:

Q:

As one of the earliest proponents of relationship marketing you must be really gratified to see its broad acceptance today.

Would you agree that we’re about to enter the golden age of relationship marketing?

Absolutely. I think every company should create a position at a corporate level called Chief Customer Officer who is not a part of the marketing department but a corporate function like IT, who would be in every board meeting speaking on behalf of the customer.

Q:

A:

A:

Q:

Forrester Research came out with a report recently saying the practice of creating an annual marketing planning model has become a vestige of a bygone era. Is the biggest obstacle facing marketers the fact that there is no new general theory of marketing to replace the old one?

We [marketing] are in the “Twilight Zone. We’re searching now for a new general theory that shows how marketing can be a positive source for society: you create value for the enterprise but also for society. I believe that we will eventually emerge with a

That would put the voice of the customer in the C-suite, explaining how the shareholders are served best by serving the stakeholders.

Precisely!

A:

DMN.ca ❰

// 16

Feature

iStock: Steven_Kriemadis

Knowing who’s at the party

By Paul Tyndall

E

vent sponsorships give organizations ways to raise their profiles, but it’s hard to measure their effectiveness. It’s a challenging question for executives who want to know if the events they are being asked to sponsor will attract the consumers they are trying to reach.

The problem has been that there is no good way to collect visitor data at sponsored events. They are often too big and unwieldy for traditional measures, like intercept surveys, to be deployed efficiently and cost-effectively, particularly if the event is in a public space without a specific point of entry.

To address this data gap, we created MobileScapes, a mobile analytics tool, which is opening up a range of direct marketing possibilities. MobileScapes leverages mobile data, which is anonymized permission-based location data collected from smartphones observed in defined areas. These data can also be used to estimate the likely home postal codes (and in most cases, work locations) for the holders of those observed devices.

Who celebrated on Canada Day? To illustrate the types of insights MobileScapes can provide, let’s consider what they tell us about last year’s Canada Day celebration on Parliament Hill. With 40,000 people on the Hill to enjoy the concert and watch the spectacular fireworks display, we can provide a detailed profile of the partygoers within a few simple clicks through our ENVISION platform. Users outline a location on a map, set the timeframe and get their insights.

For this event I found the three ❱ DMN.ca

main fireworks viewing areas designated by the event organizers and combined them into one geofence. Next, I specified the date and time of the event (July 1st between 6 a.m. and midnight) and submitted the query through the mobile analytics tool in ENVISION. In the background, our mobile analytics tool assigns residential postal codes based on where the devices are seen most often overnight (think of that as the inferred home neighbourhoods).

Using a similar process, the tool assigns postal codes based on where the devices are seen most often during daytime working hours (i.e. inferred work locations).

Once we have these postal codes, we can use that information to link to the wide range of demographic, psychographic, financial, behavioural and other databases to gain even more profound insights.

The results speak for themselves.

In the spirit of a truly national celebration, there were visitors from every province and territory in attendance, with high numbers of visitors from each of the 25 largest cities in Canada. At least one visitor travelled more than 4,100 km to join the party.

By looking at the distribution of visitors through the lens of PRIZM, our popular segmentation product that classifies Canada’s neighbourhoods into 68 unique lifestyle types, we can get more useful insights. For instance, the Urban Young Social Group—who tend to be single, universityeducated in white-collar or service jobs—were overrepresented. Grads & Pads—one of the segments that shares the same social group as Urban Young—was almost ten times higher in attendance than

the general population, while Urban Digirati—which also falls into this social group—was three times higher.

From a life stage perspective, attendees in the Singles Scene segment were observed at a 3.5 times higher rate than the other segments in attendance.

Conversely, Older Parents with Younger Kids and Families with Tweens both scored below average.

If you dig into the demographics of those in attendance, we find it skews younger and more likely to be singles. They were also more likely to be university graduates who are renting condominiums or apartments.

Targeting event-goers In the past, marketers would have had to guess at who was at the party, but with this precise information they can make quantifiable and trackable business cases for their campaigns, optimize them and target their messages.

With these insights, direct marketers can focus their efforts on these same segments ahead of the events, enticing them with special discounts and offers. Mobile data can be used by event organizers as well. Armed with these data, they can now target relevant companies and present compelling cases to sponsor their events.

By linking mobile data with our other comprehensive databases, marketers can learn what products and services attendees at the events are likely to consume, as well as the best ways to engage them. For instance, our data shows the crowd who showed up on Parliament Hill on Canada Day have a higher propensity to be using their mobile phones than the average Canadian. More than

16% of those who showed up for the party ordered food through mobile devices versus 12% in the rest of Canada. We also found that almost 20% of the crowd on the Hill were more likely to manage their finances on the go, including buying and selling financial products.

Given their comfort with digital technology, it should come as no surprise that many of the Canada Day partygoers are also more likely to respond to ads on social media and to pop-up ads, as well as those sent to them by text.

Transit posters and billboards offer another effective way to reach this audience. That is a critical distinction for direct marketers given our data also found this group is less receptive to flyers delivered to their door.

Layering on additional data yields other exciting insights that demonstrate the power of third-party data. By linking mobile data with our SocialValues data, we found that these partygoers belonged to segments that had a higher interest in “Culture Sampling,” “Pursuit of Novelty,” “New Products” and “Risk Taking” behaviours. And given Canadians from far and wide came to join in on the festivities it probably comes as no surprise that the data confirms these Canadians are comfortable in crowds.

With our new Mobile Analytics tool within ENVISION, in a few short steps, I was able to compile a comprehensive profile of the attendees at a recent event despite not having any visitor data to start with. That is a lot of information from one little party.

Paul Tyndall is vice president, strategic projects at Environics Analytics.

April 2019

// 17

News | Events

Marketing Hall of Legends returns AMA Toronto, a chapter of the American Marketing Association, a not-for-profit community of volunteer marketers, is rebooting Canada’s Marketing Hall of Legends (MHOL). The goal is to better honour the industry’s most outstanding leaders and build business excellence within the profession.

The association is launching an expanded MHOL programme for 2019/20 called Legendary Leadership. It is preparing to accept nominations for 2020 inductees in May. “For 15 years, the Marketing Hall of Legends has been celebrating the visionaries,

enablers, builders and mentors who’ve had tremendous impact on the field of marketing throughout their careers,” said AMA Toronto president Matt Chong. “This season, to share knowledge and inspire future marketing leaders, our organization is expanding its recognition of Canada’s marketing legends through the Legendary Leadership series.”

AMA Toronto is staging quarterly Legendary Leadership events, interactive and educational conversations in 2019 to honour and explore the careers of recent inductees and promote business excellence. The first MHOL event, on April 9, was with Arthur

Fleischmann, president and CEO of John St. Fleischmann is a 2016 inductee in the Enabler category.

The event, titled “Following Trends is Killing your Business”, was a kitchen-table style conversation with Leslie Root, who is senior vice president, marketing at TJX Canada. Additional Legendary Leadership events will take place July 10 and November 13.

“The expanded Marketing Hall of Legends programme will provide the marketing

community with an opportunity to really explore how the ideas and contributions of the industry’s most original thinkers, brilliant strategists and industrious leaders have impacted the marketplace and shaped the industry,” said Michelle Flynn, AMA Toronto president-elect, 2019/2020 season. “These intimate, frank conversations will reveal the remarkable success stories that make up each legend’s career.”

Events Calendar May May 2 BCAMA VISION Vancouver, B.C. https://bcama.com/vision-conference/ May 7-9 WB Research eTail Canada Toronto, Ont. https://etailcanada.wbresearch.com/ May 8 AMA Toronto Experiential Marketing & The Impact It Can Have On Your Audience Toronto, Ont. www.ama-toronto.com/events/ May 9 Association of Fundraising Professionals, Ottawa Chapter, Fundraising Day Ottawa, Ont. https://community.afpglobal.org/ afponottawachapter/home April 2019

May 13 Canadian Prepaid Providers Organization Third Annual Prepaid Symposium Toronto, Ont. www.cppo.ca/prepaid-symposium May 14-16 Payments Canada 2019 Payments Summit Toronto, Ont. https://www.thesummit.ca/

May 28-30 CSPN 22nd Annual Conference Toronto, Ont. http://conference.mycspn.com/ May 30 Association of Fundraising Professionals, Greater Toronto Chapter, Fundraising Day Toronto, Ont. http://afptoronto.org/

June

May 16-17 DigiMarCon Canada Toronto, Ont. https://digimarconcanada.ca/

June 5-7 PostalVision 2020 Arlington, Va. http://www.postalvision2020.com/2019annual-event/

May 20-23 Collision Toronto, Ont. https://collisionconf.com/

June 12-13 Big Data and AI Toronto 2019 Toronto, Ont. www.bigdata-toronto.com/2019

May 28-29 Retail Council of Canada STORE 2019 Toronto, Ont. www.storeconference.ca

Visit us online for complete list

www.dmn.ca DMN.ca ❰

// 18

Fundraising Day

Creativity: A fading spark we must reignite

By Agostino Guastella

A

rt has been in my life from the day I was old enough to use a crayon. Growing up, I was lucky to have my creativity nurtured at home and in school. My high school art teacher recognized my passion for art, exposed me to its application in the advertising world and, ultimately, encouraged me to pursue a career in it. Fast forward 30 years and here I am, a creative director who gets to flex my creative muscle every day in ❱ DMN.ca

the fundraising and marketing worlds.

Unfortunately, my creative journey is the exception. These days, most people—particularly children—aren’t encouraged to be creative. In fact, it’s the exact opposite. We live in a world that is designed to limit and even diminish creative thinking. This isn’t just a personal hunch: it’s a fact that’s been proven in scientific studies, a phenomenon so well documented that it’s been dubbed “the creativity crisis”.

When I first came across the term “creativity crisis”, I thought it was a joke. Working with non-profit clients dedicated to social, environmental and international issues, I usually see the word “crisis” applied to things like conflict, climate change or poverty. I had never seen it used to characterize creativity. But the more I read, the more I realized the crisis is no joke.

It’s real, and we should all be concerned.

A commonly cited study that

proves the crisis exists has been written by Dr. Kyung-Hee Kim, a world leader in creativity research.

She analyzed more than 270,000 American children and adults who completed a test known to be the gold standard for measuring creativity1. The results showed that creativity rose from the ‘60s to the ‘90s but has been declining ever since. Even more troubling is that the decline was the “most serious” among children from kindergarten to grade six.

One of the main causes of this April 2019

// 19

Fundraising Day young age. This is no less than a crisis because we need creativity to solve problems and develop better products, services, organizations, communities and countries.

Now that you have the bad news, I can give you the good. Although there are strong forces working against our creativity, we can—and must!—push back against them. As someone who has been engaged in creative work and leading creative teams for years, I have a few tips for how you can do it.

Get inspired and informed Block off time to look at other creative work. Do it proactively on a regular basis, rather than reactively when you need to come up with ideas for a specific project.

This will help build a memory bank of ideas and approaches that you can draw from.

Getty Images

Practice, practice, practice It’s a common myth that creativity is a mysterious talent that you either have or don’t. Like anything else, it’s a skill that anyone can build with practice. Try coming up with five ideas in five minutes on any subject. They don’t have to be good, but the process alone will get those creative synapses firing.

creativity dive, said Dr. Kim, is a shift in the approach to education.

Before the ‘90s, there was a greater focus on encouraging curiosity, risktaking and non-conformity. But in the ‘90s, schools started to prioritize standardized testing, which promoted rote memorization, conformity and competition.

The outcome of all this is downright depressing. The childlike wonder we’re all born with, the constant need to know why, to play, to imagine and to think differently, is being ironed out of us from a very April 2019

space where zany and novel thoughts start to creep in.

Expose yourself A lot of our creativity comes from our own experiences and exposure to the world around us. So, get out of your comfort zone and make yourself vulnerable. Take a class, read a book or go to a lecture on something you know nothing about. Plan a trip and go off the beaten path. Not only can you get inspired, but studies prove that when you do something new and step outside the norm, creativity improves.

Connect the dots The thought of coming up with something completely new can be intimidating. But the truth is that no idea is truly original. Creativity is about making connections between existing ideas and things you already know. Building on my point above, you are the sum of your knowledge and experiences, so the more you absorb, the more connections you’ll make to ideate and innovate.

Make some noise Chatter and laughter in my creative department make me very happy.

Ambient noise is proven to increase creativity, so try not to complain when the people around you are being too loud. I like to work in a coffee shop for that very reason.

And, if talking or coffee grinders are too distracting, keep your headphones handy and listen to music that puts you in “the zone”.

Move!

There’s no denying that exercise can improve your creative thinking. A Psychology Today2 article says that sweat “lubricates your brain and makes your thinking more fluid.” So next time you consider skipping a run, tell yourself it just might spark your next great idea.

We all have a creative spark.

Don’t let yours fade away.

Agostino Guastella is creative director, Blakely Inc. (https://blakelyjourney.com).

1 Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman, “The Creativity Crisis”, Newsweek, July 10, 2010.

2 Christopher Bergland, “The Neuroscience of Imagination”, Psychology Today, February 8, 2012.

Bring in fresh eyes and minds You can’t underestimate the power of the collective, which brings diversity of thought and opinion to your project. Even if you’re working on something alone, it helps to ask someone removed from the work what they think, or what they would do differently.

Narrow the playing field Dr. Seuss wrote Green Eggs & Ham after a bet that he couldn’t produce an entire book in under 50 words.

In the same way that necessity is the mother of invention, limitation is the mother of innovation. You might think that starting with a blank slate is creatively ideal, but the opposite is true. Create parameters for your project that help to focus your creative energies.

Tired is good, sleepy is better I used to think that jamming through the night was such a pain.

But I soon found out that creativity flourishes when our minds are less focused and begin to wander.

A tired brain can enter a magical DMN.ca ❰

// 20

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Understanding tomorrow’s Canadian consumer

Continued from page 6

much packaging to toss away as the person who shops every day.

Despite a lack of consumer concern, consolidated packaging may be the future of online ordering. Amazon lets their customers pick if they want their packages shipped as quickly or in as few boxes as possible. Will other brands quickly follow in their footsteps and consolidate their own shipments? Time will tell.

Tomorrow’s retail leaders must recognize that consumers can no longer be discretely classified as online or in-store. With this in mind, tomorrow’s retail leaders will excel at making things easier and minimizing friction across all touchpoint in the purchase journey.

These key insights, sound bites and nuggets of information can be found in our online report at WisePlum.com. It all comes down to delivering against basic human needs. We don’t want fancy things, we want it fast and easy.

Paula Courtney is product founder of WisePlum (www.wiseplum.com) and president and CEO, The Verde Group. WisePlum, a collaboration between LoyaltyOne and The Verde Group, is a customer experience insights tool. The Verde Group specializes in helping companies measure the cost of customer dissatisfaction, prioritize the issues based on return on investment and quickly fix them for improved retention and profitability.

Excellent Execution

// 22

Pivot to integrated digital strategies I

Kenneth Evans is managing partner, APEX Public Relations/ruckus Digital (www.apexpr.com).

n the age of technology, social media, influencers and the steady decline of conventional media, it’s clear that new marketing strategies involving nontraditional advertising should be the direction brands should be considering. Yet are chief marketing officers (CMOs) shifting their strategies accordingly?

This is what we set out to answer when APEX PR, ruckus Digital and research partner MaruBlue launched the CMO Lab (http://cmolab.ca/) project in fall 2018.

Our motivation was to determine if Canada’s marketers are genuinely keeping up with the pace of change.

Alas, the results were not what we expected. The CMO Lab revealed that only one-third of Canada’s CMOs have changed or evolved their strategies in the last few years.

There are a few reasons as to why there’s been a slower shift to a more digitally directed marketing approach. Canadian operations are often viewed as satellite offices of their parent foreign companies, with budgets and campaigns determined by the head offices, thereby putting their Canadian marketers in a more transactional position. Some organizations are still relatively siloed and are not prone to collaboration between divisions. For others it’s the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” mentality, convinced there’s more risk than reward when it comes to switching things up.

But conventional marketing no longer delivers the audience, engagement or impact that brands need today. And it’s evident that marketers who are unable to shift from traditional tactics to a strategic and integrated approach are putting their organizations’ brand reputations and customer loyalty at risk.

Conventional marketing no longer delivers the audience, engagement or impact that brands need today.

Facing the fork in the road What are the one-third of senior-level marketers doing right? Those who’ve changed their approach are engaging with their audience in more holistic ways, using an integrated communications strategy and collaborating with multiple agency partners, all while understanding effective content that works for their brands. Today, there’s a bigger emphasis on digital communications—with more dollars being spent on influencers, video production, social media and paid digital—while still driving earned media coverage.

Rather than work with just one agency, many senior-level marketers have chosen to collaborate with multiple agency partners across creative, media, digital and PR to strategize concepts. The goal for this type of collaboration is to have strengths come from wider ❱ DMN.ca

networks to execute campaigns in a coherent way, where all channels have strong editorial sensibility.

Content has to tell a story to drive engagement and create word of mouth.

When APEX PR and ruckus Digital published its CMO Lab podcast The Pivot, our goal was to dive deeper into the importance of integrated marketing, gaining insights from some of Canada’s top marketers and shining a light on how they have responded to change.

In the non-profit sector, the SickKids Foundation stands out as an organization that’s fully adopted a digital/PR approach for its VS campaign to raise $1.3 billion for a new hospital. In episode one of The Pivot, Lori Davison, vice president of brand strategy and communications, discussed the vitality of the digital approach to reach new donors. The VS platform was designed with the ambition of talking to new audiences, to jolt the potential donors who are sitting on the sidelines. The VS campaign was an incredible success, earning Lori Canada’s Marketer of the Year award from the Canadian Marketing Association in 2017.

Based on our own experience, there’s no doubt that marketers in Canada’s retail sector also fall within the one-third of those who’ve shifted their approach.

Walmart Canada is one example of a brand that has successfully collaborated with its multiple agency partners to execute its integrated programming. As a leader in sophisticated integrated communications, the brand also played in the digital space with its unbranded web series, Upstairs Amy.

The three steps to take Here are three steps to pivot your marketing strategy in order to take full advantage of what digital media can offer to both the customers and the brands.

1. Get integrated. Senior-level marketers should expand their use of integrated communications to further optimize programmes, reach more audiences and stand out from their competitors. By doing so, they will achieve greater consistency of brand messages and enhance consumer engagement, and public and employee engagement, while driving sustainable growth.

2. Scrap the hero agency model. Working with one agency could hinder the creative process. Allowing multiple agencies to participate in the ideation phase reaps better results. With this model, the “big idea” for a narrative can come from anyone. Giving others a chance to form a brand’s narrative and effectively working together on execution paves the way for a rush of new ideas.

3. Tell your story effectively. When developing a content strategy, ensure that the content has editorial sensibility. Strong content puts the consumer first and the brand second on an ongoing basis. Find the right audience and communicate with them at the right time, in the right way.

To learn more about the CMO Lab and to listen to The Pivot podcast, visit CMOLab.ca. Follow the conversation using the #CMOLab hashtag.

April 2019

Reach marketers & financial executives Our magazines are must-reads for key executives in core corporate competencies.

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Mark Henry 905-201-6600 ext 223 | 1-800-668-1838 | mark@dmn.ca Visit our websites:

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Payments Business magazine, www.paymentsbusiness.ca Canadian Equipment Finance magazine, www.canadianequipmentfinance.com