Traditionally marketers have thought in terms of disciplines and many marketers sat in their silos with only a vague understanding of what the other disciplines do. But the best marketing campaigns are those that cross all the disciplines, connect with people on an emotional level and provide customers with an experience that they will remember.
Smart Cookie have grown from a production house, producing great work to order, to a marketing agency that examines the challenge of engaging the customer and then comes up with a really creative solution that exploits the technology now available. We create experiences. To give you a couple of examples; we engaged people (including pilots) to stretch their arms at airports and pretend to fly on an interactive screen and shoppers to talk to vending machines.
Marketing has always been about engagement and digital has made it possible for these conversations to be two-way. To achieve engagement we need to put the customers at the heart of our thinking process and, ignoring the artificial boundaries between disciplines, use our creativity to find solutions that solves the challenges. We have to think about what we’re giving customers in exchange for their attention, not demand and then irritate them by interrupting something else they’re trying to do. We need to stop treating customers as mere demographics and instead treat them more like friends and find a way we can emotionally connect with them and make them love us and then they will talk about us.
Digital marketing, at its laziest, has resulted in mass broadcasting (rather than engagement) and impersonal spam (rather than targeting, tailored communication). But digital offers marketers fantastic opportunities to provide customers with memorable experiences and engage and entertain them at the same time. I believe we’re only just beginning to understand the potential.
By Chris Searson, Chair of Smart Cookie.
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