The woman whose iconic face became Gerber baby is about to turn ninety. Her story is a simple one of being picked amidst hundreds of babies as the epitome of a healthy, happy baby. Her sketched features became the hallmark of the Gerber baby brand and marketers followed simple, clear channels to spread the message.
Nowadays a brand has to perform virtual circus acts to gain that kind of exposure. Million dollar budgets and entire campaigns are dedicated to growing and retaining consumers’ attention, and I am pretty certain that many of today’s brands will not survive the next fifty years, never mind ninety.
Of course we have become ever more refined about cutting through the noise, and as a result we have created a marketing world which is becoming increasingly complex. We are a very long way from the days when a fresh-faced baby and a good artist were sufficient to do the job.
For a start technology has enabled us to increase reach and relevancy. This in turn has lead to marketers finding themselves sifting through complexity, and, paradoxically, we are also seeing increased inefficiency, missed opportunities and ultimately potential loss of valuable new customers.
The very opportunities and choices which we currently have are creating confusion rather than clarity. Little wonder marketing leaders still struggle when developing strategies that align with their marketing objectives.
Let’s fast forward from Gerber baby to a contemporary equivalent - without doubt their experience of marketing is diametrically different.
As with many brands these days, one of the key dilemmas rests on how best to use programmatic to deliver their messages.
As any marketer worth his or her salt these day will know, key with programmatic is the reach and scale it offers. The entire process is speeded and scaled up, something which would be worthless without it also being operationally efficient. At the very heart of the process is real time optimisation, which effectively enables a marketer to cherry pick who sees their messages through to tailoring these messages according to real time data. As a result the advertising can be highly personalised and targeted.
Unlike Gerber baby who simply targeted mothers, today’s brands have far more complex target audiences and they rightly want to maximise on the opportunity to add extra layers of contextual relevance to reach them.
Furthermore they want to reach consumers on the right device, at the right time, with a personalised message. Ninety years ago that would have been impossible, in 2015 it is exciting, still quite new and challenging!
What marketers really need now is a guiding hand to enable them to deliver beyond their wildest expectations. We have developed the technology, we now need to develop the mindset that goes with it. The only limitations are the ones marketers impose on themselves. There is still a tendency to think like those marketers back in Gerber baby’s day.
Now we can quite literally throw the baby out with the bath water. We don’t have to limit ourselves to one RTB (Real Time Bidding) provider, we can stretch across the breadth of multiple providers.
Marketers require this kind of breadth of access to gain live insights into the strengths and weaknesses of all RTB platforms on the market. If performed correctly, aggregating multiple RTB algorithms will ultimately deliver incremental volume in display marketing and explosive exposure.
I believe taking this kind of agnostic approach to technology, one which plugs a brand in to all the main RTB engines goes a long way towards addressing this issue. However this needs to be combined with asking the right questions of the data produced.
Marketers need to go back to the drawing board and spend time on how people actually make decisions. Ninety years ago that kind of information was overkill, nowadays it is gold dust. However this very gold dust can be overwhelming. The data produced by programmatic platforms needs to be well understood if we are to see transformational changes in efficiency and effectiveness.
Whilst technology has shifted marketers’ perspective, it is worth remembering that display marketing is not just about technology... small subtle changes to messaging, call to action and imagery can have big impacts on ad engagement and interaction, and can continually be addressed as campaigns are refined.
It is time to really make technology work for us and caste marketing nets across multiple RTB providers, the inventories are extensive enough to avoid cannibalisation and the results will most definitely be worth it.
By Nick Wild, director at PRGRMTK.
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