Keeping Up With the Pivot
As marketers adapt to evolving market dynamics and customer expectations, flexibility is the only steady
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Is Starbucks only about the coffee? No, it’s a space where people want to come and hang out and relax. It’s called the third place, a term coined by sociologist Ray Oldenburg, to signify a space other than the office or home that people seek out to exchange ideas, have a good time, and build relationships.
Starbucks has been able to successfully leverage this space and create a distinct identity across its cafes. But did you know that in 1971 when Starbucks was founded, it was meant to be in the business of selling espresso makers and coffee beans? In the eighties, New York-based businessman Howard Schultz took over the business and made the pivot to coffee shops inspired by the Italian espresso bars that he noticed on his trips to Milan.
It’s not the first time that a pivot has been able to change the game, even go so far as to save a business from collapse. Since 1929, Western Union has been one of the largest telegram service companies. But telegrams lost their market share as the telephone became a standard feature. Luckily, Western Union was able to pivot and secure a new niche as a money wire service.
Pandemic learnings
The pandemic, perhaps, was the biggest test for business leaders. As the events industry came to a staggering halt, T3 Expo, a provider of trade show solutions and products, decided to shift its focus to community projects like building personal protective equipment, to providing shields and desks and intubation tents. Leaders were also called on to help the US Army Corps build and design temporary modular hospital rooms for COVID-19 patients at the Javits Convention Centre. It’s interesting to note that prior to the pandemic, T3’s client list included Salesforce, Amazon and the International Toy Fair.
At the same time, Burger King’s marketing team decided to add some humour to their campaign. In 2020, marketers realised that the Zoom background was a prime piece of advertising real-estate that had yet to be tapped. The brand incentivised anyone using a video-chat software to use images of Burger King billboards as their backgrounds. Users who posted photographic evidence on Twitter using the hashtag #HomeOfTheBillboards was offered a “buy one get one free” offer for the Whopper sandwich.
Moving to digital
Businesses have evolved across industries. For example, traditional retailers have made the move to digital. According to a McKinsey report, apparel, fashion, and luxury retailers saw online penetration rise to 26 per cent in 2020, up from 16 per cent, and touched 30 per cent in 2021. That’s equivalent to eight years of online growth compressed into just two years. Retailers are also realising that they don’t need to commit to a single business model but can adopt a combination of pure digital player, omnichannel player and legacy brick-and-mortar player.
So, how do marketers keep up? According to a report by Gartner, nearly 30 per cent of marketing leaders believe that a lack of agile and flexible analytics negatively impacts marketing execution. The shift to using data to drive decisions was strongly in place before 2020. Historic data was used to predict trends and patterns for the future. The last couple of years have overhauled the process. Due to data decay, many models are not as relevant. Customer expectations have changed drastically, and continue to impact buyer behaviour even as economies move towards recovery.
Let data take the wheel
The fact is that every company, whether leaders admit or not, is a data company. This means new products could be waiting to be discovered within your data. Take the example of Samsung Ads. In 2020, it made its CTV video inventory available programmatically via the supply-side platform SpotX. The move is owed to the fact that the platform observed a 70 per cent increase in viewing time and 132 per cent in weekly hours after the pandemic hit, compared to the beginning of 2020. Buyers are seeking more short-term flexibility and value in response to uncertain economic times. With this move, advertisers can manage the campaign reach and frequency of linear TV, connected TV (CTV), and mobile and desktop. It integrates with Axiom, Adobe, Experian, LiveRamp, Merkle and Oracle Advertising to plug it into Samsung’s ecosystem.
In 2021, Samsung Audience Advisor – a predictive campaign planning tool made its way into the market. It allows advertisers to plug in any combination of first- and third-party data to understand the scale, behaviours, and time spent by their target audience in ad-supported video on demand (AVOD). Earlier this year, Samsung Ads introduced The Samsung Ads Total Media Solution, software tools for media agencies to manage and measure cross-platform video campaigns.
Training the team
Marketers are a resilient bunch. All they need is tech to match. In 2020 when the third party cookie was still being debated, Fitbit ran a campaign based around Father’s Day as a test. It exposed separate consumer groups to different stimuli as it sought to prove the value of cookie-free advertising. One cohort was targeted using cookies, and another was engaged using new ways of authenticating audiences who have set permissions for using their data. The latter audience could be reached through automated bidding on advertising when they arrived at a publisher’s website. LiveRamp partnered with the brand and revealed that it was able to reach 90 per cent of the addressable audiences by including groups like “sports enthusiasts” and “home seekers” via its 125 publishers. The hypothesis held up. The new approach to audience identification yielded a return on ad spend that was twice as high as generated by cookies.
So, how can leaders make sure the workforce is prepared to tackle these changing trends? Amazon, as part of its Upskilling 2025 initiative, will invest $700 million to train 100,000 employees for higher-skilled jobs over the next six years. This effort will allow the company to address skills gaps in areas such as data mapping, data science, security engineering, and business analysis through a range of internal training options.
Is your marketing team built to bend?
