When it comes to video advertising for our clients, no detail is left to chance.

In our new round of Jobtitles Bingo Bernadette Pa, Unit Director Video Consultant for Mediaplus, tells us why her job is so exciting and various, she talks about the challenges she faces in her day-to-day job and how she brings successfully together family and career.

By Mediaplus Middle East’s Suparshv Chopra

For years, brands & marketers have been using 3rd party cookies & tracking pixels to track website visitors, improve the user experience, and collect data that helped them target ads to the right audiences. However, now this is going to change forever. Digital tracking capabilities are more restricted than ever. Third party cookies are already redundant on browsers like Safari (iOS devices) as well as Firefox and now Chrome will discontinue supporting them from 2023. All apps on iOS require a consent from the user to be able to track / monitor them.

Law enforcement bodies across the globe are laying strict rules and guidelines for the advertisers to restrict online tracking to avoid misuse of any PII (personally identifiable information) data. And above all the growing use of ad blockers by internet users that restrict the data flow from one server to the other.

While this is progressing in the right direction as far as protecting user’s online privacy is concerned, on the flip side, these changes are taking digital marketing measurement back to its initial years. Back then, the digital infrastructure was just evolving and the most an advertiser could track from their digital marketing was how many people did they reach, how many impressions were delivered and how many clicks / interactions came through. 

A major disruption in digital marketing came almost a decade back with the introduction of remarketing which was built on the back of third-party cookies and along with that followed a whole new eco-system of digital marketing attribution. Now marketers have a complete visibility on who came to their website, from what source, using which device, which page of the website they dropped out, what products did they buy & finally retarget them with ads based on their interaction on the website. And the business world was only getting used to how sophisticated they can get when it comes running as well as tracking their digital marketing campaigns when the lawmakers and the big tech giants decided to overhaul the system all over again.

So, let’s stop for a minute and imagine what the worst-case scenario would be – that all tracking goes away completely no more google analytics, no more data from Facebook you would have no idea who’s coming to your website, who’s buying your products or services, all tracking would be eliminated. 

How do we survive this situation & what should we do today to prepare ourselves if and when tracking starts to be depreciated? As per the latest update from Google, it will delay the deprecation of third-party cookies on Chrome by another 2 years or so. Therefore, it’s very important to use this time to have a strong plan to transition from what we call as deterministic marketing to a more probabilistic marketing. 

In deterministic marketing, you can be 100% sure that John came from Facebook and brought a hat on your website. Probabilistic marketing on the other hand, only lets you know with a high degree of certainty that someone came from a particular channel or the probabilities that the user has certain attributes. Having said that, probabilistic marketing has its pros and cons.

One of the best things about working in a probabilistic environment is that it’s going to work regardless of what they do to tracking. 

So, if we can start to train ourselves to rely on probabilistic data today and start to transition how we think about marketing into a probabilistic thought process we’re going to succeed when the big tech players continue to ratchet what tracking is available to us. Another advantage of probabilistic marketing is that it will still allow us to make optimization across all the channels and across various audiences so even if we don’t know specifically that John is John, we can still make determination about the probability that John is John and that the audience that describe John will behave in this way. Another merit of probabilistic marketing environment is that it really forces us to focus on the bigger picture without getting too far down in the weeds looking at individual landing pages, conversion points, customer journey, etc. 

We get to take a step back and analyze across all channels, landing pages, assets & customer journey what’s working well and what levers can we pull in order to increase the campaign performance.  Working in probabilistic environment will allow us to have access to campaign insights much faster as compared to that in deterministic environment. In deterministic set-up, we need to track every single point of contact, know where the customer is in the journey, where they came from, have cross-device tracking and all other aspects of tracking put in place perfectly. In probabilistic set-up, we just make assumption and get close to the similar results. It’s not going to be perfectly accurate, but the net results will resonate to what one would expect from having a perfect deterministic marketing set-up.

However, not everything about probabilistic marketing is good. At its core the data itself is less accurate. It is not as scientific as deterministic marketing approach.

A big drawback is that we lose the individual customer journey. All these journeys are grouped together into a probabilistic journey, but we can’t zero in on John to find out exactly what John did, how long he spent on each page, etc. If John comes in and he’s a top customer who did everything right and we want more Johns it’s pretty hard to determine exactly the steps that this one individual did so that we can get more of that customer. 

Instead, John is lost in the population of other people of who some were good, and some were bad but they weren’t all Johns and so with probabilistic attribution we lose that ability to get down to the individual level to know for certain what each person did. Another demerit is that as consumer preferences change and traffic on the website starts coming from a new source, the system needs to re-learn what this new traffic source is, how well is it converting and then update the overall probabilities across channels. This disrupts the learning established so far and, in a way, resets the whole attribution pattern all over.

Therefore, to have an accurate attribution or to improve our marketing campaign with higher accuracy based on data, we need to rely on quality data. And typically, that is our own first party data. We should start creating our own first party universe and if we are successful in doing so, we should be able to thrive in today’s environment but also be future proof in the event where cookie tracking goes away. As an immediate step, we should start capturing customer information by incentivizing the visitors on the website to register or log in before they are able to access full content on the website. Once we build our own first party data, we will not be reliant on the likes of Google, FB, Amazon to target the right audience and get a better return on our advertising spends.    

First published in BrandBerries.

In the still fuzzy reality of the metaverse, a confluence of many constructs like social, gaming, and crypto, there’s an opportunity for brands and consumers not only to co-create but to co-own content, tokens, and assets.

Co-Creation is the New Connection

We’d love to call the current state of the metaverse a co-verse. No, it’s not a covert operation to sabotage the biggest buzzword trolling the halls of industries these days. On the contrary, it’s a recognition that the metaverse has become an open space where co-creation is perhaps the only “tangible” means for brands to connect with an audience living for the thrill of thriving as mere “embodied presence” on the internet.

With Roblox, brands like Gucci have started selling virtual branded products, essentially inspiring a whole new generation of avatars in luxurious garbs. And while Nike has created a Roblox virtual world called Nikeland, brands embracing the co-verse can choose to push the boundaries farther, not for their own sake, but for the contentment of its virtually-insatiable consumers. Instead of simply rendering actual physical products as virtual replicas on the metaverse, allow consumers to develop, design, and patent their branded virtual creations. Give them free reign and see how far consumers’ imaginations can shape or re-shape your brand’s own product development and design possibilities.

Non-fungible has Become Tangible

The digital collectible space has finally invaded brands. Yep, with the advent of NFTs, or your so-called non-fungible tokens, the words digital and collectible can now co-exist in the same space. That’s because non-fungible tokens are digital assets that can go beyond bitcoin to include any real-world object like a drawing, artwork or music that are now primarily rendered in AI. They’re non-fungible because they’re unique and irreplaceable, and much like trading cards, these are one-of-a kind virtual cards that if traded with another card, you’d own something completely different.

Budweiser has been on this space since late 2021. This January 21st, 2022, it aims to take this momentum into a purposeful cause as it seeks to support emerging musicians with an impressive drop of 11,000 NFTs based on 22 artists featuring 500 NFTs a piece. Sometime this year, BMW in the Middle East will seek to immortalize the iconic sound of an M engine, among others, as it takes its Museum of Sounds to the NFT arena. Museum of Sounds is BMW’s ambitious effort to preserve the melodious roars of its petrol engines before e-vehicles can render them forever obsolete. Soon, petrol heads can own a piece of their BMW icon in non-fungible terms as a tangible nostalgic memento.

Gamification Isn’t Dead in the Age of Gaming

Gaming, over and above social and AI, is currently touted as the next big leap for brands wanting to jump into the proverbial virtual band wagon. More and more brands are looking at e-sports sponsorships, game development opportunities, in-game presence, and even gamers as new-age influencers as revolutionary means to enter the growing world of gaming. Well, these brands are in for what we’d like to call a gentle wake-up call.

Gaming, in all its glory, can be broken down into its simplest form to serve the best possible entry-point for most brands seeking to test the waters. Especially for brands not as endemic to gaming as tech brands are, gamification – used and overused as it is, and even rendered old-school in this day and age, can still be a tool for potent co-creation. Think customization, for instance.  For retail brands already running solid e-commerce platforms, giving customers the possibility to create shopping avatars over mere buyer profiles can spawn gaming possibilities. If developing on-site gamification is a far stretch, think cooperations with gaming developers where cross-overs can happen between shopping avatars and gaming avatars.

A significant media presence is more important than ever! As a PR Consultant, Robert Koria takes care of precisely that.

In our new episode Jobtitles Bingo, he gives us insights into the day-to-day work of a PR Consultant, tells us what the best thing about his job is, and describes what his work has to do with an enjoyable glass of wine. And how does somebody become a PR Consultant? He also tells us that!   

So, get excited and have fun watching the new episode!

By Pooja Suvarna, Digital Marketing Manager at Serviceplan Group Middle

The growth in e-commerce in the recent two years has been exponential, we have seen the Pandemic as a wake-up call for many brands to speed up their e-commerce plans and activate their digital stores to ensure that they do not miss out on the opportunity of selling their products when the world went into lockdown. This is clear with double digit growth in e-commerce volume in our region according to multiple sources and expected to become a $50bn market by 2025 in GCC ($17.7bn in 2019. Stated in a report by Kearney Middle East notes).

Following this growth, many have started speculating about the role of Brick & Mortar stores, and even considering setting a date as to when the digital stores will completely take over. The online sales in e-commerce business are expected to increase by 14.8% every year whereas the offline stores will only increase by 1.9%. So, does this mean that physical stores are going to disappear?

There is no straight answer to this question, and with our experience in the digital sphere we can say that brick and mortar will continue to play a major role in the foreseeable future. However, the changes on the consumer behaviour imposed by the Pandemic will continue to impact the means of communicating with our consumer and their requirements in terms of store experience.

It is clear that in our region, digital penetration and usage is amongst the highest globally, and although many marketers focus their efforts on conversions when looking at digital channels, they should still consider the top of the funnel as a major role of such channels to help drive awareness about brick-and-mortar stores and eventually drive footfall. Though, with a channel that has been always understood to be highly targeted and very minimal wastage, we will have to rethink how we approach awareness when our objective is driving footfall. We can still use the traditional channels with hyper location targeting to ensure the messages are geo-fenced to the specific stores and this applies whether the retailer is a small or large one.

 On the other hand, brands must ensure that they create in-store experience that can compete with the online experience and eventually retain the footfall to the stores. These experiences can start with the human element with staff engaging the shoppers all the way to unique moments in the stores that will enhance the overall experience. Give-aways gift/vouchers with purchases can be another way of attracting the customers to visit the store and shop in stores. Direct checkout without long queue can be an option too to enhance the user experience further.

 Many retailers have started using in-store technology to attract users by introducing things like Augmented Reality overlay to see product reviews, discounts, features etc. which will entice and empower the shoppers to make a purchase decision. Shop and collect options can also be one way to bringing the user to the store which might also lead to additional shopping in the stores, this way the e-commerce business can also play a vital role in supporting the retail business.

Brick and Mortar stores will continue to be an important channel of sales, but innovation and technology will play a vital role for it to continue to excite people and engage them more while shopping in stores. Any retailer either big or small will have to embrace the change and start looking for ways to keep the engagement with their customers.

Understanding the customer – wouldn’t we all like that? Nico Blößl has a few tips to share. As Unit Director Client Consulting & Planning at Mediaplus, he not only manages the communication issues of our clients, but also helps them get their messages to the right people in the right way, at the right time.

So, have fun with a new round of Jobtitles Bingo!

Since summer 2021, Christian Waitzinger has been Chief Experience Officer (CXO) at Plan.Net Group, one of the leading digital service providers in the field of customer experience and commerce. As an experience and design expert, Waitzinger is responsible for defining a service and product portfolio for designing and implementation of data-driven customer experiences. In the following Experience Manifesto, he describes what experiences means in today’s world, what it needs to represent, and what the requirements are for a high-quality experience.

The way that customers perceive and interact with brands – whether at home or on the go, via digital channels, in stores or when contacting a service hotline – has changed. Brands today need to provide a seamless, contextualized, and data-driven customer experience in order to meet customer expectations. This is nothing new. Yet, it is also no secret that very few companies have managed to satisfy rising customer demands and create a truly differentiating brand experience.

This is precisely what we are striving for with our holistic customer experience management: Our goal is to understand customers across every interaction, touchpoint and organizational unit – from marketing to sales to customer service departments. Our task is to orchestrate and systematically improve all of these areas, because the key to lasting customer loyalty is a brand experience that is unique, personalized, appropriate anytime, anywhere, and constantly evolving.

Ideally, this process is managed centrally by collecting and evaluating customers’ experiences and data. We utilize this information to continuously improve the experience across sales, customer service and e-commerce. The result is a loop optimized incrementally by decision-makers via a process of distilling the insights gained from customer interactions and incorporating these into communications and further product development. The primary task is to build a personal relationship with the consumer: to create an ongoing dialog that calibrates the right time, place, and information with the customer’s personal interests.

Alongside a number of specialized disciplines – such as data, media, tech, user experience design and creation – what is needed above all is a cohesive experience strategy along with overarching organizational structures and processes within a company that are attuned to customer needs. To achieve this, companies must network their individual expertise and create synergies between creation, media, data, and tech – in other words, they must think about and orchestrate their customer experience holistically.

INTRODUCE OVERARCHING ORGANIZATIONAL PROCESSES

An experience strategy must be supported by all departments. It requires the right resources, skills and tools as well as the empowerment of individual employees and departments to be able to make decisions quickly and independently. However, this is often difficult within the traditional organizational structure of a company. A better approach is to establish customer journey teams that collaborate across departments, as some of our customers are already doing today.

Holistic customer journey mapping plays a key role in the organizational process, allowing us to centrally collate key insights in terms of customer expectations, data, and processes. With these as a basis, we are able to identify customers’ rational and emotional needs and a range of potential areas for improvement, as well as the necessary tools and systems, and the KPIs we need to measure.

Another crucial task is to ensure that the insights gained from a customer journey are implemented and result in genuine improvement. This requires an ROX (Return On Experience) model across the journey to plan and monitor the entire experience.

ESTABLISH A FUNCTIONING BRAND SYSTEM

The brand core itself serves as the basis for the holistic experience along the customer journey. Decision-makers should critically reflect on whether their brand’s fundamental visual identity is designed to allow the brand to withstand the continuous evolution of digital products and services, and thus remain successful in future. The necessary components of the brand identity are constructed in a manner that allows them to quickly and
consistently convey a uniform and harmonious image across all channels – and whether the way that the brand is perceived will still make sense in the future if parts of the brand experience are automated.

Today, many brand guidelines still consist of 90 percent print and offline instructions, thus criminally neglecting the brand’s digital component. Yet interface design will continue to evolve in the direction of “Zero UI”. People will increasingly talk to computers and expect an intelligent response. Data will serve as the basis for almost all services and products – today and in the future. A coherent, modular, and centrally orchestrated enterprise design and asset management system is therefore indispensable. Without this existence, it is virtually impossible to create a coherent and personalized customer experience. In addition, further development of the design system must be approached not as a one-off project but instead as a program that is managed centrally and across all departments.

FOCUS ON CREATIVE EXCELLENCE

As well as digitization and automation, constant performance tracking and the latest tech stack, experience requires passion, soul, creativity and innovation. The best digital ecosystem is worthless if it is not brought to life through good content, a differentiated user experience, and emotional storytelling.

In terms of the user experience in particular, there is need for improvement because digital products and services often appear interchangeable. Currently, the majority of them are designed according to best practices in order to make the experience for users as simple as possible. This is not wrong itself – the aim is to ensure that applications are easy to use. But the result is that every app works in the same way, virtually all e-commerce checkout processes are interchangeable, and most websites share a similar structure with familiar navigation.

It is time to ask whether the development of the user experience has been shaped too much by the notions of utility and usability – and whether there is an over-reliance on branding and marketing activities to provide brand differentiation. User experience design must return to its own creative strengths and no longer act in isolation. A good user experience can also provide differentiation – especially when combined with appropriate marketing and branding, attractive storytelling and emotional content. This allows us to create special, memorable moments and a coherent, stand-out brand experience for consumers.

ALIGNING DIGITAL PRODUCTS WITH MARKETING AND BRANDING

Digital products and services today need to be fused with marketing and branding in order to create a perfect brand experience. Consumers should feel a positive sense of engagement at every touchpoint by being appealed to at the right time in the right context and always finding themselves in the ecosystem of the brand world.

That’s why it’s desirable to closely dovetail product and marketing activities: The insights gained in the product world regarding consumer behavior are extremely relevant to the creation of branding and marketing activities. Marketing data in turn informs product development. After all, you want to make the right decisions in all areas.

This requires merging the marketing and product loops, aligning content and experience, and orchestrating all the creative disciplines to create a unique brand experience for customers. Because a great user experience boosts a brand, and a strong brand has the power to positively influence a digital product.

GREATER LOYALITY AND INCREASING CUSTOMER LIFETIME VALUE

Everyone knows that it is many times more expensive to acquire new customers than to keep them within the brand ecosystem. And a positive experience is key here, too: After all, customers who are enthusiastic about the entire product experience have less reason to look elsewhere. So the better the experience, the greater their loyalty and customer lifetime value (CLV), one of the core customer experience KPIs. And the harder and more expensive it is for competitors to regain the customers they’ve lost.

At Plan.Net, we are convinced that a successful customer experiences will in future require an integrated strategy and organizational processes, a brand system equipped for the future, and, above all, creative excellence. As the most creative digital service provider in Germany today with a high level of expertise in data-driven tech, our aim is not only to not only generate the brand promises for our customers, but above all to actually deliver on them – with consistent, seamless, and creative appeal across every platform and touchpoint.


Let’s get up and start a new round of #JobtitlesBingo!
“Platform Advertising Consultant” – what rolls off the tongue so smoothly can sometimes be as exciting as a roller coaster ride in everyday life. Our colleague Nina Altmann tells us what she finds so exciting about her job, how she imagines the perfect client and what makes her everyday life so beautifully diverse.

Check out our new episode Jobtitles Bingo and learn more about how diverse the everyday life of a Platform Advertising Consultant at Mediaplus is.

Our Worldwide Executive Creative Director Jason Romeyko sums up a week of ÜberCreativity, inspiration and motivational speeches at Serviceplan Group’s headquarters – the House of Communication in Munich.

Our colleague Alicia Fricke gives us some exiting insights into the world of the Digital Media Consultant, the job profile combines curiosity, analytical thinking, creativity and sociability.