SF Roundtable II

Has digital acceleration come at a cost to long-term brand-building – and will brands and consumers revert to old patterns post-Covid? Marketers at the latest Marketing Week and Salesforce roundtable debated the balance of strategic planning versus lean agility

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12 August 2020

back to the intelligent 1:1 customer journeys hub

Has the pandemic accelerated a digital shift, or is it a temporary blip?

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With both brands and consumers emerging in stages from lockdown, marketers are taking stock of how their audiences have changed – and how they too must adapt tactics and budgets. Yet with a lack of certainty around the ‘new normal’, and unprecedented pressure from accelerated adoption of digital services, brands are struggling with long-term planning, compounded by legacy business issues such as siloed teams and fragmented data. As leading senior marketers revealed at a recent Marketing Week virtual roundtable, sponsored by a Salesforce, relying on closely following ever-changing consumer behaviours – and reacting accordingly – will be crucial for post-Covid survival and success. Pre-Covid issues now magnified The concerns of marketers at the roundtable were in parallel with the results of Salesforce’s recent ‘State of Marketing’ report. Engaging customers in real time was named as the top challenge and the second most pressing priority for the 7,000 senior B2B and B2C marketers Salesforce surveyed worldwide in January and February for its report. While the results captured attitudes and activities pre-Covid, marketers at the roundtable addressed the question of which ones still resonated and which had shifted. Also named within the top five challenges were ‘creating cohesive customer journeys across channels and devices’, ‘unifying customer data sources’, and ‘sharing a unified view of customer data across business units’. These were all exacerbated by the pandemic, as the CMO of a well-known energy services provider explained at the event, which was conducted under the Chatham House rule to preserve anonymity. “One of our biggest issues is siloed data, so obtaining a single customer view and [having the] ability to leverage that data in real time [is difficult],” she said. “The technology might exist, but I’m not sure it’s well leveraged, understood and utilised in a customer experience end-to-end way. “We know 60% of demand into our call centres is driven by failure from the broken journey. It’s a real issue for businesses which are sat on complex systems and multichannel touchpoints, because there isn’t a dynamic view of that data flow in real time.”

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Making use of content Shifting resources from traditional advertising into online content has been a remedy for call centre overload brought on by the lockdown, added the energy CMO. This strategy is in line with one of the top three global trends highlighted in Salesforce’s report, which showed consumer marketers spending 18% of their budgets on content, and 14% of B2B marketers doing so. “On the B2C side, we turned off all selling when the pandemic first hit, but we upped the ante on content,” recalled the CMO. “We started listening to the questions customers were asking and created content to help people to self serve, as you couldn’t get through the phone lines for love nor money. So we had to create content very quickly to allow as much telephone contact avoidance as possible.” Digital content has also been a driver for the global head of marketing at a large investment and finance firm, which has been careful to adapt messaging as the pandemic has played out. “We need to continually talk about the world of investments as markets and economies are continually changing,” he noted. “But trying to get the balance right between Covid-related content and more promotional content is a tricky one. Whilst people are becoming Covid-fatigued, that content continues to be what people are most engaging with.” However, a global planning director from a prominent drinks brand expressed concern at an imbalance between content creation versus distribution, with Salesforce’s report results showing 23% of consumer marketers’ budgets allocated to advertising, alongside 18% in B2B. “It is kind of disturbing that we’ve got almost as much spend on creating content as deploying it,” he commented. “In an ideal world, you’d want to see the advertising - or the media - percentage much higher and the content number much lower, because that would reflect more deployment.” Dynamic planning and spending This then pointed to the importance of channel mix and consumer engagement based on changing behaviours, with the energy CMO weighing in with a need for greater sophistication when it comes to segmentation. In particular, she named the ability to understand and predict audience cohorts’ behaviours as part of a more dynamic approach to quarterly planning and spending. “We’re looking closely at rising debt. We’re seeing lots of customers who can’t afford to pay their bills, so price and value are going to become even more important,” she observed.

Considering just how much the consumer profile will have changed – and how likely it is to revert to type in future - is a serious question, said a director of performance marketing at a gambling company. “Certainly none of us in our industry know if the players who moved from retail to digital will go back to retail because that’s what they prefer,” he explained. “We’re all watching over the next few months to see what’s changed temporarily compared with what’s permanent. Those that react quickest to that change will do the best. There will be many business opportunities, as I’m sure there will be many difficulties.” Balancing short and long term Using data and technology to make sharp decisions is how the drinks brand planning director plans to “emerge with better market share positioning in the longer term”. This is in line with ‘improving and modernising the use of technologies’ being a priority of marketers in Salesforce’s report. “All bets are off in terms of what you would spend versus a normal situation,” he said. “It needs to be zero-based against the balance of short and long term priorities. “The lockdown will have a dramatic impact on discretionary spend and economies for the next two to three years. So that balance of planning - eye on the long term but really managing volatility and investments - is a skill that needs honing to get right.” Long-term brand building remains on the agenda for the finance firm’s global head of marketing. “Financial services has the opportunity to step up and not let customers down, so the importance of developing a direct brand with individuals on the street will be more and more important,” he confirmed. “The banks haven’t really cracked pensions and other products, so there’s enough space for businesses like ours to develop that ‘cradle to grave’ savings brand.” The chief digital officer of an FMCG company echoed a need for wider communications to raise awareness of products and messaging, while affirming it was more important to be a “content company” rather than “just buying media”. “We are the planet’s largest plant-based food company, which probably nobody knows yet. We used to be known for selling margarine, which a lot of people still think is artificial and bad for you, whereas if you consult nutrition specialists, the contrary is the case when you look at things like cholesterol,” he elaborated. “So we still have a massive job to do in communications and advertising. For us it has been a shift from the very TV-led past of [our former parent company] to a more digital-led and data driven approach. Covid has accelerated that movement for us.” Despite a degree of clarity in direction, a number of questions still loom large. “How can our brand be helpful in the current context? How do you come out stronger as a brand while doing something that’s relevant and helpful to your customers?” pondered the energy CMO. “But the other big question is - what’s going to be the impact on the P&L? What will be the shape of the recovery? Will it be a ‘V’? A ‘W’? A reverse square root? Nobody really knows, to be honest.”■