MEC, a leading media agency, www.mecglobal.com, today released its fifth edition of Review Preview (RP No.5 – Transforming Marketing). This collection of global essays recaps the most significant takeaways from the past year and explores how digital transforms the way consumers explore, discover, buy, and engage with products and services as well as with each other, transcending traditional channel boundaries in 2015.
The essays, written by MEC’s senior team from around its international network, offer a truly global perspective on marketing. Key articles include:
1.The power of building stories: At the forefront of the massive shift in marketing, content has emerged as a major marketing disrupter, empowering brands to educate, entertain and mobilize the participation generation. As an example, the essay links to Netflix and MEC’s award-winning native advertising project for the Season 2 premier of Orange is the New Black.
2.Escape the live room: In the 2000s we’ve built labs, in the 2010s we’ve built live rooms. But today, many of those live rooms have turned into sad, abandoned conference rooms with lots of expensive screens. The author argues that live is not a space, but a cultural transformation and a new way of working. As marketers, we must be ready to be always on, meeting the consumers in real time, whether from inside the live room or not.
3.Data is changing how marketers plan: The data and technology advancements enable marketers to unlock and monetize consumer insights at an unprecedented rate, making way for real-time solutions, customizable audiences, endless creative iterations and opportunistic channel activations.
4.Romancing the ecommerce shopper: There is much more to ecommerce than giving consumers a place to enter a credit card number. In 2015, the sheer volume of everyday consumer decisions that will be made ecommerce will necessitate brands to, as David Ogilvy said “charm the consumer into buying their product.” Brands should leverage consumer insights and technology to tell a cohesive, consistent and compelling story across all ecommerce touchpoints.
5.The rise of digital video: As screen and content choices continue to proliferate, video will become an ever greater part of our lives. Marketers need to think more about how they can leverage digital’s unique capabilities to create immersive and relevant video experiences. To this end, there are three areas marketers need to keep top of mind: interactivity, native video advertising and social TV.
Commenting on Review Preview, Carl Fremont, Chief Digital Officer, Global said, “This year’s articles from our global network of senior leaders provide a guide for implementing marketing brand initiatives in a digital enabled world. Digital has transformed the ways in which consumers explore, discover, buy, and engage with products and services as well as with each other, and staying ahead of technology and the consumer’s changing expectation is one of the biggest challenges of today’s marketers. Our best advice is to dive in and explore the new opportunities to change and grow the business: Open your data and your services. Fund disruptive innovation. Experiment, fail and learn.”