It’s a necessary – and happy – paradox that in a world where technology strives to make the lives of consumers easier, brands must be more sophisticated than ever to create connections with those same consumers.
Technological developments and the corresponding digitisation of the world has meant that brands can now make real and useful connections with consumers that are infinitely more sophisticated and provide real utility, far beyond the old model of message and media. The effort in creating these richer connections is crucial, but the world, the topics and the populist messages that will resonate are changing so quickly we have to be able to adapt to seize the opportunities.
These connections are moments in time where a brand can offer value to people through entertainment, insight, utility or other value derived through the creative application of data and the understanding of the humanity that lies behind it. Progressive advertisers understand what this new world of data connectivity can provide.
As an example, Unilever, working with Digital Genius, created What’s for Dinner – a fully automated system able to engage in natural language conversations with customers via SMS. Targeted at emerging markets where internet access is limited, What’s for Dinner talks to Knorr customers, provides new recipe ideas and is even capable of suggesting recipes based on the ingredients customers already have. The system also creates a unique profile for each customer, continuously learning about their individual preferences and dietary requirements. As a result, customers experience a “unique conversation” as they would with a real human.
In order to create effective moments such as these, we have to move past the media-centric view of placing messages in the right channels to the right audience. There has to be an underlying understanding of the humanity of that connection, as Unilever clearly understood. With this in mind, last week, Havas Helia held a one-day festival called field.work, devoted to exploring the creative potential of data.
Data has often (and wrongly) been described as the antithesis of creativity and has often been the last place to which people look for this insight into emotional resonance. In fact, far from providing one-dimensional dry binary statistics, it opens up more creative opportunities than ever before.
For example, tech companies such as Adoreboard are using emotional scoring to understand the impact of brands (both people and companies) like Rory McIlroy and Nike and the impact they have on people. From this contextual data, brands can understand how consumers are reacting and act accordingly to improve how they deliver products and services, but in the most human way.
Sensory science has also brought brands to life beyond advertising and normal communications in a way that is broader and more human than just specific messaging. When visuals, sounds, scents and textures are blended together, our senses become heightened, which can lead to a profound influence on customer behaviour and product enjoyment. This is something that the old media/message model would never be able to provide.
This benefit is also channel agnostic, so advertisers and brand don’t have to be hostages to the media platforms’ ability to target through platform-specific ad products. Each customer is an individual and deserves to be treated as such. Relative Insight, for example, one of the exhibitors at field.work, uses language comparison about people purely based on how they speak. This then informs the creative of marketing to be more resonant and relevant to people, providing a great opportunity in the realm of loyalty marketing.
Language comparison can also be used in a broader way to understand the differences in the ways mums on Mumsnet and Netmums speak differently about the summer holidays – and therefore how brands should talk and add value around this for families.
The combination of sensory, emotional, neural and language mapping provides a far richer context than the shallow use of social media analytics. By understanding the likely responses to marketing messages, we can craft the creative ideas as well as deliver real-time experiences that are more effective and more personal.
It’s this ability to provide utility at a human level that shows why data isn’t the last place that advertisers should look for emotional resonance, but the first.
Ben Silcox is chief digital and data officer at Havas Helia
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