Tech

Digital must die

Digital must die

Marc Pritchard, Procter & Gamble’s global brand building officer, recently proclaimed that digital was dead and urged marketers to look beyond the pipes and plumbing of digital and social media to what really matters: engaging people with creative campaigns (1).

On the one hand, Pritchard is correct to suggest that digital is dead. These days, the division between digital and traditional exists only in the minds of marketers and engineers. Consumers simply see digital as part of their day-to-day lives. On the other hand, the practice of digital advertising lags behind that reality.

Over two billion people now access the internet worldwide – about a third of the global population. Facebook reaches one seventh of the world’s population. And in a few years’ time, smartphones will ensure that the reach of both is even greater. But the people who use these tools do so in conjunction with all the other aspects of their lives: relaxing, shopping and exploring. So a brand that is encountered online is no less a real-world encounter than when it is seen in a store. Even if we focus on the experience of a single brand campaign, very few people encounter a brand’s advertising only in the digital channels. For instance, in a cross-media study conducted for Nestlé’s KitKat brand a couple of years ago, we found that only one out of 10 people encountered the campaign in digital channels alone.

In his speech, Pritchard asked marketers to: 'Try to resist thinking about digital in terms of the tools, the platforms, the QR codes and all of the technology coming next.' Unfortunately, this is tough to do since the logistics of digital dvertising remain complex. The multiplicity of platforms and protocols encountered in the digital domain mean that it is all too easy to get fixated on the pipes and plumbing of getting a piece of content in front of the target audience, rather than worrying about the audience’s likely receptivity to advertising or how digital fits into the wider brand experience.

In his speech, Pritchard suggested that the current fixation with pipes and plumbing has led to a focus on means, rather than ends. Rather than focus on what the brand needs to achieve and how consumers relate to brands and advertising across the different channels, we allow simplistic metrics to define success. Digital advertising practitioners are fixated with the easily available behavioural metrics, such as click-through, views and likes, irrespective of whether or not they relate to positive brand or financial outcomes. The industry appears to assume that people are robots, and much of the learning about how people use digital media,respond to digital ads and interact with brands in the digital domain is ignored. This blindness leads to an overuse of sophisticated ad tracking and targeting systems that optimise ad placement, rather than brand engagement.

Pritchard suggests that the future of marketing lies in building 'brands with campaigns that matter, make people think, feel and laugh. We have the chance to do all those things now in a way that is so much more exciting than what we did before'.

All of our research suggests that Pritchard is correct. The brands that people want to buy and for which they are willing to pay a price premium are the ones that are perceived as meaningful. They add something to people’s lives, be it functional or emotional. Campaigns that matter come from brands that matter and, online or off, people respond well to campaigns that resonate – the ones that strike an emotional chord. But while digital continues to be managed as a separate silo from traditional marketing, it will be very difficult to make what we do more exciting. Instead it may simply irritate and annoy.

AdIndex findings demonstrate that the range of success for digital is huge, with the very best ads having a strong effect on brand impressions and purchase intent but the worst having a negative effect.This is the dirty little secret of digital advertising. One in four online ads have a measurable, negative effect on purchase intent. Rather than enhancing the overall effect of a campaign, online may actually be undermining it.

The evidence from our cross-media studies consistently finds that multimedia campaigns work better than campaigns that use just one or two channels. Unfortunately, while digital continues to be considered a separate discipline, with logistics and metrics dominating the needs of the brand and consumer, it will be difficult to capture the full potential of any multi-media campaign. For this reason, if nothing else, it is time we abandoned our long-standing fixation with ‘new media’ and recognised that digital is just another way to engage people in their day-to-day lives.

Yes, the logistics are different, but the end result – the need to build meaningful brands and campaigns – is not. It is time for digital to die.


Nigel Hollis is executive vice-president and chief global analyst at Millward Brown [email protected].
 
This article was taken from the January 2014 issue of Market Leader. Browse the archive here.

 

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