From mad men to math men: How marketers need to evolve

“Technology is a glittering lure. But there’s the rare occasion when the public can be engaged on a level beyond … if they have a sentimental bond with the product,” said Don Draper in the iconic TV series Mad Men, centred on advertising in the 1960s.

Marketing contemporaries would echo Draper’s statement that sentimental bonds, as a prelude to sales conversions, are a necessity. However, the lack of technological know-how causes them to resemble old-school mad men who insanely push products without an adequate understanding of their audiences.

In today’s digital era, sentimental bonds can be created by reaching the right customers with the right message at the right time. 2014 saw the shift of consumer attention to digital devices and them growing accustomed to personalised experiences.

A personalised experience is now a requirement when consumers engage with brands, be it offline or online. Coincidentally, the TV series will air its final episode in 2015, a year where technology is set to become the enabler of personalised experiences and the centrepiece of every marketing strategy.

We are now at a time where marketers need to be highly analytical – math men, if you will, or marketing technologists – who track real results and insights in real-time, instead of just drinking scotch and coming up with a big creative idea that may not work. While some may rage against the machine and question the irony behind turning to technology to achieve greater personalisation, the truth is, software will become the primary means of engaging prospects and customers.

From here on, every attempt to engage or target an individual must be user-centric and personalised, based on an understanding of the history an individual has with the brand. Therefore, the ability to store, aggregate and make sense of large data volumes collected from multiple sources in multiple formats will be key.

As digital and e-commerce increasingly supplement traditional touch-points such as TV and out-of-home advertising, the importance of mastering marketing technology will grow. In fact, Gartner predicted that by 2017, a company’s chief marketing officer will spend more on technology than its chief information officer[1]. More importantly, a marketing team’s choice of software, how to configure and operate it, along with how creatively it’s applied, affects how the brand influences its audience and how the audience perceives the brand.

Understandably, the challenge of effectively managing all this technology is daunting. As marketers look to unravel the complexities of marketing technology, here are some tips that can help them cope and thrive.

Embrace advanced cross-channel measurement solutions

Just because consumers spend more time on mobile does not mean they are spending less time on other channels. In line with consumer behaviour on multiple platforms, eMarketer predicts that in 2015, worldwide media ad spending across the board will rise by an additional 6% from US$558.68 billion in 2014[2]. This includes not just mobile, but TV and outdoor advertising as well.

Brands have already adopted unifying data management platforms which enable data from digital and mobile brand interactions to be analysed as a whole. However, further cross-platform competence will be required. After unifying data from digital and mobile, the next step will be the integration of location-based data collected from “data-points” scattered geographically, return-path data from pay-TV set-top boxes and additional data from wearable devices.

Invest in marketing technologists

Next, marketers can’t possibly take advantage of a data stream if they are perpetually drowning in it. Investing in marketing technologists is essential. Engage a vendor who can align marketing technology with business goals, serve as a partner to IT, and also evaluate and select relevant, bespoke software projects to develop unique customer experiences.

Marketing technologists will develop data-driven personas, employ intelligent targeting, incorporate an understanding of the customer journey and utilise cross-channel measurement solutions. They will be in the perfect position to influence how user-centric advertising strategies can be developed and applied.

As Draper might add: “People tell you who they are, but we ignore it because we want them to be who we want them to be.”

Through their behaviour on various channels, consumers are already sharing their personal narratives and preferences with marketers, in the form of data. We are at the threshold of next-generation customer interactions. The management, application and integration of analytics and algorithms can no longer be ignored. It’s 2015 and it’s time to get rid of the Mad Men paradigm, and to replace it with the math men mindset.

Anthony Shiner is the chief revenue officer at Group Digital L!fe.

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[1] Gartner Webinars. By 2017 the CMO will Spend More on IT Than the CIO.

[2] eMarketer. Worldwide Ad Spending Q4 2014 Complete Forecast.

Other articles from The Futurist:

Getting up close and personal by Mike King of IKEA Singapore
Still a touch ‘Mad’ but not for long by Anna Bory of Audi
The death of traditional and digital marketing, by Rahul Asthana of Kimberly-Clark
Up, up and away with Millennials, by Rick Harvey Lam of Accor Luxury and Upscale Brands
Welcome to the ‘third age of travel’ by Karun Budhraja of Amadeus Asia
The future(s) of B2B marketing by Andrea Lin of Citi
The mobile customer experience will fuel digital transformation in Asia Pacific by Forrester
Communicate… or die by Greg Klayton of Kadence
4 tips to becoming “2015 Marketer of the Year” by Ambrish Jain of Lenovo
What’s a bad personality trait for a marketer? by Abdul Rahim Bawa of MasterCard
How does a mobile led future look like? By Rohit Dadwal of the Mobile Marketing Association
Do you have the skills to be a futuristic marketer? by Marcus Chew of NTUC Income
Marketing will soon be everybody’s job by Alvin Neo of Integrated Healthcare Holdings/Parkway Pantai.

This article was from Marketing Magazine’s special edition The Futurist, the January-February 2015 issue.

For the full issue, click here.