The future of marketing: Personalisation

We live in the consumer age. Customers today are more empowered than ever before and demand a lot from companies looking to engage them. Thus, marketers need to stay ahead of the communication trends in order to win customers.

During the seminar, Marketing Insights: The Future of Marketing – How To Stay Connected With Your Consumer – hosted by Marketing magazine, Irene Xu, practice lead for customer intelligence at SAS North Asia, pointed out to brands and companies that there was a saying “innovate or die”, but now it is more like “digitalise or die”.

Xu explains the emergence of digital has created a new breed of customers, and this kind of new-generation consumers are more demanding than ever and if they want something, they want it right away, so she stresses real-time communication is critical.

Other than responding to their needs instantly, she says personalised marketing communication can’t be ignored because that can make the entire experience relevant to
personal needs.

She adds that in the future of marketing, leveraging advanced analytics will help to understand customers better and cover real insights, which will enable brands to support key junctures throughout the journey, and to ensure the customer receives a consistent, personalised and compelling experience.

For years, it’s believed that to make communications relevant, marketers have to create customised content to make the organisation’s message stand out.

Joyce Lui, regional marketing director of Asia Pacific at Marriott International, shared how British Airways’ “Visit Mum” video campaign had successfully targeted specific customers and pulled at their heartstrings as an example.

Lui says the airline looked into its database and found out that a considerable number of Indian expatriates were living in the US, especially on the east coast.

British Airlines then created an emotional online film as part of the location-based campaign, encouraging those Indian expatriates to visit their mothers.

The commercial features a mother in Mumbai talking about how much she misses her son in New York, who hasn’t been back home in the past 15 years. During the video, she cooks her son’s favourite childhood dish which sets off a lot of homesickness.

As the video took the connection to a very personal level, it created a tear-jerking effect, which brought success to the campaign.

“In today’s world there is no secret recipe to follow which will get you to the result; it’s all about optimisation,” she said.

While many brands want to be relevant to their consumers, she advises them not to just offer a price promotion in the marketing mix, but adopt a more emotional approach.

Karen Tam, assistant general manager at Harbour City, agrees that an emotional approach can make a difference. She says the yellow rubber duck exhibition hosted by the shopping mall in 2013 built an emotional connection with audiences successfully.

When it comes to technology, Eric Chan, head of products and services at Hutchison Global Communications, says the business model of innovation nowadays brings disruption that transforms a whole vertical industry.

For example, he mentions the car-hailing app Uber operates it business without owning vehicles; while Airbnb runs lodging businesses without properties, making ownership of physical assets less important these days.

On the other hand, Lui shows one image to depict the power of mobile devices: In 2005, there was a crowd in St Peter’s Square waiting for the Pope announcement, without phones in their hands.

However, in 2013, there was a starry sea of smartphone screens at the unveiling of the Pope where people shared and talked about the announcement that ensured they were connected to the digital world throughout the day. Lui thinks this kind of phenomenon can be an instant marketing engine.