Discussion lead: Zachary Jean Paradis, from Sapient
Despite the complex title, it was really about the challenges of making sure your marketing message is consistent across a lot of different media outlets. The primary challenges involved “traditional” organization structures which focus on siloed bits of information or roles. Even with the best communication, it is quite a struggle to get these messages spread from the top-down. Adding to the challenge are the use of multiple agencies and multiple countries/locations.
In the realm of changing organization structure, someone from Walmart mentioned that they had recently combined all of their e-commerce efforts under a “global e-commerce” area to ensure they were consistent. Several groups talked about fluid environments – involving folks from many different areas – and creating “execution teams” or groups charged with implementing a particular campaign/messaging effort. These groups are incentivised based on their success at accomplishing a common goal, which, in theory, creates a multi-channel effort. While focusing on the overall success of the communications goal, it is still tremendously important to focus on channel revenue attribution (a fancy way of saying, “take a look at how much each media contributes to sales”). By doing this, you’ll be able to track how successful each channel is and provide the best ROI for your efforts. It’s important to keep the customer service/front line folks in the loop, as they’ll be key to letting you know what is really working – even helping to measure by asking the simple, “how did you hear about us,” or “what made you call.”
There were several groups – both on the agency side and the brand side – which talked a trend toward “customer experience” consultants. Folks from Mother and Naked Communications,talked about a focus on understanding the needs of the customer and delivering a story and promise no matter what form this may take. Someone from USAA reinforced this point, stating that they didn’t set forth to build the first iPhone app that lets customers deposit checks simply by taking a picture of it, but it came out of ideas to make the customer experience easier (How do they let military men/women who move around alot and may have limited access to the internet while on duty do business easier/better). Brands need to closely monitor customer needs and deliver on their brand promise. New tools, like Twitter, Yelp, etc. make it easier to find our what their frustrations are and where your brand may not be delivering consistently on its promise.
Finally, there’s a fine line between delivering your message across multiple channels and “spam.” Be sure you’re not saturating the market with your message.
