2018 tips: what it means to start from the experience of people

2018 for us opens with a great novelty at the editorial level: with this content, we will begin to treat monthly articles that will tell the trends and the scenario of digital marketing issues according to our experience: content and social media, online advertising, SEO and Analytics, and above all Experience. The people’s experience, in fact, pervades every single piece of our work that we carry on with passion every day. And we will do it in a new way.

We will publish written content to six hands that will take the form of “Video Tips”, and will be suggestions given by us, with our voice, with our face, with our everyday experience and the evolution of the market that passes through our keyboards. People of TSW will tell the tips with the shape of the video, and this is the first content on our tips on things to watch at the beginning of 2018.

Engagement: the contents are human experiences generated to involve

Marketing always starts from People’s behavior. And the biggest highlight of 2017, according to IPSOS experts, was that people’s attention span dropped to 6 seconds. In addition, the number of vehicles used by people has increased, but for brands the possibility of “hooking” them with content in all channels has decreased. There has also been a return of traditional media in investments: how to respond, then? Creating interconnections and reasoning in a cross-media perspective.

“Starting from people” does not only mean speaking a human language: this has been clear since at least 1999, as reported by Cluetrain Manifesto, which said “Markets are conversations, markets are made of human beings (…) Conversations between human beings play human. And they take place with a human voice”.

Starting from people means above all to follow their path of fruition of the points of contact they have with the brands, amplifying their experience and stimulating, with the contents, emotional reactions.

Today for companies – and when we speak of “present” we already mean the “future” – the absolute quality of the contents – which must be relevant, original and contextual – is not only essential, but above all it is a long-term horizon linked to the strategy of contents. No longer just a “hic et nunc”, but there must always be an eye to the future, using the right mix of creative activities, curation, advertising and measurement of results that leads to being aware of the real value that content can generate over time.

The best example of all this is the data-driven advertising of Spotify, already proposed at the end of 2016 with a campaign that dissected the listening habits of its subscribers, which in 2017 with “Wrapped“ has evolved to propose a landing personalized page for each individual member, with personalized playlists and individual good intentions for the year.

And the good purpose for the brands that will create content in 2018 will always be to keep these three key concepts in mind:

• The contents must be of quality: perfect for their context, resonant with an audience.
• The contents must be long-lasting: their usefulness cannot be exhausted in a short time but it is necessary to create lasting and cross-generational interconnections, taking example from the cinema sagas like Star Wars or the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
• The contents are real human experiences that do not end with a purchase.

Performance: the keywords of 2018 in online advertising

Technology, data, creativity and personalization, supporting a strategy of quality content. These are the keywords of online advertising in 2018, but in reality none of these elements is enough to achieve the maximum effectiveness of an advertising campaign. The right solution to engage the user is their mix, consistently over time, accompanying them on different channels and devices.

“For every dollar that migrates from traditional media to digital media, GroupM has recently estimated that 25 cents is for technology and data.”

Technology and exploitation of large amounts of data will help brands create meaningful relationships. Data is now important for the success of campaigns, but in the near future it will be essential to support creativity and content. Two practical examples:

• the first is the possibility of always targeting segments of users already known by the company with more efficiency, according to the Lifetime Value;
• the second is the possibility to predict the potential value of a new unknown user, when it is reached in the country.

“People-based marketing” is one of the strengths of the advertising offer of the giants Google and Facebook (together more than 80% of online advertising in the world), but with Amazon on the launching pad as early as 2018 to work alongside to form a triumvirate. People-based marketing means the ability to track and recognize a single user when he moves from one channel to another, or from one device to another, when he remains logged.

Greater competition in this field is the desire of all actors. So we hope initiatives like the “Advertising ID Consortium” will progress. Born to counter the walled gardens of Google and Facebook: this could become an open and scalable alternative to their user tracking system.

Experience: expectations, error, care, but above all context and coherence

The experience cannot be defined, and it is difficult to describe it with some “keywords”. Experience, in fact, is a concept that depends on the person and the context, and changes in every situation and continuously.

However, we can try to define it by associating it with three concepts, always starting from the concept of context:

• Expectations: user expectations. they are in continuous evolution, and are formed through the confrontation with an even wider context, that of the competitors. Often, however, they depend on comparisons with services not connected to a specific industry: for example Spotify and Netflix “set” the expectations that thus become the reference of the entire scenario, because they are the ones that users want in each interface.
• Error: we must not conceive error as something to be avoided. Indeed, we must design the experience taking into account the error, which enters a path of use or a particular flow. The mistake is part of the experience, and it must be neither denied nor hidden, because it is a heritage for correctly managing a flow of context.
• Care: caring for people. We must take care of the rules and rules with which people are accustomed to interact in a system, and manage them in critical moments of the experience, not only when they live a positive experience.

Only by having the People’s Experience at heart and respecting it will we be able to improve it. Every moment can become a memorable moment. And in 2018 our greatest aim is this: to transform every experience into a unique, unrepeatable, engaging emotion.

Content written with contributions by:

• Riccardo Coni, Engagement Team Leader
• Claudio Pontirolli, Digital Advertising Team Leader
• Luca Rodighiero, Head of Experience