New Technologies Mean New Marketing Innovations

Much of the exclu­sive con­tent on CMO.com in the last cou­ple of weeks has focused on the roles of tech­nol­o­gy and inno­va­tion in mar­ket­ing, espe­cial­ly with Adver­tis­ing Week Europe tak­ing place 18–22 April. As tech­nol­o­gy con­tin­ues to devel­op, its role with­in mar­ket­ing will inevitably increase for mar­keters who are try­ing to stay ahead of the curve. It will also inspire new inno­va­tions as mar­keters try to find new and rel­e­vant ways to reach consumers.

Dylan Stu­art, Part­ner, Strat­e­gy at Lip­pin­cott, shared the impor­tance for com­pa­nies to be “selec­tive­ly excel­lent.” Selec­tive excel­lence involves inten­tion­al and explic­it com­pro­mise in some areas of the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence in order to focus on inno­va­tion and excel­lence in oth­ers. These choic­es cre­ate a dis­tinct val­ue for the cus­tomer. Stu­art offers sev­er­al exam­ples, such as Hyundai’s use of tech­nol­o­gy to sell cars in the UK through dig­i­tal showrooms.

CMO.com sat down with Kate Anck­etill, CEO, GDR Cre­ative Intel­li­gence, for a sneak peak of her Adobe Sum­mit EMEA talk on the “fourth indus­tri­al rev­o­lu­tion.” Anck­etill describes the fourth rev­o­lu­tion as “the fusion of phys­i­cal, dig­i­tal, and bio­log­i­cal tech­nolo­gies.” The impact on mar­ket­ing is sig­nif­i­cant because of the poten­tial to immerse cus­tomers into an expe­ri­ence. She also shared how AI is becom­ing a real­i­ty that will help peo­ple to improve their over­all performance.

The future of pro­gram­mat­ic mar­ket­ing was a hot top­ic at Adver­tis­ing Week Europe. Oli Whit­ten, SVP of Europe and inter­im head of inter­na­tion­al at Rubi­con Project, shared his opin­ion that adver­tis­ing will con­tin­ue to move in the direc­tion of pro­gram­mat­ic because cus­tomers are using the tech­nolo­gies that are avail­able to them. This means mar­keters have to keep up, and automa­tion will be key in that pur­suit. Jonathan Forster, VP EMEA adver­tis­ing & part­ner­ships at Spo­ti­fy, argued that peo­ple who are buy­ing in more tra­di­tion­al ways need a bet­ter expla­na­tion of automa­tion. Many oth­er indus­try lead­ers agreed that pro­gram­mat­ic is the direc­tion mar­ket­ing is headed.

Matthew Dear­den, pres­i­dent of Clear Chan­nel, in his AdWeek Europe ses­sion, “Cre­ativ­i­ty Meets Tech­nol­o­gy,” posed the ques­tion of creativity’s place in online adver­tis­ing with the rise of ad block­ing capa­bil­i­ties. Richard Eyre, chair­man of IAB UK, sug­gest­ed that cre­ativ­i­ty still has a place, but we’re at a time when cre­ativ­i­ty, media, and tech­nol­o­gy need to work togeth­er. Ger­ard Grech, CEO of Tech City in Lon­don, echoed the sen­ti­ment, point­ing out that “the rea­son Lon­don is one of the world’s top-three tech hubs is the inter­ac­tion of dif­fer­ent skillsets.”

Natal­ie Bell, MD of Man­ning Got­tlieb OMD, in her AdWeek Europe ses­sion, “New Real­i­ties for Mar­ket­ing,” shared her expec­ta­tions for the role of vir­tu­al real­i­ty (VR) tech­nol­o­gy in mar­ket­ing. She shared that VR tech­nol­o­gy isn’t at the wide­spread adop­tion stage yet, but it is at a place where it can meet mar­ket­ing and busi­ness chal­lenges. Gill Wor­by, Vir­gin Media’s dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing man­ag­er, agreed with Bell’s analy­sis and shared how Virgin’s recent release of VIVID 360, a live-action VR expe­ri­ence, in stores aims to “increase dwell time and footfall.”

We encour­age you to check out our exclu­sive engage­ments on CMO.com. And please let us know what you think.