Despite Changes, Marketing Fundamentals Remain The Same: Percolate Conference

“In marketing we talk a lot about stuff changing, without locking down what exactly the change is,” said Noah Brier, founder of Percolate, at the company’s Transition 2016 conference in New York City this morning.

“In marketing, we talk a lot about stuff changing without locking down what exactly the change is,” said Percolate founder Noah Brier, at the company’s Transition 2016 conference in New York City this morning.

According to Brier, “changes” began in the early ’80s with an increase in new-product introductions. “Today, when you walk down the supermarket aisle, there are more products on the shelf to choose from,” Brier said. “That means less market share for companies. So what brands have had to do is go out and find more market.”

Another big change, according to Brier, is brands are now talking to more people, who have more money to spend than consumers of the past.

“More channels, and specifically, the growth of mobile is another big change marketers are facing,” Brier said. “Back in the ’70s, you could reach most of America through four networks and a couple of magazines. Today, everyone has a device you can communicate with them through. And mobile is just one slice of a channel you can reach people through.”

The explosion of channels has meant an increase in agencies and partners for brands. In 1931, a company such as P&G had two agencies. Today, P&G works with approximately 2,500 different partners, according to Brier.

Yet, while the marketing landscape has changed quite a bit, Brier said, a lot has stayed the same. “The job is still to create demand. Content is king, and that’s nothing new,” he said.

All of these factors point to an increasingly complex marketing landscape, with budgets growing linearly, at best, Brier said. To help illustrate how marketers are responding, Brier invited on stage David Beebe, VP of creative and content marketing at Marriott.

Beebe started his talk off by saying that because of all the channels, markets, different consumer trends, and rising costs, every brand is looking to produce more content in-house. “A lot of brands understand the need to change, and they get the value of content and storytelling but don’t know why they are doing it. My advice is to stop and go back to the beginning to figure out the why and how you will manage it,” he said.

For its part, Marriott launched a content studio two years ago. “We don’t physically create anything in-house, and there is no massive production studio,” Beebe said. “The company develops the ideas for all creative in-house, and then when it knows what it wants to do, it finds the right creative partner to tell that story.”

Communicating the brand’s values consistently across cultures while maintaining local relevancy is of huge importance. “Regardless of how good our marketing is, our product has to be great because … if you come stay with us and have a bad experience, you’ll probably go online and complain.”

To that end, Marriott set up M Live, an in-house real-time marketing studio, to monitor online mentions and engage travelers in more personalized, one-to-one ways, Beebe explained. M-Live also helps Marriott with the measurement of brand awareness, where people are sharing the brand’s content, and their overall perception of specific Marriott brands. By taking an omnichannel approach to tracking conversations, trends, global performance, marketing campaigns, and brand reputation across social platforms, M-Live identifies opportunities to authentically integrate Marriott’s 19 brands and 4,300-plus properties worldwide, he said.

“Measurement depends on the goal,” Beebe added. “For something like Marriott Traveler, our content marketing play, it’s all about providing value, so the measurement metrics would be different than something that is solely meant to get heads into beds.”