What marketing practices and tools can be used in a Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous world?

No one real­ly believed it could hap­pen, and yet it has hap­pened… We are now in a post-Brex­it, post-Trump world, and we have to make do. These two major events that experts were unable to antic­i­pate prove that any­thing is pos­si­ble, the best as well as the worst, and no one is capa­ble of know­ing what the future holds.

This uncer­tain, com­plex world was char­ac­ter­ized 15 years ago by the Amer­i­can army using the acronym VUCA: Volatil­i­ty — Uncer­tain­ty — Com­plex­i­ty — Ambi­gu­i­ty. These 4 adjec­tives were used to describe the sit­u­a­tion in which troops found them­selves dur­ing the mil­i­tary cam­paign in Afghanistan and Pak­istan: a ter­rain and an adver­sary that they had trou­ble under­stand­ing (cf. Overview of Man­age­ment The­o­ry pub­lished by the U.S. Army War Col­lege in 1991). An acronym that was tak­en up some years lat­er in the man­age­ment world to describe the ultra-com­pet­i­tive envi­ron­ment in which brands and orga­ni­za­tions have to live in: sat­is­fied but not loy­al cus­tomers, fierce com­pe­ti­tion from Asian pro­duc­ers, con­stant­ly evolv­ing stan­dards and laws, vari­able sales peri­ods, start-ups that are ready for any­thing because they have noth­ing to lose, etc. More on this top­ic: What VUCA Real­ly Means for You and Lead­ing in an Increas­ing­ly VUCA World.

Today, the ques­tion that every­one is com­ing up against is: How can you make a dif­fer­ence in such an unsta­ble mar­ket envi­ron­ment? Faced with tra­di­tion­al media’s audi­ence decline, adver­tis­ers are turn­ing towards dig­i­tal media and are find­ing them­selves plunged into an envi­ron­ment that is both very com­plex (ex: the dif­fer­ent tech­niques of pro­gram­mat­ic buy­ing) and ever evolv­ing (ex: the con­stant changes of the adver­tis­ing for­mats on Face­book, Insta­gram, Snapchat, etc.). This makes it extreme­ly dif­fi­cult to mas­ter these new chan­nels and coher­ent­ly orches­trate large-scale campaigns.

From post-truth to post-marketing

What works for com­pa­nies also works for con­sumers, who are sub­ject­ed to con­sid­er­able pres­sure by the media and adver­tis­ers: break­ing news every two hours, reg­u­lar­ly revamped prod­ucts and ser­vices with lit­tle trans­paren­cy as to their com­pat­i­bil­i­ty and com­pli­ance (ex: the mul­ti­pli­ca­tion of 4K and UHD TV stan­dards), very com­plex offers (ex: home insur­ance, car financ­ing, or trav­el insur­ance), and ambigu­ous mes­sages (ex: “we offer you the best prod­uct with the best ser­vice… at half the price!”).

Con­sumers are exposed to a build-up of promis­es they no longer believe and offers they are wary of that are issued by brands they no longer trust. The sit­u­a­tion is thus more strained than ever for adver­tis­ers who also have to deal with rapid­ly chang­ing media. To off­set the gen­er­al decline in vis­i­tor traf­fic and the upsurge of adblock­ers, edi­tors are diver­si­fy­ing their edi­to­r­i­al and adver­tis­ing for­mats. This dis­par­i­ty in for­mats forces brands to car­ry out numer­ous adap­ta­tions of their cam­paigns and thus increas­es the risk that mes­sages will be dis­tort­ed. These new edi­to­r­i­al / adver­tis­ing for­mats are also more com­plex to mea­sure. Long sto­ry short: Adver­tis­ers, edi­tors, and con­sumers make do with this world of uncer­tain­ty as best they can.

Let us be clear: the sit­u­a­tion itself is not the end of the world, but it caus­es anx­i­ety and it pre­vents adver­tis­ers and con­sumers from plan­ning and mak­ing bold because no one real­ly knows what the future holds.

In order to con­tin­ue to per­form in a VUCA world, brands have to devel­op an offer, a pitch, and mar­ket­ing tac­tics that are able to with­stand this ultra-com­pet­i­tive envi­ron­ment (short­er prod­uct life cycles, dis­rup­tive inno­va­tions, uber­iza­tion, etc.).

If we look at it from the con­sumers’ point of view, this is broad­ly how adver­tis­ers can reduce the impact of the VUCA context:

• Volatil­i­ty. Faced with rapid­ly chang­ing prod­ucts, ser­vices, stan­dards, etc., a brand must have a sta­ble vision and com­mu­ni­cate it over the long term. Of course, it is pos­si­ble to change your posi­tion­ing or USP, but not every year! This con­sis­ten­cy in com­mu­ni­ca­tion neces­si­tates a coher­ent voice across the var­i­ous media at the very least. Since cur­rent tech­ni­cal solu­tions enable us to indi­vid­u­al­ize mes­sages accord­ing to the medi­um, con­text, and pro­file of the tar­gets, the fun­da­men­tals of the brand voice need to stay the same.
• Uncer­tain­ty. Con­sumers have dif­fi­cul­ty antic­i­pat­ing the ben­e­fits of a prod­uct or ser­vice because they are no longer con­fi­dent. Thus, your offer has to be com­bined with a strong promise, tan­gi­ble proofs, and qual­i­ty ser­vice, which will be high­light­ed by con­crete guar­an­tees. Of course, omni-chan­nel­ing is the norm, since it is no longer pos­si­ble to treat a POS cus­tomer dif­fer­ent­ly than an online buyer.
• Com­plex­i­ty. As prod­ucts and ser­vices are pro­gres­sive­ly becom­ing more sophis­ti­cat­ed, con­sumers have more and more fac­tors to con­sid­er in their buy­ing deci­sion. It is suf­fi­cient to present them with an easy-to-under­stand val­ue propo­si­tion, prefer­ably based on rel­e­vant argu­ments (ex: smart­phone man­u­fac­tur­ers who per­form device detec­tion in order to com­pare their smartphone’s fea­tures sole­ly with those of the smart­phone whose adver­tise­ment being viewed on).
• Ambi­gu­i­ty. In a con­text where mes­sages are increas­ing­ly short and increas­ing­ly numer­ous, con­sumers legit­i­mate­ly have trou­ble grasp­ing a pitch that is too gener­ic. Since mass com­mu­ni­ca­tion cam­paigns still prove their worth in cer­tain spe­cif­ic cas­es (ex: favorite food prod­ucts, such as Nutel­la), the best way of grab­bing your tar­gets’ atten­tion is per­son­al­iz­ing your mes­sages. This is for­tu­nate, since that is pre­cise­ly the main argu­ment of dig­i­tal media: very high cov­er­age with max­i­mum flexibility.

Thus, it is pos­si­ble to lim­it the impact of a VUCA envi­ron­ment, but all these good inten­tions can­not be accom­plished with­out rework­ing your marketing.

New prac­tices = new tools

Defin­ing and imple­ment­ing post-VUCA mar­ket­ing requires agili­ty and resilience. OK… agreed… apart from that? Beyond wise words, brands and dis­trib­u­tors need to recon­fig­ure them­selves in order to be bet­ter pre­pared for the con­straints of this VUCA world. This inevitably involves the imple­men­ta­tion of new prac­tices and new mar­ket­ing tools. Apart from agili­ty, one of adver­tis­ers’ major chal­lenges is cor­rect­ly under­stand­ing and mas­ter­ing these new tools, and hav­ing one sim­ple con­cern: how can you main­tain the integri­ty of a mes­sage or cam­paign in the era of pro­gram­mat­ic buy­ing and microsegments?

This is the para­dox that we are wit­ness­ing: invest­ing in com­plex tools with an uncer­tain ROI in order to com­bat the com­plex­i­ty and uncer­tain­ty of the mar­ket. For­mu­lat­ed this way, the appeal of mar­ket­ing tech­nol­o­gy (“martech”) tools should be put in per­spec­tive. This being said, as your com­peti­tors are upgrad­ing their tech­no­log­i­cal arse­nal, I do not real­ly see how adver­tis­ers with a min­i­mum of ambi­tion could spare them­selves this upgrade.

Bear in mind that an advertiser’s ambi­tion must in no way be lim­it­ed to adopt­ing new tech­no­log­i­cal tools. Tools are only a means to achieve a goal, just as with con­tent or a new posi­tion­ing. If your goal is to stand out from the crowd, to improve cus­tomer expe­ri­ence, to increase mar­ket shares, or to secure your mar­gins (or all of this at the same time), then you will inevitably need to adopt these new tools.

“Inevitably” because if we sum­ma­rize the com­po­nents of a post-mar­ket­ing approach which is able to with­stand a VUCA envi­ron­ment, a cam­paign must deliver:

• A con­sis­tent mes­sage regard­less of the medi­um (Flex­i­ble Ads and land­ing pages in Respon­sive Web Design are imperative)
• A sim­ple, hard-hit­ting pitch (that thus uses the same words and/or the same visu­al ref­er­ences as your targets)
• A per­son­al­ized promise and proof / guar­an­tees depend­ing on the tar­gets’ pro­file (dynam­ic per­son­al­iza­tion and intel­li­gent seg­men­ta­tion tools are there for that)
• A con­tex­tu­al­ized reminder mech­a­nism accord­ing to your cus­tomers’ progress in the con­ver­sion fun­nel (so that they do not receive the wrong mes­sage at the wrong time)
• An adver­tis­ing pres­sure that is prop­er­ly bal­anced (so as to not sat­u­rate the tar­gets) and intel­li­gent­ly spanned over time (with ongo­ing optimization)
• A pre­cise mea­sure­ment of effec­tive­ness and attri­bu­tion (so as to bet­ter arbi­trate bud­gets and even be able to think ahead)

Once again, all these good inten­tions can­not be done on a large scale with­out suit­able tools. Mar­ket­ing automa­tion solu­tions are there to help you set up mar­ket­ing sys­tems and cam­paigns that are able to with­stand a VUCA envi­ron­ment. The goal to keep in mind is to opti­mize the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence using an adver­tis­ing jour­ney that is more respect­ful for tar­gets and a more sophis­ti­cat­ed con­ver­sion fun­nel that is capa­ble of adapt­ing to the numer­ous con­texts of the tar­get­ed seg­ments. In order to deliv­er the stat­ed promise, this opti­mized cus­tomer expe­ri­ence needs to be care­ful­ly designed and pre­cise­ly imple­ment­ed. This neces­si­tates increased exper­tise on tools whose func­tion is some­times obscure in the eyes of novices. For­tu­nate­ly, pro­files like mar­ket­ing tech­nol­o­gists are there to help you bet­ter com­pre­hend this com­plex­i­ty (obvi­ous­ly a recur­ring theme in this VUCA world!).

Dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion as a rem­e­dy for the VUCA world

New media, new behav­iors, new com­pet­i­tive envi­ron­ment, new prac­tices, new tools… In case you did not under­stand, we are talk­ing about dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion. Admit­ted­ly, it is a gener­ic theme we could asso­ciate with numer­ous arti­cles or dis­cus­sions, but it is a very prac­ti­cal term to sum up the under­tak­ing that awaits brands and orga­ni­za­tions. Dig­i­tal exac­er­bates the volatil­i­ty of cus­tomers, the uncer­tain­ty of the mar­kets, the com­plex­i­ty of buy­ing behav­iors, and the ambi­gu­i­ty of pitch­es.

In order to avoid a long, tedious expla­na­tion, we can start from the prin­ci­ple that dig­i­tal is both the prob­lem and the solu­tion. Mas­ter­ing this new dig­i­tal envi­ron­ment and your cus­tomers’ dig­i­tal dai­ly life means pro­tect­ing your­self from the effects of a VUCA con­text. In this arti­cle, I empha­sized mar­ket­ing prac­tices and tools, but there are also numer­ous oth­er domains to improve: your orga­ni­za­tion (the way infor­ma­tion flows, the way deci­sions are tak­en, etc.), your offer (the way it is defined and the way it evolves), your cre­ative process, etc.

In con­clu­sion, we must learn to live and work in a world where volatil­i­ty, uncer­tain­ty, com­plex­i­ty, and ambi­gu­i­ty are the new norm. In order to adapt, you need to over­come the steep learn­ing curve and make dig­i­tal con­cerns the crux of your organization’s trans­for­ma­tion, since it crys­tal­lize all the fac­tors of change and uncer­tain­ty. As I am con­stant­ly repeat­ing: mar­ket­ing is the depart­ment that holds the best posi­tion with­in your orga­ni­za­tion to make this trans­for­ma­tion hap­pen because it is at the fore­front of cus­tomer needs and mar­ket stud­ies and because it is the key to new prac­tices that will enable you to bet­ter con­trol the tools need­ed to adapt to a VUCA context.

If you would like to find out more join our Mar­ket­ing Inno­va­tions Track ses­sion at Adobe Sum­mit EMEA.