Rethinking Marketing in the Digital Age

™

the new imperative

In partnership with

For both consumers and business, the world is speeding up,
more uncertain and more technology-based than ever before.
The customer journey has become increasingly sinuous, winding
back and forth from online to in-store, from individual to social,
from static to mobile. In trying to keep up with these changes
and manage complexity, brands are faced with new challenges
that traditional marketing cannot meet. We are reaching the
limits of yesterday’s mass media communications—television,
radio and print—and are in the midst of a paradigm shift brought
on by digital technologies and the emergence of new digital
marketing opportunities. This new paradigm calls for a new
approach to marketing.
How to rethink marketing in the digital age? How to create,
equip and organize marketing teams for meeting the needs
of the new digital consumer in a rapidly changing world?
How to seize the digital marketing opportunity and provide
consumers with the experiences and services they have
come to expect? How to reorganize marketing teams so
that they can take full advantage of the benefits of digital
technologies? How to effectively reconcile marketing with
performance and accountability?

about Valtech
Valtech is a new breed of digital marketing and technology agency, with a global
footprint in eight countries (Denmark, France, Germany, South Korea, India,
Sweden, the UK and the USA) and approximately 1,600 employees. As a full-
service digital powerhouse, Valtech delivers value to its customers throughout
every stage of their digital projects, from strategic consulting to design,
conception, development and optimization of business-critical platforms.
Through its unceasingly renewed commitment to innovation and agility,
Valtech helps global brands build business value and increase revenues through
digital technologies while optimizing time to market and ROI. Well aware of
the dramatic changes wrought by digital marketing, Valtech has created a
dedicated Agile Marketing™ team that brings together experts on Customer
Responsive Platforms™ (consulting, implementation, and maintenance),
Digital Performance (optimization) and Agile Organizations (transformation).
For commercial inquiries, please contact:
digitalplatform@valtech.com

about the authors
Laura Guillemin has held the position of Digital Insight Lead at Valtech for
the past two years. Through her work in developing a strategic vision of
agile digital marketing and te chnology innovation, she has contributed to
the birth of the new Valtech and its positioning as a global digital marketing
agency. Before joining Valtech Laura worked at Microsoft France developing
partnership programs for innovation and start-up ecosystem.
Laura holds degrees from the Sorbonne, the HEC School of Management and the
Ecole Normale Supérieure.

Lubomira Rochet is Deputy CEO of Valtech.
She is in charge of Strategy, Marketing and new digital offerings. She has led
Valtech’s new strategy and positioning around digital marketing and has developed
Valtech’s vision of Agile Marketing ™.

As the world has moved online,
the distance between companies
and customers has collapsed to
zero.

foreword

Foreword
by Scott Brinker
(aka @chiefmartec)

We’re privileged to live in the most exciting time in the history
of marketing.

While every profession has been impacted by the explosion of ubiquitous computing and connectivi-
ty in the digital age, the impact on marketing has undoubtedly been the most profound. As the world
has moved online, the distance between companies and customers has collapsed to zero. Google
calls it the Zero Moment of Truth (ZMOT), and it changes everything.

Previously, high costs and slow lead times were the price marketers paid to cross the physical chasm
to their audience—and that bridge only went in one direction. Marketing management and infras-
tructure were built around those constraints.

But today, information and interactions flow freely both ways. Costs and lead times for many marke-
ting activities, at least as dictated by external constraints, have shrunk. A large advertizing budget is
no longer the centerpiece of marketing. Instead, customer intimacy has become the new crown jewel.
It encompasses the entire firm, and it has elevated marketing to the vanguard of business leadership.

I propose to you that, in this new era, the most valuable marketing capability is agility.

5

agile marketing™, the new imperative

Consider three waves of agile transformation in marketing.

The first wave was driven by the proliferation of digital channels themselves.
How long does it take for your prospects to open an email, query a search engine, jump to a web site, or
engage with social media? As fast as they can click. And they can effortlessly move across the breadth of
the global Internet as interest and inspiration strike. They are fluidly agile in the digital space.
Symmetrically, how long does it take you to update your web site, send an email, launch a keyword
ad on Google, or share new content on Facebook or Twitter? The actual moment of publishing—and
its delivery to your audience—is also done at the speed of a click. We’ve come to take this for
granted, but it is an amazing shift in the nature of communications.
But the very fluidity of digital channels quickly became marketing’s bane as well as its boon. As the
number of vehicles and individually addressable audience segments multiplied, the sheer magni-
tude of deploying all of these digital messages—and servicing the resulting interactions with pros-
pects and partners—outstripped the ability for marketers to implement them by hand.

Thankfully, the second wave of agile transformation is now arriving: a massive new generation of
marketing technology platforms that provide software-based levers to manage this load at scale.
Marketing analytics, marketing automation, marketing optimization—these tools thrive on the dy-
namics of the digital domain. They empower marketers to target and personalize thousands of
micro-marketing interactions across all of these channels. Or, it might be more accurate to say
that they technically enable such Long Tail marketing.

For many marketers, however, something else is becoming the gating factor in their performance.
It is this bottleneck that is the focus of the third wave of agile transformation: making the marketing
organization itself truly agile.
Up to this point, digital was largely squeezed into marketing management and governance struc-
tures that predated it by decades. But now we’ve reached an inflection point where it’s manifest:
digital is our new foundation, not our window dressing. To harness the agility of digital channels
and technologies, we must now adapt our organizations to operate at this new speed.

Agile Marketing ™ methodologies—by no coincidence, adapted from the agile development metho-
dologies that revolutionized modern software—promote a better way of managing marketing in this
dynamic environment. They let us act and react at the speed of digital. «Float like a butterfly,
sting like a bee,» to quote Muhammad Ali’s famous words. It’s an approach that can make even the
largest marketing departments nimble.
This paper by Valtech connects the dots between these three waves of agile transformation.
It illuminates the possibilities and sketches a roadmap for moving forward. I hope it inspires
you—for there has truly never been a better time to be an inspired marketing leader.

Scott Brinker
@chiefmartec
President and CTO, ion interactive
www.chiefmartec.com

6

“ Float like a butterfly,
sting like a bee. ”


introduction

Toward the end of 2011, we began to hear the term “Adaptive
Marketing” (1) increasingly often in the media and from industry
analysts. For a recently coined buzzword, it does a good job of
summing up the need to reinvent marketing.

Our preference, however, is for “ Agile Marketing ™ ”, a concept with a proven track record. The term
agile is borrowed from the history of technology, but it progressively entered our world and then
became all-pervasive in every arena for both businesses and consumers. In the late 1990s, due to
the explosion in demand for IT services on the part of large companies and the subsequent indus-
trialization of business processes, the very way in which technology projects were managed had to
be transformed. Markets, users and competitors were changing so quickly that IT projects began
to suffer from tunnel effects: Software development was lagging behind. To remedy the problem,
software developers issued an Agile Manifesto. The new approach and new methodologies outlined
in the manifesto revolutionized IT project management. Flexibility, time to market and the quality
and relevance of products were vastly improved, which enabled IT departments to work more colla-
boratively, deliver higher performance and drive more value.

We believe that marketing is in precisely the same position that IT was in twenty years ago (2): Bud-
gets are under pressure. ROI expectations are higher. Time to market must be shorter. Both consu-
mers and competitors are changing at breakneck speed. The results of any operation are always
uncertain. For all of these reasons, we believe that marketing should be infused with the agile values
that have been so successful for IT development.

9

introduction

What are those values?
Focus on people: effective collaboration between all stakeholders, including consumers, par-
tners, employees, developers, creative personnel and others.
Focus on quality: product quality, customer experience quality and brand experience quality.
Focus on performance: time to market, targeting and metrics.
Focus on the consumer: consumer-centric, consumer-relevant, personalized and responsive.

Agile Marketing ™ empowers marketers to seize the many and varied opportunities of digital techno-
logy. Agile Marketing ™ empowers marketers to be flexible and responsive to change, to prove their
ROI and demonstrate their performance.

How? Digital can provide far better customer intelligence. Digital offers the ability to execute cam-
paigns in a multichannel environment, all the while maintaining brand consistency and delivering
a seamless customer experience. Digital technologies enable continuous measurement and conti-
nuous feedback so that operations can be optimized, fine-tuned or changed in real time.

Agile Marketing ™ lets marketers take full advantage of these digital benefits to truly put the consu-
mer at the center of every business strategy. The Holy Grail of marketing has always been to deliver
the right incentive to the right person at the right time. The agile approach allows marketers to
reach, engage and convert consumers in ways that are much more relevant and personalized. In
other words... deliver the right incentive to the right person at the right time.

Agile Marketing ™
lets marketers take full advantage
of these digital benefits
to truly put the consumer
at the center of every business strategy.

10

We live in a world where technology
is advancing at lightning-fast pace,
changing the way we live, work and shop.

This technology whirlwind has left
businesses and consumers racing
to keep up with it:
The traditional marketing timeframe
is no longer feasible.

Marketing needs to be agile.

01 * why marketers need to be agile?

Speed, uncertainty and technology
have created a new and
challenging playing field
for marketers

From world-shaking events in global markets to everyday
events in our personal lives, everything is moving at top speed
and the only certainty is uncertainty. The rules of the game for
businesses, especially with regard to marketing and the constant
quest for the ever-elusive consumer, have radically changed.

Fast and furious:
The age of speed and uncertainty is driven by technology innovation.
The emergence of new means of communications, particularly telecommunications, is the reason for this
dramatic acceleration in our professional and personal lives. Comparing life today with life just a few decades
ago, we can only marvel at what the world must have been like before the democratization of air travel, before
the existence of high-speed trains and before the development of the Internet. Not to mention the most
recent of these innovations: Mobile phones, now smartphones, have literally put the world at our fingertips
no matter where we are. Such accelerated technological innovation is both the cause and the consequence of
our high-velocity world.

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Along with its many advantages, however, such speed also creates chaos and rising levels of uncer-
tainty. It has become increasingly difficult to make forecasts in a world where seemingly any situa-
tion can be turned on its head overnight. New and disruptive technology and devices often arrive
without warning, re-arranging players and the playing field in the blink of an eye. For instance,
who could have predicted the massive disruption on the telecommunications market caused by the
release of the iPhone? Who could have imagined the power of social networks in toppling Arab go-
vernments? Who can claim to accurately foresee the future of companies like Groupon or of social
networks like Quora and Pinterest?

Change and uncertainty are indeed the only constant. Time to market has never been under such a
pressure and responsiveness to external change has never been such a key success factor. Conse-
quently, businesses are forced to value speed and flexibility above all other qualities. Agility—both
internally and on the market—is now an essential asset.

This is particularly true for marketing departments, which are faced with an increasingly complex
environment and an increasingly complex consumer. Digital technology has given birth to the digi-
tal consumer and he or she presents major new challenges.

Volatile, vocal, connected, demanding:
The era of the digital consumer creates new challenges for marketers.
With new technologies being released every day—not only new devices that disrupt the market,
like iPhones and tablets, but new applications and new social media as well—we live increasingly
connected lives. This has changed our world forever and anyone with a message to convey has little
choice but to change with it. For better or worse, we have become utterly reliant on technology. We
can’t manage without our cell phones and laptops, Facebook and Twitter. Children born when the
digital age was already underway are even more connected. And they’re taking their parents and
grandparents, sometime kicking and screaming, with them.

The new consumer is born.

14

Tokyo

New York

Paris

Buenos Aires

Sydney

SMARTPHONES

THE WORLD AT OUR FINGERTIPS

“Mobile phones, now smartphones, have literally put the world at our fingertips no matter where we are.”
© Valtech 2012


The digital consumer spends increasingly more time
on digital channels and increasingly less on traditional
channels. The digital consumer is spending ever-increasing amounts
of time with technology: on social media, mobile apps, websites, etc. She
is social, local and mobile. In particular, she does more and more of her
8,2 % shopping on mobile and sales of mobile devices have outpaced sales of tra-
ditional PCs. This rapidly-evolving consumer is radically different in the
way she interacts with other consumers and with brands, products and
o f d i g i tal tr a ffi c
c am e fro m mo b i le a t services. The new, always-connected consumer expects to be able to ac-
th e e n d o f 201 1 . cess content and services no matter where she is and no matter what time
it is. As of end 2011, mobile accounted for 8.2% of all digital traffic, with
2.5% coming from tablet users (3). As well, the rise of mobile has meant
that consumers are now connected with their communities at all times.
In one enlightening statistic, 45% of local deal visitors are “very likely” to
recommend a daily deal site (4). Today’s consumer is mobile and wants
her experience to continue seamlessly even when she switches devices.

The digital consumer is a born zapper with a shorter at-
tention span. Digital consumers are multitasking consumers precisely

5 seconds
because they are hyper-connected. Accustomed to exchanging messages
in the blink of an eye and accessing information in just one click, they
expect content to be interactive and immediately available. If not, they
is the average simply leave. Consequently, they are far more volatile. Due to the many
attention span. screens in everyone’s lives, attention spans have shortened, audiences
are more fragmented and zapping has become the norm. Nowadays, the
average attention span is about 5 seconds long; ten years ago it was 12 mi-
nutes—144 times longer (5)! The web and new media mean that brands
need to invent new ways of reaching and interacting with demanding,
impatient consumers. Of course, they still watch TV, the traditional outlet
for brands, but they combine it with other screens and other platforms,
making it increasingly difficult for marketers to know where and how to
shape their tactics to reach such erratic consumers.

5,000 ad messages
The digital consumer is overwhelmed by advertizing and
has learned to hear and see only what is relevant to him.
A person living in a city 30 years ago saw up to 2,000 ad messages a day,
compared to 5,000 today. It is even worse in a digital world (6). Due to
are seen by a
person living in a the many screens in their lives—web, mobile, tablet, TV—consumers are
city today. overwhelmed with advertizing and the result is information overload to
an unprecedented degree. The human mind simply cannot process the
vast number of messages it is exposed to on a daily basis. Along with the

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omnipresent traditional media, signs, posters and billboards constantly
clamoring for our attention, we are now assailed with web banners of all
descriptions popping up every time we open a browser and every time
we enter the digital world from any device or interface. Consumers are
so submerged that they simply do not have the mental capacity, or the
willingness, to lend their eyes and ears to information not directly related
to their needs. They have learned to ignore messages that are of no imme-
diate use to them and they have developed a highly utilitarian attitude
toward branding and marketing.

social The digital consumer is empowered in her rela-
tionship to brands. Digital technologies are intrinsically interactive
media (social media, mobile apps, location-based services, etc). Technology has
empowered consumers and they are well of aware of that fact. They know

mobile that social networks can give them a far-reaching voice. Furthermore, they
now know exactly what other consumers think of any given brand and
devices
... its products or services. Brands are no longer in the lead position when it
comes to shaping the way consumers perceive them. They do not dominate
The consumer the message anymore. Consider the case of Kristin Christian, an ordinary
is vocal and customer who in the pre-digital age would have had very little influence:
empowered.
She launched a “bank transfer day” on Facebook to protest Bank of Ame-
rica’s new monthly $5 debit card fee. The response was enormous. Bank of
America’s competitor Credit Union saw new accounts rise 50% (7) on the
day of the event. Not to mention the public outcry when Gap decided to
change its logo (8). Clearly, the illusion of brands having complete control
is over: It’s the worldwide community of consumers that is now in control.

The digital consumer wants personalized relationships
C o n s um e rs w a nt with brands. In this volatile, data-overloaded environment, consumers
app reciation, are increasingly attentive to the notion of personalized relationships with

respect a nd brands. Consumers want appreciation, respect and recognition from brands
and they want such consideration on an individual basis. They will be more
recognition loyal to brands that anticipate their needs and expectations, remember
fro m b ran ds.
their birthdays and propose products and services suited to them as indi-
viduals. Witness how Amazon built its success on showing each customer
how much he matters. The Internet giant captured the market by being
attentive to each consumer’s personal details and demonstrating in-depth
knowledge of his history with the brand. Consumers now expect brands to
take into account the particular day and date, their current location, shop-
ping habits, tastes and any relevant contexts and events. The digital consu-
mer does not like to feel that he is just one more mass market buyer.

17


The end of mass media: The communication paradigm has now shifted
from mass media to a more personalized, two-way relationship.
Throughout most of the 20th century, brands had a monopoly over their messages and communica-
tions were one-way, top-down, brand-to-consumer. In the old context, building marketing master
plans years ahead and scheduling brand interventions at set dates (product launches, the Superbowl,
the Olympic Games, etc) was effective. But times have changed drastically. Now, consumers can talk
to brands—whenever they choose to do so—as easily as brands can talk to them. And consumers can
talk about brands and their products as easily as brands can talk about themselves and their products.
New technology has imposed a new communications paradigm that cannot be ignored.

In the digital age, not only are communications multilateral rather than unilateral, but competition
is fast and fierce. As mentioned above, no one foresaw the upheaval caused by the first iPhone, but
companies are now accepting the fact that disruptive, and even revolutionary, new products and
services, can burst onto the market with little advance notice and little time for advance planning. E-
books and tablets are yet another example: Entire industries will have to regroup to make flexibility,
rapid action and consumer responsiveness a priority... or face extinction.

In this new paradigm, two new rules of thumb have emerged for marketers:
The acceleration of market dynamics and the increasing level of uncertainty require marketers to
be more responsive to change than ever before.
The development of new interaction opportunities between brands and consumers requires mar-
keters to engage in an ongoing conversation with consumers.

Of course, brand building still entails long-term, high-level marketing strategy, but such strategies
are all the more difficult to design and implement in a fragmented, multichannel environment where
consumers expect interaction that is more frequent, relevant to the moment and available on any
device. Certain major events will naturally continue to necessitate significant advance preparation.
Marketing plans are not dead, but they must be far more supple and flexible. To cope with increased
uncertainty and a world that moves at a much faster pace, the key may not be the ability to plan and
schedule but rather the ability to adapt and respond to change. Marketing timeframes and consumer
interactions must both be reinvented.

Warning: Marketers are ill-equipped to face these new challenges.
Today, most marketers are still working in environments that prevent them from being agile and
responsive.

Firstly, in most organizations the marketing timeframe is still anchored in long-term planning. High-
level marketing plans usually run from 3 to 5 years, divided into rigid 12-month sections and based

18


on strict schedules and well-oiled campaigns. This traditional approach to planning is one of the rea-
sons why time to market for campaigns is still quite long. Phrased differently, marketing remains a
very linear process and one relatively disconnected from external market dynamics.

Secondly, marketers are frequently ill-equipped, lacking the technology necessary for managing faster-paced,
more responsive and more industrialized operations. Sony offers a typical example of this very problem.

“With multiple business units such as Sony Pictures, Sony
Playstation, Sony Music, and others competing for valuable real
estate placement on Sony.com’s home page, the most equitable
solution had always been to manually rotate creative content
for various promotions. However, managing the distribution
of website impressions between these business units and
coordinating content was time-consuming and inefficient.”
Hareem Lawrence, Executive Producer for Sony.com

As well, many companies began the digital era by developing proprietary tools that do not scale and are
not able to meet growing demand. La Redoute, with 6.5 million unique visitors per month, nearly 12,000
categories for 30,000 products and 150,000 items in total, had to cope with the issue of obsolescence.

“In order to manage our websites, we initially developed a
tool but recognized that it had limitations in terms of speed,
responsiveness, and flexibility. We needed lots of manpower to
manage operations when launching new collections or during
periods of heavy traffic such as holidays and sales.”
Sebastien Laithier, ISD Project Manager at La Redoute.

When consumers and the environment change—and as we have seen, they are changing very
quickly—either marketing becomes irrelevant or it adapts. We are now witnessing the first signs of a
much-needed revolution in marketing. As the saying goes, challenges are opportunities in disguise,
but challenges they remain. A new approach to marketing must be developed and implemented,
freeing marketers from the aforementioned constraints and enabling them to survive in the new
environment and to address the new digital consumer. Our conviction: successful digital marketers
will be agile marketers. For marketers the imperative is now “Become agile, or die.”

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What is Agile Marketing™ ?
™

Making the most
of multichannel,
conversational and
experiential marketing.

To address this new consumer—a vocal, volatile, connected and
demanding consumer—marketers will be leveraging the fantastic
opportunities offered by digital marketing. They have already begun
to do so and are starting to experience the tension between the
traditional approach to marketing and the new challenges of digital.
Agile Marketing ™ is the way for them to put digital marketing on
steroids and transform its amazing potential into real ROI.

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Multichannel, ubiquitous marketing:
Seamless for consumers, painless for marketers.
The main issue for marketers has always been to address the right consumers
with the right message. One of the keys to accomplishing this was choosing
A g i l e Mar ket i ng ™ ,
v i a th e the right channels to do so. For a long time things were, if not easy, at least
i m p l e m e n tat i o n well-oiled, partly because the channels and the way they worked were stable,
o f s up p o rtive
te c h n o l o g i e s, well known and easy to identify. The multitude of new devices, which are
e n ab l e s m arket ers already connected to one another and will be so increasingly, means marke-
to k e e p up w i t h t he
ters must manage an ever-expanding and diverse range of channels. Among
n e w c o n s umer, t o
s y s te m ati c ally b e them are digital channels that are relatively new to many marketers. In an
wh e r e s h e is. unfamiliar situation like this, finding the right marketing mix is one of the
A g i l e m ar k et ers ca n CMO’s biggest challenges. Marketers have no choice but to play the multi-
b e re s p o n si ve t o channel game, taking into account rapidly growing digital channels (web,
th e i r c us to mers i n
r e al ti m e , any w here mobile) and the new digital environments (social media, gaming, etc.) and
an d ar o un d- t he- combining them efficiently with traditional advertizing media (print, TV).
clock.
A look at the new consumer journey is enlightening: The new consumer starts
with search engines for product research, moves to forums for peer recom-
mendations, goes to a brick-and-mortar store during lunch break to see the
product while surfing the mobile web or mobile apps to cross-check informa-
tion and then eventually finalizes the transaction online or in a store closer to
home. For marketers, he is far more of a puzzle than the traditional consumer.

Not only has reaching consumers where they are become quite difficult,
since audiences are fragmented and elusive, engaging with them has also
become much harder. In the digital age the challenge of multichannel is
not simply being present and having a voice on the right mix of channels,
the challenge is, as well, to become a “conversational brand”. And being a
“conversational brand” means changing the very way marketers engage
with consumers. The empowered consumer cannot be ignored: Brands must
do everything possible to create engagement, listen to consumers and pro-
vide compelling responses to their questions and feedback. This new style of
engagement, which is far more two-way than in the past, is a major aspect of
the multichannel challenge. Marketers must effectively reach customers at
every brand touch point in order to ensure that their experience is seamless.

Because it relies on digital marketing platforms, Agile Marketing ™ means:
Industrialization of marketing initiatives and centralization and ratio-
nalization of brand assets, consumer data and product information
The ability to test, experiment and shorten campaign time to market
Multichannel capabilities for a consistent brand experience and a
seamless customer journey
Real-time responsiveness to rapidly changing consumers and competitors

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Targeted, relevant marketing:
The strength of personalized marketing.
We have mentioned the extent to which customers are inundated with ad-
vertizing messages and how, consequently, personalization and relevance
A g i l e Mar ket i ng ™
i s ro o te d i n hy per- are now the cornerstones of successful marketing. Marketers can no longer
d e tai l e d c ust o mer afford to rely on intrusive, interruptive advertizing because, quite simply,
d ata c o l l e c t ed
th ro ug h ana ly t i c s consumers no longer pay attention to it. They ignore the banners that pop
to o l s th at ena b le up while they’re watching a YouTube video, reading a blog post or gaming
m ar k e te r s to t a rg et
on Facebook. Such invasive advertizing is grounds for divorce between a
e ac h an d e very
c o n s um e r b a sed brand and its customers, and brands that believe such practices at least
o n h e r i n d i vi dua l create awareness are going to be proven wrong most of the time.
i n te rac ti o ns w i t h
th e b r an d . In fact, as one media company expressed it, “You’re more likely to sur-
vive a plane crash or win the lottery than click on a banner ad”. (9)
A g i l e m ar k et ers a re
r e l e v an t m a rket ers.
The digital consumer is, in his own way, a marketing expert. Digital natives
grew up with these ads, saw how they developed and are well-versed in acces-
sing content while remaining completely oblivious to or even blocking any-
thing that does not interest them. The proof is in the pudding: Products like
Ad Block sell very well. The challenge for marketers is to become more ac-
curate and more relevant as well as to provide consumers with personalized
messages, customized products and more extensive services based on those
products. The digital revolution has, needless to say, put many tools at the
disposal of marketers that allows them to attain a high degree of relevance.

Because it relies on analytics and the systematic use of data, Agile Mar-
keting ™ means:
Targeting, relevance and personalization to meet each individual
consumer’s expectations and needs
Testing, experimentation and continuous optimization, feedback-dri-
ven marketing tactics and a focus on creating value
Data-driven, accountable marketing

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Reactive, responsive marketing:
“Test, listen, adapt” are the new watchwords.
In our high-velocity world, not only do consumers change their minds every
morning, competitors also create new products, services and ideas that no
A g i l e Mar ket i ng ™
combines one saw coming. Increasing economic insecurity and the feeling that almost
te c h n o l o g y a nd da t a anything can happen—and happen overnight—adds to the impression of
wi th o rg an i za t i o na l
c h an g e to crea t e dizzying speed. Such fickle consumers have lost any sense of loyalty to
th e m o s t ada pt i ve brands, so marketers are always struggling to find the next good idea and
an d fl e x i b l e fo rm
find it faster than their competitors. In such a climate of uncertainty, the big-
o f m ark e ti ng
m an ag e m e nt — gest challenge for marketers is to become more flexible and more responsive
m ar k e ti n g to what is happening “here and now.” What’s happening on the market and
m an ag e m e nt t ha t
s ati s fi e s c o nsumers what their customers and competitors are saying and doing. It is no longer
o n th e fl y by t a ki ng feasible to spend an entire year on a new campaign, simply because by the
ful l ad v an ta g e o f
i n d i vi d ual c ust o mer time it is released the world will have changed so much that the message
fe e d b ac k . could be irrelevant, or worse, completely inappropriate.

A key part of this challenge involves nothing less than revamping the overall
approach to marketing. In fact, the very idea of campaigns, at least in their
traditional forms, may have seen its day. Although somewhat of an exagge-
ration, “Campaigns are dead” is a statement that can be heard or read with
increasing frequency. Long-term, year-long planning will have to be balanced
with a test-and-learn approach, which leaves more room for experimenting
with new tactics, measuring results and moving ahead with initiatives that
consumers truly respond to.

Because it is relies on governance by all stake-holders and flexible, res-
ponsive project management, Agile Marketing ™ means:
Enhanced collaboration between marketing and IT to avoid tunnel
effects and shorten time to market
Responsiveness to change
Enhanced control over budgets and schedules
Alignment of marketing goals with business goals

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The three pillars of Agile Marketing™ are:
multichannel platforms, data
and governance.

Agile marketers should build Customer
Responsive Platforms that enable
multichannel, real-time testing.

Agile marketers should nurture
a data-driven culture.

Agile marketers should implement faster,
flexible and more collaborative internal
governance.

02 * what does it take to be agile?

Step One:
Implement Customer
implement
Responsive Platforms™
and develop multichannel,
real-time marketing.

To develop truly responsive and consistent
What’s marketing across all channels, marketers can
at take advantage of a wide range of technologies
stake? that form a “ Customer-Responsive
Platform™ ” and help them address consumers
Being where
consumers are,
in a seamless manner, wherever they are and
on every channel,
anytime and
with the right message.
on the fly and These platforms alleviate the pain of having
offering them a
seamless customer to manage channels separately and enable
experience across
all touch points. centralized brand content management.

26


Customer-Responsive Platforms™
for managing seamless multichannel marketing
To address the digital consumer, marketers must manage publishing across all existing devices and
platforms. The technology landscape is highly fragmented and markets have no choice but to confront
this diversity. Such a situation can be a nightmare for marketers, given the constraints in making
content accessible on iOS and Android, on Internet Explorer, on Google Chrome and Safari... not to
mention Facebook.

The right technology platforms, however, can enable effective multichannel marketing by cen-
tralizing a brand’s digital assets, product information and consumer data. Customer-Responsive
Platforms that integrate the necessary bricks, such as Digital Asset Management (DAM), Product
Information Management (PIM), and Web Content Management (WCM), are making it easier for
marketers to manage multichannel, multi-country campaigns. When these bricks are efficiently
connected, relevant content can be easily offered to the customer across all brand touch points,
greatly enhancing his or her overall experience.

Moreover, these platforms manage content so that it is usable on all types of screens and devices by
automatically adapting the content to the targeted platform or environment. In doing so, they dra-
matically reduce the risk of damaging brand consistency across channels. Since content, assets and
data are all centralized at one access point with one interface, marketers can ensure that all creative
elements are used on the right channel, at the right time and with the right message.

support on-the-fly message production and publishing.

Customer-Responsive Platforms™ that centralize content and data create a high degree of flexibility
and make it much easier to industrialize marketing operations. Cross-channel publishing—on web-
sites, mobile websites and social media—is easy because marketers do not have to make their way
through a jungle of tools to find the right content, the right creative materials or the right product
information. These platforms also enable the brand to deploy truly satisfying customer experiences
because, as well, they integrate the entire marketing chain, from designer to publisher.

Consequently, marketers have much more time to focus on creativity, strategy and responsiveness.
As the process for effectively addressing consumers has been industrialized, personnel can devote
themselves to activities that are truly value-added, the very activities that increase marketing ROI.

27


help drive real-time responsiveness and enable experimentation
By driving industrialization and boosting flexibility in marketing, these Customer-Responsive Plat-
forms™ dramatically shorten time to market for multichannel campaigns. Therefore, one of the most
value-added benefits of such platforms is enhanced responsiveness on one hand and more effective
experimentation on the other. Managing every marketing channel, creating new banners, pushing
the content wherever and whenever... all of this means that marketers can react almost in real time
to any event or any development. For example, when a competitor releases a new campaign or when
negative buzz arises about the brand or one of its competitors, marketers can quickly respond with
messages that are relevant to the situation and to customers. Along with facilitating responsiveness,
such platforms help brands become far more proactive. Campaigns can be developed and released fas-
ter, and the price of testing and experimenting is drastically lowered. Marketers are therefore in a posi-
tion to see what works and what doesn’t and are much freer to correct or fine-tune their operations.

In short, the right platforms are true drivers of change in marketing performance and marketing culture.

The result
For customers: a consistent multichannel brand experience across all touch points.
For marketers: the ability to produce campaigns with a shorter time to market and greater free-
dom to focus on creativity and responsiveness.

28


How La Redoute geared up
for additional growth with Adobe CQ

With 6.5 million unique visitors per month, and automatically prioritize mana-
11 million page views daily, nearly 12,000 gement of one item over another. This
categories for 30,000 products and 150,000 was important for helping us manage
items in total, La Redoute is a top-ran- our sales operations with more flexi-
ked player in the retail apparel sector. As
bility,” said Laithier.
the company has websites in more than
10 different countries, managing content Adobe CQ was also chosen because it proved
creation and publishing was a monumental to be rather intuitive in its usage, adaptive and
challenge. The marketing teams needed a user-friendly. “We can quickly execute
platform that could automate the publishing searches to find a file and change set-
of product information and allow for greater
tings. Adobe CQ DAM provides all the
flexibility in applying data changes to web-
versions of image sizes necessary for
sites in a variety of different languages.
listing a product online and it can put
“We wanted to be able to manage these pictures in their proper places
multiple languages and to be able to on the sites,” added Laithier.
quickly develop new features for the
“Automating previously manual tasks
websites. We wanted to integrate ISO-
allows for faster processing and bet-
level functionality in the short term
ter service,” says Laithier. Thanks to this
and automate processes that were
new platform, La Redoute teams are more res-
previously manual,” explained Sebastien ponsive to customer demands and are better at
Laithier, ISD project manager at La Redoute.
handling heavy traffic. “Our teams vary
By implementing Adobe CQ Digital Asset Mana- in size depending on the location, so
gement (DAM), La Redoute enabled its teams automating product prioritization for
to easily and effectively manage product photos sales campaigns enables us to update
and logos and link them with products and their
the site instantly with accurate data
color variations. Concurrently, the retailer also
instead of relying on manual entry
implemented Adobe CQ Web Content Manage-
that is slower and prone to errors,”
ment (WCM), which enhances content from
concludes Laithier. Moreover, La Redoute can
Adobe CQ Dam with complementary data that
now improve data sharing between countries,
streamlines creation, publication, product asso-
with flowcharts of products and visuals created
ciation, sorting and product showcasing online.
for one site or across all of them.

“With Adobe and our existing web in- In short, the Adobe CQ publishing plat-
frastructure, we wanted to prove that form allowed La Redoute to comfortably
we could generate product descrip- increase the amount of content on its web-
tions that show variations for several sites and optimize publishing processes for
competing versions of the product over one million product listings.

study
case
29

The right platforms
are true drivers of change
in marketing performance
and marketing culture.

day day day

Web
2 WEEKS ITERATIONS

MULTICHANNEL PUBLISHING FOR CAMPAIGNS
1 DAY
day day
Mobile
Service
agencies Providers

day

Tablet
MARKETING IT
log TEAMS TEAMS
ck
Ba
ily
Da ings
t
ee
m

Kiosks
Inception day

Phasis 1
day
TESTING
FOR OPTIMIZATION
& Scoping CUSTOMER
MARKETING
RESPONSIVE
ANALYTICS Advertizing
PLATFORM ™

day
day

Social

day day day

Inception Phasis Backlog / 2 weeks 1 day Customer Responsive Analytics Testing Cross-channel
& Scoping Daily meetings iterations iteration Platform™ (C.R.P) for Optimization & ROI-driven marketing
Presence of all stakeholders Definition of a project backlog Every two weeks or so, the back- Every day, project stakeholders Using the potential of a centra- With analytics plugged on it, Thanks to the collected data, The combination of platforms,
(Internal & External; IT and of prioritized features and ob- log is reviewed with all stakehol- evaluate the advancement of the lized content platform, marke- the platform also becomes a digital marketing can be stee- analytics and agile governance
Marketing bridge), Definition jectives with a daily follow up ders and adapted, based on la- project and redefine the priori- ting teams can publish content data platform, tracking consu- red towards performance, tes- allows for a smart, ubiquitous
of a common and shared Stra- by each stakeholder. test data collected and priorities. ties, sharing their difficulties and and easily build their digital cam- mers’ behaviors and the per- ting many ideas and focusing and relevant marketing.
tegy with built-in KPIs. best practices. Transparence and paigns on a cross-channel basis. formance of each marketing on those that drive ROI.
collaboration is made easier. initiative.

Agile Marketing management
© Valtech 2012


Step Two:
Implement web analytics
& develop a culture of data

Along with the greater flexibility and
What’s responsiveness, these Customer-Responsive
at Platforms™ are made even more effective by
stake? the addition of web analytics tools.
B e i n g r e l e v a nt t o Analytics provide an individualized 360-view
v o l ati l e c o nsumers
an d e n s uri ng t ha t of the consumer for enhanced personalization
m ark e ti n g budg et s a re
al l o c ate d to i ni t i a t i ves and targeting, more accurate customer
th at trul y d r i ve va lue
fo r th e b ran d.
intelligence and more valuable measurement
and feedback.

Web analytics produce behavior-based versus attitude-based customer
intelligence to better target and reach consumers and prospects
throughout the cycle.
Digital technologies are an unprecedented opportunity for marketers to learn what individual consu-
mers actually do when they interact with their brand (behaviors) instead of making broad assump-
tions based on surveys and focus groups (attitudes).

32


To accomplish this, marketers can turn to existing tools that, when added to Customer-Responsive
Platforms™, evaluate what people do on websites, mobile apps, social media, etc., as they are actually
doing it and follow their customer journeys in real time. Web analytics tools are being improved every
day so that they now encompass more channels and can produce a comprehensive, accurate, cross-
channel view of an individual consumer’s journey. Since these tools now extend to mobile and social
as well as combine data from other sources such as CRM and market insights, they are becoming even
more powerful in their ability to monitor behaviors with precision.

Analytics tools are able to provide such highly detailed information because they can track each indi-
vidual consumer on media owned by the brand as well as on paid media. Consequently, they make it
possible for brands to personally target every consumer with messages, content and offerings that are
truly relevant to her. They do this by providing marketers with concrete—real-time and historic—beha-
vioral data on that individual. With the technological resources to properly sort and analyze such data,
brands can enhance their performance at every step of the cycle, from acquisition to conversion to
retention. Indeed, when marketers have tools that can tell them what each customer is actually doing
and what they did in the past, they can be drawn in with a range of tactics undreamed of in the past.
For example, marketers now know that this is a given consumer’s first visit to XYZ website and they
know she landed there after typing “green shoes” on Google. Green shoes are automatically displayed
on the landing page. They might, on the other hand, learn that she has been to ABC website several
times and searched for women’s jewelry but never completed a purchase. In which case women’s
jewelry will be automatically pushed the next time she returns to the site. In yet another example, if
she is a regular customer on such-and-such website, she will be shown special offers on her next visit
(see Amazon). These are just a few simple illustrations of how brands can be more relevant to custo-
mers by using web analytics tools to identify their individual behaviors.

Moreover, in an environment where consumers are constantly assailed by advertizing, these tools
help transform marketing from pure content into a real service. Marketing gains enormous power
when it becomes a genuine service, a service that alleviates the pain of consumers lost in the digital
jungle and, sometimes desperately, trying to find the product they need at a price they can afford. Bet-
ter still, brands can provide this much-needed service while driving consumers to their own websites.

Analytics pinpoint which marketing initiatives really create value for the brand,
a.k.a., the test-and-try approach
Analytics not only supply marketers with behavior-based customer intelligence and targeted marke-
ting, they also give them the means to monitor their digital initiatives and measure ROI in real time.
Once the relevant performance indicators are defined, such ROI data on digital campaigns can be quite
valuable. Traditional marketing could rarely be precisely evaluated simply because it is impossible to
determine things like, for example, how many people actually saw this or that billboard. Digital mar-
keting, on the other hand, can be evaluated with a high degree of exactitude if marketers are equipped
with the right tools. Today it’s quite easy to find out exactly how many people clicked on a banner or

33


purchased a product on a given website. A further advantage is that marketers need no longer wait
until the campaign is over to measure its effectiveness: Performance evaluation can be done in real
time while the campaign is live. Web analytics are nothing less than a revolution in marketing because
they pave the way for continuous testing and optimization.

With traditional advertizing, it was very difficult to determine which initiatives were actually driving
value. As famously phrased by John Wannamaker and expressed later by The Coca Cola Company CEO:
“Half the money I spend on advertizing is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” (10)
By monitoring the effectiveness of pushing various different creative materials, different products
and different messages, digital marketers will have the customer feedback they need in order to
focus on tactics that actually create value and optimize operations in almost real time. Marketing
tactics that do not drive value are abandoned, so, once again, resource allocation is significantly
improved. Known variously as test-and-try, multivariate testing or A/B testing, this practice is only
beginning to take hold as brands start to comprehend the full potential of digital tools.

Analytics enable more performance-driven marketing,
marketing that increases business and empowers marketers
With digital, and especially with analytics tools, marketers are now able to provide specific, concrete
proof of the value they create for their companies. They have the necessary tools to better allocate
budgets and better drive ROI. They gain more credibility and more traction in decision-making. When
equipped with top-quality reporting dashboards that clearly indicate which initiatives work, the CMO
is truly empowered to implement performance-driven marketing—marketing that not only benefits
the brand but also shows the value of marketing within the company.

Moreover, as the frontier between commerce and e-commerce becomes increasingly blurred, more
and more value will be driven directly by digital channels. Marketers will derive their power from their
ability to track ROI on all channels. They will be able to identify key conversion drivers and pinpoint
the most profitable initiatives and focus their investments accordingly. More than ever before, the
mastery of marketing for e-commerce will be the paramount issue for brands. And the alliance of Cus-
tomer-Responsive Platforms™, digital performance tools (analytics) and e-commerce modules will be
the winning combination (11).

The result
Performance-driven, consumer-relevant marketing that delivers superior ROI and supports digital
commerce.

34


How Thomson increased the conversion rate
from 6% to 15% with Adobe Site Catalyst
One of Thomson’s strategic brands is RCA, key landing pages, which featured Flash movies
a leading name in consumer electronics and expressly designed to capture their attention.
the flagship for Thomson products in the “We created another set of pages that
Americas. RCA’s business model involves were identical in every way, except
educating website visitors about products we replaced the Flash movies with
and then driving them to purchase items graphics. We discovered that visitors
at one of its dealers’ sites or retail stores.
stayed on the graphics but were still
Hence, the website was designed to quickly
leaving the Flash pages because the
lead visitors to data about the products that
interest them and keep them on the site
movies either did not download or took
until they are mature for final purchase. too long to download. Armed with this
Thomson, however, faced a major problem: information, we were able to persuade
The company was not able to effectively the managers who wanted to keep the
monitor and influence visitor behavior. movies that they were not working
“We could never gather the metrics we and we received permission to change
needed to understand why visitors fol- the pages,” explained Heacock.
lowed the paths they did on our site,”
Managers themselves are now requesting analytics
stated Chris Heacock, Global Marketing
because they realize that such data enable them to
& Sales Systems Architect at Thomson.
make accurate, informed decisions. Today they
“For example, we noticed that visitors
are empowered to do more than cross their fin-
were immediately leaving several key gers and hope for the best. According to Leacock,
landing pages that we specifically “We now have concrete, quality data
built to lead them deeper into the site. backing up every decision we make.
Our web analytics were so unreliable No more guessing or spending extra
that we often made assumptions about money to find out if one tactic is better
what they meant. Managers stopped than another.”
asking for the numbers since they pro-
ved misleading and unhelpful.” With the right tools and data management, no
matter what changes take place on the market
Reliable data was all the more critical to Thom- Thomson is confident that it will be agile enough to
son since they test how well new products sell adapt, test and respond to the brand’s advantage.
on their site before recommending them to
Heacock concluded, “Before, we estimated
dealers, and they were highly dependent on
we had a 6% conversion rate, but that
metrics to prove to dealers that rcaaudiovideo.
was only a guess because of poor qua-
com was effective at driving business their way.
Thomson turned to Adobe SiteCatalyst, a solution
lity data. SiteCatalyst has helped us
that took only a few weeks to implement. The increase our dealers’ sales, which im-
electronics brand was then able to perform A/B tes- proves our bottom line and restores
ting to determine why visitors were leaving their trust in our web metrics".

study
case
35

In store

PERFORMANCE & DATA DRIVEN MARKETING
marketing

CUSTOMER RESPONSIVE PLATFORM ™
research

web analytics
LS Personalized
Call center MARKETING ET
OO

360° VISION OF CONSUMER
DATA RE
ATI
V
Marketing
C

serial
analytics

Social media
CRM

Multi surveys
Channel ES
UL Multichannel
Consumer Website ME
NTR
Marketing
GE
NA
MA
IGN
ERP PA
M
CA

COMPANY
Mobile app / site DATA

financial
data Marketing
as a Service
Online advertising
(
(Display, sem, affiliate, ...)
DATA WAREHOUSE

Consumer Brand DATA Content Optimization
Touch Points

The Customer Responsive Platform™ at the core of Marketing optimization
© Valtech 2012


Step Three:
Implement an agile
approach to governance
and methodology

Equipped with Customer-Responsive
What’s Platforms™ and empowered with
at analytics tools, marketing teams
stake? will have everything they need for
Being both flexible and adding maximum value to their
efficient so that ongoing
experimentation and digital strategies. But, as always,
optimization are possible
which, in turn, enables implementing the right technology is
maximum responsiveness
to consumers’ ever-
useless if the company is not properly
changing expectations. organized to take advantage of it.

Customer-Responsive Platforms and analytics tools
can only drive value in an agile management environment.
To take full advantage of Customer-Responsive Platforms™ and analytics software, mar-
keting departments need to value data and high performance on a continuous basis in
day-to-day operations.

37


One of the major disruptions introduced by digital marketing is the sheer amount of data generated by
consumers and made available to marketers through analytics software. Marketers should know how to
gather, process and analyze this data if it is to enable them to make better decisions and drive operations.

Maximizing the benefits of Customer-Responsive Platforms™ and analytics software also means chan-
ging the way marketers work: Marketing teams will have to shorten their usual cycles and will pro-
bably need to introduce brief daily meetings to share their insights, data and analyses. The ROI made
possible by this new technology is contingent on shared, rapid, real-time decision-making. In the past,
campaigns were assessed once they were over—there was simply no other way to assess them. Now
every operation can be fine-tuned on an ongoing basis. Continuous feedback will compel marketers to
abandon their current linear approach for a cyclical, iterative approach.

Agile methodologies mean focusing on quality and efficiency
in digital marketing projects and campaign management.
The key principles of agile digital marketing management are based on streamlined methods that pre-
vent wasted time and resources. Clear goals are established but minor details and small-scale require-
ments are decided upon as warranted during the project lifecycle.

Lengthy upstream analysis is jettisoned in favor of short project inception times. Agile marketers can de-
liver the highest priorities early on and then continuously build the experience for consumers, integra-
ting feedback and enriching the product or service. This approach to marketing is similar to the notion
of “beta” in software development: It is more effective to optimize the product/campaign based on user/
consumer feedback along the way rather than trying to anticipate every single variable before release.

When the project is launched, adequate time should be devoted to customer experience, concept de-
sign and development, architecture and graphic design. Key performance indicators that are consistent
with project goals should also be defined from the beginning. One, or a maximum of two, iterations
should be the norm for designing projects.

This notion of time-boxing and defining a set number of iterations is crucial to Agile because it moves
projects forward as quickly as possible. The implementation work for an agile project follows a strict
routine of two-week iterations, beginning with planning sessions and daily status meetings and en-
ding with a demonstration to stakeholders and a review designed to improve the team’s efforts for the
next iteration. At the end of the iteration, all stakeholders, including agile marketers, plan for upco-
ming iterations along with analysts, concept developers and creative resources. When a campaign or
product is launched, analytics will measure real consumer behaviors and responses and the necessary
improvements will be fed back to a list of new requirements.

This approach generally entails less reworking than traditional methods, thanks to regular iterations
and adaptations. Consequently, budgets and schedules are easier to control and monies are spent
more economically and efficiently.

38


One of the key advantages of this approach is that all stakeholders collaborate from the start. Only the
inclusion of all relevant stakeholders – internal and external – beginning with the inception phase and
continuing throughout the project lifecycle can guarantee success. Indeed, the stakeholders them-
selves will have jointly defined the criteria for success. They will have followed every stage of the
project and will have had the opportunity to respond to analytics feedback and influence the operation
until completion.

In our current complex environment, brands and marketers are ill-served by siloed organizations, nor
can they remain in simplistic brand vs. service provider relationships. The agile approach relies on
conceiving of all stakeholders as part of an interdependent eco-system which includes a variety of
players from a wide spectrum of disciplines—ranging from technology to branding to advertizing,
from content provider to platform enabler, etc. This requires fostering collaboration and bringing to-
gether all stakeholders in regular meetings to ensure that objectives and priorities are shared, timing
is respected and budgets are under control and allocated in an optimum fashion.

There is no one-size-fits-all method for Agile Marketing ™ . But the above provides a glimpse of how pro-
jects can be managed to best benefit from digital technology and win over the new digital consumer.

Agile governance helps foster collaboration between marketing and IT.
Ranking high among the new players that marketing managers will now have to deal with regularly are
the brand’s internal and external technology partners. In the past, CIOs and CMOs had few opportuni-
ties to talk to one another and often knew very little about their respective tasks. The advent of digital
marketing, however, means that they will be seeing much more of each other and closer collabora-
tion will be the norm. Agile Marketing ™ takes this new relationship into account and builds bridges
between marketing and IT providers, both internal and external.

One of the main reasons for such stepped-up collaboration is the vast amount of private customer data
generated by digital users and the related feedback-based databases. Privacy issues regarding personal
data collected by marketers are already in the headlines and this matter will become ever thornier as
technology advances—today’s mere molehills of data will be mountains tomorrow. To ensure their
privacy policies are effective and in compliance with regulations, it will be imperative for marketers
to cooperate closely with their internal IT departments and external IT agencies. If not, they are in-
creasingly likely to face potentially costly legal problems as well as possibly irreparable damage to their
reputations and loss of consumer trust.

39

feedback-driven
strategy release often,
release fast

co-creation
with clients
collaboratin
& ecosystem

test & continuous
optimization

reactivity
to change

benefits

COST-EFFECTIVE business alignment Focus on
quality SHORTER TIME TO MARKET PROVEN ROI
REAL TIME ADAPTATION Ability to change your mind

AGILE FOR MARKETING

PRINCIPLES AND BENEFITS

The Agile virtuous Curve
© Valtech 2012

what do
you get
from being
an agile
marketer

?
We define Agile Marketing ™ as a marketing approach
based on three pillars that empower marketers
to take the fullest possible advantage of digital technology.

Industrialization of marketing

1.
initiatives, centralization and
rationalization of brand assets,
consumer data and product
information
Because it relies on
The ability to test, experiment and
Customer- Responsive shorten campaign time to market
Platforms,
Multichannel capabilities for a
consistent brand experience and a
Agile Marketing means: ™
seamless customer journey
Real-time responsiveness to rapidly
changing consumers and competitors

Targeting, relevance and

2.
personalization to meet each
individual consumer’s expectations
and needs

Because it relies on
Testing, experimentation and analytics and the
continuous optimization, feedback-
driven marketing tactics and a focus systematic use of data,
on creating value
Agile Marketing™ means:
Data-driven, accountable marketing

3.
Enhanced collaboration between
marketing and IT to avoid tunnel
effects and shorten time to market

Because it is relies on Responsiveness to change
governance by all stake-
holders and flexible,
Enhanced control over budgets
responsive project and schedules
management,
Alignment of marketing goals
Agile Marketing™ means: with business goals

Similar to what IT departments underwent
several decades ago,
marketing is set to undergo nothing short
of an industrial revolution
—radical changes necessitated by the
challenges of multichannel communications
and the data explosion.

Streamlining, rationalization and
collaboration are essential
to industrialized marketing.

We see agile as a key driver
in this transformation.

03 * how agile will drive marketing’s industrial revolution?

Digital technology is
an unprecedented
opportunity for marketers,
provided they become
agile enough to seize it.

Thanks to digital technology, the playing field for marketers
is bigger than ever. Instead of only reaching customers and
potential customers while they are watching TV or reading a
magazine, marketers can now reach them wherever they are,
catch them in the most receptive situations and drive them to
buy. Yet this requires marketers to, firstly, become tech-savvy—
they have to master the technology that will enable them to reach
out to, engage with and convert customers like never before—
and, secondly, to make the necessary changes to their culture and
to their organization.

45


The plethora of new devices and channels allows marketing to reach consumers anytime, anywhere,
on the fly. But digital marketing does much more than widen the scope for brand communications. It
also radically transforms the way brands interact with consumers. By enhancing brand content with
video, storytelling and other features, digital marketers can create closer, more continuous and longer-
term relationships with consumers. Mobile and web applications allow brands to provide consumers
not just with products, but with a variety of services that enrich the product experience. Here is where
“SoLoMo” comes in, the combination of social, local and mobile that is ripe with potential for digital
marketers. Mobile phone geolocation services enable marketers to target prospective customers at the
very moment and in the very situation where they would be most receptive to a particular product or
service. Brands have already started surfing the SoLoMo wave via mobile apps that detect a customer’s
presence in a mall and promote special offers in his favorite store or entice him to visit a nearby res-
taurant. Leveraging local marketing with mobile marketing is one of digital’s most promising uses.

Social media, especially social networks, are another key area of digital potential. The soft power of
influence, driven by online communities of interest, has already shown its strength and continues to
be explored by marketers. There are, of course, significant risks for brands in such an environment
and the emergence of community managers in major companies makes the point eloquently. None-
theless, building on the consumer’s social graph empowers marketers to not only to extend their reach
and increase awareness but also to target qualified audiences and increase their transformation rates.

The convergence of online and mobile devices, channels and usages leaves the door wide open to a
myriad of new marketing practices. But marketers must have a good grasp of the increasingly complex
customer journey as well as the mechanics of multichannel operations. Although these are matters
of strategy and planning that cannot be solved by technology alone, marketers still need the most
advanced equipment and basic knowledge of digital technology in order to understand the expecta-
tions of the new consumer.

46


The digital marketing opportunity

Traditional Marketing is based on... Digital marketing can be...

INTERRUPTION Vs. CONTEXTUALIZED

SINGLE EVERYWHERE
Vs.
CHANNELS / MULTICHANNEL

ATTITUDE-BASED Vs. BEHAVIOR-BASED

ONE-TO-MANY PERSONALIZED
Vs. AND TARGETED
APPROACH

EVALUATION EVALUATED
AFTER THE CAMPAIGN Vs.
IN REAL TIME

ONE-SHOT CAMPAIGNS FEEDBACK-DRIVEN
Vs. & CONTINUOUSLY OPTIMIZED
WITH LITTLE CAPITALIZATION

LONG TIME EXPERIMENTAL WITH
TO MARKET Vs. FASTER TIME TO MARKET

The digital marketing opportunity
© Valtech 2012

47


Vision
Agile Digital Marketing
will fuel
the marketing revolution

Agile digital marketing is paving the way for marketing’s
industrial revolution, a revolution created by technological
advances that are transforming business methods and models
which, in turn, are gradually transforming organizations.

Technology & Innovation:
Full-fledged Customer-Responsive Platforms™ coupled with analytic tools
enable marketing industrialization, rationalization and optimization.
Digital technologies empower consumers and marketers. The latest generation of technology platforms, such
as Adobe CQ5, Sitecore or Episerver, makes life easier for marketers and help them do what they need to do:
Reach, engage and convert consumers on a multichannel basis
Deliver a seamless brand experience across all channels and devices
Protect the brand in the digital environment
Be fast to market and deliver campaigns quickly
Drive ROI

48


By implementing solid web and content management systems, companies provide their marketing
departments with a centralized platform for digital assets, product information, customer data and
insights. These platforms are at the core of marketing industrialization, as they also allow marketers
to manage and automate major parts of campaigns. Hence, they can push their message and content
on a multichannel basis, managing their websites, social media channels, mobile channels, and even
point of sales devices from a single platform. Since so many operations can now be automated and so
many assets centralized, the time to market for campaigns is dramatically reduced.

Coupled with web analytics tools, these platforms enable marketers to define targeting and perso-
nalization rules so they are as relevant as possible for their customers. They form the cornerstone of
the industrial revolution in marketing: Digital technology platforms industrialize the entire campaign
cycle, from content creation to behavioral targeting and re-targeting, with continuous and near real-
time optimization fueled by consumer feedback.

Last but not least, by combining the power of these platforms with the power of analytics, marketers
can drive their strategy through relevant KPIs and ensure that budgets are allocated to campaigns, me-
dia and tactics that boost ROI. With customizable marketing dashboards, these platforms afford a clear
view of performance for each channel and every tactic. Since they free up more time and resources
for experimentation and for focusing on what actually drives value, the new Customer-Responsive
Platforms™ pave the way for truly performance-driven marketing.

New methodologies & business models:
Traditional marketing methodologies that assess customer expectations and
needs (focus groups, attitudinal methodologies…) are being outsmarted by new,
behavior-based customer intelligence methodologies based on “big data.”
Despite the many disruptions wrought by digital technology, the essential tasks of marketing remains
unchanged: understanding consumers and building brands. Over the decades, marketers developed
a wide range of methods designed to explain what consumers do and why they do it. The goal was to
gather information that would help define strategy for future products and campaigns. Their methods
were based on defining consumer attitudes. Through surveys and focus groups, quantitative and qua-
litative approaches, marketers created consumer typologies and assigned certain attitudes to certain
typologies. For example, they would study a panel of consumers and reach the conclusion that white
American women between 25 and 45 buy more apparel online than the average population but they
spend less on shoes online than they do offline. Marketers would then extrapolate from these conclu-
sions to build their strategies.

Such methodologies are based on representative samples and probabilities, and they should not be
discredited. Nevertheless, the digital technology revolution has made it possible to gain a far more
subtle, precise and targeted view of consumers. Gleaning an idea of the attitudes of “white American
women between 25 and 45 years old” is no doubt better than nothing, but the variations and variables
among such a vast category of consumers render any conclusions about them somewhat reductive.

49

Rethinking Marketing in the Digital Age

Rethinking Marketing in the Digital Age

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Rethinking Marketing in the Digital Age