The standard for creating and using advertising models has long been the AIDA model. However, the emergence of contemporary and omnichannel retail, as well as the widespread use of social media and the internet age in general, have demonstrated that consumers don’t always follow a straightforward linear path when making decisions about purchases, much alone loyalty. It would be unfair to the marketing and advertising professionals to attempt to categorise customer behaviour and emotions using a hierarchical paradigm.
The aforementioned claims might come out as scholarly and too idealistic, but if we choose to use the last few decades as a guide, it only becomes clear. Today’s purchasing route would resemble a spider’s web with numerous entry and exit locations rather than a single straight line.
A brand must connect with consumers across a wide range of interfaces in this web of options and diversions. Martech is frequently presented as a solution to make the consumer’s omnichannel journey more engaging. At any size, it is not straightforward to combine integrated marketing, technology, data, and communication. If one includes all the channels and interfaces, the complexity rises even further. Understanding the ecology in which marketing technology’s function is necessary before we can effectively grasp, absorb, and use them.
The greatest performers from a variety of fields are brought together in Martech to promote speed and agility. Martech evolved into a technology to support this fusion of several organisational departments. At least, advertising as it currently exists needs to catch up.
Three main themes run through this catching up:
Advertising and the industry as a whole are considered as active externalizers.
Lack of coherence: Without a unified creative idea, Martech layer rarely enters the discourse about advertising for TV, print, and outdoor.
Lack of integration: Agencies’ lack of captive capabilities prevents them from integrating with the brand’s other layers. This is also a result of the relationship being time-based.
These issues require distinct attention and sophisticated treatment for each. I intended to emphasise the first, or “active externalisation,” in my piece. Advertising’s origins in the pre-digital era are widely recognised, and it still exhibits some of those quirks today. Any blending of tech, data, etc. is difficult to do during the process of understanding the brief to execution, which includes several long-standing rites that are lauded by its practitioners. Even in organisations that are “digital natives,” the activities in product development, marketing, and advertising take place in separate, parallel universes that are not meant to collide until go-to-market.
Both inside and outside the organisation, this externalisation is ubiquitous. As a result, a product or solution that was developed using technology, knowledge, a channel, and data is one that the rest of the organisation is constantly playing catch-up with. Information that has been marginalised is what the agencies see and access. Again, the capacity of the person writing briefs to stay current on the larger organisation’s circumstances and resources will determine how this information is used. Unfortunately, Martech is unable to address these communication value chain bottlenecks.
The multitude of technologies that the agencies and marketing departments utilise in total isolation without any form of integration or backward compatibility with the captive assets is what frequently results from this dissonance. The internal marketing organisation must figure out a means to tap into this informational value chain and link it with external actors in the agencies without being overly prescriptive. But to successfully synchronise organisational assets with outside competencies requires more than just strong brief writing. There have been a variety of approaches taken to resolve this anomaly, ranging from radicalism to balance. Internal agencies or teams with the mandate to generate value while also reducing costs have been one extreme. But it goes without saying that a diverse and varied setting fosters the highest creative production. While internal teams are well-equipped to access the organisation’s value chain, they lack the creative diversity that enables an agency to approach an issue from a novel angle.
An incentive-driven partnership between brands and agencies, where the impact of the creative solution generates value for both parties, may be a balanced strategy. To do this, agencies must make strategic investments in four areas of Mar Tech, rather than just tactical ones.
People\Product\Process\Performance
The agencies would find it beneficial to invest in people in order to bring them closer to Mar Tech technology by investing not only in tools but also in the development of long-term talent pools. On the product front, this would present a chance to fill the market gap and expand such products as a service. It is necessary to transform the method for producing creative output into an approach that is outcome-based and serves as the foundation for performance.
The communication value chain’s “lack of harmony” and “lack of integration” must be assessed in order for this shift to be fully ingrained. In this new era of communication, active externalisation, a lack of harmony, and a lack of integration would combine to form the triangle for brand love, not just for the agencies and the companies but also, and most crucially, for the consumers. To become long-term and sustainable brand guardians in this new era, agencies will need to strike a balance between these three concepts.
