Customer First Thinking

The discipline of brand building has atrophied over the past two decades, as corporate chieftains focused mainly on short-term growth objectives. But for companies to succeed in a post-pandemic world, the brand must become the face of business strategy, argues branding expert David Kincaid, with the CEO leading the way.

The pandemic has been costly for traditional retailers who were slow to adapt to omnichannel commerce. In Canada, Canadian Tire avoided that fate, launching its Triangle Rewards program three years ago to deepen its relationship with customers. Under the stewardship of Senior VP Shawn Stewart, the 10-million member program has become instrumental in the retailer's shift to a digital-first model.

Under pressure to act fast during the pandemic, businesses sped up their digital transformation plans, compressing their timetables from years into months. Now they face the next phase of evolution, what digital prophet Brian Solis calls the "novel economy". For businesses to adapt and thrive, says Solis, they must take a more profound and humanistic approach to transformation.

Slow to awaken to market disruption and too reliant on ad spending, the global agency holding companies have seen their valuations plummet in recent years. To reverse their fortunes, they need to transform their service model. MDC is leading the way, aided by an infusion of capital from the new CEO Mark Penn, who is set to turn his collection of "partner agencies" into a "modern marketing company of choice".

Marketing has always been on the front lines of change. Each seismic shift has brought a new set of challenges. But now, in this new world of "infinite media", marketing is facing its greatest challenge ever. The only response, Mathew Sweezey believes, is for marketing to pivot from harnessing media to creating experiences that help customers in the context of the moment.

The world is awash in mediocre content, mainly because most brands struggle to find something meaningful to say. Yet in times of crisis, when people are feeling anxious and concerned, there is never a better time to speak up. The key is the ability to show empathy, Ann Handley argues. She urges brands to "do less" and "obsess" about producing higher quality content that matters.

Most loyalty programs today do little to make people feel more loyal to the brand. They are mainly promotional tools designed to drive repeat sales by giving away margin in the form of redeemable currency or discounts. Which is why it may be time to reimagine loyalty programs, according to Bryan Pearson, transforming them into dynamic platforms that are a more integral part of the customer experience.

Marketing as a discipline is going through an identity crisis due to the radical shift in the buying behaviour of people. The answer, for some companies, is to ditch the classical marketing function in favour of a broader mandate that makes the customer experience more of a corporate priority. But just fixing what's wrong is not enough, according to Jay Baer. Companies must also offer customers an experience so memorable and unexpected, they'll be keen to talk about it with everyone they know.

The practice of content marketing began to evolve into a grown-up discipline about a decade ago. That was around the time social media platforms had reached the size where they could serve as a practical delivery channel. Companies no longer had to rely on paid ads to drive visitors to their own branded web properties – they could attract inbound traffic organically through social media. And then with the democratization of publishing the content floodgates burst open. Today the world is awash in blogs, streaming video, e-books, white papers, infographics, webinars, podcasts, newsletters and so much more, in a dizzying dogfight for attention. We've reached a saturation point, where no matter how good the content may be, the chances of it being noticed are remote. Despite this explosive growth, content marketing remains a leap of faith for most companies. They may have become better at generating content – but whether it works or not remains to be seen, especially when you consider that 70% of content reportedly goes unnoticed. Which is probably why 86% of companies say that their content marketing efforts aren't generating business value, according to Forrester. Pretty distressing when you consider how much money is spent on content marketing – oftentimes, as much as one third of a company's marketing budget. Despite the questionable contribution to business results, marketers are undeterred – budgets are expected to keep growing. But that means the content glut will only get worse. Even more money will have to be spent making that content visible – relying, just as before, on paid ads. The solution, according to Randy Frisch, is to say "F#CK to Content Marketing", which just happens to be the provocative title of his recently published book. Despite the attention-grabbing title, he's been an ardent proponent of content marketing ever since he and his partner founded their company Uberflip in 2012. Uberflip competes in the hotly contested arena of content marketing platforms. But unlike a lot of its CMP competitors, which function as publishing workflow engines, Uberflip prefers to optimize what it likes to call the "content experience": allowing marketers to offer a more personalized and interactive way to engage with content. Every year the Toronto-based company hosts a highly regarded event for marketers called CONEX - short for "content experience" - which just last month drew a crowd of over 700 attendees from across North America. The main thesis of Randy's book is that marketers have spent too much time worrying about content scalability and not enough about content discoverability. Even the best content can get buried in a chronological scroll. And often the content is too elementary or generic to be of much value to prospective buyers deep into self-education. Marketers should be thinking about how to map the content journey to the purchase journey, Randy argues, and design a dynamic experience that aligns with the knowledge level and decision stages of individual buyers. But before getting Randy's take on the state of content marketing I wanted to know: what's up with that book title?

Most traditional businesses are just now getting used to the idea of a mobile-first world where people spend six hours a day immersed in digital media. But as the digital economy starts to take over, businesses will have to be ready for even more tumultuous change. A new wave of disruptive technology is coming. It will usher in a post-digital age of continuous connectivity and transform how society functions: what's been called the 4th Industrial Revolution. AI-powered smart speakers, streaming services, messaging platforms, apps, mobile commerce, 5G-connected devices, virtual and augmented reality, blockchain – all converging to transform how people live their lives. No wonder IDC is forecasting over $1 trillion in digital transformation spending this year, an increase of 18% over 2018, as businesses frantically try to upgrade and modernize their infrastructure and systems. But most businesses remain "digitally distraught", as IDC puts it. New ways of connecting with customers means new ways of doing business – hard to pull off if the C-suite can't see past the next earnings report. Digital transformation is not for the "faint of heart", IDC warns. It takes an enterprise-wide commitment to change. It requires an inspiring vision of how to create an unforgettable customer experience. And it means rewiring the business to become more agile, collaborative, daring, innovative. In other words, it means acting more like "digital natives". Since the number one goal of digital transformation is almost always to improve the customer experience, marketing should be leading the way. Yet, according to Forrester, that job is usually handed to the CIO, who's more likely to be thinking digital-first, not customer-first. Which is why efforts at digital transformation generally run aground: siloed mentalities, timid goal-setting and risk aversion get in the way of being customer-obsessed. To act like a "digital native" demands an inquiring mind and a constant itch to defy convention. Those attributes perfectly describe Mitch Joel, the Montrealer who's made a name for himself as a digital expert specializing in decoding the future, as he puts it. He built his reputation as a trailblazer in the early days of the digital revolution, dating back to the start-up of his digital agency Twist Image in 2002, which he later sold to WPP. Mitch writes a popular blog called "Six Pixels of Separation" which he started 16 years ago and produces a weekly podcast by that same name. He's also written a couple of best-selling books, the second of which, "CTRL ALT Delete", was about "the evolution and reboot of business". So it was natural that digital transformation would be the main subject of our conversation. But first I wanted to know – how did he go from being a music journalist and publisher at the start of his career to becoming a renowned digital seer?