DIGITAL WORLD
“It’s amazing how those opinions shape people’s purchasing decisions. I think the best example is that Amazon has built an entire business model on user reviews and ratings. Every time I ask an audience if they look at the user reviews when they use Amazon, everybody says ‘yes’. If you ask the question differently, if you say, ‘Do you take into account somebody else’s opinion when you make a purchasing decision?’, they might say ‘no’ or they might say ‘maybe my mother or my friends’. But if you think of Amazon, yes you do. “There are some sites and companies that play into that with
their business models, like Amazon or Trip Advisor.” When it comes to certain topics, such as health, there is of
course a risk of people being misinformed, she notes. “I think that’s where human intelligence will move on. People will understand that not all information on the internet is true. We already have our radars on and have certain criteria to decide what’s right and what’s not right. And we’ll act upon that collective information that we’ve got at our fingertips to make our opinions. But again, just saying ‘Well, I don’t personally do this’, yes you do! It’s just become a virtual society characteristic, not just a phenomenon of social media. The two other areas of consumer behaviour are immediacy and
value, she says. “People truly have everything at their fingertips all the time and mobile is just accelerating that whole phenomenon. So, this sense that people expect that when they have a problem they are going to be able to find a solution and make a decision in a few clicks is another reality that a few years ago we didn’t have to worry about.” Finally, she makes the point that because so much information
about brands is available online, companies need to find a way of engaging consumers and providing them with extra value. “For example, when they’re planning a trip today, the majority of
people will search on the internet for the best ticket price. A few companies have played into that and are just using the information that is available on the web or in digital systems to service that need of consumers. “If all of the information on brands and products is increasingly
available, you’re going to have to figure out something else to engage these consumers if you’re not the cheapest price provider or don’t have a feature that really sticks out. So I think this is a real brand con- sideration of the virtual society.”
Understanding the challenge For anyone involved in the advertising industry, Nuytemans says it’s a particularly challenging time. “It’s really hard for people who have a lot of traditional expertise in marketing to deal with all of these things, like gaming and Facebook and FarmVille. They’re swamped with all of these companies and developers and digital agencies and traditional agencies coming their way and just flag- ging things to them. It must be just so hard to realise there are thousands more options than before. And also to wonder if these options are as effective as the simple good old formula of putting a lot of money in mass media where they could see the effect on their sales immediately.” It’s vital, she says, to put in place strategic approaches because
this is not going to go away. “This isn’t a passing trend. The big elements of this are just going to get bigger and bigger. And it’s not that the digital guys are going to take over the world because they are people who understand digital really, really well. You still need people who understand how to tell a great brand story, how to really build relationships with existing consumers, how to really build reputations with just a few influencers. “All of those skills really still matter,” she concludes. “It’s just that
the solutions they lead to are a combination of the traditional and contemporary expertise of doing that in the world with so many possibilities in digital technology. So, this sense of collaboration is actually for me any agency model in the future. Any advertising business model is going to have to get out of these silos and cre- ate collaboration because there is no other way to actually figure out and deal with complexity. It can’t be in the brain of one single person. It needs a bunch of experts to really work together.”
Volume 4 Issue 3 2010 Marketing Age 31
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