ESSAYS
ROBERT GOLDSMITH, MANAGING PARTNER AT SPINNAKER
an innately personal space. Wearable tech, says Goldsmith, is only likely to strengthen that sense. The natural response from brands, then, might be to embark on a frantic arms-building exercise and create more digital assets and content. But, to rephrase Kevin Costner in Field of Dreams, just because you build it, that doesn’t mean they’ll come.
MAKE IT EMOTIONAL “We need to be smarter, more
considered and more personalised in how we communicate with our audience,” says Goldsmith. “But it’s important that we’re relevant and contextual. According to eConsultancy, 94 per cent of companies agree that personalisation is critical to their current and future success. Despite that fact, the ‘personalised push’ is still where the majority are.” Just because a brand has personal
models of the future will be more naturally in step with human nature. “It’s key that we listen, observe and understand how consumers interact and what insights are being thrown up,” says Goldsmith. If brands and marketers listen, what they create will be inherently popular. If it’s inherently popular, consumers will engage and share. What we’re looking at now, explains Goldsmith, is a new definition of ROI: return on involvement. Involvement, however, isn’t something that can be spun out of thin air. Underpinning it is trust. “We need to be very authentic in how we present our brands,” he says. “Nothing will work unless we’ve engendered trust. Brands can’t fake it. Consumers are too intelligent. Build relationships first, not just sales. Brand humanisation needs to start from the bottom up. But if you get it right, trust feeds
ENTER THE INNER SANCTUM Trust, then, is what kick-starts
communities. But what binds them together over time is storytelling, which needs to flow in both directions between a brand and its audience. So who’s getting this approach right? Instant
data on a user - age, family circumstances and possibly even whether they’re in the vicinity of a store – that doesn’t mean they’re entitled to bombard them with deals and offers. Personalising in a ‘push context’ is no longer enough. “We need to be personalising in a much more emotional sense. If we don’t, it’ll be intrusive. And intrusiveness is inherently anti-social.” So, the successful digital marketing
messaging service WhatsApp, says Goldsmith, is an example of a brand with humanisation at its heart. “The very nature of the product is
rooted in listening and insight. The conversation pre-launch was all about young people’s concerns: texting can be expensive, it’s not intuitive, group chat opportunities are limited. By responding to those concerns, trust naturally followed. WhatsApp’s products are in
33 issue 23 january 2015
line with what people are looking for.” Burberry is another example of a
BRANDS CAN’T FAKE IT.
CONSUMERS ARE TOO
INTELLIGENT”
brand which has reimagined its story, humanising its online and offline presence with clever, creative content. Back in the early noughties Burberry set out to reposition itself by appealing to younger consumers. “You could sense that listening to people and understanding human behaviour sat at the very heart of how they were working,” says Goldsmith. Now, he notes, on the brand’s YouTube channel you’ll find everything from campaign footage to personalised garments to acoustic music sessions by up-and-coming artists.
Why has the focus on music been so
the essence of what we believe humanisation is all about.”
successful? In part because the strategy is born out of Burberry CRO Christopher Bailey’s well-documented passion for it, which provides the approach with an un-buyable air of authenticity. Cleverly, Burberry have also retained a separate Twitter account for their customer service, enabling their main account to spread its wings and focus on ongoing creative messaging. “It’s about being drawn into the inner sanctum and getting behind the scenes of the brand so there’s a sense of involvement,” says Goldsmith. So, digital may be the default medium
and technology the focus of marketers’ attention. But for those who want to develop meaningful and ongoing relationships with consumers, it’s not simply about the tablet or the handset, but the human hand in which they’re sitting.
spinnakerdirect.co.uk
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