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AI inom marknadsföring

Möjligheterna med AI inom marknadsföring är stora och spännande. Med sin förmåga att snabbt och exakt bearbeta stora mängder data har AI potential att revolutionera sättet som företag interagerar med sina kunder och riktar sin marknadsföring. Detta kan leda till mer effektiva och effektiva marknadsföringskampanjer, samt mer personliga och engagerande innehåll för konsumenter.

En av de viktigaste fördelarna med AI inom marknadsföring är dess förmåga att hjälpa företag att bättre förstå sin målgrupp och rikta sin marknadsföring mer effektivt. Genom att analysera konsumentdata och använda maskininlärningsalgoritmer kan AI hjälpa marknadsförare att identifiera mönster och trender som skulle vara svåra för människor att upptäcka. Detta kan göra det möjligt för företag att skapa mer personliga och relevanta marknadsföringsmeddelanden, vilket kan förbättra engagemanget och konverteringsgraderna.

En annan fördel med AI inom marknadsföring är dess potential att automatisera rutinmässiga uppgifter och ge marknadsförare möjlighet att fokusera på mer kreativt och strategiskt arbete. Genom att använda AI för att hantera uppgifter som dataanalys och e-postmarknadsföring kan marknadsförare spendera mer tid på att utveckla innovativa marknadsföringskampanjer och kreativt innehåll som resonerar med sin målgrupp. Detta kan hjälpa företag att sticka ut från konkurrensen och driva bättre affärsresultat.

Som marknadsexperten Mark Ritson har sagt: ”AI har potential att revolutionera marknadsföringen genom att låta oss bearbeta stora mängder data och göra bättre, mer informerade beslut om hur vi riktar och engagerar våra kunder”. Genom att dra nytta av AI:s kraft kan marknadsförare skapa mer effektiva och engagerande kampanjer som driver bättre affärsresultat.

Det där ovan, det är en riktigt bra text om AI och marknadsföring. Det kan jag säga utan att vara självgod, eftersom jag inte har skrivit texten själv. 

Texten är skriven av Open AI:s chatbaserade ChatGPT. Det är en prototyp av dialogbaserad AI-chatbot som kan förstå naturligt mänskligt språk och generera imponerande detaljerad människoliknande skriven text. AI:n fick briefen här ovan, och spottade sedan ur sig texten på 8 sekunder blankt. Inget mer, ingen bakgrundsinfo.  Baserat på en kort och slarvig brief  hittade allt, (inklusive ett citat av Mark Ritson om AI som jag inte ens visste existerande innan).

Det är helt häpnadsväckande hur snabbt den här utvecklingen har gått, hur snabbt AI inom text gått från klumpiga botar som hackar ut sig texter som mest kan användas som skämt, till det här korrekta, eleganta och på gränsen till skrämmande verktyget.

Implikationerna är, likt AI:n beskriver själv, enorma. SEO-optimerade produktbeskrivningar till sajt, copy till performance marketing och sociala medier, email till CRM och marketing automation, Irriterande och/eller inspirerande LinkedIn-poster. Att automatisera enkla uppgifter för att frigöra tid så att människor kan lägga kraft på mer strategiska beslut är ju en fantastisk möjlighet. Men man kan också tänka sig att ha den här Ain till hjälp med att formulera briefer, sammanfatta kampanjmätningar, skriva på pitcher eller hitta eleganta sägningar om konsumentbeteende.

Man kan – bevisligen – ha den till att skriva blogginlägg.

Det är som sagt ibland bitvis skrämmande att tänka på vilken påverkan detta kan ha på vår bransch. Men när världen känns stor och osäker kan det vara bra att balansera med ett av de gulligare användningsområdena jag hittat med ChatGPT. Att låta den skapa sagor år mina barn där de själva har huvudrollerna.

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Zlatan gonna be Zlatan

En stjärna är en stjärna. Zlatan är grym på vad han gör. Han sticker ut, har talang, har driv, gör mål.

Men många av de kvalitéer som gör honom till en grym målgörare är också kvalitéer som skulle göra honom till en ganska kass målvakt. Där kanske man istället behöver någon med lugn, tålamod, lite mer kallt kalkylerande.

Utöver en Zlatan och en målvakt behövs ett helt gäng spelartyper till, samt materialare, ägare, tränare med flera. Massör. Alla typerna behövs för att skapa ett framgångsrikt lag.

 

Sen behövs det en koordinerande kraft, som sätter riktning, strategi. Som fördelar rollerna på de olika spelarna, ser till att Zlatan verkligen får spela på topp och göra det han är bra på, ser till att mittfältet passar honom så att han kan göra sin grej etc etc.

I detta finns en liknelse till marknadsföring. Media, konceptutveckling, produktutveckling, distribution, performance marketing, sajt/UX har alla olika roller att spela, och behöver koordineras med andra ”spelare” och ha en gemensam riktning, men behöver också få utveckla expertisen för sin roll.

Vissa expertiser får mer rampljus än andra. Dale Reece som är “Performance & Medical Coordinator” i landslaget har 15 900 träffar på google. Zlatan har 43 miljoner.

 

Utöver specialisterna finns som sagt ett stort koordinerande jobb att göra. Vem sätter den övergripande riktningen, visionen, prioriteringarna. Om vi håller oss kvar i sportliknelser kan man säga att det kan vara olika spelare i olika lag. Ser vi istället på basketdokumentären ”The Last Dance” ser vi exempel på att den dynamiske spelaren Michael Jordan är den som sätter riktningen för Chicago Bulls.

Men i min mening är det undantaget som bekräftar regeln. Att tro att den som är bäst på att sätta mål också är bäst på att välja spelstil eller se till att man bokar rätt buss till bortamatchen är att hoppas på mycket. Istället är det ofta en mycket torrare typ som behövs i de sammanhangen. Baseballfilmen ”Moneyball” med Brad Pitt och Jonah Hill är ett bra exempel på när den torre analytiske tränaren skapar förutsättningarna för framgång.

Men. Last Dance har en rating på 9,1 på IMDb. Moneyball bara 7,6.

Ett problem inom marknadsföring, liksom med sport, är att det där med riktning är mer trögrörligt, mindre synligt och mindre kul att lägga tid på. En spektakulär räddning eller ett bicicleta-mål är roligare att kolla på än en långdragen diskussion om laguppställning. På samma sätt är det enklare att engagera när man pratar om kampanjer och kreativitet, säljsiffror och dashboards, nya kanaler och teknik, än om prioriteringar och organisation.

Mark Ritson brukar dra ett tankeexempel där han säger att analys strategi och execution är lika viktiga delar av marknadsföring. Och reklam (det roliga) är en fjärdedel av execution. Med den hypotesen skulle reklam och kommunikation stå för 8,33% av jobbet inom marknadsföring (1/3/4=0,083), och därmed få 8,33% av uppmärksamhet och tankemöda.

Att kunna bedöma om en insats är strategiskt rätt är något annat än att kunna utföra den insatsen med elegans. Båda delarna behövs för att nå framgång, men ibland känns det som att det fokus vi lägger på att uppskatta utförande överskuggar tanken på att sätta riktning, att göra torra avväganden och en långsiktig plan.

Kort sagt tror jag det vore bra att ibland göra marknadsföring lite tråkigare. Att prata lite mer om branschens kartläsare, vallare, tränare, och kanske lite mindre om Zlatan. Annars riskerar vi att springa snabbt som fasen i en riktning ingen vet är rätt.

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The CMO Mandate Paradox

A lot of discussion in recent years has been around too much allocation of comms spend going towards tactical and digital activities. While some point to the lobbying muscle of Facebook and Google, and some say the blame is on an industry too focused on being trendy, there is one thing few focus on: the lack of hierarchy in marketing today.

Generally, most people in digital advertising are not evil or sinister. They are just trying to maximize the value of clients budgets in relation to some given KPI:s. In the tactical space, they are doing their best efforts. And if their client contact offers them a higher budget, well hey, someone on the client side has probably done some diagnosis and strategy work to support that allocation of budget.

The same goes for the people at the media agency, the creative lead agency, the performance agency and the agency working with retail. They all maximize the value of their field, and the overall strategy is not their responsibility.

But what if there has been no overall strategy at all?

If there is no conductor, each member of the orchestra will just start playing louder and louder. Even the best violinist in the world has difficulty finding his or her role in an orchestra without sheet music or a conductors’ guidance.

And even if it was possible for that violinist to learn in detail the relative roles of every instrument in the libretto, that would just be inefficient: The main idea of having a conductor is to not have to make all 90 musicians learn the overall picture in detail, but allow them to become specialists. And at the same time to allow the conductor to focus solely on conducting, being able to control every section of the orchestra and to make them work together to create beautiful music.

As different disciplines within marketing are playing their individual tunes, we risk missing out on synergies. Also, if there is no conductor with an overview of all elements, people risk trying to impose learnings and models relevant to one discipline to others, even though they do not apply there. While the insights from Binet & Field regarding a trend of over-investment in digital is true within comms, it may not apply to product development or distribution. While new digital KPI:s and A/B testing can be relevant for tactical comms, it may be all wrong when it comes to branding.

What might then be the ground for a development with more siloed disciplines within marketing? To my mind three interconnected trends drive this development:

  • A lack of mandate for overall orchestration of the things that drive growth
  • An increased focus on short term profits
  • The fear of missing out on new trends and technologies

Marketing is traditionally a discipline encompassing all activities that generate money to a company. As outlined by Mark Ritson et al there is a great importance in diagnosing your market, setting a strategy, and then executing that strategy across both Product development, Pricing, Promotion (comms) and Place (distribution). With a helicopter view across all these elements, you can see how they interact, make informed trade-offs between different initiatives, and work long term.

However, recently CMO:s have lost a lot of control in this area. When Dentsu surveyed 1000 CMOs across the globe, many of the top responses indicate decreasing control: Lack of integration, insufficient control and competing agendas with the rest of the C-suite are all key challenges for implementing the marketing strategy.

As summarized in the very pertinently titled article Why CMOs are only lasting as long as Spinal Tap drummers: “First, finance officers took away pricing. Then, strategy officers who took away market analysis and strategic planning. Product officers took away product. Operations and logistics officers took away distribution. Sales officers took away sales.”

So the mandate of the marketing function is diminishing. At the same time, the same function is still responsible for growth, a paradox that some say may be the cause of CMO:s being the most short lived members of the C-suite. This leads to the second underlying cause of the marketing cacophony: Short termism.

There are a lot of reasons that we are getting more short term focused. Stock markets looking at every quarters sales figures is one driver. Another is the influx of more and more short-term data claiming our attention. On a larger scale, some say that we are in a midst of a global trend across not only marketing but society at large where we are more tactical, and data focused.

The short term focus leads to wanting to maximize the value in each channel or discipline straight away, without taking time to see how such a push affects the bigger picture. “Can we save money in distribution by going digital – let’s do it! How does the loss of physical outlets affect our service level and premium brand position? Dunno, that’s not my responsibility and I don´t have time to check.”

Digitalization, in turn, leads us to the third Horseman of the marketing Apocalypse; FOMO.

From Apps to social media to the current day holy grails of AI, AR and Agile, there seems to be and increasing trend in wanting to be part of the latest marketing trends. And as digitalization adds new needs, new expertise is needed, the traditional lead agencies lose their grip of the overall picture. Social Media agencies, performance agencies, digital agencies take control of different aspects of the puzzle. And perhaps a CMO is too afraid to reveal a lack of understanding to take charge. Better let some new CXO take charge of that new thing.

That is why we end up with a lack of central leadership. And as a consequence of that void, the different instruments in the orchestra start riffing on their own solos. Suddenly the “CSMO” and the social media agency start developing their own diagnosis and strategy, diagnosis and strategy based only on achieving their siloed KPI:s. The Head of Product Development develops his/her own view of the world and strategic prioritizations, perhaps even finding a target group definition that suits the product developments. And then you end up with TikTok Strategies, retargeting marketing that destroys brands, too much consumer centricity in branding, not enough consumer centricity UX, and a general lack of consistency across disciplines and time.

So what might be the remedy? It probably comes down to a clear division of labor: As the complexity of the marketing game increases, each player needs to understand the overall picture, understand what role their instrument plays in it, and at least have some rudimentary understanding of what roles others are playing. Getting a bit humble. If you say; I am fully aware I only play one of many instruments, but this is how I think mine should be best played, is so much more graceful than saying THIS IS THE TRUMPET LET’S PLAY MORE TRUMPET.

  • People in digital/social media: Binet & field DOES show we have gotten too tactical
  • People in traditional brand building: There ARE interesting new channels and formats within digital that can play a great role in tactical advertising
  • Comms people: Outside of Comms, digital DOES have interesting potential within the extended product experience (CX) and distribution
  • People in media tactics: Sometimes the value of consistency MUST trump channel adaptation
  • People in branding: Sometimes a channel I so relevant it CAN warrant doing some adaptation to fit messaging
  • Etc

As for the role of overall vision, the CMO probably needs to take more charge in the boardroom – by leaning on the science behind marketing and getting more savvy in new technologies and buzzwords coming along. Understanding how these things can contribute to growth is key to arguing they should be subordinated to the growth agenda.

There is no shame in doing great tactics. But it should not be confused with strategy. There is no shame in being the greatest violinist in the game. But that skill should not be confused with – nor substitute – the need for orchestration.

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From Barbells to Bananas

A while back, I attended a seminar with a great array of speakers on strategy and marketing (Mark Ritson, JP Hanson, Wiemer Snijders and Rory Sutherland). That experience resulted in a blog post that got a lot of appreciation. So, I went on and extended that blog post and structured it a bit more, resulting in a booklet summarising a few interesting ideas and models on marketing.

Below is an outline of the content, if you would like a copy of the full booklet drop me an email at nils.a.wimby@isobar.com (avaliable in English or Swedish)

FROM BANANAS TO BARBELLS – Six models to guide you in the modern marketing Jungle

Amazon.com lists over 50 000 books on the topic of Marketing and Sales. The top 20 books average over 300 pages each. I would venture a guess that most of these millions of pages are bought but never read.

The booklet I put together is just 30 pages. It is an attempt to keep it simple: six easy models or ideas on marketing. Most of them are borrowed. All of them are simplified.

For each chapter, there are recommendations for further reading. There is a great amount of good reading out there. This is just a quick nibble to get your appetite going.

1. Starting at the right end

 

The first model is about doing your research and thinking before getting to work. Studying the map before rushing out into the world.

Sounds simplistic but is often forgotten when we get caught up in day to day operations. We need to be stringent first in analyzing the market as best we can, then formulating our strategy, and finally executing our tactic measures.

The outcome of your marketing efforts becomes the multiplication of the three phases, meaning it is better to do all three at an ok level, than excelling at two and failing at a third.

2. Weighing your efforts

 

In this section, we explore two important things to consider when allocating marketing budgets:

  • Loyalty is generally very weak, with most product buyers buying very rarely
  • Long term emotional branding advertising and short term sales driven advertising serve different purposes, imply different strategies, and have different KPIs.

The first model illustrates how frequently the buyers of your brand actually make a purchase. Here, research finds that across almost all categories, the majority of purchases are done by people who buy very rarely. The banana serves as as a model to illustrate the shape of the diagram: Almost all volume to the left (less frequent consumers) with a much smaller longtail to the right (frequent buyers).

The second model needs no introduction, it is perhaps the most famous one in marketing today. Binet & Fields model illustrates the duality between short-term and long-term marketing efforts. The key takeout is that if you focus on KPIs that measure short term marketing (sales, clicks, ROI) your efforts will steer towards that type of marketing. In this there is a clear risk of neglecting long term brand building.

3. Consistency, consistency, consistency

What you see here is not a model per se, but it is a good illustration of the third idea in this lineup, consistency. None of the icons above include a brand name but are all instantly recognizable to the majority of consumers. This is a super relevant aspect in a cluttered media message where consumers are bombarded with messages and generally try to avoid advertising. Consistency, to establish recognition in consumers minds, is usually more important than adapting to short lived trends or making sure your advertising feels new and fresh.

4. Looking at the full cost / reward

There are plenty of models describing the amount of reach (and correspondingly media investment) you need to drive consumers from brand awareness to actual purchase. They are known as funnels, just because reach needs to be the biggest at the awareness stage at the top, and then gets narrower as communication gets more tactical and targeted further down.

 

As these funnels are so universally accepted, it is a common mistake to assume that their ratios apply not only to media spend, but to all costs and efforts. But the cost of content creation, tech resources etc can show different patterns. It is therefore important to not just assume that some investments are cheap because the media investment is low, but too look at all costs and resources drawn by any initiative.

5. Who calls the shots

Ambiguity of mandate and decision making in the relationship between client and agencies is present in a lot of marketing work. This is because there is no set formula for decision making and mandate. At what stages of the process does the client, the creative agency, the media agency or the performance agency have to take responsibility – and get to call the shots?

There are a couple of potential pitfalls as a consequence of this: Lack of direction, Over-analysis or flat out Paralysis

6. Putting Innovation Into perspective

As marketers are dealing with the human mind, which is subject to confirmation bias, post-rationalization and a whole host of inconsistencies, it is a mistake to let 100% of efforts be data driven. Those who do may be solving the problems of today, but not hedging against the future.

There are different models related to this. One is the Barbell model. It states that 85% of your efforts should go to low risk, low reward safe bets. 15% should be aimed at high risk high potential reward. The most important bit: Nothing in the middle. Keep your bread and butter work and your experimental efforts well separated, there should be no grey area,

 

 

A disclaimer: This is a list of six interesting ideas around marketing. It is not the list of marketing ideas. There are many others, and of course a huge amount of detail and data underpinning them. But I hope this list may be thought provoking, and get some thinking going around structure and prioritisation in the marketing process.

A very interesting and relevant thing about these models: They are not brand new, not secret or complicated. Yet, they seem very difficult to follow. This is actually a shortcut to success: If you are able to make sure you really follow at least three of the ideas listed here, you are probably doing a better job than the majority of the marketers in your industry.

 

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Marketing strategy in four simple (?) steps

The other day I had the pleasure of listening to a line up of international marketing gurus. Mark Ritson, Wiemer Snijders, Rory Sutherland, and JP Hanson had all come to Stockholm for a marketing event (SprintAd-dagen). While none of the stuff was perhaps new or revolutionary, it served as an important (and entertaining) reminder of the principles and frameworks that apply to marketing. As all of the ideas are adjacent and inter-linked, below are my take outs area by area rather than speaker by speaker. So below, I give you the foolproof guide to marketing in four simple steps:

1    Start at the right end

Sounds simplistic and basic but is something often forgotten when we get caught up in day to day operations. We need to be stringent in first analysing the market as best we can, then formulating our strategy, and last executing our tactic measures.

The diagnosis phase is to establish all we know about consumers, competitors and trends. It may also have the benefit of reminding you that nobody cares about your brand.

The strategy phase includes goals, KPI:s, prioritised segments etc.

The tactics phase is where we use the classical tools of marketing (Product, Price, Distribution and Comms).

This area was touched upon by JP Hanson and Mark Ritson. JP added that we are all subject to confirmation bias and halo effects. That means we are prone to post rationalising decisions and making isolated observations into rules of thumb when it suits our purposes. He also reminded us that a lot of new trends appearing are potential tools in the tactics phase, rather than something that should affect strategy.

Mark Ritson added a few really interesting remarks;

  • As the results of your market becomes the multiplication of the three phases, it is better to do all three at an ok level, than to excel at two and fail at a third. Distribute your efforts accordingly
  • Comms is one third of one of the three phases. CMO:s should allocate efforts accordingly (dialling back a less than healthy over- focus on this area).

 

2     Base your prioritisation of segments and goals on science

 

Under this headline, there are a lot of different studies and models basically pointing to two factors:

  • Loyalty is very weak, with most product buyers buying very rarely
  • Long term emotional branding advertising and short term sales driven advertising serve different purposes, imply different strategies, and have different KPI:s.

The first point was addressed by Wiemer Snijders, who used the banana as a model to illustrate the data. The banana effect in essence mean since a lot of people by your product rarely, you must be broad in your communication. He also talked about how brands have a meaning that to some extent is only useful if it is universally known. Imagine if Rolex only communicated their values to a niche group of frequent buyers. The whole status effect of a Rolex would vanish, as no one in the general public would understand the value of what was on your wrist.

 

Regarding the long term versus short term, there seems to be a unanimous vote in the community that the work of Binet & Field is the strategy model to follow. Even Mark Ritson grudgingly concluded that Binet & Fields work was probably the best combination of his own ideas on segmentation and Byron Sharps thinking of mental avaliability.

Also, Mark stated a strategy should be no more than one page, and include no more than 2-3 KPIs/goals

 

3    Be consistent

Daring to be consistent across channels, markets and time was an important take-away.  Advertising and marketing people are only human, and it is natural after working in a brand for a couple of years to get a bit bored with the brand appearance. But, as argued not least by Byron Sharp, distinctive and recognisable brand assets are key to being noticed in a cluttered communications landscape.

Mark Ritson added a few interesting notes from his many years as a consultant to major brands. He mentioned brand “codes”, elements that should be present in all advertising. He went so far as to instruct advertisers to refuse to pay agencies unless they included at least 2 of the brand codes.

He exemplified with Kenzo, where ads always had to include red elements, the signature poppy flower, and the brands ambassador/model against a Paris backdrop. Easily recognisable as Kenzo even if the brand name is removed from the ad, right?

4    Allow for a bit of crazy experiments

 

The final piece I took away was around experimentation. As we as advertisers are dealing with the human mind, which is subject to confirmation bias, post-rationalisation and a whole host of inconsistencies, we must never let 100% of our efforts be data driven. If we do, we will be solving the problems of today, but not hedging against the future.

There are different models related to this, One is the 70/20/10 model (70% of marketing towards optimising bread & butter, 20% towards testing new things, and 10% totally experimental). Another model is the dumbbell model as presented by Rory Sutherland: 80% safe, 20 % crazy, and nothing in the middle. They key element to these models is not getting them mixed up. The purpose, ideation process and KPI:s should be completely different for the two different efforts.

Rory also questioned why creative peoples’ ideas are always audited by structured people, but structured peoples’ ideas are never audited by creatives.

All in all, the collected insights of these speakers gives a comprehensive roadmap on how to address marketing. If you are in marketing, you really should read up on these models and se how they may apply to your business. Or as Wiemer Snijders puts it: Eat your greens!

 

 

 

 

P.S. Speaking were also Dr Emma Frans and Kapero consulting. As they were not on the topic of marketing theory I have left them out of this.

P.P.S. Only one woman speaker?