Creating meaningful micro moments

It is again that time of the year when summits about marketing and technology are abundant. Yesterday was the first day of Digital Age ’16.  Digital Age summits are different in the sense that they bring the marketing and technology worlds together. It was all about insights a few years back. The speakers were saying that through social media, marketing departments can gain powerful insights into customers and act on them. Later it became instantaneity in the sense that you know where the customers are or what they talk about and you can create a campaign instantaneously according to the data. 

This year it is more about experiences. Sherif Guindy, Maxus Global’s senior technology consultant, said that we know that the customers are online but we cannot reach them because it is not the Internet of things anymore but the “Internet of me.” He said that if brands want to catch the attention of customers they need to deliver micro golden moments. He defines the micro golden moment as both meaningful and short-lived. That’s what everyone is after these days, he said. He also added that the budget for technological innovation will come directly from marketing departments. 

Criterio’s Dirk Henkes said the path to purchases is no longer linear and you need to have personalized product experience across each channel.

Social media strategist Richard Stacy said that mobile is not a channel, but a behavior detection device. He also added that you no longer target customers, you target behaviors. 

All in all, it is obvious that technology is disrupting the way we do marketing. 

However, not everybody thinks it is good or progressive, legendary ad man Sir. John Hegarty explained to businessinsider.com.

As digital media has become ubiquitous, advertisers have turned their attention toward producing content (like videos, articles, games and social media posts) to complement their spending on traditional forms of advertising, which consumers are increasingly going out of their way to avoid or block. Spending on content marketing is set to soar 186 percent to 2.12 billion euros in Europe alone by 2020, according to research from Yahoo and Enders Analysis.

That worries Hegarty, who sees the genius of advertising in a time-starved world as taking complex ideas and reducing them into precise, short ads that are memorable. Think slogans and 30-second TV ads rather than 5-minute long branded content videos.

“I can say ‘Vorsprung durch Technik’ and you instantly know what I’m talking about [- it was the ad slogan Hegarty devised for Audi back in the 1980s.] That came out as a 60-second TV ad and there we are, 35 years later,” Hegarty said.

“We seem to have lost a desire to do that... Can anybody tell me, in the last 10 years, a piece of content that people remember and can quote back?”

I will leave you with his question for now.