Thoughts on Digital from WFA's Global Marketer Week 2017

"What we do is the same as it ever was but the way we do it can be so much faster, smarter, better, and cheeper. And that's the promise of digital. But that doesn't mean that we have to be better at digital. what it means is that we have to be brilliant and stay brilliant at our core competencies as marketers, which is you have to be brilliant at marketing but accept that we're doing it in a totally digitized world. And that all the tools and the opportunities we have at our disposal should be leveraged with the same intent we used to use with the traditional things."
- Ivan Pollard, SVP Strategic Marketing, The Cola-Cola Company



Here are some other key comments from Pollard, giving his frank appraisal of the challenges relating to digital media investment at WFA's Global Marketer Week 2017: Back to Life, Back to Reality (but watch it, he is entertaining):
"We're doing our advertising in an ADD world...So we're We're spending way more time consuming way more things in way more places and we're paying less attention to everything we see."

"So maybe time spent is not the appropriate metric to work out how attention effects comprehension."

"We need to generate scale but "been hoodwinked into believing in wastage and in the validity of targeting."

"People who were outside of our desired audience, we were told they were worthless, but they weren't. They were just worth less."

"Weight of advertising works, and Byron Sharp is right about reach. It's also telling us that that quality of content is key and Ogilvy is still right about advertising."

"Not all moments are created equal, especially for those of us selling high volume, low cost goods. What we're looking for are decisive moments."

"We have to maintain the balance between, what is happening in the real world and what is happening in the digital world and pay appropriately for them."

"Reconsidering how we maintain ubiquitous in the real and digital world. Doing this with a fanatical focus on the I in ROI. Starting to challenge the means and models by how we spend our money."
"We're living in a complicated world but the job of marketing is essentially the same."

"We make the remarkable, to make the marketing remarketably smarter."

This is also worth watching:
Our connected audiences have the power to make or break a brand, literally, at their fingertips. While the world has changed, Raja Rajamannar continues to be guided by the insight that experiences matter more than things. Learn more on how Mastercard is striving to exceed the expectations of the connected consumer by shifting from storytelling to storydoing.

"Low price, surprise and delighted, and want to be rewarded. And then there's a feeling of entitlement."

"Because as a consumer when you get rewarded you want to brag about it."

"Some brands used to be so exclusive...but now that kind of mystery has been taken away."

"Consumers want experiences that are truly uninterrupted."

"Consumers don't care about your products. They care about themselves. They care about listening to stories. They want to be entertained. In the process you inform them about your product, ok, that's incidental, but what they're looking for - that's absolutely right. But, today, consumers are telling, 'I don't care about your stories, keep your stories to yourself. I want uninterrupted experience.'"

People are valuing having experiences vs. things at all levels of the economic spectrum.

Connecting with consumers and connecting with the things that they care about - passion points. And this is experiences. If you want to give experiences to your customers, how do you do this. Create and curate experiences that will truly have scale, will have profitability from country to country, and gives us impact we are seeking from our campaigns. Use the "priceless" theme to unite the ideas. This lead to developing things like Priceless Cities where customers can have experiences that money can't buy.