Cool --> Critical

5 Take-Aways From Day 2 @ #FCIF12

1. Personal Identity Management

Forrester Analyst Fatemeh Khatibloo wowed the audience by posting content that 3 attendees had posted to the internet. The information showed the attendees were interested in running, music, coffee and dogs.  this display highlighted the challenges associated with protecting one’s data.  In a super-classy move, Forrester made a donation in the honor of the three attendees to charities that support their interests.

Considering nearly all companies manage customer data, the question becomes ‘What can companies do to responsibly manage customer data?‘

Five Principles for managing Customer Data

1. Privacy
2. Security
3. Transparency
4. Portability
5. Economy

Companies that ignore Personal Identity Data Management are likely to…

• Lose crucial access to customer data
• Lose trust and loyalty
• Incur fines as privacy and consumer rights regulation increases
• Incur massive operational costs to correct data breaches

2. Using Marketing Technology to Drive Loyalty

Melissa Boxer of Oracle demonstrated that customers’ are in control. They have:

• More choice – how when and where they want to engage
• Higher expectations – customers expect recognition at every touch-point
• More influence – peers influence decisions more than traditional marketing

3. Driving Competitive Advantage Through Science

Stephen Jalkut of Chartis, formerly known as AIG, provided an interesting data point:

Companies that have embraced Science have consistently outperformed the S&P

Science adds value across the spectrum of Chartis’ business:

1. Enabling – Traditional: loss models, data mining, visualization
2. Strategic – Sophisticated: price to value, customer lifetime value, client risk analysis, blending loss model techniques
3. True North – Transformative research: making the world a safer place, game theory in commercial sales, real options in claims

Science Teams Mission

1. Tier 1 – Reporting – what happened
2. Tier 2 – Forecasting – What might happen
3. Tier 3 – Predictive modeling – why is this happening
4. Tier 4 – Optimization – what is the best outcome

4. Taking Social Media from Cool to Critical

A session I looked forward to during the conference, Forrester Analyst Nate Elliott, challenged Marketers to connect their social media activities directly to your overall marketing plan.  Why? If you don’t even the best social media marketing campaigns fail to provide value to the business. Worse, if a business relies too much on social channels at the expensive of other marketing channels, marketing’s overall success will suffer greatly.

Want an example?

• Best Buy is learning that being really good at social media has not meant really good things for the company. They are shuttering 50 stores
• Pepsi – skipped super bowl in favor of social media campaign. They had a very successful social campaign, more people voted on social good efforts than voted in the presidential campaign. HOWEVER, Pepsi ultimately lost market position.

Why do social media marketing campaigns fail?

Two reasons social media marketing fails

1. We treat social media as an island. The engagement has little to do with the marketing strategy. They don’t turn followers into customers.
2. We ask social to carry the weight of the world. Other, traditional marketing channels suffer.

So what should a brand do?

Customers and prospects to through four stages in the ‘customer lifecycle’

How to Use Social Media in the Customer Lifecycle

1. Discover – Focus on reaching the right audience
2. Explore - Provide depth of information about products and services
3. Buy
4. Engage - Engage customers and prospects in their signaled interests

Choose the right social strategies to support each stage:

Reach - Depth - Engage

Focus on which channels offer which benefits to your marketing plan.

Social should be used to support each layer of your brand ecosystem

• Social media on your own site supplies depth
  • This aids exploration and pushes customers towards purchase
• Public social media profiles offer engagement (Facebook)
  • This engages existing customers and pushes them toward further discovery
• Word of mouth creates reach

5. Emerging Media Showcase For Interactive Marketers

Forrester Analyst Elizabeth Shaw provided a suite of examples from some of the best agency uses of interactive marketing.

Why? Technology has invaded our lives

Consumers…

• Have shorter attention spans
• Are on more platforms and devices than ever before
• Are reading less
• Have more products and services to choose from
• expect MORE

Marketers are using new technologies to:

• Drive engagement
• Target new audiences
• Align their brand and products with innovation
• Evolve with their consumer
• Grow brand awareness
• Test and learn
• Create more immersive marketing experiences…

Here are my three favorite examples:

Razorfish 5D

A 5D platform connects digital devices such as kiosks, large-screen displays, tablets and personal smart phones to better attract consumers into the store, drive product engagement and arm store associates with ore contextualized digital tools

Razorfish Connected Retail Experience Platform (codename “5D”) from Razorfish – Emerging Experiences on Vimeo.

Adaptive Advertising: Immersive Labs

Software that can automatically determine: age, gender, attention time, and adapts content on digital sights automatically based on who is looking at the screen.

Immersive Labs – Adaptive Advertising Demo from Immersive Labs on Vimeo.

Augmented Reality: Olympus Camera

Brand Objectives: Generate consumer buzz and logins to the Olympus Camera website

A Demonstation of Olympus Pen Augmented Reality from edward boches on Vimeo.