COLOGNE-While it’s great to be able to track consumers as they move across digital devices, marketers should place more emphasis on peoples’ need states than on making sure they are targeting the same individual, according to Blake Cuthbert. “All of the need states that we can identify allows us to be really super targeted but also hyper relevant,” says the Chief Digital Officer of Omnicom’s OMD agency for the EMEA region.
As he attends the annual DMEXCO global business and innovation event, Cuthbert tells Beet.TV in an interview that given the availability of technology, people can get “very caught up” in making sure they are reaching the same consumer with various messages.
“But really what we need to do is understand what need state is being signaled at that moment in time to get that relevant message,” Cuthbert says. “That’s where I think the benefit happens. Rather than the fact that it is exactly the same person that has seen that element before.”
Cuthbert does acknowledge the importance of frequency for measurement and attribution but thinks relevancy is the fundamental element.
Whereas media planning has traditionally focused on “one big insight, a big idea” now the big idea is “fused with other micro insights” of where consumers are. As a result, “we can come back with lots of little messages and utilities along the way to give them value in what they’re trying to search for or what media they are consuming,” says Cuthbert.
As the conversation segues to creative optimization, Cuthbert calls it “one of those areas where it’s the biggest challenge that we are now having to create a lot of different messages.” Targeting individuals at a low spend and taking learning from what isn’t performing, then starting scale the messages that are “takes a lot of nuance and subtlety to really understand all of those different messages in market at that one time,” Cuthbert says.
One of the things that amazes Cuthbert about DMEXCO is the plethora of attendees and exhibitors, new ideas and new technologies. “It kind of personifies the challenges that our clients have at the moment,” Cuthbert observes. “The landscape is crazy. It’s huge.”
This interview was taped at DMEXCO ’16. It is part of a video series of industry leaders. The series is sponsored by Videology. For more Beet.TV coverage of DMEXCO, please visit this page.
