Using Data to Build Market-Specific Consumer Journeys

Giles Smith sat down with industry experts, Kiessé Lamour (Global Head of Media at VML) and Giuseppe Petrelli (Consumer & Shopper Connection Manager at Coca Cola) to chat about data and how it can be used to build market specific consumer journeys. 

This is a summary of some key questions but if you’d like to hear everything that Kiessé and Giuseppe discussed make sure to watch or listen to the full episode! 

Watch it above.

Listen here. 

Q: How important is real-time data in terms of adjusting campaigns mid-flight?  

Kiessé: Real-time data really is incredibly and increasingly important, especially when you're dealing with campaigns mid-flight. The first importance that I see when it comes to real-time data is the immediacy of feedback. The second importance is when it comes to agility. The ability to respond swiftly to market changes or emerging trends can give you a competitive edge and maximize your results. The last point is personalization, you can tailor your message to better meet the needs and preferences of your audiences in flight.  

Giuseppe: In our company, we truly believe that everything starts from humans. It is key to build this approach based on real consumer understanding, putting their passion, behavior, orientation, preference at the center of our communication ecosystem. Having a data-centric focus on the consumer and allowing digital delivery optimization is key. It's important also to acknowledge that behind that concept, there is a huge architecture based on expert tools, specific way of working to leverage on cross-functional teams.  

We are conscious about the data maturity that can change market by market. For that reason, we allow the local teams to have this nuanced approach. But then, if we identify some best practice, it's important for us to understand how to scale up across other markets. 

Q: How do you see those approaches differing market to market? 

Kiessé: When it comes to the differentiation per market there are two key elements.  

The first one is about market maturity. If you consider emerging markets, for example, where you have a very dynamic rapidly changing consumer behaviors landscape, but also simply market conditions. Real time data in that context is incredibly valuable to help you adapt to those changes.  

Conversely, if you look at more established markets where consumer behaviors tend to be more stable, historical data can offer more reliable look-back insight, especially when you're talking about strategic planning.  

The second element is technological sophistication. The availability and reliability of the data can vary significantly from one market to another due to the availability or lack of advanced digital infrastructures, which will determine what you get to help you improve your campaigns. 

Q: How do you see that split in terms of real time versus historic and that relationship between the two? Is it kind of as simple as a 50-50 split between historic and real time data, or is it more nuanced than that? 

Kiessé: It's more nuanced than that. We tend to leverage both historical data and real-time analytics. But they primarily serve different purposes. I say primarily because those are not the only purposes that they serve. When you look at historical data, for example, it is great to support strategic planning whilst real-time analytics is great to support tactical adjustment. Historical data allows you to benchmark current performance against past campaigns, helping you as a brand, as an agency, as a team to set realistic goals and expectations because you have comprehensive view of what has worked in the past and what hasn't worked.  

Q: Giuseppe, is that something that resonates with you? Is that something you see in Coca-Cola? 

Giuseppe: Thinking in terms of media partners, it's important to have this conversation with the big players so they can guarantee an homogeneous approach across regions, across markets, and with that we can scale the different features that they allow at the local level, putting together historical but also in real time data and improvement of our activation. 

Kiessé: You can't operate effectively, and you can't really have strong results with data that is isolated or activated in silo. That collaboration is also about how we bring both our data together that enables us to achieve that skill and that depth. 

Giuseppe: It's more and more crucial to understand how to leverage first party data together with the capabilities that these media players can bring and how to exploit any kind of opportunity to really interact effectively with our consumers. 

Q: There are so many different sources of data, leveraging data from the big players, leveraging your own data, and some of the challenges that come with that. Do you see a place for predictive data and machine learning within this ecosystem?   

Kiessé: When it comes to predictive data, machine learning, and I'm sure, you know, at some point we're going to talk about AI, what we can, I hope all agree on is that these technological advancement have enabled us agencies and brands to really have a deeper understanding of customer behavior and really create more personalized and enhanced consumer journeys. We now have the ability to map out with much more clarity and gain a clearer understanding and picture of what works and doesn't work throughout the entire consumer journey from the point of discovery to the point of purchase.  

We understand, for example, what content and what ad formats work best, what level of ad exposure is more effective, which placement drives better results, what's the optimum bid price, especially when we're talking in the context of programmatic advertising for a given audience, which product to push and what ad mix to have in order to have better effectiveness. And all this really enables us to focus our efforts and really deploy tactics that will drive results.   

It's all about enhancing, right? All the technologies that we have access to it's about enhancing. It's not about necessarily creating something new or forgetting things that we've known for years. It's about enhancing what we have known and how do we make that better.  

Giuseppe: We always start defining an ideal consumer journey. This kind of blueprint to build this experience-based model. And with experience is not just experiential, it's any kind of interaction, any kind of relationship that we can build together with our consumer. And this always starts looking into insight and learning from the previous activation to nurture our conversion funnel.  

Now, maybe the concept of funnel is not so cool anymore, but it's important to understand how to tackle that and being conscious that nowadays this funnel has both collapsed and exploded with every interaction just a click away from the transaction.  

It's worth noting that when we look at the transaction, it's not only the purchase, the final consumption, but can be any opportunity to collect data, interaction to strengthen the loyalty through this unique content or experiences or any further connection with the valuable target audience to enrich and to enhance the relationship. 

Q: Do you think we as an industry are close to mastering that omni-channel approach? 

Giuseppe: In the past year we took a lot of steps in the evolution of this approach and also the conversation that brands with the media vendors had in order to streamline the full communication journey has helped.  

With omnichannel strategy, we really can reduce communication fatigue from a consumer perspective, and we can enhance the relevance of our messaging. It's important to keep building and to keep practicing our muscle on this approach because it's something that can be only enhanced in the future based on all this new data that can be brought together to strengthen the connection with our users. 

Kiessé: Most brands, at least household brands, tend to be omnichannel. If you think about omnichannel in the context of multiplication or the proliferation of channels where consumers are and reaching them at the right touch point within the environment that matters at that moment. 

I don't think that's the problem. Brands understand that clearly. Where we often get challenged when it comes to omni-channel activation is the data feedback. Because when you speak about the proliferation of channels, when you need to reach users, you're also talking about the proliferation of technology sometimes that is required to reach those users. And often, all the technologies that we bring to the table don't speak to each other. So, you don't have that single view, that single thread of that user from A to B. 

Such an insightful conversation with Kiessé and Giuseppe exploring how data can be used to build market specific consumer journeys. 

Make sure to watch the whole episode here or listen on Spotify. 

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Thank you!