Presented to Toronto audience for MRIA Netgain 2015 conference. Digital, social, mobile creating marketing disruption triple play that marketing research is out of synch with

1. What Marketing Research Needs to Know
About Brand-Building in a Digital, Social,
Mobile Age
Joel Rubinson, President
Rubinson Partners, Inc.
joel@rubinsonpartners.com
Blog.joelrubinson.net
@joelrubinson
MRIA Netgain Conference
Toronto, Canada
January 27, 2015

2.  Media has always been the way marketers connect brand ideas to
consumers.
 As media fast evolve to become digital, so do the rules of brand-
building.
 …so how can the picture of brand success remain the same?
The digital, social, mobile (DSM) world
changes everything

3.  “Though social and digital media
are rapidly transforming marketing
and new tools emerge daily, in
most firms the organization of the
function hasn't changed in 40
years. How should marketers
revamp…to meet the new
realities?”
 The Ultimate Marketing Machine
 by Marc de Swaan Arons, Frank
van den Driest, Keith Weed
 Source: Harvard Business Review
 Publication Date: Jul 01, 2014.
Change is not an option

4. The triple play of marketing disruption

5.  AOL “Buying at Speed”
findings across 20+ product
categories:
• We live in an always
connected world where we
browse daily…engaging in
shopping behaviors without
shopping purpose
• When we ARE shopping, up
to 80% of purchases
(depends on category)
involve digital, lean-forward
behaviors
A push-pull media world has changed
the way we encounter brands
McKinsey Consumer Decision Journey
AOL: Buying at speed: how technology empowers
the always on shopper. Jan, 2014
1

6. 2
Brands must become media…the
essence of always on marketing
Data dividend
Targeting
Amplification
Insights

7.  The majority of digital advertising placement
will be affected by behavioral data and
predictive modeling algorithms, much of it as
part of search and real time bidding systems
 According to AOL, 90% of advertisers are now
using programmatic
 Advertising has become a naturally occurring
conjoint experiment so campaigns can be
optimized in-flight
 The lift in advertising ROI from Math men is
significant and repeatable
The rise of math-men in advertising3

8. In a math-men future, programmatic messaging becomes
key…
 As a user requests a webpage, the
marketer’s goal is to serve the most
relevant ad that has the greatest chance
of response and to win that impression
at the right price. And to make this work
at scale.

9. In a math-men future, programmatic messaging becomes
key…but research is MIA!
 So how does research
help achieve this goal?
We don’t!
 Lack digital metrics-
bases guidance system
 Post mortem mindset in
a predictive, real-time
game
 Failing to change the
way that marketing works
 As a user requests a webpage, the
marketer’s goal is to serve the most
relevant ad that has the greatest chance
of response and to win that impression
at the right price. And to make this work
at scale.

10. The most important thing researchers can do in the
coming year is to get serious about integrating digital
 Why isn’t it happening?
 What the heck does this
really mean?

11. Move digital into your comfort zone
surveys
digital
Mobile
research

12. Step one: take the traditional array of tracker metrics
• Outcomes Sales, share
Equity
Clicks
Brand
lift
Conversi
onsViews
attributes
social
media
listening
Brand
audience
Ad aware
P’views,
UVs
• Equity
• Marketing
activity

13. …and integrate digital and social behaviors
• Outcomes Sales, share
Equity
Clicks
Brand
lift
Conversi
onsViews
attributes
social
media
listening
Brand
audience
Ad aware
P’views,
UVs
• Equity
• Marketing
activity

14. Step two: stop treating social media like a hobby!
• Understand how people articulate concerns and brand feelings
• Cut your tracker expense by replacing continuous tracking of attributes
with social media monitoring.
• Incorporate online and offline WOM as variables in your marketing mix
modeling, now proven to drive sales

15. Step three: bring in data you can’t get from a survey that
has action value
• Certain online panel
companies are using
social log-in. That comes
with something called
“oauth permissions”.
• Now Social data on
likes, interests, audience
classifications etc. can
be integrated into survey
results, blending brand
profiling and ad targeting
• Go even further: it is now
possible to link in
display/video ad targeting
profile data to survey
results
• Link ad serving to
shopper data to measure
advertising impact

16. Imagine a future…example: Starbucks
• What Starbucks marketing COULD do
• Match multiscreen clickstream behaviors to
transactions to create better customer knowledge and
segments
• Scale up with third party data
• Target advertising in Facebook, Twitter, and display to
customer segments defined by a mix of digital
behaviors and attitudes
• Database of all ad results so Starbucks can use
data science to understand what works
• Analyze this in real time for in-flight campaign
adjustment
• What Starbucks research COULD do
• Extend the mobile app to include an “in the moment”
survey capability.
• Match survey results to clickstream and transaction
behaviors to create better audiences
• Target users for new offerings
• Be an agent of change…prove to the enterprise the
value of first party data to encourage new marketing
priorities and actions
Note: these ideas I am suggesting are not based on any conversations or work with Starbucks or any of
their agencies

17. So, what does marketing research need to know
about brand-building in a digital, social, mobile age?
• The way brand meaning is created has fundamentally changed
• The way brands activate and win purchases has changed
• The way we manage Marketing ROI has changed…now based on
programmatic and data-driven marketing
• By and large, research has NOT CHANGED. It must get in step and even
become an agent of change. To do so, it must reinvent brand tracking,
consumer segmentation, and new product forecasting to leverage digital
data.

18. In 2015, think digital and do something big!
• Integrate digital into KPIs
• Shift half your money from long form trackers into
digital and data science
• Add in data integration (frequent shopper data,
facebook oauth permission)
• Redesign an upcoming segmentation study to be
targetable
• Conduct “in the moment research” via smart
phones
• Commit to creating and mining digital ad results
data

19. To help you along…
• “Brandbuilding in a Digital, Social, and
Mobile Age” available on Amazon.
• Free pdf as a courtesy to attendees…
• E-mail me joel@rubinsonpartners.com

20. Parting words…
The marketing insights team mission must become how to deliver
more for less. There is so much waste and so much research
that under-delivers, if we can't achieve more for less, shame on us.“
Stan Sthanunathan, SVP CMI Unilever
January, 2014