“We’re using data to inform our messaging, deliver personalised communications, drive better results and achieve higher ROI.”
Are you really? What makes a good strategy a good measure for improved ROI? The marketing landscape is evolving rapidly. Traditional strategies that inundate consumers with generic content are no longer effective. Attention is scarce, and brands compete for seconds from consumers.
The antiquated, one-directional communication strategies that dominated brand interactions have become obsolete.
Today’s consumers expect personalised, engaging experiences that reflect preferences and behaviours. With 73 per cent of customers stressing the importance of being recognised and understood, the dynamics of consumer-brand interactions must respond to this transformation.
Gone are the days when merely managing relationships sufficed to sustain brand relevance and loyalty. While integrating a suite of strategies can enhance brand equity, achieving customer-centricity is complex. Brands need to leverage their strategy, data, technology, and process capabilities to deliver personalised value through orchestrated interactions that creatively utilise marketing programmes.
This challenge underscores the need for brands to shift focus from managing to crafting customer relationships.
Ogilvy One is at the forefront of this shift, leading with its innovative approach, Relationship Design.
This shift reflects an acknowledgement of the role relationships play in driving success. Relationships are not mere transactions but intricate networks of emotional, psychological, and functional bonds that bind consumers to brands, and are addressed through influencing behavioural triggers—a unique Ogilvy capability brought to our partners through our behavioural science practice. To overlook the significance of these relationships is to risk relegation to the periphery of the consumers that keep your brands alive.
It’s not enough to send occasional communications with promotions or generic newsletters where brands share what they want people to know. To be relevant, businesses must make people feel something, evoke emotions, and creatively offer more than the product or service they sell, adding value to the customer experience. By correlating RFM data to SKUs on-sale for a retail client, Ogilvy One increased interactions and engagement by over 300 per cent, generated AED 8 million in incremental sales and drove physical footfall to stores, delivering campaign ROI of over 30x.
In embracing the ethos of relationship design, brands embark on a journey of purposeful engagement with their audience. Brands need to shift from managing one-dimensional, one-channel-based relationships to designing ecosystems in a fluid array of channels that deliver on the relationship requirements of consumers. Every touchpoint and interaction becomes an opportunity to orchestrate meaningful experiences that resonate deeply with consumers.
The journey toward brand devotion starts at acquisition and continues throughout the customer’s lifecycle. From the initial point of contact to post-purchase, each phase needs curation that fosters connection and loyalty, synergising brand marketing, customer experience, and loyalty initiatives in a personal and compelling manner, to address emotional and rational needs.
As the rules of customer relationships undergo this transformation, propelled by advancements in AI, brands must transcend traditional, one-way communication models. By adopting a dynamic, relationship-crafting approach that harnesses the latest in marketing innovation and technology, brands can create meaningful, personalised customer experiences that exceed their audience’s expectations.
AI can be a disruptive ally, helping brands predict which messages and experiences are relevant for individuals, determine the most effective time and channel for interaction, provide alerts when someone is at risk of churning or identify opportunities that may typically be challenging to recognise.
But don’t let the machine fool you. While AI can be a brand’s best mate when it comes to CRM and loyalty programmes, this technology means nothing without a strategic and creative mindset to effectively utilise it. This approach meets customers where they are and leverages the transformative power of AI and creative marketing to tailor experiences that resonate on a deeper level, ultimately leading to significant returns on investments.
Stemming from David Ogilvy’s ‘secret weapon’ of direct response marketing, today Ogilvy One embraces a comprehensive approach to designing relationships, blending creativity, data-driven insights, and AI-powered solutions.
We are backed by Verticurl, a 20-year-old, 2500+ man powerhouse, and one of the world’s leading marketing technology services agencies, with expertise in assessing, deploying and integrating martech platforms, activating customer experience technologies, and addressing marketing’s most pressing challenges, from improving customer experiences to achieving better ROI from martech.
Ogilvy One and Verticurl maintain key relationships with the world’s leading technology providers including Adobe, SalesForce, Sitecore, Tealium, Braze and many others, and have been at the forefront of innovation, customer experience strategy and martech consulting for many of the region’s leading brands including Aldar Properties, Al-Futtaim, the Central Bank of the UAE, Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank, American Express, Expo 2020 Dubai, Emirates NBD, and others.
So the next time you embark on increasing impact, ask yourself if you really are ‘operationalising’ the data you have at hand, crafting messages accordingly to the channel and time of preference of audiences, and landing the desired valuable action for both brand and customer.
By Hazem El Zayat, Chief Experience Officer – MENA, Ogilvy One
