Download the Playbook on Accelerating Digital Marketing Transformation for CPGs.
Disruption had taken on a valued, technology-enabled and opportunity-laden meaning in the past decade. However, 2020 has found a way for the word to reclaim its core essence. The fundamentals of individual and collective lives have been shaken with industries and organizations re-imaging the foundations of their structures. From a marketing perspective brands have a pressing need to view consumer journeys through a different lens. More than ever the past six months has seen consumer behavior radically shift online. Yes, economies are gradually re-opening and return-to-work policies are rolling out but the impact on our relationship with brands online is more multi-faceted, ingrained and complex than before the pandemic’s onset.
In this context, disruption brings with it opportunity. Digital transformation has long been considered vital to the fourth industrial revolution and for many marketers’ discussions, have for many years, focused on how consumer journeys have transformed from linear transactions to multi-moment experiences online. The impact of the pandemic fast-tracked the transition to a truly holistic world.
And while Digital Marketing Transformation (DMT) has long been on the radar of many CPG organizations, COVID has simply shifted the narrative from a question of ‘if’ to a question of ‘when’.
That ‘when’ is now.
We at MCN MEDIABRANDS have evolved to help out clients win in a world now characterized not just by change itself but by the speed of change. This requires continuous upgrading of our expertise by re-creating success and forging strong partnerships with leading experts to better bring the expertise and realistic outcomes to the upside of brands opting for digital marketing transformation. Such upsides essentially demonstrate strong correleation with Digital Maturity with up to +20% revenue increase and up to -30% cost savings.
To that extent, we’ve teamed up with Google over the past seven months to develop A Comprehensive Guide for CPG Brands to Succeed on their Digital Marketing Transformation Journey. Our Playbook answers three fundamental questions covering digital marketing maturity and transformation:
- What is the impact of digital maturity across brands’ marketing efficiencies?
- Is there a practical roadmap with best practices to kick start a plan?
- How can we reap the benefits of digital maturity and ensure sustainable growth?
The document outlines the best practices and roadmap which distills learning from around the globe, for brands to understand the impact of data-driven technologies on organizations. At the outset the Playbook maps out where brands are on their journey, then utilizing a matrix developed in conjunction with BCG that classifies businesses into four stages based on their levels of digital maturity: nascent, emerging, connected and multi-moment.
While unravelling the requirements of achieving these maturity levels, we understood techniques of implementing the 6 dimensions to achieve and evolve across the four stages digital maturity success: These dimensions are Audiences, Assets and Ads, Access, Attribution, Automation, and Organization.
Addressing CPG Marketing Challenges
Upon analyzing the CPG industry across MENA, our framework highlighted a gap between the speed at which brands are transforming compared to the speed of the transformations that consumers are going through. While individual organizations vary on the level of digital maturity, it was clear that most of the category is at the ‘emerging’ stage, with an opportunity to further evolve.
One of the key challenges historically, has been the over-reliance on wide reach as a campaign objective to compensate for the lack of granular data about consumers. Today, the proliferation of data is allowing companies to identify high value audiences of consumer archetypes that brands can identify and engage with to produce highest return on investments.
Digging further into the CPG subcategories, we identified specific buckets of opportunity. attribution and measurement, we found to be the weakest pillar across the board, a clear issue for CPG brands which sometimes have no visibility on the end consumer purchase.
Playbook Summary Learnings and Implications
This Playbook provides insights and a robust framework on the required actions to be taken for organizations to advance their way forward. And while the framework provides a solid path, navigating the complexities of implementation and seeing the transformation to its final destination requires determination, commitment, leadership sponsorship and more importantly depth of knowledge at the execution level.
As companies start to build their plans to embark on the transformation journey, the final thread remains to holistic measurement. It is critical to invest in measurement that allows an organization to understand its customers, the journeys they take and to help reinvent the way a its products appeals and engages them. A food and beverage brand can apply a custom API which fuels an attribution model towards illustrating the performance of digital paid media activity in-store as well as online. While also testing how each channel is contributing to incremental sales.
To reap such results, a premeditated process is required which prioritizes skills and expertise over implementing advanced tech stack and data driven agendas. The demand is no longer for a broad digital marketing aptitude, but for explicit skills which enable clients’ digital transformation journey with a keen surrender to data, technology, content and performance.
With our Reprise team, we undertook these challenges as opportunities to start our journey with Google which has developed mastery in leading Digital Marketing Transformation endeavors. These capabilities include auditing current maturity states then developing and implementing a comprehensive transformation plan built on the principles of the BCG framework for digital maturity and inspired by successful case studies and best practice from around the globe.
Our partnership with Google to develop this Playbook is a testament to our commitment to be at the forefront of the forces shaping our industry, and to our mission to help our clients win.
We are happy to be sharing this thought-leadership piece, which brings together the guiding principles adopted by our agencies UM, Initiative and Magna proving the efficacies of the DMT framework and in collaboration with Google’s marketing experts.
Download the Playbook on Accelerating Digital Marketing Transformation for CPGs.
