The explosion of social media channels has changed global brand management
Today's advertising landscape is a myriad of traditional and digital channels all overlapping and intertwining.
For many of us, it’s rare to see a day go by where we don’t watch or share a YouTube video, sign into Facebook or Twitter, or comment on a Vine or Instagram post. But 10 to 15 years ago, prior to the explosion of social media and the rise of the Internet, the everyday consumer would rely on a handful of sources for digital content.
As marketers, this made the job of storing and delivering assets relatively easy, the main challenge lay in generating the concept or idea behind the campaign rather than delivery and implementation. However, with new technology comes new opportunities, and the digital technologies now at our disposal means businesses have freedom to take an experimental and more creative multichannel approach to marketing.
Today’s advertising landscape is a myriad of traditional and digital channels all overlapping and intertwining. But as marketers, how do we maintain a level of control of our brand in a multi-channel marketing maze?
Imagine managing the release of a trailer for a new Hollywood blockbuster in the late 1990s. From a digital marketing perspective, other than TV and cinema, there would be few others channels you would consider exploring. Fast forward to the present day and the marketing team involved must consider creating a number of bespoke versions of the trailer to ensure compatibility with a long list of different apps, not to mention different devices, as well as different languages.
The change in the way in which people all over the world consume media has led to a step change in the way businesses and partner agencies now disseminate marketing collateral.
Historically, companies have relied upon multiple vendors to manage the storage and delivery of digital assets. But companies have found this approach carries certain limitations, raising more questions than answers. For example, how do all agency partners access material wherever they are in the world, at any given time? How does a company keep track of all its assets and measure their ongoing performance? Furthermore, is this the most cost-effective way of working when different teams are operating in isolation?
As the Internet and digital technologies have continued to change the way in which we all live, marketers and advertisers have been trying to overcome these hurdles which has led to a disjointed way of working. Ironically, the technology which led to the disconnect between marketers, partner agencies and consumers, is also part of the solution to this problem.
CHI & Partners, the agency partner for car manufacturer Lexus, has experienced this first hand. After devising an advertising campaign for Lexus, including all of the supporting assets, the organisation needed to find a way to distribute in excess of 100GBs of content across both print and digital platforms worldwide.
Furthermore, the assets not only needed to be accessible by CHI & Partners, but also Lexus and all of its other global agencies. As mentioned before, being able to track and report on the success of the campaign and each individual asset was also an important factor.
To address this issue, CHI & Partners turned to Adstream, a global provider of digital advertising distribution solutions, which has experience of delivering millions of ads per year to more than 30,000 media owners in over 106 countries. The company stores all assets in its Adbank utility, an integrated platform for digital asset management and distribution. It was in this utility that CHI & Partners and Lexus were able to create a bespoke solution which addressed all global marketing needs.
Together, they could now track assets in real time and view a breakdown of activity by asset and market. On top of this, having a single, searchable and secure repository for all of Lexus’s assets helped to safeguard brand integrity. Time savings throughout the workflow process led to reduced campaign delivery costs, while the speed to market was also increased. As a result, CHI & Partners increased traction and loyalty with Lexus by embedding the agency into the company’s common processes.
Similarly to Lexus, all brands should endeavour to strengthen ties with their creative and production agencies through a central global marketing resource, such as a Digital Asset Management and delivery solution.
Only through greater connectivity can marketers successfully navigate the multichannel, multimarket, multi-partner environment that we have come to cherish for its creative freedom, but also curse for its complex nature.
Whatever your opinion of today’s increasingly digital world, with new channels appearing every day, life as a marketer will never be boring.