Fundamentals: Agencies, Clients Need To Intensify Customer Bonds

Kim Kadlec recalled a phrase coined by Mark Twain that "etiquette requires us to admire the human race." Social marketing "netiquette" requires it as well, she said, explaining the industry's efforts to build closer bonds with consumers.

After her keynote presentation Tuesday morning at the MediaPost OMMA Global Conference in New York, Kadlec, worldwide vice president, global marketing group, Johnson & Johnson, was joined by a panel of agency executives.

All agreed that customer relationships are key in a hyper-connected digital world, and that the strategic and media planning that goes into building and maintaining those relationships has evolved to a dynamic, ever-changing process.

"It's about fundamental relationships with people," said Laura Krajecki, chief consumer officer, Publicis Groupe Starcom MediaVest Group. "And it's about expanding and deepening the relationships with the people who love your brands."

In some ways, that has always been the case, "but what has changed is the technology," said Sarah Power, executive vice president, director of insight and strategy, Interpublic Group's Initiative.

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Technology keeps consumers constantly connected with a plethora of devices, which forces marketers and agencies to be constantly vigilant and flexible, ready to quickly change the marketing game plan.

Krajecki agreed. "It's no longer planning out" over a period of time, she said. "The planning is developing all the time, and it's constantly changing."

Given the constant evolution of technology, said Scott Neslund, president of Publicis' Moxie, "the media strategists are working more closely with the technology strategists." The latter, he said, "have become key agency components that are more important than ever."

But Kadlec stressed that the industry has to "make more of a shift than we have so far" toward building meaningful relationships with consumers in the digital age. Now, they are empowered like never before with an almost endless stream of data about products, brands, and comparison pricing to make purchasing decisions. Both agencies and clients have to focus on the issue together. "As clients, we pay for the [consumer] behavior we want," she said.

The panelists agreed that building consumer bonds requires a mix of art and science. "Technology gets you only so far," said Neslund. To Kadlec's earlier point about being good listeners, he said, technology helps facilitate that in the blogosphere, on Facebook and other social media. "Knowing the customer," is critical, he said.

But that knowledge comes with risk, said Neslund -- particularly when it comes through social media. A big issue for marketers has been the "loss of control" over the messaging that comes with social media.

"For a long time, it was hard to get a green light" from a client to pursue a social media strategy, Neslund said. But those concerns seem to be ebbing as marketers have seen the benefits that come with working in the medium. "We've come a long way in the last 18 months," he said.

And Powers added that "knowing all of your customers is important, not just the ones shouting the loudest" in a focus group or on a blog. One of the best ways to do that is getting out in the field, visiting stores and malls and seeing firsthand how customers interact with brands.

That comment led to a discussion about weighing the value of the oceans of data and waves of feedback streaming back to marketers today. Kadlec said a key filter is "ideas about what people want or need. You can't know it all so you have to choose your spots where you dig into the data." J&J, she said, uses data to "simplify, get smart fast and scale or move on."

Data is good, added Krajecki, but it takes "human intuition" to ferret insights from it and "to approach the relationship" with consumers. "At the end of the day, it's not about the channels but about the experience you want to create that's fundamental to the brand."

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