In today’s digital landscape, understanding and navigating the customer journey has become more vital than ever for businesses across various industries. In a recent eMarketer Tech-Talk webinar, industry experts Nancy Taffers-Santos and Laurel Rossi shed light on the intricacies of the customer journey and the strategies that can make it more streamlined, effective, and privacy-forward. With captivating insights and real-life examples, this webinar conversation provides valuable knowledge for marketers looking to enhance customer engagement.

Adapting to a Complex Customer Journey. The customer journey has evolved significantly, with technological advancements and shifting consumer behaviors playing a pivotal role. Laurel Rossi, CMO of Infillion, emphasizes the need to understand and adapt to this complexity. Gone are the days of linear TV advertising being the primary driver of brand awareness. 

Laurel Rossi explains how digital transformation has revolutionized the way brands capture attention. She highlights how even legacy brands like Lunchables have successfully navigated the changing landscape by tapping into cultural insights and engaging customers through captivating experiences.”The customer journey has become complex and valuable, not only for CPG brands but across many industries…How do you get awareness when everybody seems to know your brand?” Lunchables’ innovative approach combines nostalgia, cultural zeitgeist, and captivating installations to engage both children and parents. This showcases the importance of staying relevant and memorable, even for brands with high awareness levels.

Orchestrating the Customer Journey. The webinar went on to discuss how to solve the challenges marketers face along the modern customer journey, including keeping up with evolving technology, orchestration across different screens, and optimizing middlemen involvement. Laurel Rossi emphasizes the importance of simplifying the customer journey, both for customers and advertisers, to ensure a seamless experience. “Making all the elements work together is essential. We need to make the user experience not just understandable for the customer but also for the advertisers and their agency partners.”

Data, Measurement, and Proactive Strategies. Data plays a crucial role in understanding the customer journey and measuring the effectiveness of marketing efforts. Rossi explains that “the era of having unilateral data sets is over. Your data should be dynamic and managed as part of the journey orchestration process.” Marketers must proactively stay on top of privacy regulations and leverage data dynamically and holistically. By adopting proactive strategies, marketers can effectively navigate the evolving landscape while making data-driven decisions.

The webinar conversation between Nancy Taffers-Santos and Laurel Rossi provides valuable insights into the complex and captivating world of the customer journey. Marketers must proactively embrace data, simplify their approach, and leverage innovative solutions to deliver seamless customer experiences. By understanding the challenges and opportunities presented by the customer journey, advertisers can shape the industry’s future and build meaningful connections with their target audience. Don’t miss the chance to learn from the industry’s top experts and take control of your customer journey strategy.

Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) has become a mainstay of panel programming at advertising industry conferences, and Cannes Lions is no exception. But with events spread along the entire Croisette all week, finding actionable conversations about DEI isn’t always easy – especially as a small nonprofit or advocacy organization. That’s why Infillion had the idea to create “The Inclusion Cafe,” a series of talks with partner organizations like Glaad, Creative Spirit, and Group Black, to elevate voices advocating for meaningful inclusion in the industry from representation in ads to profit and growth.

At Cannes Lions, programming typically kicks off on Monday morning. And this year, the Monday of Cannes fell on Juneteenth, a U.S. holiday that honors the day in 1865 that – a full two years after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation – slavery officially ended in Galveston, Texas and 250,000 Black Texans were freed. To acknowledge and elevate the importance of Juneteenth – even thousands of miles from the U.S. –, Infillion worked with The AList, a collection of BIPOC C-suite executives committing to activating their social capital to drive real, sustainable change. The AList curated the kickoff talks at our Inclusion Cafe with two discussions, Cultivating the Future of Blackness in Media, and This is About Business Growth for Brands. These conversations became wellsprings of ideas for how to support and amplify Black voices; promote authentic, Black-owned content; and invest more in Black creators. Diverse narratives offer important and unique perspectives, and they’re also good for business: According to McKinsey & Co., companies with diverse and inclusive workforces are 35% more likely to outperform their competition.

Thinking Long-Term and Building Diverse Ecosystems within the Creative World

The panelists on Monday agreed: Blackness is not a monolith. There is an enormous wealth of diversity and creativity within the community. Black creators, artists, athletes, and celebrities have played a pivotal role in shaping industries like fashion, music, film, the arts, sports, entertainment – and are frequently the trendsetters defining cool and pushing into new media. Even so, Black creators need more support from the industry overall to help amplify Black voices and content across the current media landscape.

Alex Kennedy, EVP of commercial strategy at My Code Media, emphasized that agencies can stay relevant through the construction of Black ecosystems by hiring Black creatives and multi-culturally focused people to build teams and create content: “When companies reach out to us, make proactive attempts to connect, and then pay us well, that makes an impact because it puts money into the ecosystem.”

Marissa Nance, founder and CEO of Native Tongue Communications, noted that by investing in young Black people and creating pathways for them in the creative arts, engineering and STEM professions, we can promote more equity. “When young people have a seat at the table,” she says, “they can encourage the industry to cut down on bias, and Black folks will see themselves in the content being created.”  

Nance’s company is helping creatives build ecosystems by launching the BIPOC Creators Wealth Academy to teach young talent the importance of asset and wealth management, “so we can create wealth, keep wealth, and build wealth. Creating on TikTok is one thing, but, but how can we monetize it, and then learn how to keep and invest that dollar rather than spending it?”

Be Accessible and Help People Connect with Your Content

Of course, the more widely accepted and consumed any content is, the better. Nikki Fowler, CEO of Glitter Magazine, reminds us that Black-owned media doesn’t always have to mean “Black-focused.” She adds that when Glitter initially started working with agencies, they were unsure of how to work with her and lacked understanding that while inclusivity means Black spaces, it also means, “open to everyone.” Glitter’s business model has always been built around inclusivity and making everyone feel welcome by saying, “you can sit with us.”

When it’s easy for brands to engage, content will be widely distributed, and from Pauline Malcolm’s point of view as the Chief Revenue Officer of Essence, that has been what has occurred. The company’s annual Essence Festival has seen a rising profile thanks to its streaming partner, Hulu, and will be streaming again nightly in 2023 from June 30 through July 2.

The festival continues to make a huge impact in New Orleans, where it brought hundreds of millions of dollars ($327 million) into the local economy last year. Black women are tastemakers and trendsetters, but they don’t always see the value of the things they create, so when Essence enters into partnerships with other companies, they make sure our creators get paid what they are due.

Another major emerging area of content that is widely distributed to all consumers is audio in the form of podcasting, which is still growing. Gary Coichy, CEO & Founder of Pod Media, says that audio can be very intimate, as “people are listening while they drive their cars and work out at the gym.” This one-to-one connection to the material brings with it trillions of dollars in buying power, and it has only just begun. 

Ultimately, there are a multitude of ways that Black creatives are working to shape the media landscape and grow their businesses. They’re taking risks. They’re creating their own channels and meeting audiences where they are with truly authentic content that resonates, and they are shifting perceptions of Black people in the media by focusing on the things that matter. 

Black creators are influencers who highlight and represent the vastly different aspects of the larger Black community, and they’re learning how to put money into the black creative ecosystem. As Pauline Malcolm said,“When we come together, we tap into bargaining power with media agencies. We’re bigger together if we all go to the table.”

Thank you to each one of our incredible panelists for contributing to this conversation:

Cultivating the Future of Blackness in Media:  Alex Kennedy, EVP of Commercial Strategy at My Code Media; Dexter Santos, VP of Player Services at the NFL Players Association; Joe Michael Nickson, Chief Creative Officer at ConCreates; Marissa Nance, Founder & CEO at Native Tongue Communications; moderated by Tiffany Black, Chief Content Officer at Epiphany Content & Media. 

This is About Business Growth for Brands: Bonin Bough, CSO & Co-Founder at Group Black; Christian Facey, CEO & Founder at Audiomob;  Gary Coichy, CEO & Founder at Pod Digital Media; Lynnwood Bibbens, CEO & Founder at ReachTV; Nikki Fowler, CEO at Glitter Magazine; Pauline Malcolm, Chief Revenue Officer at Essence Ventures; Regina Gwynn, Co-Founder at Black Women Talk Tech.

As much as anything can be a sure bet, is there anything more certain than the endless discussions each June at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity about the hottest trends and ideas in the ad industry? On everyone’s lips this year: The potential of generative AI, the future of Twitter and TikTok, and the risk of influencer affiliations in a divided U.S. 

Keep in mind that often the new technologies, innovations and ideas people think will reinvent our industry or sow chaos often last about as long as the rosé that fuels the season’s conversations. 

Pokémon Go, anyone? It was the talk of the town in 2016. And two years later, Alibaba touted an AI-powered copywriting tool that could write 20,000 lines of ad copy a second. And even though virtual reality was trumpeted in festival sessions and at cocktail parties for years—remember Microsoft’s HoloLens device?—VR headsets haven’t yet replaced sunglasses, and these days even Meta is disinclined to mention the metaverse (and Apple’s Vision Pro has now shifted the rhetoric to spatial computing).

This week’s festival, created by a group of international cinema screen ad contractors inspired by the Cannes Film Festival, is celebrating its 70th year, and as usual there’s the promise of exciting new developments. It’s also a good time to keep in mind some clear-eyed marketing fundamentals that are even more enduring than this annual gathering.

Integrated marketing is more important than ever

As an industry we need to be more thoughtful about how we interact with and engage consumers across multiple touchpoints, from CTV and websites to our mobile devices and through IRL in-store shopping. Given the ongoing fragmentation in media, coupled with the proliferation of platforms that are walled gardens, the need for fully connected advertising strategies is greater than ever.

Word of mouth isn’t just talk

Online influencers—celebrities and self-made social media stars—aren’t going away, but we can’t forget the power of the average person championing our brands in large and small ways day in and day out. That’s why consumer experience is still so crucial: It’s how we turn customers into advocates. Even in a challenging environment, we cannot afford to pull back on prioritizing customer service and those personalized consumer experiences that drive brand loyalty and endorsements.

Outstanding creativity still rules

Despite all the excitement about data and technology, the main reason so many people make the trek to the South of France in the first place is to see and celebrate great work from around the world. Sure, AI may help us produce even better work more efficiently, but it will never approach humans’ capacity to create art that inspires and moves. Stories based on personal experience, empathy and insight are what connect us all as humans. 

Marketing basics may not grab headlines in Cannes, but they are Lion-award-worthy in an industry that celebrates shiny new toys. 

As data-driven marketers, we often think of customer journeys as neatly structured pathways leading to purchase. We obsess over the perfect funnel and the proper sequence of touchpoints to move buyers from awareness to sale. However, the reality of customer journeys is far more chaotic and unpredictable than we might like to admit. Customers don’t always behave according to our expectations, and external factors can disrupt even the smoothest paths to purchase. In this blog post, we’ll explore why you should embrace the messy reality of customer journeys in the post-omnichannel era and how to adapt your marketing strategies accordingly.

The Myth of Linear Customer Journeys

The traditional marketing model assumes that customers go through a predictable sequence of stages: awareness, consideration, and decision. However, this linear model is only sometimes accurate, especially in today’s complex digital landscape. Customers are exposed to multiple touchpoints from different channels and devices, often jumping between stages or skipping steps entirely. For example, a customer may become aware of a product but then do further research before purchasing. Or, a customer may have already made a purchase but then revisit the awareness stage to find similar products for future purchases. Moreover, psychological factors such as trust, emotion, and social influence can heavily influence purchase decisions, causing customers to reconsider or change their minds at any point in the journey.

The Impact of External Factors

Besides the internal variables that affect customer behavior, external factors can create chaos and unpredictability in customer journeys. For instance, a sudden economic downturn might force customers to postpone or cancel purchases. At the same time, a negative online review or a data breach could damage a brand’s reputation and deter customers from engaging. Similarly, a poor in-store experience or a lack of personalized recommendations could frustrate customers and lead to abandonment or churn.

Download your copy here.

Embracing Chaos Through Post-Omnichannel Marketing

Post-omnichannel marketing is an approach that embraces uncertainty and adapts quickly to changing customer needs and market conditions. It focuses on consumer behavior across online and offline channels, iterative testing and learning, and collaboration across teams and departments. Adopting an agile mindset can create a marketing culture that anticipates and embraces customer journey chaos. You can prioritize speed, flexibility, and experimentation over perfection and control, allowing you to pivot and adjust your strategies as needed.

Seeing Chaos as an Opportunity

Rather than seeing customer journey chaos as a threat, you can embrace it as an opportunity to stand out from the crowd and create value for your customers. By recognizing that customer behavior is complex and multifaceted, you can adopt a more flexible and adaptive approach to marketing. For example, instead of pushing a one-size-fits-all messaging strategy, you can use data and analytics to personalize messaging based on customers’ needs, preferences, and behaviors, regardless of what stage they are in. Our new full-funnel product InfillionX was purpose-built to connect with our client’s ideal audiences and retarget them with smart messaging everywhere—mobile, in-store, on CTV, in stadiums, on desktop—with a single media buy.

Infillion’s Insight: Examining the New Customer Journey

In today’s ever-evolving customer landscape, marketers must prepare for unexpected changes and navigate the messy reality of customer journeys. By embracing this chaos and recognizing that customer behavior is complex, you can adopt data-driven approaches and agile methods to make strategic decisions that create value for customers and ensure long-term loyalty. 

To become a more effective marketer in our post-omnichannel era, download Infillion’s definitive guide, “Examining the New Customer Journey: Creative Connections for Post-Omnichannel Marketing.” With actionable tips and strategies, it will give you a deeper understanding of how creative connections can enhance each touchpoint within your marketing campaigns – no matter how chaotic it may seem. Download the ebook now!

It’s all too familiar: When the economic horizon gets foggy, the near term for marketing dollars often becomes unclear. 

During periods of economic stress and market chaos, like the one we’re experiencing now, marketing departments are often the first to feel pressure to review their budgets and reduce spending. Yes, it’s possible to build brands and market share during difficult times, but that can be a tough sell to the corporate finance department.

Tough, but not impossible. Trust me, I’ve been there, both as a CMO and in running a business. My relationships with CFOs have proven to be the most tried and trusted when weathering economic storms.

Growing and protecting budgets requires collaboration, relationship building, and strategic assessments focused on the overall goals of the company, not just the spend. It’s a dynamic, ongoing process. And business-minded marketers who successfully demonstrate the value of marketing and work with their CFO and corporate finance team as partners stand a good chance of coming out ahead and keeping most of their budgets intact this year.

What are the ways to do that? 

Build relationships with the finance team: As a marketer, if your first meeting with the finance team is an emergency session to discuss budget cuts, it’s going to be that much harder to defend the value of marketing expenditures. Ideally, a working relationship with the CFO and the finance team has been cultivated over time, and that department is already well versed in what the marketing department does—not just what it spends; how it contributes to the overall business; and the impact budget adjustments will have. While it may be difficult to avoid adjustments to harsh economic realities, there could be a realistic shot at protecting priority projects or teams.

Understand your audience: CFOs and financial team members are generally masters of accounting, risk-management, capital allocation, cash flow, and financial strategy. But they are not marketers, even though they work at a brand or media company. They don’t live in Salesforce and don’t speak campaign KPIs, which means a job of the marketer is to be a translator. But it’s also important to attain a base-level understanding of the finance department’s distinct language and their objectives. Unless marketing develops a collaborative partnership with finance organization, marketing can be mischaracterized as having too much discretionary budget.

Transparency is vital: Marketers can develop mutual understanding and respect by sharing the granular details of their marketing strategy with the CFO. Many CMOs are wary of this idea, but there’s no need to be. Sharing the various dashboards and attribution methodologies the marketing team utilizes will help the finance team appreciate just how data-driven marketing decisions are. And it will reduce perceptions that upper-funnel tactics like branding are a luxury. 

Help CFOs think outside the Covid vacuum: The pandemic has produced all sorts of anomalies in business, abnormal highs and lows in everything from revenue to costs to hiring, not to mention changing consumer behavior. But the pandemic years aren’t viable baselines for evaluating the performance of a marketing spend. Pegging 2019 as the most recent “normal” year has helped our partners make grounded, data-based choices. Partnering with our finance colleagues to identify the nuances of the “pandemic effect” and identifying normalization trends will help everyone align on the appropriate levels of marketing spend to foster growth, retain clients and attract new ones.

Be a team player: Heading into a meeting with defenses up and digging in on every last sponsorship (no matter how expendable) won’t get you anywhere—budget cuts during times of economic headwinds are simply a reality. And the responsibility for cuts falls on the CFO. The more you understand your CFO, the more you’ll appreciate just how difficult his or her job really is. The most successful CMOs come to budget discussions with suggested cuts in hand. Helping financial departments find the reductions they are tasked with implementing gives you a chance to hold onto what really matters. 

The economy is all over the map these days, but one thing is clear: Corporate earnings are trending down, and CFOs won’t just sit there watching. Changes are inevitable, and some may be painful. The best way for CMOs to maintain the resources they need to directly bolster revenue, even in the toughest of times, is to be deeply engaged in those strategic shifts, in collaboration, and as an essential part of a team. 

All with the CFO’s help.