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.

While new technologies and capabilities were a hot topic at Cannes Lions, meaningfully advancing diversity and inclusion in the industry—at long last—was another center-stage issue at the festival.

For all the talk over the years about the need for more diversity in media and advertising—in the campaigns we produce, the media we buy, and the people we hire—it was encouraging to hear that hard work is underway to make our ads and companies more reflective of our world. In a series of panel discussions called Inclusion Cafe, hosted by Infillion and our partners, participants acknowledged that the images created by our industry—as well as the people who are hired and promoted within it—can help change global perceptions. 

“Media introduces a narrative, a way of life, and exposes people to things that they may not otherwise be exposed to in their lives,” said Alex Kennedy, EVP of Commercial Strategy at My Code Media, who noted that portraying Black people in positions of power and leadership has been important for changing people’s impressions. 

It certainly works that way in business. As the saying goes, you can’t be what you can’t see. Leveling the playing field in the industry remains a hot topic—and is clearly a must-do. Women in advertising and marketing continue to say they need to see other women in lasting leadership roles if they are going to have high expectations for their own careers. And it’s good for business: “Growth comes from innovation, and the only way you get innovation is through diversity—diversity of thought, diversity of gender, diversity of generations,” said Viviane Paxinos, CEO of AllBright.

How to make sure our campaigns and our workplaces reflect more diversity?

Embrace authentic—and incremental—change. While it’s critical to move beyond superficial “checking the box” initiatives, it’s not difficult to weave representation of more diverse audiences into advertising storylines and scenarios in incremental and authentic ways, noted Tristen Norman, Head of Creative Insights, Americas at Getty Images. That might mean something as simple as putting a same-sex couple at a dinner table holding hands. “We’re building a muscle; we’re a pilot light, not a firework,” said Norman. “This is a lifelong, career-long investment and change that advertisers, marketers—wherever you sit within the industry—have to make.”

Demonstrate opportunity and scale. At Essence Ventures, Chief Revenue Officer Pauline Malcolm is seeing marketers commit to supporting the Essence Festival and other events the company produces. “We really want to ensure that the brand partners that are coming in are really investing into that community and not just doing ‘one and done’ at the festival,” she said during a panel discussion about why featuring diverse voices in media plans is good for society and business. 

Often, media outlets need to educate partners about the scale of an audience and the opportunity to companies that still see media platforms aimed at diverse audiences and other groups as “niche.” “Everyone assumes ‘you can help me reach a diverse audience,’ but it’s important to give them an idea of the whole scale,” said Christian Facey, Founder & CEO at AudioMob. 

Marketers and media outlets need to understand that “Black culture drives pop culture, and pop culture drives GDP,” said Lynnwood Bibbens, Founder and CEO of ReachTV.

Be comfortable with accountability. You can’t manage what you don’t measure. GLAAD, the LGBTQ+ media advocacy organization, and Kantar at Cannes launched an Advertising Visibility Index that will establish benchmarks for the industry to assess the quantity and the quality of LGBTQ+ representation in advertising with the goal of improving visibility. “Advertising is light years away from where TV and film are in terms of LGBTQ representation,” said Rich Ferraro, Chief Communications Officer at GLAAD.

Embrace the challenge. In the workplace, changing hiring practices, creating training programs, and making accommodations for people who need them can be daunting. But as I’ve seen through my work with Creative Spirit, a nonprofit that matches employers with job candidates who have intellectual and developmental disabilities, these efforts are necessary—and worthwhile. Others have noticed this as well. 

“Most managers have not been trained nor supported to work on the ‘human’—and not just the work,” said Monique Nelson, Chair at UWG. “The process is only as good as your training of the people—and some people learn differently. Actually, everyone does…. What are we doing to make sure that all of these organizations can support the difference that’s coming?”

If diversifying the people we hire, the folks we put in our C-suite, and the work we produce is difficult, that’s okay. As Julia Boorstin, author of When Women Lead noted: “When something feels hard, it makes you smarter,” she said. “Companies will be better for embracing that ‘hardness.’”

The media, marketing, advertising and adtech industries are at an important inflection point. They’re facing a difficult choice: to innovate and self-regulate their way out of growing regulation or spend countless dollars fighting it.

It’s no secret that the data collected from consumers is the fuel that enables seamless engagement, personalization, and the consumer demand we desire. And many people are willing to share their information—or have it used—in exchange for value and convenience. But mounting privacy concerns have cast a shadow over the data-marketing industry.

Over time the flow of data might be substantially curtailed in the name of consumer privacy, which is why it’s important for company leaders to come together and demonstrate how andwhy anonymous data collection benefits consumers and companies alike—and also why self- regulation is the way forward. (The advertising industry has been self-regulated for five decades.) This moment in time harks back to the days when television was nascent and the grab for attention across a mere three networks was fierce—more fierce, in fact, than what we’re likely to see in a digital economy with unlimited opportunities to attract consumer
interest.

Self-regulation should look more like consumer protection than “table stakes” compliance. The approach we take is to expand the benefits of a pervasive value exchange—and to assume that we can delight consumers with more than they expect through the use of engaging ad formats, opt-in data, and insightful targeting whenever they click, view, or scan. Connections are what’s most important to an industry of communicators, if we want more than 10% app usage rates, better than 40% customer satisfaction and 32% active viewing of streaming ads. But how can we make those all-important connections?

Ensure that consumers understand how their data is used and what they gain from sharing it.

Marketers, web platforms, and media companies shouldn’t be afraid to use more attention-grabbing means to make consumers aware of how their data is used, how individuals benefit, and what steps are taken to keep personally identifiable data private. Overexplaining shouldn’t be a concern. We ought to be able to apply our communication skills and the technology we are using to underscore how data improves consumers’ digital experiences and helps businesses thrive. At the same time, consumer privacy has to be respected. We constantly challenge ourselves to keep consumers’ privacy at top of mind in product development, disclosures, and our data collection policies.

Become better marketers by prioritizing the value exchange.

Consumers are right to expect marketers to be courteous and respectful of their time and attention. This means shifting away from interruptive ads and hyper-targeting—and toward more contextualized experiences that provide demonstrable benefits. Consumers want to know: “In exchange for the data I give you, what do I get back?” Bethany Evans, Vice President, Media and Channel Marketing for The North Face, noted onstage at IAB’s Annual Leadership Meeting that North Face now directly tells people why it’s asking for their data and how it will be used. As we make data and value exchanges more transparent and consistent as an industry, brands will reap the benefits of consumer attention and connection—the technology we wield has the power to go beyond mere observation to true facilitation and helpfulness.

Give consumers more interesting choices and control.

Consumers need control over how their data is collected and used, anywhere and everywhere. The more interesting we make data collection (e.g., via voice, video, or open-ended conversations that can be codified via AI), the more informative data we’ll collect. More interesting inputs signal to consumers that we are truly listening for their input and desires, not just trolling for clicks and sales voyeuristically. We’re setting a new standard for how consumer data is collected.

We are working closely with our partners at Airship, who are experts at innovating how consumers interact with the 900 million apps at their fingertips by providing insightful opt-in data.

All marketers and adtech firms have the technology to add significant value—and it can be done while continuing to respect boundaries. Fortunately, taking proactive steps, finding creative ways to improve the customer’s experience via technology (and not just waiting for more regulation) is what this industry is best at—and the best way to build a bridge to the continued growth that the digitization of media and explosion of content promises.