3DExcite and Dassault Systèmes throw down a challenge to marketers to embrace digital and data to lead the experience revolution. Will Green reports
A cold and rainy industrial estate in the western outskirts of Munich sounds more like the start to a bleak Cold War drama than an article on the breathtaking developments in technology that are revolutionising B2B marketing. But the unprepossessing surroundings could not have contrasted more with the 3DExcite Live 2015 conference inside.
Ostensibly there to showcase the new developments in 3D technologies pioneered by Dassault Systèmes’ digital marketing company 3DExcite, the mood of the conference was really to lay down a challenge to marketers to reassess the way they think about their role within their businesses. As Monica Menghini, executive vice president of corporate strategy at Dassault Systèmes stated in her keynote: “We are in the midst of a revolution in brand building. Old marketing models no longer generate results. In the old economy, industries focused on standardisation, mass production and a singular marketing policy. But today, with the amount of information available in the new economy, companies are excelling at understanding consumers by analysing their behaviours.”
The challenge
Technology – digital, mobile, social – has created fundamental changes in how and where customers get their information and what they expect back from companies. In turn, the ability to track customer behaviour with technology has transformed marketing all the way along the cycle from consideration to purchase to repeat purchase and advocacy. The combination of big data with technology-driven advances in creative development and distribution techniques is helping push marketing strategy from an art form crafted largely by intuition and creativity toward a technology-driven and data-focused science.
However, as the conference demonstrated, adding technology and science to marketing’s weaponry doesn’t mean creativity and intuition are marketing tools of the past – far from it. In an increasingly cluttered landscape where new channels of communication spring up almost daily, producing engaging content to make a brand stand out is more important than ever.
As Nick Parish, editorial director of advertising agency Contagious, puts it: “The web has millions of little niches and individual communities with people who intersect somehow. That’s where data comes in, but also where really great creative ideas come in. Data is important, but we can’t short sell the ability to create ideas that transcend.”
The creative and data blend
Though the need for creativity is as important as it always was, the rise of technology means that strategies underlying the creative process have shifted. With the ability to mine valuable observations, guidance and growth actions from big data, marketing is learning to combine data-driven insights that guide strategic development with cutting-edge technologies to deliver experiences that are immersive and entertainment.
Roberto Schettler, CEO of 3DExcite, sums up the ethos: “Products are no longer enough – customers buy experiences.”
In the age of experience, customers are now completely in control of the buying process and have a device for accessing information – be it a laptop, a tablet, a phone, or even a watch – at all times. This means brands can be looked up – or ignored – at will. Joe Pulizzi, founder of the Content Marketing Institute, argues: “To get any kind of attention, we need to focus on the 99 per cent of the time when customers don’t need us. How do we do that? We need to create valuable experiences for customers outside the products and services we offer.”
The data is there to back up these statements. McKinsey & Company, a New York management consultancy, found that companies using big data and analytics effectively are as much as 6 per cent more productive and profitable than those that don’t. The firm also looked at 250 marketing engagements over five years and found that companies that put data at the centre of their marketing and sales decisions improved their marketing return by 15-20 per cent.
The B2B challenge
If all of this sounds more applicable to B2C companies, rather than the traditionally more sober and product-focused world of B2B marketing, then Bernard Charlès, president and CEO of Dassault Systèmes, profoundly disagrees. He argues the ‘experience economy’ is the future of both B2C and B2B marketing, stating: “No marketer in any industry can afford not to be where their customers are – and this isn’t driven by products alone.” Instead, it’s driven by data enabling marketers to join the dots within a company, influencing the customer experience in relation to a product at every single touch point.
In fact, this means every single person in a business becomes a marketer. Whether they are in sales, manufacturing, design or IT, they will be contributing in some way to the customer experience. This means that marketers’ ability to influence and work with other departments is higher than ever – and will only keep increasing. With longer sales cycles, more influencers and more digital points of contact than their B2C counterparts, customisation and targeting are crucial to all B2B marketing efforts.
As an example of this, Pulizzi cites the example of OpenView Venture Partners, a Boston-based venture capital firm, as a B2B company that effectively combines content experiences with digital data. OpenView provides free, high-quality information for entrepreneurs. That largesse has allowed OpenView to develop a subscription list of more than 30,000, which management can use to identify and target their next investments.
Marie Taillard, associate professor of marketing at ESCP Europe Paris, the world’s oldest business school, also points to GE Aviations, who used software that permits customers, sales and marketing to communicate and collaborate in real time as an example of “one piece of technology enabling an entire ecosystem.” Open marketing collaboration in B2B is significant, she argues, “because it’s a technology change, but it’s also a huge cultural and organisation change.”
Marketing comes of age
The organisational and cultural changes in marketing are possibly making the most impact on CMOs whose functions, responsibilities and even jobs titles are being profoundly altered in the digital age. The Harvard Business Review recently argued the need for CMTs – chief marketing technologists – who blend strategy, creative development and technology as part of evolving c-suite roles.
Rohit Bhargava, CEO and founder of Influential Marketing Group, makes this point persuasively: “The role of marketing is broadening and taking on disciplines that were once outside marketing, like customer care and technology. The lines are blurring because the channels are blurring.”
Marc de Swaan Arons, CMO of Millward Brown Vermeer, agrees arguing the role of the CMO and the entire marketing department needs reorganisation: “What we do in marketing is changing beyond recognition, but how we organise is eerily the same as 50 years ago. Marketing has become too important to leave to just the marketers at a company. All other disciplines are saying: ‘Help us figure out what to do next’, and they’re looking at marketing.”
But those same CMOs are dealing with incredibly difficult challenges. Marketing budgets are tight, even as the role of marketing shifts and the number of channels increases. While more data can result in a more scientific approach to marketing’s activities, it also increases the need for emerging, hard-to-find marketing skills and increases the pressure to deliver measurable results.
Satisfaction is overrated
Few other disciplines have seen such radical shifts and changes, with regards to technology, as marketing. Just 20 years ago, online advertising barely existed. Ten years ago, Facebook and LinkedIn were just starting out. The first Apple iPhone is less than eight years old and the first iPad less than five. Yet digital marketing is already a $67 billion industry.
Amid this rapid change, marketers must have a strategy that balances data with customer centricity. In the age of experience, the new measurement for marketing success should be customer response: a digital experience, after all, is still a customer experience – perhaps the most important customer experience. As Bhargava concludes: “Customer satisfaction is overrated. If I’ve given a customer something they wanted and nothing more, then they’re satisfied. We don’t need more satisfied customers. We need more delighted customers.”
