ECONOMIC ADVERSITY: HOW BRANDS SUCCEED

Join Generator Media + Analytics, Google, InMarket, and Blockboard as we discuss how brands can find success through economic adversity, inflation, and a potential recession in this season’s Rise|Set Summit.

Our Panel:

Generator Media + Analytics – Adam Ortman, SVP Innovation & Growth (moderator) | Adam is Generator’s professional ‘thinker, explorer, and innovator,’ evaluating the constant flow of new tech offerings and determining how they can bring value to our media campaigns. In addition to overseeing the innovation and growth of the agency, Adam is focused on ensuring that the agency is offering the most innovative use of newly emerging communications channels, technologies, and industry-wide betas.

Google – Kaitlin Schwartz, Business Lead of Agency Partnerships | Kaitlin is a Senior Seller on Google’s Agency Partnerships team with 6+ years of experience in advertising and performance marketing. She has extensive experience working with brands of all sizes and verticals; while specializing in topics around product, privacy, and performance.

InMarket – Kalpana Sehwani, VP Client Strategy | Kalpana Sehwani leads the Client Strategy practice at InMarket, focusing on delivering 360-degree consumer intelligence to brand and agency partners. Kalpana comes with 15+ years of digital media experience and has worked with Fortune 500 Brands during her time at InMarket, Thinknear, Disney Media, Fox Interactive/MySpace, and Aol.

Blockboard – Matt Timothy, EVP Customer Success | Matt brings a rare combination of successful digital and traditional experience that bridges product development and advertising sales in Digital, TV, radio and cable. As Blockboard’s EVP, Customer Success, Matt leads all of the company’s customer-facing efforts helping clients navigate and succeed in the CTV/OTT space.

How are we seeing shifts in consumer behaviors and, even more importantly, how are brands reacting to these shifts?

Kalpana Sehwani – InMarket

What we’re seeing from our data is that consumers are definitely going to the value retailers on a more frequent basis, on a more loyal basis. They’re definitely comparison shopping, looking at where they can get the best deals, whether it’s the dollar stores, or Walmart. We’re also seeing consumers shift their purchase behaviors. We’re seeing for certain subcategories and categories where private label is really coming out strong. I think that consumers are definitely looking for those alternatives. They’re switching and they’re also trying to look for the best deals and best value where they can. What’s really important for brands to understand is that if your brand is able to distill and deliver that value proposition whether it’s product quality, longer lasting materials, or whatnot, consumers are still willing to spend where they find value, and I’m not talking about purely price. So, you don’t have to slash your prices as a brand. Just understanding what that value messaging is and that will resonate with your consumers. I also think of ways to reward loyalty, repeat purchase, and repeat visits, this is something that consumers will really appreciate at this time. Consumers are definitely looking to extend their dollars where they can; where brands can help them meet that need, those brands will definitely see consumers returning to their brands. Additionally, with COVID and convenience, Telehealth really boomed and finally people are more comfortable with it. Learning via zoom and learning via electronic platforms have also become the only way to continue learning. In higher ed industries you can still allow consumers to come on campus and learn the way they want to learn but also have the ability to do hybrid learning and promote that flexibility.

Kaitlin Schwartz – Google

We’re seeing people search for products earlier and earlier, at least on the holiday side. We’re seeing brands, even large players, create newer opportunities like new Prime days and new sales opportunities from a promotional standpoint, because we know that over half of shoppers are planning on buying less this year. It’s also a huge opportunity for new brands to come into the market and leverage it as a brand awareness play. Additionally, we’re seeing that there is a large shift of being brand loyal versus category loyal. So whether it is financial services, whether it’s education tech, people are looking more “near me” or “best insurance plan for X percent” or “x financial dollar versus a specific brand.” Historically, we’ve seen that kind of differentiation amongst verticals where some people are super brand loyal and you see really high increases in certain brand terms for that category. But right now, it’s all pretty much focused on category-first brands.

Matt Timothy – Blockboard

We’re looking at this through the reaction of the advertisers that we currently partner with and what they ask for. What we’re starting to see is advertisers asking a lot for performance metrics, over media metrics, more and more. They’re asking for more transparency about where every single dollar goes. I mean, we’re in the programmatic space, up and down that programmatic chain, or their supply chain, they’re trying to make sure that every dollar is working its hardest. Advertisers can’t afford waste in any way.

How should brands react going into economic shifts in order to succeed?

Kaitlin Schwartz – Google

Make sure your creatives are on point. Don’t be tone deaf, to be blunt. I had a client during COVID who wanted to put out a creative, “I’m having a big pool party.” We looked at it and said, “we’re still social distancing. This doesn’t make a lot of sense right now. We’re going back to the drawing board.” So definitively be creative and be ready to pivot those creative assets as well. Make sure that you’re empathizing with your consumers.

Matt Timothy – Blockboard

Don’t stop advertising. One of the worst things that we can do is to stop talking to our customers. Not talking to your customers is not a way to grow new customers, right? So make sure that every dollar that you have is in front of real customers. That’s when the creative has to match. Now is the time to test these things: different types of creative and different targeting strategies. Now is the time to figure out new ways to speak to your customers. We should look at this as an opportunity as opposed to a challenge.

Adam Ortman – Generator Media + Analytics

We can do our best in forecasting, but being able to pull out of buys on a dime and making sure that you’re not locking yourself into an annualized media commitment, for example, is incredibly important. There are so many different ways that you can work with your teams to ensure that you are nimble and making sure that you’re able to pivot as quickly as possible given any shifts. I think that that last two years has really taught us the importance of being nimble.

Matt Timothy – Blockboard

During the pandemic, everything shifted to ecommerce and everything was linked. On the lead gen side, it was all about “how do we get people to click and buy through this,” what we’re seeing now is another shift and this is why we have to be nimble. People went back to physical retail. Now a lot of our advertisers are starting to support their physical retail as opposed to their e-commerce. That is not a shift that I expected. So, that’s where nimbleness really really comes in.

Kalpana Sehwani – InMarket

Getting creative with your messaging by trying new formats, either going after new audiences or trying new programs that you wouldn’t even think of. So for instance, Taco Bell launched a subscription-based program for tacos, you know, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Denny’s did the endless breakfast early on, so, how can you test out new programs and really get creative with your messaging, with your promotions to draw in those customers? Then, how can you find new customers that you maybe haven’t thought of before?

What are some innovative ways that brands could be leaning more heavily into or even rethinking going into the next year?

Kalpana Sehwani – InMarket

One of the things we help marketers do is understand their consumers, their competitors’ consumers, and reveal new customers that they may not have thought of. For instance, we work with a lot of alc/bev brands which, during the pandemic, were all about buying at the grocery store or delivery services. That shift to delivery services was also really a big jump. But now, we’re seeing our alc/bev partners looking to promote on-premise, because consumers are back at dining locations, and so on-premise and off-premise are both really important. We’re seeing them get pretty creative to where one of our partners just launched a rebate offer for on-premise dining, you wouldn’t think, “oh, I can get a rebate for ordering this beer instead of that beer when I’m at Buffalo Wild Wings,” our partner decided to launch a program and it actually worked really well. Not only for the brand, but also for the dining partner, because they’re helping drive consumers to their dining partners. So thinking about ways that your advertising spend not only supports your brand, but those larger business relationships can really help your brand at the at the end of the day.

Kaitlin Schwartz – Google

This is a huge opportunity because there will be brands that will pull out and choose not to advertise, the space could become a little bit less crowded, and we know from a cost per click and share of voice perspective, typically this allows us to get more bang for your buck. So it’s a huge opportunity for us to continuously capitalize off of share of voice and market share. It’s also an awesome opportunity to test new audiences, leveraging your first-party data to really understand who your true audience is, what they look like, what they like to eat, and what they like to do on a weekend. We’re lucky right now where we have so much data that a lot of us sleep on it, a lot of us don’t really understand how much opportunity this data can represent. So, although it’s not quite innovative, it’s something that I think a lot of brands don’t leverage as much. Double down on first-party data testing.

Matt Timothy – Blockboard

One of the things that we’re doing with our advertisers now is helping them harness frequency across devices. Frequency has always been either completely under thought on linear TV and completely over thought on digital. It’s somewhere in the middle. If you have a chance to tell a story over a series of pieces of creative or a series of interactions with a customer we should be able to get closer with each frequency, until there’s a behavior that happens. To me, focusing on frequency once you’ve found the right person, you can figure out how you’re going to tell him or her the story in exactly the right way. I think that’s just the unholy opportunity that we all have.

What should brands avoid doing during times of economic adversity?

Kaitlin Schwartz – Google

Do not stop advertising, do not stop investing in different advertising platforms.

Kalpana Sehwani – InMarket

When brands go dark, you’re out of sight out of mind. If you’re not building that one-to-one connection, that is the perfect opportunity for your competitors to sweep in. Do not go dark. There’s a ton of data out there that shows that brands that continue to spend during recessionary times actually come out stronger after the recession is over. And by the way, recession is just part of the cyclical process, every seven years or so we’re in a recession. We’re gonna get out of this. It’s a bump in the road. And in fact, there’s a ton of data that also shows periods of growth last longer than periods of recession. So most recessions last one to two years at most, and then you’ll see the American economy claw back and grow once more, so you definitely don’t want to miss out on that. I would also say, we are sitting on a ton of this data. Use the data as best as you can, it is very overwhelming at times, but don’t close your eyes to it. While the tried and true solutions work and you continue investing in those, think about ways that there might be a new strategy that you hadn’t thought of. This is a good time to test because partners are willing to give you better deals now than ever before.

Matt Timothy – Blockboard

Avoid the ‘set it and forget it mentality.’ This is the time to test, you’re going to learn either new customer segments or different ways of targeting.

How do brands balance a testing mentality while remaining conservative through potentially economically turbulent times?

Matt Timothy – Blockboard

So from our perspective, historically, we have tolerated certain inefficiencies and how things are done. We can’t do that going forward. The way that you can tighten up your budget is to go back and look at what you’re already spending, where it’s going, and how much is clearly working for you versus how much is not.

Kalpana Sehwani – InMarket

Measure. Measure where you can you now, really lean on your providers and your partners to offer you attribution solutions, whether it’s sales lift studies or visitation lift studies. What data can you extract from customer engagement? Is there a brand lift study that can be done instead of the sales lift study? So, there are a lot of options. I think that there are ways that marketers can get really smart and extract as much out of their space as they can. Consumers are being very demanding with brands right now, so, we can be demanding with our partners as well. Let’s make sure that we’re spending where we’re getting the most bang for our buck.

Adam Ortman – Generator Media + Analytics

I think that media accountability has led to zero tolerance for waste. We do work with a 70/20/10 rule: where 70% of your budget should be looking at your tried and true, your workhorse dollars; the 20% should be looking at your existing media mix or campaigns and maybe reimagining an audience, a specific target, or placement within that existing tactic; that last 10% could be off-the-wall ideas, something we’ve never tried before.

Kaitlin Schwartz – Google

Testing is incredibly important. One of the first things that advertisers do, like a trigger finger, is they choose to turn off brand search and/or they choose to shift investments from the higher funnel tactics. We’ve seen time and time again that both of those put a BandAid on a situation but ultimately the long-term growth won’t be there. Ultimately, we do notice that for those who pull back now, they’re the ones who are going to be spending up to six years to keep up with their peer set who chose to be evergreen over that period of time.

What are brands armed with today that they didn’t have in 2008 and what should they be taking advantage of going into a potential next recession?

Kaitlin Schwartz – Google

Everything. We have so many different advertising platforms and CRM systems that we can leverage to close that sales loop, close that leads loop, and be nimble and efficient during this time. I don’t see this recession impacting advertisers to the degree that the media might be making it look like. It’s just a completely different ballgame and we’re playing it with such a fruitful opportunity.

Matt Timothy – Blockboard

2008 we were still living under a favorite line, “I know 50% of my budget is wasted. I just don’t know which 50%.” Yes, that was more of the reality than it is today. Today, we’re getting closer and closer to understanding that other 50% and making it 100% transparent. I think that is a fundamental shift.

Kalpana Sehwani – InMarket

You can now see consumer behavior shift nearly in real-time. This real-time ability to measure and be more transparent goes back to our important theme earlier of being nimble.

How should brands balance the retail and e-commerce landscape that exists today?

Kaitlin Schwartz – Google

I hear this all the time. I always say, double down where you’re making the most profitability.

Matt Timothy – Blockboard

For retail customers and for e-commerce customers, we see the best approach is that this is addressed in the creative and at the beginning of the conversation.

Kalpana Sehwani – InMarket

I’d say that our data shows that about 80% of purchases still happen in store in retail. I think, from a human perspective, we’re social animals and we do enjoy touching and feeling the products. I think, smaller brands, such as challenger brands, do start with e-commerce because it’s cheaper. It’s a really nice way to enter the market with very low risk. But then you also see these e-commerce brands that now have retail storefronts, e.g. Allbirds, so I think the in store/in location can really allow for discoverability. You need to meet your consumers where they are and how they like to shop and how they like to interact with your brands. I think as social consumers, we still need to look and feel and see other people. Additionally, there’s something to be said about when you’re out of sugar, for example, and you just run to the store. So there’s also an immediacy factor tied to in store retail.

One single takeaway from today’s session.

Kaitlin Schwartz – Google

Play the long game. Don’t think about where your business is today, think about where you’re going to be in five years. Make sure we understand the impact of what we’re doing today for that five year business.

Matt Timothy – Blockboard

Focus on the rise of performance as a critical KPI. Outside of just the metric KPIs. Lexus and Tide have very different business KPIs, but they share the same media KPIs. Media KPIs are just proxies and, with all the data that we’re watching now, it’s going to be all about performance. With this you’re going to be ahead of the game.

Kalpana Sehwani – InMarket

Pivot where you can, where the data leads you, and leverage the data as best you can to make decisions. Be nimble, pivot, and meet consumers where they and their needs are, and you’ll see success.