Ali White, PR and Marketing Director

• Gartner predicted in 2019 that by 2025, 80% of marketers will have largely abandoned personalisation
• Content, messaging, relationships and reputation are swinging back into top position as the most valuable tactics that brands can use to strengthen their marketing activity
• Brands need to respond to the changing market by adapting their measurement model

“Oh, you can come up with statistics to prove anything. 40% of people know that.”

Homer Simpson 

Homer Simpson said this in 1994 and, even though the joke is a great one (as they nearly all are), the point still rings true (again, as they nearly all do). Even more so now than in 1994, we have access to such a wealth of data that it can be used to validate or undermine almost any theory or idea. 

Creative interpretation of data isn’t a new skill and the potential applications for well analysed and interpreted data to deliver valuable insights are huge for brands and businesses. But, consumer tolerance for sharing their data has shifted significantly as concerns about privacy, safeguarding and security are all affecting our willingness to hand over personal information and allow the tracking of consumer behaviour to enable personalised marketing.

To respond well to this shift in consumer attitudes, brands need to consider the data they have, the data they need and the nature of their relationship with consumers. Using data in campaigns to improve targeting is too fundamental to an effective marketing campaign to ever go away completely. However, the current landscape changes indicate that in place of personalisation, brands need to focus on gathering data that helps them to understand their audiences, and to create content that deepens connections with them over and above delivering mass targeting. In 2019, Gartner predicted that by 2025, 80% of marketers will have largely abandoned personalisationefforts, and alongside this, even though it’s a fact that has been largely ignored by digital marketers for a long time – 10 years ago a Google study proved that 80% of an advertisement’s impact came from content, and 20% from targeting. 

Content, messaging, relationships and reputation are swinging back into top position as the most valuable tactics that brands can use to strengthen their marketing activity, and the power of impactful and creative story-telling will now be more important than ever. Ultimately what drives consumers today is the desire to self-identify with brands. Audiences want to be able to recognise themselves in a brand’s behaviour, tone, messaging, representatives and creative, and this can only be achieved if the messages they receive are relevant, compelling and creative. 

A good place to start for brands looking to adapt their focus would be to shift their measurement model. Instead of prioritising the focus of the data they collect on how well their targeting is performing, focus should instead be on how well their content performs. By moving beyond readily accessible numbers and challenging ourselves to deliver insight on whether or not the content being produced is resonating with audiences, the insights gathered will have the power to stimulate better creativity, and deliver content that will have a distinct competitive advantage.

Focussing data analysis on the performance of content, rather than targeting is one of the core principles of our bespoke measurement tool – CC Insight. The tool tracks audience understanding through affinity markers and evaluates the performance of different styles and types of content and creative across all marketing disciplines, and the good news is it’s available now and available in a variety of subscription and access packages. Contact us to find out more.With the right tools, instead of being fearful of the future, marketers should embrace it. It has taken a while, but data will finally be used the right way—as an amplifier of creativity instead of an alternative to it.