TMW #019 | Adidas branding eCommerce, the future of Big Data and the neuroscience of personalisation

Welcome to The Martech Weekly, where every week I review some of the most interesting ideas, research, and latest news. I try to look to where the industry is going and make sense of it all.

👋 A Quick Note

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👨 The Movember Thread

I'm committing to writing at least 200 words per day reflecting on marketing, technology and customer experience for the 30 days of November. This week I write about the risks involved with Personalisation, how we will never know what it’s like to be the customer, strategy antipatterns, how the most important things can’t be measured, using friction to your benefit, and the concept of a strategy tax. Link

👌Top #3

👟 Adidas, eCommerce and brand. Simon Peel, the senior director of global media at Adidas was interviewed at WARC on the impact of branding on eCommerce marketing. There’s a broad assumption that eCommerce players don’t really step into the realms of brand marketing because their focus is “lower down the funnel.” And in a lot of ways, it’s true - the focus on digital attribution channels to measure performance can lead eCommerce brands to neglect their focus on building a broader brand through channels outside of social, search and display. That is starting to change though with larger players like Amazon investing heavily into brand marketing. The reason why eCommerce needs to invest in brand marketing? The argument is that you can’t really be top of mind without investing in brand. As Simon says (I really wanted to do that 😂) “if you don’t have a brand, you don’t provide a mental shortcut for consumers and you become a commodity.” For a brand like Adidas, the closure of stores during the pandemic was a big deal. But because they have invested decades into their brand they’ve seen a significant doubling of online sales. So if you think about it, there’s really no dichotomy between brand and performance marketing, it’s just two pieces of the same puzzle. Link

➕ The Past, present and future of big data 15 years ago the concept of big data didn’t really exist. But now it’s in every second article about marketing. That’s because big data is significantly augmenting the way marketers perceive their role in a company and how market to customers. Not too long ago the way consumer data was collected revolved around point of sale transactions, direct mail responses (remember those?) and TV viewership numbers. In other words, a lot of marketing was putting a finger in the air and taking big guesses. But now? You would be laughed out of the room if you challenged the notion that every marketing decision must be “data-driven” and measurable. With so much that is measurable in an online world, marketers are now trying to figure out what to do with all this data. For example, over just the past two years alone 90% of all the data in the world was created, with more than 150 trillion gigabytes of data set to be created by 2025. By the way, that’s 150,000,000,000,000 many gigabytes. We’re in a phase of marketing history that parallels and overtakes the invention of television, everything is still new and we’re figuring out how to take advantage of this new technology. It will take a long time to build the data literacy, tools, and methodologies to put data to its good use. Link

🧠 Neuroscience and personalisation. Marketing departments are now relying more and more on traditional psychological methodologies to understand their customers. This one is in the subscriber version of TMW. Sign up here to get a link to the full version.

📈Chart Of The Week Teaser

This week I look at the role of legacy TV shows (think Friends, The Office), which play an important role in the explosion of streaming platforms. Sign up here to get a link to the full version and the chart.

📚 Everything Else

Productising resources I follow quite a few newsletters and it’s great to see so much innovation happening in the space. One example is a “Newsletter OS” product which is effectively a toolkit for anyone looking to build their own, built entirely within Notion. Very cool. It’s on product hunt so give it a vote!  Link

Are relevant ads better ads? A convincing argument to say that some targeting improves ad performance, but overall advertising targeting does not necessarily mean more relevant ads. Link

E-commerce in Korea. An illuminating view on the detrimental impacts of the eCommerce boom in South Korea on public health. Innovation in capabilities like same-day delivery has taken its toll on warehouse workers. Link

Stress Investing in first-party data. The IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau) has released its annual brand disruption report. Storelessness caused by COVID-19 and browser restrictions on 3rd party cookies has seen 60% of marketers surveyed say that they are stress investing into first-party data - because there’s no other option. Link

L’Oreal is selling digital makeup. The brand has created a digital product which is effectively a high-quality makeup Instagram filter. The use case is zoom meetings and the ability to use the tool to appear like you’re wearing makeup. Link

Stay Curious,

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Want to share something interesting or be featured in The Martech Weekly? Drop me a line at juan@themartechweekly.com.