Mark Schwartz, managing director, U.S., Crealytics
The tech world has spawned something of a cult of disruption, which has bled into the ad- and mar-tech spaces. Whenever a business looks to differentiate itself in the market, it self-identifies as a “disruptor.” Applying “disruption” to your brand identity means that you are doing something completely new and bucking tradition, whether that involves a process, an idea, or a product.
Marketers who have chosen to engage with these disruptors often do so on small, one-off test cases. Others, perhaps feeling that disruption is a passing trend, continue chugging along with what’s worked for them in the past.
In an ad landscape with infinite media touchpoints, neither of these approaches is the best option. Disruptive technology is no longer the exception, but the rule. In the retail space, Amazon is driving decades-old brick-and-mortar stores out of business. An inability by those brands to disrupt the status quo is essentially a decision to let the newer players pass them by.
It’s time for marketers to move from safe and standard marketing tactics and tech stacks, built by legacy agencies and pre-internet tech companies, and instead embrace more nimble and creative options. There are three steps marketers need to take to change their perception around experimentation and embrace it as the new normal.
Balance risk and safety
Embracing disruption means a brand can’t be afraid to break things, but it is certainly not a call to break established practices simply for the sake of breaking something. There is a huge difference between disrupting your typical business strategies and taking an abject risk.
Brands should approach change by performing their due diligence on every vendor, and determining how that vendor aligns with the brand and campaign goals. Validate every claim that potential partners make to ensure that the technology can actually deliver value. Determine how much risk is associated with that value, and the comfortable level of trade-off. There’s always some risk associated with change, but controlling that risk while working toward the desired outcome can pay off in a big way
Remember that there is always internal risk as well. While checking vendor client references, examine your own organization. Is the company ready to challenge itself? Beyond the marketing team, will IT or product teams be able (and willing) to risk their existing systems and processes? Disruption is like throwing a stone in a pond: After the initial splash, the circles spread far and wide.
Test and test again
Of course, the easiest way to manage risk is to evaluate it through testing. Fortunately, today’s data-centric marketing environment makes it remarkably easy to establish testing environments.
It floors me how few marketers, and especially retailers, seem to have no appetite for testing new solutions on a regular basis. Testing doesn’t have to be a major undertaking that splits off a massive portion of the budget. Marketers can use 80% of the budget with their primary partner, and then divide the remaining 20% between three to six challengers on short trial runs.
At the very minimum, constantly running tests in the background sends a message to the primary partner that they can’t take anything for granted. If the tests are overwhelmingly positive, the brand may find a new strategy for spending their marketing budget, but even then, they can proceed slowly, shifting the budget 5% to 10% at a time. Disruption doesn’t have to be an all-or-nothing approach. Many brands may find success by blending new tactics into the old way of doing things so that you continue success into the future.
Of course, when we’re talking about disruption, it can be difficult to determine a success if the challenger approaches a marketing problem in a vastly different manner. Whenever possible, brands should try to measure a disruptive challenger around the same metrics they use to measure their champion. Brands that want to embrace disruption will need to put thought into their testing process so that they can maintain a constant testing environment.
Challenge your core principles
Of course, there may be no easy way to compare a disruptive challenger to the old strategy, and that can sometimes be a good thing. A disruptive technology could very well force a change in core philosophy that updates the foundation of the business. Looking at retail, there are brands, like Warby Parker and Everlane that began as online-only ventures but now have popular physical locations. These brand disrupted traditional retail, and then noticed a shift in their customer base toward more curated retail experiences, and leaned in to the shift.
If we look strictly at marketing departments, the goal is to maintain a focus on the metrics that matter, based on company goals. The right kind of technology may push marketers to move from established metrics, like return on ad spend, toward newer profit-based measurements. The focus remains on marketing, but a new measurement system drives change throughout the department.
No matter what, marketers must embrace disruption as part of their primary campaign strategy if they have any hope of rising above the fray to get consumer attention. In the past, a desire to change likely came from a CMO with a willingness to try new things. Today, change is a necessity, as new technologies and media channels continue to emerge. It’s time for marketers of all kinds to embrace disruption, or else risk being disrupted.
Crealytics is a digital marketing agency that provides services in 20 languages.
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