At the launch of the dentsu-e4m advertising report 2022 on Tuesday 1st February, iProspect’s Global President Amanda Morrissey shared the global perspective of convergence. Morrissey began her keynote address by highlighting that the actual convergence of media happened during the Covid-19 pandemic. “We have been talking about the convergence of media quite forever but all these years media was focussing on consumers' life, not in the technology world. The actual convergence happened during the pandemic when the long-pending fundamental change occurred”, Morrissey said.
Adapting to the new consumer conscience
While most media experts blame it on a change in consumers’ behaviour during the pandemic, Morrissey says otherwise. According to her, “It is not just the changing consumers’ behaviour because their behaviour has been changing earlier as well. It is actually a change in consumers’ conscience; the way they think about their problems and the lens through which they see the world has fundamentally changed. And this will continue to change their decisions moving forward.”
She noted that consumers' are now experiencing new ways of interaction with brands, new ways of entertainment, they are learning how media operates and how it gets delivered and that is where the lines of fundamentals are blurring.
“We can’t think of offline and online journeys separately because they are intertwined,” says Morrissey adding that the digital and virtual worlds are blurring and sometimes they are replacing the physical world as they all are interlinked. The pace of this change is not slowing down.
Morrissey laid emphasis on the 3 Cs for convergence-culture, content, and commerce. Explaining the success formula for the advertising sector, she noted, “Opportunity for growth lies in the intersection of culture, content and commerce, all powered by data. Brands will win in this world of convergence if they operate on intersection of culture, content and commerce and focus on delivering today and building a better tomorrow simultaneously”.
“We need to think about tomorrow, today, Morrissey said, adding that the change in fundamentals is being witnessed all across the world”, she added.
Citing the example of the UK, where she resides, Morrissey said that doorstep delivery of items grew by 120 percent in the pandemic which created huge opportunities for brands that were into d2C segment and those with physical shops to incur losses in the tune of 22 percent. She said that the US is expecting up to 18-45 percent growth in various categories in the online commerce segment. She also highlighted how the Chinese purchased over 40 percent of the goods online even before the pandemic, compared to 22 percent in the UK and 18 percent in the US.
“The behaviour of Chinese consumers is not due to technology but their openness to brace new things and willingness to shop online. The markets adopted technology according to the consumers' need, Morrissey further added.
Citing a quote by Cedric Charbit, CEO of Balenciaga-“We need to set ourselves up to anticipate the change, rather than process the change when its too late”, Morrissey advises marketers to be ahead of consumers and not respond to their needs.
She also gave an outline of changes likely to appear in the future such as everything will be shoppable, all forms of brand conversations be it video or text or anything, will allow shopping and contactless payment.
“Consumers' expectations are super high. They are very demanding now. The question is how brands are readying themselves to treat their consumers meeting their expectations. Apart from brand building, marketers will have to provide seamless experiences and interaction points to their consumers. Every media should be like performance media,” Morrissey explained. She said that her company is offering a series of tools to brands to keep a track of consumers interactions.
How the Metaverse has impacted media
Talking about Metaverse and NFTs, Morrissey says innovations of the virtual world have started blurring lines with the physical world and the brands should be ready to leverage these technologies.
“We are planning an entire ecosystem for brands that operate in the intersection of physical, digital, and virtual world to offer a broad range of immersive experiences. We are also working on how to add haptic technology in the virtual world so that users can touch and feel in the virtual world and bring them into the real-life world. We are also working on NFTs for clients,” Morrissey told the audience explaining how iProspect was blending virtual and physical worlds for the brands which want to remain ahead in the race.
Morrissey further added that the consumers will take decisions based on their gut feelings and hence brands should substantiate every claim that they make about any product, they have to have a sustainable strategy. “People focus on healthcare and wellness. Self-care brands will be expected their products of impact on consumers' lives, health monitoring, make more experiences able to make better choices. Predict and add value”, she said.
Adding further, Morrissey noted that ethics is at the heart of decision making and that brands need to think about the environment, ethical growth of business because consumers can see everything that brands do, including the supply chain.
