Posts 1 and 2 of our blog series, Recognising the challenges of a changing marketing landscape, and Succeeding in the new marketing landscape, both provided a look into the way the marketing ecosystem has evolved over the last 5 years and how companies must start adapting to achieve mass one-to-one personalised communications, for future success. Here in Post 3, The Marketing Factory Foundation, we discover how the role of the centralised marketing team is to act as a ‘content hub’: generating best-in-class campaign ideas and creating master content assets, across all channels.
Post 3 – The Marketing Factory Foundation
Let’s first remind ourselves of the eBusiness Institute’s definition of ‘Marketing Factory’: “a department, area or dedicated group of people in an organisation who are solely responsible for the production, management and distribution of all master content assets (articles, images, infographics, videos, webinars, etc.).”
Brands have to build a centralised team of top creative content talent; this team acts as the Marketing Factory
In order to streamline digital content production and distribution, it is necessary to leverage resources and upskill to create a central team of excellence, this team is known as the Marketing Factory. The Marketing Factory (multi-market, regional or global) is focussed on generating best-in-class campaign ideas, reducing duplication and inconsistencies of local campaigns, whilst reinforcing and unifying brand messages.
This team is the content hub, the creator of what we call master assets which are campaign relevant and come from the understanding and insights of the consumer journey across all channels. These assets are stored in advanced Digital Asset Management (DAM) software systems and are mastered. Thanks to this ‘factory’ approach, teams from local markets can request assets be localised, which can be done efficiently, with minimum effort for adapting. Assets can be assigned to specific destinations and are tagged for easy tracking to help further build data for continuous improvements at global and local level. This creation of efficiencies for local marketing teams would free up time to enable them to focus on becoming experts in the consumer journey and in data-driven, personalised marketing approaches.
Last year’s Boston Marathon showed a fantastic example of personalised content marketing using this smart ‘factory’ approach applied to a specific event. Adidas, sponsors of the event, created 30,000 personalised videos for the participants of the marathon. By using radio frequency identification chips in the runner’s bibs, Adidas was able to create personalised footage as the chips were triggered each time a runner crossed a checkpoint, tracking the individual’s pace, time and location. This was used alongside pre-created assets, such as music and fill sequences, which together created the final videos. Within hours of the event, each runner received an email with access to their own personalised video of their participation. This is a great example which shows how brands can create unique consumer experiences using technology to generate data[1]
Adidas is leading the way in data-driven marketing, it uses an iterative test-and-learn approach to maintain a constantly evolving relationship with customers and to scale its business, and we’ll investigate this a little more in the next, and final, post of our blog series.
In conclusion
The Marketing Factory approach will inevitably, among many other benefits, provide synergy between global and local campaigns and their assets, as well as unifying brand messages and strengthening brand identity. Centralising these creative resources, technology and processes will, therefore, produce efficiencies in time, labour and finances.
The fourth and final post in our blog series, Adopting a data-driven marketing approach, will go through some of the key benefits available for those companies who are taking the appropriate steps to understand and act on consumer behaviours in order to truly embrace a data-driven marketing approach, with Adidas being the leading example.
This article was created and written by Luigi Matrone – CEO & Founder of the eBusiness Institute.
At the eBusiness Institute, we have extensive experience of working with numerous brands on their digital transformation. We understand the importance of an optimised consumer experience to drive your brand’s sales online and offline. Contact us to learn more about how we can help you.
Source
[1] https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/318596
