AdCommerce Week NYC  – Hot Takes

Recently, I attended AdCommerce Week in New York City, where I learned from top brand executives about how the way they market their brand and interact with their target audience has been evolving.

Here are some “hot-takes” from the event:

Consumer Centric advertising and interactions:

Modern marketing is all about focusing on what customers want. Brands need to understand their audience really well, including how they perceive the brand and what they like. This means paying attention to how people interact with websites and social media (comments, likes, etc) and thinking about things from the customer’s point of view.

Shoppable will continue to grow:

Shoppable content is here to stay.  Whether it’s via smart TVs or social media, the goal is to make it simple for people to go from seeing something to buying it. Brands need to focus on a frictionless and seamless brand interaction from ad-to-sale.

UGC Content is becoming key to brands:

UGC (User Generated Content) will continue to grow as a large part of how brands promote their brands and interact with consumers. Consumers relate to people that “look like them” and that may be at a similar stage in life.

Additionally, when it comes to making content, it’s important to be genuine and creative. Instead of just following trends, brands should try to make things that stand out and feel real to people.

Data, data, data:

And finally, data continues to be really important for marketing. Brands use data to understand what people like and don’t like, but it’s getting harder because some ways of collecting data are going away. Brands need to find new ways to get data directly from customers and use it in ways that will improve the consumer-brand relationship.

Conclusion

In short, by focusing on understanding customers, meeting them where they interact (TV, Social, Radio/Podcast, specific locations in their city, etc) making it easy for them to buy, using authentic content, and collecting data, brands can stay ahead in the ever-changing world of marketing.