By: Karsten Zunke, Adzine (translated from German)
Ad blockers are booming, users are becoming more volatile and sensitive to a variety of touch points simultaneously. The online advertising industry has to face new challenges. Adzine speaks with Sven Weisbrich, CEO of Universal McCann Germany, about the current challenges for brand management and campaign management.

Adzine: Mr. Weisbrich, there are more and more touch points to provide users with more and more interactions. Makes a distinction between branding and performance advertising any sense?

Sven Weisbrich: Absolutely, in this context, we see even a threefold division, we have to deal with the future: branding, performance, and CRM. In terms of a branding campaign including advertisers increasingly shift their TV money online in order to achieve just younger users via the moving image in its “medium”.Performance campaigns, however, pursue a different objective. This is primarily concerned to enable the user to do something. A strongly increasing importance we see in the CRM via online. Goal here is to build customer loyalty by each target person on the entire customer journey accompanied away and is supplied in accordance with interesting information and advice-giving. This separation will be relevant as long as it makes sense to act differently in different communication goals.

Adzine: communication goals are one thing. But what do you want the target groups? Have their needs – even considering the ad-blocking discussion – not be taken more into account during the design of the campaigns?

Sven Weisbrich: They already are. Audiences want relevant information and appropriate speeches.They want answers to their questions, feedback, criticism and want products and offers that are honest and fair. All this will have to find in the future a more substantial consideration within the communication with customers and potential buyers. About a demographic beyond differentiation of the target group in terms psychographic characteristics required in the future to relevant content. To achieve a higher conversion rate, campaigns need to be more temporally decoupled to pick up the consumer to needs. This has the consequence that we have to reckon with a significantly increased complexity in the branding, the branding and the general communicative action. For example, consumers want to interact more strongly with the brand today. Used in this context only one-sided forms of communication, they must be purposefully designed to meet the needs of consumers. An example: a customer buys a vacuum cleaner with Vendor A, Vendor A should show him after his purchase no more advertising for vacuum cleaners, also for competing brands, he should not receive any more advertising. This would inevitably lead to cognitive dissonance. Rather, the customer should receive confirmation of its decision.

Adzine: What impact is the expectation of the target groups on the brand presentation and campaign management?

Sven Weis Break: The brand must be able to move, offer communication opportunities and understand the consumer as a literate and intelligent opponent. The interaction between brand and consumer should be an interactive process leading to adapt offers and communications accordingly. Marketing of the future is the extent to respond to the needs and expectations of consumers and to take them seriously to him ultimately to make the product promise which he expects and demands. Campaign management thus implies the sovereign dealing with all communicative possibilities that are relevant to maintain a brand name in the target group-specific context.

Adzine: How can help technologies like?

Sven Weisbrich: consist precisely in the digital communication and CRM already extensive database solutions to their basis, we act and react individually. Suppose, for example, aspects such as targeting and re-targeting. Here it is increasingly unable to specifically address the people segments that are actually interested in purchasing. As before, however, it is a common practice that they continue to be confronted with after-sale services, which already led to the purchase before. This is on both sides not only absurd, but also leads to worst, dissonance, reactance.

Adzine: What would be the better solution?

Sven Weisbrich: tools must be developed that can intelligently analyze these contexts not only, but also ultimately provide a comprehensive intelligent communication with the consumer in order to build customer loyalty and loyalty and to ensure. In companies still not all campaign data as well as data on sales figures and product segments are evaluated together. Often the e-commerce area is separated from the traditional business. This has the consequence that potential in targeting exhausted and campaigns are not directed from a single source. This multi-channel intelligence is therefore limited. We have invested in recent years in a proprietary technology platform that enables us to see at a glance to collect performance data from over 75 sources to analyze and interpret. However, tools and data are not the sole solution. Ultimately, a successful communication at least to the same extent on to have a good sense of brand and creative communication.

Adzine: Can you give an example?

Sven Weisbrich: In the simplest case, we again find very often today, configures a consumer a silver compact car and this is again found by retargeting the subsequent browsing through different sites away as promotional items. Fortunately, the company, the consumer takes this opportunity to return and to arrange a test drive. However, measuring success not draw on qualitative factors, but is purely quantitative. To avoid cognitive dissonance here would apply appropriate tools.

Adzine: And in the best case?

Sven Weis Break: This is unfortunately rare. In the best case, a segmentation takes place, which, for example, a cookie targeting a consumer group of a user is assigned, who set up the said small cars. By analyzing the activities on their own platforms, such as newsletters, trade, website, call center, etc., the company is well known that the interest in the small car, for example, correlates with a high level of financial awareness on the consumer side. This knowledge is used to play out an alternative financing deal for this user segment. The tonality of the financial offer and the CTA may therefore fall for a user who has downloaded prospectuses and to “young environments” on the road, other than for users who are on the go and business media have stopped configuration. If after a certain time no purposeful response recorded to targeting and segment membership and thus the future address change.

Adzine: Mr. Weisbrich, thank you for the interview.