The coronavirus pandemic crisis will accelerate the trend in which brands want to speak directly to their customers.
That is according to one ad executive who says companies need to be able to find their own audience amongst the newly-inflated base of stay-at-home media consumers.
Get personal amid virus
“The need for personalization on direct-to-consumer relationships from brands will just heighten,” says Jason Brown, chief revenue officer of AT&T’s Xandr advertising company.
“The capabilities that come out of products like addressability and the ability to precision-target and frequency-manage will become more relevant for clients as they try to personalize the messages to their current customers and also their prospects.
“In this environment, with COVID, I believe we’ll start to use those production capabilities for brands just to message directly to consumers.”
Go direct
Brown cites the example of one Xandr client, a financial services institution that is using first-party data on its own customers together with viewership insights from AT&T to connect with its customers, making clear how its online banking products allow them to go on banking without visiting a branch.
The consulting firm Prophet says brands can thrive out of COVID-19 by being customer-obsessed, ruthlessly pragmatic, distinctively inspired and pervasively innovative.
According to an Unruly survey, consumers say they want brands to continue advertising, but to be more informative.
Its data showed some brands had seen an uplift in shareability and some brands had helped consumers feel more informed.
Branded content, too
The pandemic is putting brands’ commitment to purpose to the test. GroupM representatives have encouraged brands to be useful at this moment in time.
Brown says one consequence of a burgeoning growth in at-home media consumption is the risk a brand’s ad may get shown too many times to viewers – a reason frequency management capabilities may be necessary.
But he says commercials aren’t the only tool in the chest. Brown sees brand content messages as being deliverable on a personalized basis to specific audiences, too.
This video is part of a Beet.TV series titled “Audience, in Context,” presented by Xandr. For more videos please visit this page.
