Mul­ti-plat­form, mul­ti-screen dig­i­tal expe­ri­ences are pro­vid­ing more oppor­tu­ni­ties than ever before to cre­ate fun and engag­ing adver­tis­ing cam­paigns. How­ev­er, it’s cus­tomer-cen­tric adver­tis­ing that fun­da­men­tal­ly enhances con­sumers’ dig­i­tal expe­ri­ences in an impact­ful way, serv­ing rel­e­vant adverts at the right time. But what is meant by con­sumer-cen­tric adver­tis­ing? The ques­tion brands need to be ask­ing them­selves is whether their adver­tis­ing efforts actu­al­ly deliv­er val­ue and aid con­sumer pur­chase jour­neys.

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Adver­tis­ing is one of the longest estab­lished means of mar­ket­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tions, and many brands have forged a cul­ture and iden­ti­ty via the medi­um. The most mem­o­rable cam­paigns have even entered pop­u­lar cul­ture as reflec­tions of soci­ety at a par­tic­u­lar moment in time.

For many decades, adver­tis­ing was pri­mar­i­ly the domain of broad­cast media and print, but dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing has meant new oppor­tu­ni­ties for brands to deliv­er rel­e­vant adver­tis­ing at the right time. Data dri­ven mar­ket­ing, and the abil­i­ty to tar­get con­sumers at par­tic­u­lar moments of their pur­chase jour­neys, has set a new prece­dent and a new stan­dard of expec­ta­tions amongst con­sumers for per­son­al­ized adver­tis­ing expe­ri­ences that are in tune with their needs.

Infec­tious jin­gles, clever catch­phras­es, and inge­nious slo­gans cer­tain­ly have their place, but there is an argu­ment that it can under­uti­lize the insights gained from dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing. Often it seems that the high-bud­get TV spots pri­or­i­tize the max­i­miz­ing of reach rather than engag­ing con­sumers at rel­e­vant moments of the pur­chase jour­neys to influ­ence deci­sions and encour­age a con­ver­sion.

What Exactly Is Customer-Centric Advertising?

Ama­zon Media Group, writ­ing for Digi­day, sug­gests that cus­tomer-cen­tric adver­tis­ing fun­da­men­tal­ly enhances con­sumers’ dig­i­tal expe­ri­ences in an impact­ful way:

“A cus­tomer-cen­tric ad speaks to the con­sumer at the right time and with a rel­e­vant mes­sage. It informs and engages with­out mak­ing unwel­come advances on the customer’s device or shop­ping expe­ri­ence. It announces itself clear­ly and con­cise­ly, nev­er cloak­ing its mes­sage.”

Addi­tion­al­ly:

“Every com­mu­ni­ca­tion should meet a need and ulti­mate­ly dri­ve action. The needs of some­one buy­ing sham­poo will be very dif­fer­ent from that of some­one mak­ing a more involved pur­chase such as a TV. Are you help­ing or hin­der­ing the shop­ping process? Or, are you deliv­er­ing some­thing of val­ue that will be appre­ci­at­ed?”

Where Advertising Often Falls Short

The prob­lem that often plagues adver­tis­ing prac­tices is that brands see a need to be catchy, cre­ative, and pop­u­lar. It’s true that such ads can bril­liant­ly raise aware­ness.

Per­haps there’s a ele­ment of com­pe­ti­tion between brands oper­at­ing with­in sim­i­lar indus­tries to be per­ceived as the fun­ni­est, coolest, or sex­i­est. How­ev­er, brands that push too hard in this direc­tion can occa­sion­al­ly over­step and run the risk of annoy­ing con­sumers.

A case in point:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=F_-9QFvhQWo

Catchy it may be, but accord­ing to a sur­vey of 1,600 UK con­sumers by Tol­u­na, this was the most annoy­ing advert to hit British screens in the last 15 years.

Insur­ance and com­par­i­son is a tough, high­ly com­pet­i­tive indus­try, and there’s an argu­ment that brand aware­ness is crit­i­cal to busi­ness­es oper­at­ing in the space. How­ev­er, adver­tis­ing can be so much more than a catchy song. After all, do these kinds of adverts actu­al­ly helps con­sumers in their deci­sion-mak­ing jour­neys, and improve their over­all brand expe­ri­ence?

Cus­tomer-cen­tric ads don’t obsess over the clev­er­ness of their mes­sag­ing, or pro­mote prod­ucts with unnec­es­sary com­plex­i­ty. They don’t intrude on con­sumers’ online shop­ping expe­ri­ences or pur­chase jour­neys. With regards to this par­tic­u­lar exam­ple, not every­one is look­ing to pur­chase car insur­ance at the same time, and much of the pop­u­la­tion does­n’t even dri­ve.

Of course, these are prin­ci­ples that apply to adver­tis­ing across many dif­fer­ent kinds of media, whether it be TV adver­tis­ing, print, or dig­i­tal dis­play.

Delivering Ads With Relevancy And Timing

When it comes down to it, all brands iden­ti­fy with val­ues that are con­sid­ered pos­i­tive or endear­ing to their audi­ences. The prob­lem aris­es when adver­tis­ing com­pro­mis­es on these with the aim of spread­ing their mes­sage to con­sumers who aren’t cur­rent­ly eval­u­at­ing a brand or engag­ing on a rel­e­vant pur­chase jour­ney.

Per­son­al­iza­tion and cus­tomer rela­tion­ship man­age­ment, dri­ven by the data rev­o­lu­tion, means that we’re at the stage now when brands and busi­ness­es should be think­ing about ways to deliv­er the rel­e­vant mes­sag­ing at the right time.

Advertising As A Reflection Core Brand Values

Per­haps the most impor­tant con­sid­er­a­tion here is to uti­lize adver­tis­ing that offers a true reflec­tion of one’s brand. When you con­sid­er what con­sumers real­ly val­ue in a brand, it means there’s a gen­uine need for brands to imple­ment val­ues such as authen­tic­i­ty and sim­plic­i­ty, as well as those that dis­tin­guish the unique char­ac­ter­is­tics of a brand.

It may mean not chas­ing quick wins, or jump­ing on the lat­est trend­ing social media band­wag­on. Find­ing these kinds of val­ues in a brand’s adver­tis­ing mes­sages need not be a hin­drance. After all, it’s a long estab­lished fun­da­men­tal of mar­ket­ing the­o­ry not to over­com­pli­cate the val­ue propo­si­tion brands are offer­ing con­sumers.

Con­sumer-cen­tric adver­tis­ing should be an exten­sion of this con­cept, let­ting a prod­uct or an idea speak for itself.

Apple’s “sil­hou­ettes” for the first gen­er­a­tion iPod adver­tised with a ele­gant por­tray­al of the prod­ucts core val­ue propo­si­tion. It did­n’t seek to do any­thing clever, or cre­ate a need that did­n’t exist. Apple sim­ply pre­sent­ed an image of what the rev­o­lu­tion­ary device sought to be for con­sumers. And it did so with hard­ly any words at all:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=hQw3mVWXncg

Be clear. Be con­cise. Nev­er cloak the mes­sage.

Words to live by.

Not every brand has the lux­u­ry of adver­tis­ing icon­ic prod­ucts like Apple. How­ev­er, all brands can aspire to deliv­er rel­e­vant ads at the right time that enhance and nur­ture pur­chase jour­neys rather than grab­bing at share and atten­tion in an attempt to dis­rupt them.