Brace your­self for the next big mar­ket­ing buzz­word: The Inter­net of Me. In the so-called Inter­net of Me, cus­tomers deter­mine when, how often, and through what medi­um they want to inter­act with brands. It isn’t only a real­i­ty for 2016, it’s the lens by which the mar­ket­ing indus­try will reflect upon 2015. That’s accord­ing to Kevin Lind­say, direc­tor of prod­uct mar­ket­ing at Adobe.

As the name implies, in the Inter­net of Me, the cus­tomer is total­ly in con­trol. “They know they can align with a brand or leave one in an instant and con­sumers are savvy enough to know that they have the pow­er to get the best deal,” Lind­say said. “It’s imper­a­tive that brands acknowl­edge that the pur­chase jour­ney is dri­ven by the cus­tomer.” Fur­ther, in the Inter­net of Me, con­sumers don’t care about chan­nels or brand pri­or­i­ties or ads, but rather that brands engage with them. In oth­er words, cus­tomers define their own jour­ney, choos­ing where and how to engage with said brand, and whether they go beyond that ini­tial inter­ac­tion and even­tu­al­ly trans­acts. So it’s not sim­ply about wear­ables and/or IoT – it’s tru­ly about the con­sumer.

Signals

Over the next few years, con­sumers will be send­ing out even more sig­nals and telling brands, “This is who I am. This is my moti­va­tion in this moment,” and they will want brands to lis­ten and com­pete for them, Lind­say said. In oth­er words, a suc­cess­ful expe­ri­ence becomes one that is very per­son­al­ized rather than sim­ply a brand expe­ri­ence. “Look at the num­ber of con­nect­ed devices like wear­ables adopt­ed today,” Lind­say said. “These devices take in and emit sig­nals that brands should be pick­ing up in order to build rel­e­vant expe­ri­ences that con­sumers want.” To wit: Even today, con­sumers leave dig­i­tal foot­prints when they inter­act with brands. Shop­ping for a new car is a good exam­ple. While research­ing car makes and mod­els, a con­sumer may cre­ate a pro­file to explore options. “Then when you log in to the car company’s mobile app, you locate the near­est deal­er­ship and let them know you’re arriv­ing for a test dri­ve,” Lind­say said. “When you arrive at the deal­er­ship, the sales per­son can pull up your pro­file to con­tin­ue help­ing you with the buy­ing process in the show­room.” Hol­i­day shop­ping data indi­cates this is a trend that is well under­way. In fact, accord­ing to a recent Adobe Index Report, mobile has already played a vital role this sea­son with 37 per­cent of online sales com­ing from mobile on Thanks­giv­ing, 33 per­cent on Black Fri­day, and 28 per­cent on Cyber Mon­day, Lind­say said. “It’s also notable that Black Fri­day in-store traf­fic was down quite a bit this year,” he added. “This sug­gests that con­sumer pur­chas­es are not only dri­ven by dis­counts, but also by the mobile expe­ri­ence. If the expe­ri­ence on mobile is poor, it’s lost busi­ness.”

Consumer Expectations

Con­sumer expec­ta­tion is one of the main dri­vers behind the Inter­net of Me. The oth­er is tech­nol­o­gy, includ­ing wear­ables and oth­er Inter­net-con­nect­ed devices, like the smart ther­mo­stat Nest. “All of this tech­nol­o­gy is inno­vat­ing at a rapid rate,” Lind­say said. “At the same time, there are incred­i­ble changes in con­sumer expec­ta­tions. And as con­sumer expec­ta­tions change and demands increase, it puts pres­sure on brands.” Lind­say said Adobe hears from many brands that say they have to find oth­er ways to dif­fer­en­ti­ate them­selves because they can’t sim­ply keep throw­ing offers at con­sumers and leav­ing mon­ey on the table. “‘When [con­sumers] jump to anoth­er site for 25 per­cent off, do we retar­get with 30 per­cent?’” Lind­say says these brands ask. “Brands are being squeezed. The con­sumer is savvy. They know they are some­what in con­trol and how to play brands.”

Data

The stakes are even high­er as con­sumers give up data about them­selves and their expec­ta­tions for rel­e­vant con­tent and expe­ri­ences grows. But that sim­ply means brands and mar­keters must make good use of the data that comes from devices and to use inter­ac­tions to under­stand cus­tomer behav­ior and to per­son­al­ize and deliv­er expe­ri­ences. Take, for exam­ple, an Inter­net-con­nect­ed gar­ment. The con­sumer wear­ing said arti­cle of cloth­ing or shoes knows the brand can track his or her vitals. So in order to appease the per­son wear­ing this, say, pair of shoes, who is won­der­ing, “What’s in it for me?” from the brand, mar­keters could poten­tial­ly look at the num­ber of miles that per­son is clock­ing to gauge when the shoes are wear­ing out and when it might be ide­al to send an offer for anoth­er pair. “We under­stand usage and that there’s a real need,” Lind­say said. “That’s when it becomes more about me and less about the device and it becomes about putting the con­sumer, me, at the cen­ter of the expe­ri­ence.” This, in turn, means mar­ket­ing has to infil­trate oth­er parts of the orga­ni­za­tion respon­si­ble for cus­tomer expe­ri­ence. “The health­i­est of mar­keters say they are mar­ket­ing through­out the life­cy­cle to make sure the brand deliv­ers on its promise,” Lind­say said. Mar­keters have so much data to help them do their jobs bet­ter now. They know when a con­sumer buys a prod­uct, where and how often. Fur­ther, with app engage­ment, they know how fre­quent­ly con­sumers are using apps and how long they are in apps, but the pit­fall fac­ing brands today is hav­ing too many mar­ket­ing prod­ucts to ana­lyze this data and try­ing to tie them togeth­er, Lind­say said. “What they need to invest in is a dig­i­tal foun­da­tion that allows them to assem­ble real-time and rel­e­vant con­sumer expe­ri­ences as agile as their mar­ket­ing cam­paigns change with­out com­pro­mis­ing on con­cerns like secu­ri­ty,” Lind­say said.

Brand Examples

Fur­ther, he points to a brand like men’s cloth­ing web­site Trunk Club as an exam­ple of a brand that has this fig­ured out and envi­sions seam­less expe­ri­ences as curat­ed expe­ri­ences. “Trunk Club takes inputs from its cus­tomers on their size, col­or and bud­get pref­er­ences for instance,” Lind­say said. “They then send clothes based on those guide­lines. This is a seam­less expe­ri­ence because rather than me store hop­ping and sift­ing through aisles upon aisles of clothes, Trunk Club is able to decide and curate the right expe­ri­ences – clothes – for me based on the data that I pro­vide.” Ath­let­ic brand Under Armour is anoth­er exam­ple. “It’s not just an appar­el com­pa­ny any­more,” Lind­say said. “They’ve spent some­thing like $300 to $400 mil­lion on data and tech com­pa­nies to enhance that whole cus­tomer expe­ri­ence and they use data from their Inter­net-con­nect­ed wear­ers.” In addi­tion, Lind­say says gam­ing con­sole PlaySta­tion is an inter­est­ing exam­ple because it was an inher­ent­ly Inter­net-con­nect­ed device intend­ed to con­nect users with each oth­er. “As you’re play­ing games, it’s about being able to com­pete with or play against oth­er indi­vid­u­als, which is real­ly kind of a cool thing,” Lind­say said. “So they have the infra­struc­ture already there, which lent itself to going to the next step, which is using the in-prod­uct expe­ri­ence as a mar­ket­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty.”

Data-Informed Interactions

There’s only going to be more con­ver­gence between human and dig­i­tal inter­ac­tions. “More and more human inter­ac­tions will, in fact, be data informed,” Lind­say said. “For exam­ple, I recent­ly talked to a Ver­i­zon Wire­less cus­tomer care rep who knew my data usage, min­utes to Cana­da and upgrade oppor­tu­ni­ties at the moment I called. Every inter­ac­tion — includ­ing ones with cus­tomer care reps — will be a role in the cus­tomer jour­ney.” This is not to say brand expe­ri­ences will no longer be rel­e­vant. Brands will always play a role because they build the goods that end up in the mar­ket, Lind­say said. “Ulti­mate­ly it’s about know­ing who’s in the driver’s seat – the cus­tomer,” he said. “Com­pa­nies need to deter­mine how the brand com­ple­ments the customer’s jour­ney, not the oth­er way around.”