#Apex2017: Has connectiveness killed the big idea?

Brand loyalty is not dead, but we need to offer something that is relevant, Brett St Clair, head of digital product management at Barclays Africa told delegates at the Apex masterclass held at the Sandton Convention Centre in Sandton on the morning of the Awards ceremony.

“While you were working on the big idea, the world changed. Agencies and brands look for the big idea and then roll it out to customers and win customers, but it does not work like that anymore,” he says.

The reason for this is that technology is ubiquitous, he says. Every 18 months technology doubles while the price halves – look at mobile phones. “This is the law of acceleration. We are building great technology on top of great technology, so imagine how fast the world is changing, and then think that you are working on the big idea for a year and then rolling it out. It is an outmoded way of working.”

Adding to this is the era of selfies. “This is turning our world around. The mobile device is not mapping what is happening around us, but it is putting us in the story.”

What marketers need to understand is that consumers are giving them the intimate details of their lives. In return marketers need to talk to consumers in their own language. This can be through bots or using facial recognition.”

It is about understanding micro moments, and all of us have these. These, he explains, are massive amounts of scale. “We do millions of micro moments as we use our mobile hundreds of times a day. The ability to scale these moments lies with artificial intelligence.”

It is about using the data to understand your audiences and customers and then customise your audience to the last detail. “That means listening to your customers. Just speaking to them is no longer good enough – we must listen every minute so we cannot only change the message but the apps and the product,” he says.

Listening to your customer is vitally important, he adds, as it gives you hyper-personalisation – something Coca-Cola figured out years ago – which is about building incredible customer experiences, and delightful experiences.

“To get this right requires more than just a big idea; it requires the marketing function and the advertising agency to stretch beyond the big idea. Understand that straight through processing is what counts, which means the campaign is no longer enough, you should sell all the way through. It is no longer the world of the big idea, but the era of connectedness.”