Growth Trends 2022: Addressable Content – A Creative Renaissance
It’s time for marketing to get creative with the opportunities that addressable content offers – that is, the ability to communicate with people, on a one-to-one personal basis with empathy and at scale.
Personalisation has become both an implicit and an explicit part of everyday life. From personalisation based on user behaviour (for example, 99.5% of internet search results are based on previous user behaviour) to personalisation based on what we explicitly give away (for example, wearables that encourage personal bests or ovulation trackers that guide potential parents to optimum windows of fertility).
Personalisation is not only based on what we type into a box. Amazon Alexas across the UK respond to individual voices within the household, understanding context, and learning from what we baked yesterday to inspire what we bake today.
Personalisation happens in physical form, too. Personalised products from vitamins to perfume are over-the-counter, mainstream and direct to consumers. Starbucks has been writing names on cups for years. Not On The High Street’s gifting and décor business is predicated on personalisation. Luxury brands command a premium for it. Who does not feel special when their wishes are pre-empted or fulfilled?
Personalisation now also comes in the form of deciding your own narrative. Participative personal involvement in entertainment is on the rise. Some 62% of UK adults take part in some form of gaming where they direct the narrative. Twitch continues to gather fans beyond gaming with live events and music partnerships, as audiences direct and performers respond.
The media opportunity is vast
85% of the media we buy as an agency is addressable in nature, meaning that we can serve specific audiences with specific creative adapted to the sequence we want them to experience at scale. Put another way, addressable content gives us infinite opportunity to personalise to the person, the moment, the story we want to tell with imagination and empathy.
One study reports that over 60% of UK consumers are willing for advertisers to use their data to personalise ads and offers if it keeps content free and data anonymous. Another says that 67% specifically want addressable advertising.
Unsurprisingly, a recent Wavemaker analysis and research report suggests that almost any level of addressable content programme will deliver a marked improvement in return on ad spend (ROAS), with successful programmes improving ROAS by 24%.
Content matters
But, we’ve spent the last five years obsessing over targeting strategies fuelled by the ability to automate sophisticated audience-buying at scale. And neglected what we put in the pipes – that is, the creative, or what we say and how we say it. While products have supercharged creative personalisation for users, our advertising trails behind.
This is obviously important when Google estimates that 70% of the effectiveness of digital campaigns come down to the creative used. And we all know that growth-unlocking effectiveness is achieved best by creating work liberated from a hierarchical and binary medium or message mindset.
The Holy Grail is medium and message working together to deliver engaging communications. The demise of third-party cookies and ever-increasing audience fragmentation provides further fuel to the fire.
We’re seeing green shoots
In the most recent Cannes Festival of Creativity, only eight of the 38 Titanium and Grand Prix Lions went to traditional, TV-led campaigns. The rest used a combination of innovation and social purpose and demonstrated their value to the values of individuals with personalisation at the heart.
Mastercard US introduced the product innovation of inviting trans communities to use their preferred name on payment cards was useful, genuine and human.
InBev Colombia addressed a distribution issue for themselves by empowering local shops to be available to customers using hyper local advertising looped in with a WhatsApp ordering service.
Wavemaker India’s ‘Not Just a Cadbury Ad’, promoted Cadbury’s Celebrations during Diwali. Using tech, dynamic creative optimisation and AI, the campaign was localised and personalised to 300+ pincodes with 2000+ local business owners across eight cities, reaching out to 7000+ retailers whose names featured in the ad. Transactions grew 25% with 6% brand consideration lift, reaching 100m.
Implications for brands
- Addressable content is about medium, brand message and audience signals working together to make your creative work harder.
- Don’t dismiss addressable content as paint-by-numbers creativity. There’s real opportunity to show up with imagination, and to continuously learn more about your audience enabling you to keep in step with them, and communicate on their terms.
- Connect. Don’t think of personalisation as one channel. It can be one big idea across multiple channels.
- Start small. Connect one more digital channel such as digital out-of-home (DOOH) to your 1:1 media and trial in one area. Or test and learn with one more format, for example trial an addressable audio version of your 1:1 addressable digital display campaign.
- Addressable content is not only to be considered at the active stage of the journey. Addressable thinking at priming stage can be useful. Audience commonalities often inform the broadcast strategy. Consider, too, what pulls your audience apart as this is rich opportunity for personalising content to make the most of their differences.
