This year’s digital marketing exhibition “dmexco” (digital marketing exposition and conference) in Cologne counted fewer visitors than in the last year, but the professional quality increased. With 1,100 exhibitors and 570 international speakers, including Sheryl Sandberg, the COO of Facebook, this years dmexco stayed true to its “Pure Business” motto. The decline in the number of visitors from 50,700 (2016) to 40,700 is primarily attributable to the fact that tickets were not free for the first time. As one of the exhibitors, artegic AG was present and reports on one of the much-discussed trend topics: new paths in marketing, not only through new channels, but also via “Programmatic Creativity” and video.
Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook, usually watches the dmexco online in her office. This year she was a live speaker herself, a further sign that the exhibition is growing. In her lecture, Sandberg made clear that the mission of Facebook “Connecting the world” is still far from being complete. She also pointed out the benefits of digital connectivity through stories in which Facebook users got in touch with other people through the platform and introduced their business model this way. For several times the social media platform has served as a link between companies or brands and consumers.
Programmatic Creativity
However, the channel and time are not the only relevant factors to get the customers attention. If the content does not fit, it does not matter that you generally reached them. Therefore, it is important or even an obligation to link the content to information or data about the person. For example, it is much more relevant to send the customer a discount coupon for a product he has recently viewed as sending general promotions to products that may not interest him. In a perfect scenario, the content also includes a “surprise factor” which then results in the so-called “hyper relevance”. If, for example, the customer receives a mailing a week before his birthday, which refers to his special day, this is surprising and will certainly receive more attention than the fifth congratulatory mailing on the day itself. To do this in an efficient way marketing automation technology is needed. The combination of these two factors leads to the so called programmed creativity and creates so-called smart content. The following examples show, however, that the best content currently does not necessarily come from the minds of marketers, but from the young consumers themselves, who have discovered video as a channel to express their selves.
Video – from everyone for everyone
“Do not let anyone tell you that you can not do something” is an important thought for Millenials. In his video “do what you can not”, youtuber Casey shows how you can realize your dreams with a smartphone, wifi and a good idea. The medium video is currently breaking all records and receives extreme attention in the younger generations. According to statista, revenues in the digital video market in Germany will be over EUR 800 million in 2021. Furthermore it still has a lot of potential, for example in education. An increasing number of channels with clever learning and explanatory videos are shooting out of the ground and, for example, saving pupils costs for private tutoring. Companies can also use this for their customers to explain their products in videos and offer added value like this. Or they even let them create the whole campaign like in the app yeay. The channel video makes new business models possible. At the dmexco, Melanie Mohr, the founder, described the app like ebay and Snapchat are having a baby. It brings together young people who want to create content but do not have a product for sale with companies that lack the good ideas. Models like these point out a new direction in marketing.