"If only we knew what we know" - why data collection is not the most important thing

There is this current myth that data collection should be your primary focus on the information arena - after all, "data is the new oil" so of course you want to make sure you have acquired as much of it as possible. But, you need to ensure something as important - that data is flowing, being worked and actually being used for decision making. 

Now, I know this seems obvious, but the number of times we have seen data flow processes broken is probably countless. In many companies, there is even this sentence, ready at one's lips, when people find this great insight that was dusting on some shelf for a few years - "if only we knew what we know"...

This became even more critical in the past years, as the pace of markets accelerated exponentially. Nowadays, if you set a social listening tool, some of those insights or opportunities will have a very short life, sometimes just hours. And you cannot expect that your main competitor will not pick up the same deep insight you are finding in your data analysis. Data collection is critical, but the way and speed it flows into decision making is as critical.

A few tips:

- ensure that everyone (including decision makers) knows about the tools you have for data collection, what data and information they can provide, who to contact if their use is specialized and requires dedicated teams. In a way, just check that you have a clear operating framework for data collection, work and decision, and that this is on everyone's minds.

- make the data collection and decision making as physical close as possible. If data flows in from a specific team (like a social listening team or a more traditional market research one), try to sit them in the middle of the brand managers / directors. Enable informal contact, quick conversations about data, insights, needs, marketing plans, strategies,.... This will make sure that you are on top of those short-lived opportunities ("Quick, Kylie Jenner just posted a photo drinking our product") or longer running trends, and that decision is taken quickly.

- if physical proximity is not an option, try creating a close contact habit between the teams. Encourage brand managers to message or text the data managers, asking them questions ("Jeff, did anything caught your eye today or this week?"). Try to manage this carefully, to ensure it doesn't go to the extent of creating unwanted pressure on the data team, but also don't rely on passive, monthly sharing meetings, where you are overloaded with so much information you might lose track of what makes the difference.

- try to have a circular flow of data. So that it just doesn't flow from data teams to decision makers, but that there are clear conversations that ensure clarity between everyone - so the data guys can really understand what are the information pearls that could make a difference for your business.

Data collection can be incredibly complex and expensive - especially when you want to reach the "big data" realm. So, it would be a shame not to use it for actual, fully-informed decision making.

Mobile ready hero images - why should you use them and how

Did you ever try to buy a shampoo online, and ended up trying to enlarge images to understand if you were really looking at a shampoo, what kind of hair was it for and the size? Then you can skip half of this article, because you already grasped the problem.

E-commerce is about simplicity and convenience for the shopper. And that starts by the way you present your product in the online store. You want to make sure that your product stands out clearly to the shopper, and its key features are easy to understand - in a shampoo, product category, brand, variant /  / benefit, size. You don't want a shopper to actually have to click on your product, then click again on the image, just to understand that was not the product they were looking for and having to do it again on a number of products until they find the one they want to buy - you know things don't work like that in the real world, and that somewhere in the process, you will lose the shopper, who will just decide to try a different brand. Hence, "hero images" is the two words you want to keep in your mind.

Now, let me make it a bit more difficult. 58% of global e-commerce purchases last year were done in a mobile device. Which means smaller screens and hence makes it even more difficult for a shopper to understand product features. So, "mobile ready hero images", that work as well in a mobile device as in computer screen are actually the four words you want to keep in mind - and use them in all your e-commerce related sites.

A mobile ready hero image is not a picture of the real product. It is an optimized version of such. It starts from a picture of the real product, but then you work it up. And it is not that different from working up single product packshots - the principle is to take off the unnessencial (no ingredients, no marketing claims,...) and highlight the key features of the product, the things the consumer really wants to know scoping a shelf - again, make the brand, the variant / benefit, size and (never forget) the product category ("is that thing a shampoo, a conditioner or a shower gel?" is a more frequent question than a marketer would like). Don't limit yourself use the packaging as a frame - put some of the essential information out of the pack frame, if needed. And zoom in the packaging. Remember, you want to make the shopper shelf scoping easier, to make your product stand out through clarity.

The results (always key): A/B testing points out to a 30 to 40% increase of sales of a product, when using mobile ready hero images. Which is typically a winning reasoning.

A key habit every consumer goods marketer needs to have

Every consumer goods marketer knows that stores hold lots of information. Shelves space, appearance, turnaround, promotions locations, prices, in-store communication,... - there is a ton of things that you can learn from a store. You might even talk with a shopper in front of a shelf, with a polite introduction and some well honed questions - and again, you will learn a lot. But there is this key thing you can do in a store that can unlock even further information, and that many marketers don't. You can talk with your restocker.

Yes, the person that replenishes the stores' shelves with your products is one of the most valuable sources of information you can have. They can tell you not only about your products performance (and detail it by variant and size), but also about your competitors. They can comment on which kind of promotion is the most successful and who buys it, based on what they see. They can tell you about pricing and how you can use instore communication (and in a world where this communication is more and more limited by store management, they can even get you a break on this). And they can tell you about how your operations are going, how are things happening on the back of the store - is there any logistics problem, any out of stock or delivery issue, any quality problem? If you go and ask about these things to a restocker (and believe me, they will be willing to talk to you if you show how interested you are and that you work with those brands) they will provide you with important, valuable (qualitative) information and insights, completed unfiltered.

The people that are closest to the market typically have key insights. And there aren't many people that are closer than the restockers, that actually handle your product in stores. So, make a habit of going to a store and talking with them. You won't believe how good is the information you will get. I am still amazed at what I learn on those conversations!

The 5 seconds rule in Youtube

When we are talking about digital video advertising, Youtube ends up being the most talked name in any conversation. Youtube's capacity to attract content is amazing - every 2 months, the content uploaded to Youtube surpasses the one created by the 3 main US TV broadcasters in the latest 60 years. It is a fabulous and diverse content, that Youtube explores to the limit of its advertising capabilities. 

The main advertising format you have in Youtube is to insert a commercial during a Youtube video, at specific lengths of it. It is similar to a TV commercial, and it is an interruption of the user playtime - so Google went one step beyond TV and gave a bit more of power to the user. The viewer has the option to stop the commercial and go back to the content it was viewing anytime after 5 seconds of commercial play. That means that the consumer has the option to cut you out after 5 seconds.

When I am around in Youtube (and I have a small child, so "Peppa Pig" and "Little Baby Bum" are part of my friends) I am amazed at how many advertisers ignore this rule. Because it has considerable implications on the way people watch your commercials, and how you should develop them. 

We are typically taught that a good video (TV) commercial is based on a small story where you create tension that is solved by your brand, highlighting its main benefit - that is the base for engagement and message communication, and it should put your brand as the hero of your commercial, strengthening branding. Now, that means that your brand is only explicit to the consumer late in the communication (typically, only after 12 secs in a traditional 30 secs commercial). Will your commercial viewers on Youtube understand what brand is communicating to them on this case? Not 98% of them, because they will cut it out at 5 secs, while you are still building up (or just introducing) your story.

The solution is to adapt your commercial to the media (as it should always be the case, by the way). Make a specific Youtube version (cut) of your commercial. If viewers have the power to cut you out after 5 secs, the absolute rule is that the brand should be explicit in that time frame - show your brand in the first 5 seconds. If you can show its main selling point / attribute, even better. But never air an ad that is not clearly branded in the first 5 seconds in Youtube - that's just a waste of your budget.