Online Brand Identity

WW: First of all, could you tell us a little bit about your role at Google?
I have a role that didn’t exist before. I’ve been at Google for six years now, and for the first 3 or 4 years, I was head of research. I analyzed consumer journeys and conducted studies on them. So I became a strategist bridging the online and offline worlds. At one point, I discovered that advertisers were using digital in the same way they used TV—they would simply take a TV commercial and put it online. Eventually, I realized that we could successfully leverage the unique capabilities of digital, such as digital targeting. Because I was a researcher, I was asked to prove this first. But in my opinion, we had to take action first and then measure the results. So I realized that, as a researcher, I couldn’t help advertisers navigate this digital transformation—they had to take the first step themselves. It’s more of a strategic approach to trying new things, not something you can prove with data. Then I wrote the job description for the role I hold now—I wanted to focus on digital transformation. Today, I lead full-day workshops with a very clear vision of where the process is headed—for advertisers and brand managers who are willing to transform first and measure later. I’ve been doing this for a year and a half now.

And what made you write a book on this topic?
I discovered in the workshops that people who understand digital very well don’t understand brands very well, and vice versa. I’ve tried to combine both into a model that incorporates all the essential, timeless information for branding and integrates it into digital thinking. It’s a model for building your brand within a digital media mix. I don’t think there’s an advertiser who does everything at once very well. The complete transformation takes a few years. But every part of the model has already been implemented by at least a few advertisers. So every part of this model is illustrated with practical examples. The book also includes some exercises to help you develop your own strategy.

But digital transformation is very complex. How can a book provide all the tools needed to navigate this complex process?
Digital transformation is very complex. And when you look at the entire process, it seems like too much to even get started. It’s also not something you can do based solely on data. Instead, you have to focus on the process, which involves a learning curve. And then you need to break it down into experiments that you can actually run tomorrow. It took me about four years to get all these layers right.

Can you summarize the entire model?
If you ask people in the digital world what branding means to them, it turns out to be a rather vague concept. Some think that making a few online videos is branding. Or they think you’re wasting all that money because you can’t measure it. So I start my book with a new definition of what a brand is: A brand is basically what people think, feel, and say it is, based on all their experiences—with your products, customer service, your communication, and perhaps the press. So it’s not just communication; it’s everything people associate with the brand. If you’re trying to build an online brand identity, you have to acknowledge that there are already so many associations with the brand, and you have to communicate differently.
Based on that, anyone who creates something that comes into contact with the consumer is, by definition, a brand builder. If you work in digital e-commerce, you can’t say that branding is the brand manager’s job—everyone is a brand builder. Also, branding isn’t just some vague concept; it’s a long-term business endeavor. If you look at the brand promise, for example, it represents everything the company does.
So, the brand promise is like a long-term business model—a business strategy choice that affects everything you do.

So, for you, branding is less about image and more about a business strategy choice?
Yes. Branding can be seen as a focus on long-term sales impact; it involves making systematic business trade-offs to deliver a consumer experience that is consistently aligned with the unique promises you make.

This means that digital transformation is a holistic process, a painful reorganization—it takes years to transform…
If people hear things like, «You need to think differently about your audience, you need to start measuring differently, and for that you need different technology,» it suddenly seems like a huge undertaking, and people don’t want to get started. That’s why I try to break it down into five small experiments. These are all kinds of things you can basically start testing today. If you do all of them, you’ll automatically start breaking away from old habits.
The main problem for traditional marketers is that they think one message works for every channel, don’t measure engagement, and don’t differentiate between the various types of interactions. But there are completely different levels of engagement. On YouTube, for example, you can skip ads. The impact of a true view versus a forced video is about 2.8 times higher, and a forced video online is 1.5 times more impactful than on TV. And the impact of an opt-in video is even higher still. Then there are interactive videos. So there’s perhaps a one-in-thirty difference in impact, and if you only measure reach and not engagement, you simply overlook that entire aspect.

How to Begin the Digital Transformation?
As a new campaign rolls out, take your one-size-fits-all messaging and tailor it to two types of people within your audience who are so different from each other that it’s actually strange you’ve been showing them the same branding ads all along. Then start measuring to see which approach works better. And then you can try to identify a third audience segment. At some point, the additional impact you gain will level off, and the video will start costing extra—so that’s where you’ll find the sweet spot: the optimal number of marketing segments within a branding campaign. This is just one of the experiments you could start today. Another would be testing the TrueView format. If people choose to watch the video, you’ve received a signal of interest and can add them to your marketing list. Next time, you can serve a different message—perhaps even a longer one than the first. So, if you were to evaluate the reach of a forced message alone, you’d simply play the first video over and over again, even to people who aren’t interested. If you follow a system of different videos based on signals of interest, you’ll be more relevant to consumers and learn more about their interests. If you test a sequence of videos like this, you’ll see that view rates increase every time you serve a new video after a signal of interest.

What kinds of opportunities does this targeting offer?
Once you begin the digital transformation, traditional metrics like reach are no longer useful. The new measurement system is all about organizing data across the consumer journey. Then you start to realize things like, for example, that not every purchase is caused by the last click. The database provides you with new insights. If you start integrating CRM data and real-time data, and manage everything in a single system, your data will gradually begin to reflect the consumer journey. Once you have that, you can start quantifying the financial value of consumer interactions earlier in the consumer journey. So this is something you can simply start doing independently of all your other experiments.
And then, the last one is bringing together creative people and technical people to see what kind of cool things you can do with digital technology.

In your book, you say that consumers are becoming more selective: «People only watch the ads they want to watch, and at the time they want to see them.».
Yes. What we’re seeing in the U.S. and also in the U.K. is that people are actually switching from TV subscriptions to online streaming. And this year in the Netherlands, we saw that TV viewership was declining. Even though linear viewing remained very stable for a long time—it seemed as if nothing had changed—we’re now seeing that the quality of viewing has declined: people are using different devices while watching TV. This year marks the first time that not only the quality of TV viewing has declined, but also the total time spent watching TV.

Switzerland isn't there yet, but it's already in the first phase, where you can see that there's less attention being paid.
And then at some point, people really start watching less—that’s when advertisers finally wake up. This actually happens quite late. If you take a TV commercial and move it to digital, people are far less likely to accept it because there are so many more ways to avoid ads online. Now everything is going digital. People won’t put up with ad breaks consisting of ten commercials anymore—and this has been the case for five to ten years now. So you have to change the model. And there are two ways to make that happen: one is data, so you can be more relevant by knowing more about the customer. The other lies in the creative opportunities available to you—like creating cooler content or developing all kinds of tools to make your ads more meaningful.

You mean tools like your model's content strategy?
For example, Nivea offered a bracelet for parents going to the beach. You could put the bracelet on your child's arm and use your smartphone to set a distance limit for how far the child could walk, so an alarm would go off if the child strayed too far.
There are several ways to create content, such as branded entertainment, for example. The trick is to find something that truly fits your brand. Right now, it’s very common to see a program that simply says «sponsored by…,» which isn’t a very meaningful connection.
When you develop your content strategy, first think about all the people who are important to your brand and who are very different from one another. Then start thinking about all the moments in their lives when your brand could make a meaningful impact. Sometimes people go online simply because they need information; other times, they go online looking for inspiration; and sometimes they’re seeking entertainment or practical solutions.

What is the main reason to begin digital transformation now?
The first thing is to understand the sense of urgency. Soon, the old way won’t work anymore because people are moving into a digital world. Also, the new approach to advertising is very different from the old one. This means you’ll need to go through a learning curve. So if you wait until the last minute to get started, you’ll actually be too late. Start with small steps today.