Promotional products are a condensed brand experience

Promotional items are often classified as being of secondary importance in terms of communication. In fact, they have a different effect than traditional advertising. They explain nothing, they claim nothing - they are used. A direct experience is created through their haptics, suitability for everyday use and naturalness.

This is precisely where their strategic explosive power lies. Promotional products are condensed brand contacts. They are brand management on a small scale, but with great proximity to everyday life. A promotional product that works confirms the brand promise casually and sustainably. A faulty one does the same - only with the opposite sign. This makes it more dangerous than bad advertising. Because bad advertising can be ignored. Bad user experiences cannot.

From product thinking to intentional thinking

The real problem lies deeper: many companies still treat promotional products as a logistical side note. The main thing is cheap, quickly available, somehow useful. This perspective ignores the real question: what kind of experience should be created during use?

Intentional thinking starts right there. Every promotional item is an invitation to interact with the brand. If this invitation remains undirected, the article becomes a risk. Not because of a lack of quality alone, but because of a lack of intention. Promotional items must therefore be chosen and designed consciously: in line with the context, the brand's attitude and what it wants to achieve in everyday life.

Brand communication begins with use

The ruler case is not an isolated incident or a media joke. It is a warning signal. Brand communication does not end with the claim and does not begin with the campaign. It begins where people use brands.

Promotional items are not a scattergun, but a touchstone. Used correctly, they are one of the most effective instruments of sustainable brand loyalty.

Steven Baumgaertner is the founder and CEO of the promotional products retailer cyber-Wear.

Current data

Put simply, we know: The more up-to-date and complete the customer data in the CRM, the higher the company's sales potential. The trick is therefore to use limited resources to quickly and efficiently create a data basis for various measures such as cross-selling or lead scoring. Marketing automation delivers reliable results in this context. It stands for the gradual, data-based and therefore targeted development of communication channels and campaigns across all communication channels, digital and print. The focus remains on brand and market-oriented communication with its specific operational marketing objectives. This is almost automatically accompanied by the continuous enrichment of existing CRM data: This is because scheduled or triggered communication optimizes the database in every loop - both for future marketing measures and for sales.

Scalability

Another advantage of CRM-based marketing automation is its scalability: based on so-called trigger elements, the communication route is set up once for each event and can then be automated and played out continuously. Through specifically integrated dialogue elements, reactions and thus data from the target group are recorded promptly so that the performance of the campaign can be measured and optimized. This transparency makes it possible to align marketing and sales strategies as a whole directly with market feedback.

Which triggers can be used to pursue which operational marketing goals? How and where does the print channel improve results?

Programmatic media campaigns

In the next step, for example, programmatic media campaigns with the aim of generating leads (newsletter registrations, etc.) would be conceivable. Existing customer/CRM data can be digitally anonymized, matched with online parameters and translated into target group segments. Advertisers whose data depth is not (yet) sufficient can use curated data segments from well-known data providers or even have individual custom audiences created. These are then stored as targeting in the campaign platforms for the targeted playout of digital advertising content.

Overall, marketing automation represents a pragmatic solution to the challenges of modern multichannel marketing. By enabling data-driven and therefore targeted communication, it paves the way for efficient use of existing, even incomplete data and for updating, supplementing and continuously generating relevant additional information. The scalability of this method and the prompt responses offer additional flexibility and enable efficient adaptation to internal resources as well as the needs of a fast-moving market.

*Alex Schmid is Topic Lead Dialog at Farner.

Werbewoche.ch: Ogury's business model is based on personified advertising as opposed to personalized advertising. Can you explain what that means?

Andrea Wieseke: While recent global privacy regulations are paving the way for an ecosystem of cookie- and ID-less advertising, the market is still partly insisting on personalized advertising in the belief that it will continue to be promising. In reality, ad tracking has become socially unacceptable and a growing number of customers are vocally opposed to it. Furthermore, advertisers are no longer interested in targeting just a few specific people, but rather broad segments that share the same affinities.

And you have a solution for this?

This is exactly what Ogury offers with its Personified Advertising technology. This solution enables targeting based on personas rather than the identity of users and the environments in which these personas consume content - as opposed to targeting the individual users themselves. We look at the placements and their user characteristics and deliver based on this assessment.

The abolition of cookies by Google is just around the corner. What do you think of the industry's reaction to this impending change?

Once Google starts disabling cookies for Chrome users in early 2024, advertisers will have many different options to choose from, so it's easy to lose track. A recent global survey of 1,000 senior executives from major brands and media agencies commissioned by Ogury to find out their views on the future of digital advertising in a cookie-free world revealed a significant lack of awareness of the issue.

Do you have specific figures from the study that you can share with us?

According to the survey, 60 percent of the managers surveyed believe that cookies and IDs will be superfluous in the near future. However, more than 41 percent of respondents are not familiar with cookie-less targeting technologies at all. This clearly reflects a lack of awareness of cookie-less alternatives, which advertisers also find difficult to understand as they are not yet the norm in our industry and have not had to be until now.

So what should advertisers do to create a paradigm that prioritizes data privacy?

At Ogury, we believe that personalized targeting is the most promising alternative for advertisers to continue reaching their customers at scale while respecting their privacy. With this technology, advertisers can overcome their scalability concerns while meeting the wishes of consumers and regulators. Instead of tracking customers online, persona-based advertising focuses on the places where content is consumed, using Ogury surveys of active users to generate millions of actionable data points and create personas that are relevant to brands. In this way, we are moving from a customer-centric to a placement-centric perspective to ensure scalability, reach and improved consumer protection standards.

How do you classify the solutions of AdTech companies?

Many AdTech companies are now focusing on contextual targeting. These solutions are easy to implement, but are far from sufficient to properly understand the behavior of the target group and also to achieve the necessary reach. In a world without cookies, brands and agencies should definitely expect more. This is where Ogury and its Personified Advertising technology come into play.

Shouldn't advertisers also be concerned about the latest AI developments like ChatGPT and how they could hurt the industry?

The growing importance of AI in advertising is undeniable, and I look forward to seeing how it will shape our industry in the months and years to come. However, we are on the cusp of a major change that will have a more direct impact on our industry. Google's long-awaited elimination of third-party cookies is just months away, and the rebalancing of consumer privacy has pushed advertising identifiers to the brink of extinction. Brands, online publishers, media agencies and ad tech companies are all at a strategic crossroads, and the direction they take now will determine their future success.

You joined Ogury in 2022 as Managing Director for Switzerland and Austria. What experiences have you had since then and how do they fit in with your ambitions for Ogury in the region?

Advertisers can be a little clueless when it comes to the changes that await our industry, and Switzerland is no exception. They don't really know where to start and need help to navigate and succeed in this new age of digital advertising. In fact, the changes we are experiencing now are an excellent opportunity for our industry to equip itself with the right tools and partners that can enable success in a future or cookies.

What goal did you set out with?

I opened Ogury's Swiss office last year with the aim of positioning the company as a market leader in privacy-friendly advertising by leveraging our unique data model and global footprint. In fact, there is a rapidly growing demand from Swiss brands, agencies and publishers for our unique approach. In the region, Ogury works with premium brands such as Heineken, Velux, Bubblebox and Salt, as well as leading media agencies including Dentsu and Havas. I am incredibly proud of what the team has achieved over the past year, with our commitment and service excellence always at the forefront of everything we do.

Andrea Wieseke is Managing Director Switzerland and Austria at Ogury and has almost two decades of experience in digital advertising.