Marketing today should mean putting humans at the center of your brand’s story, surrounding them with experiences informed by data, and ultimately making them feel validated and appreciated.
To earn the attention of modern audiences, brands needs to try harder. The marketing tactics of old – typically large-scale and always interruptive – won’t cut it.
While the role of the brand really hasn’t changed, the role of the consumer surely has. Empowered by technologies that keep them connected 24/7/ 365, consumers control the flow of information and set the rules for engagement.
Today, marketing is about connecting with consumers on their terms, using the data generated to deliver personalized experiences that build relationships and fit people’s lives.
With access to infinite data points, and fresh insights generated by each new interaction, marketing can deliver custom strategies that integrate paid, owned and earned media channels to deliver relevance with precision in a landscape that’s constantly being disrupted.
Antarctica’s proprietary, sprint-based marketing methodology is designed to keep a brand nimble. Leveraging data to optimize continually and find actionable business intelligence, strategic marketing blends art with science and always puts humans first – because with the modern consumer, that’s what it takes to win.
Let's explore.
A Human-Centric Approach
The most successful brands are those that use marketing to build relationships with their audiences. Rather than hide behind a logo, they use it to demonstrate empathy, to communicate naturally, and to almost predict their customers’ wants and desires before they emerge. By setting the stage for long-term loyalty, they’re protecting themselves against the risk of being commoditized, disrupted or simply undercut on price.
Building these relationships requires your brand to create human-centric experiences. And in order to do that, your brand needs to understand every nuance of your audience’s motivations, behavior, and decision-making, as well as your competitive landscape and business goals.
Connection Is Two-Way
So where do the insights necessary for human-centric experiences come from? The short answer: data. Data not only helps you understand your audience and how to reach them, it challenges assumptions you’ve made, and it helps to define the shape and form of the digital experiences you’ll ultimately create.
But there’s one thing data can’t do – it can’t tell you who you are. You can try to be all things to all people, but that approach inspires little trust. And an identity built by data alone isn’t going to connect with real human beings.
The point of getting to know your audience is not to tell them what you think they want to hear. It’s about telling your story in ways that resonate. It’s about finding points of connection and common ground that enable genuine interaction.
Blending Context & Content
The demand for human-centered experiences has grown at such breakneck speed that marketing itself is still catching up. Digital now requires deep specialist collaborations – not just a series of individual contributions. And collaboration needs to be faster and more responsive to change.
Delivering personalized experiences can be challenging for brands whose marketing efforts aren’t integrated. Getting digital right requires deep collaboration between agile teams of experts, and a commitment to responding to constant change.
In response, our marketing team has developed a proprietary, sprint-based methodology that uses data – often from disparate sets – to inform their story-driven approach.
Their process begins with the collection of all available data – brand, audience, competitor, industry, and more – from sources on- and offline. After a series of deep-dive analyses, they develop detailed personas for a brand’s most viable “humans” – their ideal customers, uncovering the context for the next phase of planning. Guided by a deep understanding of a brand’s target(s), we put ourselves in their shoes, creating journeys that connect the stages of the purchase journey to critical touchpoints and content that converts.
To ensure that the content we deploy is well-received, we use a variety of tools and ongoing analyses to optimize for performance. Even when things are working well, we look to improve, iterating plan and creative to garner the best possible results and ROI.
At BFM, we use data to deliver compelling stories to the right audiences at the right times on the right platforms. We know that “me too” marketing and tired tactics won’t help a brand cut through noise filling the modern customer’s journey – but personalized, empowering, and relatable experiences will.
