How to capture King Kong

_{By Dan Daynes, WW Head of Integration}

In the concrete jungle of the marketing world, there's a new alpha in town. A behemoth that has climbed to the top of the Empire State Building of success and roared its dominance over the industry. The adage goes that ‘If content is king, then context is King Kong’.

However, in an increasingly connected ecosystem where audiences are addressable from insight to execution, context has the potential to become an increasingly colossal force of modern marketing. 

As the digital age has brought about an unprecedented level of connectivity, we as a public (let alone consumers) are bombarded with messages from every direction. Amidst this cacophony of information, marketers must find a way to rise above the noise and capture the attention of their target audience. In this instance, context is critical for truly omnichannel marketers. Managed properly, it unlocks more consumer engagement as campaigns can resonate on a deeper personal level, developing the necessary memory structures to be considered effective.

Unleashing the beast: What is context?

At its core, context refers to the environment in which a message is received. This includes everything from the physical location of the consumer to their emotional state, interests, and even the time of day they encounter the message. Essentially, bringing more empathy to the messaging marketers should be communicating. By understanding and leveraging these factors, marketers can not only create highly targeted and personalised campaigns that strike a chord with their audience but also dramatically increase marketing effectiveness.

In recent years, the importance of context has become increasingly clear as the marketing industry has shifted away from traditional advertising methods and embraced more innovative, data-driven approaches. With the rise of digital marketing and social media, using the power of context has become essential for success. But we must not lose the humanity which makes good marketing, great. We must develop the practices necessary to amplify it, as well as the technologies and skillsets to enable it.

The heart of the beast: Empathy and humanity in marketing

In the quest to conquer the marketing world with context, it's crucial not to overlook the importance of empathy and humanity in messaging. As marketers delve deeper into data-driven strategies and AI-powered personalisation, there's a risk of losing sight of the human element that ultimately drives consumer connections. By infusing campaigns with genuine empathy and understanding, marketers can create messaging that not only resonates on a contextual level but also forges emotional bonds with their audience.

At Mindshare, we talk a lot about Precisely Human Intelligence. This sits at the core of how we layer on more contexts to appeal to more human identities, not just IDs in exchanges.

By connecting this to our end-to-end addressable marketing practice (Empathetic Executions) our clients can now go beyond merely targeting consumers based on their interests or location and instead demonstrate a true understanding of their mindsets, values and aspirations. This approach fosters a sense of trust and loyalty that transcends mere transactional relationships and elevates the brand in the eyes of the consumer. In the end, the most successful marketing campaigns are those that strike a balance between leveraging the power of context and maintaining a deep-rooted connection to the human experience. By embracing empathy and humanity alongside cutting-edge technology, marketers can ensure their reign as the King Kong of the industry remains unchallenged.

Empathetic Executions is a suite of capabilities and proprietary technologies that informs everything from enterprise-level strategy all the way through to execution and understanding, to continuously inform audience engagement.

Harnessing the emotional beast: Understanding consumer sentiment

Context isn't just about targeting the right audience, at the right time. It's also about understanding the emotional state of the consumer. A message that might be well-received during a light-hearted moment could fall flat during a more serious or stressful time. By priming the emotional context in which messaging will be received, marketers can tailor their approach to unlock emotional intelligence for maximum impact. Through working with our NeuroLab team, we can guide creative direction by understanding how the creative features of an asset drive emotion, grab attention, or impact on sentiment. For example, our work with Trolli, US gummy candy brand, uncovered unexpected insights through measuring neurological responses to media. In a media environment, if you were already watching something joyful, something sad, or something scary, in which of these three contexts would the brand’s joyful ads best evoke happiness?  It turns out, surprisingly, that the answer is fear and joy. 

When combined with our GenAI-powered Creative Analytics we can measure, hypothesise, and optimise messaging accordingly to deliver the best performance possible for both the client and the audience.

Not only facilitating an understanding of the emotional context when it comes to messaging, but also understanding the emotional response and impact when it comes to marketing objectives such as brand loyalty, advocacy, and love.

Scaling new heights: Content marketing

It is vital that the depth of audience insight in planning is matched with the correct content practices, getting us closer to capturing King Kong in our communications. To simply serve up an adapted 30” TV ad is not good enough with the current technology at our disposal. By understanding the interests and needs of our fellow humans, marketers should produce content that speaks directly to their identities. 

Not only delivering the right context of the audience and their environment but also ensuring the right context of the consumer journey and marketing objective. But this is only the beginning, the true value is how we as practitioners can start to extract, learn, model and understand how this impacts lifetime customer relationships and the mutual value exchange that can be developed around them. 

Taming the power of Generative AI: The future of addressable marketing

The rise of artificial intelligence has played a significant role in the increasing importance of context in marketing. By analysing vast amounts of data, AI algorithms can identify patterns and trends that would be impossible for humans to detect. This allows marketers to gain a deeper understanding of their audience and deliver highly targeted messages that resonate on a personal level. Particularly when reuniting media and content functions, supported by a foundation of technology and analytics. However, with great power comes great responsibility.

For example, advertisers can use tools that help analyze and measure impact of editorial content on minority communities, like Impact Index, Mindshare's award-winning tool. The custom algorithms powering the Index are trained, validated, and regularly audited by experts to identify detrimental or hateful content towards minority groups and communities. 

As marketers continue to rely on AI and other technologies to deliver personalised messaging, it's important to remember the ethical implications of these tactics. Consumers are becoming increasingly aware of the data being collected about them and are demanding greater transparency and control over how their information is used.

Not only that but we are only at the beginning of the GenAI application. Whilst one holds out a huge sense of optimism around its potential, it will be a rocky road in the short to mid term, as we as an industry navigate a responsible approach to its commercial use. 

The reign of context: Conquering the marketing world

Context is the King Kong of the modern marketing industry – and capturing it is critical to success in an increasingly connected, addressable ecosystem. By understanding the environment in which their message will be received, including the physical location, emotional state, and interests of the consumer, marketers can create highly personalised and relevant campaigns that resonate on a deep level.

As technology continues to evolve and consumer expectations shift, it's more important than ever for marketers to prioritize context in their campaigns. Those investing in its integration now will no doubt reap the rewards later to increase their competitive advantage in the marketplace. By doing so, they can climb to new heights of success and establish themselves as the true alphas of the marketing jungle.