The single biggest concern for CMOs now and in the future is owning and connecting with a rapidly evolving audience as they look beyond Gen Z to Gen Alpha, and what’s next.
With that in mind, CMOs are designing brands for a virtual world, investing in a new toolkit of technologies to enable more immersive, emotive brand experiences.
AUGMENTED HUMANITY:
BY THE NUMBERS
Brands today are built at the intersection of belief and behavior, creativity and technology. CMOs are embracing a new experience toolkit with the power and potential to infuse every interaction with humanity and with emotion.
87% of CMOs agree that brands today are built through experiences. This number rises to 91% in the US and 93% in Australia.
84% of marketers believe that every aspect of the customer journey can and should tell the brand story, from Comms to Commerce, while 88% agree it is essential that the customer experience matches up to the brand promise.
CMOs believe firmly in the coming together of creativity, technology, and craft to shape brand-building experiences.
The key ingredients in creating truly brand-building experiences were identified as “technology that enhances the creative idea” (48%) and “innovative new interfaces such as gaming, virtual worlds, gesture, and touch” (48%). Closely following were “Delightful interactions enhanced by technology such as AR and Image Recognition” (45%) and “A powerful organizing idea that shapes the Experience Vision” (43%).
The importance of almost all these factors has increased by at least 5 percentage points YoY, demonstrating an increased importance of building brands through innovative, immersive, ownable experiences.
With these ambitions in mind, CMOs are investing in technologies with the potential to shape experiences that are as delightful, and distinctive as they are easy and effortless.
The most commonly used technologies CMOs claim to be leveraging today include social commerce (35%), chatbots for CX (28%), virtual brand properties like avatars and idols (28%), and virtual reality (27%).
Technologies designed for a world where new experiences emerge everywhere and every day, and the boundaries between real and virtual, content and commerce have disappeared.
Of all the technologies explored, social commerce is the one showing the single greatest increased adoption reported by CMOs year on year, up 4 percentage points versus 2022 and highlighting the ever-stronger connection between content, influencers, and commerce.
AUGMENTED HUMANITY:
WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE
CMOs are embracing new interfaces from voice to gesture, AR to AI.
Enabling ideas that are distinctive, delightful and disarmingly human.
DENTSU CREATIVE teams in Argentina, Brazil and USA, with Eurofarma and dentsu health's specialists, co-created and developed an app that enables Parkinson’s patients to control their social media feeds using facial therapy exercises. The Scrolling Therapy app won the Pharma Grand Prix at 2023 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.
WHAT IT MEANS FOR BRANDS AND BUSINESSES…
Spatial Computing and Social Commerce blur the boundaries of content and commerce, real and virtual. There are no limits to the spaces and experiences that can be augmented with real-time digital data. Craft and innovation are coming together to imagine new possibilities, from AR configurators to Augmented Storytelling, all powered by integrated data and commerce platforms.
The old world of static brand books and guidelines is no longer fit for purpose. Modern brands must connect belief and behavior, brand values, and CX principles in a single integrated system, that is operationalized at scale through modern digital design systems to create a living, breathing brand.
EMOTIONAL EXPERIENCE DESIGN
It is no longer enough to design for frictionless experiences that often deliver functionally but are creatively forgettable. We must design for the moments that matter, creating experiences in the online space that are as distinctive and ownable as concept stores or signature packaging are in the offline world.
This article is part of DENTSU CREATIVE’s 2023 Global CMO Report, ‘Creativity at a Crosswords’. Using data from a survey of 700 CMOs and senior marketers in the US, UK, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, India, Italy, and Spain, the report has identified eight key themes which show that despite being an industry at a crossroads, it is one empowered by creativity and technology.
Our report helps you understand how your business, brand, and investment strategies compare with other CMOs. Are you in step with peers around the industry or carving your own path? Are there areas where you’re investing ahead of the industry or others where you may be lagging?
For full report, please visit DENTSU CREATIVE global website below.
www.dentsucreative.com/news/CMO-report-2023-download
TOPICS YOU MIGHT BE ALSO INTERESTED IN
