Vanity will eat trust for breakfast and convenience is the appetizer.
The rise of social and mobile over the last 15 year have created 4 billion individuals craving attention. Being exposed felt good. Wanted to feel unique. Seeking confirmation. Being liked. Literally.
But…the more and the longer we as consumers are becoming the product, the more and more sceptical we become; the more critical we are about our privacy. We no longer accept to be marketed to, let alone sold to.
In the next phase of social beyond big tech – with its virality and swiftness typical for the TikToks of this world – the world is creating 9 billion potential content producers. It's making 9 billion celebrities. All want to feel special in their own way. All are demanding in their own unique way.
Vanity is starting to run through the veins of this generation. Being customer Obsessed - the fundamental baseline of Amazon's growth model - no longer cuts it.
At the same time, a Privacy revolution is taking place - and both Google, Facebook and Apple all have their own method of addressing the opportunity of gaining dominance over our screen time and becoming the trusted gateway to our identity.
On the other side of the fence, Marketing is often about creating brand experiences that bring sympathy. At best. But we have shown little empathy.
In the world of the Vein, more is needed. In the world of the Vein, you need to empathize more. Much more. Really listen, but especially act – and become proactive.
In the land of the Vein, four perfect revolution storms are coming together, challenging your audacity to move.
The first one is the Privacy Revolution. Everything that is taking place: the end of third-party cookies driven by Google, the 'Ask me not to track' introduced by Apple. All of this is nothing more than Google, Apple and Facebook trying to choke each other and go for world domination with the sole excuse of protecting your privacy. All of this is aimed at nothing more than becoming and remaining the dominant player on your screen whether it's the phone in your hand or the goggles on your face.
Revolution two: Platforms. In the last 15 years, we have seen business lines fade. Marketing moved deeper into sales, and Service has become the new marketing. As banks, telcos, and retailers are repositioning themselves and becoming publishers, we are witnessing the fading of industries. Your customer no longer necessarily has to buy something with you to be of value, as you can serve them ads or other value and monetize on that.
Revolution three: the data revolution. Data volumes will explode in the next coming years. Knowing that only 1% of company data is used to impact or steer Customer experiences and that 99% of data is unstructured (think about the powerpoints on your drive or the xls sheets we all create) will be essential to manage this better. Data quality will become the oxygen to your success machine even more tomorrow.
Revolution four: Predictive model as a new normal.. Spotify used to condition us because it created a certain level of convenience that outclassed the quality of the audio. What Spotify is making now is a new paradigm with minimum Input but Exponential output. Its recommendation engine is so powerful – that when you select one song for the ride home, the rest of the trip, you have a radio station based on that one selection.
30% of what Amazon sells in the world comes from their recommendation engines.
The good news?
First, the technology needed for change is democratizing like hell and available to almost any organization. You don't have to be a billion Euro revenue retailer.
Secondly, in Vanity, I will be introducing a model to fix this behind and keep ahead of the curve. As with any new paradigm, there are new technology concepts that goes in hand with achieving this. More on that in the keynotes.
This blogpost is written by Renout Van Hove, active at the intersection of Advertising, Data ecosystems, Privacy and Technology