It all started after the year 2000 – a time when people began to research products and make decisions online before even talking to a sales person. This was uncharted marketing territory. Consumers turned into brand advocates and critics, posting reviews and recommendations with no control from brands.

The next shift came with the rise of smartphones, which gave 24/7 access to the Internet. The customer decision journey was promoted as a better model to replace the linear “funnel” one. And, after that, came the next big shift: social media. Social completely changed the way we thought about content and advertising. The traditional media model fast lost its validity.

We currently have a really complex situation. We have three kinds of media to consider, in addition to more than 1,800 specialized technologies for analytics, social, search and more, with new technologies emerging at an accelerating pace.

It’s imperative that brands stand out across all devices; and it’s the power of creativity and human relevance to make people stop and pay attention. Creative is what frames the relevant brand experience – not to mention its importance to the increasing number of millennial buyers. Just have a look at the headlines: “Creative Is King When Targeting Millennials,” “Generation Y Defined by Creativity,” and the list goes on.

In addition, research studies are now proving the remarkable effect of creativity. Recent ComScore research proves that creative content drives more than half of sales changes. And, initially with small impact, creative campaigns have doubled the sales impact of non-creative and in the long term are 11 times more efficient. While technology enables us to target precisely the right consumer at the right time, what messages look and feel like is not a result of data science.

The trend seems clear. As things continue to become more complicated, the need for integrated solutions only increases. Whatever big shift is coming next, we can’t afford to lose sight of what’s important. Because in the end, there is no success without creativity and human relevance at its core.

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Kalin Dimitrov – Senior Art Director, gyro New York

Addicted to creativity, Kalin Dimitrov is a passionate idea hunter with a long track of creative work in several business sectors, and brands such as Coca Cola, Audi, Danone and more. Before joining gyro, Kalin worked for GE in East House Creative, and spent several years at Bulgarian offices/representatives of Y&R, TBWA and Publicis, as well as at Noble Graphics.

While an organization’s purpose-driven culture can be exhibited in a number of ways, the central element is that the program or service is not driven by product revenue, but is instead measured in social reward. Essendant’s approach to purpose is driven by the passions of all of our stakeholders — including management, associates, and even customers — to ensure that the company’s contributions are authentic and beneficial to all involved.

In some cases, a CEO inserts his or her own passion as the larger organization’s purpose, but what the CEO is passionate about may not resonate with associates. As a result, these companies may not have full associate engagement, and it becomes yet another “top-down” mandate. In contrast, a model that empowers stakeholders to have direct input and joint participation in purpose-driven initiatives ensures involvement from each group and guarantees maximum benefit for the community. At our company, a board comprised of associates from across our businesses and operating locations leads the Essendant Charitable Foundation. This broad-based approach to defining and pursuing our larger purposes enables our organization to truly engage associates and make a significant impact on their communities.

We see at least these three benefits to the purpose-driven model:

Building a customer connection:
Demonstrating a shared value and belief with customers can be a powerful driver to brand preference, which ultimately drives sales. Clear communication of your organization’s purpose provides a bond that increases the brand value with existing and potential customers.

Increased employee engagement:
Increased employee engagement is a major factor driving the growth of purpose-driven organizations as it results in higher workforce performance. Simply put, if you ask associates to help you service the needs of others — and you do this together — it is easier to ask them to help you when you need to engage in driving the pace of change in business today. This approach creates a culture of openness and trust, which leads to speed and high performance within the organization.

The retention of valuable, committed employees:
In today’s market, it is tough to attract and retain excellent talent. A company that positions purpose as a central element is better able to repeatedly capture high performers who recognize the company’s strong associate engagement, sense of trust and overall purpose efforts. Potential employees recognize this as a point of differentiation versus other organizations and then choose this company as a result.

The influence of a purpose-driven culture has grown significantly in recent years and is likely to continue to increase even more as millennials, who have shown an affinity for such social programs, assume a larger presence in the workforce. By empowering employees to help define their company’s purpose-driven culture, today’s leaders can build beneficial customer connections, increase employee engagement, and attract and retain valuable employees for years to come.

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Bob Aiken, CEO, Essendant

Bob Aiken is CEO of Essendant, the fastest, most convenient solution for workplace essentials. Essendant is a wholesaler of business, facility maintenance, industrial and automotive products whose extensive network provides next-day delivery to 90% of businesses in the US.

gyro is here to help. In our recent webinar, B2B Marketing: 6 Emerging Trends in 2015, we identified key areas of change and discussed how to leverage these trends to finish out the year strong. Here’s a rundown:

1. Higher UXpectations: The new design dynamic.
   Have you talked to your car lately? Or, perhaps, yelled at your thermostat? As the digitizing of our lives continues, B2B marketers can learn valuable lessons in user experience — whether it occurs at work, at home or on the road. From Adobe Slate, a free app that can turn a formerly drab annual report into a rich, interactive visual story, to interactive thermostats and car dashboard interfaces, design is further intertwining the digital and physical worlds. The result? Users have higher expectations and lower frustration levels. Use digital to dazzle your prospects, but don’t keep them waiting, or confused.What caught our eye: 
   • Cinemagraphs
   • Adobe Voice and Slate
   • Car dashboard interfaces
   • VUI — voice user interface
   • New forms of mobile navigation
2. Crowd power by the people, for the people.
   Crowdsourcing is now a 10-year-old term, but crowd power is ever evolving. Now, a new moment is taking place in the civic arena. To meet higher expectations for information access, governments are opening up their data and becoming more transparent. Meanwhile, citizens are organizing themselves in increasing numbers, using digital tools to improve their communities.This civic form of crowd power not only creates new opportunities for programmers and entrepreneurs to help governments become more transparent; but businesses can also tap into this trend to further their own cause-marketing programs, from zoning changes to giving back. 

   Crowd power moves:

   • Increased information sharing by government
   • Crowdsourcing and co-ops democratizing space
   • Micro-improvements making a big impact
3. Streamlining commerce for companies and customers.
   In a complex and connected world, simplifying the sale has become a business imperative, and several new tools are answering this need quite nicely. Point-of-sale (POS) systems now enable merchants to accept payments via tablet interface. Digital signature technologies reduce transaction time and costs, and mobile “buy” buttons that appear in social media feeds bring the point-of-sale directly to customers, wherever they are.On the flipside of the sale, new customer-engagement tools, such as Intercom™, Gainsight and on-demand customer-care company, Directly, are making it easier for businesses to reach, track and help their customers. 

   What’s simplifying the purchase path:

   • Tablet-style POS and business management systems
   • Digital signature technologies
   • Mobile “buy” buttons on Twitter, Facebook and Google
   • New customer engagement platforms: Intercom, Gainsight, Directly
4. Content is the new currency, and speed sells.
   Real-time marketing is no longer a nice-to-have for B2B. It’s an expectation, and brands are realizing those who break the story first stand to reap the biggest rewards. To stay ahead of customer demand and the competition, many are opening real-time newsrooms, leveraging them to mine trends and insights and creating content in response. These newsrooms can be scaled up or down as budgets and staffing allow, while content delivery systems, such as Meerkat’s streaming video service or Facebook’s Instant Articles, help feed the insatiable appetite for information in real time.Just in: 
   • Brands are deploying real-time newsrooms
   • Real-time content delivery via Periscope, Meerkat and Instant Articles on Facebook
   • Tweets appearing in Google search results
5. Rapid evolution of the tried and true.
   Think it’s enough to optimize your website for mobile? Think again. Traditional media platforms and advertising models are changing before our very eyes, meaning many go-to marketing strategies can no longer run on autopilot.Take mobile, for example. Ad formats are further adapting to user behavior, with scrolling image progression on Instagram, motion posters and five-second video shorts offered through Vessel, and cinematic pins now available on Pinterest. 

   From interactive infographics to episodic video series, familiar mediums are finding new ways to attract and engage customers.

   Traditional marketing tools, unconventional uses:

   • Mobile-first ad formats
   • Pay-to-play social media economy
   • Branded landscapes
   • Next-gen infographics
6. The tech transformation of B2B marketing.
   Leave it to high tech to make marketing more personal. People-based marketing is on the rise, and Facebook is leading the charge. With its recent acquisition of Atlas, a back-end data provider, Facebook can now attribute behavior to individual users. For marketers, that means cohesive cross-screen messaging is now easier to achieve. And just as consumers are seeking a seamless ad experience, marketing automation vendors are responding to marketers’ demands for a simpler approach. Customized suites give marketers one-touch access to all the tools they need.Once the leads come in, many marketers are turning to predictive analytics to determine the most promising prospects. 

   Trending high-tech marketing techniques:

   • People-based marketing
   • Expansion of marketing automation
   • Predictive analytics in B2B

It’s been long said that change is the only constant in business. However, there’s probably never been another time when the stuff of science fiction is becoming the new reality, on an almost daily basis. Rather than be awestruck, determine and execute those manageable ways you can turn the wonder of it all to your business advantage. In the era of 24/7 quantum leaps, that’s where success lies.

To watch the full webinar, click here.

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Pamela McWhorter, Senior Copywriter, gyro Cincinnati

As a copywriter at gyro, Pamela has had the pleasure of bringing ideas to life for a wide range of clients, including First Data, Tate & Lyle and SAP. She’s addicted to chocolate and aha moments, when words and pictures come together to create a great creative concept. Pamela’s a suburbanite who avoids driving a minivan at all costs. Her hobbies include raising seven-year-old twins with her husband.

According to a recent BrightEdge Content Engagement Report, consumers engage with 20 percent of content on average, whereas in the business-to-business space, average engagement for technology and manufacturing professionals is more than 53 percent. This engagement includes traffic, conversions and revenue.

Consequently, if you are involved in business-to-consumer marketing, I suggest a new mantra: Engagement with Content Is King.

If content is the battle, deeper engagement is how the war is to be won. Good content is vital, but striving toward deeper engagement is what fills needs and increases revenue. In order to drive content engagement, follow these seven proven ways:

1. No dead ends. Too often marketers are so happy to complete a piece of content that they publish it on a website and breathe a sigh of relief. However, every type of content should include a call to action or a way to more deeply engage. For example, “watch now”; “start today”; or “download the e-book.” Think about the next piece of relevant content and offer it.
2. Test, test, test. We’ve all heard about the importance of testing headlines, calls to action and even the color of buttons. Quite frankly, marketers rarely test. Recently, gyro conducted an A/B test of a button color and increased conversions by 12 percent just by imaging the amplified effect across an entire website.
3. Create once; use many. While this should be a common practice, some marketers are better at following it than others. If you are able to take a white paper and develop a social media post or infographic from it, think about how you could extend that content even further to create a SlideShare deck, webinar or even an executive summary to direct people to a white paper. Push yourself harder in this area, and you are bound to reap rewards.
4. Love surprises. At gyro, we are firm believers in measurement and analytics. A few months ago, we were surprised to learn that our social media program for a heavy manufacturing client was actually driving more conversions and engaged leads than some of our other channels. As a result, we reprioritized our efforts.
5. Include a passing lane. Do not limit your customers’ potential to advance to later marketing funnel content. You might think they are early- to mid-funnel because they downloaded a white paper, when, in fact, they are ready to request a quote.
6. To your target audience, be true. How many times have you been disappointed by the lack of authenticity of a brand? Sometimes it seems like brands forget who they are. Be consistent, but expand your brand by turning facts into stories, elevating customers into superheroes and inviting customer conversation in ways you have never done before.
7. Thank you is not goodbye. We love when forms are completed and leads are identified. However, too often we don’t deliver a “thank you” page. Thank you pages are wonderful opportunities to drive continued engagement by offering additional relevant content that might include offering a newsletter or providing social links.

As a content marketer, it’s a great time to be alive. There are more content tools, resources, channels and ways to measure engagement than ever before. So which of the “7 Proven Ways” make the most sense for you to focus, encourage and drive deeper engagement?

Background: This was adapted from a presentation John gave at Content Marketing World 2015.

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John Dobbs, SVP Group Account Director, gyro Cincinnati

John Dobbs brings a long track record of delivering tangible business results for national and global B2B clients, including GE, BP and Makino. With extensive experience in the industrial sector, John helps clients identify and amplify their points of differentiation to outpace competitors and drive meaningful growth. He offers expertise in long sales cycles and complex buyer journeys that require integrated planning and strategic direction, as well as excellent creative execution.

The years spent improving our understanding of the buyer journey, the development of more insightful personas and content may have resulted in marketers’ ability to be too good at personalizing solutions to buyers. How can that be?

The issue, according to CEB’s research underpinning its new book The Challenger Customer, is that our improved ability to increase a buyer’s awareness of those areas of a solution most relevant to them has inadvertently increased visibility into the overall risks associated with the purchase decision and/or change. As a result, buyers begin to unbundle and simplify solutions, driving down price points. The real shocker of this insight is that marketers’ improved ability to personalize content may be coming at a cost to sales.

According to co-author Pat Spenner, the real challenge lies in convincing buyers to first agree on making a change. “Focus your content marketing efforts on creating a consensus case for change among the decision making group,” he writes, which, according to CEB’s research, now involves at least five people in the typical B2B purchase.

According to Spenner, “Personalization can hurt the buyer’s ability to get that critical early consensus, because it can cement those individual stakeholders into their individual contexts, without doing anything to bring that more diverse group together around a common vision for change.”

So should we stop personalizing our communication? No, but it does highlight the need to also create that common rallying point, and to equip key buying group stakeholders with the tools to create consensus around it. Something the authors say helps clients elevate the conversation from “me to we,” an umbrella approach that ties your content efforts together regardless of the audience being targeted.

To motivate buyers to change, you first have to disrupt their status quo by planting and nourishing seeds of doubt about “business as usual.” Show them not just the benefits of action, but also the consequences of inaction. CEB recommends using fact-based content built off a Commercial Insight to break down buyers’ existing mental models.

Concurrent with breaking down the audience’s long-held beliefs, you need to give them something to aspire to – a new future state that rallies the group to take action. This is where a compelling creative campaign does the heavy lifting. A “big play” campaign, like IBM’s “Smarter Planet,” creates a compelling future vision but also provides a broad platform to disrupt IBM’s many different buyers and to cover IBM’s expansive solution/product portfolio.

Personalization is still essential, and comes via messaging to specific audiences. But it is built on the commercial insight, and aligned to the common vision of the future state. It’s not that personalization doesn’t work. In fact, it can be very effective for “breaking the status quo,” according to Spenner. “But you also need a unifying rallying point for buyers who may be too attuned to the risk associated with change.”

The key to leveraging the good work marketers have done to increase relevancy with buyers? Properly balance and/or convince the audiences that the rewards associated with making the change, both organizationally and personally, outweigh the risks you’re asking them to take on. If not, they will reduce the risk for you, and you may be hearing about it from sales.

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Scott Gillum – President, gyro Washington, D.C.

Scott Gillum has been the CMO of an INC 500 firm and the interim CMO at a Fortune 500 company. Currently, he leads the Channel Marketing practice and the Washington, D.C. office of gyro, a Top 50 global advertising agency. Prior to joining gyro, he spent a dozen years with MarketBridge, providing sales and marketing consulting services to Fortune 500 companies.

His blog, B2B Knowledge Sharing, has been recognized as a top Business-to-Business site, distributing content to a number of online publications. He has also been published in Forbes, Advertising Age, Fortune, Media Post and the Sales Blog. In addition, Gillum is a contributing author to the following books on marketing: Advice from the Top: The Expert Guide to B2B Marketing, PR News Guidebook, and Transformational Marketing: The Best of the Forbes CMO Network.

Follow him @sgillum

In the same way that millennials value experiences over products, they value donating their time over their dollars. According to the Millennial Impact Report 2015, 77 percent of respondents said that they are more likely to volunteer if they can use their specific skills or expertise to benefit a cause. In addition, millennials are part of a skilled workforce with a sense of social good. In 2014, 82 percent on average reported participation in positive action toward social change.

By focusing solely on money, organizations are looking at only half the picture. Here are three ways nonprofits can focus on creative capital in addition to financial capital when targeting millennials.

Implementing the “Reverse Registry”

Nonprofits should frame their needs within a story instead of a wish list. Instead of asking for money to fix a problem, show the impact of the problem and give millennials an opportunity to take the next step.

In 2011, I launched a social-good project called Underheard in New York with several others. We followed a “reverse registry” – instead of asking for a known solution, we talked about the need it would fill. One of the homeless men participating in the project walked 40 blocks each day to use a library computer. After hearing his story, someone donated a filled MetroCard so he could take the subway, and someone else donated a laptop computer – both wonderful, unanticipated results.

Many companies have adopted the participation economy concept, and nonprofits should too. If nonprofits give up a small amount of control, millennials are apt to feel like they have more ownership over the solution and may even deliver an outside-the-box answer.

Using Skills-Based Volunteering

Skills-based volunteering is gaining in popularity among millennials. For example, Catchafire is a website that connects professionals with nonprofits based on skills, cause, interest and time availability. Nonprofits can sign up on the site and post its needs, and users can search based on the cause they’re interested in (such as education) or their skill set (such as PR). Users can then donate their time using their skills to do things such as building websites, putting together press kits, creating a donor strategy and performing other kinds of higher-priced labor.

Since it was founded in 2009, Catchafire’s community has grown to more than 13,000 professionals. People have volunteered 45,000 hours to 3,000 nonprofits; this adds up to $11 million in donated time and labor – potentially more than they would have received by soliciting just monetary donations.

Bringing Hackathons into the Social-Good Space

Hackathons, defined by the General Assembly as a “marathon brainstorming session” that can last for a few days, have been around since the 1990s. Although originally used exclusively by the technical and coding community, in recent years, they’ve been used to build products, promote brands and even examine previously private government data to discover new solutions.

Nonprofits could look to hosting or sponsoring hackathons to solve a challenge. Similar to the reverse registry, solutions aren’t predetermined and can range from hardware to app ideas.

Recent hackathons by nonprofits have attacked issues such as street harassment and women’s rights. In September, gyro co-hosts its own hackathon with Self chec, a nonprofit created to help prevent cancers and other chronic diseases, and Startup Institute, a career accelerator for those looking to succeed in start-ups. The event, Coders vs. Cancer, challenges attendees to come up with innovative tools to help women learn and adhere to an effective self-examination schedule, thus creating healthy collective habits that prevent breast cancer.

All told, make sure you’re communicating with millennials on their terms. They are generous, philanthropic and looking to help a worthy cause. So whether you’re hosting a hackaton, using skills-based volunteering or implementing a reverse registry, millennials are ready to help you make it happen.

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Rosemary Melchior – Business Development Manager, gyro

Rosemary handles business development for gyro New York and supports new business initiatives throughout the global network. Prior to taking on this role, she was an Account Executive at gyro on TD Ameritrade and Starwood Hotels & Resorts. Before joining gyro, Rosemary spent several years at BBH New York working on global campaigns and clients. This included a global rebrand and repositioning for Vaseline, as well as work on Dove Men+Care, British Airways, and several non-profit projects.

It’s not surprising that playing with all of this newfound information has become a business obsession for many brands. It usually manifests itself as companies mining server farms gain even more insightful data on their customers to enable them to communicate with the most personalized messages possible.

However, the pursuit of ultra-fine-tuned, hyper-targeted reflections of customers can quickly become a reductive, low-return endeavor. While it can drive important marginal improvements in performance, it can distract marketers, blinding them to the fact that business decisions are driven by the heart and not rational data.

The fact of the matter is that people make the decisions in businesses. As human beings, we seek qualities such as authenticity, trust, respect and a sense of self-worth. In short, we want to feel an emotional connection with the people and companies we do business with.

Specifically, our research study with the FORTUNE Knowledge Group, one of the global leaders in business journalism, found that — in business decision-making – the emotional far outweighs the rational when it comes to making decisions. Almost two-thirds (65 percent) of 720 senior executives polled admitted that human factors (like values, culture and reputation) are more important than analytical factors when making business decisions.

Furthermore, 62 percent said that when it’s time to pull the trigger on making important decisions, they trust their gut more than anything else.

That’s why finding ways to humanize business and to build emotional connections with business decision-makers is the key to success. When people move beyond just buying your product or service and into the special space of buying into your company, your brand and what it stands for, then you’ll know you’ve achieved such success.

Our report, “Only Human: The Emotional Logic of Business Decisions,” and the follow-up report, “Beyond the Brand, Why Business Decision-Makers Buy into Strong Cultures,” explain that businesses with strong, defined reputations and cultures win. When choosing a company to do business with, 70 percent of respondents admitted that company reputation is the most influential factor. Company culture is also a key influencer, according to 53 percent of executives surveyed.
However, people don’t want to spend a huge amount of time understanding a company intellectually. They want to feel it, otherwise known as getting “a gut reaction.” They want to feel that a decision is right, and then most people try to post-rationalize it. Essentially, winning over an individual emotionally is by far the most powerful approach to winning their business.

Once you have used the insightful data to talk to your customers in a humanly relevant and timely way, and engage them enough to secure a face-to-face meeting, you have to bring the magic in the room, and embody the company ethos they have hopefully already bought into. In other words, if you have to spend a lot of time explaining your brand reputation and your company culture, then you have a problem.

So, yes, data is very important for informing marketing decisions. However, business-to-business marketers cannot allow it to become the be-all and end-all. They can’t allow themselves to be blind-sided by an obsession with big data. B-to-B marketers should think big emotion and small data. They should remember that each strong and successful business has a powerful emotive story that drives it. That is where the transformational magic is, not in the data.

Business decisions are deeply personal. They are high-consideration, career-changing moments; and there is plenty of analysis and rational thinking involved. As buyers, people are looking for a long-term partner they can relate to and collaborate with. In many ways, they are looking to find a small part of themselves and their hopes, dreams and ambitions in the business they buy into.

That’s why, ultimately, business decisions lie in the heart and not in the numbers.

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Chrissy is the Business Development Manager at gyro London.

As digital technologies become the foundational strategy of almost every line of business (LOB), IT can no longer simply serve as an order-taker. These professionals are in a prime position to step up and become a game-changer for their companies. The real question is whether IT is ready (and willing) to take the next big step toward the future.

Evolving Expectations
gyro recently conducted research to find the answer. Social media listening, qualitative interviews and a quantitative survey of 150 business leaders across a variety of functions revealed the perceptions, expectations and future goals that company leaders have of IT.

It’s evident from the research that LOB leaders yearn for IT to take a more strategic role within the company and help to prepare to handle the future marketplace. A quick look at the evolution of the top term describing IT’s role supports this finding:

5 years ago: Help desk service provider
Today: Technology infrastructure strategist
Future: Business technology strategist

Lines of business feel pressure to keep up with the rapid changes in technology, and they are looking to partner with IT to discover the best solutions to improve their efficiency and effectiveness.

That’s a dramatic shift in responsibility for the IT group, whose primary concerns used to surround the more tactical duties of maintaining infrastructure and troubleshooting — roles welcomed by the traditional technology professional personality.

But as technology evolves, so must the keepers of it. Eduardo Conrado, chief innovation officer for Motorola Solutions, describes these new IT personalities as “mavericks,” those who are willing to step up and take risks and play active roles in collaborating with other departments.

Drew Chapin, chief marketing officer at OnBase by Hyland, described this transformation well:

“CIOs for a long time were viewed as a utility. [There was] no expectation that IT would be into the business processes. Now it’s almost absolutely necessary for IT departments to understand what’s out there, what’s coming and then be able to advise the business and introduce new concepts and be more proactive.”

A Balanced Focus
As consumers gain more power and increasingly direct their own paths to purchase, all departments, including IT, must work together to deliver an integrated, seamless customer experience, as our research found.

Top 10 IT Department Tasks in the Future, According to Finance, Marketing and Operations Leaders

1. Find new ways to apply technology to improve the customer experience.
2. Find new ways to apply technology to improve business operations.
3. Drive business innovation through technology.
4. Find new ways to apply technology for competitive differentiation.
5. Manage IT security.
6. Control IT costs.
7. Improve internal IT operations.
8. Integrate information across the organization.
9. Lead technology change efforts.
10. Find new ways to apply technology to create value for customers.

Ask IT leaders what they want to accomplish in the future, though, and you are given a different story.

Top 10 IT Department Tasks in the Future, According to IT Leaders

1. Manage IT security.
2. Uncover insights through data analytics.
3. Protect customer privacy.
4. Improve usability.
5. Find new ways to apply technology to improve business operations.
6. Find new ways to apply technology to improve the customer experience.
7. Drive business innovation through technology.
8. Integrate information across the organization.
9. Prevent IT crises.
10. Find new ways to apply technology for competitive differentiation.

To rectify these disparities and better balance priorities for IT across the organization, the group must embrace its “human side” and change its culture and thinking about the department’s ultimate purpose and focus. It must also improve how it communicates with the organization — a primary area of disconnect and top area for IT improvement, according to the business leaders gyro surveyed.

To reinforce its identity within the organization, IT must not only transform itself, but also humanize itself in order to fulfill the role business leaders now expect of them.

“We have to make sure we get people to focus on the business needs we’re trying to accomplish,” said John Phelan, vice president of information services at OnBase by Hyland. “What are the requirements we’re trying to meet, rather than just what does the screen look like, what are the colors of the buttons, how many clicks do my users need to make? Our employees are our customers, and I expect the same level of service to them that we expect as a company to give to our end users.”

Times have changed. Technology has evolved. Business leaders’ expectations have increased. Now is the time of great opportunity for IT to become the game-changers that company leaders desire them to be, and showcase the value and human relevance that technology brings to the business.

To download “The Humanization of IT” white paper, please click here.

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Judy Begehr – Senior Vice President Account Planning, gyro Cincinnati

Judy Begehr is Senior Vice President, Account Planning, at gyro. Judy’s 15-plus year career in advertising has been focused on the intersection between strategy, the psychology of decision-making, and creative communications in business markets. She has mined market and audience insights leading to breakthrough strategies and award-winning integrated marketing programs for clients including SAP, GE, Kellogg, Tyco, Avaya, Pitney Bowes, Transamerica, AOL, Haworth, Zebra, Terumo, USG, Bright House Networks, Eaton, Mutual Service Corp, Deloitte Consulting, Food For All, Cincinnati Bell, and Allianz Global Risks.

However, there is something novel starting to seep into the industry. The maker space is moving its way into the halls of advertising agencies, through creative technologists, production partners and now hackathons. They aren’t trying to start conversations. They aren’t trying anything. They’re actually doing. And that’s why the industry is beginning to walk the walk when it comes to reinvention.

Messaging won’t be absent when it comes to production. It will be baked right into whatever we make. But the fact that the advertising industry can, on top of branding and conversing, actually be an industry is a true turning point.

Such reinvention helps culture in two ways. On the client side, becoming a partner with what the client actually produces further integrates us into the company; building trust, having more skin in the game and putting money in transforming the brand instead of just the image. In other words, clients gain an operational partner on top of an already existing messaging partner. True betterment rather than image alone.

On the agency side, it’s a modern conduit for pent-up creatives who sit on their spec ideas piling up in their filing cabinets. We always come up with 99 ideas before that one idea is chosen. However, those 99 ideas tend to burn holes in one’s pocket after a few years. Products made at events like hackathons focus all of that repressed creativity and give it an outlet.

BBH pioneered this in 2006 with ZAG. Anomaly created a joint venture division called Anomaly IP. Meanwhile, Weiden + Kennedy developed an accelerator program for start-ups called the Portland Incubator Experiment (P.I.E). Hackathons are one conduit for agency divisions like these – and agencies in general – to enter this new maker territory. There are even the ones on how to advertise.

It’s still in the early days, and it’s still uncharted territory. But nonprofit causes like the California drought and gyro’s upcoming Coders vs. Cancer in September give agencies a taste of what’s possible, bringing a modern way to interact with the consumer. It’s not a coupon or a confidence-boosting headline or even shining light on a different perspective, but an actual product.

Actions like this may produce something. But while raising the value of the client, it also helps define the brand. In the end, it’s still advertising.

——————–

Jaime Schwarz – Associate Creative Director, gyro New York

Jaime Schwarz, a creative for the past ten years in NYC, has split his career between full time at agencies like JWT, BBDO and currently gyro and freelance for agencies like AKQA, BBH, MRY and SS+K. As an integrated copywriter he has won Lions, pencils and CLIOs for experiential and digital work while continuing to innovate for clients and agencies alike.

Why such the low rating? Perhaps when it comes to the small to medium-size manufacturers, they are simply scared to change. They have been doing things a certain way for so long they assume those efforts are working best for them. They are wrong.

Buyers are constantly bombarded with a deluge of information, and communicating product specs and stats no longer cuts it. Industrial companies must take a more innovative approach if they want to connect with their customers and prospects. The solution? Better content marketing.

Content Challenges
Almost half of all manufacturing marketers say they will increase their spending on content marketing in the next 12 months. Yet, without a solid strategy in place, these efforts may be all for naught. Only 34 percent of industrial companies say they closely follow a content marketing strategy. Problem area No. 1.

The second potential problem? Many companies are trying to be all things to all people. The average manufacturer is targeting five separate audiences. So it comes as no surprise that their go-to strategy is to push out as much content as possible in the hope that it sticks. In fact, 65 percent of manufacturing marketers say they are creating more content than they were one year ago.

But this is the wrong approach. The focus needs to be on quality, not quantity. Rather than adding to the noise, companies need to create a few key pieces that portray their brand’s unique perspective and relate to the audiences on a emotional, humanly relevant level.

Content That Works
There’s no doubt that video is a hot content marketing tactic. So much so that 87 percent of manufacturing marketers use it in their efforts. A majority of marketers (82 percent) are also relying heavily on illustrations and photos. These two tactics resonate well with the manufacturing audience since industrial companies produce precision products that often need to be seen to understand their value.

Other tactics being used include:

• e-newsletters, 85 percent
• Social media, 85 percent
• Digital articles, 84 percent
• In-person events, 79 percent
• Case studies, 75 percent
• White papers, 70 percent
• Print magazines, 65 percent
• Blogs, 60 percent
• Microsites, 56 percent
• Online presentations, 52 percent

It should be noted that while many manufacturing marketers still put money and effort into doing the tried-and-true trade shows, fewer than 50 percent say they are using the following tactics:

• Webinars/webcasts, 48 percent
• Infographics, 42 percent
• Mobile apps, 38 percent
• Digital magazines, 35 percent
• e-books, 18 percent
• Podcasts, 17 percent

Interestingly, however, some of these tactics are the very ones that marketers claim are the most effective in the industrial space, such as webcasts (62 percent) and e-books (50 percent).

This reveals a window of opportunity. By taking advantage of these underused tactics, you’ll not only be able to differentiate yourself from the competition, but you can more effectively connect to your audiences.

In It for the Long Haul
Manufacturing companies recognize that producing engaging content and measuring its effectiveness is difficult; 62 percent say they are presently challenged with and are working on creating more engaging/higher-quality content.

Here are some tips to help:

1. Focus your efforts. Many companies try to create a lot of content (video, newsletters, case studies, blogs) and spend large sums of money in year one on too many things. Such tactics can lead to disappointment if their efforts aren’t successful. Manufacturing marketers are better off focusing on a few tactics and doing those well.
2. Slice and dice. If companies can create a handful of effective pieces in year one, those materials can later be repurposed in other ways, such as social media posts or turning a white paper into shorter, more focused articles.
3. Don’t sell it. Companies can’t say they are creating thought leadership pieces if the assets read like self-promotional sales brochures. Pick topics that are educational and meaningful. Content marketing is all about building targeted awareness, which is accomplished by creating something your potential customers will consider helpful. You must focus on their changing needs and not your own.
4. Stay consistent. Maintain a regular cadence of content creation. This strategy can help you learn what topics and types of content resonate most with your audience and enables you to maintain relationships with decision-makers over time.
5. Promote it. What good is your content if no one sees it? Don’t forget to promote content through search, email, social media or paid advertising to build the audience.
6. Track the ROI. Only 12 percent of B-to-B manufacturing marketers think they are successful at tracking the ROI of their content marketing programs, and fewer than half use sales as a metric to measure content marketing success. Learn what works best and do more of it to keep ahead of your competitors.
7. Stick with it. When it comes to content marketing, you need to stay in it for the long haul. Don’t expect immediate results. Building meaningful relationships takes time.

Your company’s products are technical. The environments where industrial products are used can be tough. But your communications don’t have to be just as hard. Your audience needs you to listen to them, understand them and make real connections with them through personalized, relevant content. Content marketing is not just a one-and-done tactic, but a meaningful, ongoing conversation.

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Carolyn Ladd – Vice President of Account Planning, gyro Cincinnati

As an account planner, Carolyn is responsible conducting research projects, developing strategic insights, facilitating ideation sessions and workshops related to process improvement, new product development, campaign strategy, defining analytics and metrics for clients, and working with agency teams to develop campaign strategies and tactics that resonate with customers.

Carolyn’s first foray in business was with Thoughtware Inc., a pioneer in interactive learning and integrated support systems. The job at Thoughtware led Carolyn to realize that she thrives as a strategic planner and consultant. Her strong sense of curiosity, superb listening skills, solid facilitation acumen and the innate ability to distill complex ideas into simple messages were crucial to her role. As she says, “I’m always at my best when working with the unknown. I enjoy taking all the pieces of the puzzle and putting it together.”

Carolyn has been working with the world’s top brands for over 20 years. She has conducted complex research that drives brand messaging and tactical planning. She has developed segmentation programs for B-to-B companies that rely on brokers, deals and/or distributors to sell their products and solutions. Carolyn is passionate about leveraging digital strategy and tactics to drive results. At gyro, she is one of the leaders in digital marketing communications.