The German car maker and French beauty brand fronted Cannes delegates yesterday with some unsettling news for media owners and sage advice for marketing colleagues.
BMW and L’Oreal’s customer pathway to purchase cycle, once underpinned by big mainstream media awareness raising efforts, was being transformed by producing thousands of narrowly targeted online articles, “how to” online videos and, in BMW's case, “really useful” apps. Most of the online publishing initiatives relied heavily on organic and paid search tactics to get their branded information to people researching those product categories.
Using content creators and aggregators like Demand Media and Say Media, L’Oreal and BMW are lessening their reliance on mainstream media – although they stress they’re not eliminating traditional advertising forms altogether – to keep up with the changing sources of influence in consumer purchasing decisions.
L’Oreal’s chief marketing officer for North America, Marc Speichert, said consumers had already “gone” to online when trying to inform their choices in categories like electronics, books and video games and the “next battleground” was in beauty, footwear and home décor - 35% of beauty product buyers were now researching online before they purchased certain products and the figure was rising. Grocery and household goods, he said, were less affected at this stage by consumer online "evaluation".
Driving consideration and awareness in mass media was
where L’Oreal traditionally spent most of its advertising efforts,
Speichert said, but the cosmetics giant had identified a “big opportunity” in
the “evaluation phase” of beauty products, which meant people were
increasingly researching online before they decided on the products
to buy.
“The new model is more complex,” he said. L’Oreal’s
old “push” mass media approach, designed to create brand awareness and purchase consideration with consumers, had now splintered. Mass media was, in part, giving way to L'Oreal's online branded publishing efforts, which included detailed fashion advice for specific body shapes, bridal makeup for different skin colours and even the right colours for eyelid types such as monolids - an Asian characteristic.
All of these brand funded online "publishing" initiatives were designed to rank highly in online search queries. Speichert said L'Oreal was abandoning its more simple mass media "pathway to purchase funnel", used by most consumer goods marketers, in favour of a four stage approach - it still used traditional media but marketing investment was moving more heavily into online publishing to influence consideration, evaluation, purchase and consumer advocacy.
The session, presented by UM, included research the media agency conducted with US trade publication,
Advertising Age, of marketing executives - 51% of which said they
were already investing bigger marketing budgets to become online content
publishers. Another 25%, UM said, were already shifting their marketing budgets to
“riskier” initiatives outside traditional advertising and 32% said they would
start doing so in the next 12 months. A third of marketers, however, said they were not
interested in the idea of more risk. Established media players will be happy about that.
Have something to say on this? Share your views in the comments section below. Or if you have a news story or tip-off, drop us a line at adnews@yaffa.com.au
Sign up to the AdNews newsletter, like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter for breaking stories and campaigns throughout the day.