Think About Layers Not Channels

This week I was chatting to a colleague who works at an agency specialising in Dynamic Creative Optimisation (DCO).

For all the growth that this area of the industry and by proxy, his business was seeing, he suggested that his clients and partners were treating this capability as an isolated line item on the digital plan; little more than a media vendor, that could be removed or exchanged from the plan with ease.

DCO capability was being diminished by virtue of this treatment, he argued. It was seen as a nice to have and not an integrated component of the communications strategy.

This feels like an all too familiar story.

Much of the early advertising opportunities in digital environments were facsimiles of traditional or established routes to market that already existed in analogue media channels. But, as technology advanced, new opportunities emerged that posed greater questions of marketers and practitioners. Specifically, I’m thinking about things such as Search, Mobile, eCommerce, Programmatic and Social.

At a prosaic level, these opportunities can be (and still are) exploited as another means of transmitting messages to audiences - as a route to reach. However, when considered more broadly, they represent a much more profound opportunity for marketing and brand building.

Search is a consumer behaviour, not just a channel; mobile is about consumer connectivity and access to information, not just the use of smaller banners; Programmatic allows for a more dynamic use of data signals; Social represents the infrastructure for user-generated networks that live alongside mainstream media networks; eCommerce provides a route to the reduction of friction in the user journey, not just a form of digital POS.

Dynamic, like those other, big and material advances in technology that came before, can easily be thought of as a channel. When thought of as a line item on the plan DCO may help us eek out another couple of basis points of efficiency in ad performance. Our natural inclination, when dealing with new technology is to approach the opportunity in this way. This leads to a fairly one dimensional, transactional and ‘unintegrated’ approach.

In contrast, when considered through the lens of the underlying technology as opposed to just the output (a banner or MPU), Dynamic capability could represent something much more exciting; a means by which a brand could, across all it’s touchpoints, ensure maximum relevance to the audience it is being presented to through the management and application of data signals.

I’ve been toying with the thought that visualising elements of the marketing mix as a series of layers powered by these new technological opportunities rather than a set of individual channels, in the hope that this provides a route to more coherent, integrated thinking. A thought that riffs off Stewart Brand’s concept of Pace Layers, which I encountered in Dan Hill’s brilliant essay Dark Matter and Trojan Horses.

Marketing meets Geology - rethinking the marketing mix as a series of layers, rather than as discrete channels (Source: Author)

The model, pictured above, which feels most correct to me has six layers, layers which I’ve defined as follows:

At the base of the model, which is our most fundamental layer, is Product: what a company produces and sells.

Above this is Brand: the means by which a company brands it’s products: logos, colours, fonts, brand name, slogans and other forms of distinctive brand assets.

The third layer up is Experience and Discoverability: A brand’s physical and digital presence - what the brand does and where it does it, in both the real and digital world. Apps, Websites/.com, social accounts, its own retail estate, its corporate headquarters, its fleet of vehicles and ‘experiential’ activities. Discoverability includes what we might traditionally think of as ‘search’, but I have deliberately relabelled so we might conceive of this less as ‘google’ and more as getting the brand listed in all relevant environments where search behaviour exists.

Next is Commerce: the ways and means by which a brand transacts with consumers beyond it’s own retail environments. This includes working with third party retailers and distributors, advertising within these retailers, performance media activity designed to drive conversion to sale and new forms of ‘shoppable’ advertising format which shorten the distance between exposure and sale.

The penultimate layer is Content and Commmunication. What we would typically think of as brand advertising, focussed on building the top and middle of the brand funnel - the inclusion of content broadens the role of this layer beyond merely ATL and starts to make allowances for branded content, influencer and creator partnerships, sponsorships etc.

Last is Context: the levers by which a brand can flex it’s activity in content and communication such as audience availability, advertising inventory related to specific and relevant content genres, geo-location/device or IP, weather related triggers such as temperature etc

In this model each layer builds on top of the one that came before, and whilst not all activities we undertake will need to use all layers (as brand and product may be locked) this does not mean we should be working in isolation of these factors. Similarly, in some instances some of the layers may not be useful. But, this model might encourage thinking which cascades upward and downward through the layers, asking planners and strategists to make choices and build ideas through the lens of the adjacent layer. The abundance of data we now have in marketing can help provide the means of navigating the layers, acting as a form of connective tissue.

Thought of in this way - there is an additive, multiplicative dynamic at play (e.g. What is the commerce layer doing? How might we make this idea or experience shoppable? ) when building plans - rather than what can happen when we think about things purely in channel terms: isolated, unintegrated or loosely integrated activities which don’t capitalise on the full potential offered by martech innovation and that don’t ladder to a coherent strategy.

To my mind we need models that break down channel silos and reframe martech opportunities in the broadest, most fertile ways if we’re to create integrated, effective solutions.

Musician Drake not only helped get Top Boy back onto our screens, but he’s also used it as a vehicle to add hype to the latest Nike collaboration with his Nocta streetwear label. A modern, layered approach to marketing covering many of the layers listed above. An approach which weaves itself seamlessly through content, commerce, experience, discoverability, brand and product layers. Proper, modern integrated marketing fit for the modern age.

I believe that effective integration is simultaneously the biggest opportunity and challenge facing Strategists today. New technological opportunities need new mental models if we’re to use them to the best of their ability. Yes, DCO may sit comfortably within a channel like Digital Display, but thinking of it in these terms only is to miss the point; when considered as a layer that can sit over everything, dynamic media opportunities becomes a potent addition that could inform and impact everything a brand does. As more and more technologies emerge which have the potential to shift the fundamental mechanics of the communications landscape I believe we have to stop talking and thinking in channel terms and instead start thinking in terms of layers. By thinking about activity as a series of layers that sit on top of one another, we will find a means of achieving an effective, coherent form of integration in a media landscape which is fragmenting more and more all the time.