The content management space continues to evolve. We’re starting to see this push towards microservices, headless content management, and that’s going to be ultra relevant because the compute paradigm is shifting. More channels for compute are coming into the fold so the need to get content to various channels is becoming increasingly relevant.
Lamar Hines is the new Chief Technology Officer at Barbarian, a collaborative and creative digital advertising agency providing end-to-end, brand-to-customer marketing services. Prior to joining Barbarian, Hines was the Vice President of Technology at R/GA.
In this episode of Velocitize Talks, Hines shares his thoughts on 5G marketing, organizational alignment and how technology continues to change marketing.
Level up your brand (1:11)
It’s really about breaking down those organizational silos [and] creating connected technology to help drive value for brands that are looking to increase revenue, decrease operational inefficiencies and ultimately create great customer experiences.
Breaking down silos remains one of the top benefits of digital transformations within a large corporation. Organizational alignment, paired with the right technology, are the keys to your digital future.
Barbarian recently created a client tool called Barbarian Labs. The tool employs audits and develops custom teams within an organization to identify both obstacles and opportunities.
Perfectly aligned (2:25)
It’s thinking about that on three levels: people, process and platforms. How do you create a connective tissue between those concerns and then, ultimately, how do you let technology sit under that as a foundation to connect people to allow things to run in a seamless fashion?
In a report by Deloitte, Aligning the Organization for Its Digital Future, researchers emphasized the need for increased digital congruence. This can strengthen your brand and build consistency, enhancing the consumer experience. (Check out Barbarian’s latest talk, The New Direct to Stay-At-Home Consumer, here.)
Providing value (3:45)
I think for the future it’s really about brands earning the right. So providing value for consumers, and as they’re providing value, slowly progressively profiling those consumers and then leveraging that data to bring more value back to the consumer.
Millennials are willing to hand over personal data if it provides convenience and a more personalized experience.
Leveraging AI (4:20)
Ultimately, artificial intelligence and machine learning give us the opportunity to really drive additional value out of the data we’re collecting so we can be more predictive and provide great customer experiences from an operational perspective.
This year AI is projected to create over 2 million jobs, according to research from Gartner.
Connecting customers (4:52)
How do we make sure our technologies are connected across the organization to drive great customer experiences? From there, it’s thinking about that customer journey holistically.
Creating a positive customer experience pays off. PwC reported that keeping customers happy can translate into a 16% price premium on products and services.
The customer’s always right (5:42)
It really comes down to ensuring that we understand what the business needs, the business outcomes that brands are seeking. Also, most importantly, just listening to what the customer is looking to get out of the relationship.
It’s that personal relationship that customers are looking for, and retailers have taken note. In fact 66% of retailers have defined omnichannel retailing as delivering a “seamless and consistent” customer experience.
Open for business (6:23)
The world is proliferated with innovation and a lot of that comes from the open source communities that are creating technologies that give a foundation to accelerate innovation. A great example of that is the Cinder project, which came out of Barbarian.
Cinder is a free, open source library for coding in C++. People have used Cinder to create interactive art work, interactive museum visitor tours, a national park finder and much more. Brands such as Forbes, Playstation, Microsoft and others have built their websites using open source CMS WordPress. WordPress is used by 28% of the internet.
Social commerce (7:52)
I think social media will continue to be key. Social commerce is becoming very relevant. Leveraging influencers for brands is something that’s ultra relevant.
Barbarian recently created a social media campaign for its client JBL across Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat, with the goal of reaching their targeted customers where they are and increasing brand awareness. Consumers are over 30% more likely to purchase online this year. Even before Covid-19, Business Insider reported that 36% of US internet users said their social networks influence product choices.
Are websites extinct? (8:51)
We’re slowly going to get from the phase of infancy to a scenario where AR and VR penetrate the market. It’ll become much smaller and 5G will play a pretty critical role in being able to serve up content in a more seamless fashion to a smaller device over time.
Websites have continued to evolve. Here’s a fun walkthrough of how they’ve changed. In the past 20 years as technology and customer expectations have evolved, websites have followed. Flash died, HTML5 was born, and mobile-first became a thing; then came VR and AR. The Next Web outlines what’s possible.
5G marketing (10:05)
A lot of that hardware can be removed and things can stream into device so that’ll play a pretty critical role in helping to make augmented reality and virtual reality something that’s ubiquitous.
According to a Forbes blog post, The Four P’s of Marketing 5G, the next frontier of 5G marketing will bring about the ability to utilize AR and VR while monetizing the back-end infrastructure.
To learn more about Barbarian, visit their website and follow them on LinkedIn and Twitter at @WeAreBarbarian.