The Unreachables: A Generation Lost to Marketers

As marketers, we all know that the way we learn about brands and products is changing on a seemingly-daily basis. What we have trouble with is getting our arms around it.

Hearts & Science, the meteoric OMD ad agency that is a current client of mine, has a couple of pretty good wins as its first two clients-- P&G and AT&T, only the #1 and #2 biggest media spending clients in the US. These are both behemoth companies whose product lines-- consumer packaged goods and telecommunications services-- are undergoing tectonic market shifts.

The agency recently partnered with The Wharton School of Business to capture some of these shifts in an important set of studies. Click here for the study's microsite. Here are a couple of findings that stood out for me:

The new ways we're consuming content have outrun our ability to market to consumers. Fully 47% of people 22 to 45 in the US aren't accounted for in the current way of measuring TV and video consumption. The study draws a line in the sand of panel-based method measurement, with technical and philosophical issues creating "obviously absurd requirement(s) that negate the power of dynamic digital targeting and therefore includes very little digital viewership in these measures," according to Scott Hagedorn, Hearts & Science CEO.

If you thought streaming wasn't a thing, well... understanding how to get the most from addressable TV is the Big Marketing Problem of our time. 73% of 22-45 video consumers are watching Netflix, Amazon, and other streaming services. If you're relying on broadcast to give your media plan reach, this chart might keep you up late at night:

Bring data or go home. There's a new customer journey these Unreachables embark upon that have nothing to do with your current marketing strategy or media plan. If you aren't looking at the right datasets, or your first party data isn't porting into systems that allow agile decision-making, now is the time to rethink your marketing science strategy.

Some media outlets are getting it. For example, ESPN is starting to deliver measurability on every screen, although the initial offering will offer weeks-old data. But the entire content industry, and especially companies that deliver programming on multiple screens, needs to hear the call for open APIs and consistent, common-sense measurement tools across channels.

As a recruiter in the media and marketing science field, I speak daily with marketers whose depth in modern marketing practices falls short of what's needed right now. It's time for marketing and advertising professionals to understand what's happened over the last five years, and to pursue radical upgrades in skillset and knowledge. The world has changed around all marketers, and today's traditional marketing plan is going the way of the buggy whip.

Rob Pait is head of Unicorn Consulting Group, providing companies with fractional talent acquisition leadership.