Value: it’s not just for clients

At Dizplai, we believe that an equal value exchange between brands, audiences and channel owners is the key to efficacy in modern marketing. From humble beginnings, marketers have been looking at ways that they can ‘add value’ for clients. From the smoke-filled, whiskey-scented brainstorm rooms of the by-gone Mad Men era, through to today’s multi-channel modern marketing approaches, a response to a brief was all about how best to serve the brand:

What can it deliver? What’s the most creative way we can land the brand message? Will the client like our campaign?

Granted, these are important questions for advertisers, marketers and creatives to ask when it comes to a client brief, but in 2024 the rules of the game have changed. Or rather, the customers that are forced to play the game are instead playing their own game. Changes to the media landscape have seen a shift in control of branded content because channels, content, topics, and communities have become irreversibly fragmented.

Audiences are savvy. They avoid advertising at all costs and – due to how time-poor they are and the amount of content they need to consume – the value that content is giving them becomes critical to their selection process. They will avoid anything that interrupts the content that they now opt into via communities, independent research and esoteric interests. Without spending time thinking about what a brand’s target audience values, the chances of modern-day campaigns succeeding diminish.

This idea of a value exchange between the brand, audience, and channel owner is critical to our approach at Dizplai Creative. Yes, adding value for clients is paramount, but just as important is conceiving the ideas, creative, and content that demonstrates clear value for the target audience. No longer can agencies pump media dollars into branded content and expect the same engagement returns that they did fifteen years ago. If agency thinking doesn’t start from thinking directly about what audiences care about, respond to and participate in, then their plans are destined to fail. Or at best, be very expensive, perform with high reach and impressions but result in mediocre conversion and attention. An exchange of value in modern marketing shouldn’t be a crazy idea – it’s human nature for us to spend time with people, objects, experiences and moments that add value to our lives and our digital lives are no different. The challenge we face is convincing marketers to take a moment to stop thinking only about their brand strategy and start putting some effort into their audience strategy.

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