In the past, consumers previously spent a lot of their personal time researching their purchases. First, they needed to be hear about a brand. Then, they had to learn about their products to see if it was worth their while, and finally they would go out to the store to purchase. But that’s all changed thanks to social media ads, explained Claudine Cheever, VP of global brand and marketing at Amazon.
“Of course, everyone’s talking about AI, but I think they’re also talking about the funnel being broken — this idea that customers move in a very orderly fashion from first being aware of a brand to considering it, to purchasing it,” said Cheever.
She sat down at Variety Studio, presented by Canva, at Cannes Lions to discuss current shifts in the way people consume products, and how social media influences a lot of instant shopping.
“If you think of things like direct to consumer marketing and all the social marketing and social commerce, it’s ‘see it, buy it’ for a lot of people,” Cheever explained. “So, I think everyone’s trying to figure out how to navigate that changing customer journey and obviously, the role of technology in doing that.”
She considers this break in the typical consumption chain to be a good thing because allows consumers to buy exactly what they want, and not be marketed with products brands think they need based on their demographic. Instead, she hopes technology can pick up on trends in what people search or browse so they can better determine how to market to them as an individual.
“I personally don’t like to be marketed to my age. I’d rather be marketed to whatever mood I’m in, or maybe the last thing that I bought, versus being told over and over again I’m a certain age,” Cheever explained.
But sometimes, that sort of hyperawareness in advertising can be off putting to consumers. “Sometimes you get [ads] so directly connected to something, it’s a little creepy,” she said. “So, I think that that’s one of the things too, where I see AI not so much writing my Super Bowl ad, but helping me make my media plan work a lot harder and the delivery of the ads being much more relevant.”
A company like Amazon still needs people to write ads like their most recent Super Bowl commercial about the family and their dog. “That inventiveness of when they go, ‘Oh, we’ll get another dog for the dog.’ And that a-ha moment, that’s how we drive our own culture,” Cheever said.
In the future, she hopes to see a smoother collaboration between tech and analog advertising strategies.
“I think five years out, you’re going to see much better marriage between technology and creativity. Hopefully, that will really be sinking together,” she said. “And certainly, technology is going to replace a lot of more mundane, rudimentary creative, but there’s always a role of judgment, and people pay attention to what’s distinctively different and they’ve never seen before.”
