Welcome to “Brand Aware.”
I’m Bob Arnold, Associate Director of Global Digital Strategy at Kellogg Company, and I have the privilege of penning this column. I’ve been in the digital marketing space for more than 12 years – 10 years at Procter & Gamble and two years at Kellogg.
Having grown up in the “branding” side (as opposed to the “direct” side) of marketing, I’ve always felt that ad tech companies – to a certain degree – have ignored or simply not understood brand marketers. This is evidenced by the lack of innovations that are developed with branding as the main focus.
As a result most large brands only invest a fraction of their budget into the space, despite the mass consumer adoption – a recent AdAge article states, “By the most generous estimates, the all-in costs of digital make up around 10% of P&G’s U.S. marketing outlay and a similar share for P&G’s big global rivals, Unilever and L’Oréal — Nos. 2 and 3 in global ad spending, respectively.” It has become a vicious cycle!
My vision for this column is simple – to help close the gap between amazing technology companies and brand marketers. If ad technology companies understand what keep brand marketers up at night, we’ll be flooded with incredible innovations.
Trust me, brand marketers want to play much more in the space, we just need help getting there. So, while I definitely don’t have all of the answers. I’ll do my best to represent what’s on brand marketers’ minds, our needs, frustrations, etc.
Which brings me to you. Whether you are a fellow marketer or in ad tech, I look forward to your feedback, questions, and, above all, your participation. Please post suggestions for future columns in the comments below.
Google has famously predicted that the display market will hit $200B a year. Clearly we have a ways to go and I want us – together – to do everything possible to make it a reality.
Follow Bob Arnold (@bobbyarnold) and AdExchanger (@adexchanger) on Twitter.
