The New 4Ps of

Marketing
September 2014

In this Fast Take we examine how the traditional 4ps

Product, Price, Placement, and Promotionare evolving in a
world of real-time marketing and multiple screens.
In the process, we explore the emergence of a new 4Ps for
marketingPortability, Personalization, Proximity, and
Presencealong with the imperative (and opportunities) they
present to brands and marketers around the world.

WHATS INSIDE
The new customer journey: What brands need to
understand to thrive in a real-time, multiscreen world
Portability: Applying the concept of responsive
design to the entirety of the customer experience
Personalization: Using volunteered and implied
customer data to create more meaningful content
Proximity: Going beyond latitude and longitude to
create true contextual relevance
Presence: Integrating digital connectivity into the
physical world
Case studies: Inspiring brand executions
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THE NEW LANDSCAPE

WHATS DRIVING THE TREND?

Thanks to an expanding ecosystem of devices and

technologies, marketing is evolving faster than ever. Almost
everything is becoming connected to the Internet and
brands face pressure to be accessible anytime, anywhere,
across a fast-growing array of touchpoints.

Mobility has disrupted digitals status quo in

unforeseen ways. The one-size-fits all approach to
content is a thing of the past; today brands must be
accessible across many screens but they must also be
relevant to the user behaviors these devices engender.

So what are the new 4Ps?

Product, Price, Placement, and Promotion still matter but
the new 4Ps enable us to expand upon and magnify their
effects in an increasingly digital world.
These new 4Ps are:
Portability of the customer experience across myriad
devices and interfaces.
Personalization of the customer experience using
volunteered and implied data.

Proximity, adding additional context based on where

someone is both literally (e.g., geo-location) and
metaphorically (e.g., customer journey).
Presence, integration of digital interactivity into
traditional media and everyday objects.

Consumer adoption of smartphones and tablets is the

key driver of this trend. Better, more affordable
hardware and cheaper, more plentiful data have
created a culture in which consumers expect content to
be automatically customized to their screen of choice.
However, in this new always-on, internet-of-things
world, literally everything has potential to be a screen
and this complicates matters for brands considerably.
Complexity makes it tempting to resist change and its
common to try to retrofit the new into the oldcase in
point, the websites of the early 90s that looked so
much like print brochures. But Moores Law ensures
that marketing will continue to evolve at a faster pace
than ever. The new 4Ps provide a familiar framework
for brands to navigate this new world where change is
the only constant.

Responsive Brands are useful, usable, and relevant across the

many diverse touchpoints of the new customer journey

THE NEW
CUSTOMER
JOURNEY
Todays always-on consumer is
continuously bombarded with
information, seeing thousands of
brand messages per day.
The key to success is to create clarity
amid the chaos, delivering the right
experience to the right person at the
right time across the many digital
touch points of the journeyi.e., by
behaving responsively.
Responsive Brands create successful
relationships with the connected
consumer by applying the principles
of responsive designi.e., real-time,
contextual, multiscreen experience
deliveryto all aspects of marketing,
from start to finish.

Searches for
info on her
smartphone

Texts to a short
code on a
billboard

Gets a beacon
message from
a POS display

Gets an alert
from a fitness
tracker

Gets a push
message from
an app

Interacts with
an in-store
kiosk

Gets a
sponsored
message from
a smartwatch

Makes a mobile
payment

Sees a beacontriggered
personalized
DOH message

Scans a QR
code on a
package

Performs a
voice search
using an app

Scans a
product logo to
see an AR
experience

Performs a
visual search
using smart
glasses

Sees a Twitter
ad while
watching TV

PORTABILITY
The imperative to behave responsively
Portability is about seamless experiences that
make the customer journey faster, more
enjoyable and ultimately more successful for
consumer and brand alike. In essence, its about
reducing friction in an increasingly frenetic world.
Responsive web design was the earliest and m0st
obvious portability trend, but behaving
responsively has evolved far beyond delivering
digital content to smartphones and tablets. Truly
responsive brands are the ones creating holistic
content ecosystems that support the needs of
real-time, multiscreen consumers, e.g.,
The ability to initiate payments in real-time on
a chosen device
The option to start a video on one screen and
continue it on another
The opportunity to get customized product
information through in-store screens
The chance to get specialized offers and
rewards based on your current location and
your relationship with a brand

MOBILE-FIRST CONTENT
STRATEGY

TOP PORTABILITY
TRENDS
More than 50% of digital media
is consumed using nondesktop devices, a percentage
that will continue to grow as
new screens evolve1.
It is vital for brands to
understand how to create the
right experience across new
interfaces, not just in terms of
usability, but in terms of
content as well.

According to comScore, as of June 2014,

smartphones and tablets accounted for
60% of Internet usage1 in the United
States.
The concept of mobile first, i.e., using
mobile devices as the starting point for
designing digital content, is fast
becoming a best practice for brands.

APP CENTRIC CONTENT

DESIGN
Consumers spend upwards of 80%2 of
their mobile time in native apps. This
demonstrated preference for the
streamlined and customizable user
experience of apps impacts how brands
invest their digital dollars in both media and
content development.
Not only are brands accelerating the shift to
in-app advertising, there is also an
increased emphasis on developing branded
native apps and in actively cultivating a high
level of post-download engagement.

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1.comScore, Major Mobile Milestones in May: Apps Now Drive Half of All Time Spent on Digital; June 2014
2.Flurry, Flurry Five-Year Report: Its an App World. The Web Just Lives in It,, April 2013

PERSONALIZATION
The end of the one-size-fits-all customer experience
Early tools like Google Maps catalyzed the sharing of
personal data (e.g., physical location), in exchange for
customized, real-time content (e.g., directions). These
experiences opened us up to the idea that it might be
OK to share a little non-personally identifiable data as
long as we got something of value in return.
The next wave of personalization came from social and
service oriented brands (e.g., LinkedIn, Netflix,
Amazon) that customized the content served based on
observed behaviors from users such as people they
followed, movies watched, products purchased, etc.

Warby Parker Virtual Try On

Now were seeing personalization spreading to more

diverse types of brands, with adoption most evident in
Retail/CPG. Rather than simply using analytics to
customize content, these brands are using data
volunteered by users to create better experiences.
The idea of consumers proactively exchanging data for
customized content is particularly compelling in a
world where the cookie is no longer the silver bullet
and where consumers are more aware of, and
concerned by, potential infringement on their privacy.

Shoe Dazzle Style Profile

Trunk Club Personal Shopping

THE QUANTIFICATION OF
THE SELF

TOP
PERSONALIZATION
TRENDS
Consumers are becoming more
aware that they produce data that
can be exchanged with brands for
something they value, such as
directions, better content, tools
that help us make better
decisions, etc.
Now is an opportune time for
brands to understand how to
properly collect and solicit
consumer data, and to determine
how it can be used to improve the
customer experience.

The wearables market is expected to be worth

8.36 billion by 2018, and its just getting
started1.
Brands early to the marketplace, like the
Jawbone Up and Nike FuelBand, introduced
consumers to the concept of owning their data
and making something meaningful out of it.
As wearables become increasingly
sophisticated and integrated with mobile
devices, personal data management will
become more consistent and the practice of
using it as a form of currency more common.

MULTISCREEN
SEQUENTIAL CREATIVE
Cross-screen analytics, driven by mobiles cookieless state, has evolved from the experimental
stage into a viable (albeit nascent) medium.
Hybrid statistical solutions designed for mobile
are enabling a unified view of a single consumer
across multiple devices and offering brands the
opportunity to finally create a truly sequential
narrative with media and content.

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1. Markets and Market Report, Wearable Electronics Market worth $8.36 Billion By 2018 ,
October 2013

PROXIMITY

Using location and ambient factors to create context

Proximity extends the concept of location beyond latitude & longitude to include
adjacency to places of interest and real-time events, because knowing where
consumers are and whats going on around them is almost as relevant as who a
consumer is.

Latitude & Longitude

Lat Long only tells you so much

layering in other data (e.g., whats
happening nearby, places and
things in the vicinity, who someone
is, and their relationship with a
brand) turns geo-coordinates from
simple numbers to true relevance.

Places of Interest

Understanding what is in a
customers vicinity tells us a great
deal about his or her needs state
(e.g., they are likely to respond
very differently to an offer
message from Target when
standing in the store vs. when
sitting in their living room).

Events & Circumstances

Real-time events add an additional

layer of valuable context to
proximity. Weather, seasons,
events, and many other types of
dynamic circumstances, when
combined with geo-location and
proximity to places of interest,
supercharge the standard notion of
location.

Latitude and longitude are the fundamental elements of proximity but the true value lies in including additional
layers of location-oriented signals

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PROXIMITY INFLUENCING
CONTENT AND MEDIA

TOP PROXIMITY
TRENDS

Proximity is a standard element of search

and display campaigns, but, as brands begin
to understand the influence that proximity
has on consumers, its becoming applied
more frequently to the content itself.

Proximity enables a brand to

truly be where the customer is,
and to create just the right
experience in the moment.

Consumers will soon fully expect the website

of a hotel to look very different when viewed
on a smartphone while standing in its lobby
vs. when they booked on their home PC.

As consumers spend more

and more time on geo-aware
mobile devices, brands must
move beyond simple geotargeted media and develop
full proximity strategies that
extend to digital content and
brick and mortar experiences.

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MASS UPTAKE OF
BEACONS AND SENSORS
Today, 200 million iOS devices can serve as
proximity transmitters and receivers1 and
brick and mortar brands are rolling out
beacon programs to track the movements of
consumers and send hyper-targeted alerts.
The catch? Beacon messages must come
through an app, problematic for brands
struggling to maintain a loyal app user base.
Even so, expect mass adoption of beacons on
the brand side, as well as increasingly positive
receptivity from consumers, as beacons are
used to reduce friction in the journey.
1. Business Insider, BEACONS: What They Are, How They Work, And Why Apple's iBeacon Technology
Is Ahead Of The Pack, May 2014

PRESENCE
Thinking beyond the browser
As everyday objects connect to the internet, a new world of marketing possibilities emerges. Theres
no clear blueprint for what brand experiences look like through a vending machine or a smartwatch,
making it an opportunity for early adaptors to set the standards.

WEARABLES

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SOCIAL MACHINES

Smart glasses, smartwatches,

fitness trackers, and smart
clothing

Vending machines, appliances, kiosks, and

everyday household objects connected to
the internet

The true value of wearables will likely

come from the data they deliver to
other interfaces (e.g., a fitness
tracker delivering activity
information to a smartphone app) or
the experiences they trigger on larger
screens (e.g., a smartwatch
triggering a DOH screen to display a
custom message as a user passes by).

Social machines will greatly reduce

friction by customizing the product
dispensed or the service rendered to
each unique usere.g., the fridge that
orders milk when youre running low, or
the coffee cup that alerts you that
youve maxed out on your caffeine
consumption for the day.
Soon the idea of an object of any kind
not being interactive will be
unthinkable

CONNECTED AND
CONVERGENT SCREENS
Interactive in-store experiences,
lobbies, and showrooms

Interactive screens are becoming

commonplace in brick and mortar
settings, providing access to the
tools and information of the .com
world in a bigger visual palette.
These connected and convergent
screens augment in-store
experiences with deeper levels of
informational detail that can be
customized by proximity to a
mobile device and navigated at a
distance by gesture or glance.

MOBILE AS AN ACTIVATOR

TOP PRESENCE
TRENDS
As the internet of things comes to
fruition, consumers are expecting
that even the most simple,
everyday objects will provide
some element of interactivity.
For brands, this is a golden
opportunity to create new
interactive touchpoints via
previously static stops along the
customer journey.

The most compelling thing about

smartphones is that they rarely, if ever, are
out of reach. This fact, coupled with innate
device features like SMS, Bluetooth, and
NFC, make them the ideal activation tool
for formerly static media, taking broadcast,
print, POS, and digital and traditional OOH,
and turning them into interactive mediums.
It will be increasingly rare to see a piece of
traditional media that is not activated in
some way by a mobile device.

LARGE FORMAT IN-STORE

SCREENS
Many brick and mortar brands are installing
large format digital screens to augment the
customer experience and supplement
customer service efforts.
Unlike earlier versions devoted largely to
marketing messages, these screens offer
real utility, enabling customers to browse
inventory, customize products and
experiences, share their choices, and, in
many cases, complete transactions.

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WHAT THIS MEANS FOR BRANDS

Best Practices For Marketers To Capitalize On The 4Ps of Marketing

Brands Must Behave Responsively

Content must be useful, usable, and contextually relevant on the three standard screenssmartphone,
tablet, and desktopbut also on many other new digitally-enabled interfaces. Hence, digital infrastructure
and strategy must be as flexible as possible to support delivery to the screens that matter now and those that
will matter in the future.

Customers Expect Something In Return For Their Data

Customers are increasingly aware that they produce data and that it has value, and are progressively
expecting content and experiences relevant to who they are, where they are, the device they are using and
their relationship with your brand. Providing opportunities for them to proactively share their data with you
will be essential to success.

Proximity Is More Than Latitude And Longitude

Knowing where someone is and whats around them will be a standard element that defines your content.
But the metaphorical meaning of proximity (e.g., where someone is in the customer journey) will have just as
great an impact on your strategy. Smart customer experiences that are contextualized according to each
users unique relationship with the brand will simply be the status quo.

Brands Must Think Beyond The Browser

The Internet of Things is still nascent but, eventually, everything will be a digital touchpoint, from a bathroom
mirror to the vending machine in the company lounge. Getting your content there will be less of a technical
challenge and more of a creative one. Now is the time to experiment with how you will collect data through
these new mediums and how that data will be applied to creating and delivering content.
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15

PORTABILITY: Amazon Fire Phone

Amazons understanding of portabilityi.e., of

making the brand accessible in the most useful,
usable way possibleis clearly evident in the new
Fire Phone.
The Fire is a brilliant example of Amazon extending
the customer experience of Amazon.com to the
consumer in a more integral way. Visual shopping
tools coupled with delivery by Prime woven tightly
into the UI bring a level of convenience that far
surpasses what the Amazon app is able to provide.

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PORTABILITY: Starbucks

From the launch of mobile payments in 2009 to the

debut of a responsively designed website in 2012, CEO
Howard Shultz & Co continuously strive to create a
customer experience that exemplifies portability.
In 2014, rumor has it that Starbuck will be rolling out
iBeacon in its stores, enabling seamless delivery of
reward points and debiting of payments. Theres also
speculation that consumers will be able to earn points
through transactions with 3rd party brands. These and
all Starbucks mobile innovations to date illustrate a
keen understanding of modern retail in which ease of
use and on-demand access to the brand are valued at a
premium by customers.

PERSONALIZATION: Trunk Club

Trunk Club ushers new shoppers through a series of

questions designed to get to the root of ones
personal style. Measurements, brand preferences,
and quizzes designed to assess subjective tastes
result in a curated collection of clothing delivered
monthly to your home.
Trunk Clubs business model is exemplary of the
move towards using customer-supplied personal
data to create a better customer experience and, in
this case, a more personalized service.
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PERSONALIZATION: Warby Parker

Warby Parkers practice of encouraging the consumer to

share data enables the brand to create a more curated
experience and a frictionless journey. Customers upload
their prescription info online and then have the option
of doing a virtual try on and having sample frames
shipped to their home, or, they can walk into one of the
brands many popup showrooms to find which frames
they like best. Sales reps can then tap into a complete
history of a customers shopping data whether its a
wish list, past purchases, or the prescription info they
entered on the website.

PRESENCE: Coca-Cola Fair Play

Machine

Coca-Colas Happiness Machines are some of the earliest

examples of the social machine phenomenon. The most
recent, shining example is the Fair Play project where two
machines were installed outside separate entrances to a
Milan soccer stadium. Fans could not get a drink for
themselvesrather, they were encouraged to dispense a
free soft drink to fans of the rival team on the other side of
the stadium.
The Fair Play machines exemplify Coca-Colas Buy The
World a Coke mantra and underscore the power of presence
when integrated into formerly static elements of the
customer experience.
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PRESENCE: Cadburys FacebookPowered Vending Machine

The Facebook powered "Joy Generator launched by

Cadbury Australia analyses a customers Facebook profile
and uses the information to automatically assign him or her
a candy bar flavor.
Like Coca-Colas Happiness machines or Oreos 3D cookie
printer the Joy Generator uses social interaction and
physical machinery to create branded awareness
moments. However, we predict that over the next 18-24
months we will start to see personal data used to enable
more functional human/machine interactions and more
digital interactivity triggers built into everyday objects from
refrigerators to washing machines to in-store price check
scanners.

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PROXIMITY: L'Oreal's
Location-Based Beauty Tips

PROXIMITY: Duane Reade

and iBeacon

Visit the homepage of beauty brand LOreal on a

desktop, smartphone, or tablet and you will notice
a unique use of location to drive product
recommendations. Is it blazing hot where you are
right now? You might see recommendations for
SPF-enriched products. Overcast days might trigger
tips for a cheery makeover to boost your spirits.

A more advanced example comes from Duane Reade,

the largest drugstore chain in Manhattan where
iBeacons have been installed in ten locations. When a
consumer who has the Duane Reade app installed
approaches one of the pilot locations, the beacon will
connect and trigger push notifications, including offers
based on previous preferences and even product
reviews for items they browse in the store.

LOreals inventive approach to content and location

shows a keen understanding of how where you are
influences your needs state, and hence, your
purchase decisions. We predict youll see more and
more brands using location to modify .com content
across all device platforms in a granular, geolocation specific way.

The campaign launched May 1st, 2014results are still

forthcomingbut Duane Reades early investment in
beacon technology shows a clear understanding of how
important proximity marketing is poised to become for
retail brands.

THE NEW 4PS:

KEY TAKEAWAYS
It was easier when our biggest
worry was Does it work in Internet
Explorer on a Mac? Those days are
gone for good. Faster, cheaper
data, mobile devices, social media,
and the internet of things have
changed marketing forever.
And thats a good thing.
Not only can we be where the
customers is, we can be there in the
right way, in the right place, at the
right time on whatever device
makes best sense in the moment.
Theres no clear blueprint for this
constantly evolving ecosystem but
a few key concepts light the way.

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Put handles on your content: Theres no definitive way to know

what platforms you will have to port your content to in the future so the
near-term recommendation is to create as modular and flexible digital
architecture and strategy as possible to ensure that you can extend your
brand to the interfaces that matter both now and in the future.

Make it contextual: As consumers become more consistently connected

via digital, they are bombarded with more media, confronted with more
choices and presented with more opportunities. Brands must focus on
applying volunteered and implied data to create content and cross-screen
experiences that are more contextualized to real-time circumstances and
the unique needs of the customer.

Think beyond the browser: Thanks to mobility, brands can connect with
consumers in real time through multiple touchpoints in the physical world.
Some of these opportunities are more tangible than others, such as
wearables, where the standards of content and media are still evolving. The
essential principle for brands to keep top of mind is that the customer
experience need no longer be confined to a browser windowmultiple
touchpoints in the physical world should factor into digital marketing
strategy as a matter of course.

Thank you!
For questions or more information, please contact:
Rachel Pasqua,
Head of Mobile, MEC North America
Rachel.Pasqua@mecglobal.com