Bringing Modern Marketing back to the Manufacturing Industry – Could it be ‘Unbound’?
Last week Total Control Pro’s new marketing intern, Jasmine Smellie, attended the Unbound Festival at London’s Old Truman Brewery. As an Innovation student, Jasmine is interested in delving deeper into what innovation means and what the future may hold for innovators. In her first blog entry on the event, she uncovers some key tokens to take away and apply in her internship in Total Control Pro Limited’s marketing department.
Guest blog by TotalControl Pro intern, Jasmine Smellie
Unbound Festival
Unbound’s award-winning festival returns to London to bring together rich sources of innovation from across Europe. Brands, corporate executives and investors will come together to meet with Europe’s most disruptive startups, forging partnerships and exploring new opportunities. Chaired by Yossi Vardi, the festival connects 5,000+ founders, entrepreneurs, investors, corporate & brand executives and thought leaders with sources of innovation from around the world.
Day 1
On the 19th of July, I had the honour to attend Europe’s largest celebration of Innovation at the Unbound Innovation Festival in London. The two-day event saw a wide range of new budding technological developments, apps and start-ups come together to share experience, and expertise and build the interests of prospective investors. As an innovation student, it was an opportunity to view the new cutting-edge ideas that are starting to take shape in the marketplace, from VR art installations marketing to new artists, museums and art galleries, to clothing apps that give the buyer a chance to be the model.
Additionally, it was hugely beneficial to immerse me into some of the discussions that are in circulation in the industry and hear some top tips by leaders in their fields on how best to market and develop your product. Over the next few weeks, I will be posting more detailed insights into some of these discussions. However, the purpose of this post is to hone in on some of the key points I took away from the event that best fits my role as a marketing intern at Total Control Pro Limited.
Since starting at Total Control Pro Ltd. it has been clear that the three areas vital to the company and software are the tracking of process, product and people. As part of the marketing team, it has been the ‘people’ aspect that I have paid close attention to, discussing who exactly the users are, who the manufacturing customers are and why they feel a need for Total Control Pro Ltd.
Day 2
The first-panel debate of Day 2 at Unbound considered ‘Data-Driven Storytelling,’ and what became clear was not just the power the data of users now has in shaping industries’ marketing techniques, but also the true power of shaping it to tell stories. Storytelling is a craft and when considering marketing plans, it is vital to highlight the power of context-specific to specific users. This will be a key insight when formulating ideas for Total Control Pro Ltd to take to the Advanced Engineering Show in October this year when considering what user experience, we are seeking to leave visitors with.
By considering who the user is, why they are at the show and what they are looking for, we can unfold an experience to show them how Total Control Pro Limited can provide a solution for them and increase production productivity by tracking the location of the product, who is working on the job, where and for how long. In a broader context, such an unfolding technique can be applied throughout the marketing schedule.
Takeaways
The power of consumers is ever expanding, therefore considering their character can aid marketing techniques. Interestingly Ben Hookway, CEO of Relative Insight, believes that when consumers say they want personalised advertisement, what they really want is relevance. Therefore, marketing teams must pay attention to how consumers talk, what they are talking about and why they are talking about it. Such considerations provide a better understanding of the key target audiences and aid in shaping the journey, marketing strategies should aim to take users on.
Then of course, in marketing these days, it comes down to the power and use of technology and social media. An interesting question raised by the panel discussion was ‘Have we got to control the power of Facebook, Google and Amazon?’ With their private advertisement options, is it coming down to those that can afford to throw money at the sites to market themselves, emerging as the leaders? Even if this may not reflect the best option on the market for consumers? With emerging examples of control some technology platforms can have, such as the issues that arose in the United States between the White House and the Microsoft Corp, and new data laws and regulations, it is important to consider what information businesses are using to market to their users.
The nature and way consumers are absorbing information marketed to them on social media and external sources are continually changing. Generation Z is changing the way they consume and how they use technology and thus starting to dictate the ways industries should consider their marketing strategies. For example, Gen Z is emerging to be a great deal more conversational and interactive with the way they use technology, whereas the millennials are seen more as broadcasters of themselves and personal information.
It is worth considering that the manufacturing industry has the potential to be “cool” (or at least modern) and more attractive. Through the use and adoption of technologies frequently manipulated by Gen Z, from simple social media platforms such as Instagram to the creation of memes, manufacturers hold an opportunity to attract the new generation to the market, and hence wave goodbye to being classed as “the parent’s job” by young innovators and emerge on the cutting-edge technological platform.
Ben Hookway endorses this and argued that brands need to start to think about the context of users and understand what Gen Z are using. As Gen Z become more mobile-savvy, the more they can control what they see and are exposed to, indicated simply by the shift towards greater willingness to buy online rather than physically. Although this is such a broad area, and definitely one which requires greater insight and discussion, it has provoked interesting conversations amongst the marketing team.
Total Control Pro Limited are starting to consider how best to market their new app-based debut product and see that paying attention to the ways their Gen Z and millennial users differ in using the product may help shape a young, innovative and attractive model to market.
