Digital advertising may be growing, but many brands are still ill-equipped, or just downright unwilling, to making it an integral component of their marketing plans.
We asked brands at the Digiday Brand Summit in Deer Valley, Utah, the same question: “What is the biggest internal challenge brands face in adapting to digital?” The answers ranged from having to educate some marketers on the importance of digital to not being able to adapt fast enough to not knowing how to accuratley assess ad tech vendors.
Katrina Craigwell, head of global digital programming, GE
Governance and structure. For a lot of big brands, digital is a big field that spans a lot of teams and who owns it is not clear. You need to re-organize your marketing, communications, analytics and IT teams to not just run a dot com but have a larger digital strategy. Things like co-locating your marketing and IT teams can help.
Elly Deutch, associate director of digital and social media, Garrett Popcorn
Breaking down existing barriers and education. We’re an old brand, and some older executives still see digital as a Millennial medium and have not necessarily adopted it. So it’s really about making sure they understand the value of it.
Bailey Doyle, group manager of national shopper marketing, Clorox
We’re always one step behind. You start designing a website, and then you find out the website has to be mobile first or responsive. We can’t turn things around fast enough.
Robyn Phelan, senior marketing manager, Palms
Getting upper management to understand what the digital team does. I do more than just Facebook. They say they want data on what we’re doing, and then they say they want more data. And then we don’t get the necessary budget.
Jillian Schaefer, senior brand manager, Zumba
When it comes to ad tech vendors, reading through what’s actually good and what’s just good looking. The team is only as good as the people behind it.
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