MARKETING

A Cheat Sheet for Marketers on

the Future of Digital Platforms
by Mark Bonchek and Cara France
MAY 05, 2015

STEVEN MOORE FOR HBR

Customer engagement has never been more urgent or more elusive. Real engagement the
kind that goes beyond a momentary impression to a meaningful interaction isnt happening
on traditional channels. Its happening today on digital platforms such as Twitter, Facebook,

LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, SnapChat, and Instagram.

To understand the future of digital platforms and what it means for marketers, we spoke with
senior executives in a community of top marketers from Silicon Valley. The perspectives of
these executives suggest that the pace of innovation shows no sign of slowing down.

Marketers who want to understand the future of these platforms need to understand seven
Ps: people, participate, personalize, product, process, pay, and partner.

1. People. The power of platforms ultimately comes from people. For the first time in history,
we have mass collaboration on a global scale. Digital and social platforms eliminate the
friction in the flow of information and communication, empowering customers, employees,
and citizens alike. To date, platforms have made us more efficient, but according to Ivy Ross,
Head of Glass at Google, they will soon help us be more human and do the things we love to
do. And David Rubin, Head of Brand at Pinterest, adds, technology is ultimately about
making things easier for people.

2. Participate. The word platform gets thrown around a lot, but is often misunderstood.
Platform isnt just a fancy name for a distribution channel or a service delivered through the
cloud. Channels are one-way pipes; platforms are two-sided networks. Its the difference
between Netflix and YouTube. Netflix has an audience and adds content incrementally.
YouTube has a community and adds content exponentially. GoPro understands this well,
engaging their customers not just as an audience of consumers, but a community of cocreators. According to Paul Crandall, SVP of Marketing at GoPro, the goal is to make our
customers the heroes by showcasing their enthusiasm and content on our platforms.

To generate participation, marketers must engage more authentically, with a focus on

ongoing relationships beyond individual impressions or transactions. Danielle Tiedt, CMO of
YouTube, says the goal isnt how do I create the viral video? Instead, the goal should be
how do I use video to create an ongoing conversation that builds a relationship? Brands
must also remember that they are members of the social networks in which they participate.

Daina Middleton, Head of Global Business Marketing at Twitter, told us, as marketers, we
have historically wanted to dominate the conversation, but now it needs to be about
participating, not dominating.

3. Personalize. The ease of connecting and co-creating on platforms has a downside. The
amount of information can be overwhelming. Digital platforms do the work of making the
experience more personalized, relevant, and meaningful. According to Middleton, platforms
are becoming more intelligent. They will proactively notify us whats important and even
work as an agent on our behalf. More and more, customers are creating their own filters. They
are at the center and in control. According to YouTubes Tiedt, Our next challenge is to make
sure the things they might be interested in, they have an opportunity to discover. And
Googles Ross thinks that the platform will be more than a place where you connect with
friends; the platform itself will feel like a friend that knows you.

4. Product. To date, digital platforms have been the place you go to talk about products. But
the relationship between products and platforms is about to undergo a significant disruption.
First, platforms are going to be more integrated into our products and services. As an
example, Uber customers can now select the music for their trip directly from their Spotify
playlists. Nick Besbeas, former VP of Marketing at LinkedIn, believes the lines between
product and marketing are blurring.

Second, our products are going to start showing up in our platforms. Today, a spouse might
send a reminder to pick up the milk or get the oil changed. It wont be long until our
connected refrigerator or connected car sends the message itself, most likely through a digital
platform. Ross believes the convergence of digital platforms with connected devices will be
one of the most disruptive forces as the net is increasingly around us and on us. The
Internet of Things will soon be the Social Network of Things.

5. Process. We tend to focus on digital platforms that are customer-facing, but they are also
happening internally and behind the scenes. Twitters Middleton notes that bid management
and customer experience platforms are bringing social media, display, search, and CRM

together, connecting customer acquisition, customer service, and customer retention.

Companies are adopting platforms to reshape other business processes, ranging from
employee communications to performance management to professional development. We
believe a phenomenon is emerging that one might call platform symmetry. Companies that
want to engage customers who use platforms to manage their lives must equally use
platforms to manage their organizations. And leaders who want their customers to engage
with their brands on platforms must also participate themselves. In a social age, you truly get
what you give.

6. Pay. Have you noticed that payments are disappearing? The convenience of a swipe is
giving way to the even greater convenience of nothing. Thanks to digital wallets, we can
download an app, pay the driver, or order a coffee without touching our wallet. In the future,
we can expect even greater integration of e-commerce and social networks on digital
platforms. Lara Balazs, SVP of North America Marketing at Visa, says that digital payments are
creating frictionless ways to shop and pay. Where payment used to be an afterthought, its
now becoming critical to the experience itself.

When youre on a social network, the act of making a payment can feel a bit odd, or even
unsettling. Its part of a relational context that anthropologists call a gift economy. But the
invisible nature of digital payments is making a new era of social commerce possible one in
which transactions are seamlessly embedded inside of ongoing collaborative relationships
between customers and businesses, instead of being the culmination of a temporary
commercial relationship.

7. Partner. To layer product, process, and payment on top of people, participation and
personalization, companies will need to get even better at partnership and collaboration.
According to Ross, customers wont want to use more than one platform for any given
purpose. Platforms and providers are going to have to work together to unlock the
connectivity and deliver a compelling and seamless user experience. The smarter home will
require partnerships with appliance manufacturers, and the connected car will require the

same of carmakers. We can expect digital platforms to move beyond software platforms to
business platforms with associated ecosystems, creating new opportunities for brands to
form unexpected alliances.

Marketers need to continuously evolve the way they think about adding value to their
customers beyond the products and services they sell. Companies that win the hearts and
minds of customers will be the ones that put their customers passions, goals, and inspiration
at the forefront. The more you engage, involve and empower your customer, the more your
customer will want to engage with your brand.

A study by Adobe found that 80% of marketers believe their role is fundamentally changing,
and that 40% believe they need to reinvent themselves to keep pace. According to Ann
Lewnes, CMO at Adobe, new technologies like digital platforms are just the beginning.
Marketing leaders need to rethink how they approach people and process. They need to
attract talent in areas like data science, social media, and web analytics that didnt exist five
years ago. And they need to create opportunities for their employees to re-skill and reinvent
themselves too.

Our conversations suggest that for marketers, the road ahead will not be getting easier
anytime soon. Digital platforms are evolving to be more robust, relevant, and intelligent. This
makes things easier for us as individuals, but more challenging for companies with traditional
mindsets, structures, and practices. Customers are setting the pace in this race. Whoever can
keep up with the customer will share the winners circle.

A Cheat Sheet for Marketers

the Future isofthe
Digital
Platforms
Mark on
Bonchek
Founder
and CEO (Chief Epiphany Officer) of SHIFT Thinking. He
works with leaders to update their thinking for a digital age. Sign up for the SHIFT newsletter
and follow Mark on Twitter at @MarkBonchek.

Cara France is CEO of The Sage Group, a firm providing marketing and consulting
talent to San Francisco Bay area companies, and founder of Marketers that Matter. Follow her
on Twitter @SageCEO.

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7 COMMENTS

LIAM SHANNON

9 months ago

Great piece. The only thing I might want to add is perhaps another "P" having to do with
creativity/entertainment - Performance. The Internet was created to support discourse among DARPA
scientists. Now significant portions of it are devoted to porn and cat videos. So while, from where we stand
now, it can look like the killer platforms of the future will be data-based, just as Reality TV gave way to the
long form serial story ( a la The Sopranos and Breaking Bad and Mad Men), those who want to build the most
appealing platforms would do well to either offer or foster great performances.
00

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