Most experts agree that programmatic marketing is the future. With programmatic, consumers can be targeted online and in real time and they may be served in an automated way based on their requirements and needs. There is less focus on the fact that programmatic will also radically change the physical structure of locations, varying from shopping mall to petrol station. CSDM has already developed an underlying vision for this.
There is still a great deal of unused space surrounding locations such as petrol stations, or it may be that it is used in an ‘old-fashioned way.’ Read: in a way that modern, connected customers on their own personalised customer journeys do not care for. CEO Radjen van Wilsem wrote it in his preface: ‘Digital is not a medium, it’s a way of life and thinking.’ And this includes all the resulting social and economic consequences.
And yes, the future is always now, as paraphrased by CSDM project manager Heloise Bien. ‘Technologies such as programmatic marketing, personalised messaging and several analytic tools to
analyse the customer’s behaviour, and indeed to even predict it, as well as offering specific advertisement / content slots and services and products based on the obtained profile: all this is already deployable now. What is yet to come is the connected car enabling you to not only reach the customer at the service station, but also at home and en route. But here too, the central idea is that you want to get to know a customer through and through, and you do this by enriching data profiles.’ From this perspective, it is quite conceivable that sites will be adapted, certainly once customers drive electrically in the future and spend more time at a petrol station.
‘A petrol station in the city, for example, serves a different target group, more business people, than one in a village with, for example, people with a very conscious lifestyle. So you adapt your station to these elements. In some stores, you ensure it has an ecological market, while others also have a hairdresser, a beauty salon and a pick-up point for parcels.’
‘The central starting point is that you want to get to know a customer through and through, and you do this by enriching data profiles’
At this point, sites often still have one formula for everybody; CSDM believes this will change. There is a great deal of space near a petrol station, it is easy to access and there are good parking facilities.
‘Such a site might become a small town. In any case, the central starting point is that you get to know a customer so well that you are able to offer them exactly what they need. Indeed, using the technology I just mentioned will also change the hierarchy between customer and company. A company does not offer a product or service in general, but in a fully personalised way based on the data profile and the feedback of customers. A proper revival of “the customer is always right”.’
