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Digital Innovations and the future for agencies: Interview with Peak Seven CEO Darren Seys

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Darren Seys is the founder and CEO of Peak Seven Advertising, an award-winning advertising, and marketing agency in Boca Raton. With over two decades of experience in the industry, Darren leads a talented team of results-driven marketers and creative designers to achieve great results and help their clients’ business grow.

I had a chance to talk with Darren about his work in advertising and how the digital and technological transformation has impacted the way agencies work today.

 

Thank you for your time today Darren. Why don’t you tell me a little bit about yourself and your company, Peak Seven?

I grew up on a farm, moved to South Florida, and got my start as an illustrator for Nascar. Ultimately ended up in Boca Raton. Had an agency and sold it and started Peak Seven in 1999. Peak Seven is a full-service Ad Agency, that started of really with a branding and design background and morphed into a more of a high-level technology digital marketing agency, with branding as well, but the digital took over the branding as far as our main services.

 

How do you think the role of the Agency has evolved through the years?

Agencies typically would actually manage the media at a high level, some ad agencies made most their money in media commission. But it has evolved now, where the transparency out there, that the media outlets have basically stepped around agencies and sell direct. So agencies had to make themselves more valuable in other ways.

Fortunately for the agency world, technology has evolved so much that it basically gave the agency a ton of value in the strategy side of the business. It allowed us to have a skill set that a lot of people couldn’t find. You would have, not just an artist and creative people in-house, but now you also have roles like digital strategists, and of course, media still being a big part of it.

 

What are your greatest concerns as the CEO of a digital agency?

That technology gets so advanced that you can do the bulk of what we are doing now, yourself (the client). The metrics and the platforms will basically do so much testing for you, even if you aren’t doing it well, it can actually funnel it through to where it allows you to get high performance, even without heavy strategy or agencies behind it, trying to create the best opportunity for you to gain ROI on your money.

You already have platforms like Facebook and Google that kinda tell you, you should be doing this, consider that. With Facebook now you can upload five headlines, five subheaders, ten images and it rotates to a hundred different scenarios and combination of an ad, something you could never do before, you can run a Facebook campaign yourself.

 

What are the biggest challenges for digital agencies in today’s digital environment?

Staying ahead of it and finding what actually works best for the client. Obviously, we have our verticals that we deal with, but it’s forever changing. Right now, the best thing for agencies is a lot of new technology that will continue to come out, it makes us stay ahead of the game.

Also, talent, high-level talent. That literally makes a difference in the performance. You are always going to have the marketing strategy side of everything, forgetting the technology for a second, someone that has to put together the plans, ideas, the vision, the target audience and what the client is trying to go for. The technology comes in the implementation and in reaching those goals.

It used to be you bought tv, you bought radio, you ran print ads, newspaper ads, and that’s how you reached your market. Now, there are thousands of different channels to reach them, then what metrics you use for KPI’s, so data analysis and data crunching is the space that’s gonna be hugely valuable in the future, already is now.

There are agencies out there already hiring data scientist, and they are starting out at $200,000 out of college, based on their degree and what they did, just to crunch the data. You know why? It’s all trackable, and then you just have to do actionable items out of it.

 

What are your thoughts on the digital and technological transformation affecting this industry? We hear about AI, chatbots, programmatic advertising, voice search and so on. How do you think all of this is impacting ad agencies and clients?

AI is going to be everything. I was in Hong Kong and I saw some demonstrations of what they are doing now with it and it’s literally going to be everything in my opinion. You can feed it so much information and it’s so smart that it can learn from it. On your day to day communication, the first point of contact in your company a lot of the times is a person, that is getting eliminated, now with bots and AI, we are even going to be able to get faces that are computer generated, and they will talk and everything.

You’ll be interacting with avatars all the time, and not even realize it, they are going to be so educated that people are going to accept it. Fifteen years ago you never thought you would buy a car online, and years from now people are going to be communicating with these avatars like it’s no big deal, my rep is Johnny and he is not even real. To me artificial intelligence is huge.

 

In your opinion, what’s the biggest trend in the near future that marketers should not ignore?

On the digital marketing side, I’ve heard that with these privacy laws, what you were able to do, you were able to target people with geo-fencing, geo-targeting, income, gender and all those types of things. The reality is the more the privacy laws expand, the less that stays relevant. So, ironically, the organic results are gonna come back into play, the whole world of SEO, that was kinda pushed with paid, SEO may come back to play because you’re not going to be able to target as much.

Cookies are going to get removed, from browsers and everything like that. I think even this week, Chrome is going to be losing those cookies, right, so when you look at retargeting, remarketing, as they say, a cookie may be active for 24h hours. That changes everything on paid advertising.

I also think there’s a trend where most verticals, if they are performance-based campaigns, are going to end up in a few channels, based on the verticals you’re in. We work with Real State so we have some channels that just perform, you’re not really going to do anything else. It used to be back in the day, with magazines, you would run 10 magazines because you weren’t sure which one was going to be working, now you’ll just know.

To me, it really affects brand awareness, because businesses don’t really look at it as a KPI or ROI. I spend a thousand dollars and had 100,000 impressions, that doesn’t work. You want to spend a thousand dollars and get leads. So brand awareness is getting much more difficult to actually sell and perform, to clients, because they have a budget, it’s super tight, everyone’s budgets are getting tighter, so if you can’t produce leads and or tangible assets that they can translate back to sales, you’re toast.

For some, it’s not like you’re Coke or Pepsi, where you can just put up billboards to keep people reminded of you. At least in the space that we deal in.

 

What would be the best recommendation you could give to businesses starting with digital advertising?

Take small budgets and test, test all the channels to see which one is performing the best for you. Define what your metrics are for performance, what does well, what doesn’t. If you do want to have some branding and exposure, try to work with two separate budgets, one that will be allocated to brand awareness and the other that is dedicated to performance. If you muddle the two together is going to skew the numbers on your ROI performance and not really be fair.

But yes, just test multiple channels, whether it is Pandora radio or Twitch, Snapchat, all these different channels, you don’t know which one is going to work best for you, maybe some of them will be a little more obvious, don’t be afraid to mix it up. You can’t just go with what’s working today, you will be surprised because there are so many niches online with all these different components.

Marketing To The Senses

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Brands are constantly looking for ways to differentiate themselves, immersive in-store experiences, innovative technology, emotional ads, you name it. Looking to move away from a perspective based solely on the visual element, brands are taking on new approaches that manage to enhance the consumer shopping experience with all the senses.

Sensory marketing goes beyond mere promotional campaigns, the goal is to stimulate emotions and create special moments in order to achieve a better perception from consumers. Making consumers fall in love and engage with brands through all the sense, inviting them to smell, see, taste, feel and listen.

Here’s a great example on how brands can play with our senses to evoke emotions and generate a positive sentiment.

 

 

In sensory marketing, the sense of smell is one of the most powerful ones. Aromas not only get the consumer’s attention, but they generate very strong ties with emotions and memories. Overall, campaigns and communication using the senses can be very powerful, it can influence how consumers feel and help brands generate a strong relationship with them and at the end increase brand loyalty.

Ingredients for Success: Experiences & Personalization

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Companies are no longer just concerned about meeting sales goals, in the latest years, marketing strategies have shifted their focus into the consumer, understanding that buyers are not just looking for a product, but a complete, personalized shopping experience.

In order to create customer-centric strategies, we must be able to understand all the aspects surrounding consumer behavior and apply all gathered knowledge to improve customer experience. The rapid growth of technology and social media, new generational shopping behaviors, cultural shifts and so on, have created a new consumer who is much more demanding and less loyal.

 

 

According to Google, about 62% of consumers are expecting brands to deliver a consistent experience every time they interact with a brand, but only 42% believe brands are actually doing this. Providing an entirely personalized experience throughout the customer journey should be one of the ultimate goals for businesses, but it’s not always easy to execute.

The retail industry is one leading the way, integrating both online and offline to provide a better customer experience. Recommendations based on purchase history, personalized emails, incentive-based campaigns to promote customer advocacy, “buy online, pick-up at the store” options, these are just some of the few ways retailers are taking advantage of customer data and technology to provide a seamless shopping experience.

The changes in consumption behaviors in today’s market is pushing companies to look for ways to get customers attention by not only selling products and services, but an experience. Unique and memorable experiences that makes them fall in love with your product or service, and that will not only generate loyalty, but advocacy, something extremely valuable for companies in today’s digital environment. Offering a unique experience focused on the customer’s journey will help brands stand out in a saturated market and build a strong, long lasting relationship with their audience.

The power of music

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Music, regardless of the genre, has an incredible power to generate emotions on a listener, it can make you feel good, calm or anxious, and it’s no surprise why it’s such an important element when it comes to advertising.

The audience can gather information, feelings, memories… from the music they are listening to, and this can be a great benefit for advertisers that are trying to bring them closer to the products or services they are announcing, at the end, advertisers seek to attract the attention of the viewer, generate an interest and provoke a greater interest that will push them to the action.

When we associate brands with songs we are transmitting feelings and emotions if the music reaches out to the audience and actually connects with them in an emotional level it will also do so with the brand, increasing brand recognition and creating loyalty. Whether it is a popular song, a catchy jingle or an original score, with the power of repetition, the musical element on advertising can become part of the brand’s identity, how consumers see and remember our brands.

Creativity with a plan

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When it comes to the digital environment, we are currently saturated with advertising. We see ads and sponsored content everywhere, much so that even social media platforms like Facebook faced the need to changed their algorithms to “declutter” our newsfeeds. This has become a big challenge from brands, trying to understand how to stand out from the crowd, and actually, reach their audiences with the right content. One of the biggest benefits from digital media is the ability to analyze data in real time, this makes not only understanding our audiences much easier, but it gives us the possibility to make adjustments in our campaigns to make them more effective.

This is where A/B testing comes to play. In simple terms A/B testing, also called split testing, let’s us test out variants of the same message. It could focus on colors, the different wording in a call to action, the placement of our logos or many more small changes that when tested end up being a decisive component in the performance of our communication.

Even if we as marketers believe we might know our audience perfectly, we truly can’t predict how will they react to certain content and how will the behave. That’s why when we are communicating with our potential buyers, testing is a great tool to our disposal to actually see real results and understand what message will work better and lead to better results.

Did you see that video?

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Marketing and advertising are changing constantly, and with the overwhelming amount of digital content spread out all over the internet, consumers demand more quality content, and brands are becoming more aware of it. It’s not about creating content just to be out there, but connecting with audiences, speaking to them, getting their attention and above all, becoming viral.

Surely we’ve all seen hundreds of videos all across Facebook, Twitter or Instagram. Emotional, intriguing or just funny, those videos that catch the attention of the users will get shared. And this is what we want to accomplish with our campaigns, be seen, make an impact and get our audience to respond.

Video is becoming one of the preferred tools by marketers and brands everywhere. In just a few seconds you can tell a story and go beyond just selling your product or service, but actually connecting with your audience on a deeper emotional level.