Q&A with Kamakshi Sivaramakrishnan, Founder and CEO of Drawbridge

The 4A’s regularly asks industry leaders to provide their personal stories, advice and observations on how to succeed in the advertising industry. Here is what Drawbridge’s Kamakshi Sivaramakrishnan had to say:

Today’s consumers have multiple devices—and multiple online identities. How should marketers design communications to address this?

We live in a time of unprecedented device proliferation and adoption—especially on mobile. It’s safe to say that all of us have at least one phone and one computer, maybe more, and many of us probably have a tablet, wearable or a connected TV as well. As consumers, this has made our lives so much easier. But for marketers this device proliferation has led to identity fragmentation, making it difficult to deliver a personalized online customer experience.

One way to get around this is to force a login, like Facebook, Google, Amazon and Netflix currently do. Each of these provide highly customized environments across devices, while consumers are within those platforms. But how can marketers deliver the same experience across the rest of the Internet, where it can be very fragmented?

It’s ultimately less about marketers designing communications to reflect the multi-device, fragmented-identity reality, and more about using technology to get around that and deliver customized experiences, regardless of platform or channel. Marketers must find an independent, accessible and scaled solution for digital identity. A democratized alternative of what the Facebooks and Googles of the world have—a universal currency for anonymous digital identity.

Consumers don’t necessarily follow a linear path to purchase. How does that affect the design of communication?

The landscape for marketing channels has exploded. In the past, brands had only a few ways to connect with consumers outside of a direct relationship with them. But today we have computers, smartphones, tablets, watches and even cars with screens in them. In addition, we have social media, video, native and myriad other formats. This creates a lot of noise for consumers, if marketing is done haphazardly.

Consumers are more sensitive to being constantly overwhelmed with messages across every channel and medium possible. Today there are methods like universal frequency capping that can limit the exposure from one brand to help protect brand sentiment, or sequential messaging that can help guide consumers through the purchase path across devices. But at the end of the day, it’s less about designing specific communication messages and more about using data to deliver the richest experiences, which translates into more effective communication.

It’s also important to make sure marketing is measurable. Ultimately every brand wants to get a consumer to do something—click an ad, watch a video, visit a site, download an app or do something offline (like visit a store or make a physical purchase). To effectively drive those actions, we must understand who consumers are across all of those devices and channels. It comes back to having a seamless digital identity.

How can advertising agencies and their executives work with people and organizations that have skill sets unfamiliar to the world of advertising?

Advertising and marketing are colliding. Everyone is bringing in more technology partners or building tech stacks themselves, so this is becoming more and more important. There’s a balance between art and science where the math doesn’t displace creative, it makes it stronger. Something that has always rung true for me, regardless of with whom I’m speaking or the topic at hand, is that you should trust data. Whether it’s a piece of advice, a new technology or pure methodologies—if it’s backed by sound data, it can be easily trusted. If you’re coming to the table with something new, no matter how unfamiliar, come with the data to back up your points.

We seem to be on a path from social to AR & VR storytelling. What impact will that have on communication design?

We’re still in the early days, but I think the potential for AR and VR is tremendous. I’m very interested in seeing where this goes. Today the vast majority of the AR/VR applications are pure consumer experiences, so it will be interesting to see how the marketing and advertising players explore and adapt to this new channel.

We’re still learning how enterprise value can be derived from AR and VR. Marketing and advertising are ways to create value, but will consumers stick around? Certainly brands will continue to use this medium creatively, but is there a larger data play? How does the technology and data involve, and evolve from, the pure creative aspects? There’s an interesting dialog here around this divide between data and creative.

When designing communications, which comes first: consideration of the platform or consideration of the audience?

It’s definitely a mix and every brand and enterprise needs to find the balance that suits their specific needs. I tend to go back to the audience first. If the audience isn’t defined and understood, the platform is irrelevant.

For example, if your business is purely enterprise B2B, and your audience doesn’t exist in the social media sphere, then there may never be a social media strategy that’s right for you. Likewise, if reaching Millennials is key to your strategy, traditional TV spots may not be an effective means of reaching this digital-first generation.

Defining and being able to reach your ideal audience is key—then you can adapt the message for the platform. The platform is irrelevant if your audience isn’t right.

To hear more from Kamakshi Sivaramakrishnan, attend the 4A’s CreateTech2016 event in New York City on November 9-10.