Why it's time for CMOs to connect the creativity dots between brand, CX and commerce

It takes bravery for CMOs to use creativity to connect the dots across emotional brand connection, functional customer experience and commerce, VMLY&R’s global CEO, Jon Cook, says.  

Cook and VMLY&R’s chief marketing officer, Beth Wade, caught up with CMO on a recent visit to Australia to extend the agency’s commerce capabilities on local shores from Sydney and Melbourne to now include Brisbane. VMLY&R Commerce’s debut followed the merger of the VMLY&R and Geometry agencies, both owned by WPP, in 2020.  

The agency is positioning itself at the intersection of brand strategy, experience management and commerce, or what is also now being recognised by Cannes Lions as ‘creative commerce’. VMLY&R Commerce’s services extend across retail strategy, shopper marketing, ecommerce, social commerce and experiential marketing.  

For Cook, creative commerce is the idea that a consumer is not always at the point of commerce or commitment to a transaction. But they very well could be with a bit of creative and brand magic.  

“You have to start with the belief that the consumer doesn’t know whether they’re having a brand or customer experience. It’s just an experience. But if you are a company or agency delivering that, you find yourself in the position where you also have a consumer who’s in a position to make a commitment to the brand,” he said. “The feeling we had was to be the agency of the future, we have to be there where the commitment is made - that being commerce.  

“We also recognise the commitment or ‘commerce’ could be something like a subscription, renewal, entering a loyalty program, buying something in-store or online. But we felt like we were delivering the consumer to that point of commitment and we’d be leaving it short if we didn’t have that commerce piece.”    

To illustrate this belief, VMLY&R Commerce devised its own ‘infinity loop’ to show the connection between brand experience (creating emotional value) and customer experience (creative functional value), with commerce firmly in the middle.  

“When consumers are experiencing the story and creativity of the brand, then if we’re doing our job right, creative commerce will intersect at a point where they may not have even thinking about making a transaction,” Cook said. “We will have made it relevant not only for the purchase, but the entire experience of the brand. It’s those thoughts that led us to this point.”    

Thanks to the rise of social commerce, the historical definition of commerce, as well as its place in a linear customer funnel, has been overturned, Wade said.  

“The old-school marketing funnel really doesn’t exist any longer. At any point, I could be presented with an opportunity to buy, or join a community,” she commented. “We have to be able as an agency to satisfy a consumer need at the time they need something, versus making them go through hoops to get it.  

“When we look at the many different ways people are interacting with brands, it’s expected today that they get to a commerce solution at any given point. It’s that merging of sales and marketing channels we’re responding to.”    

According to Cook, the agency is increasingly working with CMOs and brand leaders who are excited but also challenged by the fact consumers are finding their way into commerce from these other media entry points, as well as through entertainment, education or while seeking information about the brand.  

“The CMO is being challenged by not knowing where commerce is going to strike or where to put it,” he said. “That’s element one that contributed to our building creativity to our commerce to allow us to transact in those points of entertainment.  

“The second one is the siloed nature of where commerce decisions sit in organisations. The CMO and sales ideally are together, but we see many examples of brands where sales, technology and marketing are three different individuals and functions. While the relationships between them might be good, the infrastructure doesn’t connect. We have tried to be the solution to siloed brands by being the connector.”    

Being brave  

Of course, when it comes to challenging the status quo, you’ve got to be bold. Cook said it will take bravery from the CMO to want to connect these dots and unite brand, customer experience and the point of conversion into one holistic creative endeavour.  

“For a lot of brands, specifically packaged goods, the decision about the way things are sold doesn’t involve as much of the creative community internally or at the agency,” Cook continued. “The bravery of the CMO to allow for a fuller sense of creativity and brand purpose around their commerce experience does mean walking down the hall and talking to the sales department, completely engaging with the retail or reseller part of the supply chain, and uniting commerce with the advertising agency - if they’re not the one and same.  

“But with anything that is transactional today, you can tell when the CMO of the product you’re building has fully connected to that end-to-end process. I think we’ll see a separation of brands with CMOs in the future that really know how to connect those dots. They’ll be ones taking the time to walk down the company hallway and make those connections. We recognise it’s not easy – there is politics, different KPIs, relationships, hierarchies within organisations. We don’t take it for granted this is extra work.”    

Another macro trend informing VMLY&R Commerce’s work with clients is the drive for first-party data and building direct customer relationships. “Commerce is an amazing way of fuelling that. Commerce can be the instigator for a stronger relationship for brands with their consumers,” Wade said.  

Clients connecting emotion, function and conversion  

As an example of how VMLY&R Commerce is bringing ‘creative commerce’ to life, the pair pointed to Unilever in India and work on the Smart Fill initiative. The initiative won the first Creative Commerce award in Cannes this year.  

In direct response to mitigating plastic waste, the Smart Fill in-store experience allows a consumer to fill up any plastic bottle, container or existing product packaging with any Unilever product from a refill station. Cook said the creative commerce element was providing the consumer at that point of purchase with the broader brand story around tackling plastic waste.  

“We put what would have been a very mundane detergent or product purchase in the context of storytelling and the impact that purchase was having on the world. This converted it into an experience where you’re changing the world and making an impact,” Cook said.  

Another example is VMLY&R’s work with Corona in Latin America creating RFID-enabled jerseys for football fans. With so many consumers not taking their wallets into stadiums, the beer brand had seen a sales decrease onsite. 

“We worked to create an RFID that would go into the jerseys folks wore into the stadium so they could buy themselves a Corona. We saw amazing sales through this innovative use of tech and creativity to build sales,” Wade explained.  

A third client example highlighted was Wendy’s Hamburgers, now the number two burger chain by sales in the US after McDonald’s. As a brand that has built its persona through social media, it’s increasingly engaging in a real-time dialogue with customers that has a knock-on effect to creative commerce via social, Wade said. Recently, the QSR integrated into Fortnite’s online gaming ecosystem, winning the Grand Prix at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity for these efforts.  

These sorts of integrations are also key as brands look to win the dollars of Gen Z. According to VMLY&R’s recent Gen Z research, a paradox exists between the conscience-driven Gen Z belief and the commerce behaviours they’re exhibiting.  

The research, Wade said, reframes cancel culture as crush culture and shows Gen Z’s power to not only abandon brands that don’t align with their values, but intentionally build brands that do. For example, while 75 per cent of those surveyed said they will switch from a brand that gets negative PR, they’re all in for a brand that sends the right signals on social media.  

Measuring creative commerce  

So how does this integrated play on creative commerce, brand and customer experience change the way campaign and marketing performance is measured and understood by clients?  

“It does require allowing for brand engagement, love or other brand metrics to be part of commerce metrics,” Cook said. “If you’re doing creative commerce right, you’re making an impact both on sales and on overall brand emotional connection.  

“Yes, somebody has to be brave and make the decision to be more creative with commerce, and to allow for a KPI to go beyond the sales metric. While the sales metric shouldn’t be replaced, it allows for other metrics to be important.”  

VMLY&R is measuring its own creative commerce progress by the level of penetration it has with a client’s brand in terms of impacting their commerce work.  

“Our position is that we build connected brands. It’s a fancy tagline, but what it means is we have to look across our client base, hold ourselves up and say: Are we truly working across scopes that allow us to create brands addressing this infinity loop,” Cook said. “We look across our client to make sure we are doing the brand, customer experience journey work promptly, but that we also make an impact on their commerce and transaction layer.”    

Cook admitted there’s an education job to do getting the broader creative commerce vision across to some clients. 

“The industry or CMO doesn’t yet expect all of those things to be in one place from one provider. If they do expect it, they expect it might be a disjointed process,” he said. “So another way we hold ourselves up and what we have got very good at is how well connected those capabilities are, and how credentialed we can be with each of them to counter disbelief one company can have all those things.” 

But get it right, and creative commerce gives the brand the ability to inject context and purpose around the point of conversion and build stronger trust with consumers, Cook said.  

“There is parity in many commerce experiences today. Having that creativity connect to the broader brand story and bigger purpose on one level deepens commerce and lifetime relationship, but it also builds trust. It’s giving brands more opportunity to be more transparent, tell their story and be relevant,” he said.  

“Every brand hasn’t earned the right to tell their whole story. It takes baby steps to even allow the consumer to engage in something beyond the purchase. That’s part of building trust – how much creative commerce a consumer is going to allow comes back to us. I have to believe there is something that’s worth me spending more time with you.”  

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