For marketing service companies, capturing customers or media is the two major prerequisites for a business model to be established.
In 2011, the well-known KOL Scott Brinker in the field of marketing technology drew the first MarTech Landscape. In the first version of the MarTech panorama, only about 150 companies were included. After 8 years of development, marketing technology ushered in Unprecedented prosperity: More than 7,000 companies have been listed on the MarTech 5000 Landscape in 2019.
Logo’s dense MarTech Landscape reflects the thriving marketing technology track. On the other hand, it can be intuitively seen that market share is very fragmented. From a business model and investment perspective, this does not seem to be a good thing.
The marketing service market has significant “fragmentation” characteristics. There are three reasons for this pattern: First, marketing services is an extremely large market. All business activities require marketing services and can accommodate enough suppliers. Second, marketing services from all walks of life need to be combined with industry knowhow to provide a large number of small and beautiful vertical marketing service providers to survive, industry awareness has formed competition barriers, and the market structure has been cut into fine markets; Third, marketing is an extremely non-standardized service. The production chain from demand generation, creative planning, execution, and media purchase is very long. These three factors have contributed to the flourishing and flourishing situation of the marketing industry.
When advertising technology and marketing technology were just emerging, innovators had high hopes for technology and hoped to use technology to disrupt the industry. However, two decades have passed since the rapid development of the Internet. There are still no technology giants in the upper and middle marketing industries. Media Group still occupies the main battlefield, overseas has Omikon, Interpublic, WPP, Dentsu Group, in the Chinese market can not get around the blue cursor.
The MarTech feature has reported on a number of marketing technology start-ups and technology companies listed on the New Third Board. At the same time, we also pay attention to the trends and views of listed companies in the industry.
Recently, we interviewed Pan Fei, CEO of Blue Cursor (Digital) Media Group, and he shared Blue Label Media’s insights into the marketing industry.
Q: What is the current business layout of Blue Cursor Group in the MarTech field? Blue Label Media and BlueWhat is the relationship between the target group?
Pan Fei: Blue Label Group has always given people a more diverse and complex business. In fact, it can be divided into “three big and one small”. The Blue Label Group started from the public relations business. Now this part of the business is called Blue Label Digital. Almost all public relations services are handled by this business unit. Service is the core. This is the first part. The second part is Blue Label Media. We After the rise of the mobile Internet era, it acquired two mobile advertising companies, Domeng and Yidong, and developed products and services such as media procurement, mobile Internet advertising, and programmatic platforms. The MarTech part that everyone said is mainly in the blue label media. The third most part is Blue Label International. We have acquired a number of overseas marketing and advertising companies, including Vision 7, We Are Social, Fuse, Metta, etc., and are responsible for customer marketing needs in overseas markets. These three major sectors constitute more than 90% of Blue Label’s business, plus OTT, large-screen TV advertising and other businesses, which constitute the blue label group’s “three big and one small” business layout.
In terms of profit volume, the contribution of Blue Label Digital and Blue Label Media is comparable, and it is also the core source of profit in the Blue Label Group system. From the perspective of revenue, because the advertising plate is relatively large, Blue Label Media has contributed more than 2/3 of the entire group’s revenue. The MarTech part of advertising technology, marketing efficiency-enhancing technology products is mainly in Blue Label Media.
Q: After 2010, the mobile Internet ushered in a boom, and AdTech was sought after. At that time, a number of startups encountered the ceiling of the development of the New Third Board. In recent years, there has also been a boom in marketing technology. How to look at the development prospects of these technology-driven enterprises and their impact on the marketing industry?
Pan Fei: I always think MarTech is a “false proposition” for marketing service companies. Because no technology platform can replace the importance of both customers and media in marketing service companies, MarTech is a tool for empowering customers and media.
Whether it is an advertising media company, a marketing planning company, or an independent technical third party, as long as it is a marketing business, the importance of the client and the media should not be ignored. Having these two ends, plus the programmatic middle Only with the platform and other capabilities can business logic be established. If you just stand in the middle, you do n’t have the ability to really have customers, you do n’t have the ability to play games with the media, and the pure third-party platform I think the business model and business logic are not valid, so today we will see many marketing technology companies not Big.
From the perspective of DSP business, it has experienced a process of being killed in the Chinese market. Around 2013 and 2014, DSP was deified. Everyone thinks that the programmatic buying platform can solve all problems.Be behind the industry. There was a turning point in the middle. In 2016, a brand ’s Chinese market director was reported to use DSP companies to falsify data and launder money. Then the DSP platform began to be demonized. The authenticity of the data was seriously questioned. Some people think that the large amount of data in DSP is No value at all.
Excessive pursuit and excessive depreciation are biased. Now everyone’s attitude towards technology + advertising marketing is beginning to return to rationality. These cognitions are also the conclusions reached after a long exploration of the Blue Label. The Blue Label has also gone through the stage of superstition and loss of confidence in technology. Persistence along the way has gradually made our cognition clear: only combining service and technology. With front-end customers and back-end games with the media, business logic can be established.
Q: What technology is Blue Label Media focusing on in the field of marketing? What other areas might you invest in in the future?
Pan Fei: Our investment and focus are as follows: 5G, intelligent marketing tools for small and medium-sized enterprises, tools to improve the efficiency of short video production, and wake-up business from stock operations.
Let ’s talk about 5G first. Blue Label has a dedicated team to study the changes that 5G may bring to the marketing industry. It pays attention to the production of 5G mobile phones in the second, third and fourth tier cities, bandwidth, and usage scenarios for video production Requirements, flow requirements, etc., have been studied in great detail. Our attitude towards 5G is neither pessimistic nor optimistic. In recent years, what impact it will have on the marketing landscape is still difficult to draw conclusions. Before 5G mobile phones were really popular, many ideas were conceptual. However, it is a matter of time before and after 5G brings changes. The network infrastructure has evolved and will always have an impact on smart marketing in the future. We will always look at this potential variable.
Second, Blue Label used to be good at serving large enterprises. We hope to serve SMEs with some intelligent and instrumental products. For example, when small and medium-sized enterprises want to make overseas marketing, they ca n’t avoid the launch of mainstream traffic platforms such as Facebook and Instagram. We have launched a cross-border e-commerce social drainage product “Luban” system with creative one-click generation and advertising. Optimization, data analysis and other functions allow Xiaobai users to complete operations step by step after registering their accounts. At present, this product has been used by more than 1,000 enterprise users.
The third is a tool for short video production. After the outbreak of short video marketing, it poses a great challenge to the efficiency of video content production. In the past, the production cycle of video creative may take 5 to 10 days, but now it takes one day to produce More than a dozen videos can meet the needs of customers. This is not a problem that can only be solved by manpower. The development of intelligent tools related to short videos is imminent. Tools need to be used to quickly generate and process materials. At the same time, they must be able to track the effects of mass marketing materials. .
Fourth, on the programmatic buying platform, we also addedWake up business. Some companies may have hundreds of millions of registered users in the past, but there are fewer and fewer active users. We use data matching to help APPs push content that users may be interested in and let users start using the APP again. New mobile phone users in China have reached a platform stage, and the wake-up business is in line with the general trend of future market development. If you research customers, you will find that many companies have set up growth departments that are independent of the core organizational structure, and are directly managed by the CEO and president-level departments, which reflects the anxiety of Internet companies on user growth.
Q: “Going to sea” is a key word that Blue Label has been emphasizing for the past two years. What is the current customer demand for going to sea? What services does Blue Label provide?
Pan Fei: Games, e-commerce, Internet tools and brands are the industries with a relatively large volume going abroad. In the past few years, China has led the world in the development of mobile Internet, mobile payment, and social software. When China ’s mobile phone user traffic subsides fade, everyone will naturally consider going out. The Southeast Asian market is very open to Chinese products, and some places that ca n’t pay by credit card can use Alipay.
We divide the business of going abroad into two categories. The first category is the Internet going abroad. The so-called “borrowing to the sea” mainly refers to the advertising of traffic platforms. The overseas traffic pattern is relatively stable. The degree is also relatively high. The value provided by Blue Label is mainly the optimization of investment strategies and provides a platform for account management and investment strategy management. The second type is the brand going overseas, helping companies like Xiaomi and Air China to land overseas. These companies are After completing the Internet overseas, I am not satisfied with advertising on Facebook and Twitter, and I hope to integrate into local life. I do need to have a deeper understanding of the local public opinion environment and cultural environment. These are customized services. Blue Label International There are many offices around the world, and the employees are foreign employees. We will extend our reach according to the needs of customers.
Q: What changes are happening to customer demand? In response to changes in the technical environment and customer needs, what adjustments are being made to the Blue Label?
Pan Fei: The first is growth anxiety. Correspondingly, we launched the wake-up business. Second, customers are more open-minded in marketing cooperation, so we will pay more attention to the flow of resources within the system, such as IP cooperation. Third, customers pay more attention to marketing ROI, so Blue Label pays special attention to the establishment of an internal advertising operation optimization team. In the past, it ended after the traditional channel launch. In the Internet era, launch is only the first step, and it is necessary to continuously track clicks. Marketing materials may be iterated several times in a day, and the efficiency is completely different from the past.
I think in the marketing industry, there are three things that we are talking about less and less. Customer first, industry definition of customerThere is ambiguity. Do customers who work with 4A count as your real customers? I don’t think it counts. Second, there are fewer and fewer people talking about the media. Third, fewer people (team members).
Especially “talent”. In recent years, the industry has rarely talked about talent. This is actually a particularly large misunderstanding. To say that the blue standard measures to respond to industry changes, in fact, the most important thing is the cultivation of people. The quality of talents determines the quality of the team. In the face of marketers in the intelligent marketing era, what changes in thinking? What happened to the skill requirements? This is an issue worthy of discussion by the industry. The industry is changing fast, and everyone is very impetuous. They ca n’t wait for it to be a doctrine. They recruit people and start to use them. The emphasis on technology and concepts exceeds the training of talents.
Facing the current marketing environment, I think that talents are definitely more and more diversified. We hope to cultivate talents who can solve several types of problems. First of all, we must have both creative ability and technical thinking, and know how to deal with R & D personnel; The second is to be able to embrace the era of rapid change. In the face of new variables like 5G, after we have trained the relevant basic information for talents, they can actively think about the changes brought about by these factors. Third, there are career ideals, and Customer awareness, the products and services we provide can withstand customer inspections, and only when team members agree with this concept can we form a true ONE TEAM.
Q: In the early 10’s, Blue Label acquired a lot of companies. Will it consider continuing to acquire MarTech in the future?
Pan Fei: This year is the tenth year that Blue Cursor is listed. In the past ten years, we have indeed expanded our business through mergers and acquisitions. However, the outside world has some misunderstandings about the blue label mergers and acquisitions. We feel that we buy and buy from east to west and sticks. In fact, if we observe the targets of our mergers and acquisitions, we will find that our idea of mergers and acquisitions is clear: our first round of mergers and acquisitions was to complete the The company’s transition to the Integrated Communications Group. At that time, the blue label had only public relations business and no advertising business; the second round of mergers and acquisitions, through the blessing of technology and Internet genes, officially implemented the “marketing intelligence” and “business globalization” strategy. Blue cursor moves towards marketing technology group.
This is the third stage of our development. We rely more on the ability of endogenous growth. We hope to use tools to empower the business and improve operational efficiency. Through the first two rounds of mergers and acquisitions, we have already made up our technology research and development capabilities. In the future, more and more technology products and businesses will be introduced through independent research and development and internal incubation.
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