What you need to know:

• ING CMO, Danielle Hamilton, used her time onstage at the recent Future of TV Advertising event in Sydney to make a plea for agency and media partners to leave reach and frequency behind and get sharper on the commercials marketers are facing internally as they endeavour to demonstrate return on marketing investment.
• Explaining the complex system of short and longterm measurement and incentives she’s managing across her teams, from performance to brand, risk and product marketing, Hamilton noted applying a customer value lens across the top of her marketing investments to get to the right outcomes for the digital bank.
• Yet even after years of getting it together, Hamilton said there’s still a ways to go to shift from volume towards value: “It’s not just that we acquired X amount of customers, or sold Y widgets, we should be looking at the one, three or fiveyear value of that through a customer lens.”
• Hamilton also detailed ING’s 18month partnership with Seven news as an evolved push + pull approach to leveraging media, revealing she’s extending the partnership given the significant wins its delivered the business.

The recent Future of TV Advertising event in Sydney was notable for prolonged discussions onstage about how to evolve media measurement from the reach and volume game of old to engagement-based outcomes and a pricing hierarchy that places higher premiums on addressable, longform video – and the audiences it commands over social platforms. But even as attendees witnessed growing consensus between broadcast and streaming players to find a way to work together to uphold their worth – and avoid the pricing freefall seen in digital display channels – ING CMO Danielle Hamilton was calling on the advertising community to sharpen its commercial acumen pencil. 

In answer to a question on whether the TV industry was obsessing over things that don’t really matter to marketers – principal media trading among them – Hamilton agreed, noting she had no idea about the nuance of such deals or their potential existence in the Australian market. In fact, only about 10 per cent of her time is spent on media.

Instead, Hamilton wants her agency and media partners to become more attuned to the return on marketing investment measures she’s being held to account for inside ING.

“I spent the first 10 years of my career working on agency side, and it wasn’t until I went into a marketing role in the States that I realised the CFO, CEO and CMO were not interested in cost per leads, or reach, frequency numbers. Yes it’s important at one level, but it’s not the way to win hearts and minds in the boardroom,” Hamilton told attendees. “We as a broader community around advertising need to sharpen the commercial acumen pencil.

“I’d love our agency and media partners to get into bed with us to understand those commercial realities and what it’s like to drive growth in a business, to help us drive creative connection plans, brands, properties or whatever the discussion is.”

Of most importance to Hamilton are measurement and audience strategy that feed into demonstrable return on marketing investment (ROMI). While agreeing ROMI can lead to a media efficiency obsession if you’re measuring in a short-term, tactical way, she argued it is the best metric to bring to executives when you apply the right lenses to it.

Shifting from a volume and acquisition mentality to one that traverses the lifetime value of a customer to ING is a key step here. Hamilton pointed to a five-year customer lens as a key input into her ROMI approach. What helps is having the ability to see the direct cause and effect from a campaign through to customer value and what products a customer takes up inside the direct-to-consumer digital bank.

“I know where every dollar of my marketing budget is going, and I can talk to the c-suite about the ROI on that. It’s taken six years, and various iterations of our frameworks and tooling, to be able to do that,” Hamilton said. “By no means are we nailing it – there’s still work to do. For instance, we talk a lot about volume, and we’re now talking more about value. It’s not just that we acquired X amount of customers, or sold Y widgets, we should be looking at the one, three or five-year value of that through a customer lens.”

Hamilton admitted incentivising to ensure these longer-term marketing outcomes are met is a juggle against short-term targets.

“We are on an annual calendar year cycle, and there are absolutely non-negotiable outcomes we have to reach year-on-year,” she said. “There’s obviously sales. But my targets are broad, from financial – profit, revenue, return on marketing investment – then customer, so NPS, brand equity, active customer growth in each portfolio – right through to risk, people and leadership. We have a robust process of setting targets, where we cascade those short- and long-term targets through the business.

“For example, my brand team’s primary target is brand equity, but they also are incentivised to drive a high customer value as well as NPS. Equally in performance and digital sales team – they would have a product consideration target and customer value target. There’s a cascade so it’s not long or short, sales versus brand dynamic. That extends across the risk department.”

Aligning media strategy to customer strategy

For Hamilton, a media plan therefore should be in response to your customer strategy. “Those are the topics I’m engaging the media agencies on, with our MMM partners,” Hamilton continued, adding ING uses Kantar for brand tracking. “We want to have strategic conversations, then empower the experts in the team to execute efficiently on the strategy, whether that’s in performance channels or through TV partnerships, such as our work with Seven.”

The partnership with Seven ING embarked on 18 months ago via UM sees the bank as the official consumer finance sponsor of Seven News. Five times a day and five times a week, ING talent broadcast live from studios in the ING offices via Sunrise and Seven News, talking to the national population about macro, consumer finance topics through to interesting nuggets on money-related topics including what Aussies spend on sports fandom.

“It’s much more of a push plus pull strategy, rather than running spots and dots around Australia telling everyone to come to ING,” Hamilton commented. “This comes back to our purpose and our brand strategy, which is empowering Australians to be more empowered with their money. There is so much apathy around money in Australia. We are trying to break down complexity and do it in an unusual format – from your morning coffee to evening news. It’s a content play. If we can get in family BBQ conversation with arresting content that feels different from a bank, that’s key. We’re also then amplifying the content and talent on podcasts, drivetime; all those sorts of things.”

It's a deal that could not have been brokered without ING’s agency, UM, Hamilton said. She described the brand’s 13-year relationship with the media agency as more valuable than ever – even with ING’s decision to insource performance marketing channels.

“It’s one based on trust and collaboration, and there’s so much IP in that business on our business. As a client, we try to motivate agency partners to have their best talent work on our business. We know as a challenger brand that will give us the best outcomes,” Hamilton said.

Connecting the audience ecosystem dots

As to what else she’d like to see more of from the media players at Future of TV Sydney, Hamilton called for a more holistic view of audiences extending beyond owned broadcast channels.

“Our experience can be linear and siloed. The producers are not necessarily thinking about digital amplification, or the social opportunity. Think about the ecosystems you all own, and audiences with which you have the privilege of connecting with,” she said. “That’s what is so powerful about the Seven deal. I’m pleased to say we’re extending that deal, as we see tremendous value from brand value to site visitation. I’ve seen it being done firsthand, as a result of the media network and agencies bringing that value to us.

“As long as TV networks and publishers produce great content, there will be an audience. And advertisers will continue to want access to those audiences, but we’re going to want access to smart data and tooling to prove the value of being into those environments, whether it’s spots and dots, integration into MAFs or news.”

More broadly, Hamilton said it was critical brands take bigger bets on differentiation as categories become increasingly commoditised.

“Brand, experience and proposition are how we differentiate. That’s the role of the marketer. I genuinely think creativity is the last differentiator on growth,” she added. “Collectively, everyone in this room should be aspiring towards that outcome.”