From Data Users to Data Creators

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👋 Hey everyone,

This week Microsoft and Coca-Cola announced a pretty unique partnership.

I wrote a LinkedIn post about this, but it felt so important that I wanted to take some time to expand on why I believe this is so important for marketers.

The single biggest shift that will need to happen for brands to survive the next era of digitalization is this: going from data users to data creators.

In order to undertand this, we need to go back in time a little.

The way the traditional transactional model and value exchange worked between brands and consumers up until a few years ago was this:

1. Brand → creates product

2. Brand → advertises product on radio, TV, outdoor media

3. Consumer → sees advertising, decides to buy product

4. Brand → creates a new product

… and the cycle continues.

But with social media coming into play for almost a decade now, we didn’t just add a new channel to brands’ distribution of their advertising.

The bigger and more transformational shift has been the fact that consumers have become THE CHANNEL of distribution, with influencers getting paid to promote the products they once simply just bought and consumed.

Initially, it was just a handful of influencers that had the guts, the inspiration, or the access to do this.

But today, everyone can be an influencer.

Today, everyone IS an influencer.

You, me, young kids, old grandmas, your neighbour, the CEO of the brand, the cleaning lady - EVERYONE can create content, tell a story and create attention.

The young girl from a small town with a million followers can now make or break your brand. In a second.

She is the main CHANNEL of distribution today, not Instagram or TikTok.

The consumer is.

According to Business Wire, the global influencer marketing platform market value stood at US$17.98 billion in 2023, and is expected to reach US$94.21 billion by 2029. The market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 31.78% over the projected period of 2024-2029. 

Remember what we talked about at the beginning?

The single biggest shift that will need to happen for brands to survive the next era of digitalization is this: going from data users to data creators.

To understand consumers, brands need to buy data today. But what happens when data is sold by the actual consumers directly to the brands?

Meaning, the young girl form a small town, who has 1 million followers, knows more about her followers than you (brand or marketer) do.

And she will be able to eventually sell that data in a bigger way than just through sponsoships. She will OWN her data.

We, all consumers, will own our data and we will be able to decide wether to sell it or not.

Hence the transaction model between brands and consumers now becomes this:

Brand → creates a product

Brand → pays influencer (consumer) to promote the product (she doesn’t need to buy it anymore)

Brand → pays influencer to share her broader audience data (she will own it)

Influencer (consumer) → promotes the product to millions of other consumers who now have the option to do the same thing (they own their data)

Question → who JUST buys a product? how do brands scale under this new model?

Obviously, we will still need to buy products. I’m not saying we will stop doing that at mass.

BUT… if we as consumers get to own our data and sell it to brands, where does brand loyalty come into play?

My take is that it won’t, that brand loyalty as we know it is dead and the only way for brands to be able to continue a scalable growth is to:

1. own data (through IP aka digital properties or products)

2. build attention (relevancy)

There won’t be more people on earth. We don’t have more resources to spare. Climate change is a real thing.

Digital value has no cap and is completely scalable.

THIS is what Coca-Cola understands and this is why this 1B$ agreement with Microsoft makes total sense.

In order to become data generators, they need to completely shift their entire tech ecosystem and who else better than Microsoft (and OpenAI, a company owned by Microsoft) to help them achieve this?

When I read the article, I thought “wow, this is really happening”. The new era of digitalization is here.

As marketers, it’s time to level up. Old models are dying. New paradigms are emerging.

Until next time, keep your 👀 on the future.

Oana