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Gaston Legorburu is the Senior Vice President and Chief Creative Officer of Sapient. Gaston Legorburu oversees the company's overall creative vision, directs its corporate marketing efforts, and leads its experience marketing practice.

Legorburu has been a driving force in the evolution of the interactive marketing business since co-founding Planning Group International (PGI). Under his leadership, PGI became the largest privately held interactive agency in the United States and was acquired by Sapient in 2006.

Throughout his career, Legorburu has spearheaded some of the most successful online campaigns in the history of the Internet. He has partnered with clients in industries ranging from financial services and travel and leisure to technology and food service.

He has helped these clients gain unparalleled insights into effectively marketing their products and services in today's increasingly complex marketplace. Legorguru continues to provide clients with forward-thinking answers to overcome their critical business challenges.

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Sapient Uncovers Behavioral Targeting

Written on
July 12th 2007
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by Gaston Legorburu  |
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binocs2.jpgHere’s a news flash, the Internet is delivering marketers the opportunity to customize marketing programs based on the behavior of their target audience. Well, that’s not really a new flash per se. The online behavioral marketing wagon left the barn months ago. What is somewhat newsworthy, however, is the fact that with all the advances in the area of behavioral targeting and the proven benefits it delivers, marketers continue to utilize untargeted mass media for customized marketing programs.

To me this just seems illogical and somewhat surprising. After all, we hold conferences and workshops on the topic of behavioral marketing throughout the year but once the conferences end; we go home and fall back into the same marketing mindset—using the wide open approach with mass media initiatives.

Now where is the logic?

Like I said, behavioral targeting has proven its worth online, empowering marketers to provide customized programs capable of driving superior results. As interactive advertising revenues continue to rise, and they will (IAB recently stated revenues continued to increase in Q1, nearing the $5 billion mark), behavioral targeted advertising will play an increasingly bigger role. In fact, eMarketer says that spending will surpass the $1 billion mark by 2008 and will nearly quadruple to $3.8 billion in 2011, driven by what it calls the “advertisers’ growing enthusiasm for establishing and building brands on portals and other Web sites.”

With this online success an outsider might assume that marketers are running to identify other avenues where this technology can deliver value. One would think that, right? The reality is that a traditional and narrow minded view of behavioral targeting and how it can be deployed has quickly formed over night.

These behavioral targeting traditionalists view it as strictly an online opportunity, which does a true disservice to this technology by discounting the other areas where it can deliver value. The online realm was the ideal medium for this technology to make its debut and for many it will be the only place it gets utilized. However, for others, such as your local bank or car dealership, the Web is only one piece of the overall equation. It is this group that needs to expand beyond this traditional mindset to see the bigger picture.

So what needs to be done to show marketers that this same success can be achieved on the mass market arena? We know having another conference surely is not the answer. The reality is that marketing professionals need to first open their eyes by educating themselves to the big picture. Once they have done that three things must happen:

First: They now need to move from a channel planning approach to a philosophy of planning for one, which encompasses all devices (from the Web, to the ATM machine, to the fliers that get mailed to your house). A successful campaign will deliver communication goals across each, all based on the behavior of the customer

Second: We need to break out of our traditional models of reach and frequency, which no longer apply. Instead, behavioral targeting needs take a “reach and facilitate” approach where we react as marketers when a consumer is requesting content. As a result, we can facilitate a meaningful dialog that results in first choice brand preference, further opt-in communications and sales for clients

Third: Companies will need to implement a complex system by which marketers can track, react and give consumers what they want on demand.

Consider your local bank:

If a consumer consistently visits their local ATM each Friday, withdraws $100 for the weekend and then ops-out of the receipt, the machine should learn this behavior so in time it knows how much the person wants and that they do not want a receipt. By adapting to the customers’ needs and habits the bank will further enhance that person’s loyalty to their business. The bank may in time take this one step further by then offering the customer suggestions combined with coupons for ways to spend that money, be it at a restaurant or a retail store in the consumer’s area. As they learn which coupons the customer uses the most, future interactions may even become more customized.

The possibilities are truly vast and once we have taken these steps and mastered the ability to manage complex behavioral targeting campaigns across several channels a whole new world of behavioral marketing will open up.



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