Flashback to the summer of 2022: the sun was probably shining, birds were singing, the pandemic was receding into history, and everything was alright with the world except the nagging sense that something was missing. No industry buzzword had emerged to act as the north star, technology destination, and organizational goal to guide the industry into 2023 and beyond. It was a big surprise. Marketers were adrift and convention programmers had no theme to program around.
Omnichannel has been that thing for a few years, and it’s been effective in shaping a more customer-centric approach to marketing and experience. We’ve seen profound transformation throughout the industry come to fruition as result. Many life sciences organizations have aligned their people and processes to deliver omnichannel-orchestrated interactions and also developed or partnered with leading-edge companies to scale foundational technologies that make the automation components possible.
That includes everything from standing up Customer Data Platforms (CDPs), developing data taxonomies, instituting cross-channel messaging enablement, and many things in between. It’s been a great start and so much more transforming is still to be done. Content production and differentiation needs to get even faster, lag times for label updates need to get shorter, and next-action automation needs to take a leading role in message orchestration.
The Next Great Buzzword
Without further ado (drum roll on your desk please), the future state of omnichannel is omnidynamic. I first threw out this term half-jokingly during a client brainstorm on innovation. The more I thought about it, the more it became clear it was an apt description of where omnichannel is leading us and needs to go. Put as simply as possible, omnidynamic marketing and media is a future state where the philosophical and operational aspects of dynamic creative optimization (DCO) combine with omnichannel orchestration to elevate the customer experience in real time.
Omnidynamic is where omnichannel breaks free of business rule-based constraints, is fueled with variable and modular content across marketing channels, and each customer can be served a unique experience that is attuned to their specific in-the-moment needs. It solves the problems that have impacted the industry’s ability to scale omnichannel capabilities by introducing technological solutions to manual problems. It prioritizes and automates the content product process. It significantly reduces label change downtime by seamlessly toggling campaigns from branded to unbranded by using a consistent and templated message structure. And most importantly it makes a unique customer sequence possible and scalable.
We need and love big ideas to be the quixotic windmills of the industry. We love them almost as much as the alphabet soup of algorithms that swirl through our conversations. Omnidynamic marketing is what unifies the leading-edge marketing technologies into a coherent strategy for elevated customer interactions. We are just scratching the surface of what this could be, and I’m excited to see where it leads next.
