dudley’s BACKGROUND & FOCUS - VIRTUAL INFLUENCERS / VIRTUAL HUMANS & 4th wave marketing:

Dudley Nevill-Spencer is a Virtual Influencer and Virtual human pioneer. He created the worlds first agency that develops virtual Influencers for brands www.virtualinfluencer.agency and is recognised as one of the worlds authorities on influencer marketing, Chairing the opening panel for the Worlds first Influencer marketing show in 2018 and the first Influencer marketing panel for Europes largest marketing show , The Festival of Marketing.

An integrated  brand strategist, a student of Machine Learning at MIT, Dudley has a rare, multi-disciplinary background in communications, tech and culture that has enabled him to develop a truly insightful view on the future of marketing and brands.

He coined the term "4th wave marketing",*  to explain his focus and process to help future-proof  brands and take advantage of the significant opportunities that are occurring as the digital, biological and physical worlds are fused by technology.

His speciality is his ability to develop insight led brand strategy that seamlessly integrates social, influencer and MarTech into coherent communications, experiential and innovation campaigns that are connected to the Zeitgeist and integrate brands into the cultural lives of their customers.

With a background in entertainment marketing and digital, Dudley has worked as an Executive at pioneering tech powerhouse Massive Interactive, music company Ministry of Sound, & film companies Celador and the ABC before moving into brand strategy consultancy in 2007, focussing on social, Influencer and culture marketing, creating one of the first integrated communication consultancy offerings in the UK .

His mission it to help brands maintain relevance & build customer advocacy and is a champion of data driven customer segmentation, using Machine Learning Tools to understand not just the demographics but the psychographics , interests and motivations, of customers.  An expert in MarTech his process it to use the latest AI based tool to help refine not only customer segmentation, but to test and refine content and advertising and enable social media marketing to work with laser like precision. 

His belief is that in the near future, all individuals - much like celebrities - would become media brands in their own right, and that Influence, content and brand discovery will be democratised by Blockchain and AI, and that this will critically challenge linear and traditional advertising. As a Consultant he has won many of the world's first Influencer and lifestyle communications contracts, from global companies such as Diageo and American Express back in 2010, through to general consumer, finance and tech companies such as British Gas , Amazon and the EU in 2018.

*4th wave marketing is named in reference to "The fourth Industrial Revolution", as defined by Klaus schwab, one of the founders of the World Economic Forum.  

Brand Purpose, culture and entertainment

Dudley is a believer in brand "purpose"  and passionately believes in the transformative power of culture and those who create it,  with a deep knowledge about "who" and "what" is next. He coined the phrase "The Culture Continuum*" to reference the process by which issues, grassroots communities, nascent cultural outputs and finally political movements and entertainment trends, are created, and develops "Cultural Radars**" to help Brands understand this process and position themselves within it. This often takes the form of advising on which movements, creators and cultural leaders share the same values, this is what Dudley refers to as "Cultural Navigation***", executed correctly it creates authentic cultural integration, avoids appropriation and develops advocacy for brands.

sociAL MEDIA, INFLUENCER MARKETING & data:

"It's about using data to find brand, category and customer insights and the individuals who have Influence on your customers, creating content that resonates and then serving them that content at the right part of their consumer journey - and then measuring it. Influencers can have 100 followers or 100,000, scale is not necessarily the measure of success, its about engagement and Influence".

Dudley has used and regularly reviews data driven tools, from Social Listening to Influencer Search, Creator Markets and Campaign ROI reporting Tools. Part of any effective integrated strategy involves Dudley recommending and utilising the Tools that provide the best data sources and the most effective algorithms for the job at hand. As such, advising on the "tech stack" has become an increasingly important part of Dudleys campaign advisory, he has used and advised on over 50  different data tools - reviews can be seen on his blog - he is a keen student of Machine Learning programming language "Python", enabling him to understand and evaluate many of the tools and data sources.

See more about Influencer marketing here:

An integrated campaign needs to manage and seek out Influencers at all levels,  "The Local hero" (those with a very low following but who are completely trusted - e.g the Captain of the local football team, the head of the PTA) - they create the Community, "Niche Influencers" (those who have authority and influence on one subject) - they create the validation and authority for your brand, and "Power Influencers" (those who affect culture en mass). This level of perspective is a product of working at all levels of Influencer and creator marketing, from attaching superstars such as Jude Law to Johnnie Walker, or developing the first micro-influencer campaigns for brands such as Estee Lauder. See "The Influencer trust Continuum"*****

AWARENESS, CONSIDERATION, PURCHASE

Every campaign Dudley creates references the different parts of the customer journey and the marketing channels and messages that best apply.  At each stage data is gathered on the customer, content and brand, this is then used to refine the brands customer segmentation data, tweak its content and advertising output and retarget and redefine the Custom Audiences for its Social Media marketing efforts.

GLOSSARY:

* THE CULTURAL CONTINUUM: The marketing framework that is used to identify and display the development of cultural outputs, moving from birth to maturity. This includes political, artistic and entertainment outputs; starting with individuals, moving to groups, grassroots movements, trends and finally mass awareness. 

** CULTURAL RADARS: The marketing product and processes that identify cultural outputs and their relevance to specific brands. Relevance is determined by the alignment of the cultural outputs "values" to the brand in questions "purpose".

***CULTURAL NAVIGATION: The process of helping brands to navigate and integrate with culture that is relevant to both their brand and their consumer.

****THE INFLUENCER MATCH TOOL: The tool and process that evaluates brands and Influencers on their values, creating an overlay and a percentage match, delivered in the form of an "Influencer Audit".

*****THE INFLUENCER TRUST CONTINUUM: The process that outlines the inverse relationship between Trust and Scale in influencer marketing

For more information or a discussion about how Dudley can help your agency or brand please email dudley@theinfluenceragency.co.uk