Partners in Digital Experience: Wunderman Thompson on The Multiple Layers of Digital Experience

Image

Growth is essential to a thriving business. Whether that’s growing your operations, growing your audience or growing your overall value proposition, successful companies rarely stay stagnant. The technology space is always expanding, adding new channels, devices and ways of connecting with others every day. 

As a global agency with over 200 offices around the world, Wunderman Thompson understands how to add new value to a thriving digital ecosystem. Through multiple acquisitions over the last few years, Wunderman Thompson has united digital leaders across nearly every industry and speciality. Today, the global agency provides end-to-end capabilities to brands, guiding them from creative conceptualization all the way through to customer experience. Acquia is proud to have Wunderman Thompson as a global partner and presenting sponsor for this year’s Acquia Engage conference.

At Engage, they’ll share how they’ve helped customers to reinvent themselves in a new world and given them the tools to scale without slowing down. We recently caught up with Niel Mouton, Managing Director, Wunderman Thompson Technology, South Africa for a preview of their exciting main stage session and an inside look into the many layers that go into building truly monumental digital experiences.

Adapting to New Customer Expectations with Agile Technology

The last few years have forced many people to alter their daily routines and reset their expectations for technology. For brands that relied heavily on in-person experiences, the pressure to adapt to change quickly led them to a total digital transformation. Wunderman Thompson’s team worked with Acquia to rapidly set up new methods of digital communication. They quickly went into action to consult with each of their clients on how they could pivot their strategies and maintain relationships with their core audiences. 

For instance, when a pharmaceutical company struggled to engaged with HCPs (Health Care Professionals during the pandemic, Wunderman Thompson created a new digital strategy for them that focused on educational product content and relationship building. “Pharmaceutical reps weren’t just able to walk into a doctor’s office and speak with them. So they needed a new way to communicate product knowledge,” said Niel.

Wunderman Thompson leveraged Acquia’s Open Digital Experience Platform (DXP) to create a learning experience platform that provided  Health Care Professionals the information they needed and made it easy for them to digest the product knowledge though a great experience.. In only six months, their client onboarded nearly 12,000  health care professionals and generated over 25,000 hours of engagement on their digital channels. 

The Freedom to Build New Capabilities Without Starting Over

Agility is critical to staying competitive in any industry; however, as companies expand to new markets and their needs change, it's challenging to continue to work at a fast pace. “International clients need to roll out global campaigns in multiple languages, across multiple markets and still adhere to all the specific requirements of each country. So you need to balance meeting specific needs while maintaining some standardization across the enterprise,” said Niel.
 

An integrated DXP built with open technology allowed Wunderman Thompson to reduce the complexity of such a large scale implementation process and begin engaging with customers immediately. "We ultimately believe that complexity is the enemy of transformation," said Niel. 

We ultimately believe that complexity is the enemy of transformation 

-Niel Mouton, Wunderman Thompson

Rather than try to navigate every need at once with a single monolithic solution, Wunderman Thompson breaks their clients' needs down into distinct services and capabilities, whether that’s adding an e-commerce engine or adopting a customer data platform (CDP). The customer journey is an ongoing wave of composable experiences and instead of a monolithic platform that claims to have all the bells and whistles from day one, an open platform allows a company’s technical architecture to scale as their needs do. “As clients' operations and goals mature over time, we treat it as adding new layers onto a secure and powerful foundation. “Allowing for continuous improvement means that clients can maximize their future value proposition. They aren’t stuck with a certain set of features or capabilities,” Niel added.  

As a long-term Acquia partner, Wunderman Thompson has helped clients evolve their approaches to digital experience over the years. No matter if someone suddenly decides to switch up their strategy and go headless or invest in new channels, every request is always an achievable possibility.

---
To hear even more about the amazing ways Wunderman Thompson and Acquia are helping companies digitally transform, check out Wunderman Thompson’s session at Acquia Engage on October 26!