For the latest edition of the SoDA Report (Volume 2, 2015) we wanted to share some thoughts on putting the user first.

Putting the user first is the only defense against the increasingly barrier-ridden UX ecosystem of brands. To thrive in today’s environment, agencies need to go beyond campaigns and solve user problems anywhere and everywhere.

Maslow pushed out his hierarchy of needs in 1943 in a nostalgically cute world of push-only marketing and brick and mortar commerce – an era when the funnel was still a relatively straightforward concept.

The marketers of the Mad Men era never had to worry about mobile, tablets, desktops, apps, social, the Internet of things, wearables, Virtual Reality, and enough data to make our head spin. In 2015, consumer needs live in a complex world of customer journeys across devices – the operative word being complex. While consumers’ needs have largely remained constant, trying to fulfill them now requires constant vigilance and an anytime / anywhere approach. Managing those user experiences across touch points is arguably the hardest part of any marketer’s day. And by hard, we mean it’s reached a byzantine level of complexity.

Read the rest of the article and the full SoDA Report online or on Slideshare.