Most major brands are finally getting their content publishing and distribution models aligned with demands from customers on their owned web and mobile channels. However, there is a critical need for atomic and reusable product marketing and advertising content across contexts like social, in-app and inter-device experiences.

There are three major challenges to keeping up with the complexities inherent in the proliferation of marketing and advertising, namely:

1. Customer research and knowledge. Creating a reliable process that refreshes the brand's understanding of customer behavior is a code that is yet to be cracked by many companies and their agencies.

2. Technology and channel currency. Marketing technologist-like titles are growing but the ability to stay abreast of trends in technology, devices and social is a full time job.

3. Production cost. People, process, technology and time investment in creating valued content for advertising and product marketing is more than a challenge. The production of quality, usable and re-usable content is prohibitive without efficiency and alignment with challenges 1 and 2 listed above.

The Uncomfortable Truth about Digital Transformation

• For organizations in leading market sectors, taking a 'fast follower' approach without experimentation or addressing gaps in the above capacities will lead to dangerous financial outcomes, if not corporate peril.

• Organizations that are investing in new and innovative ways of developing, testing, delivering and validating the efficacy of their content quality, channel delivery and customer reach and engagement are seeing positive returns.

• Although over-stated and fast becoming another buzzword, digital transformation is a reality. As the digital behavior of your customers remains fickle and continues to change, leaving the heavy lifting to competitors or new entrants in your market is more risky than making the effort to adapt.

• Developing approaches that keep pace with the empowered customer demands corporate agility. Today's reality is that change, and the speed of that change, is now a constant. Investment is required in areas such as executive and employee knowledge, the value to a customer in context, leadership to manage the change, integration of business processes and understanding gathered data and results.