The process of digital maturity is brought to life through the case study of fashion brand Scorpion Bay. This project, which started in Spring 2023, saw the creation of a brand equity development strategy aimed at revitalizing the brand’s values which were then projected into a medium-to long-term purpose marketing horizon.

During Tangoo’s workshop at the recent Netcomm Forum, Marino Gualano, Founder and International Business Development Director and Davide Ricco, Head of Sales of the company, along with Walter Junior Cassetta, Co-Founder and CSO of The Harvest Consulting, presented the strategy and approach for an organic digital growth journey that every company can and should undertake. This was explored through a project for the well-known and established fashion brand Scorpion Bay that Tangoo and The Harvest Consulting are undertaking in partnership.

Digital maturity is an objective that brands aspire to, or should aspire to, in order to be able to remain competitive and plan long-term growth.

But what is digital maturity? Who can pursue it and how?

The discussion highlighted why brands need to reach digital maturity and took them through the evolutionary journey. Delegates learned that regardless of the industry, company size, or budget invested, all brands can embark on such a journey.

The journey was embarked upon through the case of Scorpion Bay, a project initiated in the spring of 2022 with an initial phase of audit and assessment.

From this The Harvest Consulting developed a brand equity development strategy aimed at revitalizing the brand’s values and projecting them into a medium – to long-term purpose marketing horizon. The Harvest Consulting then developed a repositioning plan for Scorpion Bay, starting from its origins, with strategic and tactical actions aimed at reaffirming the brand’s Californian heritage, founded in 1987 by Fischer and Bradford. The relaunch plan focused on coordinating content and media, PR, and product strategy.

This led to a digital transformation process primarily based on replatforming on Shopify, along with a targeted CRM and content marketing strategy, culminating in the initiation of a digital maturity path created together with Tangoo.

Once the first fundamental step was completed, it was time for the digital media partner, Tangoo, to step in. Through an in-depth audit, the brand’s maturity phase was determined in order to position it within the digital maturity framework. From there, a short- and medium-term digital strategy was developed, transforming the client’s business needs into marketing solutions. The identification of the digital maturity phase in which each brand finds itself is achieved through the careful and meticulous study of five dimensions that form the foundation and development of the entire journey. 

The four phases of digital maturity are: Nascent, Emerging, Connected, and Multi-Moment.

The five dimensions on which the growth journey is based are: Audience, Asset and Ads, Attribution, Automation, and Access.

The four phases are determined by defining the status of these dimensions. In summary these are:

• Nascent: This is the initial or embryonic phase in which the brand must effectively structure and organize itself in terms of assets and activities.
• Emerging: In this phase, the company has organized itself and is implementing assets and organizing data, which are now first-party. Digital activities become more sophisticated at this stage.
• Connected: In this phase, the company has an advanced approach and implements an almost complete digital strategy. Integration, optimization, data-driven strategy, and integrated digital services are established.
• Multi-Moment: This the final phase of full digital maturity. Technology, media activities, programmatic, and analytics all communicate and interact continuously, allowing brand customers to experience a perfectly optimized customer journey. Optimization, data-driven approaches, and asset optimization are the key elements and the growth of Lifetime Value (LTV) becomes exponential.

After this crucial theoretical part, the audience was taken through Scorpion Bay’s journey, from the Nascent phase to almost six months, later entering the first part of the Emerging phase.

With results already measurable, the brand is continuing on this path with the objective to reach the end of the emerging phase by December 2023 and to be fully in the connected phase by the end of 2024. Scorpion Bay’s owners The Mistri family attended the workshop and are fully engaged in the project.