AMELIA ISLAND, FL: Marketers could benefit from choosing to "vote with your money" as they seek to drive digital change both in-house and externally, a leading executive from Campbell's has argued.

Umang Shah, Director/Digital Marketing & Marketing Innovation at the Campbell Soup Co., discussed this topic at the Association of National Advertisers' (ANA) 2015 Digital and Social Media East Conference.

Having joined the firm in 2014, Shah established a Marketing Innovation Lab which aims to keep its brands relevant in the digital age.

"Vote with your money," he advised. (For more, including further examples, read Warc's exclusive report: Campbell's steps up to the cutting edge of innovation.)

"It sends a message to the organisation that you are willing to invest in the right kinds of projects – that you're not just going to do the same old thing."

One example of this idea in action is a tie-up between Campbell's and Amazon's Echo interactive speaker, through which the food group can provide recipes with a voice instruction.

This initiative was undertaken "quickly and cheaply", he suggested, but the insights gleaned will have significantly greater value.

"We don't know if Amazon Echo will be here forever. But I have a pretty good hunch that voice interactions are going to be around, and are going to play a bigger role over time. So the learnings are limitless for us," said Shah.

And such a willingness to remain ahead of the technological curve will be vital for brands which are seeking to keep up with their customers.

"We want the projects today that everyone else is going be looking at a year from now or five years from now," said Shah.

"We want to play around with it and value whether or not it's right for us. And if it is, great. And if it's not, that's fine too. We can fail.

"If we don't know where the edges are," he continued, "how do we know that we're pushing the boundary? We can get a bunch of ideas that we all maybe think are interesting – but how do we really know that they're cutting edge? "

Data sourced from Warc