Reflections & Projections: Season One
[MUSIC PLAYING] SPEAKER 1: If consumers are amplifying their digital expectations, it's imperative that brands keep pace. Hello I'm Wilson Raj and welcome to Reimagine Marketing, where we explore how marketing organizations are reinventing themselves in the age of the digital consumer.
Today's episode is reflections and projections season one. This episode marks the end of season one but certainly not the end of the podcasts. Plans for season two are underway. I'm joined by one of my co-hosts, Steven Hoffman. Welcome Steven.
SPEAKER 2: Hi Wilson very excited to be
SPEAKER 1: Here yes. Absolutely, I do remember it was several episodes ago where you and Justin Sang one of our other global co-hosts talked about what this show is all about. And the idea behind it and some of the topics that we want to explore.
SPEAKER 2: Now correct for me it was a very exciting journey. I had the opportunity to learn a lot during those different podcasts. And the difference host you had and I had. And I'm really excited that we can today discuss some key learnings, that we had during our different podcasts.
SPEAKER 1: And absolutely and talk about key insights and unexpected moments you know there were absolutely a lot of them in all of our episodes. So it'll be exciting to just give our listeners a taste so that they can go back and check things out and keep in touch with us.
SPEAKER 2: Yeah, correct, well. So you had quite some podcasts and one of the podcast that struck me the most is the one with the butcher house as a madhouse. I was really impressed that a butcher house is measuring actually the volume of traffic, before their doorstep. And just trying to adapt their marketing strategy based on, for example, the weather, the amount of traffic, that's really impressive. That doesn't sound like your next store butcher shop.
SPEAKER 1: Steven it definitely does not sound like your next door. You are your friendly neighborhood butcher. I'm sure they are friendly. But I think in that episode it was really cool because the whole discussion there with our guests Bernard Ma, who is strategic advisor and now a futurist it was all about immersive tech.
How do you use technologies such as augmented reality, virtual reality. How does it powered by AI to really create these immersive experiences. And there were a lot of huge examples that were featured in that episode. IKEA, Dulux, Rolex and so on.
But then this particular one this butcher shop was fantastic, because this is a family business. And they were able to get onto the idea that, what if we knew what is happening outside our shop, along the footpath, around the town, around the neighborhood, maybe we can serve them better.
And that's exactly what happened Steven, where they started putting these sensors out there as you mentioned, to measure foot traffic and volume. They also invested in mobile applications to send alerts to their customers when they were nearby. And then the last we heard was that they were now expanding the types of data they were going to be using.
But I think the beauty of this is that this is a small neighborhood shop. So I think the big takeaway is that you don't have to be a giant brand, to do data analytics and use AI and things like that. The size doesn't matter. You can be a small family concern like this and still use the technology to serve customers.
SPEAKER 2: I think it's also a nice example of the things we talked about in the first episode. And looking at a customer journey, and really not looking at all the ads. OK, how can we better serve our customers from a marketing perspective. But also look at the customer journey itself the process. And how can we use data throughout different interactions and processes and we have with our customers.
And really even as a small business, try to get to our customers delight. And that's what I found really impressive about that podcast marketing is for everybody and data and analytics is for everybody. So that they'll really was for me an unexpected learning.
SPEAKER 1: And that's a great summation Steven of that episode.
SPEAKER 2: So another thing I found really interesting was one of the quotes and please explain to our audience what the quote was about. This is a fact that CRM. Everybody looks at it as a technology. Right a way to go forward and improve internal processes. But it's actually a strategy how should our audience interpreter that?
SPEAKER 1: Yeah that quote came from one of the episodes called digitizing southern hospitality. Where we had the president of Twiddy & Company, which is another family business in real estate vacation rentals in the Outer Banks of North Carolina. And he said it this way exactly is what he said he said CRM for us is not a technology. It's a strategy.
And therefore being a strategy, what they think about is, again, how do they serve their clients, their business partners, the community. First and foremost putting that in the center and then layering the technology on that. One of the interesting things Steven, is that the way they made CRM into a strategy was actually to have an all hands meeting. With their data scientist, with their analysts, with marketing people.
Clark said that this meeting was open to anyone in the company that could come in once a week. Look at the data, ask questions, and then be able to take actions from that. Whether it's process improvements or switch their collateral or whatever that is. So I thought that was a great example of how you make CRM firstly a strategy for us. And then allow the technologies to support you.
SPEAKER 2: I think it's also a nice example of the fact that CRM should be part of a special club within the organization. It should be about collaboration and involving really the whole company in that same strategy. Otherwise you won't take the full potential of your CRM strategy. If it's not approved by everybody known. So I like really the example that he says the meetings are open to everybody and everybody can contribute and think with us to reach our goal or universal goal. So I really like that.
SPEAKER 1: Yeah, Steven. That goes back to your earlier point. When that data is for everyone, not just for the customer for their benefit is for the internal collaboration as well. Now speaking of quotes, now you had a couple of interesting guests. As well that had certainly interesting quotes.
And I would never think of this in terms of AI or data analytics should be like the paparazzi. You could choose when you could turn it on or off. That was really something. That can you speak to that in a context of that particular quote and the idea behind that.
SPEAKER 2: I think was a quote by Mika and I really, liked it because it made me think in a different way about how data is being collected and used. Today you don't have really a choice when do you want to share your data.
Do you want to share your data and do you want to get for example personalized offers. Do you want to get newsletters et cetera. Every time you go on a website your data is being collected. And what Mika is actually referring to with a record is that, should we as citizens as consumers be entitled to more ownership of our data.
Today your data is owned by the telco provider. It's owned by the retailer they have your shopping card data. And actually if you start thinking about it. Why don't we get the opportunity to centralize our old data, all our data and being able to share it with who we want to share.
And I think if you imagine that you go to a new Supermarket and you can give five years of your historic transaction data, to get a personal treatment I think that should be allowed or that I mean, that should contribute to the general perspective of having better consumer and customer relationships.
So it really struck me for me that data should be owned also by the person itself or maybe not only by all the companies. What is your perspective on that Wilson? For me I had two European guests. And it was very interesting about you coming from the US what is your perspective on that?
SPEAKER 1: I think we're definitely drafting in that direction Steven. Clearly what's happening with Google the whole not wanting to support third party cookies, at the very recent announcement by Apple to basically get rid of ad tracking on apps, in their app store all this is really to your point Steven.
Pointing to a little bit more control on the consumer end for the benefit. And then therefore making the brands work a little bit harder and smarter and more transparently, to gain not just gain the trust but then to be able to then engage on the consumer's terms.
SPEAKER 2: It makes sense I think first party data is going to be one of the most important data pieces to act on. So that's why I think it could be important that you can decide with my first party data my 60 customer profile. Who do I want to share with. It could be an interesting take for one of maybe of the next sessions will have on one of the further episodes.
SPEAKER 1: Absolutely Steven and also I think in your podcast I was just a very interesting discussion with you and your guests around the balance of processes. Internal facing processes around data governance and stewardship and journeys. And then what does that external look like. I think there's some tension there. There are some really interesting points there Steven.
SPEAKER 2: Yeah one of the remarks of Rubin was that I'm explaining the target story. Everybody is familiar with the target story and the dad and his pregnant daughter. If not, then please go listen to the episode. And he said to avoid these type of things that call that we first focus on internal processes, like for example the smart scale where they say. Yeah we are scanning automatically our fruits. So that it's being added to the cash register and this allows people at the cash register and the salesperson to talk to the customer and provide a better customer experience.
So he said which I first focus on internal processes and then go to external processes. But on the other hand, my personal opinion is, shouldn't you be experimenting from a marketing perspective. The only way you would learn what works for your audience is to put experiments out there see how people react. Look how sensitive it is, and do some analysis and then scale it. What works scale it to your bigger audience.
So start small experiment and then grow from there. I don't think you should first do all your internal processes. And that's not what we're even meant by the way. But I think there should be a balance between both. And there are I think process efficiencies from a customer experience point of view. That you can gain but you shouldn't be waiting to also use that same method to provide better customer experience for your customer outside. Because I think your competition might be trying at the same time and you could lose competitive edge.
SPEAKER 1: Yeah I think that's definitely, is going to be a hard balance. And think to your point Steven talking about experimentation. And we know from a marketing perspective it's not just simple A/B testing. You can do multivariate, you could do all continuous testing, the right very dynamic over a range of items, whether it's offerers or content and timing, et cetera. And then asking to what works best. But at the same time you're right if you're constantly experimenting but not having a point of view, then you might miss some big targets there.
SPEAKER 2: And it shouldn't always be like with a commercial objective I like the example of the Black Dog Institute. Where they are their Black Dog Institute is an organization that takes care about mental health and they were adapting the text on their website to better serve actually the people that are visiting their website.
You have to understand that a person is going to school and is having a depression is something totally different than somebody who's at the end of his career and having a bore out of depression on that stage. So also there are it's about having personal conversations and setting up experience to adapt your message, your websites, your content to every specific persona. And the only way you can do it is by experimenting and see what fits which profile.
SPEAKER 1: Absolutely now these things are all working together. As we can recap some of these things is really difficult to separate loyalty, trust, digitization, real time journey orchestration. It is hard to separate all those things into different pieces. They all have to work together and in our series, we have a range of conversations with Daniel Newman that really hit on all of those things through our sas.com/experience2030 research findings. So again the world is getting kind of more integrated from a marketing perspective and there's the opportunity but there are also challenges there.
SPEAKER 2: Definitely.
SPEAKER 1: Cool as we've told our listeners this is certainly not the end of our series. This actually is going to be the beginning of a new one. But let's give a taste of what some things that we are curious about. And maybe some of the topics that we like to explore more in season two.
And I know Steven in having conversations with you and certainly Justin, who will join us back in season two. There were some really exciting things that you had lined up with your guests and some of the topics that you're going to be exploring. You want to care, to share some of those with us?
SPEAKER 2: I think one is fan experience. We have the euro zone in Europe coming up at the European soccer qualifier, that year in soccer European soccer games are coming up actually. So fan experience is a major topic we are still not allowed to travel a lot stadiums cannot be fully exploited. So how do you bring that European experience that those different European soccer how do you bring them in the household. So that's going to be a very important questions because I think those marketers working at the different unions, national soccer unions in Belgium and the Netherlands, for example they all have to come up with a quite bold marketing strategy to try to bring I think that same experience to everybody household.
I think another one is going to be marketing planning. And the reason of marketing planning. And how should you organize yourself around marketing planning. And marketing planning it's a hard topic not everybody likes to be tracked not everybody likes to put everything in rigid plans so having agility in your marketing planning, having creativity in your marketing planning, and having a plan actually right like you need really a dashboard so one of the quotes was you really need a dashboard that allows you to steal your organization. If you don't have a plan, you cannot steer in the right direction you cannot adopt it. So very interesting conversation there for season two around marketing planning.
SPEAKER 1: Man I can't wait to even and speaking of that fan experience, I think is a great topic and maybe we can have a separate podcast around that whole Super League thing. Man that was really something I think it really spoke to the power of the fans. In terms of what they expect from these clubs.
It was Super interesting you address I can't wait and you're right planning can be market is obviously as an afterthought, but can't wait for your conversations about how important that is and how dynamic it needs to be in today's digital world. For season two I got a couple of things. One is obviously the evolution of customer experience. We've always been focused on engagement, which is great but now the question becomes how do we make that more participatory. How can consumers not just engage but participate with the brands in the journeys and content in customer experience.
And then of course, our favorite topic is around that whole AOI powered, marketing, customer experience. That important balance between offloading very complex tasks to AI but then balancing that with human intelligence, human judgment, human creativity. I think that will still continue to be an important topic as we move forward. So wow definitely a lot of things to look forward to in season two.
SPEAKER 2: Yeah very interesting and also on both of the topics you mentioned looking forward to hearing more about him. The second one is about choice and control why, why everybody talks about implementing and automating customer processes. But we always need a human touch. Without a human touch, it won't work. So very interested in that conversation and see how that works out.
SPEAKER 1: Yeah Steven I think that's a great place to end this episode, we start with AI and technologies, and then there's the human touch. So I love how we just got really brought it home there. So that's it folks for season one of the Reimagine Marketing Podcast. If you enjoyed today's show please head on over to sas.com/reimaginemarketingpodcast, all one word. To catch up on all of your off season one content and other bonus materials.
Please stay in touch with Steven and Justin and myself and share your topic or guest ideas by e-mailing us at ReimagineMarketingPodcast all one word at sas.com. Now we're also super excited to share that you will now find us on our own dedicated channel. Just search for Reimagine Marketing on your favorite podcast platforms and subscribe. So they can continue to catch us as we drop new content later this summer. So don't forget to join us when we return with more personalities, paradigms and practices on the future of marketing and CX. Thank you for listening.
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