Reflections & Projections: Season Two
[MUSIC PLAYING] WILSON RAJ: Marketing organizations are leveraging the continuing pandemic-related disruptions and accelerated digital transformation efforts as catalysts to reinvent marketing and transform customer experiences for a digital first consumer.
Hello, I'm Wilson Raj and welcome to this Reimagine Marketing podcast. Today's episode is called Reflections and Projections, season 2. This episode marks the end of season 2 but not the end of the podcast series. Plans for season three are underway. And I'm excited to be joined by my co-hosts, Steven Hofmans and Justin Theng. Hi, guys.
STEVEN HOFMANS: Hey, Wilson.
JUSTIN THENG: Hi, Wilson.
WILSON RAJ: Good to see you all.
JUSTIN THENG: Likewise.
STEVEN HOFMANS: Good to see you, too.
WILSON RAJ: Great to have you on the show, and this is a great season. We've had a range of guests ranging from very progressive marketing leaders in different industries, everything from Telco to CPG. We had futurists and leading market research leaders weigh in on marketing transformation in today's world and leading into tomorrow.
So as we kind of recap this for our audience, just give them a taste of season 2. Let's start with just some, maybe some highlights that perhaps resonated throughout the show.
STEVEN HOFMANS: Yeah, OK, for me one that I found interesting was like, the 80-20 rule. I learned in the first episode with Sandy, 80-20, it was all over the place, and actually you can apply that to many things in your life. Actually it was about marketing planning, and she said, you need to put your plan 80% fixed and you need to give global teams the ability to personalize 20% of the marketing plan. Same with personalization, right?
You-- 80% you can personalize through a specific country but then you still need that 20% to embed the local culture and embed that local flavor. And actually that 80-20% rule you can also adapt to your work. You can spend 80% on your-- it was in another episode, 80% you can spend on your normal tasks and 20% of your time you can spend on innovation. So it was actually very funny that in the first episode with Sandy, that 80-20% rule was very important.
And then later on when we talked about implementing marketing automation solutions globally and how do you overcome global challenges, it was also 80-20%. So I found that that 80-20% rule is actually something very important that you should apply in your daily life.
WILSON RAJ: All right.
JUSTIN THENG: I love that, it's so fascinating, that 80-20. Here in Australia, in our region, one of the variations on, I think they call it the Pareto principle which is 80-20, right, is the 70-20-10, and all it is they've budgeted a little bit, Steven, and the 10% is left for crazy experiments and testing. And it's just-- that's where you just have fun, take some big risks, and see what happens afterwards from the data.
For me one of the things that stood out was Wilson's interview with Ray Wang. And he was talking about data supremacy. I love the idea of data supremacy because it speaks to that competitive advantage. It's true, whoever owns data is king. It's not just the brand that owns the data. But even at a boardroom level, whoever owns the data and can extract a narrative from that data is going to be the most credible voice in the room, because everything else would be anecdotal.
So, Ray Wang talks about the three A's, analytics, automation, and AI. And those three A's to me are like AAA battery, right? That's what's fueling a lot of growth these days. And I know we're going to talk more later, Wilson, about some of the data restrictions and challenges.
WILSON RAJ: Mm-hmm.
JUSTIN THENG: But I do feel like in this coming era of privacy and governance, especially in the marketing arena, analytics and predictive analytics are going to be critical.
WILSON RAJ: Yeah, I think that particular one with Ray around decision velocity was really critical because his notion was that the gap between the analog physical world and that digital world has really meshed, and so how do these interfaces and interactions occur? And basically you need the analytics and AI to be able to speed value from data to decisions, and then obviously into actions, and then to be able to bridge physical and immersive, augmented reality-type experiences or digitized experiences.
So I think that was the key thing where the brands or the business will need faster, more precise decisions. The other thing that he also mentioned was around anticipatory analytics. That's an interesting word which is, I think, certainly a big part of AI, because it is predictive.
But how do you then not just react to experiences or fluctuations in customer engagement in real time, but to anticipate moment by moment, not necessarily into a next phase of a customer journey, but in that moment, what is that next moment? What's the next step? What are the choices?
So he gave an interesting example which I won't share here, listeners can talk about, hey, how a future elevator ride would look like. So go check that episode out and you'll see some of Ray's thinking there.
JUSTIN THENG: Yeah, that was a great little scenario, yeah. And just to echo that, Wilson, I think in an unpredictable time we need to put our own predictability back in as much as possible.
WILSON RAJ: Mm-hmm. The other one that was particularly interesting was the interview with Scott Brinker, we did two with him, around the meshing customer experience with your marketing technology stack there, and also around, how do you bridge those CX goals with investments in technology? And there's a lot there, but there's one I think I did like, where we really tackled the age-old problem around, do marketers build technology or buy technology, or is it integrated and best of breed?
I know, Steven, you had some thoughts there. You've been-- you're in this business, you talk to customers around those kinds of choices. So what's your take on that one?
STEVEN HOFMANS: So he kept me-- when he was talking and explaining his different kind of situation, it struck me that, on the one hand, when you buy a platform from a vendor and everybody would implement that same platform in a standard way, you won't differentiate on customer experience because everybody's sharing the same experience. So if you want to be top of the market, you need to customize. You need to think about what will that technology mean for you, and how can you use it to your benefits, and how can you customize it, do little tweaks, to bring that experience?
But then the other question is how much tweaking do you need to do? And then I wondered, myself, I think the moment you have the feeling that you are becoming an R&D company and you're becoming a software development company, I think that's really the end of the road. I mean, unless your ambition is to become a software vendor in your business, I mean, that's where you have taken the road too far.
So, finding that balance between customizing that makes sense, to do good customer experience and excel, but also watching out that you're not becoming an R&D port, I think is a very important factor that you need to take into account when choosing softwares and working in a marketing technology environment.
JUSTIN THENG: Right, I think that that South African proverb is apt here, if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. And that's certainly been the feedback that I've been hearing especially out there in the market where people are able to build specific solutions in-house and that's great.
But the upkeep of it, they tend to go out of date and very, very fast. So as the rest of the world adapts it's difficult to keep up. Once the project is closed off and finished, it's very difficult to keep reiterating and making sure that it stays current and continues to work.
On the flip side, as you said, Steven, even if an organization were to buy, there is a certain level of customization that needs to be done anyway. And the question is which way around do you want to do it, and what would you like your speed to value to be? I think you raised a good point around, IT typically would prefer to build, whereas, so there's some IP ownership, or IT ownership, IT/IP ownership, whereas the business would probably prefer speed to value.
WILSON RAJ: Right, and I think the guiding principle, he tried to say, whatever you customize has to be very unique, unique to the organization that only the organization can provide, because for the most part, a lot of these engagements across industries, across sectors, are very, very similar, so to have a thoughtful approach to that. And I like that proverb because that does link to some of the themes that we saw in, I think, most of the podcast, which is around collaboration, not just teamwork. I know, Steven, you had one about the people first. I definitely want to hear about that.
But I think in the Ulta Beauty with Kelly Mahoney, in terms of how they were digitizing beauty experiences, it really took not just the marketing team but an entire stakeholder team ranging from marketing, sales, service, technology, and brand loyalty, that was all integrated into their Ultimate Rewards program. And I think Christine Moorman, in her CMO survey report, one of the episodes there, she talked about-- there was some stats around companies where they had higher levels of collaboration tended to do better in terms of their marketing efficiency and effectiveness.
JUSTIN THENG: Mm, and into brand collaboration as well, even beyond the organization, now, as marketers are looking for solutions of what to do once third party cookies and third party data disappears entirely, is how can brands who are non-competing share first party data in a compliant manner? But this is nothing new. Jay Abraham has been talking about this for, I think decades, calling it the host-beneficiary model. And it's just that now we are forced to not be able to use third party data and everyone's thinking, OK, well how can we collaborate better and share data?
STEVEN HOFMANS: I think it contributes to the whole idea of, if you want to, as a company, become a partner of your customer, you actually need to go outside-- go think outside your box, right? A customer has a dream, he wants to realize something. And actually maybe the service your company is offering is not enough. So you can actually, by sharing data with third party providers and maybe building a service together with third party providers, you're really getting to that, I'm no longer a vendor of that customer but I'm becoming a partner helping to realize his hopes and dreams.
And I think if you can use an ecosystem and really use all the data available to become relevant, I think that that is going to be a massive differentiator for the future. The company that can integrate different kind of external partners in their services using data from all of those kind of providers offering that ultimate dream customer experience is going to win the market. I believe-- I mean, that's my belief for the next coming years.
WILSON RAJ: All right, I think that was a common theme among all of the guests, that centrality of data, and Ray Wang said it nicely, data supremacy. So as we move through, what are some of the challenges?
STEVEN HOFMANS: I think one of the things I mentioned by here, this is-- where we're looking for synergies within companies. But on the other hand, you need to be able to allow individuality in a company. And what I mean by that is there are always discussions in marketing going on, on what do you centralize and what do you don't centralize? Who do you leave independent and not independent?
And every market has its own ecosystem, so how do you decide on what is best for the market and the company together to give a global customer experience? I think that's a kind of hard challenge as there are many ecosystems out there and providing value for the customer. I think that's quite a hard nut to crack.
Where should you collaborate? Should you collaborate local? Should you collaborate global? Should you look for different kind of services? I think it's a hard nut to crack, to really give a personalized experience tomorrow with all these global and local players. I mean, for marketing, it's hard to choose, I think.
WILSON RAJ: And Justin, I think in your episode you had a nice-- I think you touched on some of that in this notion of experiential tech, right, happier customers and increased profitability because they have to go together. You don't just make the customer happy, you've got to be profitable as well, as a brand and as an organization.
JUSTIN THENG: That's right, Matt Kuperholz spoke about exponential technologies--
WILSON RAJ: Mm-hmm.
JUSTIN THENG: --and the experiences that they bring. And yes, one of the things that, I mean, as we've spoke about, I think that third party data is a big issue. Being able to centralize a single view of customer, I think, is also another big issue that cuts beyond marketing, goes into sales. And then it goes without saying, I think any time you bring this up in a room of marketing and CX leaders, you talk about talent and every head is nodding, saying, yep, yes, that's me. I mean, the Great Resignation, right?
WILSON RAJ: Mm-hmm.
JUSTIN THENG: So one of the things that I, not to just present problems, but one of the things that I predict is going to be best, it comes from an idea that Adam Grant put forward in his book, the Originals. And he talks about, he did this incredible study around what provides longevity in brands and businesses, and would you believe that if you look further afield from the actual function that you're hiring for.
So for example, if marketers were to say, well, what about if I take somebody from automotive or what about if I take an engineer or what about if I take a, yes, a data scientist, or what if I take a marketer from fashion, or-- so they go further afield.
And I think for that to work, as long as the leader is very strong in data as the source of truth, then you can bring expertise and viewpoints from various different fields further abroad into your marketing ecosystem and form squads or form strike teams that can look at data and use their intelligence and intuition to think, what should we try next? And the data will tell you whether it's working or not.
And we have the benefit now of being able to rely more on artificial intelligence to do what marketers traditionally would have done using intuition. I'm not saying it's replaceable entirely, but I'm saying it's more enabled now to look beyond the field of marketing for talent. So, I mean, those are the three challenges that I see as the core.
WILSON RAJ: Excellent, I think now we can kind of-- I think this is a great time now to pivot to some of the interesting topics that we could potentially have a deeper dive to more in season three. I think that notion around data but then also what's the humanity, right, the empathy there.
And I think in the CMO survey there was a very surprising finding where brand building has now taken on a focus for marketers in her global survey. So, building the brand in terms of more advertising, telling the narrative, getting more connected from a value, emotional capacity, rather than just sort of a transactional, so that kind of supports a little bit Justin.
So for season three, what are some of the one or two topics that each of you think would be an interesting one that can do a deep dive into?
STEVEN HOFMANS: I think for me, you guys in season 2, we talked a lot about the value of data and we are becoming a decisioning economy and we need to focus on data. I think the customer is realizing the importance of data and is more and more going to see it in the future as a currency. So they'll expect, when you ask them to share their data, there's going to be a discussion around fair value.
WILSON RAJ: OK.
STEVEN HOFMANS: Are you providing me fair value for the data I'm giving you because data is currency, and I'm paying you with my data so what do I get in return? So I think having a discussion around fair value, what is fair value?
And can you ask banking transaction data, and what is the cost of asking banking transaction data to a customer to provide a better service? When is a customer willing to give his data up for a certain service? I think that's a very interesting topic or discussion just to understand the synergies between those two, the customer and data.
JUSTIN THENG: I 1000% agree, Steven. I think this fair exchange of value will even get to the point where third parties are facilitating payments for the use of your personal data and you can sell it for a time. That's a topic I'd like to explore. It's something that's fascinated me.
Another topic that's fascinating me at the moment is actually based on some research that Google has done called the messy middle. And if any of the listeners haven't seen that whitepaper I certainly recommend you go and look at it because what it does is it challenges, based on the data since the pandemic, how people are searching and purchasing, in fact, what we might have called the funnel previously, throw that out, the flywheel, throw that out. It's called the messy middle.
And interestingly, awareness plays a role, but not as a phase. It's called exposure, where all the activities that you're putting out in market of all kinds, whether it be conversion campaigns, or whether it be legion or nurturing campaigns, all of it is exposure and all helps it. And I think that's where brands are starting to-- or rather, marketing teams are starting to focus on brand. It's that idea of exposure.
WILSON RAJ: Yeah.
JUSTIN THENG: That's something I would love to explore further, I think.
WILSON RAJ: I think for me I definitely see that and in addition to that, what I call pandemic-era services, so things such as curbside pickup, virtual assistance, digital delivery. All those kinds of things will not just become the next customer experience normal, but those expectations are going to continue to rise into 2022 and beyond.
So I think sometimes we're also reading that some brands are reverting back, for example, like airlines right now. Some of those systems are kind of, while they made a lot of inroads during the disruption, some of the bad habits are creeping back in, in terms of wait times and more complex processes. So that will be something that will be an interesting topic.
The other one, as we all mentioned, that need for privacy or consent journeys that are designed with the customer in mind. That's going to heat up. So again, going back to things like the data deprecation, the going away of third party cookies, the legal scrutiny, governance, all those kinds of things will have to be built into that messy middle for sure, in terms of reimagining customer engagement and marketing.
Well, I think this is a great spot to wrap up this discussion. And that's it for season 2 of the Reimagine Marketing podcast. Now if you enjoyed today's show, please search for the Reimagine Marketing podcast on your favorite podcast platforms and subscribe to the series for show notes, hear previous episodes, and to catch season three content when it drops in 2022.
Also you can head on over to SAS.com/reimaginemarketingpodcast, all one word, to join in the conversation and discover more bonus content. So don't forget to join us when we return with more personalities, paradigms, and practices on the future of marketing and customer experience. Thank you all for listening.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
