Is the uncertainty surrounding the global economy harming innovation? And how can professional marketers best encourage their organisations to be tenacious and explore fresh customer approaches through data collaboration?
These were among the questions posed to a panel of industry experts in London recently. Hosted in association with LiveRamp, New Digital Age’s editor Justin Pearse chaired the discussion and was joined by: James Trott Sr. Director, Global Addressable Media, The Coca-Cola Company; Jo Holdaway, Chief Data & Marketing Office, The Independent; James Damaa, Senior Manager – Global Strategic Data Capability, Costa Coffee; Charlotte Skornik, Head of Client Measurement UK at TikTok; and Hugh Stevens, LiveRamp’s Managing Director in the UK.
The panel were all previously subjects of LiveRamp’s ‘Meet the Revolutionaries’ interview series.
Trott opened the conversation by suggesting that, in a time of economic uncertainty, brands have an opportunity to create a competitive advantage through innovation.
“When the economy is performing well or badly, you have a rough idea of what your competitors are likely to be doing in terms of innovation. That’s not the case right now. If you have an idea or innovation that you believe in and can talk about with conviction, the stakeholders you need to engage are more open to listening to you at the moment.”
Trott told how, a couple of years ago, The Coca-Cola Company decided to change its marketing philosophy. “We pivoted from a fairly traditional approach, focusing on share of voice and investing in traditional channels to something much more digital-first and audience-first, trying to deliver more tailored digital experiences, often to a younger audience.
“Changes to our data policy have followed that trend and now have the backing of the whole business. There have certainly been some conversations around how we best collect, unlock and use our data, but that’s been a good thing for the business as we are now all moving in the same direction on what we’re trying to achieve.”
Fresh thinking
Skornik agreed that, as brand advertising budgets are tight, there’s a lot more thought being given to where budgets are allocated. This, in turn, is leading to more testing and innovation among digital marketers.
“There’s more focus now on audience and measurement than there ever was in the past. Even media mix modelling is making a comeback despite the fact that it’s expensive, complex and takes a long time.
“At the same time, the distinction between brand and performance campaigns is blurring all the time and things like ‘last click attribution’ have outlived their usefulness. Marketers are beginning to think more holistically about their media investments.”
Skornik added: “Our role at the marketing science team at TikTok is to build trust in the platform by helping our advertisers achieve the business outcomes they’re looking for. Like any platform, we have our own measurement platform, but recently more brands are looking to collaborate with us on their own tests campaigns, and more are open to using their own first-party data to help inform their media strategy.”
Damaa explained how the shockwaves of the COVID years had initially led to a period of various cost-saving exercises at Costa Coffee, including marketing budgets. Today, however, Costa is investing more than ever in marketing, innovation and testing based on its ample store of first-party data.
“We’re getting very good at quantifying priorities, because everything now has to have a number against it. Being clear about the value a change or innovation could unlock for the company is key. From a data and innovation point of view, there are lots of opportunities for us to explore.”
Building a wide variety of cross-team, cross-function relationships across your organisation is key to the success of any innovation project, said Damaa.
“You have to invest time in meeting the people and understanding their needs and objectives, before you try to sell an idea. Once you’ve built those relationships, then it’s about regular updates, and just keeping people on a journey with you.
“Also, look for opportunities to influence or change any legacy processes that may be acting as blockages to innovation.”
Data-informed insights
Holdaway recounted how The Independent went ‘digital only’ in 2016, so had “no choice” but to innovate digitally.
“Today, our commercial and marketing functions are well integrated and we’re swimming in customer data. We see data as the ‘nervous system’ of our business. Our strategic decisions are ‘data-informed’ rather than ‘data-led’ because too much focus on the data itself can lead you down a rabbit hole. You can end up spending six months on a project that goes nowhere.
“For us, the process starts by asking “What are our objectives?” From there, you can determine what data integrations and data solutions you need to help you with the business problems you’re facing. We started our data strategy from scratch, which has helped enormously in avoiding legacy silos with our own datasets.”
Holdaway added that, ultimately, things like GDPR and third-party cookie deprecation have been good for publishers, by prompting them to take more control over their own destiny.
LiveRamp’s Stevens believes that organisations need to think much more strategically about how to democratise their own data in order to power insight-led decision making.
“Quite often, a significant amount of work is required to make an organisation’s first-party data operational. We’ve worked with clients who are digital natives, online-only businesses, and yet their data infrastructures aren’t set up to make data actionable across the business.
“Chief Information Officers (CIOs) and Data Protection Officers (DPOs) live in a different world from digital marketers and are often more focused on securing and locking down data than making it accessible across their organisations or creating a better experience for customers.”
Despite the challenges, Stevens believes that there is a renewed vibrancy among marketers around the value of data and collaboration.
“We’re seeing the market focus more on addressable media through the lens of activation and measurement. Leveraging data insights to inform more of the media plan is going to be a big thing in the next 12 to 24 months. We’re entering a whole new world of data collaboration.”
