Category / Digital Execution

by jcuene

Leaders: Your Data Strategy is Your Business Strategy

Three recent engagements – A multi-channel retailer, a national media company, and a retail/store chain – have made it clear why so many marketing organizations are still struggling with their data. In these three engagements, reasonably good marketing programs are being questioned by senior stakeholders because the reporting is, well, let’s call it “fluid”.  In all three of those organizations, the marketing team is swimming in data, but can’t generate the necessary reports to drive better decision making and any “Insights” getting shared are more about tactical efficiency vs. whether the strategies are working.

I think this misalignment is pretty common. For a number of orgs we’ve seen, there are plenty of reports and data dumps. But, the reports aren’t helping the growth and marketing teams make the right, most important decisions.

There’s an ever present chicken/egg situation: The egg is “we need confidence in the measurement before we invest more” and the chicken is “We need your team to be clear and consistent about what you’re trying to measure and why so we can get you a better measurement plan in place”. 

For the typical org we’re working with, the “measurement” and data work is downstream (often way, way downstream) from the marketing  and strategy planning. That is, the marketing team will develop their strategies, debate some metrics, and assume there will be a measurement plan, later, of some sort. In effect, they’re betting on the analysts to figure it out.

The better orgs will develop their data strategies hand in hand with their business strategies. They’ll develop a clear, high-confidence data and measurement plan with the acknowledgement that the strategies need to be tested; there needs to be some way to confirm whether the strategy (not just the tactics) is actually working. Then, the operational plans will include both the actual tactics but also the implementation of new measurement methods. For instance, they’ll simultaneously update their data roadmap and user instrumentation while they’re updating their customer journey (or customer experience) strategies and operating plans.

The better orgs will  invest early to make sure they can acquire the data needed to measure whether their strategies, tactics and plans are working.  And some orgs will deprioritize strategies and tactics that aren’t measurable. The rationale is pretty straightforward: The more we can measure, the sooner we’ll know if the strategies – the choices we’re making – are the right ones.

I wish there was a clear, easy answer about why this conundrum is still happening in 2023, more than twenty five years after the start of the digital revolution. It’s obviously complex, but here are three ideas:

  • Leaders assume everything is measurable – Most marketing leaders struggle to understand that not all digital efforts are measurable. A surprisingly large swath of digital marketing efforts can’t be consistently tied to any real business impact. We might have leading indicators (e.g. “consumers reached” by your TikTok), but no real way to measure whether and which consumers did anything afterwards.
  • Move Fast and Break Things – A lot of leaders are still biased towards speed and movement, at almost any cost. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but they aren’t Zuckerberg and they aren’t working in a well funded startup where topline growth matters more than anything. The “move without measure “approach is just rash in most corporate settings.
  • Measurement after the fact – A lot of marketing leaders assume (still!) that you can go back and measure any digital efforts after they have concluded. They don’t know, or haven’t been told, about the work required upfront to get clean measurement
  • Poor discipline on strategies and tactics – There may not be good rigor on aligning objectives, strategies, tactics/key results and business outcomes. In other words, the teams often measure the wrong things. Or, worse, don’t know what they *should* be measuring

If you are a leader of a growth/marketing team, the solution starts with you. As you’re working through your strategies and operating plans, take the time to engage your reporting/analytics/data teams early. Get them in the room with your team, as you’re developing or updating your plans. Take the time, with the team in the room, to interrogate the plans. Ask the hard questions:

  • How will we know our strategies are working? – What would be the outcomes that would tell us we made the right strategic choices?
  • What would need to be true to measure/validate those strategic choices? – Can we go beyond leading indicators (i.e. visits, clicks, reach, whatever) to get at the downstream outcomes (i.e. usage by segment, conversions by customers acquired by specific campaigns, gross margin, etc).

Then support the investment in operationalizing the data in parallel with the rest of the marketing work.

Leaders should acknowledge their role starts with strategy but encompasses the data, too. Great measurement is rarely easy. Discipline up front, means a better chance to get quality data. So, give your data and analytics team a chance to drive real, genuine insights, by doing the disciplined work upfront to clarify what absolutely, positively needs to be measured.

by jcuene

How Four Agency Holding Companies Are Upping Their Consulting Skills | AdExchanger

Decent overview/update on how agencies are trying to become consultancies and consultancies are trying to become agencies. Brands just want to grow.

Note: Notice the snark in the analysis of Publicis’ own challenges integrating Sapient. A little of the shoemaker’s children, i guess.

Source: How Four Agency Holding Companies Are Upping Their Consulting Skills | AdExchanger

by jcuene

CEO’s & CMO’s: 2017 Strategic Planning Questions for Your Digital Team

While the rest of us are enjoying the fall weather, football and the changing seasons, most CMO’s and CEO’s and their leadership teams are elbow deep in 2017 planning and budgeting. In addition to all the normal business challenges, most leadership teams are probably spending a significant amount of time talking – one away or another – about digital and/or their digital transformation. Maybe its a question of how to allocate the capital budget for digital capabilities, or it could be a culture question (“How do we get more digital talent?”). Or, more urgently, it could be an existential question (“how do we compete against X and the disruption they are causing”).

Eventually, those boardroom conversations and plans will make their way down to strategic planning discussions with the VP’s of Digital Marketing, the Chief Digital Officer, Head of Digital, or Directors of Digital. Here’s what we hope those lucky leaders are getting asked in those strategic conversations:

  • What’s our strategy to use data to develop a competitive advantage? We see a lot of C-level leaders who are missing the strategic opportunity to plan for, collect and analyze data in unique ways (not just the obvious stuff) to give themselves a competitive advantage. We know of one company that bought a couple large Instagram handles from their owners, just so they could get the day to day data on likes and use the comments section to gain unique consumer insights that their competitors wouldn’t have
  • How are we using digital to create a unified experience over the whole  customer journey? Smart companies are moving on from digitizing their functions (Sales, Service, PR, brand Management)  to looking for ways to integrate and unify the whole consumer experience. They are going from good/great execution at the functional level to managing the whole customer journey in a holistic, integrated way even though there’s not an immediate ROI and dramatic changes in short term results are rare. Not only is it better for consumers, it positions companies to collect unique, potentially proprietary data along the way. It’s an easy concept to grasp, but it’s incredibly hard to execute internally unless there is a multi-year commitment from the top to keep investing ahead of results.
  • What capital investments and resource allocations do we need to make to get better data across the customer journey? See above. A dramatically improved customer experience will generate incredibly valuable data
  • What must we do to invest enough in both incremental and transformation innovation? No good leader says “no” to opportunities to invest in innovation, but few leadership teams are disciplined enough to balance short-term, functional innovation (i.e. incremental) with the willingness to pursue transformational opportunities.or instance, we know of one company that is generating a surprising amount of revenue from advertising on their digital platform; enough revenue to pay for a larger, more advanced digital team. It’s almost guaranteed that the directors and managers and coordinators on the digital team have ideas for both, but they may not be getting the support to pursue both due to a heavy prioritization of short term results.
  • How do we need to evolve our brand position and actions to be even more relevant to our customers? All leaders should by now understand how digital is transforming consumer expectations of brands. But even after years of watching brands like Dove drive great results by moving the brand to a higher, more aspirational space (and creating amazing digital content that’s getting shared all over the place), too many leaders are still(!) focused on the result (“get me something that goes viral”) instead of the characteristics of a soap brand that millions and millions want to connect with. In other words, you have to do the work to elevate your brand and your company in order to be relatable, digitally.
  • What do we need to do culturally to create the conditions for more agility and innovation in our marketing? Most good business leaders have read up on Agile, Lean Startup, and “working like a startup”. It’s thrilling to see courageous leaders try to change their companies actions. But, smart C-level folks will listen to the digital teams about what needs to change culturally to create the conditions for more flexibility, agility and innovation in their marketing model (or their business, overall). The behaviors are one thing, but the attitudes and beliefs and values and incentives are another. Most importantly, CMO’s and CEO’s should be asking: Have I created the right incentives to unlock true innovation (or  will my team still get penalized for taking risks)?
  • Are we being aggressive in looking at business model or product innovation opportunities? This is something that any sufficiently paranoid organization should be asking itself every six months: “what would a potential disruptor do to come take our business away?” Or, put another way, “how do we not get Blockbustered?” And, as part of the same exercise, CEO’s should be asking their digital team “what opportunities are we missing to use digital for  new revenue, new products, or serving our customers more effectively”? It’s easy to get a false sense of security that “we’re on it!”.
  • What do we need to do to help our employees work at the pace and speed of our customers? As the proliferation of tools and technology accelerates, it’s imperative for customer-focused companies to enable their front line people – the sales folks, the community managers, customer service – to work with the same tools and platforms that their customers are using. So, whether it’s instagram or Snapchat messaging, chatbots or Kik, CMO/CEO’s will make the hard policy changes to stay connected with their consumers

If you’re the VP or Sr Director of Digital, the Head of Digital or the Digital Transformation leader and these questions aren’t coming up in the annual operating plan discussions, you should set up time with your CMO and CEO and push these issues forward. It’s your chance to lead “up” and push the thinking of your organization and, ultimately, position your team to drive even greater impact in the organization. And, to make life a little better for your customers in 2017.

by jcuene

BitTorrent wants to change the way the web is built | The Verge

In this vision, web publishers could publish, distribute, and update an entire website through the BitTorrent protocol, and others visiting the page would automatically help share the site’s content, just as anyone downloading a file over BitTorrent would also start sharing the file with other peers.

via BitTorrent wants to change the way the web is built | The Verge.

by jcuene

(Updated) Um, Facebook, This isn’t Great

Engagement with brand content is evidently dropping  pretty dramatically. As a guy that went all in on Facebook when i was in a seat to influence a lot of media spend, this is concerning. For brands, it’s obviously bad. For consumers, it’s probably a win of sorts.

These numbers are even more striking when you consider engagement is significantly down even though brands are almost certainly spending more money to promote their posts to combat plummeting organic reach. Facebook’s ad revenue reached $2.27 billion in Q1 2014, up 82 percent from Q1 2013.For brands on Facebook, these are dark days. They can choose to spend more money to reach fans they had already accumulated in the past, but Facebook will likely decrease branded reach even further.

But, this also speaks to challenges in the FB ad model from the brand perspective. It seems like Facebook is  resorting to limiting organic impression supply (by tweaking the algorythm to lessen brand reach), making it more important for brands to pay to get the exposure.  The main reason i believed Facebook was a great platform was the  combination of organic and efficient paid reach. With the constant tweaks to the organic reach black box, that mix (of organic and paid) gets less attractive and FB becomes just another paid ad platform.

UPDATE 6/18/14: I think i buried the lede here. The point i was REALLY trying to make is that it looks like Facebook is losing one of the aspects that made it so attractive in the first place: It enable brands to build deeper relationships (that’s good) while also building a more modern media mix, one that delivered a beneficial combination of owned and earned media and paid. The less organic reach a brand can generate, the more they have to pay to get the reach, the less attractive the original value proposition is.

via New Report Reveals Just How Drastically Brand Engagement is Plummeting on Facebook | The Content Strategist, by Contently.

by jcuene

Lessons For Marketers in the NYT’s Leaked Innovation Report

The New York Times 2014 Innovation Report is an extraordinary document. Extraordinary in that it  exists at all, for one thing. But, also extraordinary for the honesty and candor in the analysis provided by the authors.

We’ve all watched the news business getting transformed over the years by blogs, the web, Google, etc. Now we can read the report from inside a pre-eminent news organization, written by a handpicked group of leaders given the mandate to tell the truth to power (well, their bosses).

But, at the same time, it’s an exceptionally useful document for marketing leaders who are struggling to thrive in a time of rapid, seismic changes. Digital, however you want to define it, is creating almost unlimited opportunities to create new growth, reach new audiences, and work in different ways. Call it creative destruction, transformational innovation, or just reinvention; we’re all going to have to deal with it. The news business is at the front of many of these changes, but eventually all business, from cars to cereal will have to deal with them. So, we can learn a lot about what to do (and what NOT to do) by reading this report carefully.

While it was unfortunate that this document was leaked, we nonetheless have it as a story of a great organization at the mid-point of a life-or-death struggle. Here are just a few lessons  brand builders can take away.

Be Honest With Yourself, First – One of the more remarkable things about this document is that it doesn’t seem to hold many punches. It calls out specific projects, departments, etc. Its a seemingly honest assessment of what’s working and not working. Not self-flagellating, but also not overly optimistic about what’s really going on. Marketing leaders should take on this kind of assessment every other year, at least. A hard look, done by trusted mid-level leaders, those with enough understanding of how things really work on the execution level but also have a broader strategic sense about what the organization can be and needs to get there.

Understanding how Disruption Works is the First Step to Disrupting Yourself – With everyone talking about innovation all the time, you’d assume everyone understands what “Innovation” really is. But, wisely, the writers spend a couple pages outlining Clay Christensen’s Disruptive Innovation process. And, they even provide a cheat sheet for their new competitors. As leaders, we should understand that disruptive innovation actually is kind of predictable and it will hit every industry at some point. Get your teams to understand this, and it’s the first step to creating the kind of innovations that disrupt the business on your terms vs. waiting for someone else to do it to you.

Reconsider What You’ve Always Taken For Granted – The report advocates a recommitment to audience development strategy, to re-examine how they are getting the news in front of people.  For generations, the Times could assume an audience existed, was reachable in a predictable way, and cared about the product. But, that audience is easily swayed, distractible, and, in the end, not so easy to reach. Now, the Times has to re-learn how to reach it’s audience, weaving a news set of skill into the newsroom. All leaders should be rethinking the parts of the model they’ve always taken for granted.

Digital First is Much More than a Buzzphrase – For the times, it’s a flip from “a newspaper that also produces a rich and impressive digital product” to “A digital publication that also produces a rich and impressive newspaper”. That’s over-simplified, but that mental model flip is one that most marketing organizations need to make if they haven’t already made. A mobile, digital way of building the brand that is amplified at scale by traditional media is  “digital first” for most marketers.

Culture Change is a Mofo – This is really a document describing wrenching culture change in slow motion. The capabilities, the technology, the tools will all be relatively easy to update. But, the talent, the leadership, the skills, the mindset needed to thrive in a digital-first world at the Times will be incredibly difficult to weave into the organization. The leaders will have to remake their culture from the inside without losing the best of what got them there.

Finally, the real story here is that the leaders of this organization recognized they were out of synch with their times and they turned to 8 trusted insiders to figure it out. That’s courage. We can all learn from them.

There are dozens and dozens of smaller nuggets in the document. It’s so rare for a business leader to get a peek into another organizations’ strategy development process that i imagine this will be a document i go back to and re-read multiple times.

Here are a couple other great writeups:

by jcuene

Stay Golden, kid: Meet The 20-Year-Old Millennial Making A Living Off Facebook

I love stories like Koby Conrad who is hustling and growing his hemp business on Facebook (uh, it’s growing like a weed?). There are so many good, smart little businesses grinding it out and supporting jobs. I wish more of the business press would focus on this kind of story (a la “Bootstrapped and Profitable” from 37Signals.)

He’s a kid with limited technical expertise, who is using the Internet to build a fast-growing, small business.

He’s the kind of hustling, hard-working person the experts say doesn’t exist in his “millennial” generation.

“Everyone always tell you to be scared,” he says.

“Be scared of things going wrong, be scared of things not working, be scared of the people you meet online, but no one ever tells you that it could all actually work.”

via Meet The 20-Year-Old Millennial Making A Living Off Facebook – Business Insider.

by jcuene

True Big Data / The Atlantic Wins Journalism

If you want a good example of what “Big Data” really means, it’s this. “Big Data” isn’t just “shit ton of data”, it’s “amazing and proprietary insights that could only come from very creative analysis of a shit ton of data that only we can get our hands on”.  So, stop referring to your little facebook data project as “big data”.

And, for what it’s worth, the Atlantic just showed you what’s possible when you cross a curious journalist with a hacker’s mindset. So very cool.

 

Using large teams of people specially trained to watch movies, Netflix deconstructed Hollywood. They paid people to watch films and tag them with all kinds of metadata. This process is so sophisticated and precise that taggers receive a 36-page training document that teaches them how to rate movies on their sexually suggestive content, goriness, romance levels, and even narrative elements like plot conclusiveness.

They capture dozens of different movie attributes. They even rate the moral status of characters. When these tags are combined with millions of users viewing habits, they become Netflix\’s competitive advantage. The company\’s main goal as a business is to gain and retain subscribers. And the genres that it displays to people are a key part of that strategy. \”Members connect with these [genre] rows so well that we measure an increase in member retention by placing the most tailored rows higher on the page instead of lower,\” the company revealed in a 2012 blog post. The better Netflix shows that it knows you, the likelier you are to stick around.

via How Netflix Reverse Engineered Hollywood – Alexis C. Madrigal – The Atlantic.

by jcuene

Where I’m Going Next: Unlocking Innovation for Modern Brands

Though the digital revolution really began in the early 90’s, we’re just beginning to get our arms around what’s possible for brands and marketers. Meanwhile, the future of brands, of brand building, of marketing is being invented, right now, every day.

For instance, as I write this post, the digital marketing headlines center around the founders of Snapchat turning down an acquisition offer from Facebook, holding out for a better offer.

It should be noted, they have no revenue.

Snapchat didn’t exist three years ago (and, if you are reading this in 2017, Snapchat may not exist anymore). Yet, some observers agree they may be worth more than  the rumored $3 billion dollar Facebook  offer.

Has the business world gone crazy, or is it truly possible to invent, design and grow disruptive, innovative businesses that fast?

For those of you not living in the digital space, the pace of change may seem disorienting. But trust me, it will never be slower than it is right now.

Unlocking Innovation: The Next Phase of the Digital Transformation

I’ve been involved in the digital business in one way or another since 1995 when I was teaching classes on “What is the Internet” or “Understanding the World Wide Web”. I’ve done a lot of the jobs required to bring web and mobile experiences to life, from coding and designing to advertising and promoting. I’ve lived through a couple boom and bust cycles.

I’ve seen Web 1.0, Web 2.0 and whatever Web 3.0 was supposed to be. But, based on my experiences, I believe we’re in the early stages of the most important cycle for most businesses: Accelerated innovation through new products and services.

In today’s landscape, smart business leaders see the massive opportunity for innovative products and services that weren’t possible even 5 years ago.  Bold, modern marketers are recognizing that there’s never been a better time to build brands through useful, helpful services and content.

So, they are looking for ways to reinvent, to unlock new ways to grow.

In almost every category, I’m seeing examples that should appeal to the soul of modern marketers who recognize growth can come by re-examining all aspects of their business in light of the digital transformation hitting them: their business model, their go-to-market strategy, their consumer communication model, the products, services and content they offer and their brand, overall. Just a few examples of bold innovation I’m seeing.

  • GoPro has built an incredible business and brand in a space that should have been owned by Sony, without much paid advertising (marketing model innovation)

  • RedBull has become one of the largest providers of action sports programming (media model innovation)

  • SpecialK has built and delivered a diet plan around their cereal brand (brand building innovation)

  • DollarShaveClub.com is working on disrupting the men’s grooming accessories business through price, brand and distribution (business model innovation)

Brands Need a Different Kind of Partner to Spark Innovation

To unlock real transformational growth and innovation, smart marketers need partners that aren’t satisfied merely to work on this year’s campaign materials. As a matter of fact, I’m seeing some of the most exciting ideas happening when companies work with smaller, more experimental firms at the front of the change.

Fortunately for marketing leaders, there is a growing number of great firms out there. The marketing service companies that support the brands (i.e. the ad agencies, PR shops, design shops, management consultancies) are going through their own, difficult transformations, too.

As a result, new kinds of firms are emerging, focused on dreaming up new businesses, inventing whole new products or services, or planning out alternative marketing models; Firms that are purpose-built, designed from the ground up to be agile, fast, data driven and iterative.

The agency disruption is leading to the kind of collaborators who help marketers answer that age old strategic question, “what business are you really in?” and then bring those new ideas to life, in market, to drive growth.

These new model, smaller firms are alternatives to legacy agencies which are trying to compete on strengths (scale, global network, heavy investments in “creative”) that aren’t as valuable anymore. And, in many cases, the operating models and cost structures of legacy firms make it almost impossible to move quickly and to work with the best collaborators available across the globe.

An Amazing Time to Build Brands and Businesses

Disruptive innovation is hitting just about every industry. New collaborators arising to help marketers win in a changing landscape. Has there ever been a better time to be in business?

So, marketers, we have a choice: are we going to wait and watch and react when it hits your category? Or are we going to drive the change. I don’t know about you, but I want to be a driver.

My Next Phase: GoKart Labs

I’ve recently left one of America’s great brand building companies (General Mills) to join a company not many know yet. GoKart Labs (gokartlabs.com) is a small, stealthy company that builds real businesses and drives remarkable innovation. We build our own businesses (Sophia, Kinly, a couple in the pipeline). We build them with our partners (BringMeThenews.com). And, we will use our business building chops to grow yours.

Your ad agency can’t do what GoKart does.

We’re built to invent new products and services, help you find and grow your customer base or help you generate whole new business models. We’re designed for market acceleration, not conference room creative conversations. Then, we’ll help you design, develop and deliver the digital experiences that build your brands. And, finally, our growth hackers can help you find customers through the truly agile marketing we use to grow our businesses.

Now, as I buckle up for this next phase — both mine and the web’s — I couldn’t be more excited. I’m excited to bring what I’ve learned working with some of the best marketers and brands in the world.

I’m excited to learn from the many entrepreneurs and business leaders in and around GoKart Labs. And finally, I’m excited to be part of a crew of collaborators inventing new businesses, products and innovations. I’ve got my foot on the gas and I’m ready to drive.

by jcuene

All Commerce is E-Commerce

“Retail has become a blur. And the blurring is 100 percent driven by technology,” says Tige Savage, a partner at AOL founder Steve Case’s investment company, Revolution, which is investing in new online retail startups. “Are you at the store? Or is the store at you? And then there’s mobile, the store is in your pocket. The game is to satisfy demand wherever and whenever it is.”

Good article from the MIT Technology Review on the pervasiveness of technology in commerce. Part of a well timed focus this month on the growth of multi-channel commerce.