Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates says that over 50% of business travel and 30% of time in the office will never come back even after pandemic restrictions are lifted:
My prediction would be that over 50% of business travel and over 30% of days in the office will go away. Now it’s not the gold standard that to fly all the way here to sit in front of me that. You can do the virtual connection. It will be a very high threshold to actually doing that business trip. There will be ways that you can work from home a lot of the time. Some companies will be extreme on one end or the other.
I just don’t like talking to African leaders and I always feel bad for African leaders. There are so many conferences in Europe and the US that they are expected to come to. Yet, their job in their countries is so important like their education or health system or collecting taxes or disability. Yet, they spend half their time on all these trips. The fact is now we can do a 20-minute call as needed and touch with base them. It’s been pretty impressive how a lot has gotten done. We will go to the office somewhat. We will do some business travel but dramatically less.
The fact that the (video communication) software doesn’t have any sort of serendipitous thing of people you run into after the meeting or gathering thing, there is some work to be done there. So no I haven’t run into somebody and made a new friendship. There is something missing there.
Bill Gates: Over 50% Of Business Travel To Go Away Permanently
Luxury online retailer Farfetch, where product prices start at around a thousand dollars, had a breakout IPO on Thursday, raising $885 million while setting a valuation of $6.2 billion for the company. Then on Friday the stock surged 53 percent above their initial offering price and it’s up again this morning valuing the enterprise at $7.4 billion.
Farfetch plans to use their IPO windfall to dramatically improve their technology which they see as the best way to improve the consumer experience.
Farfetch Founder and CEO José Manuel Ferreira Neves recently discussed Farfetch and the online luxury brand industry on Bloomberg:
Online Luxury is Growing 25 Percent a Year
It’s a very unique opportunity. You have this amazing global industry. It’s $300 billion, the personal luxury goods industry and only 9 percent is online. There are two opportunities here really. One is the growth of online luxury which is going to grow to 25 percent a year for the next seven years. This is a $100 billion opportunity shift in online luxury.
The big question is how is technology going to help brands and retailers really improve the consumer experience in the physical store. This is something at Farfetch that we are very passionate about.
China is an Incredible Opportunity for Online Luxury
China is a very exciting opportunity. Chinese citizens are at the onset of the luxury industry, whether they shop at home or when they’re shopping abroad. Online penetration is very low in China so this means that there is an incredible growth runway for Farfetch in the territory.
That led to our partnership with JD.com where we have our own team. We have the Farfetch China app and website, we have local customer service, local payment systems, and local marketing. It’s a truly localized service. That is what’s driving incredible growth to the Farfetch brand in that region.
José Neves, founder and CEO of @farfetch, told us about the company’s grand ambitions for China at the WWD’s Men’s Wear Summit this week. https://t.co/MrMj7y5VCG
WeChat is an amazing app with over 900 million users. It is the Instagram, plus WeChat, plus PayPal, etc. of China in one app. That is very powerful and very interesting. Now with our acquisition CuriosityChina we are powering the retail presence of 80 luxury brands. We think that is very interesting for the industry and we think that is probably something that we will see for the western world.
Brands Now Using Social and Digital Marketing Extensively
I think brands move cautiously and they choose their marketing channels very carefully. As these newer channels have developed the brands have adapted to them and their now using social media and digital media extensively to create desire, to drive discovery of new products obviously transactions as well.
It’s a gradual pace but it’s really exciting that were at that inflection point where the brands see this as a tremendous opportunity.
One of the many huge ramifications from pandemic lockdowns has been the advent of large physical conferences converted to virtual conferences. This has been especially true for enterprise software events. Box CEO Aaron Levie says that their annual conference last week held entirely virtual saw higher engagement with customers and much lower costs than last years San Francisco event held at Moscone Center.
CEOs around the country and the world are debating whether they should abandon expensive physical conferences altogether once the pandemic restrictions are lifted.
Aaron Levie, CEO of Box, discussed this new reality, asking the question, how does this look in the future when you can actually have physical conferences? Do you still rely on a virtual first environment or do you have a bit of a hybrid conference?:
Box Virtual Conference Last Week Was A Huge Success
We did just have our virtual conference last week. We saw somewhere between four and five times the scale of registrations that we would normally see in one of our physical conferences. We saw higher engagement in a lot of areas than normally we would see. Overall, great levels of attendance and engagement on our keynotes and product updates. Certainly, as you can imagine, a much lower cost and much easier way to get this content out to our customers.
There are a lot of benefits to a virtual conference. We’re able to hit demographics of our customer base who previously wouldn’t have been able to fly out to San Francisco and come to Moscone for a two or three-day conference. There are real benefits of the scale of impact of customers we can interact with and engage with. There is a difference in terms of being able to have conversations one-on-one with customers. So it’s a different experience from that standpoint. But we were able to make do with the environment of having to move to virtual.
Now we’re really asking the question, how does this look in the future when you can actually have physical conferences? Maybe it’s next year or maybe it’s the year after. Do you still rely on a virtual first environment? Do you have a bit of a hybrid conference? These are some open questions that the industry’s going to have to ask. But overall, we were very happy with the success of the event.
Gary Vaynerchuk, CEO of Vayner Media, social media star and entrepreneurial guru followed by millions, says you can’t even find a 24-year-old on Facebook today:
I Don’t Believe TikTok Is A National Security Threat
The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) has released a report demonstrating how much COVID-19 has impacted advertising.
As the coronavirus pandemic began impacting businesses, advertising was one of the areas hardest hit. The IAB conducted a survey of 242 companies to see how the pandemic has changed advertising, and how it will continue to do so going into 2021.
In a bit of good news for the industry, the IAB projects that digital advertising will see an overall increase of 6% in 2020, compared to 2019. That’s where the good news ends, however, as overall advertising across all mediums is expected to drop by 8%. Traditional media advertising is to blame for the drop, experiencing as much as a 30% decline.
Looking ahead to 2021, as much as 70% of businesses have ballpark estimates of their budget at best, are not clear or have no idea how much they plan to spend. Those buyers that do have some idea of their 2021 budget, plan to spend 5.3% more than in 2020.
While the pandemic continues to take an obvious toll, one thing is clear: digital advertising is coming into its own as a result.
Microsoft, Adobe and C3.ai have joined forces to use artificial intelligence (AI) to reinvent customer relationship management (CRM).
The new product, C3 AI CRM, is powered by Microsoft Dynamics and fully integrates with Adobe Experience Cloud. The goal is to deliver “the first enterprise-class, AI-first customer relationship management solution is purpose-built for industries.”
Salesforce, in particular, should be worried by this development. Microsoft has been trying for years to dethrone Salesforce as the CRM king, with little success. While Dynamics 365 has certainly carved out a corner of the market, Salesforce is still the undisputed leader.
The combination of Dynamics’ foundation, C3.ai’s artificial intelligence and Adobe’s “AI-driven solutions for marketing, analytics, advertising, and commerce” may be just the winning combination Microsoft has been looking for.
“This year has made clear that businesses fortified by digital technology are more resilient and more capable of transforming when faced with sweeping changes like those we are experiencing,” said Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft. “Together with C3.ai and Adobe, we are bringing to market a new class of industry-specific AI solutions, powered by Dynamics 365, to help organizations digitize their operations and unlock real-time insights across their business.”
The companies made a point of highlighting how the digital transformation had changed the requirements for a CRM solution, with general-purpose software no longer meeting customers’ needs.
“Microsoft, Adobe, and C3.ai are reinventing a market that Siebel Systems invented more than 25 years ago,” said Thomas M. Siebel, CEO of C3.ai. “The dynamics of the market and the mandates of digital transformation have dramatically changed CRM market requirements. A general-purpose CRM system of record is no longer sufficient. Customers today demand industry-specific, fully AI-enabled solutions that provide AI-enabled revenue forecasting, product forecasting, customer churn, next-best product, next-best offer, and predisposition to buy.”
Microsoft’s open approach to data and integration have already been labeled a big advantage over Salesforce’s approach. Should this new partnership deliver on its promise, Salesforce may soon find itself scrambling to catch up.
Using spatial reality to combine the virtual and physical world, Sony’s new Spatial Reality Display creates an incredible 3D optical experience that is viewable to the naked eye.
“It’s unlike any conventional display,” says Sony Product Designer So Morimoto. “It’s like you’re looking at the real thing. The Spatial Reality Display compared to other displays is amazing. Obviously, conventional 3D displays can show things in 3D, but this actually follows your eye movements, making it feel like a real object. I love that the display feels so natural to the human senses.”
For designers, this is a huge breakthrough says Sony Product Designer and Mechanical Engineer Tatsuhito Aono. “If we could share designs that are life-size with this kind of clarity, it would make things much smoother. We could get the planner, the designer, and everyone else on the same page, so I think efficiency would improve and so would the quality. It’s almost like you are looking at the same image side by side.
“I quickly realized that I’m seeing a whole new world here,” says Morimoto. “
https://youtu.be/HY2uI39-r9I
“Every single person I’ve seen observing this display is just like wow… I’ve never seen anything like it,” says Dan Phillips, Executive Producer for Emerging Technology at The Mill, a technology creative partner for agencies, production companies, and brands. “I mean you are literally looking at magic happen on the screen. At The Mill, we always take a brief and try to expand on it, whereas this is no kind of precedent.”
“We’ve all seen holographic effects but this is one that you can see with your own eyes in a very physical sense. It tracks your eyes and it’s just got this depth that is just pretty magical.”
“Seeing it was kind of mesmerizing and kind of mind-blowing,” says The Mill Creative Director Andrew Proctor. “You’re not designing a set frame but you’re giving a window. Look deeper, look further. You find yourself leaning around and seeing something.
https://youtu.be/lBnJ9PV6OMA
Here’s how it works according to Sony:
High-speed Vision Sensor – The SR Display is based on an innovative high-speed vision sensor that follows exact eye position in space, on vertical, horizontal, and depth axes simultaneously. The display monitors eye movement down to the millisecond while rendering the image instantaneously, based on the location and position of the viewer’s eyes. This allows creators to interact with their designs in a highly-realistic virtual, 3D environment, from any angle without glasses.
Real-time Rendering Algorithm – Additionally, the SR Display leverages an original processing algorithm to display content in real-time. This allows the stereoscopic image to appear as smooth as real life, even if the viewer moves around.
Micro Optical Lens – The micro optical lens is positioned precisely over the stunning 15.6 inches (diag.) LCD display1. This lens divides the image into the left and right eyes allowing for stereoscopic viewing with just the naked eye.
In a struggle to display authenticity without resorting to obvious pandering, while still hitting ROI targets, some brands find Facebook Ads difficult to approach, especially in a politically and culturally sensitive era
Numerous reports can be referenced highlighting the importance of authenticity within marketing as a whole. This advice is doubly true when attempting to appeal to demographics that may span numerous cultures and socioeconomic backgrounds. The only way to truly be authentic is to have representation within these diverse groups of people that can tell their story about your brand in a way that is unique to them and their coveted audience.
The way for such brands to avoid failure is to adopt a UGC ad approach utilizing influencers. Influencer marketing, as you may recall, can be distilled in having someone else tell your brand story for you, which is precisely what UGC created ads are.
There are multiple methods that influencers can utilize in the Facebook ecosystem, including live streaming collaborations, fan page postings, and group advertisements. However, the method we have found particularly effective involves using Facebook’s internal brand collabs manager as a multi-step campaign process.
For this process to work, a brand will need to only have access to an account with Facebook Ads management credentials. However, in multiple tests, we have found it is faster and more efficient to prequalify influencers through an external network prior to engaging, rather than relying upon the Facebook marketplace alone for the selection process. The importance of this step is predicated on the importance of first calculating the probability of influence based on your predetermined campaign goals. The reasoning for external vetting prior to ad collaborations is as follows:
1. While approximate reach and engagement is discernable through the brand side of the Facebook collaboration marketplace, what isn’t obvious is relevance. By first vetting Facebook influencers, a brand will likely find the self-identified categorical selections and content focus is not always congruent with the information displayed in the collabs marketplace.
2. The next issue is cost. Once again, testing has determined that price is not as static as one might assume when simply utilizing the brand collabs marketplace. The reason for this is reflective of fit. As a thought exercise, imagine a digital marketer is being asked to set an hourly rate for her services. The ads collabs manager in this analogy represents the expected blended rate for all activities the aforementioned marketer would be asked to perform. The reality is her distaste for a service such as site infrastructure auditing may make other activities she enjoys more expensive on that blended rate. The same is true of influencers. A blended rate exists to satisfy the vast majority of collaboration pitches the influencer is expected to receive. Therefore, approaching an influencer external to the collabs marketplace can often result in a lower starting price point.
The only caveat to this approach is not every Facebook influencer in external networks is a member of the ads collabs marketplace. If time is of the essence, it is recommended to ask on the status of this membership when pitching. However, as Facebook is willing to let most applicants into the program, if a brand feels strongly about an influencer, it can be worth pursuing the relationship while urging the influencer also gain membership into the program.
Once an influencer has been selected based on campaign criteria of fit, economics, and expected outcome, the process for using this influencer in an ongoing ad is remarkably similar to that of a normal influencer campaign. The critical difference is centered on ad quality guidelines, as some industries are more heavily regulated from an ad copy perspective. Presumably, a brand will evaluate the true impact an influencer provides prior to elevating into an ad unit. Additionally, running a postmortem analysis in the event expectations are not in line with reality helps for future transactions. After initial satisfaction has been reached the next steps are simple:
1. Approve the collaboration in the Facebook collabs manager interface
Branded Content Approval. Source: Facebook.com
2. Create a new ad utilizing the influencer via the boost post ad type. Simply set a budget and you’re done.
To test this concept for yourself, simultaneously run this process against a fresh ad campaign on the same exact topic. You may find, as we and others have, that the UGC-elevated ads end up outperforming the conventional ad types. The often occurs without running into the pitfalls of a brand trying to target multiple demographics, which can often come off as inauthentic. All that was required was simply incorporating some influencers into the process.
To learn more, take a self-guided demo of Intellifluence, which will help you understand how influencers can be applied to virtually any marketing use case in a simple campaign creation process.
“We’ve benefited from a tremendous relationship with theatrical exhibition for many years,” says Disney CEO Bob Chapek. “However, there are a lot of consumers that want to experience a movie in the safety, comfort, and convenience of their own home. We want to accelerate our transition to a real direct-to-consumer priority company. Ultimately, the consumer is going to be making the decision in terms of how they consume our media as opposed to some arbitrary decision that we may make from a distribution standpoint.”
Bob Chapek, CEO of Disney, discusses how Disney is transitioning to a direct-to-consumer company with less focus on the theatrical distribution of video content:
Accelerating Transition To Direct-To-Consumer Company
We want to accelerate our transition to a real direct-to-consumer priority company. We’ve got the opportunity to build upon the success of Disney+ which by almost any measure has been far and above anybody’s expectations. We really want to use this to catalyze our growth and increase shareholder wealth. In every territory and every platform, our expectations with Disney+ have been exceeded and exceeded every month. We’re thrilled with the way it’s going. We just think that this reorganization is going to catalyze growth even further.
I would not characterize (our reorganization) as a response to COVID but COVID accelerated the rate at which we made this transition. This transition was going to happen anyway. Essentially, what we want to do is separate out the folks who make our wonderful content based on tremendous franchises from the decision making in terms of where the prioritization is and how it gets commercialized into the marketplace.
We want to leave it to a group of folks who can really see objectively across all the constituents that we have and the various different considerations that we’ve got and make the optimal decision for the company. This is as opposed to somehow having it be predetermined that a movie is destined for theaters or that a TV show is destined for ABC. So really what we want to do is provide some level of objectivity and really make it a decision that benefits the overall company and its shareholders.
We’re Putting The Consumer First
What it says is that we’re putting the consumer first. The consumer is actually going to be who’s going to make this decision. They’re going to lead us with how they make their transactional decisions. Right now, they’re voting with their pocketbooks and they’re voting very heavily towards Disney+. We want to make sure that we’re going the way that the consumers want us to go.
Certainly, COVID has impacted all of our traditional distribution businesses. But this is even more than reactionary, this is really progressive. This is looking out with a vision towards where we see the world going and how we see that consumers are interacting with Disney+, ESPN+, and Hulu and where it’s going to go in the future in our international business with Star. We’re trying to as they say skate to where the puck is going to be.
Less Theaters, More DTC
We’ve benefited from a tremendous relationship with theatrical exhibition for many years. As dynamics change in the marketplace though we want to make sure that we’re giving consumers who want to go to theaters, to experience everything that a theatrical release can give them, we want to make sure that we continue to give them that option.
At the same time, there are a lot of consumers that want to experience a movie in the safety, comfort, and convenience of their own home for whatever reasons they do. We want to make sure that we put the consumer first. Ultimately, the consumer is going to be making the decision in terms of how they consume our media as opposed to some arbitrary decision that we may make from a distribution standpoint. We want to look at ourselves as consumer enablers.
“The barriers have broken down now in digital transformation because of people working from home and the need to adopt faster,” says Brenda Harvey, General Manager at IBM Asia Pacific. “We see continued growth of hybrid cloud and of cloud services after the pandemic. It’s touching every element of a company’s business processes from the inside out and the outside in.”
The benefits coming from new personalized services, workflow automation, infusing AI to help drive this more personal experience, are actually driving better business impact. When we think about hybrid cloud which enables you to leverage all of your investments across your infrastructure we’re actually seeing two and a half times value than traditional models. We’re also seeing the benefits from regulatory cloud and capabilities that we’re putting into our platforms. We just announced a financial services cloud and we’ll do the same with insurance and healthcare.
We’ll take the costs out of the regulatory risk and compliance while providing more value from a business perspective. We’ve had a number of relationships across multiple industries including BNP Paribas, MUFG Bank, Adobe, across telecom with Vodafone Idea, Bharti Airtel, Verizon, and even Schlumberger and Ernst & Young. Companies are seeing the value of these platforms. In fact, in the study, 94% of the respondents said that by 2022 they would have a new business platform model that would continue to power their business.
Barriers To Digital Transformation Have Broken Down
We see continued growth of hybrid cloud and of cloud services after the pandemic. It’s touching every element of a company’s business processes from the inside out and the outside in. The inside out includes HR, finance, risk compliance, procurement, supply chain. Then the outside in, marketing, sales, customer engagement, and customer service. With marketing at marketing events, we saw a 3X response into our Think Digital than previous years because we could have more reach. So now marketing is taking into account a digital transformation of the clients’ needs.
Customer service and engagement are the number one priority of our clients. They are building and investing in the contact center to improve the experience and drive more value. This cloud platform will bring in new capabilities with 5G such as IoT (internet of things), blockchain, and of course quantum capabilities. We’ll see the technology advance while the cultural change is advancing too. The barriers have broken down now in digital transformation because of people working from home and the need to adopt faster.
IBM: Barrier To Digital Transformation Have Broken Down
“We are in a new digital world―in an ALL digital world,” says Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff. “The past is gone and it’s not coming back. We are not in the future. We are in the present moment. We are now in this new digital future and we need to rebuild our companies and organizations. This is a moment where if we all decide that we are all going to be successful and that the past is gone, we can create the future that we want.”
Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce, discusses how we are not living in the past or the future, we are living in the present. He says that the present is a new digital world in an all digital world:
This Is About Helping Our Customers Thrive
We are, of course, in an unpredictable time. There’s never been greater uncertainty in the entire world because you have a global pandemic, you have a global economic crisis, you have a racial justice crisis, you have a global leadership crisis, and you have a global environmental crisis, and they are all happening simultaneously. There’s a lot of uncertainty in the world. That’s why we all really have to focus and get really clear on what we want right now and how we are going to succeed through these times.
This is a time that you can no longer do what you were doing six months ago. You have to do something totally new and if you can do something totally new you can have tremendous success. Salesforce is now an example of that success. We delivered a 29 percent growth quarter. It was amazing. That followed a 30 percent growth quarter. We also had record margins and we had record large deals. It was amazing how many very large transactions we were able to close during that time.
Ultimately, this is about helping our customers succeed and helping them thrive during this time. It was a 63 percent increase in seven-figure deals for our quarter. It is really because the largest most important companies in this world are all making dramatic changes and we’re there to help them connect with their customers in a whole new way.
We Are In A New Digital World… In An All Digital World
We are in a new digital world―in an ALL digital world. The past is gone. It’s not coming back. We are not in the future. We are in the present moment. This is a be here now moment. Everyone needs to realize that the past is gone. We are now in this new digital future and we need to rebuild our companies and organizations. Ultimately, we need to rebuild ourselves to be successful in this new digital future.
I just had a Board meeting last week. I had a Board member and they were talking about how great Zoom is and how we participated in this great IPO and successful it is. The Board members said that Zoom is really the future. I said, look, Zoom is not the future. Zoom is the present. This is our present reality. We are in a new world. This is our reality. We need to all make changes and we need to make them now because this is not going to shift anytime soon. If we’re going to succeed through this we need to realize that the past is gone.
We Can Create The Future That We Want
We are never going back to how it was. All of our employees are at home. Even in countries where we are open like Japan employees don’t want to even come in to the office because they have reskilled themselves. We have a whole reskilling engine called Trailhead.com. They use our tools. We have a tremendous salesforce automation tool that lets our employees sell to our customers remotely digitally. Our Sales Cloud is why we have tremendous sales, productivity, and success. Our Service Cloud is why we are having tremendous ability to service from anywhere and market from anywhere. The reason we’re the fastest growing top five software company in the world is because we use our own products.
This is just a minute in time where I say, wow, I didn’t see this coming. Nobody did. But now that we’re here we have to rebuild ourselves. At the same time we have to also augment for our customers what we can do. We are doing now contact tracing for thousands of companies. We run pandemic response management for 35 states. We didn’t have a pandemic response capability six months ago. Now we have to have it.
We have to be there for our customers to help them be successful whether they are public sector organizations or whether they are the world’s most important companies. This is a moment where if we all decide that we are all going to be successful and that the past is gone, we can create the future that we want.
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff: We Are In A New Digital World
“There’s a real recognition that digitization and transformation are not doing what you used to do in the physical world,” says Publicis Sapient CEO Nigel Vaz. “Digitizing that and translating that is essentially the journey of going from being a caterpillar to a butterfly. Real transformation. How do you reimagine yourself in the context of a world that now is entirely digital? Customers are thinking very actively about how they actually create products and services that essentially create value for customers entirely digitally.”
Nigel Vaz, CEO of Publicis Sapient, discusses how the current pandemic has forced organizations to reimagine their businesses digitally. Nigel works closely with clients such as McDonald’s, Nationwide, and Unilever to deliver transformative experiences and business models:
https://youtu.be/VOKcTLcxHXw
Businesses Being Reimagined In A World That Is Now Entirely Digital
Digitization Has Become Existential For Business
I think Digital has always been important for business. Now more than ever what’s becoming very clear is this has gone from being something that’s important to something that’s existential. How do you support customers to make orders entirely online when your stores are closed? How do you create mashups with other partners to be able to facilitate deliveries when your own deliveries don’t suffice? How do you try to create experiences online through self-service that minimize the impact of people calling your call centers?
All of these things are things clients are facing on a regular basis. Most CEOs I’m in conversation with are acknowledging the fact that this has now got to be a priority, that they have to be ready more so than they’ve ever thought before.
3 Key Things Happening With the Transformation
There are three things happening here in terms of transformation. The first is the change in human behavior where I think there’s a recognizable shift now. We’re seeing significant accounts of over-70s, for example, ordering from retail and ramping that up. We’re seeing a big shift in institutions like schools and educational institutions, which historically had not thought about transformation as particularly applicable to them.
We’re also seeing a shift in industries like leisure looking at creating virtual experiences since physical experiences are essentially restricted and people can’t use them. The human behavior shift is translating to big investments in technology and technology platforms that enable this.
Businesses Being Reimagined In A World That Is Now Entirely Digital
Then lastly, new business models. There’s a real recognition that digitization and transformation are not doing what you used to do in the physical world. Digitizing that and translating that is essentially the journey of going from being a caterpillar to a butterfly. Real transformation. How do you reimagine yourself in the context of a world that now is entirely digital?
Customers are thinking very actively about how they actually create products and services that essentially create value for customers entirely digitally. There are plenty of examples in this from telemedicine and from the educational space with new courses coming online which can scale faster than traditional courses limited by a classroom and a professor.
Marketers often think that their voice is not listened to and that there is often a disconnect with C-suite execs. Unilever CMO Keith Weed said, “I often joke with my CFO, he counts where the money’s going, I say where the money’s coming from.” How can you as a marketing executive effectively get through to others in your organization?
Marketing Week recently asked several prominent marketers how they ensure their voice is heard by the rest of the C-suite:
The key thing is to talk to them about how you can help them achieve their objectives rather than trying to convince them to help you achieve yours. Many people approach marketing with an open mouth but in reality, many people don’t understand it. Business leaders see it as a tax on their business. The role of a marketing leader is to help them understand that marketing is an enabler that helps them achieve their business objectives and their business strategy. Once they see it as something they own then they’ll be prepared to invest in it.
The secret to having your voice heard in the C-suite is caring passionately about what all the other people around the table do. If you’re myopically focused on just the marketing then you won’t be taken seriously. You need to understand everything about the finances of the business, about how the sales channels are working, about the HR problems, and the organizational opportunities. You need to understand the whole thing.
Debrah Dolce, SVP, Group Brand & Marketing Director, TJX Europe
I think to be effective in the C-suite, clearly, it’s going to be about relationships and a business approach that can showcase the impact that marketing can have on the commercial side of the business as well as the long-term brand building and customer engagement that we’re obviously all responsible for.
For me, it would very much be about the partnership and the relationships within the C-suite. As the world becomes more connected and more integrated I see that only becoming more and more important. To function as a high-performing exec team it’s going to take everybody to care about the customer. I think that’ll be critical for all marketers moving forwards to share that passion.
Keith Weed, Chief Marketing and Communications Officer, Unilever
There is no stainable growth other than consumer or customer demand-led growth and marketers should be at the core of consumer demand-led growth. If you can do that you can tell the people around the table where the growth is coming from. I often joke with my CFO, he counts where the money’s going, I say where the money’s coming from, and that’s important for business.
The way marketing leaders can ensure that their voices are heard in the C-suite, number one is they’ve got to be able to talk the language. So really understand what the business is about, understand finance, and then think about you know what is core to making that business grow. If you can combine all those three you’ll have a great voice in the C-suite.
Tony Miller, VP, Digital Marketing & CRM, EMEA, Disney
In order to make our marketing leaders’ voice heard to the rest of the C-suite group it’s about really open dialogue, being honest with your peers, and having the ability to have debate and encourage debate and discussion around things that are happening in the industry and specifically within your brand and your sector.
I think marketers today need to ensure that they have everything backed up through data and insight, whether it’s about kind of proving return on investment of that marketing value through brand engagement or customer satisfaction or sales and return on investment. Having the data and letting that help speak and guide those conversations.
John Rudaizky, Partner, Global Brand and Marketing Leader, EY
I would say from point of view, how does your marketing and your brand contribute to the growth agenda? You really have to work hard at making sure that that’s clear. Most businesses are looking at growing through very disruptive times at the moment. The next thing is from a digital transformation point of view, I think marketing has never been more relevant in the boardroom.
When you think about the total customer experience being changed through digital and technology, marketing has probably got the best ever moment in time to have a seat in that conversation. Thirdly, I’d say trust, every business is going through change and if you think about digital things reputations can be affected overnight. From a brand point of view, marketing and brands can play an active role in helping the boardroom navigate through these disruptive times.
It was a merger that started out nearly a year ago as a perfect idea and was even approved by the U.S. government. In the end, it turned into a perfect storm because of the ad industry upheaval caused by the coronavirus and subsequent business closures followed by massive unemployment and fewer clicks on ads. Ad prices then dropped dramatically which changed the value proposition for both Outbrain and Taboola.
The world’s two leading companies in the discovery & native advertising industry will remain fierce competitors in what still is a chaotic and unpredictable ad market.
“As part of the process we exchanged financial information with each other,” says Taboola Founder & CEO Adam Singolda in a blog post. “Based on the relative performance of the two companies, we decided the original deal does not make sense anymore. We could choose to pay the same price of 30% in equity + $250M, but our shareholders thought it’s too much for what we would get based on the relative contribution of the two companies. Nothing emotional, not about culture fit, just data.”
“Out of deep respect, we tried to do a deal that was equity only (but less equity), or equity and cash (but less cash) that matched Outbrain’s financial contribution to Taboola. We failed, and we called it off.”
“It is now public news that Outbrain’s planned merger with Taboola is heading to termination in the near future. This isn’t the outcome any of us anticipated for this process. We believed when entering this deal that there is great potential value to be had for our employees, our marketers and publisher partners, and our shareholders. However, this combination apparently was simply not meant to be. We worked hard to mix water and oil, but ultimately the companies proved to be too different to be mixed.”
“During a very stormy year for the Outbrain team, due to both the pandemic and the cloud of the merger, Outbrain’s character as the #1 most trusted partner for the world’s best publishers has shone through very brightly. We’re excited to continue innovating and building the best native advertising products for publishers and marketers as an independent company for many years to come.”
Online marketing sensation Dan Lok says that when it comes to marketing online, there are only two things, conversion and traffic. That’s it. “To convert the right attention, to convert followers and likes into money, in between you a need conversion mechanism,” says Lok.
Lok adds that if you are getting zero conversions it doesn’t matter if you increase your traffic because you cannot multiply zero.
Dan Lok, one of the most-in-demand marketing consultants in the world, a 2 times TEDx speaker, and best-selling author, recently talked about the first rule of online marketing in a YouTube video (watch below):
Know Who Your Audience Is
The very first rule of online marketing is you need to know who your audience is. It’s not about making noise, it’s not about just getting your name out there. A lot of people I talk about, even entrepreneurs, marketers, and business owners, you hear this all the time, I just need to get my name out there. It’s not about getting your name out there, it’s about getting your customers into your door. It’s not getting them out there it’s getting them in here. That’s the very first rule of marketing online.
You Need the Right Type of Attention
You have to know it’s not just about getting attention. A lot of people they think they need a lot of followers or need a lot of fans or a big social media reach. I have a massive social media reach but fame doesn’t equal fortune. The right type of fame to the right type of people equals fortune. So it’s not just about getting attention because right now you could run around naked in the winter in Vancouver. Guess what, you will get a lot of attention but it’s not the right attention.
You need the right type of attention at the right time from the right prospect, that’s what makes sales. If you run any kind of business, it can be a home-based business or any type, whatever you’re selling online, first, you have to define exactly who you’re selling to. Who is your ideal customer? If your answer is anyone who breathes, anyone who has a heartbeat, then you’ve got a problem.
Who are they? Are they men or woman? What age group? What kind of professions? What did they do and what are their ping points. Once you’ve narrowed that down then you craft your offer, you craft your message specifically talking to this group of people. The amount of money you’ll make from marketing, the amount of money you make for your business, is in direct proportion to how well you understand your potential customers. Once you do that then you will know where you could get traffic.
When Marketing There is Only Conversion and Traffic
For example, if you know this is your demographic, this is the ideal customer profile, then yes now you can do Facebook Ads, now you can do banner ads, now you can do affiliate marketing, now you can run Google Ads, now you can do Instagram, now you know exactly who you’re talking to. Versus I need to get more followers, I just need to make some noise, I need to get more traffic. It doesn’t help. When it comes to marketing online, there are only two things, conversion and traffic. That’s it.
If you’ve got these conversions going on, let’s say you are converting one out of every hundred visitors buying your product, a one percent conversion. That’s fine, so now you know if you get two hundred visitors that are the right type of visitors that will get you two sales and then three hundred visitors and so on and so forth. It’s a one percent conversion.
You Need a Conversion Mechanism
However, if you have had a few hundred visitors or even a few thousand visitors to your website, to your offer, and none of them bought, listen to me, you cannot multiply zero. If you’re not getting sells with a few thousand visitors, guess what, let me get more followers, let me get more visitors. I’ll get 20,000 visitors and then my problem will be solved. I’ll get more sales. No, it won’t.
You cannot multiply zero and you cannot go to the bank and say hey, you know what, I don’t have a check to deposit but I’ve got a lot of Instagram followers to deposit. The bank wants cash. You cannot deposit likes, you cannot deposit followers, you cannot deposit fans, you deposit cash. To convert the right attention, to convert followers and likes into money, in between you a need conversion mechanism. Whatever that thing might be.
Most People Suck at the Conversion Mechanism
It could be your ecommerce site, it could be a webinar, it could be a good old telephone to convert them to a sale. Whatever that mechanism is I can tell you from my experience that when it comes to making money online most people they focus on traffic, but they all suck at this conversion mechanism. Either they don’t have one in place or the conversion mechanism they have sucks.
Their web page sucks, it doesn’t convert, it doesn’t get people to act, it doesn’t get people to buy, it doesn’t get people to click. They thought, then just get more people viewing my page, let me get more traffic and that will solve my problem. It won’t.
What Offer Will Get Them to Put Up Their Hand?
The very first action that you need to figure out is who is my ideal audience? What kind of offer can I put in front of them to get them to put up their hand? Maybe it’s generating a lead, maybe it’s a making a small purchase, maybe a big purchase, it doesn’t matter. What is the right offer to put in front of them?
Once that’s converting then you can find ways to buy traffic. There are so many ways and so many places you can buy traffic. That’s how you do it, that’s the rule of marketing online and that’s the rule of selling anything online.
Some things in the new world will change forever. Customer meetings will change forever. In the past, I never thought that I could do a Zoom call or a Teams call with the CEO of a company I’m trying to sell to. In the future, I don’t think my customers will want me to come and see them. There’s continued opportunity for remote access. Anything that allows you to connect with clients online or build the brand is going to be really valuable. I had an Instagram Live yesterday with Kris Jenner. She’s been selling online for years now. Every business needs to move online, especially small business.
Robert Herjavec, mega entrepreneur and Shark Tank star, says on CNBC that the coronavirus crisis has caused the word to change forever. Meetings will never be the same and many other post-pandemic changes are in store:
Customer Meetings Will Change Forever
When all of this first happened we wanted to use Zoom because all our customers use Zoom. But I have got to tell you, some of the security issues are really pretty bad within Zoom. So we’ve switched over to Microsoft Teams. I think that’s one of the reasons that Microsoft stock is doing so well. The use of Teams at the corporate enterprise level is really taking off. We’re also seeing Webex usage really go up. There was also the acquisition of BlueJeans (by Verizon), another video conferencing platform.
I have become very optimistic about the return, whenever the return is, and what the world will look like. Some things in the new world will change forever. Customer meetings will change forever. In the past, I never thought that I could do a Zoom call or a Team’s call with the CEO of a company I’m trying to sell to. In the future, I don’t think my customers will want me to come and see them. There’s continued opportunity for remote access. Anything that allows you to connect with clients online or build the brand is going to be really valuable. I had an Instagram Live yesterday with Kris Jenner. She’s been selling online for years now. Every business needs to move online, especially small business.
We’re Into This For The Long Haul
I used to think that we were in a light switch moment where miraculously President Trump will get on the news and say we’re all back on this date. But I think what we’re seeing now in California and in New York is that it’s going to be⎯⎯we’re into this for the long haul. Certain parts of the economy will go back quickly. But even the ones that do go back are going to be limited.
Restaurants will have to distance half the tables. If I have more space in my restaurant can I charge more along that line? I think it’s going to be challenging but with all those challenges there’s going to be opportunities. The key for me about going back is testing. What that means and how people get tested. There’s a great new saliva test that was approved by the FDA where people can do it at home and I think we just have to be able to do that at scale.
Nobody Wakes Up And Says “I Want My Life To Suck”
Shark Tank is a mirror to what’s happening in the American economy. When we started the show twelve years ago it was during the financial crisis. Nobody could get a loan. So people started a lot of businesses that you didn’t need capital for. Then we moved to online selling. This will be the same thing. If I’ve learned anything on twelve years from Shark Tank it is that the human condition is about hope. Nobody wakes up and says I want my life to suck. Every time somebody comes on Shark Tank they are full of hope and they’re full of optimism.
This is a challenging time but entrepreneurs will figure it out. The key though is you’ve got to have a growth plan. The stimulus plan, the protection plan, all these relief funds, are simply survival funds. They are not growth funds. If you don’t have a plan to grow, if you don’t have a plan to gain market share, getting a stimulus today is just keeping you in business. It’s not helping you to grow. You’ve got to have a game plan for that.
I want to know what people’s plan is for survival. It makes me want to invest in two types of companies, either a company that has a very strong balance sheet or companies like an Uber or a small business that can scale back its costs. I want to invest in a company that can quickly scale its expenses to meet a decline in revenue or vice versa. So fluidity and the ability to adapt in a small business is really going to be the key. I don’t want to invest in a business with a large infrastructure, buildings, equipment, and all that kind of stuff. That stuff is very difficult to scale down.
Customer Meetings Will Change Forever, Says Shark Tank’s Robert Herjavec
Everything you do in the company drives you toward the vision and the mission of the brand and the company itself, says Jan Bednar, Founder & CEO of ShipMonk. “Something we have learned in the last few years is that once you communicate those values and what the brand really means to your employees and to your customers, it kind of does the job itself,” he says. “You don’t really have to spend a lot of time maintaining it.”
Bednar adds: “Everything you do at that point is the brand.”
The one important thing in the way we look at our products and our brand is we try to figure out who are users are and what does our brand mean. We have a certain set of values that are associated with our brand. It’s not just a bunch of text that we put on a whiteboard three years ago and we never look at it. We have them everywhere and everyone knows them. They basically become the pillars of the organization. It’s something that everybody looks up to. You know what they are.
Everything you do in the company drives you toward the vision and the mission of the brand and the company itself. Something we have learned in the last few years is that once you communicate those values and what the brand really means to your employees and to your customers, it kind of does the job itself. You don’t really have to spend a lot of time maintaining it.
ShipMonk Values
Everything You Do is The Brand
Everything you do at that point is the brand. It’s how you answer the phone. It’s how you decorate your office. It’s how you go to work. It’s what you wear to work. Every single detail, as long as you have those values in the back of your mind and you know what the brand really means, it’s almost like a self-sustaining organism at that point.
That’s been really important for us. We really see with our customers that once they like our brand and they see what we are doing they become part of it. It’s one of the most rewarding things. They love coming to our office. They love sharing their thoughts and improving the product. It becomes this one big ShipMonk family in a way. Everything we do from a branding and marketing standpoint surrounds those values and the proposition of the brand.
From their inception in 2014, ShipMonk has operated with a singular guiding principle: to help small and medium-sized businesses scale by offering technology-driven fulfillment solutions that enable business founders to devote more time to the things that matter most in their businesses. Put simply, ShipMonk helps eCommerce companies stress less and grow more.
There are six things that you need to think about with employee engagement and customer engagement says Andrew McMillan, a renowned customer experience expert based in the U.K. “The most important thing is what you do for each other is actually what you do for customers.”
For me, customer experience is simple. I think the first part is to know who you are as a business and to know what your personality is going to be. Friendly, kind, thoughtful, helpful, or forward thinking? What’s the personality of your brand? Then come up with some attributes and behaviors that are going to enhance that personality. That’s what you then start to try and recruit in terms of your employees.
How You Treat Employees is How Employees Treat Customers
The most important thing, I think I learned from John Lewis, was actually what you do for each other is what you do for customers. Create that working environment for your employees so they find their managers are friendly, thoughtful, and kind to them. I believe then, it’s just a leap of faith but I proved a ton time again, that they will then be friendly, thoughtful, and kind to their customers.
What is Your Companies Vision?
The North Star, some people will call it visions and some people call it purpose. It’s just why do we exist? Why should anybody care about this? Why should anyone want to do any business with us? John Lewis’s was a bit of a strange one actually. The purpose in 1929 was to have an organization where employees were happy.
So these can be really highly aspirational and lofty or they can be very very simple. But having something there, the idea is that people come to work inspired and having a sense of purpose.
John Lewis Partnership – Vision
6 Ways to Achieve Employee and Customer Engagement
There are six things that you need to think about with employee engagement and customer engagement:
The first one is to define what your personality is going to be in terms of behavior and attitude. It can be friendly, kind, thoughtful, whatever you want to be as a business.
The second one is to measure that and measure it with employee surveys and customer surveys. This is inside-out. This is what you do for your employees and what you hope they’ll do for customers.
The third thing is to communicate it. Communicate it at inception. Then continue to tell stories about people who’ve lived up to those behaviors and attitudes to see what it’s done for customers and what it’s done for them to bring it to life, so people can see what it looks like.
The fourth thing is leadership. That’s probably one of the biggest things I see that’s lacking in organizations. There should be leaders modeling the behavior that we talked about and then actually coaching it in their team’s to encourage them to deliver that behavior for each other and for their customers.
The fifth thing is HR really. It’s a Reward Recognition Appraisal to make sure those are links to not just the outcomes people achieve but the alignment with the behavior with which they achieve those outcomes. So it’s about how they do things, not just what they do.
Finally, the sixth part is the recruitment. If you’ve done the first five really effectively and really built a cohesive network around those first five, you’ve got a great blueprint for exactly the sort of personality and individual you want to recruit into your business.
“One trend that is going to happen is that travel as we knew it is over,” says Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky. “It doesn’t mean travel is over, just the travel we knew is over… and it’s never coming back. It’s just not. Not surprising, we’ve spent twelve years building Airbnb’s business and lost almost all of it in a matter of four to six weeks.”
Brian Chesky, CEO of Airbnb, discusses how COVID has wreaked havoc on the travel industry and Airbnb and how it has literally changed travel as we know it.
Airbnb’s Built Over 12 Years – Gone in 6 Weeks
One thing I’ve learned is not to try to get in the business of predicting the future. Anyone who has made predictions has not done very well in the last few months. What I can tell you is the following. Beginning with March travel was at a standstill, almost virtually stopped. There were 2.5 billion people locked down. Not surprising, we’ve spent twelve years building Airbnb’s business and lost almost all of it in a matter of four to six weeks.
What’s happened over the last three or four months though is something else entirely. People are saying they want to get out of the house but they want to be safe. They don’t want to get on airplanes. They don’t want to travel for business. They don’t want to go to cities and they don’t want to cross borders. What they are willing to do is to get in a car and drive a couple hundred miles to a small community where they are willing to stay in a house.
Now Something Remarkable Has Happened
Because of that, although our business has not recovered, something remarkable happened. At the end of May and early June, we have the same volume of bookings in the United States as the year before… without any marketing. Zero marketing whatsoever. This is just showing that people are yearning for something. They’re yearning for connection. They want to be connected to the communities and to each other. They want to get outside. I think that travel is going to come back. It’s just going to take a lot longer than we would have thought and it’s going to be different.
We have dramatically reduced our costs. We reduced our cost and it was an incredibly difficult and harrowing experience. We said that we don’t know how long this storm will take so I’m going to hope for the best but I’m planning for the worst. So if there is a new shutdown or multiple shutdowns and travel stops again we will be okay because of the changes we’ve made. We’ve cut nearly a billion dollars of marketing. We’ve had to reduce our staff, and we’ve become very lean and nimble.
We’ve also been resilient. We’ve launched online experiences that people can do from home. We have longer term stays. A large percentage of our bookings, almost a fifth, are for stays longer than 30 days. Another thing is that we have not lost any hosts on our platform. We actually have more hosts and homes today than before COVID started. The important thing here is that the market is resilient.
Travel As We Knew It Is Over
One trend that is going to happen is that travel as we knew it is over. It doesn’t mean travel is over, just the travel we knew is over… and it’s never coming back. It’s just not. No one quite knows what it will look like but I have a couple of thoughts. Instead of the world’s population traveling to only a few cities and staying in big tourist districts we are going to see a redistribution of where people travel. They’re going to start traveling because they are going nearby to thousands of local communities.
We have had fairly ambitious real estate expansion plans and we have paused those plans. We are not adding more real estate. I think more people are going to work remotely. Also, working from home can be working from any home, and that’s an opportunity for Airbnb. You are going to see major population redistribution on the table. Not everyone is going to want to live in the same city. That being said, we don’t know the full cost of entire workforces being remote.
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky: Travel As We Knew It Is Over
“Last year we sent about 50,000 pet portraits to our customers,” says Chew CEO Sumit Singh. “We’re an experience-driven company. This is not a cost. This is an engagement mechanism. We’ve partnered with about a thousand local artists across the country. We think of this as an experience building. We have 90 percent re-ups (of our subscriptions). Our customers love engaging with us.”
Sumit Singh, CEO of Chewy, discusses their IPO (launched today) and how customer engagement has driven their phenomenal growth in an interview on CNBC:
We Are An Experience-Driven Company
Last year we sent about 50,000 pet portraits to our customers. We’re an experience-driven company. This is not a cost. This is an engagement mechanism. We’ve partnered with about a thousand local artists across the country. They show up to your doorstep unannounced. It’s a total surprise. You can’t buy them. When they do (the paintings) they create memories. People talk about them. They drive dinner table conversations. They show up on social media. It’s just an emotive category.
We think of this as an experience building. We have this because we want it, not because we need it in some way. Once we get out there and once this shows up on your doorstep the engagement that it creates generates the loyalty, the repeat purchase rate. In fact, our cohorts just keep growing from $330 to $500, $600, and $700 as they go from year five, six, and into year seven. This is what does it. Pets is the only category where a consumer refers to themselves as a pet parent. The only other category where consumers do that is kids.
“Jackson loves his Chewy portrait!” notes Chewy customer Eri Anne
Our Customers Love Engaging With Us
Pet ownership is underrepresented in the growth of e-commerce. First of all today in the United States we’re only about 14 percent penetrated from an online point of view. Chewy, if you look at it, is a $70 billion dollar industry. We’re penetrated in about roughly 10 percent of the households. We have 11 million customers. We’re growing fast and we’re engaging them hard.
They stay with us. It’s the two flywheels, the engagement, and the acquisition. It just spins really well. Our investors love that. Our customers love that. We like it. We have 90 percent re-ups (of our subscriptions). Two-thirds of our revenue comes from Autoship and our subscription program. Our customers love engaging with us.
We Have An Incredible Amount of Data
Our shipping (cost) is built into our gross margins. What you’ve seen is as we’ve gotten big fast, we’ve also gotten fit fast. Our gross margin has expanded over 500 basis points over the last three years. We have a dense network. We have the predictability of Autoship. We can plan supply plan tighter and baseload build a lot tighter and get it to our customers fast and in a reliable manner. That’s how we make it work.
We have a ton of data. When you contact us you’re giving us (information). Pet profiles is an amazing way for us to engage with you. Customers are leaning in. We talked to you via customer service. At this point, we have 11 million customers but we manage over 27 million relationships between pets and pet parents. That is an incredible amount of data and facts to have on base.
Pets.com Was 20 Years Ago
The company (Pets.com) was 20 years ago. Look at the way the e-commerce has built out, the inputs are changing. Look at our stickiness. Look at the number of customers that we’re attracting. The fact that we’re servicing greater than 95 percent of US households in less than two days and the fact that customers keep coming back to us. Also, the necessity and desire to continue to engage and seek information via the high-touch high-class customer service that we provide. We just closed the loop better than anybody else out there.
We Are An Experience-Driven Company, Says Chewy CEO Sumit Singh
“Nobody was using machine learning to point at the underlying consumer data to help make sense of it and bring it together,” says Matthew Biboud-Lubeck of Amperity. “We put together cloud computing that was scalable with better economics alongside a machine learning algorithm that we were pointing at the data to help make sense of it. We realized that what we had was a pretty scalable solution to help brands get to that nirvana of a single view of the customer.”
Helping Brands Create a Single View of Their Customers
We are a CDP (customer data platform) based in Seattle that is helping brands create a single view of their customers and to unlock personalized experiences from that data. If you look back to the founding of Amperity about three years ago our founders were canvassing the marketplace. What you saw was a marketplace using a lot of buzzwords but having a lot of trouble executing them. You heard about personalization, customer 360, and a 360 view of the customer. Marketers across major consumer brands were super frustrated.
They spent a fortune trying to cobble some view of their customer. They invested in technology to help them send better emails, to make their media more targeted, and to unveil better analytics. All of those tools that they have invested in talked about the notion of a single view of the customer because they fundamentally needed that to operate. The reality was that nobody was getting to the solution. We came in to say maybe there is a better way.
Machine Learning Helps Brands Get To Nirvana
There were two things that changed in the marketplace that we capitalized on. First of all, it was that cloud computing got a lot cheaper. It used to be that if you were a big brand and got hundreds of millions of customer interactions, it’s just a lot of data. Part of the reason that no one was able to create an easy solution to putting that all together was because it was cost prohibitive.
The second really interesting evolution in the market is that machine learning has become much more mature. What we found was that everyone in the marketplace was using machine learning to make that last mile to the marketer a little bit better. It was used to decide which products to show a customer or to decide which offer to show a customer or to create a customer care solution that’s automated. You go online and type toward a solution and some bot talks back to you. Nobody was using machine learning to point at the underlying consumer data to help make sense of it and bring it together.
We put together cloud computing that was scalable with better economics alongside a machine learning algorithm that we were pointing at the data to help make sense of it. We realized that what we had was a pretty scalable solution to help brands get to that nirvana of a single view of the customer. That’s how we were born. What’s interesting is that the customer data platform space is a little bit confusing. You have a lot of companies that started as something else that rebranded as a CDP. We were purpose-built from the ground up as a customer data platform designed to bring all of a brands data, reconcile that data to create a notion of identity on it and then to unleash that data back to the brand anywhere that they want to use that data.
