Insights

The Dog Days Of Summer – Time For Brand Activation

The Dog Days of Summer – Time For Brand Activation

We are now in the “dog days of summer,” the last week of August leading up to Labor Day weekend. Those of us in the NYC-metro area are enjoying beautiful, sunny, late summer weather and one of NYC’s annual big sporting events – U.S. Open tennis tournament.

This is a time of year when everyone is asking, “where did the summer go?” Business typically slows down for many of us in this last part of August, as everyone is either in “vacation mode” – taking those last few days of vacation before the fall sprint to the year end finish line – or many are busy getting their children off to college or back to school.

We all like enjoying the carefree feeling of a few more free days – we like living the life of a child in summer, right? And who can blame us, enjoying each single, sunny day to the fullest, jumping in the lake, eating ice cream, or just enjoying the glorious summer sunshine.

The dog days are also an excellent period for reflecting on your career and personal brand. Where is your career heading? What’s your ultimate destination? Is your current organization the right vehicle to get you there? Are the leaders of your current company a match for your personal vision and values? How proactive is your current supervisor in developing/growing your leadership skills and competencies?

Too often we can get stuck in the same routines dictated by the frenetic day-to-day work challenges that we don’t stand back and ask these career questions. The dog days of summer provide a time to step back and reflect on the bigger career picture.

EC is working with a number of executives currently in our Brand Activate program, and this number always increases during the summer months, as many executives decide this is an ideal time to begin planning a change so it can be actualized early into the next calendar year.

Please reach out to us directly if this is a “summer of discontent” for you and you realize that a future career change is in order. While our August calendar is completed, we currently have 3 openings available for our September Brand Activate program.

We are also attaching a related article (7 Tips to Refresh Your Brand Strategy – by Marcy Shinder – CMO, Work Market) which has some great ideas for refreshing your company brand. Marcy is an exceptional marketer, one of the many great American Express marketing alumni, and she recently moved into a new career role.

Enjoying the dog days,

Jeff Gundersen, CEO & Founder

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7 Tips for Refreshing Your Brand Strategy (by Marcy Shinder, CMO – Work Market)

The dog days of summer are the perfect time to refresh your brand strategy. Wait, what!? It’s true – with a little pre-Labor Day thinking space, you will set your company up with fresh energy heading into fall selling season.

A brand refresh is a makeover for your company. Think of it like a personal makeover … a new haircut, contemporary outfit and a great pair of shoes transform how a person is perceived. It is the same with your brand. Best of all, if your budget is too tight for an agency right now, you can leverage on-demand talent for this type of work: art directors, graphic designers, copywriters and brand strategists. Get started immediately, do so affordably and inject some incredible fresh energy into your brand to drive sales.

Here are 7 easy tips:

Manifesto: A manifesto is important for all brands. It goes beyond the product and chronological history and portrays the fundamental essence of a company. It unlocks your company purpose and informs your marketplace positioning. It becomes your brand’s north star.
Unique positioning: Answer the question: “What do we stand for that differentiates us from competitors in a way that matters to our design target?” Include in this effort a workshop around your brand personality which can be a fun team exercise as it forces the company to think of itself as a person, candidate, character. This output is critical for developing the brand identity (#7).
Single metric: Choose a metric from your purchaser’s business dashboard to align your messaging to. It will help you increase category relevance and connect the dots to how clients look at your role within their business. Examples may include net promoter score, cost to acquire a customer, growth, etc. Pick one to inform your messaging and apply it across all of your touchpoints. You’ll be surprised at how dramatic the impact of a single metric will be.
Product bundles: Answer this question: “How should our services come together to make it easy for prospects to understand our value and buy from us?” Your product bundles should be clearly presented and connect back with the design target’s use cases and benefits. They do not have to map to your internal org chart. There are pros and cons of bundles as outlined by Forbes; having learned marketing at American Express, I’m a fan (think Amex Green, Gold, Platinum Card).
Sources of value: Getting to product bundles involves first examining the sources of value and drivers of differentiation of your feature sets. It is the unsexy but necessary starting point. You can shortcut the exercise with some scrappy online research and a few internal working sessions with Product, Marketing and Sales.
Pricing: Design your pricing for purchasers with Procurement in mind, and always offer a value option with upgrades available. Pricing is the logical outgrowth of product bundles (#4) together with sources of value (#5).
Identity: Last but not least, tie your strategy together with a strong visual and voice, informed by all of the above, that brings the brand personality (#2) to life. For this you’ll need an experienced art director, a brand strategist and an editor. With the outputs from exercises #1-6 in hand, they should be able to work quickly.

Filed Under: Announcements, Connections Briefing

Beware of Mr. Robot!

Beware of Mr. Robot!

In a world where consumer adoption of m-commerce is growing by leaps and bounds, there are still increased risks for payment companies and consumers of data breaches and identity theft.

Last year, USA Network and co-stars Christian Slater and Rami Malik won several awards for their new TV show, Mr. Robot, which features a story line of a socially-awkward computer whiz who leads the successful hacking of large Wall St. firms.

Pymnts.com, a leading financial payments industry publication, reported on Monday, August 15, 2016, “Starwood, Marriott & Hyatt Breach (Again).” According to reports out of Reuters, 20 U.S. hotels operated by Connecticut-based HEI Hotels & Resorts for Starwood, Marriott, Hyatt and Intercontinental apparently coughed up some sensitive payment card data.

And by some, we mean a lot – specifically, the data from tens of thousands of food, drink and other transactions. This breach follows the form of previous hospitality data breaches seen of late, particularly one at Hyatt Hotels and Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide.

HEI attributes the stolen data to malware placed in their system. The bad code was first discovered in June 2016, and was found to be primarily affecting payment systems used at restaurants, bars, spas and lobby shops. The number of customers affected remains unknown – however, according to Chris Daly, a spokesman for HEI, there were tens of thousands of transactions.

According to HEI – customer names, account numbers, payment card expiration dates and verification codes are all likely to have been stolen. In all, 12 Starwood properties, 6 Marriott Properties and 1 Hyatt hotel were found to have been involved in the data breach. According to available data, the breach was active March 1, 2015 to June 21, 2016, HEI said on its website last Friday. IHG and Marriott did not comment on the breach. It is incredible that a data breach could be active for 15 months.

It seems on a weekly basis we hear of another case of a data breach or cyber-hacking involving a Fortune 100 company. While this certainly has CEOs and CTOs investing even more heavily in cyber-security, it appears cyber-crime and identity theft are the newest, easiest forms of bank (financial) robbery and consumer theft.

Our call to action, as consumers and business leaders traveling globally, is “Beware of Mr. Robot!” Particularly in the utilization of lobby-based ATMs, and other retail payment systems in hospitality businesses, be cautious before simply swiping your payment card. Sometimes its just safer to pay cash.

JENNY RUBIO JOINS TGSLC IN SENIOR MARKETING ROLE

JennyRubio We are pleased to announce Jenny Rubio has joined our client TGSLC, based in Austin, Texas.

As Manager – Demand Generation, Jenny will play a critical role in helping our client, who has been leader in student loan administration, undergo a strategic transformation into business process outsourcing (“BPO”), specializing in handling collections and other revenue management functions for targeted verticals. She reports to the VP of Marketing at TGSLC, a leadership position we successfully placed in January 2016.

An accomplished B2B marketer with ten years of experience on both agency and client side, Jenny will oversee the development and implementation of prospective customer engagement programs and lead generation tools, including content creation and email marketing, to facilitate measurable interest and sales interactions.

Jenny was most recently an Account Director at Bulldog Solutions in Austin, where she served a portfolio of blue-chip B2B clients in media, technology and financial services. EC will be providing Jenny with our unique career transition support services as she begins this important new career opportunity.

EC is delighted to have initiated this transaction and recruited Jenny Rubio to TGSLC. Ed Baum, Managing Director at EC, managed this assignment for TGSLC.

Filed Under: Connections Briefing

Brexit Marketing Lessons

Article by Karen Lithgow, Managing Director – Executive Search & Marketing/Business Strategy Consulting

As the implications and consequences of the Brexit referendum vote are in the midst of being understood, I find myself reminiscing about my days as a brand assistant and thinking about the importance of fundamentals. So what can we learn from what has transpired in the UK? For the marketer, there are a few good reminders:

Brexit Lesson #1: Understand your audience inside and out

The RemaIN campaign failed to understand their audience, what motivates them and what message would resonate with them vs. the Leave campaign that understood their target consumer very well and spoke to them directly. The fact of the matter is that although 73% of 18-24-year-olds supported RemaIN, they did not turn out at the polls. The older generation was motivated to get out and vote vs. the Millennials whose voice was drowned out because a lack of voter turnout. And with advanced analytic capability through social media that can target the right audience with the right message, one can’t help but think of the missed opportunity.

Brexit: Lesson #2: Keep the message simple and have a clear CTA

In the world of “snackable” content that we now live in, a simple, clear message and Call to Action (CTA) is more necessary than ever. The RemaIN campaign, while a clever play on words, was not able to communicate their arguments for staying in a simple manner and lacked a clear CTA. RemaIN’s “Britain stronger in Europe” does not have the galvanizing mission, as say the Leave campaign’s “Let’s take back Control” and it certainly did not pull the Millennials out to vote. The consensus was that the RemaIN Campaign’s messages were irrelevant and did not speak directly to their target audience. Distilling a complicated message into simple terms, for specific target audiences makes it more memorable.

Brexit Lesson #3: Never discount the power of emotion

In our early marketing days, we learned that the combination of the rational and emotional is what drives decision making. The RemaIN Campaign seemed to focus solely on the rational reasons for staying in the EU. On the opposite side, the Leave Campaign provided voters with a more emotional connection by creating a message that all could relate to that ultimately ended up being more influential. The Leave Campaign was fueled by a passionate emotion and was able to engage its customers in a more meaningful way.

So, as you reflect upon your campaigns, what parallels do you see with the Brexit campaign? How has Big Data and advanced analytics been employed to help focus on the fundamentals of your business? In today’s fast-paced social media fueled environment is it becoming more difficult to focus on the basics?

As always, we welcome your comments and input!

Filed Under: Announcements, Connections Briefing

Is your brand relevant?

Welcome to our new semi-monthly executive briefing.

As many of you know, we strive to “walk our talk” on the necessity of ongoing brand management — when it comes to delivering on the brand promise of Executive Connections and for our personal brands. With this website redesign—and the corresponding relaunch of our newsletter—it was important to consider how we will remain relevant to our clients and followers while also staying true to what makes us different and valued.

You’ll notice two main evolutions:

We’ve focused on how we’ve been on the forefront of partnering with CEOs to build global marketing teams with today’s competencies in digital, mobile, and analytics
Because we wanted to adapt to the content consumption demands of our senior executive audience, we’re now going to send a short executive briefing twice a month. If you haven’t subscribed yet, you can do it right here:

ANNOUNCING BRAND ACTIVATE

Along with our relaunch, we are introducing a new service, Brand Activate. Increasingly, senior marketing executives were asking us to help them translate their personal brands to their LinkedIn profiles. Typically, we’ve worked with them before, so they wanted to partner with us again to re-think the current relevance of their brands to position them for their next move. They also wanted to understand better how to leverage the current capabilities of LinkedIn. Since, we are all about making connections and have been delivering a more comprehensive version of this career branding strategy service for many years, we decided to make it even easier to access. Beyond the positive outcomes that come from having an updated and well-branded LinkedIn profile, the best part of Brand Activate is we do the work for you.

The summer is the perfect time take a step back to ensure your brand is relevant and that your connections will be in a position to link you with the right opportunities. Take a look at Brand Activate and contact Jeff Gundersen to discuss how taking advantage of this offering fits with your goals.

Filed Under: Connections E-Zine

CONNECTIONS Ezine No. 90

In this issue:

Announcing Our EC Rebrand! by Jeff Gundersen and Lola White
100 Most Creative People In Business by Jeff Gundersen and Lola White
Career Opportunities:
- Manager, Demand Generation – NEW
- Market & Segment Manager – NEW
- Sr. Mgr., Digital Strategy

Announcing Our EC Rebrand!

Because we connect organizations with the future of marketing, we’ve been on the forefront of partnering with CEOs to build global marketing teams with today’s competencies in digital, mobile, and analytics. Our new mobile-friendly website—launching next week—is built around this positioning. It has clear paths to our innovative blended services for clients and candidates and better features our expertise in connecting you with important happenings in the area of marketing leadership.

Because we are adapting to the content consumption needs of our senior executive audience, we are also changing our e-zine format with our next issue. To keep you abreast of the latest news and career opportunities, we will be sending out short executive summaries twice monthly beginning in July. Look for our new Connections Briefing in your inbox soon, and have a Happy Fourth!

Very truly yours,

Jeff Gundersen & Lola White

100 Most Creative People In Business

Creativity and disruptive innovation are the keys to extraordinary value creation in business. But how does this type of game-changing creativity happen? From where do extraordinary innovators come? What are the critical culture ingredients that foster a creative environment?

Kudos to Robert Safian, Fast Company Editor, and his staff for curating this year’s list of 100 Most Creative People in Business (June 2016 Issue). Fast Company’s list highlights the most creative and inspiring leaders in technology, design, media, music, entertainment, market, science, and more.

In his Notes from the Editor, Safian highlights “15 Lessons from Creativity,” and we would like to highlight three of these lessons:

1. The Impossible Happens…. Only If You Try.– Lin-Manuel Miranda (#1), creator and star of Hamilton, was selected as the most creative business person for his hip-hop musical which has become a phenomenon for its fresh spin on the historical impacts of Alexander Hamilton. After winning a Tony in 2008 for his first musical, In The Heights, Miranda was invited to perform at The White House, and having just read a biography of Alexander Hamilton, he was inspired to tell this story in a way that would be relevant to a modern audience. The rest is history, as Hamilton has revitalized Broadway, broken Billboard and online music and video records for downloads and views, and catapulted Miranda to the highest creative rank in Broadway since Andrew Lloyd-Webber. All at the age of 36 years old. What amazing things could happen if you tried something impossible?

2. Dream What Doesn’t Exist – Just like Amazon, Google, and more recently Uber, there are huge benefits from creating a product or industry category which did not previously exist. Nike’s Martin Lotti (#28), Global Category Creative Director, created the first ever line of women’s soccer cleats and sleek uniforms worn by the U.S. women’s 2015 World Cup champions. Nike continues to be innovators in “performance athletics,” using new textured yarn to create a more aerodynamic fabric and a FlyKnit precision knitting technology to make soccer boots that fit like a sock…with studs. According to Lotti, the starting point of Nike’s innovations is listening to the voices of the athletes for the problems they are identifying. What performance problems are your customers telling you about?

3. Impossible Problems Are Addressable– Crown Princess Mette-Marit of Norway (#92) and Kate Roberts (#93) – SVP at Population Services International (PSI), decided the current model for philanthropy was not working to lift girls out of poverty. They created The Maverick Collective and began recruiting private sector donations of $1M+ from women to fund breakthrough pilot programs. To-date, the founding 14 members, including Melinda Gates, have invested $20M+ of their personal funds in projects spanning 13 countries and have been instrumental in attracting $60M+ of additional resources to support young girls in under-developed countries. In addition to their financial commitments, members of Maverick Collective bring their skills— ranging from research, organization, and communications—to assist in the execution of various program initiatives. Building upon lifetime philanthropy commitments of the Buffett, Gates, Zuckerberg families, and others, many of the world’s most serious problems of abuse, drugs, education, healthcare, and poverty are being addressed and financed by private sector funding and leadership. What areas of philanthropy and giving back call to you?

Summary

One other learning from the Fast Company article caught our attention… Every Community Needs a Muse. We want to give a shout-out to Barry Stowe, CEO of Jackson National Life Insurance, who recently hired Emilio Pardo from AARP as the new muse of the annuities sector to change the conversation regarding the role and importance of annuities as a personal pension plan to supplement social security. Stowe is an experienced and successful life insurance CEO with a 20+-year track record of growing life insurance businesses globally. Especially for the Boomer generation now reaching retirement ages, with the majority not having a company pension, there is a vast and growing need to transfer self-funded IRAs into a distribution vehicle with guaranteed investment returns that provide lifetime income and financial security. Executive Connections placed Pardo at Jackson National, and we are confident he will be just the muse this category so desperately needs. Good luck Emilio, and congratulations Barry on making such a smart decision!

With Summer arriving, this is a great time for everyone to take a mid-year review of how things are going. What’s working, what’s not? What course corrections or adjustments make sense for the second half?

As always, we welcome your comments and input.

Very truly yours,

Jeff Gundersen & Lola White

Career Opportunities

We have career opportunities at a variety of companies.

Take a moment to click on these links (below) for the complete position description:

Learn more about our Career Opportunities…

Filed Under: Connections Briefing

Tech Insurgents Lead 2016 Agency Growth

Led by the surging, double-digit growth rates of Accenture Interactive (+57%), Deloitte Digital (+14%), IBM Experience (+12.5%), and PWC (+32%), the advertising agency sector has grown 2016 revenues by 6.5% according to AdAge’s 2016 Agency Report published May 3, 2016.

Digital advertising rose to 41.3% of total U.S. agency revenues, confirming the prior prediction by the CMO Club that digital will exceed 50% market share by 2018 or sooner. Technology consulting firms appear to be the biggest winners, as the 4 top global digital agency networks are units of technology consulting firms. However, the rising tide of digital advertising and technology insurgents appears to be raising the entire advertising and marketing services sector, as WPP, Omnicom and Interpublic are trading at record high share price levels.

Filed Under: Connections E-Zine

CONNECTIONS Ezine No. 89

In this issue:

Technology Insurgents Lead 2016 Agency Growth by Jeff Gundersen and Lola White
Jackson National Appoints Emilio Pardo as SVP, Chief Marketing & Communications Officer
Career Opportunities:
- Sr. Mgr., Digital Strategy
- Head of Corporate Branding & Communications – Life Insurance/Annuities – FILLED
- Global Head – Analytics & CRM – FILLED
- VP, Marketing – Collections – FILLED

Technology Insurgents Lead 2016 Agency Growth

Led by the surging, double digit growth rates of Accenture Interactive (+57%), Deloitte Digital (+14%), IBM Experience (+12.5%), and PWC (+32%), the advertising agency sector has grown 2016 revenues by 6.5% according to AdAge’s 2016 Agency Report published May 3, 2016.

Digital advertising rose to 41.3% of total U.S. agency revenues, confirming the prior prediction by the CMO Club that digital will exceed 50% market share by 2018 or sooner. Technology consulting firms appear to be the biggest winners, as the 4 top global digital agency networks are units of technology consulting firms. However, the rising tide of digital advertising and technology insurgents appears to be raising the the entire advertising and marketing services sector, as WPP, Omnicom and Interpublic are trading at record high share price levels.

Big 5 advertising holding companies completed 100 acquisitions in 2015, led by Publicis’ acquisition of Sapient, the largest remaining independent technology consulting firm. And while the ad holding companies continue to acquire technology and digital media assets, the technology consulting firms have begun building and acquiring creative resources, as highlighted by Deloitte Digital’s recent acquisition of Heat, a full-service advertising agency in San Francisco.

Deloitte Digital CEO, Andy Main, commented on this acquisition, “Adding Heat’s extraordinary and award-winning creative capabilities is the perfect complement to our market-leading and long-established digital business. We are the single place for our clients to go to connect business strategy with creative strategy and content, customer experience, core business operations, transformational technology, and campaign execution. We combine creative chops with the powerful Deloitte platform to help our clients find their own disruptive advantage.”

We have long predicted that as technology consultancies build and acquire creative capabilities, they will be positioned to compete head to head with the Big 5 advertising holding companies for global marketing services leadership. We are seeing this happening in 2016!

If your career path is in the marketing services sector, where will your best advancement opportunities be in the next 5-10 years? The incumbent advertising holding companies or the technology insurgents?

As always, we welcome your comments and input.

Best,
Jeff Gundersen & Lola White

Jackson National Appoints Emilio Pardo as SVP, Chief Marketing & Communications Officer

We are pleased to announce Emilio Pardo has been appointed SVP, Chief Marketing and Communications Officer responsible for the strategy and direction of branding, marketing and communications across the North American Business Unit (NABU) of Prudential plc. In this role, Pardo will be responsible for developing and implementing a strategic framework to strengthen brand identification and guide innovation to deepen customer engagement with Jackson National Life Insurance Company^® (Jackson^®) and its subsidiaries.

Pardo will be based in Nashville TN, reporting to Barry Stowe, chairman and chief executive officer of Prudential plc’s North American Business Unit, which includes Jackson, its subsidiaries Jackson National Life Distributors LLC (JNLD) and Jackson National Asset Management, LLC^® (JNAM) and its U.S. affiliates National Planning Holdings^®, Inc. (NPH) and PPM America, Inc. (PPMA). Pardo will serve as a member of the Prudential plc Leadership Team, which consists of key senior managers across various business units of Prudential plc worldwide.

Pardo brings more than 20 years of marketing, communications and business leadership experience across corporations, nonprofits and government organizations. Most recently, he served for more than 10 years as the Chief Brand Officer and a member of the executive team of AARP. In this role, Pardo was responsible for strategy, management and integration of the AARP brand throughout the organization, including more than 50 offices nationwide and 70 direct reports. “Emilio’s strong track record of managing and transforming successful and prominent brands will be immensely valuable to Jackson and our affiliates,” Stowe said. “Emilio is uniquely qualified to champion financial education and investing confidence for consumers, particularly baby boomers, who are so critically under-saved for retirement. We are excited to be at the forefront of the movement to reach across the multi-generational market to empower consumers to make the best financial decisions they can, and believe Emilio will play a very important role as we work toward that goal.”

Before joining AARP in 2005, Pardo served as SVP for Discovery Communications, Inc., where he led strategic business development and partnerships for the health and fitness sectors. Prior to this position, he co-founded and served as CEO and Director of CityNet, a leading broadband network company and pioneer in building fiber optic networks in the U.S. and internationally. Earlier in his career, Pardo worked at Fleishman-Hillard, one of the nation’s largest public relations and marketing firms, where he rose to senior partner, driving the company’s global expansion and establishing its social marketing, branding and technology practices. Pardo also held the role of Press Secretary for U.S. Senator Ernest F. Hollings in Washington, D.C., responsible for all national media functions on issues relating to telecommunications, transportation, trade, space, consumer, foreign commerce, tourism and sports.

Executive Connections LLC handled this exclusive retained search assignment for Jackson National and EC will be providing Emilio Pardo our unique career transition support services to assist in his assimilation into this new career role.

Career Opportunities

We have career opportunities at a variety of companies.

Take a moment to click on these links (below) for the complete position description:

Sr. Mgr., Digital Strategy
Head of Corporate Branding & Communications – Life Insurance/Annuities – FILLED
Global Head – Analytics & CRM – FILLED
VP, Marketing – Collections- FILLED

Learn more about our Career Opportunities…

Filed Under: Announcements, Connections E-Zine, Uncategorized

CONNECTIONS Ezine No. 88

In this issue:

The New Frontier – Analytics, Big Data & Machine Learning by Jeff Gundersen and Lola White
Accenture Interactive: ‘We’re Billed Based On Proven Business Outcomes’ by Kelly Liyakasa for AdExchanger
Girl Scouts Hires Christine Cea as Chief Communications Executive
Career Opportunities:
- Sr. Mgr., Digital Strategy
- Head of Corporate Branding & Communications – Life Insurance/Annuities – FILLED
- Global Head – Analytics & CRM – FILLED
- VP, Marketing – Collections – FILLED
Upcoming Professional Development Events
- Premier EDGE Awards: Wednesday June 8th 2016

The New Frontier – Analytics, Big Data & Machine Learning

Happy Spring!

Since this is a season of new beginnings, and new growth, we invite you into a discussion of one of the new frontiers. With Marketing tilting onto a digital- and mobile-first axis, one of the newest, hottest frontiers is Analytics driven by Big Data and Machine Learning.

Boards are pushing CEOs to invest in advanced technologies to better analyze the wealth of customer, employee and business data already residing inside large, legacy databases.

We are placing a greater number of Chief Analytics Officers, and in partnership with CTOs and CFOs, these CAOs are being tasked to develop and apply advanced analytics to improve decision making enterprise wide.

Machine learning, similar in concept to IBM’s Watson, is a branch of artificial intelligence that enabled machines to learn on their own, thereby enabling them to optimize and create new algorithms for predictive analytics, and similar regression analyses, leading to improved sales and marketing results, better hiring decisions, and improved operational efficiencies and safety/security performance.

In “The Rise of Machine Learning,” an article by Dale Buss in Chief Executive magazine (March/April 2016), Mike Tuchen, CEO of Talend, points out “it’s the speed and ability to learn from data that gives Machine Learning the power to provide tremendous insights in ways that humans could never do on their own or with basic business-intelligence tools.” Computers essentially write their own code and optimize algorithms enabling them to uncover previously unseen patterns and trends in large scale databases…..leading to breakthrough business insights and real-time performance optimization.

This next level of analytics and big data innovation is both exciting and yet simultaneously unnerving for CEOs and corporate cultures trying to create the environments necessary to attract and retain this next generation of young technologists who are game changers in the new artificial intelligence age of analytics.

At a recent CEO Roundtable, several CEOs shared it’s easier to find the new talent for Innovation and R&D Centers, but it’s harder to retain them as they look for greener pastures and new frontiers after 1-2 years. According to Gool Sanchurn, CEO of Envipco, “That happens no matter what compensation you give them.”

Nonetheless, now is the time for CEOs to make these investments in Analytics, Big Data & Machine Learning. According to surveys by Accenture, 53% of companies pursuing these investments are following directives from Board Directors. And while cost cuts and improved efficiencies represent 49% of CEO expectations for return on investment, 30% of CEOs (and growing) are expecting new businesses and new revenue growth as the primary outcome.

Where does your company stand in relation to the new frontier? Are you investing, thinking about investing, or hoping the next Amazon does not show up in your sector to begin disintermediation?

As always, we welcome your thoughts and comments.

Best,

Jeff Gundersen & Lola White

Accenture Interactive: ‘We’re Billed Based On Proven Business Outcomes’

by Kelly Liyakasa for AdExchanger

Accenture Interactive, the $2.9 billion digital and marketing services arm within the massive management consultancy, sees itself as a new breed of agency.

Instead of taking a campaign-based approach, Accenture Interactive instead blends commerce, design and analytics to make marketing more experiential.

“If you looked at the old KPIs for grocery and retail, they wanted to drive more traffic into the store or online,” said Glen Hartman, managing director at Accenture Interactive. “Once you’re there, they wanted you to spend more time at the endcap [the end of the aisle where shoppers often see sale items] so they can send you more promotions. You wanted to increase the shopping cart.”

Now, retail and grocer clients need to engineer around intent. If a loyal shopper frequents a store every Saturday morning but unexpectedly comes in on a Tuesday afternoon, maybe her intent is to get in and out as quickly as possible.

“A lot of people think you need relevant recommendations or right offer/right time, but this goes way beyond personalization,” Hartman said. “This is challenging business assumptions and sometimes means breaking your own rules.”

This shift in client demand is reworking the way brands retain Accenture Interactive’s services in the first place. Traditional pricing models included billable hours or monthly retainers, but Accenture Interactive is noticing a move toward billable outcomes tied to ROI and specific performance objectives.

Hartman spoke with AdExchanger about these changes in its digital business.

AdExchanger: What are the new retail/shopper marketing requests?

GLEN HARTMAN: We’re working with companies today who want to create new affinity programs where you can use your loyalty points as currency to buy all new types of products. You start to take your products and turn them into engaging services, new KPIs. We did a lot of research with a retail client’s loyalty base and found one thing they cared about most was the consumer just wanted to be notified about what items were on sale everyday. It’s a way to move away from episodic, campaign and promotional ideas to continuous engagement or utility.

Brands are talking about experiences and outcomes more than campaigns. How is this changing their agency retention strategy?

We’re serious about this idea of reverse engineering around outcomes. So much so that we’re actually crafting deals and commercial structures around outcomes only. This is a big change for a consulting company. It’s not time and materials, not a fixed-bid contract, not a rate card. We’re working with an automotive client now where we have a three- to four-year agreement with them, thousands of people working on it, but we only get paid on net new cars sold.

Is that a one-off or are you seeing more disruption in billing methods?

That’s not every client. Maybe we work with a B2B company and we say, “We will increase your lead generation by X amount,” or something really important to the business. We had a client that had a hard time getting their campaigns out on time. If a car company launches a campaign for a President’s Day sale, there was somewhere around a 15-20% on-time delivery. Can you imagine if an email doesn’t go out or a banner doesn’t render and it’s a holiday-based campaign? In this case, we might guarantee [or be paid on the basis of] their campaigns going out 99% on time.

Who does Accenture Interactive compete with? Are you up against the media agency more or the systems integrators?

Everyone knows where the game is: combining design and creative with the technology and analytics. You see different forms of that. There’s a reason Publicis bought five of the top digital agencies. They’re trying to amass more capabilities. You also have marketing service providers like Epsilon, Merkle and then technology companies – system integrators who want to get into consulting. But it’s hard for one firm to go through the continuum of strategy, design, build and run. We think this is where we’re uniquely differentiated.

What’s your approach to acquisitions as competitors like IBM Interactive Experience acquire creative shops?

We’ve invested a lot in trying to redefine what the role of an agency is. The new breed of agency that’s experience-led and reverse engineered around experiences and outcomes speaks to what the CMO and brand managers need to do now. You can’t live off of brand awareness, brand effectiveness and affinity alone. They have to drive sales, engagement and all sorts of new experiences. Accenture Interactive sits at the epicenter of these things both through organic and inorganic growth through acquisitions.

Accenture’s acquired digital marketing services firms like AD.Dialeto as well as creative agencies like Fjord. Do you acquire for functionality, clients or to tackle new geographies?

Our four big pillars are service/experience design, content, commerce and marketing. That’s all powered by analytics and personalization. We are making acquisitions to continue to grow those capabilities. Second, there’s the geo focus. We have most of the capabilities we need at scale, but we want to have that localization because the local, onshore approach for an agency model – where you stay close to the brand – benefits the client.

How do you prioritize tech partnerships? You have a new deal with Marketo, but also do a lot of Adobe and Salesforce implementations.

If you look at the way the ad and marketing tech stacks are aligning, we have all the technology partnerships to do the build out of a “model,” but it’s really about the “run.” So we set up all the software, but it’s the running of the software and all the analytics, the optimization that’s important. We create services – we call it marketing as a service – and that would include programmatic media buying, ad operations. Are we in programmatic? Absolutely. We have a global team working on that as part of a way to get these outcomes. You need it to have better efficiency.

What happens to the future agency model?

We don’t think it’s so much the offline-to-online thing as it is the merger of the agency world with management consultancies. The moment you decide to shift your experience design, you’re talking operating model changes, new organizational design, change management. This is the world of management, process and business consulting. Agencies don’t do that. But we’re not making a Super Bowl commercial anytime soon.

Girl Scouts Hires Christine Cea as Chief Communications Executive

Girl Scouts of the USA has hired Christine Cea, former Unilever comms head, as its chief communications executive. Cea stepped into the role on April 4. She is reporting to Girl Scouts chief marketing and communications officer Lynn Godfrey.

Career Opportunities

We have career opportunities at a variety of companies.

Take a moment to click on these links (below) for the complete position description:

Head of Corporate Branding & Communications – Life Insurance/Annuities
Sr. Mgr., Digital Strategy
Global Head – Analytics & CRM – FILLED
VP, Marketing – Collections- FILLED

Learn more about our Career Opportunities…

Upcoming Professional Development Events

Join, Jeff Gundersen, Board Trustee of MarketingEDGE for the 2016 EDGE Awards on Wednesday, June 8 at Guastavino’s, 409 East 59th Street in New York City.

Network among 400+ decision makers from the field coming together to support Marketing EDGE and its 50-year history to ensure future generations of talent in our field.

Click here to register.

Filed Under: Connections Briefing

The New Frontier of Analytics

Happy Spring! Since this is a season of new beginnings, and new growth, we invite you to a discussion of one of the new frontiers. With Marketing tilting onto a digital- and mobile-first axis, one of the newest, hottest frontiers is Analytics-driven by Big Data and Machine Learning.

Boards are pushing CEOs to invest in advanced technologies to better analyze the wealth of customer, employee and business data already residing inside large, legacy databases.

Filed Under: Connections Briefing

2016 is the year of mobile!

In a recent AdAge article by Maureen Morrison, she highlighted according to EMarketer, 2016 will be the year mobile ad spending eclipses desktop ad spending. EMarketer goes on the project by 2019, mobile advertising will exceed $65B+ and will represent 70% of total digital ad spending and 30% of total media spending.

That’s quite a staggering and rapid growth rate and it underscores why Google (32% share) and Facebook (19% share), the 2 mobile advertising juggernauts, will continue to grow exponentially and become the largest and most profitable global digital media companies. This also explains why Apple and other mobile phone and device manufacturers are making screens larger; it’s because we are in a new era of mobile-first marketing, meaning consumers are seeking and accepting marketing messages real-time, including geo-targeting which is enabling marketers and brands to reach consumers in real time at (or near) the point of purchase. Mobile-first has enabled new promotion marketing, including instant in-store coupons, and real-time loyalty marketing incentives. And it’s still early days for mobile, with ad tech companies developing new ad formats, and marketers focused on delivering relevant, targeted content messages and ads/offers conducive to the smaller mobile screens (especially mobile phones).

Insights

The Dog Days Of Summer – Time For Brand Activation

Beware of Mr. Robot!

Brexit Marketing Lessons

Brexit Lesson #1: Understand your audience inside and out

Brexit: Lesson #2: Keep the message simple and have a clear CTA

Brexit Lesson #3: Never discount the power of emotion