Marketing Lessons from the Best: Key Takeaways from ADMA's CMO Panel

With so many changes on the horizon, what can marketers do to stay ahead of the curve? ADMA’s Global Forum brought together four senior marketers from TikTok, Optus, Optimizely, and Seven West Media to discuss their key challenges for the future, and how marketers can adapt.
 

The next era of data-driven marketing and advertising

With the cookie apocalypse firmly on the horizon, marketers are about to enter a new area of tracking, measurement and optimisation. For Andrew Brain, Director of Audience Intelligence at Seven West Media, there’s one awkward conflict that’s defining this future.

“Consumers want brands to know everything about them - but they don’t want anyone to track them,” he says.

Concerns over the misuse of personal data are rampant, and assuaging these fears can’t happen overnight. But that’s exactly why Optus CMO Melissa Hopkins believes privacy regulations couldn’t have come soon enough.

“These regulations are forcing businesses to ensure there’s a value exchange when they speak to customers,” she says.

“Customers are really happy to give us heaps of data, if they feel they're getting value. But what’s happened with privacy is that it's not about the customer, it’s about the organisation,” she adds.

Brett Armstrong, General Manager of TikTok Australia, believes marketers need to think beyond trying to simplify the complexity of current datasets.

“What I think is interesting right now is the change in communities, building content and connecting back with brands,” Armstrong says.

“What are 20 new innovations you can do? Out of that 20, about 10 of them could work and be optimised with data,” he adds.

“The amount of data we have right now has caused an overwhelming emotional state,” says Simon McDonald, Vice President of Sales ANZ at Optimizely. “That just means marketers need to look at things from a scientific approach.”

Paving the path forward through consumer-centricity

A focus on consumer-centricity has been heralded as one of the key ways marketers can ensure they don’t become buried in mountains of data. But it doesn’t always work like that.

“At the very heart of everything we’re doing, we should always be focusing on the customer. Unfortunately, we often focus on the data and forget about the human,” says Hopkins.

Brain muses on how consumer-centricity allowed him to think beyond typical datasets and instead find a more relevant approach to media consumption.

“It’s not enough to say that anyone between 25 to 40 is going to be interested in Survivor, Big Brother, or Married At First Sight. Those are broad brushstrokes. We need to rethink how we use this data, go beyond simple demographics, and find the platforms where our audiences actually are,” he says.

McDonald also argues for how keeping the consumer at the centre of all campaigns will be essential in determining how customer experience evolves. Crucially, he says, it also helps marketers from becoming swamped in data.

“If you go back to a consumer-centric approach, it’s not that overwhelming to understand what customer data or AI is actually relevant for you and your business. We know there’s data out there, and that data can deliver you customers and keep them happy,” he explains.

McDonald further emphasises that although machine learning can be a strong aid for processing data, it can’t be at the expense of humans.

“We still need a human person to look at data and deliver insights based on customer feedback,” he states.

Rethinking personalisation

Personalisation has truly become one of the most powerful buzzwords to dominate the marketing industry, but marketers must reckon with the fact that true personalisation is a path, not a destination.

“Personalisation has to be a joint journey with your customers,” says McDonald.

For Brain, whose audience numbers in the millions, personalisation can be a daunting prospect, but is “absolutely fundamental”.

“We need to know about our customers, but with everything we know going back into the platform,” he says.

“For example, we just launched a rewards platform for Seven Plus users to give them something instead of content, because if the content isn’t right, they won’t come back. So we had to bring them something that was utility based. Personalisation is another database for us,” he concludes.

Hopkins raises that third party data almost acts as a drug for marketers who have become accustomed to this level of tracking. She explains that the Optus marketing platform is built off first party data in order to avoid relying on third party data to deliver personalisation.

“I actually think third party data is why people get frustrated with personalisation. I think some marketers became lazy and they just spam out in the hope that something's going to stick. We were really spoiled,” she says.

Marketing in a hybrid work world

When Armstrong took up the role of General Manager at TikTok Australia, it was right in the midst of COVID-19 lockdowns.

“The truth is you can build a business from home, but it’s been a journey. And the other thing we now have to think about is that it’s so hard to get talented people into our organisations,” he says.

This talent shortage has placed a chokehold on hiring and recruitment across the industry, and shows where skills gaps clearly are.

“With people not being able to travel into Australia, we really need to start getting graduates interested in advertising,” says Armstrong.

“I’m 50 next year and I have learned so much in the last three years, I've had to upskill myself as a CMO,” says Hopkins.

“That's what you need to do in this business. You need to think about talent management, and upskilling in areas where you’re focusing on live data,” she adds.

“How many times have you looked at an organisation chart, and seen a data engineer, solution designer or Business Intelligence specialist in there?” asks Brain.

“We need to bring these capabilities into the business, and start to upskill people too,” he says.

Hopkins and McDonald also both agree that a wholly remote working environment fails to generate the same culture and relationships that face-to-face interactions do.

“There has been a positive in that we can now recruit more remotely, but there’s a real challenge to how we build culture,” says McDonald.

“We now have an interesting opportunity to give people more of their lives, and ultimately, provide our businesses with a more productive workforce,” he adds.