Amazon, Netflix and Mastercard are among major brands and media companies negotiating a new landscape where they must balance global ambitions and growth with a drive for personalization and relevance, according to speakers at the Brand Innovators Beach at Cannes.
A stronger understanding of business fundamentals – how companies make their money – and openness to data, technology and ideas that can come from any source and region of the world, said speakers.
Marketers should study business, said Jo Shoesmith, Amazon’s global chief brand officer. They need to know how companies make their money because it will make them better strategists, she said.
“It’s really understanding who you’re talking to in the room,” she said. She recalled being stumped in a meeting early in her career when she was asked what her client’s stock price was and how it made her money.
Training and investing in staff is important, she said. The biggest mistake companies make is to expect their people to do their day job “with no support and no education and no training and no time.”
Marketing leaders are under pressure from the operational side of their organizations, said Jill Kramer, chief marketing and communications officer of Mastercard. She noted she had just sat down recently with a peer from another company who told her she was hearing impatient requests from the business side to show results.
“She kept saying ‘they want the math, they want the math,’” said Kramer. They sat down and worked out a few ideas for them, but the experience underlined the escalating demands on marketers, she said.
“We have to recognize the business has changed. We need the big ideas, but also the business case,” said Kramer. “You need to do all that, but you also have to do it at speed.”
Data can help in this effort, especially with assistance from artificial intelligence, which is making ingesting and processing data more available and more effective, said speakers.
“I know there’s a love/hate relationship with data, but it does come down to data,” said Kramer. “You need to know who you’re going after.”
Marketers can’t connect with customers without first knowing who they’re going after and who they are reaching, she explained.
“Data is never the enemy,” said Shoesmith. “The more I ingest, the more I know, the better it’s going to be.”
The most important factor is how to use the data, she said. She recalled an athlete describing data as a lamppost: a drunk man can use it as support, but it’s not going to get him home. It’s an input that helps support decisions and can be a starting point for discussions, “but it’s not going to get us all the way there,” she said.
Amazon is “data-driven, but in the services of solving human problems,” Shoesmith explained. The most creative problem-solving starts with the customer, looking at the pain points that need to be resolved, she explained.
“There’s always a nugget in the brief that’s going to take you to a better work,“ she said.
From left to right: Janice Min, CEO and Editor-in-Chief, Ankler Media; Mary Ellen Coe, Chief Business Officer, YouTube; Brittany Broski, host, “Royal Court”
Netflix – which launched its own tech stack to manage data last year – was faced with a variety of metrics to quantify its viewers. Advertisers can use many different data points to test their efforts’ success on the streaming platform and “ultimately, we need to serve all of those,” said Amy Reinhard, president of advertising at Netflix.
“We have to meet advertisers where they’re at,” and they know what suits their business, she said.
The streaming service had initially partnered with Microsoft, which helped it launch in a matter of months, but Netflix is a company of builders, so eventually it decided to maximize the opportunity in its extensive data store the streaming service needed to have its own tech stack, she said.
Global, multimedia ambitions
Netflix has been expanding its reach, both in its growing ad-supported subscription base, live events and new formats that break the TV mold, such as podcasts and mobile-friendly vertical video.
“We want to entertain the world,” said Reinhard. “We want to make sure we’re moving like consumers are moving.”
She acknowledged that can mean different things. Netflix is looking for ways to win on those “moments of truth” where the viewer is on the move or using a mobile device, she said.
“We realized there are moments of truth where we may not be the first choice. It may not have been a living room moment,” she said. “Having that kind of content available to our members felt like a natural extension of what we were doing already.“
This fragmented media landscape is a reality that marketing leaders have to navigate, said Kramer. Marketers need to get out of their own way, and connect from the viewpoint of the person seeing the message, she said.
“There’s no easy path for CMOS around this,” said Kramer. They can’t simply cross out legacy media they believe it’s done, and yet they have to find the time, space and money to invest on channels that will potentially pay off in the future, she explained.
The media landscape “requires testing and learning and it takes new sources of data and new insights,” said Kramer. Organizations can fall in the trap of minding internal logistics about budgets, business lines and funding. Meanwhile, the end consumer doesn’t really care about the media mix and only sees the platform as a whole, she said.
Jill Kramer, chief marketing and communications officer of Mastercard
Bubble up creativity
Creativity also needs to be unleashed, and winning ideas can come from all sources, said speakers. Kramer noted that sometimes ideation is held back by the expectations set by leadership. She recommended working with partners, asking teams and figuring it out. “It does take a bit of courage to say ‘I actually have no idea what I want. Show me,’” she said.
Marketers need to give the creatives all the context to come up with a global idea, said Kramer. She told the audience she’d had coffee that morning with an international group of staffers and “they pitched me the best idea I’ve heard in the seven months I’ve been here,” which will be out later this year. She noted the staffers at the meeting came up with great ideas for their regions but were not aware those would work elsewhere.
Marketers need to create a system so those ideas can “bubble up,” removing barriers and celebrating creative wins, she said.
Many global brands face the same question: How to encourage creativity at the local level while it still adds up to a growing, strengthening global brand, said Kramer.
“That’s a really delicate balance to hit,” she said. “It starts with: Does the brand know itself deeply? Do you know exactly where it’s going and does everyone know that?”
