Living the Promise Blog

The following blog post was written by PepsiCo intern, Kyle Butler. You can follow Kyle by connecting with him on Twitter! Follow @kylebutler

“Marketing is the new finance,” quipped Dennis Shirokov, referring to the depth of analytics involved. Shirokov, an Interactive Marketing Manager with FedEx, and four other notable professionals—Dan Keller, Kellogg’s Vice President of CRM & Loyalty; Adrian Olvera, Dell’s Global Consumer & CRM Business Development Manager; David Edelman, a Partner with McKinsey & Company’s Sales & Marketing practice; and PepsiCo’s own Lawrence DiCapua, Director of Consumer Engagement Optimization—took center stage at Internet Week in New York for a panel called “Data Drives Success for Leading Brands.” Moderated by Eric Stein, Epsilon’s EVP of Online Solutions, the panel offered insight on how brands can make the most of new and emerging data.

Panelists took part in a discussion on data collection and shared best practices on where, when and how to gather information from consumers. “What is going to be your data architecture? What do you collect and understand about customers?” Shirokov asked rhetorically. “Not just in digital channels, but in retail channels and others.” The panelists agreed that a robust, multi-channel system for data capture is crucial, and that the teams establishing data architecture must be cross-functional, leveraging talent from brand marketing, IT, digital, creative and other relevant areas.

But even the most sophisticated data architecture has gaps. “In Consumer Packaged Goods, it’s very difficult to get consumer transaction data,” Keller said. DiCapua agreed that point-of-sale data is a marketer’s Holy Grail:  “The struggle in the CPG space is that brand marketers have gotten used to not having access to that ultimate success metric: did we sell? It’s led to a point of view that we’re never going to know.” DiCapua emphasized that, in lieu of transaction data, awareness, purchase intent and other indicators of engagement fill in:  “There are proxies we use to measure performance. Our analysis has allowed us to feel comfortable that those brand health metrics will lead to the sale.”

The conversation changed course when moderator Eric Stein posed a hypothetical situation: If you could turn off all targeting, would the impact be a net positive or net negative for consumers? Stein asked the panelists for a show of hands, and all voted in favor of net negative. Targeting, they agreed, is paramount in producing relevant messages. But Stein’s point was about privacy: As marketers gather more and more information, how can brands maintain the trust of consumers? What constitutes a violation of privacy?

“I’ve seen way too many instances where marketers feel like they need to scrape as much information as they can,” DiCapua said. “If you’re asking a consumer for information, you need to impress them with what you’re doing with it. What we’ve done at Pepsi is we’ve really condensed the information we ask from consumers. I’d much rather observe a consumer then ask for information.”

The 50-minute discussion produced a great deal of insight—not just for marketers, but also for any professional that’s involved in data-driven decision making. Here’s a high-level list of takeaways:

• Establish a Data Center of Excellence. Having a central data hub allows everyone in your organization to leverage the latest and greatest technology, continually improving the quality of data collection and analysis.

• Think Long-Term. The instant gratification of digital data makes it easy to measure short-term goals, but a focus on long-term measurement will produce more reliable, meaningful and actionable results.

• Be Behavioral. What consumers do is more valuable than what they say. Whenever possible, use behavioral metrics in conjunction with consumer-reported information.

• Stay Transparent. Communicate to consumers how and why any data you collect will be used in simple terms. When possible, allow consumers to refine how their data is used.