The Loss of Intelligence: 5 Things You Can Do to Regain Your Marketing & Data Smarts & Take Charge of the Future

Over the last several months, I’ve come to believe that the greatest crisis looming over the marketing industry is the loss of intelligence. 

We’ve all sat through the presentations that claim the root of the problem is:

• Fragmentation
• Consumer Control
• Cord Cutting 

Wrong.

Our industry faces a glut of data and the subsequent explosion of marketing data sets; we're at deep risk of losing touch with who consumers are, what they are engaged and interacting with and wanting to enjoy. We're in danger of becoming dumb, and on a fast track to getting dumber.

The loss of intelligence is driven by marketers, agencies and other marketing ecosystem companies’ inability to recognize that legacy marketing and agency structures cannot do this job with the same approaches of the last two decades. To win, brands must deploy software, tools and technology to help them understand who their consumers and customers are.  All in real time, in linear and non-linear media, and spanning the omni-channel experience.

This increasingly impacts the ability of smart, driven and creative industry professionals to do their jobs. If you are inundated with data, but do not have the software, tools and technology to harness and understand what’s available to you, it’s a big problem. You can stay up all night as the lonely person with your media plan or your data and analytics assignment, but that won’t get you there anymore.

So, what should you be doing?

1) Stop outsourcing control of your data strategy. The most valuable data any company has is its own. If you are a company that has access to safe and ethical first-party data, you can’t get enough of it. If you are a CPG company, you need to partner to have access to as much of other people’s dare and third-party data to begin to regain intelligence about your consumers. Data on boarders, aggregators, and Live Ramp are incredibly valuable. It's a poor strategy to think that the platform companies will help you here. Their focus is to take your data and their data for the purposes of monetizing their advertising units. 

2) Embrace e-Commerce.  As powerful as Amazon and other online retailers are, you will never gain access to the data they have and the data you want. Invest in your own e-Commerce platform and consumer experience hubs as a way to harness and capture more first party data and link it to the other data sets you have. Online gaming companies and e-sports leagues are leading the next generational wave of companies who are using a mix of platforms, advertising, and real-time experience to know who their users are and predict usage and business outcomes. 

3) Be Data-Ready and Invest in Data Platforms. Make a commitment to either build or partner to build a sophisticated data platform that enables leaps forward with knowledge and predictive analytics. This goes beyond media data and a DMP and extends across all customer data, such as a CDP or Customer Data Platform. The most important thing a data platform can do for you is enable you to deploy data science models that help power stronger marketing use cases to make your creative briefs, media briefs, optimization and content versions better. Remember, your agency partners want to be as creative and strategic as possible. With new tools and software pointed at the right use cases, they will be. 

4) Invest in Identity and Personalization. Identity and unique ID’s will be the currency the marketing industry trades on in the next five years. We are moving very quickly from cookies to unique ID’s to true identity resolution. Once permissions systems and regulations are fully embraced, this movement will start to accelerate again. Ensure all of your partners understand the power of identity and personalization, and that you are building identity-based CDP’s for the future.

5) Experiment with Direct to Consumer Brand Models. There is a reason that Stitch Fix, Dollar Shave Club, Blue Apron and others have been wildly successful. They are direct to consumer brands who know their customers with an intimacy and relevance that few have. They’ve done this by capturing first-party data, and then redeploying the knowledge gained into highly targeted and sustained marketing campaigns. The average DTC brand spends 25% on marketing and consumer intelligence building, versus 5% on distribution. The average traditional brand does exactly the opposite. These DTC brands represent a powerful new model, and the reason they are disrupting the marketplace is that they know their consumers extremely well. These brands possess the intelligence and tools to market to them effectively and relevantly.