SPEAKER_01 0:04

Hi Casper? Hi Casper. Another week has passed. Another week. And um and you look amazing. Thank you. You're welcome. How have you been? Um I'm good. Yeah? Yeah. Uh slowly getting ready for ready for summit.

SPEAKER_00 0:24

I'm very excited about Summit. Yeah. I think events in general are super interesting. It's not what we're gonna talk about today, but just I think it's super interesting because they hold such a potential, and I'm definitely gonna make an episode about this as well. But but how do we do the right efforts? How do we not over invest? How do we kind of what do we align how to get there? Now that's a that's a side trail, yeah. Um, but but I'm really looking forward to the event, and I'm looking forward to testing some new strategies that I think we can talk about in a in a later episode. Yeah, but today I actually have a really, really interesting topic that I've been looking so much forward to talking to you about. I'm super excited, Catherine. Yeah, I cannot wait. I read the survey um a little time back, and it kind of blew my mind. It said uh it was an investigation of 1200 CEOs, and it said that 90% of CEOs don't trust their marketing leader or their marketing's uh ability to uh report uh objective commercial thinking. Okay. 90% of 1200 CEOs. And and who did the survey? Uh it's a group, it's a good question. Fournay's marketing group. Sorry? Fournay's marketing group. Okay. Um but like asking 1200 CEOs and comparing data, like I'm a data guy. Yeah. I I I really think this is interesting. I think it touches on a topic that is so important. Um I just want to a side note to this is that 90% of the same CEOs trust their CFO and CIO to report uh commercial thinking. Okay. So my question for today is like marketing is screwed? How did marketing become the least important voice in uh in the commercial uh thinking and uh and strategizing? I think that's super important, and I think that's the the main challenge of of marketing.

SPEAKER_01 2:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:24

How does this resonate with uh the the numbers are blowing my mind? Totally, right? Um do you think they're wrong? Like not the survey, but the other thing is.

SPEAKER_01 2:33

Yeah, I was trying to process it because um is marketing the least trusted in the commercial? Uh I I guess I guess they are. I mean some of the conversations that we're seeing is and I had a really interesting one at the the analytics and advertisers a couple of weeks weeks back where we I had a conversation with with someone who um who said why have we just defaulted to that the data we lose from uh missing consent, cookie consent. That that's okay. Yeah, nobody's talking into a solution. Some is uh doing A, some is doing B, some is doing C, but there's there's like no common you know setup for how do we compensate for those numbers. No. And and I guess uh I guess that's that's part of the issue of not trusting the data, right? Because in in my experience, there's always a lot of when there's questions to the data, there's always a good explanation for it. But the issue is that you have to explain it.

SPEAKER_00 3:40

Yeah, right. But I actually I I completely agree, and I looked into like I started thinking about this. So I don't think we have a performance problem because marketing is performing there beeps off, like yeah, really working well. Um and we can talk more about that, but maybe been focusing a lot about channel reporting. So we've been optimizing all the channels. We like you cannot put a finger to any of that, but it doesn't relate on a wide scale back to the business. So I looked into like what is it that the CFO, the CIO, that's trusted by 90% of the CEOs, report on. They report on cost, they report on revenue, they report on profit, uh, uptime, like business critical things, uptime for IT, security risk, uh, infrastructure questions and stuff like that. Yeah, a CEO would always trust that because it's business critical. And and hard numbers to some degree. Hard numbers. And I and when I think about what and now we work in this space, what most marketing uh when we look at how how campaigns are tracked and all these things are reported back, it's uh reach, awareness, attribution, as you say, numbers that need to be explained.

SPEAKER_01 4:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:52

So I think it's it's super, super, super interesting that I I don't think it's a performance problem. I think it's a structural problem. Yeah. It's about that in marketing we've been too focused on reporting on campaigns and on channels rather than the impact of what's going on. And if if if we are honest, the the scrutiny that we see on budgets for marketing right now is directed is directly affected by this. Yeah. Um the challenges of trust, the challenges of like I actually was at an Adobe event uh a year ago where they talked about what is the main challenge that most CMOs report back, and it is impact.

SPEAKER_01 5:35

Yeah. But isn't so uh if if we talk about the KPIs you mentioned, like cost, you know, whatever cost I'm throwing into licenses or or paid ads or whatever, it's it's it's you know, you cannot argue whether I spent 100,000 or 200,000 because it's it's it's on the credit card.

SPEAKER_00 5:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:56

That I use all this money, right?

SPEAKER_00 5:58

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 5:58

Um and I guess if we look at orders, then if we pull the orders from the back end, there's there's no discussion in you know whether we sold 100 things or 200 things.

SPEAKER_00 6:11

Oh no.

SPEAKER_01 6:11

But I guess when we look at it in our marketing software of uh you know let's say analytics, we don't really have the true number of how many orders actually came from the website.

SPEAKER_00 6:25

But we're because we're missing 20% from a and and I guess that's that's where the distrust comes in. That's definitely where the distrust comes. Yeah, but I think the structural problem of this is a bit different because we are so good at at optimizing performance in local channels. But when we have to report back to the business, local channels, local campaigns, is not enough. We need to look at the data holistically. So, how how many companies, and I can tell you we are looking into this, like it takes two things to report holistically. It takes that we can track on the same parameters across channels. Yeah, and we can, they're called different things, but essentially if we set up our data language in the correct way, we can track this holistically. Then it takes data completeness because otherwise data won't be trusted. And as I mentioned in season one, we did a survey showing that that enterprises are working on 50% data accuracy. So we have the performance, but we don't have the data to prove it across all the efforts that we're doing. And this is why we, when we come back, we can say, yes, but Facebook reported really well all these things where the CFO will say we lost X amount of dollars or we earned X amount of dollars this month. And this means that in a situation where the CEO or the leadership have to decide do we go with position A or B, they will choose the CFO ten out of ten times with the structural reporting that's in marketing right now.

SPEAKER_01 7:53

But doesn't that come back to an ownership issue? Yes. Right? Absolutely. Because there's very few who actually owns everything across, and and I hate using the term silos, but but but it is silos, right? Because the the pay channels are uh working over here optimizing uh their efforts. Uh and then there's you know, I don't know, TV or you know, it's different teams who's doing everything.

SPEAKER_00 8:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:21

And there's no one who owns it across every, you know, across the and that's a massive problem.

SPEAKER_00 8:27

And the problem is that it's the marketing leader who should own this. It can only be owned from marketing leadership. It takes this ownership. We need like I work with these companies every day, we work with these companies every day who does this, who implement the shared data language, where marketing leaders say, we need to report on these things. So across all campaigns, we need what is the campaign name, what is the budget ID, what is so we both have the cross-functional uh reporting things across channels, no matter what it's called in local platforms, we can always say, like, what did we spend, what campaign does it refer back to, yeah, what are the creative, all these things. And when we have this, we're able to answer questions that our top leadership wants to. Yeah, where do we best spend our next marketing dollar? Because we can compare the same things across all the channels. Essentially, we can compare it across our agencies, across our collaborators. Yeah. And when we can answer that, we can say, where do we best spend the next next marketing dollar and where should it come from? Because now we can see where does the dollar perform least and where does it perform best. And suddenly we start reporting holistically and we start seeing the effect of these things from a structural point of view. As I mentioned a few times now, I don't think it's a performance problem, I think it's a structural problem. At those companies who do that experience two things. We see two clear things happening. They start being able to report on these things that is business critical because they have hard facts on where them investment goes and what will be the return of this. They have clear attribution, they have all these things that has been a challenge no matter how you do it. And their data quality goes up. Because when when when it's enforced from the leadership, then it's non-negotiable. We need to have this data across compared, otherwise, we're irrelevant. And if a CMO comes up to the board and reports on something that is 50% data accurate, then they won't trust it. And then you can say, yeah, yeah, but they don't know if it's 50% accurate. No, but we're in a position where 90% of leadership doesn't trust the numbers for marketing. So I think we are in a backway, backwards situation where we don't need to believe that they trust our marketing data is accurate. We need to prove that our marketing data is accurate. So if we come up with our marketing numbers, they are holistic across everything, and we can report this is on 92% tracking accuracy. Then suddenly we have the voice of the CFO in that conversation or CIO in that conversation. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:03

So where where should let's say I'm a CMO in a company where I have that issue. Yeah. And you're saying that a company who who does this can do ABC. How do I get to the point where I can do that? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:20

What what's the I love that you're asking that question? Yeah, because I put down three things that I think that companies should do to fix it. We didn't even practice this. This is a new formula. No, no, but we see three things in this that kind of progress. And it's a big political topic, but I think as marketing leaders, we need to take ownership of this. As commercial leaders, we need to take ownership. Marketing should be the most important voice in this. Like the commercial setup is about sales, how we market, how we position ourselves, how we do all these things. So these numbers are crucial to how we perform and how we are able to create predictable revenue in our businesses. Three things that we see uh working is that we need to take the platform performance and make it into holistic reporting. So you need to find fixed points that goes across all your campaigns. Okay. I've seen now over the last three months, two companies remove one million dollars of misattribution per month just doing this first exercise. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 12:23

I mean everything uh and I and I was thinking this when when you said some other stuff earlier as well in the conversation that uh that I keep thinking Adobe Mix modeler. And I and I don't want to be selling your product or anything like that, right? But but uh the the biggest exercise for that is actually agreeing on what are the different KPIs and metrics across all the data sets that we have. Yeah, right, because the data needs to be harmonized in order to do a proper reporting or modeling on the data, right?

SPEAKER_00 12:58

And to be honest, I think you're touching on a very important point here. AI, marketing mixed modeling, whatever it is, is just lipstick on the same problem. It's bad data quality. Yeah. Or not on non-comparable data.

SPEAKER_01 13:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:12

If we have that, all those projects would not be a problem. Like 95% of AI projects does not prove RRI. Yeah. Because we don't have the data to do it. It might create results and work and stuff like that, but it doesn't create any value. It doesn't make sense, right?

SPEAKER_01 13:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:28

So I think you're completely right. And it feeds back, like the data foundation feeds back to everything. Yeah. But now in this isolated case, I think this is the most pressing challenge for marketing in any size of company anywhere in the world right now. Like we're not trusted. Like marketing is where the budget is cut first. Yeah. Marketing is where there's most distrust. Marketing is where these things don't work. So the three things that I see working is first, from platform performance to more holistic. Yeah. What things can we compare across? And it can be done. We see this every day. Yeah. Second, own data ownership, own the data, as you said. And data ownership for me is that we ensure tracking completeness, that we ensure that all these things work for our naming. So when they hit our platforms, they're named in the right way. Um and I think it's important that we ensure the media integrations back to our reporting. So we assure that the data that feeds from all the platforms, no matter if it's a QR or a live event, as we talked about in the beginning, or a digital campaign, that it all feeds back in the same way to our reporting and the tools of app. And then third off, and this is it's not probably not controversial, but it's like I think this is key, and this is something that I've never heard anyone talk about. We need to align with the CFO. We need to understand what the numbers that the CFO values is. We need to get out of sight of our marketing brains, and we need to say, hey, okay, what are the numbers that actually worth something here in this dialogue? Yeah. Because in 10 out of 10 cases where there's a dispute between marketing and the CFO, CEO, board, whoever it is, will listen to the CFO. So we need to align this, we need to understand what's going on, and we need to take more responsibility into the role of marketing if we want to be the trusted advisor that we need to be.

SPEAKER_01 15:23

Yeah. So and that's probably easier said than done, right? And and structure, like changing. And I think some of the things that you're saying, uh I can think of a few companies where that would be the recipe for an internal fight of ownership as well, right?

SPEAKER_00 15:43

But it's uh something that's progressing right now. We see so many companies changing this. Yeah, we just hosted an event where big tech said bring clean data before your money. Yeah. Agencies say own your own data.

SPEAKER_01 15:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:58

And a big company, Mersk, said you need to um, like we see business results from doing it this way. We can report directly back to business.

SPEAKER_01 16:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:08

This is a massive pivot. So there's something changing in the marketing. Something's cooking. Something is cooking right now because we are we are realizing the lipstick challenge of data right now. No matter if it's AI or modeling or whatever we do, we need to have this data. And if we don't have the ownership, we start over all again and again.

SPEAKER_01 16:30

Yeah. Um so as a as a CMO, what would be what would be your recommendation to the to the first step for the CMO to do?

SPEAKER_00 16:40

It would be uh understand what what are the metrics that's reported back that is that is trusted in this way. And then secondly, I would make sure that my data is cleaned up, that I have accurate data that can be measured across all channels. Yeah. And it's not hard. It's it's in our tracking, it's in our base tracking, and tracking has been something in marketing that's like, uh, that's not interesting. That's not it's like the dark side of the moon. But it's not anymore. It's the it's the need to have to perform. You will lose if you're not in control of your data in marketing. That's 100% certain.

SPEAKER_01 17:15

But there's also data that's uh otherwise in the company that that's relevant, but but is not you know uh driven by marketing, but but I guess they need to be part of that holistic view as well, right? Or are you thinking purely from a marketing data?

SPEAKER_00 17:36

In the perfect world, I think this pressing issue is that marketing are not trusted. Marketing is not able to prove the value of their work back to the business. Yeah that's what we need to solve before we solve the whole data situation for the company. Okay. And I think as marketing leaders and as commercial leaders, we need to take responsibility into this and we need to act. Because this is the only way. And yes, there's a lot of data points, but I think that we are becoming more and more aware that big data is not a thing anymore. Small data is better. If you have a small amount of the right data, then you can prove your impact and so start there. Yeah, and then we can grow it. We can get all the data that we want, but do we need it? If we understand what metrics we should really report back on, then we can relate it back to that. Yeah, and to be honest, it is a big political swap, but this is why it needs to be owned from marketing leadership. But when it's done, results within three months is what we're seeing right now. You're not there, but you will start to report these things. It's not it's not a long journey, no, if you take the leadership into to owning your own data.

SPEAKER_01 18:41

No. So I I I I definitely see the issue with having too much data. Yeah. And I I'm I'm not sure who I should uh give credit for this one, but but somebody at some point said that we're not building a library with the data, right? So we need to trim down the the data points that we're collecting. Because the simpler data we have, the easier it is to get insights from them and uh take action on them, right? We at least need to know why we have them and what we're using them for. They should be mapped to uh uh you know a business requirement for for each data point that we're collecting, right? Absolutely. Um and and I guess that would potentially be the first step, right? Uh aligning on what are the key business requirements and what are the data points that we need to uh better report on these. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 19:36

Yeah. What we've done in the last few projects is this understand what you're reporting back on, and then make sure that all the channels that you have active have the same parameters. Not for performance optimization, because we have tons of metadata that we need in the individual channels. Yeah, but with everything going back to your business, what are the five parameters that we need to have holistically across all channels?

SPEAKER_01 19:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:59

And how do we prove that our data quality, which is a very important topic to us, is accurate? Because in this mindset change, we need to be able to prove, and this is why in the episode where we talked about marketing ROI, I talked about that your data quality needs to be a part of this calculation. Because this is the only way that we're gonna turn the distrust into trust for marketing and for like longevity in terms of how we can report impact. Yeah. Um so so I agree, but I think I I don't think this formula is is is very complicated. No. But it takes data ownership and it takes leadership to to make this change, but it can be done fairly quickly, and a lot of companies are making this transition right now.

SPEAKER_01 20:43

Yeah. Interesting. I I I guess, and as we talked about it, I I think it's it seems to be what I'm seeing primarily driven of making sure that you have a good foundation for uh AI being able to actually look at your data.

SPEAKER_00 21:02

Or don't you don't you as I said, I think AI is just the the next thing, it's the lipstick on the main problem. Because if you have this under control, AI is not your problem, and the next thing after AI will not be a problem.

SPEAKER_01 21:16

No, I I just feel like that uh this is not a new discussion. Like in all the years that I've been in the space, that you know that's been the conversation. Yeah. Right. Um but I feel like that the conversation is changing and there's a bigger focus on data quality, and I guess data quality also goes into making sure that you have proper metrics and KPIs across your channel that you can report on, and that that conversation is primarily driven by or has been enabled by AI.

SPEAKER_00 21:52

Yeah, yeah, but but every time we see a mega trend, the data conversation pops up. So that's why I'm saying it's just a new lipstick. And I I think this is a structural problem and it's a leadership problem. It's like it's we need as the marketing leaders and commercial leaders, we need to take ownership of this now. This is the only way we're gonna stop keep talking about this. Because they see it every day. The companies who take ownership of this stop talking it becomes an issue they'll never talk about. Yeah. Because they got it under control, they can prove it. And they suddenly brought on level with those most trusted by CEOs in the companies. And that's like we can go into the nitty-gritty, we can go into all the metadata, and we're gonna do that. But I think before we change this as a political thing in marketing, then we're not gonna go any further. Then we're gonna keep talking the same topics that essentially only data nerds want to talk about, like ourselves. Yeah. Like this is not the problem. This is a leadership problem that we need to take care of now. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:50

And on that note, yeah. I thought it was I thought the the survey was uh really interesting. It blew my mind. Totally blew my mind. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:58

Because I was like for the first time, there were words put to the channels that we are all kind of tiptoeing around and not really I and I feel it's feel this so tangible what needs to be done. I was like two points connected in my brain when I read this. Yes.

unknown 23:17

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 23:18

So I hope that we gave a sprinkle of the same to you guys and that you feel inspired to move this forward as data leaders or inside your organization.

SPEAKER_01 23:27

Um and and without uh uh turning this into uh advertising, I I guess if people want to get started and don't know where to start, it seems like you are already working with some companies who are taking the first steps and that's absolutely reach out, guys.

SPEAKER_00 23:42

We we'd love to to give you some insights on this. Uh this is what we do essentially every day. Um so not on a political level, but helping marketing leaders technology with this.

SPEAKER_01 23:53

So um well, thanks for the insights, uh Casper. Uh I I need to digest that. Uh that's so late.

SPEAKER_00 24:01

Yeah, I will I will uh I will share it with you and um and we'll see you all next week. Thank you for listening in. And I apologize that there was no jokes in this episode.

SPEAKER_01 24:11

And I don't have anyone uh before we close down. So so I guess this will be a first. I know you have one. Yeah, I'm really really thinking hard right now. Yeah. Um when you're forced to it you cannot think of anything.

SPEAKER_00 24:30

Nope.

SPEAKER_01 24:31

No. So we'll just end it here.

SPEAKER_00 24:33

Let's end it here. We'll end it here. Thanks.