Brand Manager Today, Marketing Technologist Tomorrow.

Mohamed Al Lawati, Director, Digital and eCommerce, Grupo Bimbo

Sit in on any CPG investor call and chances are you will not get through to the end without hearing “digitization” “personalization” and “data” at least a few times. Today these capabilities are a competitive advantage, tomorrow they will be table stakes. So, how is the inevitable spawning of marketing and technology to give way to a data driven marketer (DDM) supported by the enterprise, and more specifically IT?

The past two decades have seen an evolution of media spends from traditional channels to digital ones, to a point where eMarketer predicts that digital will represent more than 60 percent of media spend by 2025 in Canada. However, despite the channel shift, the focus on mass communication has largely remained unhinged especially in CPG. With changing industry dynamics, growing consumer expectations for relevant content, and shifting media landscape, the next phase of this evolution is undoubtedly a steady and growing shift from mass communication to Data Driven Marketing (DDM) or Precision Marketing. DDM is the practice of using customer data to predict their needs, desires, and future behaviours, serving them relevant and timely content that they are more likely to engage with.

 According to Delloitte, “DDM unlocks value for the business, marketers, and customers. Businesses can increase sales from campaigns by 15 percent on average and double-down on their return on advertising spend (ROAS). Marketers can strengthen campaigns through improved targeting, tracking of customer behavior across devices, and identifying engagement patterns.”

 ​"With changing industry dynamics, growing consumer expectations for relevant content, and shifting media landscape, the next phase of this evolution is undoubtedly a steady and growing shift from mass communication to Data Driven Marketing (DDM) or Precision Marketing "

The practice of DDM and personalization is largely experimental today, in the CPG space led by a centralized team, most likely the Center of Excellence (COE). As these efforts bear fruit, organizations will want to scale the practice across the board for maximum impact which will lead to a decentralization of DDM. However, for that, we will need a marketing team that is fully versed in data, technology, and analytics. This is when IT teams step up and offer a helping hand to scale these capabilities. Below are the areas where I see enhanced collaboration between IT and Marketing:

1. Data management: The practice of acquiring, storing and enriching data. During the experimentation stage, IT works in close collaboration with the COE and the legal department to set data governance policy and build privacy and security protocols. As we scale DDM practices, the responsibility for data management may need to be distributed throughout the marketing organization, giving brand teams ownership of their data.

2. Marketing automation: Leveraging technology to automate the delivery of relevant content to consumers at the right time and through the right channels. During the experimentation stage, IT plays a key role in selecting and onboarding the technology tools. As the practice shifts to a decentralized structure, large scale upskilling may be needed to operate these tools.

3. Analytics: IT provides the tools and expertise to analyze customer data and identify patterns and trends that can be used to personalize the customer experience. As data management gets decentralized, the demand for data processing capabilities in the organization will skyrocket. IT teams will need to support the shift from human led practices to ML models that will empower the marketing department to make quick decisions.

4. Attribution and measurement: This is probably the biggest challenge CPG marketing leaders will need to solve to measure impact of their marketing investment. The result will be a mass adoption of Data CleanRooms to facilitate data sharing between parties in a privacy centric manner. This is likely the only way to address some of the data blind spots CPG executives have today.

Above all, scaling DDM across the organization would require a shift in organizational culture by empowering employees with the right tools, skills, and resources. To achieve this, IT would need to be the flag bearers along with marketing for DDM.