Welcome to Brilliance@Work, a series of profiles about stellar marketing professionals and their best practices at work. During the next couple of months, we’ll feature market research experts.
Organizations that focus on improving the customer experience will strengthen their customer relationships and their overall business performance. John Copeland knows this first hand. John is Vice President, Marketing & Consumer Insights at Adobe. He’s also a presenter at The Market Research Event(TMRE) on Nov. 5-7, 2019 at The Mirage Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada.
John Copeland
As a preview to his presentation, John shares his perspectives on “The Customer (Experience) Is Always Right: Adobe’s Data-Driven Operating Model.”
Peggy L. Bieniek, ABC: How can leveraging a data-driven operating model help shape an organization’s future success?
John Copeland: Using a data-driven operating model like the one we use at Adobe gives a company a customer-journey-centric view of the key performance indicators across the business. By understanding business performance at the key stages of the customer journey (e.g., “Discovery,” “Trial,” “Purchase,” “Usage”) leaders of the different functions of the company (Marketing, Sales, Product, Finance) can align on the most pressing issues and biggest opportunities and work together to address them.
PB: What are some examples of how you leverage a data-driven operating model at Adobe?
JC: Among the many use cases we have, we use DDOM (the Data Driven Operating Model) to help us understand if, when, and where we need to adjust what we’re doing with our marketing to do things like: increase traffic to our website (and for which products and in which regions); increase the number of people trialing our products; or increase our efforts on engagement marketing to increase the percentage of our users who are using one of our products.
PB: How does this approach help tell a compelling marketing story?
JC: With DDOM, Adobe has the ability to understand the impact of marketing throughout the customer journey (because we can see marketing’s impact at each stage of the journey and on different groups of customers across their lifecycle). We can, for example, demonstrate which marketing activities are more/less responsible (i.e., effective) for attracting customers to our business, and also which of those customers turns out to be more (vs. less) engaged in our products, are more likely to have higher loyalty and lifetime value.
PB: What will people gain from your conference presentation?
JC: Attendees will learn about the benefits of integrating their siloed customer data and applying a customer-journey framework (and operating model). We’ll discuss how aligning cross-company operations to this framework creates better focus, alignment and performance for the business.
Want to hear more from John? Join us at The Market Research Event(TMRE). Learn, network and share best practices with the most influential leaders in market research. Stay connected at #TMREVENT.
Welcome to Brilliance@Work, a series of profiles about stellar marketing professionals and their best practices at work. During the next couple of months, we’ll feature market research experts.
Creating an effective customer story starts with empathy. Help your organization transform the value they create for customers, employees and other key stakeholders by understanding your audiences’ key emotional drivers, like they do at Zillow.
Laura Eddy is Senior Director, Consumer & Customer Insights at Zillow. She’s also a presenter at The Market Research Event(TMRE) on Nov. 5-7, 2019 at The Mirage Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Laura Eddy
As a preview to her presentation, Laura shares her perspectives on “My Insights Journey from Packaged Goods to Technology.”
Peggy L. Bieniek, ABC: How did your experiences in consumer insights shape your character and career?
Laura Eddy: Working in Consumer Insights over time makes you empathetic to the people around you. You begin to really internalize that everyone has a unique story and it is likely not just the story that they may present on the surface. That leads to listening more closely to what people tell you, and almost more importantly, what they don’t say.
I like to think this skill set has been applied to my job and career in a way where I can hear the deeper questions and needs that leaders have when facing critical decisions to drive business forward, even if they can’t always fully articulate them. This leads to stronger solutions that address the underlying issues and can significantly change the strategic direction of the organization.
PB: What role does technology play in the performance of a brand?
LE: Technology works on many different levels. First, we use technology to gain insight. It should be no secret that new technology is enabling us to understand our customers in new and interesting ways. For example, we listen to social chatter to learn about topics that we did not think to ask consumers about, and we leverage new tools like AI to determine consumer needs and wants without having to constantly ask. Second, we use technology to better access our customer and every bit as importantly, let them access and interact with us. We need to be where the customer is and as they get deeper into new technologies, we need to be there to deliver the very best context appropriate content. Third, we use technology to create better communication. New technology is allowing our marketing teams to create new and stimulating communication with improved media devices, enhanced graphics, and new voice technology.
Finally, we use technology to build better products and services to meet our customer’s ever-changing needs.
Zillow was built on the idea of data transparency and giving people the power of that data to make decisions for themselves in the real estate space. Keep in mind, as recently as 15 years ago, if you wanted to know what your house was worth, you were dependent on a real estate agent or your city’s tax department telling you that information. With technology, people now have that kind of information easily accessible. We continue to push the envelope in helping people stay informed.
PB: What are some of your most notable projects?
LE: There have been a few projects over several employers that I have been very proud of:
In 2010, Walmart became one of the first major companies to leverage Facebook to make social and local connections with customers – while there is a lot of value to this from a brand building perspective, the question came up of whether this drove actual business revenue. My team developed one of the first analyses for determining the value of a Facebook fan, even before Facebook themselves did this kind of analysis. I remember presenting that work to Sheryl Sandberg in a converted warehouse office at Walmart. Once Facebook developed their protocols, we went back and checked the results – it turns out we were off on our estimates by less than 10% of actuals, which felt pretty awesome.
At Amazon, one of the really cool insights we produced was around the idea that Alexawas seen by customers as a beloved member of the family (in fact, at the time, one of the top questions asked was “Alexa, will you marry me?”), which drove a step-change in how Amazon marketed some devices. Rather than focus on the hardware or on the device and ancillary features directly, the Marketing team pivoted its attention to Alexa and the AI. This idea helped create the idea of a device ecosystem all connected via customer-favorite Alexa for Amazon to interact with consumers.
Zillow, though, has been the place where I think I have had the greatest impact on the brand and business. We have delivered foundational work that showed just how painful the home selling process is for consumers, which led to the creation of a new business called Zillow Offers – this business now accounts for over 40% of Zillow’s revenue and is growing by leaps and bounds. Some of our new projects include envisioning the future landscape of the real estate marketplace – we are combining a series of methodologies like customer journey mapping, futuring and war gaming to construct an ideal customer experience. We are incredibly fortunate that hunger and willingness to embrace the needs and wants of the customer are the guiding principle at Zillow.
PB: What will people gain from your conference presentation?
LE: Insight, of course! Great insight is often generated by real emotion, and making a major career change from one industry that you are familiar/comfortable with, to an industry that is new, different and constantly changing can create many meaningful emotions. We want to shine a light on the process of transitioning from one industry to another, and share what you might expect and how to prepare for it.
We want to try and answer the questions that might be keeping you up at night about making this kind of move – the risks, the reward, the effort. It is no secret, companies are not as loyal to their employees as they once were, you must be prepared for an ever changing future.
If you have been wondering if you should make this type of move and just want to learn more, please join us.
Want to hear more from Laura? Join us at The Market Research Event(TMRE). Learn, network and share best practices with the most influential leaders in market research. Stay connected at #TMREVENT.
Welcome to Brilliance@Work, a series of profiles about stellar marketing professionals and their best practices at work. During the next couple of months, we’ll feature market research experts.
Looking at user experience from a holistic viewpoint is critical to help grow your organization and change the way you innovate for your customers. Once you understand your customers, you can design experiences they will strongly identify with.
Jordan Girman
Jordan Girman is Senior Director, User Experience Research at Glassdoor. He’s also a presenter at The Market Research Event(TMRE) on Nov. 5-7, 2019 at The Mirage Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada.
As a preview to his presentation, Jordan shares his perspectives on “Designing Connected Experience with the Context of the User in Mind.”
Peggy L. Bieniek, ABC: How did your experiences in UX design shape your character and career?
Jordan Girman: When I started my career, there wasn’t really a field called UX. There were the beginnings of it, but most people were termed as information architects and the field was still getting defined. I think that what really drew me to it was that I could be a part of that definition, and I liked the “wild west” feel of developing process and seeing what worked and what didn’t. So, the first thing that UX taught me was to say “I can do that,” and then realizing I could actually figure out how to do it. It felt empowering and made me feel valuable.
The second thing I learned was how to separate myself from my work. When I first started to design, I would look at how I did something, then apply that to my design. Very much “I like the color blue, so everyone else must like this color too.” Changing my approach from “I think it should be this” to “What would the user do in this situation” radically changed not just how I design, but how I approach leadership and problem solving. Research and understanding context or the problem and people I work with are all major parts of why I have been successful.
Additionally, as I advanced in my career, I really learned how to step back from the item that I was working on and then view the project from a holistic perspective. Being able to see how what I am working on extends to a larger world, being able to zero in on small interaction and zoom out to a larger view of the experience translated into strategy and vision work.
PB: What role does UX play in the performance of a brand?
JG: Really any touchpoint plays into the user experience for someone interacting with your product. What that means is that someone who sees a YouTube video, listens to a radio advertisement, talks to a CSM or has an interaction with your website plays into that person’s perception of the company. Too often companies ship their org chart and think their users perceive their product the same way as the company does internally. But to a user, they are not interacting with ‘the mobile channel’ or ‘the brick and mortar,’ they are just interacting with the company, and it’s one thing to them.
Because of this, UX is tied to the brand, and the brand is tied to the UX. If the advertisements and overall design of the marketing assets are vastly different from the product design, then experience of transition from buying to using suffers. Same goes true if the user experience is poor on the product, then the perception of the brand suffers.
At Glassdoor, we are working on ways that brand design and product design collaborate to make a seamless experience throughout every touchpoint for the job seeker and employer. It’s not easy, but we will get there.
PB: What are some of your most notable projects?
JG: In my early days, I was a big part of redesigning the Mercedes-Benz USA site (MBUSA.com) for an agency called Critical Mass. From there, I was part of starting a UX agency working with a variety of clients. Eventually, I transitioned to product design working on large scale video games for Electronic Arts. There I did redesigns for NHL and the first iteration of UFC, and eventually building design systems for the overall EA online marketing experience. Currently at Glassdoor, we are looking at how to radically change how people search for jobs in the future.
PB: What will people gain from attending your conference presentation?
JG: I hope to see people change their perspective of how their users interact with the internet and they can take the learning and apply it to their product. As we transition to mobile devices, user experience has so many more influences outside of the screen and every company needs to start thinking about how to accommodate those outside influences.
Want to hear more from Jordan? Join us at The Market Research Event(TMRE). Learn, network and share best practices with the most influential leaders in market research. Stay connected at #TMREVENT.
Welcome to Brilliance@Work, a series of profiles about stellar marketing professionals and their best practices at work. During the next couple of months, we’ll feature market research experts.
Bringing technology to life includes having the creativity and imagination of an artist. It also requires having the insights and analytics to ensure sustainable success in the marketplace.
Antony Barton
Antony Barton is Director, Global Insights and Analytics at Intel. He’s also a presenter at The Market Research Event (TMRE) on Nov. 5-7, 2019 at The Mirage Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada.
As a preview to his presentation, Antony shares his perspectives on “Leveraging Insights to Drive Intel’s Future Vision of the Laptop.”
Peggy L. Bieniek, ABC: How is Intel’s Insights & Analytics team helping to shape the organization’s future success?
Antony Barton: Our insights function is focused on driving insights into product development (e.g. 12 to 36 months) and marketing strategy (e.g. 0 to 18 months). This includes helping our business unit (focused on the development of next generation PCs) to bring forth the best products as possible; and support our marketing strategy team to develop effective marketing campaigns that communicate the benefits of Intel’s new technologies. We deploy a number of different types of insights methodologies to drive our insights into decision making including ethnographic studies, more traditional qualitative techniques, quantitative approaches including feature prioritization and optimization, pricing studies, audience segmentation, and message testing.
PB: What role does Intel’s Insights & Analytics team play in helping to measure brand performance?
AB: Measuring the health of the Intel brand among our target audiences (both B2B and consumer) is a key part of our insights function. From time to time, we also deploy more in-depth methods to better understand what our brand means and stands for; including looking by different age groups. This is important as perceptions of technology brands are constantly changing as new products and services arise.
PB: How does Intel’s Insights & Analytics team help tell a compelling marketing story?
AB: Helping our marketing colleagues bring our technology to life in an easy to understand and compelling fashion that encourages our target audience to buy a new PC is a super important part of our job. We are also often working with our eco-system partners to ensure we are coordinated in our approach (e.g. Microsoft and Dell and HP), including sharing insights.
PB: What will people gain from your conference presentation? AB: Today the ability to impact significant decision-making with insights is often dependent on how you can best bring together multiple streams of insights into a coherent story that executives can quickly understand and take action on. My talk will center on what I believe are best practices as its relates to leveraging multiple research methodologies (e.g. deep ethnographic, synthesizing secondary research, and traditional qualitative and quantitative) and the resulting insights that significantly impacted Intel’s most important mobile computing innovation decision in the past 10 years.
Want to hear more from Antony? Join us at The Market Research Event(TMRE). Learn, network and share best practices with the most influential leaders in market research. Stay connected at #TMREVENT.
Starry Blue Brilliance 