Tag: google

How Looker is Enhancing Marketing Data Analytics Through Organization and Face-to-Face Communication

Posted on by Drew Neisser

The sheer amount of data any company collects can quickly become overwhelming if it’s not managed efficiently. As a CMO you have to have control of the data and understand how it flows throughout your organization. That’s why companies like Looker exist – to help you make sense of the data and use it to your advantage.

In this episode of Renegade Thinkers Unite, Looker’s CMO, Jen Grant, talks with Drew about why her unique background allows her to understand the art and science behind connecting everyone to your company’s brand message. She also shares why it’s important to simplify your company’s core message down to just a few phrases.

Not only does Jen explain why actual face-to-face interaction is even more critical in today’s B2B marketing environment, she also discusses how Looker is achieving just that. You also don’t want to miss her best advice for CMOs.

Jen conveys the heart of marketing in such an intriguing way in this episode – you don’t want to miss it. (Click here to listen now).

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Why data organization is so important and the art and science of connecting people to your company’s true message

Without a user-friendly and complete data analytics system, critical insights that could be derived from your company’s data go undiscovered. Companies such as Looker provide an easily understood way of compiling individual data silos into one platform that can be shared across multiple employee teams. Once your data is organized in an effective manner, you can then use this data to enhance your company’s ability to spread your brand message. Data that is easily accessed and understood becomes a tool for creative storytelling that elicits an emotional response from your target market – ultimately creating more success for your company.

How Looker is bringing actual human interaction into B2B marketing, and why your company should be doing the same

Jen explains to Drew in this episode that Looker really wants to push face-to-face marketing because of the human connections that come from that process. But she warns that these in-person events cannot just be a drawn-out sales pitch. It has to be about creating genuine connections with people in your industry and regions, which then opens the door for future sales. These events are also an incredible resource for first-person stories that can be shared with your team and customers. In our technology-driven world, actual human interaction events can set your company apart from the rest, and you’d be surprised at just how effective they can be. Be sure to listen to this episode so you don’t miss out on Jen’s engaging story behind Looker’s journey in face-to-face B2B marketing.

The top two “do’s” and one critical “don’t” in data analytics

Because of Jen’s long history in marketing, and her unique background in theatre and English, she has a unique set of advice for CMOs. She suggests that companies get all of their data centralized so that every team can see the whole picture – not just snippets of information. She also is a huge proponent of as many people as possible looking at your company’s data, because you never know where your next great campaign idea might come from. Finally, she doesn’t want CMOs to forget the innate nature of marketing. While technology, reports, and team meetings are all critical pieces of the data analytics process, she encourages CMOs to remember their gut intuition when it comes to taking a leap of marketing faith. Her insights are sure to be useful to your company in 2018, so be sure to listen to this episode of Renegade Thinkers Unite.

What You’ll Learn

  • [2:20] Drew introduces his guest for this episode, Jen Grant, CMO of Looker
  • [2:43] Jen shares her unique background story and how she got started in marketing
  • [4:25] The key lessons Jen learned while working with Google
  • [10:17] Looker’s purpose and story simplified into just a few words
  • [13:17] How Looker’s technology allows data to be seen and enacted upon for their customers
  • [17:16] What Looker’s data processing system looks like
  • [20:00] Where Looker falls within the “stack” of data systems
  • [22:21] Jen shares Looker success story case studies
  • [26:56] The marketing efforts Jen has completed to combat Looker’s awareness challenge, outside of the data industry
  • [34:31] Balancing tailored regional needs to overall company brand messages
  • [37:54] The toughest lesson Jen has learned in the marketing world
  • [39:30] Jen offers her “two do’s and a don’t” for data analytics

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Moving from Storytelling to Story Living Through VR

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Marketing has undergone drastic changes in the last 100 years. At the start of the twentieth century, advertisers started hooking consumers in new ways, appealing to the psychology of storytelling to sell products. With the recent birth of social media, marketers took this strategy up a notch by further personalizing those messages. Now, we are on the brink of another marketing revolution. Virtual reality, or VR, seeks to fully immerse consumers, figuratively and literally providing 360-degree story experiences. Zoo, which is Google’s creative think tank, initiated a study on VR and is now working on ways to discover its full potential.

Abigail Posner, Head of Strategic Planning for Zoo, boldly claims that storytelling is evolving into story living through VR. A student of anthropology, Abigail sees great promise in VR’s ability to connect people and brands on an essential level. Even though VR is more or less in its infancy stage, it may play a critical in both marketing and culture in the near future.  [Note: Drew saw Abigail speak at this year’s PSFK conference, a must attend event for any renegade thinker!]

On this episode of the Renegade Thinkers Unite podcast, Abigail shares her expert VR insights with host Drew Neisser. She describes some unexpected use cases for the platform and discusses ways in which marketers may soon be able to capitalize on this new technology. You can listen to the episode here. If you don’t have time to listen to the whole thing, check out these sample Q&As from the interview:

Drew: VR has been talked about for years and years and years as the next thing. Are we finally at the point where this is going to become at least semi-mass?

Abigail: I think it’s a combination of a number of things. One is that we have enough experiences under our belt to recognize the value of it, whether it’s gamers playing it, whether it’s porn, whether it’s the fact that doctors are using it. All of a sudden, there’s a range of different worlds that are recognizing its value and it’s hitting mainstream. That’s number one. Number two, as we brought up before, the actual physical headsets themselves are becoming more accessible, whether it’s accessible that we can wear them or accessible price wise. That helps. And then finally the technology itself is evolving. So it’s becoming finer tuned. It’s becoming more accessible so that we can use it on a number of different platforms integrated into our phones and so forth. It’s a combination of a number of different factors. And then I just think generally we are becoming just more comfortable and agile with what it means to create a story in this space.

Drew: Are there any brands that are using this immersive technology right now that you can talk about and that are paving the way for others?

Abigail: Yes, we’ve seen it in a couple of different genres or categories. One is what R/GA recently launched with Guinness, which is an experience that you can experience inside a convenience store, inside a store that sells beer. And so instead of just giving you a message about the beer, you actually get to experience the shapes and the smells and the angles of beer in a way that you never would have thought of before, really giving you the essence of beer. So that’s one example. I mean whoever thought of getting to the essence of beer in that way?

Drew: How are brands going to learn how to use VR?

Abigail: I think it’s going to be about brands recognizing the role they play and how they want the user / consumer / human being to respond to them. Here’s another example that we created. This is like the ultimate PSA. We worked with The National Transportation Highway Safety Board, and they are trying to do something quite important, quite serious. It is not entertaining whatsoever, and that’s about preventing drunk driving. Probably one of the most critical endeavors that we have today, especially among young people. And so instead of creating the same type of story over and over again, which is, “Here’s what you do when you drive drunk, you hurt people or you hurt yourself.” It wasn’t effective. It just wasn’t doing what it needed to do. The results were just not in, that it was positively stopping drunk driving. They said we’re going to create a VR 360 experience where people would themselves experience as sober people, what happens to themselves as they get increasingly drunk.

Drew: How does that work?

Abigail: Where you’re playing bar games for example, and all of a sudden you don’t have the same trajectory you used to, or the sounds that are penetrating your brain are now more muffled and you come across as really funny to your friends. And all of a sudden you realize, which you wouldn’t realize being drunk, how affected you are as someone drunk. And so your cognitive side of your brain goes, “I don’t want to get behind a wheel now because now I can see how affected I am.” So it’s not entertaining as much as it is educational.

Drew: If I’m a brand, and I’m looking at VR right now, what are some of the things that I should be trying to do to capitalize on this burgeoning channel?

Abigail: Recognize that this is not a story-like experience that we’ve ever had before. In other words, it’s not a linear story. It’s not a place where you can message something that has a beginning middle or an end. It is not a space that a marketer can control. Rather, it is a highly sensory highly visceral place, so leverage senses. Recognize that people are going knee-deep in. It’s highly immersive, which is wonderful. It’s highly absorbing, so therefore you cannot be distracted by anything else. But in that experience you have to realize that this is not a place where you can distract them with stories and language. Let them go and experience a world by themselves. There are so many different nooks and crannies for them on Earth, and people want to do that. Let them do that. Give them the opportunity to just kind of see everything from different angles.

Ask for More

Posted on by Drew Neisser

So here’s the deal: You have $140 million dollars to spend and all you have to do is generate trial and repeat usage of your website. 140 million smackeroos. Salivating yet? That’s a lot of dough from where I sit. If you spent it on TV, you could pretty much blanket every man, women and child many times over with your message. Of course, spending it all on TV would be pretty silly in these DVR days, so I simply provide that as an illustration of how much money you have to work with.

One hundred and forty million dollars! That’s exactly how much Barry Diller’s Interactive Corp spent over the last two years to get folks like you and me to visit and use Ask.com (according to today’s Wall St. Journal). Amazingly, we didn’t come. Nope. We just kept using Google. In fact, despite outspending Google three to one, Google’s usage actually grew over the last two years.

So, here are my questions:

* Why do you think Ask.com failed so miserably?
* What would you do if you had $140 million to work with?

While you are pondering these questions, let me offer a couple of anecdotes. My assistant suggested that nobody uses Ask because “it sucks” and “doesn’t even load properly.” Indeed, it could be a product problem although many industry insiders praised Ask’s redesign and the quality of the searches it delivers. Our Digital Development Director, Lydia, isn’t so sure it is a product problem and actually has nice things to say about its performance. So if it isn’t a product problem then it must be a marketing problem.

One quick observation is that the hardest thing in marketing to do is to change behavior. Using Google is simply effortless. It is on top window in most people’s browser and therefore front and center every time you consider a search. I simply don’t think about going to another search engine because Google is right there. Unless you paid me or could prove to me that I wasn’t getting what I needed on Google, I’m simply too lazy to switch.

With that small barrier to overcome, I once again ask what would you do with $140 million dollars to drive traffic to Ask.com? I’ll be back later with some thoughts of my own.