By Kaitlin Dunn Troutman, Senior Vice President Operations, Alliant
The second installment of season 4 of “Emily in Paris” has thankfully arrived, making my evenings a little more indulgent. I am the ideal audience for this show: I studied art history abroad in Paris, was a marketer at a major consumer brand, and today run a marketing team whose core customers are agencies and brand marketers.
But this season hit differently. While the fashions are more fabulous than ever and the love triangles defy the laws of geometry, the storylines that hang on Emily’s role at the leading French marketing agency, Agence Grateau, continue to paint a misleading picture of what modern marketers actually do.
Emily, Je t’adore, but you are really doing data a disservice.
While the show dazzles with a glossy office and outfits, bubbling parties and poppy social campaigns, experienced marketers know this isn’t the full picture. Behind it all, there is a whole world of numbers, from consumer data and budgets, to KPIs and MMM.
While one could argue that everything is in fact fancier in France – and these banalities might be considered categorically not fancy – I don’t believe that the French are missing the very important use of data in marketing. I do wonder if data and budgets are being handled by all the unidentified team members running around Agence Grateau’s Place de Valois office. Either way, experienced marketing and agency professionals know the difference, we know the value of data in making our businesses and our client’s campaigns successful.
But what about the new generation of students looking to graduate to a coveted associate role at a brand or agency? The junior marketing manager on your team? Is this sparkly representation of marketing doing the future of our industry a disservice? Data can be sexy too, non?
For all those who may love Emily and her wild world of marketing, let me tempt you with the equally sparkling possibilities of data. Here is a taste of all the ways data underpins great marketing:
Consumer Insights: Understanding consumer interests and behaviors can open doors for innovative campaigns and supercharge business goals. From better defining an existing customer base, to building acquisition audience profiles, these insights lay the foundation for a data driven strategy.
Audience Targeting: An audience-first campaign approach uses consumer insights to drive audience selection and delivery. Data allows brands and their agencies to segment audiences and target based on demos, interests, past purchases and more. All ensuring that that amazing creative and offer, reach the right audience in the right place, at the right time.
Personalization: One step further, insights at the individual level can help drive personalization that makes an engagement even more meaningful. Caveat: use data thoughtfully here. Data used appropriately and compliantly can show a consumer you’re paying attention to them and their needs, but not being creepy.
Predictive Analytics: Looking at aggregated data over a period of time can help predict future trends and behaviors. Machine learning and AI have made data science even more exciting by allowing marketers to proactively adjust strategy, find larger more qualified audiences and stay ahead of the competition.
A/B Testing: Great marketers test things, including offers, channel, subject lines, creative, time of day. You name it, they can test it. Aggregating and comparing testing results is a data party. And when you really hit a winner, so does your campaign execution and results.
Performance Measurement Speaking of results, tying media spend to engagement, sales and other key performance indicators is a tremendously important component of marketing success. To constantly improve and drive value, marketers must know what is working and what isn’t. Measuring campaign performance can be challenging in many channels, but even simple validations and attributions can help prove ROI and make you look like a rockstar.
There will always be fun photoshoots, well-dressed colleagues, big budgets and big personalities. But when you include a focus on data there are so many more opportunities to be successful. Strategy, creative, branding, events, and social are all disciplines that make marketing one of the most fun careers in the world. But importantly, all of these are made better, more effective, defensible, and powerful when they are driven by strong data and insights.
As I wrap up my season 4 viewing and start to dream of season 5, my ask to Netflix is to give a little screen time to some of the unnamed number-crunching-data-loving associates at Agence Grateau. Data people are some of the best people.
