Don't Be Creepy: Fusing Consumer Data’s Gap Between Priority and Reality
Managing the stores of first-party consumer data requires brands to act with a bit of finesse and a lot of thoughtfulness. Leverage the data properly and you'll create lasting, loyal relationships that revolve around customer value. Take one misstep in a world hyper-focused on the customer experience, and consumers will brand you "creepy" and flee.
Learn how to create meaningful connections that drive the crucial exchange of both data and value for brands, retailers and consumers alike. (And learn when enough is ... enough.)
Alarice Rajagopal: Good morning everyone. Welcome to our webinar, “Harnessing the Power of Analytics to Drive Reciprocal Value for Consumers.” My name is Alarice Rajagopal and I’m the senior editor of CGT. I'll be your moderator for today.
The future of the consumer goods industry lies in the power of data and analytics, especially when it comes to lasting and loyal relationships centered around creating the utmost value for consumers. However, getting to that exchange of reciprocal value is no easy feat, especially as consumers become more digitally-enabled and informed than ever before. To help us discuss this further, I'm delighted to introduce our subject matter experts on this topic.
Our first panelist for today is Danica Konetski, industry principal CPG for Treasure Data. Previously, Danica was an insights and analytics at both Kraft and Conagra. She has also held consulting and sales roles at Kantar and, most recently, IBM where she was certified as a senior consumer industry subject matter expert and worked in data and analytics services and IBM services for Salesforce.
Also joining us is Jessica Knopp-Gwynne. Jessica's background is in building consumer-facing businesses across a range of industries, geographies, and business stages. She began her career as a mergers and acquisition analyst at Goldman Sachs, after which she received her MBA from the Darden School at the University of Virginia. Following business school, Jessica spent 13 years as a marketing executive and GM at P&G in the U.S. and Europe, most recently leading a $4.5 billion business unit at Chewy Inc., focused on the company's subscription business.
Last, but certainly not least, is Carole Irgang. Carole is a C-suite marketing professional having held positions at global agencies, global marketing organizations, and as founder of her own marketing consultancy Red Shoes Marketing. Carole is a results-oriented business leader who has built and reinvigorated some of the world's greatest brands including Pantene, Barilla, Godiva, Avon, Downey, Kraft Foods, and GoDaddy.
Danica, Jessica, and Carole thank you all for joining us, I can't wait to dive right in. If I can start from the beginning with the title of the webinar as we're talking about reciprocal value, Danica can you start off by helping to define what that reciprocal value is for us?
Danica Konetski: Thank you, Alarice, for hosting today, and thank you to Carole and Jessica for joining the panel. I've so been looking forward to this and I know we're going to have a lovely chat.
Let me start by answering your question about reciprocal values. It's just a concept that is the notion of marrying consumer centricity with the social construct of the value of reciprocity. The idea is that if we stay rooted to the thoughts of consumer centricity, which we've all been stewards of for as long as I can recall. We know that we do our best work on the days when we are allowing the consumer to be our North Star, and allow them to guide our work to design, build and implement products, programs, and services that solve their needs and desires.
We marry that with the value of reciprocity. You are then best able to understand that consumers will share their value, time, money, stamp of approval that's commensurate with the value that we give back. The value of the experiences that brands give back to them.
Rajagopal: Jessica and Carole I’d like to get your points of view as well. Now that we've defined what that reciprocal value is, Jessica can you share some examples of CG companies who have done this successfully?
Jessica Knopp-Gwynne: I think one of the ones that immediately comes to mind for me would have to be Starbucks and the Starbucks app. As a starting point, the app is what I would call an intuitive frictionless experience. Already Starbucks is telling me when I use the app that they value my time as much as I value my time, but most importantly they've designed it to be this incredibly personalized experience for transacting as the customer, but also as a way to provide Starbucks with information about the customers' orders, preferences, and geolocation preferences in order to deliver this frictionless experience. At the same time it provides the customer with rewards and freebies that are relevant to that individual customer.
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A fun fact about this is that Starbucks uses AI to send over 400,000 personalized messages every day to create this sort of one-on-one marketing experience dialogue with their customers.
Rajagopal: Wow. Carole, do you have any examples of who's delivering that reciprocal value?
Carole Irgang: Well, I'll actually go the other way, which is when do marketers go awry? Quite frankly, there are fewer examples of what Jessica is talking about, but there's a lot of examples where you actually do give a marketer or brand your personal information — whether it's an email, cell phone number — and you become bombarded with information.
They essentially said, "Would you like to go on a date with me?” by asking for your information. You said, "Sure, let's see how this goes." Then, they assault you with information, and every day you're getting another email or text message, and suddenly there's no reciprocity. In fact, it's the other way around. It becomes a very one-way relationship and that's the balancing act for marketers — to understand the value of that information from the customer, which is pretty precious because it's your personal information, and you've raised your hand and said, "Okay, I'm willing to have a relationship with you."
Now, that entry, that door opener that they gave you has been abused by rushing in with a fire hose of non-stop information. The key for marketers is to understand, to Jessica's example, how do you deliver that frictionless experience while providing value, things that delight me, interest me, excite me, and keep me wanting to come back for more, as opposed to, "Let me just send you my deal of the day, because eventually you're going to buy something."
Actually, no, eventually I'm just going to unsubscribe. That's the balancing act for marketers, to hold precious that data and use it properly.
Konetski: I’d like to share my favorite example of reciprocal value — Shiseido cosmetics. I love to share this story because it's such a great example of when a consumer will give you all of their data short of their DNA, because what you get back is so valuable. You can go on their website and whether a loyalty member or not, you can give them your location. So they'll look at the weather, but you can tell them about yourself, your age, gender, if you're stressed out, you take a picture and they diagnose your skin, and they immediately tell you where you might want to pay a little more attention or what's going well.
Then, they give you the regimen — the products to use, and even drop it in the cart for you to make it easy. I just love that example as, "Hey, I will give you as much information about myself as I can because what you're giving me back is the promise of looking younger, longer."
Rajagopal: I've tried it, I'm guilty of it. It's such a fine line between that value, then crossing the line, and they're gone for good. What not to do sometimes is just as important as best practices.
In our recent Retail and Consumer Goods Analytics Study, 61% of CG respondents cited consumer insights as their number one focus area for analytic efforts. However, 42% also said the inability to integrate data from multiple sources is one of their top analytic challenges. Obviously, without good data it's hard to get good consumer insights. Danica, what do you think contributes to this gap between priority and reality? Is it changes in shopper behavior? Is it lack of the right technology, tools, or is it something else?
Konetski: There's a few questions in there, but certainly CPG has a lot of data. They're not short of data, they've always had a lot of data, always been driven by the consumer. The specifics within CPG that make it a little bit more tricky is that a lot of that data is at an aggregated level and not at a personal level.
The data that they do have is typically managed, owned, and housed external to the organization — it’s not close enough to the marketer — which means that they've surrendered the relationship, in a way. There's a go-between, they're not having that one-on-one ongoing conversation. There are exceptions, and there are a lot of CPGs who are meeting the moment. Those who have data strategies to get more first party data to connect and unify all of their data, bringing it closer to the marketer, but historically the business model was different, how they interacted with the consumer on balance was more indirect than direct.
You were also asking about shopper behavior. Sure, it has certainly changed with COVID, even before COVID, and it'll never be the way it was before. But even more important than shopper behavior changes are the fact that shopper experience, expectations, and desires have changed — consumers' expectations for personalized experiences, and consumers' expectations that you anticipate their needs.
That's the change, as much as anything else, that's what's driving a need for us to shift the way that we market and communicate to them.
Irgang: Building on Danica's point, one of the things that we've seen over the years in CPG organizations is historically very siloed, fragmented organizations. The data is actually sitting in multiple places across the organization, not in one place where there's a truly holistic view of the information. I've seen organizations where the customer data coming in from their call lines is sitting in one place, the information coming in from marketing campaigns is sitting in another place, and sales data about the customer is sitting in another place.
Nobody has a single view of the customer, that's a problem. Many organizations are starting to break down those silos and get to that single view. The other thing is skill set. As more and more data sophistication happens, how do CPG companies start bringing new skill sets and technology to enable this into their organization? A lot of companies are now starting to play catch-up.
The third piece is historically CPG companies have not had first party data. If you think about who the CPG company sells to, they sell to the retailer — they sell to Publix, Kroger, Walmart — they don't have direct-to-customer consumer relationship. Now, you're seeing more and more CPG companies, whether it's through building e-commerce platforms or other means, really build their first party data capabilities such that they actually do control, to the degree that you can these days, that relationship and not have an intermediary do it.
Somewhere in the next three to five years, you're going to see a very quick escalation of new skills, technology, capabilities in CPG to manage that wealth of data that exists. Right now, it is like a fire hose of information coming in, and if you don't have the means to manage that well with the right platforms and capabilities, it's not useful to anybody, and is very hard to then action.
Rajagopal: Carole, you're touching on this a little bit, but I wanted to stay with you as we're talking about research. I know you recently completed a survey among CMOs and their marketing capabilities. Can you talk about this a little bit and tell us what you learned about how leaders are thinking about the importance of collecting own and first party data?
Irgang: Let me give a little background on the study. We did a study to understand how CMOs are thinking about the capabilities that they need to future proof their organization. We identified about 40 different capabilities, and asked them two questions: How important is this capability to your organization? And how much impact if you had this capability do you think it would have on your organization? Particularly in the area of growth, importance towards growth and impact towards growth were the two questions.
The first overarching results of the study told us that amongst these things marketers are really looking for things that they can control, capabilities they can control. Whether it's organizational capabilities, the agility of their organization, the HR components of the organization, and so on. That's what you would see, those are the things that they said were the most important and would have the highest impact in varying degrees.
It becomes less important and less impactful to those organizations. Things like the reciprocity of data and that shared relationship around data, which is interesting that marketers did not think that that was going to be important or impactful for their growth. That’s because they don't know what to do with that, and don't know what that means fully today.
What we also saw in this study is that the interconnectivity of capabilities becomes really important. You'll see something around some omnichannel capabilities and things like that — that's great — I want that for my organization.
In order to get that, you need to build all of the other highlighted capabilities. What we're seeing is that while there's an ambition for more data, more data capabilities, and more holistic views of the consumer, we're not seeing that the marketer understands the connectivity of the almost like building the road map. If I want that as my end goal in the upper right-hand corner, I need to build these five or six other things along as part of the process to enable that.
That's just part of the learning curve that we're seeing. What I'd say to anybody on the line today, if you're interested in the full results of the survey, we have it across sectors from CPG, to health care, to finance, to retail. We have the industry at large, and then we have individual sector data. If you’re interested to see the results, I'm happy to take anybody through it, happy to give anybody access to the survey if you want to take it.
If you want to take it, I'd be happy to play back your organization's results relative to the benchmark that we have.
Rajagopal: Thank you, Carole. It's interesting because it’s similar to our own analytics study where that sort of center of excellence or the goal, the end goal, everyone's on the same page about it, but it's just not what's actually happening.
Knopp-Gwynne: Let me just add something to that, which is it speaks to the need for organizations to have a high level at the C-suite type level owner of driving data and analytics as a core capability for any company. It can't be, it doesn't, it shouldn't sit anymore where it does sit in most organizations today. There needs to be an enterprise-level strategy for this because, as Carole rightly pointed out, it's connecting the dots between having the right capabilities in your organization, having the right tools in your tech stack, and connecting those to business outcomes.
Organizations are incredibly rich in data. What they're not incredibly rich in is a data strategy and the tools that can synthesize and aggregate structured and unstructured data from multiple sources at speed and scale. The technology tools exist. These are things that are readily available in the market today, but either are not well-known, well understood, and certainly underutilized. That's a key point of breakthrough for organizations that really want to step change, their business results via smarter and better use of data and analytics.
Konetski: Can I put an exclamation point on that and use it as an example? At Treasure Data, we published a case study about this recently, and if you look at the case study you'll see that that's an organization that has 500 plus brands. They had thousands of data sources and multitudes of agencies, all managing that data far-flung, disconnected, disaggregated across the globe.
Jessica to your point, we brought all of that together in four months. It can seem quite daunting, but the technology is certainly there. We can do it. We got them to begin realizing value within four months, but one of the other things that's important, and I believe enabled that, was it was a top-down. It wasn't necessarily build it and maybe they'll come, it was, “we're going to do this.”
Organizations might start leaning more toward that, even these very decentralized organizations given the importance of data regulation, security, privacy, the financial and business risk that comes if you're not in compliance. Those things are coming together that might continue to push the streamlining and unifying of consumer data.
Irgang: Jessica, you said it before because it is the foundation to all this, which is having a really good data strategy, and often that is not coming from the bottom-up typically. That is coming from the top-down to set that vision for the data strategy. … You're going to need some fairly senior-level people to drive that agenda and get that overarching data strategy in place.
The reason why a lot of organizations are slow to do this is to your point, Danica, it is hard work. It is not easy, because what you are inherently doing is disrupting the status quo. You're creating new governance models, new ways of working, new relationships within the organization, and that's hard work in big global organizations. The change management component of that alone is very hard.
In fact, I'm working with a global food company right now that just went through, during COVID amazingly, a massive organizational change to category management from where they had been. They did not put the change management components in place and the organization is now struggling to figure out, "Who's doing what?" because that component, that heavy work of the day in day out, helping people work different, engaged differently is hard work.
Don't be scared by that, you can do it in three or four months. It'll take that time, but it'll be worth the long tail opportunity that'll come from doing that heavy, heavy work.
Rajagopal: It has to be done. Time and time again I’ve had conversations with these digitally born smaller companies who come in and know how to do it right off the bat. In order to keep up, it is a big undertaking, but I do think it has to be done.
We were talking about first party data, and Jessica, I wanted to ask how you think that first party data can impact the brand's digital marketing and advertising? I know we touched on a little bit, but I want to see if you have any examples.
Knopp-Gwynne: One of the overriding or overwhelming benefits of first party data is that it really unlocks the potential for what I would call true one-to-one marketing. It allows companies to generate much deeper insight and understanding of their individual customers that is necessary to lead to a much higher value-level dialogue between a company and a customer. It allows companies to improve the relevance of what they say, how they say it, what they're offering to their customer. Most importantly, it allows for much more agile iterative interactions.
Chewy is a great example of this. Chewy, as part of their offering to their customers, has an opportunity to create a pet profile for each individual pet. When they initially created it, it was, as you would expect, fairly basic. What kind of an animal is it? What breed is it? How old? How much does it weigh? You could put your pet's name and a photo if you were so inclined.
If you look at the pet profile today versus when it started, you can see that Chewy is leveraging first party data around customers past purchases, browsing behavior on site and/or on app, just starting to incorporate personalized product recommendations in the pet profile view.
I would imagine over time as they continue to expand that piece of their customer experience, that will become an even richer and richer source of content product recommendations, other relevant information for that specific individual customer based on that specific pet, and probably even the pet's life stage. I could imagine that if you start your relationship with Chewy when you have a puppy. For example, you're going to be feeding your puppy related food and using puppy related services, which are very different needs than when you have a mature dog or a dog with specific health issues.
They're a great example of the power for, frankly, both the company, but also for the customer to make sure that the interaction continues to be relevant and offer reciprocal value.
Rajagopal: We’re talking about digital and marketing. Jessica, what do you see is the power of consumer data and analytics beyond just marketing?
Knopp-Gwynne: Oh, it's huge. It has intrinsic value that is as big outside of the marketing function as it does in other aspects of the business. One example is it can be an early warning indicator of opportunities, problems, and issues that are starting to percolate. One place in organizations where you really see that is in customer service data, which is often underutilized.
I'll go back to Chewy again since it's an organization I know well, and Chewy is certainly known for their exceptional customer service, which they take tremendous pride in and see that as being a key interaction point with their customers beyond the basic, “where's my order” or things like that. If you put aside those low value transactions, there's a lot of high value transactions that Chewy customer service has with Chewy's customers that are regularly looked at, mined, and thought about.
Is the company meeting the needs of their consumers today? What do we need to do better tomorrow to be even better at meeting our customers' needs? That's just one example of the power of data and analytics well beyond marketing. Again, it’s rooted in really deeply understanding your customers.
Irgang: I'll add another example that I saw in the last couple years, again, with a food and snack company. They had run a promotion around one of their products, the uptick of the promotion was much greater than what they had anticipated. So, as people were dialing into the promotion and seizing the opportunity to get the freebie, they had no ability to alert the supply chain. "Oh, look what's happening, we're moving at a faster pace than what we thought from a growth rate."
They couldn't tell supplies, "Go make more so we could meet the demand." The promotion, on one hand, was so successful because they sold out in a couple of weeks' time, much faster than they anticipated. But they then had to kill the promotion because they had no ability in real-time to manufacture anymore and meet the demand.
They probably would have had a really nice runway of additional opportunity with additional consumers, but they couldn't share that data fast enough, they couldn't anticipate and/or model it well enough to then alert the rest of the organization, "Hey, here's an opportunity. We're either going to go manufacture more, we're going to distribute more, we're going to ship more," whatever the case may be.
This is where marketing is not just sitting in an isolated bucket, because it's interconnected to the whole rest of the organization. The right hand and the left hand have to be in-sync to be able to pivot and be more agile. You don't know what's going to happen in today's marketplace, it's becoming increasingly more important to be seamless across the organization with data.
Konetski: In case it matters — and I think it does — we can go right back to the consumer experience. The consumer experience is better if it's one conversation with the company or the brand, whether it's customer service or in other ways we communicate with our consumers and living up to the promises and the expectations that you've set. Just another opportunity to bring it back to the importance of consumer centricity and consumer experience.
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Irgang: We've all seen the data around it, especially given the choice that consumers have today. It's abundant. It's no longer you have one choice in every category; you have multiple choices in every category. One bad experience takes a loyal customer from loyalty to I'm going to go elsewhere.
Those numbers are staggering how high they are for loyal customers willing to sort of switch if you let me down. Jessica, your example about Starbucks, the app and why it's so successful is because they don't let you down in that experience. The stakes become higher. It's not just, "Oh, I've got to deliver a good product. I have to deliver a good experience because I know my consumer can get something just about as good somewhere else even if I know my product is better.” If the experience is better somewhere else, they will go there today. The stakes are higher and that's where the data becomes super valuable, which is why you're seeing more and more CPG companies trying to build their own first party datasets to be able to enable that agility.
Rajagopal: It's so interconnected and I can't tell you how many times I've talked to companies, especially those digitally-born ones where they're not talking about selling products anymore, they're talking about being content-first. If that content speaks to your consumers, there is more of a demand, and it's not talking to supply chain. It breaks down that consumer experience. You're absolutely right about it all being connected and it has to all work together. That content, that data is so important.
Konetski: I'll add a fact about changes in shopping behavior and changes in expectation, and we've kind of talked about the change in power too really. The power of choice, the power of knowledge because the internet's at their fingertips, and the power of influence with their social microphone.
We recognize all that. We applaud it, but as marketers, we should also think about what we are empowered to give back in reciprocal value. The power of rewards, the power of association because I'm a cool brand or I have cool influencers that are associated with my brand. The power of connection and how we form those connections and are there to serve often with content, but serve with relevance to our consumers.
Still, we're bringing the value of our expertise in the categories that we play in and I'd like to also offer the power of distinction. The power of being able to know exactly what is required or desired and being able to deliver against that in a unique way. Finding that balance. The recognition of all the fantastic things they're going to consumers, but also what we bring to the party in reciprocity.
Rajagopal: Danica, while I have you I want to switch gears a little bit, but still focusing on the consumer data. As they're becoming more aware of cookies and app tracking, how does that impact CG marketers' ability to reach their target audience? What advice can you give them to maintain a marketing program's reach and the efficacy?
Konetski: There's a lot in that question. Some of the risk there is we won't be able to rely on cookies in web browsing for targeting our consumers as much as all internet browsers are, the large ones, making moves toward blocking that access. There is actually risk of alienating our consumers, because if we put into practice the ability we have with data analytics and modeling, we can come across a little creepy.
At least once a week, does someone reach out to you and say, "I think the internet is listening to me" because they got pushed something, and so it seems very Big Brother-like? It's actually the power of the capability. I imagine too, that there might be a decrease in efficiency of paid media if the demand becomes short, because we're forced to rely on that more.
That's some of the risks, but I think there's a grand opportunity here that's in front of us to take a hold of. The opportunity is to move away from cookies and move toward people, toward identity, away from touchpoints, and think more about the ongoing conversation that we're having, "Hey, let's jump head first into this world of linking data and creating a full picture."
That enables us best to understand and serve our consumers. We're quickly moving past that toward, "here's the opportunity in front of us."
Knopp-Gwynne: It just underscores the need for companies to invest in data strategy, including getting first party data if that has not historically been their approach. Again, it all goes back to the need to make sure that whatever you are telling your consumer as a company, it has to be relevant to them and for them, because if it's not, you're quickly going to get tuned out. As we've all talked about, consumers have the power of choice, and the power of knowledge at their fingertips. The days of delivering "creepy marketing" are over. That's not going to work anymore. Customers are too sophisticated and too knowledgeable.
Irgang: Just the one step further on humanizing all this, and this may seem like a very simplistic way to view a very heady topic, but if marketers go into this with a sense of “I want to build a relationship with somebody and take the principle of what does a relationship mean like in real life,” in every day, you as a person, how do you build relationships with other people?
You want to get to know them, understand them, be empathetic to their needs and desires, you want to give back as much as you want to get. If marketers just looked at this whole universe of building a relationship with the consumer through the lens of what does a relationship really mean, as if I were going to go date somebody in the world, it makes this a whole lot easier because you can plot the journey of what it means to build a relationship with real human elements attached to it, above and beyond the technology, data, and all that good juicy stuff that you need to enable it. Just put a human halo around all of this, and it makes it a whole lot easier.
When you take the human components out is where it starts to fall apart a little bit. That may be very simplistic, but it's a really simple way to put your toe in the water as you venture into this new land.
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Konetski: I like the data analogy too, Carole, because you're on a date. You're beginning a relationship, you don't want to be called 10 times a day. To talk a bit tactically for a minute, all of this speaks the importance of a strong consent management, identity and access management program in place to make sure that we're allowing the consumers to put their boundaries up, if you will. We all know what that is, and we know when and how to interact, and if not more importantly, when not to.
Rajagopal: I love that. You put your deal breakers out there, so same thing. Danica, how do consumers really feel about brands having their personal information? What is the role of consumer privacy and data security, and how do you see brands managing this?
Konetski: We've talked about that a little bit. We use the word creepy. It can feel intrusive to give your personal information, but ending where we started, they will willingly give you things. We value their time, money, attention, stamp of approval, and even personal data if it's worth it. Given what they get back from us, the value of the experiences we deliver.
Rajagopal: The role of consumer privacy is scary, and how do you see brands managing it?
Konetski: The importance of consent management, identity management, and making sure that we are getting hard matches on identity, streamlining profiles, putting that governance in place, and just being aware of resonance. Being relevant, resonant, and guided by the consumer as our North Star.
Rajagopal: Jessica, what brands do you see who stand out as leaders to best harness the power of data and analytics, or in other words, what best practices do you see? We touched on this a little bit about before, and then Carole and Danica if you’d like to jump in, also.
Knopp-Gwynne: I mentioned the Starbucks example, which is probably one of the best. As Carole mentioned earlier, there are unfortunately more bad examples than good. Another company that is doing pretty well is Sephora. They have a customer experience that allows the customer to share as much or as little as they're comfortable sharing.
Then, Sephora does a very good job of translating that impersonal information, in whatever form it is, into personalized, relevant product and service recommendations. Similar to Starbucks, the more interaction you have with them, which in the case of Sephora, isn't limited to actually making purchases. There are also rewards for visiting the site, visiting the app, providing feedback. They are trying to create this holistic relationship with customers via content, services, inviting customers in to be part of looking at new products, looking at new services.
Effectively giving feedback on what we call the omnichannel experience. Sephora is another great example of doing a good job with their data and analytics to create value with customers but also be respectful with how that data is used and shared. It's one of a small number of companies that I'm a customer of personally, where I don't feel that I get any or very little that I would say is spam. I'm not sure I get anything from them that makes me think, "Why did they send that to me? It has nothing to do with anything I've told them about myself."
Irgang: I love Jessica's Sephora example, and they've historically been one of the best in building amazing customer experiences. The other one that I would offer up is not a brand that I know very well, but I know the story of what they've done very well, which is Harley Davidson. They’ve built a brilliant ecosystem around their brand and the word ecosystem is right because it's not just the motorcycle.
Once you buy into that, and even before you buy into it, you become a part of an entire community. They have their Hog Club that you know, newsletters, a credit card, merchandise, local races that you can be a part of, local charity events that you can be a part of. They have really built the ecosystem around their brand because they understand what their customers want and how they want to engage with that brand.
They've built a whole lifestyle around the motorcycle. There's actually HogTV if you want to watch the races or you can't go to see them in-person. They built out this incredible experience that, if you want to be a part of the brand, we're going to lean into a lifestyle that you want and offer it up in every way possible. They do a terrific job of experience, but also leveraging that data to keep giving back value to customers who want to be a part of their brand.
Konetski: Carole, your example touched on the value of connection, the value of association, rewards, expertise. They're certainly unique and distinct.
They're giving all the value. I will add to that if I can, Peloton. I'm a huge Peloton person, so I'm tuned in and see it. But, how much data do they have about us as individuals? We willingly give it to them and what Peloton gives back is a healthier lifestyle, a community, connection, fun, whatever you're looking for, it's there for you.
They interact with you in a very one-on-one way, which never feels intrusive even though it's very much about me and what I'm doing with my body. It never feels that way.
Rajagopal: They keep innovating. I just saw they're getting into gaming or something. They’re obviously taking that data and doing some interesting innovations with it.
Knopp-Gwynne: What I find interesting about Peloton is that they have the ability to create this incredibly powerful connection with you as an individual, but I would say on the scale of light to heavy true personalization, they're still playing down at the light end of that continuum. I actually think they're leaving a lot of money in the table about that, frankly.
At the same time, like many people, I bought a Peloton during the pandemic kicking and screaming quite honestly, because I thought it was so expensive — do I really need this? I have found it to be such a powerful experience though to be part of the Peloton community. Yet, in an odd way, it really doesn't feel very personal, but there's a lot of other things about it that are so compelling that I continue to be part of it, enjoy it, and definitely interact with the brand five, six times a week. It's a really interesting example.
Rajagopal: Going back to the Harley Davidson example, the other day I saw baby clothes. You see babies wearing Harley jackets and it's such a loyal and big following. They're passing it down to generations.
Carole, if you don't mind we’ll start with you, do you have any last thoughts?
Irgang: What to do is think about this as a relationship, a dating relationship — what does that then mean? What not to do is don't abuse the relationship.
Knopp-Gwynne: I would say to everyone, be a champion in your organization for pushing to get the right data and analytics strategy and capabilities in place. Those will be the keys to really unlocking, taking your marketing and customer relationships to the next level.
Konetski: Jessica mentioned strategy and Carole mentioned perspective, so I'll go tactically. Tactically, I would say consider the value of bringing all of your consumer data into one place, unifying those profiles, and making it actionable with very strong consent and identity management programs in place — consider the value that those steps can deliver back to your organization.
Rajagopal: I'm afraid that's all the time we have for today. I’d like to again thank Danica, Jessica, and Carole for giving us their subject matter expertise today. Thank you to Treasure Data for sponsoring today's webinar, and thank all of our attendees for devoting some of your very valuable time to be with us today. Enjoy the rest of your day.