Real Talk: Marketing and the Golden Rule

Dustin Raney:

Yeah, if you don’t mind, start by giving our listeners a snapshot of your background and what brought you to this point in your career.

Jess Simpson:

Sure. So I grew up in the agency in HoldCo space and also have done a lot of work in partner management and business development. And so Acxiom has always been a partner that has been in our landscape and ecosystem. Most recently I was working at Publicis Group, dedicated a lot to the s Sapient business and I really found a new love for consulting. I thought it was just really fun and a lot of problem solving for a very fluid industry. And there came an opportunity to come work for Mike Menzer here who runs our professional services team and start the consulting business and take over analytics. And it just seemed like a perfect fit. I’m very scrappy, I’m very entrepreneurial at heart and working in a startup environment in a very established data company just seemed like a very perfect fit for somebody who loves data and privacy. So here I am.

Kyle Hollaway:

Yeah, well welcome. We are super excited to have you here. And so you talked there about coming in and starting to really build out the consulting and analytics practice and business. What’s the primary focus in that? Because consulting can be a very broad topic, so what’s your primary focus is in delivering consulting for clients?

Jess Simpson:

Yeah, I would say you could probably compare us to a Slalom or Sapien, maybe a little bit of a Deloitte or an Accenture, but we’re very, very focused on marketing innovation and marketing. And so what we think is a lot of the agencies in the HoldCo space, they’re focused really deeply on media transformation and a lot of the more established big four are focused very deeply in digital transformation. And so the playing ground for us is somewhere in between there to help folks understand that your marketing is sort of this headless spine that can go across paid and owned, but really where the value lies is in that data management and intelligence layer. And so we’re really dialed into that and we’re really dialed into the partner ecosystem. So one of the things that’s a little bit different historically from Acxiom is Acxiom has always been a services company, but it’s been services as related to products. We’re actually services as it relates to our partners. So we go to market really strategically with the snowflakes and the Databricks of the world, the Adobe is the Salesforce and some others. And our services help to marry all of the data that sits within the client ecosystem with all of the intelligence that lives within the applications of the partner software ecosystem.

Kyle Hollaway:

I love that. And that’s a great kind of evolution. There is so much partner activity in the ecosystem and certainly it’s a complex stack as we all recognize from looking at the Lummi scape every year and having to get stronger and stronger glasses. As the tight print gets smaller and smaller with so many partners

Jess Simpson:

Or as we age, I think that might also be,

Kyle Hollaway:

Well, yeah, I was going to leave that out, but yeah, it is a growing ecosystem, a lot of change going there. You talked about digital transformation and you also had a post on LinkedIn like yesterday where you talked about the convergence of ad tech and MarTech that paid and own. Talk to us a little bit from the marketer’s perspective where you tend to come from on that convergence. What are you seeing and how does that impact the everyday marketer?

Jess Simpson:

Yeah, it’s interesting because these words are words that everybody throws around digital transformation, cloud modernization, marketing innovation. It’s like what at the core of that does that mean? And I think that digital transformation at a fundamental level is changing how you operate as a business to deliver value for your customers. And at the end of the day, we are all in service of our most valuable asset, which is our customers. And so it’s uncomfortable because really at the root of all of it, it’s people in process and operations. And I think that there is a misnomer that you can go and buy technology and start flooring yourself into the world of digital transformation. And that’s not really how it works. The tech is what enables it and supports the digital workflows, but it’s actual the people process and operations that are all about the digital transformation.

And so it looks different in different verticals, but the reality though is without your basic foundational block and tackling, you’re building out a tech layer without thinking about how to power tech. So when we talk to clients about digital transformation, they immediately go to CDP or migration to a cloud environment, digital showroom using ai, but they don’t actually understand what that means. And so one of the quotes we always use is if you have built castles in the air, your work is lost and that’s where they should be. So now put the foundations underneath of them, and it’s actually by Henry David Throw. And I think it’s such a good quote because it’s like without your foundation, your AI doesn’t work, your tech doesn’t work, your intelligence doesn’t work. It truly is all about that first party data story and how you think about data collaboration and the process around that.

Dustin Raney:

Yeah, it’s interesting. I love your perspective on technology and kind of layers underneath that and why it’s so important to understand data, right? We are a data driven kind of marketing company. We help marketers understand more about their customers beyond just what we’re doing in the store in the organic, but our digital footprint. So as consumers are engaging across the open internet, we’re leaving behind kind of behaviors, things that about us that are important. There’s no other way to collect that or identify that. But the data itself, however, a lot of that’s being disrupted. Cookies, the things that have been following us along the internet are starting to be deprecated and that’s impacting things like measurement or the whole measurement economy is evolving. How do you see that happening today? Where do you see measurement going with cookies going away?

Jess Simpson:

Well, that’s really interesting because we are definitely in an era of disruption. And part of me revels a little bit in the fact that I’m not solely focused on ad tech anymore because a really hard place to be right now. So when you think about all the ad tech vendors in the space, I mean it is rough and it’s competitive and it’s commoditized because again, those solutions really are only as good as the data that powers it, which needs to be consented and very thoughtfully collected. And so as regulations are maturing and legacy IDs are deprecating, AI is exploding and turning information into intelligence, everything becomes more ambiguous. And we’re starting to realize that we need a more secure first party MarTech strategy and you need to have that convergence coming on the cloud so that you can bring together multiple data sets to do full funnel measurement in replace of MTA.

And so when I think about analytics, and when I think about measurement, I mean the goal is always to look at channel allocation, real-time optimization and how above the funnel is impacting below the funnel. And really what that relies on is representative data In a really good data science team, that’s often where we come in is a lot of engagements we start with are just channel specific campaign specific reporting across email or website or maybe a little bit of digital. And what we’re starting to see is that there are common threads and denominators in there like time, space, place that we can start connecting and modeling out so that we can look at how brand and engagement actually impacts lower level and direct response. But that takes a very specific skillset and a very specific strategy. And I think a lot of people are stuck on, well, how do we think about incrementality with respect to MMM or how do I replace my MTA situation?

And I think they really need to take a step back and think about the business outcomes. What are the key business outcomes that are driving the success from A CEO and A CFO perspective? And then how do the marketing KPIs actually ladder up to that? And that’s where that full funnel measurement comes in because it’s looking at activities across the entire customer life cycle versus just looking at marketing’s contribution because marketing and sales need to be a team. And so we really like that approach. We really, really we’re getting into a lot of AI based applications. We’re doing a lot in terms of ML engineering and being able to automate some of these processes and create an output in the form of a model or an accelerator that can be activated after we understand the insights is another step in the right direction.

Dustin Raney:

And you touched on consent there a little bit. I kind of want to dive a little bit deeper there. You’re quoted saying make sure privacy first people first, the data and the tech will follow. So as we’re grabbing that data about people, give us your thoughts. Maybe you can be as provocative as you want, it doesn’t matter, but on consent and people understanding transparently what’s happening in the background with their data.

Jess Simpson:

Well, I will tell you, if you don’t have a preference center, you’re not doing it. So there’s a number of CMPs consent management platforms that are simply cookie collection tools. And that’s fine for your own properties that you manage. So your website, your apps, but you’re not thinking about anything that’s happening upstream or downstream. And so there’s a lot of really interesting technology that can sit on top of the cloud on top of the CMP and funnel through your own first party ecosystem into a CDP into an email platform, into an experience platform. And really what we need to start thinking about is how to use consent signals for personalization. So for me, if someone asks me for my email address, I might not want to give that right away, but I might be very inclined to let them know that I’m a mom who lives in Atlanta who shops at Whole Foods and loves her Peloton.

It makes me seem like I’m very crunchy. I’m actually not. I love a good diet Coke now and then, but that said, those attributes become really important to being able to personalize how you talk to me. The email address is secondary. It also matters. How often do I want to be talked to? Do I want you to talk to me every day, every week, and where do I want to speak to you at? Do I want to speak to you on Instagram or TikTok or through email? Or maybe I want some material in fodder that helps me get in store because I prefer to shop in store versus e-commerce. And that preference management actually helps to develop better, more relevant experiences. And it’s all given through an exchange of trust and authenticity. And I think people focus so much on this value exchange, which honestly I used to as well, but that introduces bias because the people who are going to give you their email address for a 15% coupon, we’re probably buying with you anyways. So how do you look at your most valuable customers who are willing to give you information and then find other people that look exactly like them within your prospecting customer database and start to understand why are they not behaving the same way? So you can create these digital twins and give them the same type of communication that seems to be driving the loyalty. And you do that all through a very trusted, authentic ecosystem that the technology actually enables. But at the end of the day, it’s a first party data strategy.

Kyle Hollaway:

So in that, I mean there’s a lot of information you just packed in there and a lot of strategy in particular the aspect that historically it seems that primarily marketers have viewed the technology really to enable spot solutions for particular function or a particular channel and just leverage it. And really you’re talking about a much more holistic intelligence based strategy that says like, Hey, not only do we capture that signal or we have it for this particular use case, there’s a broader application of it and it is that next level thinking that you’re talking about. And so my question there is how is that resonating? I mean, you spent a lot of time with customers and it’s one thing to say, Hey, you need to switch out your tech stack, or Hey, you need to buy some more data or look at your data. But when you start saying, as you mentioned all the way at the beginning of really looking at your people, your processes, how that all functions and then moves into the various platforms or applications, how are people responding to that?

Jess Simpson:

Some are like, yeah, duh. And some are like, okay, but how? And so I think when you go back to the type of consultancy that we want to be and that we are, we’re very much action driven. So we’re not theoretical. Everyone’s like, oh, you need a CDP to do these things and you need an experienced platform to do these things and you need an identity spine to do these things. Well, I think everybody knows that, right? Everybody knows that these things are important, but when it comes down to it, it’s a prioritization and validation exercise. And so what actually drives the most amount of return in the quickest timeframe for the particular brand that we’re talking to? Because their objectives might look very different across different verticals. And I think that if you can get into the layer and say, yes, you need an identity solution, but actually here are the requirements that you need because that identity needs to be able to power paid media not just on AL IDs but on data-driven contextual and AI-based impression targeting or the identity spine actually helps you with a unification strategy so that when you get all your data in one place, which is hopefully the cloud, you have a common thread, you have a fabric that helps connect people.

And I think that the identity piece is often looked at on the paid ecosystem really scarily because they’re like, oh, it’s just another way to target people via email.

I’m not even talking about targeting people and the paid ecosystem with identity. I’m talking about getting your house, your foundation in order, and there’s a bunch of data transformation activities that have to happen there and you just have to tell somebody how to do it. And if they don’t know how to do it or if they don’t have the resources to do it, that’s where we come in and help. And so it could be retainer based, it could be staff org, it could just be project based for us, we’re just trying to get you from now to next as quickly as possible with as much return as possible. And so it’s all about that value for us. And I think when you frame it that way and they can see if I do this, I will have a return on ad spend that is Y, or I will have an ROI that is X, or I will be able to eliminate these amount of days in my go-to market process.

That starts to materialize for somebody who’s responsible for driving goals across the company versus saying, Hey, you need a CDP because you need all your data in one place. Which by the way, as we start getting into composable CDPs, that’s not even applicable anymore because the data sits on the cloud. But that’s a whole other conversation. So I think it’s just how you frame it up for them and talk to them like a human realize that they’re on the hook for driving revenue just the same way a consultancy is. And if you can relate to them in that way and help them understand you’re truly there to help drive their business for however long it takes, I think that that’s a different conversation.

Kyle Hollaway:

I love that. And I love you gave an analogy there about a house and building how to get your house in order and having had a contractor’s license, the aspect of building a house makes a lot of sense to me. And I have also used the analogy of your identity is like your rebar in your foundation. If you don’t have that rebar in that foundation, the foundation’s going to crumble what looks like concrete. It’s just not going to be very stable. It’s not going to have that thing that’s holding it together underneath and really creating that strength of how that foundation works. And so I love that totally resonated with me there, Dustin, look like you say something.

Dustin Raney:

Yeah, I was just going to kind of go back to really you’re talking about preference center and I don’t think people think enough or we don’t even talk enough about that sometimes of how important that is honoring people’s preferences. And if you think about brands know a customer, they know things about them engaging that specific brand, but not so much as a human as a person. As they’re changing, they’ve got a lot of different touchpoint and they might engage with that brand with different touch points that aren’t pulled together. So I might engage with a brand with Dustin at Yahoo and then come back on another device and give them, if they can’t connect all that together, they can’t really understand my preferences. And there’s been a lot of debate about if preference should be or consent should be at that touchpoint level or at the person level. So just like how does identity and data really help drive that true human preference, true human experience beyond what the brand can do themselves?

Jess Simpson:

Well, it’s interesting. I’m going to dial into a specific think. You said, should it be at the touchpoint or the preference level? I mean, I think you get privacy fatigue a lot when it’s at that preference touchpoint level. And I’m going to explain what that means and then I’m going to counter myself. So privacy by default really means you’re opted out until you choose to opt in. Now, not every state requires that you’ve got about 14 states that are moving in that direction where GDPR and CPRA set that precedent and then the rest of them are actually very much opt in until you opt out. And that is why it’s so critical to have a consent management platform because if you are in line with the regulatory requirements, that’s step one. Now you have to think about your privacy experience, what your risk appetite is and what your resources are around ML and ai.

Because most opt-ins hover between 10 and 20%. That doesn’t feel like a lot when you used to have 60%, 70% opt-ins around cookie tracking. And so it’s a shock to the brand system. But if you’ve got a good AI practice and a good data science practice and a good data collaboration practice, you might not need more than that because you’re able to set up secure data sharing, secure data collaboration, and look across media exhaust, other publisher, media lakes, other commercial partners, data sets where you can keep that data safe because the apps are natively built on the cloud, but you’re able to ingest all these insights and intelligence signals that you wouldn’t otherwise be able to get at. And then you can go and make the most out of that 10 to 20% and continue to increase it because you’ve got that deeper insight perspective that you wouldn’t have without that data collaboration, which basically is a clean room.

So snowflakes, Databricks, AWS, they do this really, really well, and a lot of them are cloud agnostic. And so it can work across multi-cloud, which is really interesting. I think that if you want to do privacy by default, you should do it at a person level. You might even need to do it at a browser level because that allows the individual to actually say to you, Hey, I’m interested. Don’t force me into this. But again, that’s a complete shock to the system because that’s not how we’ve operated. And I’m not sure that in certain states you need to get that strict with your approach yet. But you should be thinking about what happens if a federal privacy bill does pass and it does look like GDPR, then that’s the state that we’re going to go to. Or when you think about some of the advancements in Europe where people are opting out at a browser or a device level and then they’re coming to the us, that’s going to carry through.

So I think it’s important to have multiple attacks, which again, it just comes back to a data strategy and then build into your experiences how you can collect the incremental data. So again, at that touchpoint center, it could be like, Hey, tell me what favorite color is. Tell me where you like to travel. Tell me where you like to shop. Tell me if you are looking for life insurance. And once you are able to get that type of information, you can build cohorts associated to obfuscated IDs, like a probabilistic identity Id like a Google or Omniture id. And those IDs can map to the paid ecosystem just in different ways, right? Because you’re taking the cohort, you’re lifting and shifting to another type of cohort, but you’re able to target people who have similar values and similar attributes without having to have what’s the name of your first child and give me your date of birth and your social security number. I’m kidding. But it’s that type of thinking that I want to encourage people to move towards. And I’m not going to tell you what’s right for you, but I can work with your legal team to give you options on what to think about.

Kyle Hollaway:

I mean, obviously we’re talking about a very strong first party strategy and more MarTech oriented. We sit within a agency and you have a lot of agencies. Talk to us a little bit about the agency mindset because historically agencies have been like, oh, we don’t do first party, they’re more third party or in the first party contacts, those truly anonymized and they’re just kind of moving from there to more of an audience-based function. How do you see that going and how’s that overlap with your consulting engagements?

Jess Simpson:

Well, I think that’s the whole point of Acxiom, right, is they haven’t historically done first party, but they need to. And they know that. Every agency knows that. I will tell you there is not a job in the world that is as hard as working at an agency on a specific brand. It’s a hard job and people don’t understand how hard media and advertising can be because you’re not dealing with client first party assets in most instances. And if you are, the match rate isn’t good or the data sharing techniques are difficult and you’re not getting data back from the wall of gardens, it’s not an easy job. But I think that’s where you can lean into the Acxioms of the world. And it’s where we leaned into when I was that group across Sapien and Epsilon. They do have those chops. We do have those chops.

We have the ability to touch PI when in some instances they don’t. And so it’s really a partnership to be able to say, how can we be that motor that helps power everything you do in a privacy first way? And we can do that. It’s just identifying the opportunity. And when you look at what IPG is trying to build across their end-to-end solution and engine, it’s very composable. It’s very reliant on our own IP as well as our channel partner ip. But the idea should be is that you’ve got this end-to-end solution at an agency HoldCo level where you have the capabilities built in. And those capabilities could come from I-P-G-I-P, it could come from Acxiom ip, or we can lift and shift partners in the ecosystem that either matter to us or matter to our clients. And that is a different way of thinking about composability.

And the idea being that the data should never have to leave the brand’s ecosystem. We should be coming to the data, which is the beauty of the cloud, which is actually how Adtech and MarTech are converging. You have your first party data story, but you’ve got all the functions of ad tech and MarTech that are coming to the cloud to do their jobs and then taking the results of that job and moving it into the activation ecosystem that they live. But it’s much harder said than done because again, you’re dealing with people who sit in different lines of business who deal with different operation processes and who’ve got different objectives. And so you need that singular person or entity to be able to come in and say, alright, this is what it looks like. Now how do we get you guys all on the same page? It might take two or three years to get a company on the same page, which is why it’s called digital transformation. But you can get quick wins by saying, how does email and paid media on social work together? How does email and website work together? How do website and digital media work together across display? Those are the quick wins that I’m talking about. Focus on that, get your proof points, then expand.

Dustin Raney:

So you just said that MarTech and ad tech are converging, but I’ve also heard you say that MarTech is going to overtake ad tech, which is kind of a more future look, right? Can you break that down for us a little bit? Little bit more provocative, another really good provocative Jess quote,

Jess Simpson:

I actually think it is. And I think you’re going to see a lot of mergers and acquisitions where you see MarTech scooping up ad tech, and so you’ve got these functions where it’s like, is it clean room really ad tech or is it really MarTech? Well, it’s really both because most of them are built on the cloud. And so you’re going to start to be this convergence and then what’s ultimately going to end up in the systems that own the first party data and the first party intelligence are probably going to lead and inform those that don’t, which is why every ad tech company is trying to get their hands on your data. And so I think that you’re not going to scale in the ways that you’ve scaled before and you’re not going to be able to have distributed access to the data that you used to have access to at a row or log file level.

So what does that mean? That means that the ad tech ecosystem has to come to the MarTech ecosystem to execute the same functions because the customer intelligence and data sits in those systems. And that’s what I mean by convergence and MarTech taking over Ad tech. The MarTech, the left hand becomes more predominant because it informs everything that happens until you get to the right hand. But there needs to be this continuity between the two that hasn’t been there before. And the way that we’re actually shifting to that is, again, I keep saying it, but it’s through the cloud because it’s the connection point. And so that’s kind of when I think about MarTech taking over ad tech, it’s going to be that the budgets go more to MarTech, the strategy goes more to MarTech, and then MarTech is responsible for how that actually gets activated downstream versus starting with the media and the advertising and working its way back.

Dustin Raney:

Well, okay, so to stay on the provocative, I don’t know exactly how you quoted this or I’ll totally botch it up, so I want you to say it, but you talked about how the omni experience or whatever is going to be a thing of the past and these little micro moments where you’re engaged in the consumer. Can you talk a little bit about that quote, if you remember what I’m talking about?

Jess Simpson:

I do. I do. And know exactly what you’re talking about, and I love the phrase micro moments. I’m actually going to steal that. So were on, it was interesting. I was on a pitch a couple of years ago and they were saying, how do I get scale? How do I get scale and paid media without an identity solution? And I was like, guys, it’s understanding the, first of all, you should have an identity solution, but second of all, if you don’t want to go to market with ID based solutions because you’re too risk averse, then what you need to be able to understand is this concept called engineered serendipity, which I did not make up. I actually stole from a blog post from a gentleman who I can’t recall his name a very long time ago. But what that means is that’s creating these experiences at scale, these moments at scale in the paid ecosystem that use all of the data that’s appended to you that you’ve provided.

So again, all of the things that you want to know about me as a human, it uses that to embed the right creative, embed, the right experiences, get you that edge, get you that hook, get you that first look at a brand that helps you understand the brand’s DNA, so that you can make that initial connection and you can embed a data collection point in that, right? So those are the experiences at scale. Everyone talks about how AI is going to create hyper-personalization, and they’re probably right, but hyper-personalization is going to happen in a very different way. It used to be based on identity. I think now it’s identity feeding ai, which is feeding impressions. So once you get that nailed down, then you want to push them to an owned experience, an app, a website. That’s where those micro moments happen, those really intimate moments where you’re saying, I know this about you and I’m assuming that you’re really interested in these things in order for us to have that relationship. I just need a little bit more information about you. So are you comfortable providing your email address so I can talk to you this way about these things this often? And that’s really where you start developing an authentic first party data strategy. It’s not around a 15% coupon. It’s about the fact that you understand through really, really deep segmentation who it is you’re talking to and what they give a rip about. And so I think that it’s again, a very different way. It’s not rocket science, it’s just a different way of thinking about things.

Kyle Hollaway:

Yeah, I love that vision and I think there’s so much about that that resonates. My one question is really around the consumer themselves. We have what I’ve always kind of said like a bipolar populace on one side, they’re like, I want to be like the guy at Cheers. I want you to know my name when I walk in and feel like super homey, but I also am this privacy averse, or I’m getting inundated with the weaponization of privacy by some of the walled gardens and others where I’ve kind got this fear factor now building up. So it’s the efficacy of brands being able to bridge those two and being able to give the sense and the reality of the privacy empathy with the consumer and be like, I get you and I am protecting you. I am being protective of your data and this relationship, but then how to apply it in the right places to really drive that deep, intimate kind of relationship. I just wonder how that’s going to play out. The populace can be very fickle at times, right? Fickle fickle,

Jess Simpson:

Yeah. It’s a segmentation exercise. It’s again, who are the two most important people you can hire? And I’ve set this for the last 18 months, a really good privacy lawyer who understands technology and a really good data science lead. Because as you start getting into more automation, the models, whether it’s a large language model, whether it’s a traditional ML model, ai, whatever, they’re not necessarily having as much oversight from a human to say, this is good data, this is bad data. They’re just pulling from all the data, which is why you get so many hallucinations. So I think that you have to be able to segment your audiences, you have to be able to train your models in a way that’s using the cleanest set of data that you can find, and you have to continue to hydrate that because some people are going to switch.

They could go from, I’ve done this too where I’ve received SMS emails for a year about some sort of activity that’s relative to my child. My child then grew up two years a year, and they’re no longer interested in that type of thing. So I declined to get SMS messages anymore, but I still want to get an email every now and then. Let’s just say it’s children’s clothing, but my interests are going to change. So you have to be able to consistently reengage with me to help understand what are you now interested in? Do you like this product or this product? Do you still want to be talked to over email or would you rather text message? And it’s a simple exercise, but it costs money, and people don’t necessarily want to be focusing on that because they’re either putting budget towards prospecting or they’re putting budget towards other type of CRM activities.

But it’s really an evergreen consent strategy. And we work with a couple partners who do this really, really well and partner with us with it from a technology perspective where it’s just embedded in every touchpoint across paid and owned. So you might miss me on one touchpoint when I’m looking at a video, but when I’m on social on Instagram, I might be more enticed to engage because I see an outfit that’s appropriate for my 7-year-old. And it’s again, getting at the heart of understanding the data because as you start to automate, it’s going to pull and it’s going to process what you give it access to. And then there’s of course, this creative strategy. So one of my other big shtick is that you’re now getting back to an era where branding really matters. So data matters, but data is just, it’s a tool, right? It’s not the answer to everything. It’s a tool. But strategy and creative and innovation is just as important as the data that supports it. It’s really not a technology conversation, which is very interesting because everything we talk about today is technology. It’s really what’s your creative strategy? What’s your brand strategy? How authentic are you? What’s your brand voice? And how do you marry that with the data that you have to then enable that through conversations on paid and owned

Dustin Raney:

Man? So taken from what Kyle talked about, the kind of bipolarism and what you just said about maybe the two roles, the good privacy person and the data scientist, I guess my provocative thing would, maybe there’s a third role of data psychologists that a brand might need to hire. Because if you think about social media, we’ve all seen the social dilemma and how AI has already been used to get so hyper personal, maybe that the algorithm understands our behavior so much that it keeps us there to buy more things, and that might ultimately not be the thing that customers are looking for or people are looking for. So how can brands start to understand customer’s true preferences, what’s going to add value to their life, and set that as a differentiator to go beyond just selling them something. But if you think about what you just said about the brand, brand image, brand awareness, what do you want your brand to represent as AI is coming on and you’re leveraging these really powerful new tools, leveraging people’s data at scale, having that really sensitive thought, intentional thought about how to treat humans on top of the thing.

I think it’s going to be super important and I think it will be a differentiator. Absolutely. So yeah, anything you want to add to that? But we’re actually getting close to having to wrap it up. But yeah, what are some of your last thoughts?

Jess Simpson:

I mean, it’s an ethics conversation, right? It’s the golden rule, but apply it to marketing, treat people how you want to be treated, and it’s abuse, the trust that your customers have given you. Don’t abuse the data that they have given you. Be thoughtful about it because one really valuable customer is so much more important than a hundred really crappy leads that just give you a fake email address. And so I don’t know. I mean, that’s just the premise that I’ve always lived by. It’s like when you’re creating your strategy, when you’re working with your clients, what would you want in that situation? So put yourself in their shoes and then deliver an experience that would make you feel good, that would make you feel valued, that would make you feel fulfilled, that would make you feel like you’ve gotten something out of the exchange.

And it’s like having a conversation. It really goes back to the basics of how do you want to talk to people and what does that mean? Because again, some sort of incentive or value exchange is only going to go so far. Brand loyalty is when I miss my flight with two small children and I’m stuck in Jamaica and it’s pouring rain, and I get a phone call from a customer service rep that says, I’ve already rebooked you on a flight tomorrow. Here are a couple hotels in your area. Or they send me an SMS, right? That is loyalty. I will never leave Delta ever because they did that for me. And so I think it’s those types of moments, those are the micro moments that truly matter and that truly advance you. Or, Hey, I see you’re in market for a home loan. I also see your credit isn’t great. How about this offer for you so we can get you what you need? Or maybe you take out this credit card to put your mortgage payment down, whatever that is, right? I’m not, forget my financial advice, I spend too frivolously. But you get the idea. And I think those are the types of situations where you can convert one of those people. You can go and find more of those people. Those people are going to be your customer for life. That’s what you need to focus on.

Dustin Raney:

Awesome. Well, Jess, thank you so much for being on. We do like to wrap with one quick standard question. So if you fed all the data about Jess Simpson and ai, what are the three words that it would produce to describe

Jess Simpson:

You? Oh, tired, caffeinated, and very passionate.

Dustin Raney:

Yeah, I can see that for sure.

Jess Simpson:

That’s awesome. Maybe tired. Mom, can I get two words? Tired, mom, caffeinated and passionate.

Dustin Raney:

No, that’s awesome. And I think that bodes well for you in a capacity that you’re in with such influence on consumer data, right? Consumer engagement and empathy and compassion. So thanks again for joining us today. I know that our listeners got as much out of this as I did, and we’d certainly look forward to having you back. So with that, that’s a wrap.

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