Accountability, influence, GDPR: Festival of Marketing day one round-up

Coty sees GDPR as an ‘amazing’ challenge

US beauty giant Coty, owner of brands such as Rimmel, Max Factor and Wella, has embraced the challenges of GDPR in a bid to reframe the consumer experience.

Director of global data strategy, Kristina Kaganer, described the implementation of GDPR as an “amazing” opportunity to be transparent with consumers and think about the value added ways to use data, arguing that it brings an interesting element to strategic planning.

Touching on the explosion of direct-to-consumer brands in the beauty space, Kaganer explained that just because Coty does not have a direct relationship with its consumers does not mean the business is not there for them.

“We need to be thinking about how we reinvent the relationship with the consumer and how we make sure that when they go to the aisle it’s not just about what’s in front of their face, it’s not just about pricing and promotion, it’s about what they want to buy,” she explained.

“The journey is more fragmented than ever before and what we find ourselves having to do is figure out what kind of conversation we can have with her and not impose on her. You can target people with ads all day, but you also have to deliver value.”

Thomas Barta on marketing influence

As a marketer, you have no choice but to be seen as creating revenue, otherwise you’re dead in the water. There’s also a trust gap: people find it difficult to put their faith in what marketers say because they’re always talking about the future, which isn’t exactly reliable.

This is the stark reality of what it is to be a marketer in 2018, laid bare by author and Marketing Week columnist Thomas Barta during a session on what makes marketers influential.

Thankfully, when it comes to what is considered to be important for marketing leaders to succeed, the things that score highest are those that marketers have control over.

Fewer than 1% think gender plays a role and and just 5% think personality matters. Technical skills (15%) and the company (25%) are deemed more important, but it is being able to lead and effect change that 55% think makes a successful marketer.

People might not trust marketers, but if they can lead change more people will be prepared to follow.

UKTV on the need for alignment between marketing and finance to drive growth

Alignment between finance and marketing on goals, strategy and measurement is crucial at UKTV, and “absolutely key to growth and success”, according to CFO Mary Basterfield, who was talking on a panel about accountability on the Marketing Week Strategy Stage.

She has a “very collaborative relationship” with CMO Zoe Clapp, who together are accountable to the board but also the wider organisation for ensuring marketing spend is correctly invested.

“At UKTV we believe three things are absolutely fundamental to accountability, and that’s agreement on the goal (what we’re trying to do), agreement on the strategy (how we’re going to get there) and agreement on the measurement (how do we know we’ve been successful),” she said.

For an organisation to be truly successful this alignment needs to cascade through many layers of the business, from the board, to the exec team, and through the finance and marketing teams.

“With the alignment of these three you have an agreed set of principles, which create exactly the right conditions for accountability,” she added.

“The goals can vary, and this is critical,” she explained. “If we take television and UKTV as an example, we may be looking to support our core creative values and bring our viewers to a new scripted comedy, which can raise the profile of the talent on our network. Or we might be looking to increase the viewing figures for an established favourite like Taskmaster, which might immediately drive revenue.

“We’re also very supportive of taking risks to learn, which is absolutely critical to create the influential work of the future but in all cases alignment on goals, strategy and measurement is absolutely critical.”