6 Takeaways from our conversation on marketing innovation
By Stu Willson
As new advertising methods and media have surfaced over the course of the past 20 years, marketing teams have had to learn on the fly and adapt to quickly shifting expectations, both from consumers and executives. With an increasingly dynamic and unknowable future fast approaching, investment in innovation is now an essential hallmark of any versatile marketing operation.
On October 7, Radicle hosted a conversation on “Marketing Innovation: Building an Innovation Pipeline & Creating a Culture of Experimentation,” with two trailblazers in the world of marketing: Jay Livingston, Chief Marketing Officer at Shake Shack, which has been in the midst of a dramatic expansion as it integrates a variety of digital products, and Jeff Weiser, Operating Partner at L Catterton and former CMO at Shopify and Shutterstock. Dave Knox, author of Predicting the Turn and a former CMO in his own right, facilitated this conversation. The recording of the conversation is here.
During this freewheeling discussion, we touched on a number of topics, including emerging media, the role of failure in any innovative operation, and the fine line that marketing departments must walk when communicating a company’s values. Here are a few highlights:
The Importance of Experimentation
Jay Livingston: As marketers, our job is to identify where eyeballs are focused and to put our message in those places efficiently. And while it’s easy to know how to do that in established media, you can only figure that out in new platforms through experimentation. With that in mind, we pounced on several social media channels as early as possible, knowing full well there was a chance that some may never take off.
If you devoted resources to promoting a brand on Clubhouse, TikTok, Snapchat and Houseparty over the last three years, today you’d be disappointed that you devoted resources to Clubhouse and Houseparty, but delighted that you built an early presence on TikTok and Snapchat. The hard truth is that those misses are just necessary casualties in the world of marketing. Today, things like NFTs and crypto are garnering a ton of attention, and if there’s anything we’ve learned, it’s that a lot of these new platforms certainly won’t pan out, but a few of them will become the next frontier. And the only way to make sure you remain on the bleeding edge is through experimentation.
Digital Transformation
Jeff Weiser: I see traditionally analog companies attempt and fail digital transformations all the time, and typically it’s because they frame their new digital product the same way one would think of an IT implementation. They say, “Oh, it’s something in the technological world,” and they therefore think it makes sense to put their CIO in charge of building the app. But then instead of serving the needs of the customer, their new forward-facing app starts to resemble an internal ERP application.
For anyone contemplating a digital transformation, it’s vital that they understand that digital product is going to be the central driver of customer experience — that’s why you need a standalone product function that isn’t buried somewhere in your IT Department. Having a Head of Digital Product will always make a digital transformation much simpler.
The Old & The New
Jay Livingston: As long as marketing has existed, there has always been this expectation that a new, innovative medium would render an older one obsolete: if you go way back, the newspaper was going to kill word-of-mouth, radio was going to kill the newspaper, television was going to kill radio, and today, the internet is going to kill television. But the reality is that almost all of these platforms have long lifespans, even after the next great thing has already rolled along.
With that being said, there’s always going to be a new expertise to learn about or bring into your organization. Now, I can’t tell you what’s going to work on TikTok, but I have a bunch of young employees who use it all day and are great at coming up with content for that particular platform. And as TikTok continues growing, we’ll have to hire more of those people. All of this excites me — I love that I can hire 25-year-olds whose familiarity with these channels leads to a measurable impact for the business at large, even as my department continues to work in more traditional outlets.
Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is
Jeff Weiser: We’re entering a new era in which brands are being held responsible for the social positions they take. Now, some CMOs view this as a burden, but I’ve actually found it invigorating — we’re constantly having to ask ourselves how to remain responsibly engaged in the conversation without ever being too provocative. I also like this recent shift in attention from what brands say to what they do. It’s no longer enough to say, “Oh, I support Black Lives Matter,” because people are going to ask what your company actually did to support the movement and its ethos. As a result, brands are transforming from commentators into actors — and sure, in some ways, it is a burden, but I’ve come to see it as a real opportunity. Companies are being forced to put their money where their mouths are, and there’s a lot that a marketing team can do with that energy.
A Wide Range of Opinions
Jay Livingston: There are Shake Shacks all over the country — even the world! — but we’re still very much a New York based company. So even though I’m managing a large team of very progressive, left-leaning New Yorkers, we always have to keep in mind that there are Shacks in towns and cities very different from ours. We try our best to stick to our values and priorities, but I still need to remind everyone, especially the younger people, about the wide spectrum of opinion that exists in this country.
I know a lot of people who don’t even know someone who voted for Donald Trump — I mean, half the country voted for Donald Trump! So even though it may appear as if everybody agrees on something, that’s almost never actually the case. A company that chooses to take a stance, then, needs to accept ahead of time that some people won’t like or agree with their decision. And this is a hard conversation for a lot of companies, but it’s an important one to have, especially if you’re a consumer-marketing business. Welcome to your future — there are going to be many more tough decisions over the next several years.
Artificial Intelligence
Jeff Weiser: When I ask people what they think about AI, they quickly jump to the conclusion that it’s a silver bullet. “It’s going to fix everything,” they say. “It’s great.”
And then, if I’m in a room of marketers, I’ll ask, “How many of you are actively using first-party AI instead of an external product that you’re bidding on to run significant parts of your marketing department?” And I always get crickets — no one’s doing it. A lot of people claim that the dominance of AI is right around the corner, but those same people don’t use it themselves, and they don’t know anyone who does.
As long as AI keeps making very simple correlation mistakes, I have no intention of using it. I’ve tried a number of those off-the-shelf tools that say, “Oh, we’ll just figure out what the next logical product is for each of your customers. Don’t worry how we do it. It’s AI. It’s an algorithm.” And every time, they get it wrong — it doesn’t work. Now maybe AI will get a lot better, but I’m more curious than I am bearish or bullish.
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