CMO Insights: Brand Power In An Automated World

Tessa Burg: Hello, and welcome to another episode of “Leader Generation,” brought to you by Mod Op. I’m your host, Tessa Burg. And today I am joined by Jeni Gardner. She’s an executive leader in marketing and media, and we are going to dive into talking about the role and power of brand in a world driven by automation and AI. Jeni, thanks so much for being our guest today.

Jeni Gardner: I’m excited to be here, thanks for having me.

Tessa Burg: This is such, I’ll say, it’s a hot topic, but also something I’m personally interested in. I was sharing before we got on, I started my marketing side of my career at a traditional brand agency. And I’ve always been so impressed and kind of amazed at how brands can create these strong emotional connections that truly not only help people feel seen, but add value in themselves. Like, yes, our products and services deliver value, but so do brands. So I’m excited to hear more from your perspective as an experienced brand leader, how are brands evolving? And what is the role that they’re playing today when, you know, AI and automation really dominate the conversation? But first, tell us a little bit about your background and yourself.

Jeni Gardner: Absolutely, so for the past 30 years or so, I’ve had the fortune of working on some pretty tremendous brands, including many Fortune 200 brands. In doing that and seeing the change over the years as well, it’s been really interesting as well to look at brands who are established brands and have the power of being an established brand sometimes feel insecure and look at it as if it’s a bad thing, as they’ve had DTC and challenger brands coming at them and nipping at their heels and taking away some of their growth. And what’s been really rewarding for me is just taking a moment to look across all of those types of brands, you know, the spectrum of brands and what they can actually all learn from each other. Because what I experienced in a lot of that as well, was a lot of the new brands that were coming out in challenger brands were getting their growth by nimble, agile tactics. But it only got them so far in their growth. And really, they had this desire to have the power of being an established brand with consumers knowing, recognizing, understanding what they stand for. Whether it’s an emotional connection, or a functional connection. And likewise, I’ve had the pleasure of explaining that to established brands where, yeah, you do have people nipping at your heels and you have data, more data now at your fingertips than ever. Let’s use that to our advantage because you do have that luxury of being an established and known brand. But how do we take that, and act as if we are a challenger brand and we can do things creatively and differently? And so, a lot of what I’ve been doing has been at the intersection of art and science, data and creativity. And it’s been an exciting ride to solve this puzzle with brands along the way.

Tessa Burg: So let’s take a step back and do some definitions. I love your background and how much deep experience you have in helping some of the largest brands in the world solve these challenges. Tell me a little bit more, like, what does DTC mean? And what are some examples of like the core brands, versus what is a challenger brand?

Jeni Gardner: Absolutely, so even in some of the portfolios that I’ve worked across, we’ve had the pleasure of having a range of brands in different positions. New brands that we’ve created, new brands that we’ve acquired, and/or brands that have been established and around for many, many years. So being able to see that in motion in real-time has been really helpful. So, you know, I actually, when I was prepping for this, I went on and I was looking at a ton of LinkedIn articles. And even just going to the dictionary and looking at what a brand is. And it was just, it was really funny because when you start looking at it that way, it’s like, what is this conversation about? Does a brand even matter? Like, of course, a brand matters. Like, even if we take out, like, to our own personal lives or celebrities even, right? Like, as professionals, even celebrities, there’s a lot of time, intentionality, and care that goes into figuring out and defining who you are, and how you’re going to project your authentic self to others. What events you show up at, what speaking engagements you take, what your career path is gonna be, who you keep company with. So it’s just kind of funny to me that we’re debating if brand matters in today’s day and age. But when I think about brands, I think brands are, I mean, of course, there’s like the visual cues, like logos and taglines. But ultimately to me, a brand is really like how you’re communicating, what product, service, or utility you’re offering to consumers. And sometimes, it’s not even the best product that you’re selling to consumers. It could just be a cool factor, an emotional connection that you’re selling because the product’s good enough and it satisfies a use case for somebody. What I also think is interesting is brand also can be a positive thing, a neutral thing, and a negative thing. It’s not just brand being one thing. And I think that’s what’s really important too, because you could go out there and say all the great things about what you are as a brand. But if the total brand experience that consumers have with you is awful, right? You could have poor customer service experience, you could have a poor user interface on digital, they could have a poor experience with you in terms of quality of the product you sold them. You can have a negative brand experience that you really need to look deep, and figure out how you overcome that.

Tessa Burg: I couldn’t agree more, there’s actually a new story today that talked about new legislation or a law that’s gonna come into place that’s going to require subscription companies to offer a one-click cancel. And as a consumer, I was like, holy crap, that is amazing. As someone who has worked on the other side of subscription companies-

Jeni Gardner: It’s a nightmare.

Tessa Burg: It’s a nightmare, I mean, this is going to impact, potentially end some subscription companies that exist today. But as much as that sucks and people might lose their jobs and, you know, that’s all terrible, what if they would’ve started from that perspective of great brand experience and really investing in how the brand delivers that service? And not invested so much in save tactics, or in making sure that it was as hard as possible to cancel? So I think-

Jeni Gardner: Well, it’s a real glimpse into reality, right? Because if you have something great that you’re offering, and somebody feels like it’s offering value or utility in their life, they’re gonna continue and they’re not gonna cancel, even if you make it easy, right? So it kind of changes the focus in terms of, you know, some of the vanity or, you know, fake metrics I like to call a lot of times. Into really looking at what you’re offering, and are consumers actually really buying it? Are they all in on it?

Tessa Burg: No, it’s an exciting change. And I think there will be a role for technology to play a positive impact in how that service and value is delivered. So if we look at brand, and specifically as brand has evolved over the last 10 years, what is the value? Or how are brands delivered today in that brand experience, versus maybe 10, 15 years ago?

Jeni Gardner: Yeah, I think, I mean, I think there’s some new things that have come out over the years. Like the creator and influencer space has definitely not only come out, but it really has exploded. And I think there’s still a lot of promise and potential in that space. There’s baseline, you know, search, email, marketing tactics, things like that of course too. But I also feel like a little bit of what’s old is new is happening, right? So like, a lot of the best practice in terms of communicating what your brand is hasn’t changed, right? It’s just the freedom that you’re giving an influencer to talk about your brand versus the very scripted lines that you would have for, you know, a DJ read. Or, you know, your own commercial that you’re creating, for example. There’s just a little bit more trust that you have to give out in the system. But in order to do that, it really requires you to provide the baseline of, what is this brand? And the harder time you have defining what that is, the more terrifying I think it is when you start to put the control in DJ chatter or creators or influencers, because you’re actually not really sure what they’re going to say about your brand ’cause you don’t know enough about what your brand is. Or you could be trying to fool people, and then you’re actually afraid of getting the truth, you know? So I just think, the other thing I think that’s really important about brands is like there’s this debate that continues to go around about, does a brand drive short-term value versus long-term? To me, a brand drives value. It’s the levers and the tactics that you take to drive the short and the longer-term. And so, you know, when I look at some of those levers and tactics, sometimes people think we can save the day on these micro optimizations through the lowest of funnel digital marketing and media tactics. And those things are great, and that’s where technology also comes in at a huge way. It allows you to do things you couldn’t do before. You can do ’em quicker, you can get some test and learn reads back much quicker too. So you can optimize in real-time. But a lot of times, what I’ve seen is the level of growth that happens in that portion of your communication or your marketing and media plan is not going to be enough that takes you to the full growth potential that you need to deliver to meet the business needs. And that’s even more why it’s important, that we’re looking at the totality of the holistic marketing plan. What are you communicating? Where are you giving other people the freedom to be fans of your brand, and talk about the great things that you bring to them? And then where are the right environments and places for you to show up and double down on those things, or create personalized messaging that helps people realize that your product actually is relevant for them and has a solution for whatever need state they have?

Tessa Burg: Now, you make a really good point, that when you’re focused just on bottom funnel digital channels, you’re only hitting the people who are already in that moment have a need. And are at least familiar with your brand enough. But if you’re not investing in how they got there, then that pool is probably gonna shrink. And you mentioned earlier about vanity metrics. What are the right metrics that we should be using today to measure the value of that bigger picture, and the totality of brand value?

Jeni Gardner: Yeah, I mean, listen, I think, I always say like, if you don’t know something, you can’t look for it. So if there’s a new feature or a new product, a new service, and you are not aware of it, you’re not gonna be able to go search for it. So it doesn’t matter how great your paid search or your organic search is, people don’t know about it. So they don’t know to look for you. So how do you get them to be aware, to consider, and then take it down even further? Similarly, like some digital metrics, they’re really important, they can be very meaningful. But if you’re looking at digital advertising all the way through clicks, add to cart, and the ultimate sale, if there’s a fall off between the add to cart and the ultimate sale, people could walk away feeling like what we did or what they did was a huge failure. However, if you have multiple ways for a transaction to actually take place, like in a retail location, that’s actually not a bad thing. Somebody took the journey digitally but, for whatever reason, they decided they wanted to transact in a store. That actually is a huge win. But if you’re looking at things in silos, you’re gonna look at that digital, the activities, and the actions you did in digital and think that it’s a fail. So that’s why, you know, a lot of times what I do is I’ll work across marketing and media plans. And we try to even use the good old funnel visual, even though we know the funnel is not really a linear funnel anymore. But the good old funnel visual to really say, okay, hang on, what are we trying to do in each part? Are we educating? Are we driving greater awareness? Is it a price point we need to drive? Is it a functionality use case? Is it emotional connection, and cool factor, cultural relevance? And then how would we measure that? So a lot of ’em are more attitudinal studies that take a little bit longer time. I’m a huge fan of pretesting assets before they go out. To me, you should go out with your best foot forward. And I think there’s been a lot of technology and automation that has allowed the pretesting environment to really come leaps and bounds from where it had been years before. Consideration I think starts to get a little dicey, because does an engagement mean consideration? Does a click and a like mean consideration? So you kind of need to dig a little deeper, and make sure you have the full team aligned on what the core KPI metric is in that space. Because sometimes consideration is a mindset thing. Have I changed your mind? Do you have intent to purchase? Other times, consideration could actually be a high-end product that does require more research. So I click and I’m spending time on a website, and that could be the right metric at the time. And, of course, I mean, the lowest of the funnel is actually getting folks in to be advocates of your brand, and purchase and everything like that. So I’m not a big believer to think that there’s a one-size-fits-all metric in general, and/or for every single part of the funnel. I do think it takes a lot of coordination and collaboration with the experts for each of the channels, the strategic leads who are defining what we’re trying to do and why we’re trying to do it. And bringing the measurement team in early. ‘Cause a lot of times, I’ve seen misses where the measurement team’s in last, they can’t get anything in market to get a good read. And then you’re reliant on historical metrics that may not be the right metrics to be looking for. You may need to make a pivot from the original metrics you were looking at.

Tessa Burg: Yeah, your point about pre-testing definitely resonates. And earlier in the conversation, you mentioned how legacy or large existing brands have an advantage over challenger brands, and it is their data. And that data now, through the use of AI enabled tools, you can very quickly, what used to take a business intelligence team weeks or months, start to get correlations, predictive models that help you pretest, better understand your audience. Get a deeper level of empathy for where they are in their journey. And that’s something that we’ve been working a lot on that I just think is, it’s so eye-opening. All the examples you gave are a clear reflection of you having very deep expertise and experience. And just a breadth of balancing the strategic need to work across enterprise wide silos and bring different people together. Make sure you have diverse viewpoints from experts in the field, but AI and automation is changing so quickly. So how is the role of the CMO also starting to change?

Jeni Gardner: Yeah, I think, I mean, listen, I think with technology, some CMOs are naturally leaned into technology and being early adopters and testers in that space. Other CMOs kind of take a step back and they let everything happen first, and they see what happens. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with either one of those things. I think often with technology, automation, even AI, it’s talked about as if it’s already here when it’s in the very infancy stages. So to me, it’s about being real about where we are. And any of the things, whatever the technology automation is, and whatever the solution is that you’re using it for, what’s the problem statement that you’re trying to solve? Where are you on the spectrum? And even if it’s early on the spectrum, just know that, right? Dive in, test and learn, see what happens. You might be a little ahead of your time or you might not, it might surprise you actually what can be done. I think the patience and the human capital that’s required for it, right? Like, these machines need the right datasets, the right inputs. And if you’re only giving them small portions and not the total view, there could be a lot of things that you’re missing, right? I mean, even think about like consumer signals that are coming back now with what we have so far. Your example that you brought up before about one-button cancel, right? While that could be horrifying to the people that are being paid and that, you know, and check-marked on their job against that KPI, it actually could be really good for the brand or the company overall. Because if you find that there’s a lot of cancellations, hello, huge data signal right there, why are people canceling? You could potentially be refining your product or service to become even better than it had before. And if you hide the cancel button, right? You’re not getting that real talk or real feedback from the consumer right now. I also think CMOs over the years have gotten more comfortable being very involved in the business performance discussion, right? So the EBITDA numbers, what the revenue numbers need to be, how the growth is gonna happen. And, you know, yes, of course, being a brand and looking at, it could be NPS scores or awareness, purchase intent, attitudinal perception changes, that’s still important. But how do you start talking and connecting, and pulling that into what it ultimately means to the connectivity of the business results? So I’ve seen CMOs needing to step up even more. Get their financial literacy in order, really understand the nuts and bolts on how the company is functioning from a financial standpoint to be able to make that connection back to, these are the levers we’re pulling. And because what we’re seeing over here, we’re gonna double down on those. Or actually, something has changed in the midst of our strategy and we need to make a pivot. And there’s a different lever we need to start pulling to make this happen.

Tessa Burg: Yeah, I think financial literacy is one of the most important skills for CMOs because there’s a tendency on, I would even say, the CFO side and other leaders, even COO, to look at things from a strictly, what I call the spreadsheet point of view. So they lose that line of sight to the customer, right? And it’s not that they don’t care about them, and that it is not even like a conscious decision. But if you are a CMO who is truly customer-centric, is taking a data signal that people are canceling as a signal to start to foster innovation and start doing more experimentation with your consumers and customers at the top of the funnel, then you are also going to be able to have a conversation with the CEO, the CFO, the COO, on how doing that customer-centric activity is going to drive that growth back down the funnel.

Jeni Gardner: Exactly, exactly, exactly. I think what’s also interesting about that too is spreadsheet metrics could also become vanity metrics. Like, they’re not really telling the full story of everything. You know, I often get in a lot of conversation about audience cohorts and, you know, we know that there’s certain growth audiences. Whether it’s population size, or we truly have a product that is solving a need state that they have. And so, you do all this work on creating audience cohorts. And there’s a lot of time, energy, and money and human capital that go into it, but it’s worth it when you have the right strategy behind it. But often I’ve been in conversations where you get caught, where audience A costs more to reach or drive traffic with than audience B. And a lot of times, I call ’em like no-duh statements, right? Like, no-duh, like any type of media when you’re buying a smaller audience size would likely cost you more money when you’re comparing it to a larger audience size. But tell me a little more, let’s dig in a little more. And it’s taken the conversation away from just the surface numbers to actually get deeper. Should this audience cost us more or not? Are there other ways we can reach that audience, whether it’s within media or other marketing channels, that actually could be more efficient? Should it be more efficient? Is it okay to be more expensive? Because if they’re gonna be a new growth audience for you, but they’re not really your mainstay audience today, it could be worth investing in speaking to that audience, even if it is a little more expensive because they’re your future. And if you don’t invest in the future now, you’re gonna have a bigger problem later on. So I think a lot of the conversation really has to come down from all the high level, you know, spreadsheet numbers to get into the strategy and the why, because you could have the wrong strategy set.

Tessa Burg: Yeah, I think this is going to change the conversation from being strictly focused on, how many new customers can we acquire and cost per acquisition? To, who’s likely to be loyal? And we hear a lot when we think about the audience of the future that gen Z is not brand loyal. And, you know, is that true? Is that not true? It’s so funny because every gen Z person I know in the real world is extremely brand loyal, primarily to Lululemon because that’s what all my nieces want.

Jeni Gardner: Or Stanley Cups, right?

Tessa Burg: Yeah, Stanley Cups. And like, I don’t see anything else, but brand loyalty. And where is loyalty coming from? Like, I think this is another challenge for CMOs is, when your value’s gonna be measured on how much people really want your product and are gonna stick with it, loyalty and true brand loyalty is going to become ridiculously important to sustain your business. How do you see that? I mean, how have you navigated that in the past with like younger audiences coming up? I feel like this is like every generation, they’re like, they hate brands, they don’t care about this. It’s like, but they do.

Jeni Gardner: Or even like purpose, right? Like, the brand has to have purpose and whatever. And you can go too far with purpose, where you can alienate whether it’s your core or even the new people that you’re think you’re trying to speak to, right? So I think there’s an even balance that you have to pay attention to when you are creating and crafting your brand. And what freedoms you’re giving, and what you’re gonna stand for. But I do think, I think, the way your brand stays the same, I think the levers and tactics starts to change even more. So even when you think about consumer behavior, right? Like Google search, right, is the world to so many people, but a lot of the younger generation are starting to search differently, right? They’re searching on TikTok, or other social applications, right? Which also makes you think of the digital shelf differently, right? So, so far, especially in the packaged goods world, the digital shelf has been Google search, as well as all your retail media networks, right? Again, all very important. But now you have another complicating factor, because if you don’t have money to do all of that alone and now you’re entering into the world of TikTok or other social platforms where the younger generation is, you can’t not be present. So you’re gonna have to pick and choose. Now, it could be a blip. And maybe that behavior doesn’t stay forever. But following the consumer and understanding what’s happening when and where is really important. ‘Cause if you’re not showing up in certain places where they are, the question is, how do you have to show up? You need to be authentic, they’re gonna see through it. I mean, I even laugh. Like sometimes I see videos of, you know, celebrities, you know, hawking a brand and you know it’s a one time only thing. And sometimes I think, like, my god, like, is this ever gonna end? Like, are people ever gonna see through this? But then you see the product explodes and goes through the roof. So there’s something there about having that right combination of your product, and whether it’s celebrity or just an influencer who is gaining notoriety in different ways these days. But I also think there’s a lot about owning your own narrative as a brand, and showing up when and where it makes sense. So speaking in these absolutes, like you said, brands are dead. It’s like saying TV is dead, video is alive and kicking. I can assure you that. I think there’s a lot of people that sit here saying they don’t watch TV, they may not watch TV in the traditional sense. But there is an exchange of content mixed in with advertising, and that exchange is alive and well. And it’s taking place, just in different shapes and forms, right? So I joke with some friends in the industry, streaming is kind of becoming the new cable, right? Just is it more expensive cable? I don’t know. Has the full viewership moved over there? Maybe not yet, but there’s a lot of promise happening there because there’s the power of watching what you want, when you want it. But also, there’s still live viewing happening in those spaces. And there’s also like, “Tell Me Lies” is introducing new episodes every week. They don’t put the full season out. They have the chatter of social, you know, word of mouth, et cetera, happening between each episode. So there’s got to be something there, ’cause guess what? People are still tuning in each week for the episodes.

Tessa Burg: Yeah, it’s so interesting. This conversation has been rich with a lot of great insight and detail. And I think if I were to try and summarize some key takeaways, it’s, one, you know, even though there are so many different ways to deliver brand, so many different channels, it’s really important to keep investing in your brand. And being consistent with the story and the values that your brand stands for, and aligning that to where your consumers are. And I love this last example because I feel like video and media and TV is really just right now starting to get into, how can people experience us differently? And that can be, and it is and has been, really exciting. When you can create those emotional connections of anticipation, longing, interaction, I think something that even retail brands can take a page from. It’s like, we don’t have to sit still. And technology can actually enable us to bring our brands to life in ways that we have yet to imagine.

Jeni Gardner: Absolutely, I just think creativity is still really important. But looking at the data signals, looking at the consumers and ensuring it ties back to the strategy is really key. And I think there’ll be elements of your marketing plan that are going to be automated. And it’s going to take you leaps and bounds beyond where you’ve even been, probably beyond what you can even imagine today. But I also think the power of a brand and doing some really cool things, that you try different things, you get out there on a big platform for your audience is also still really important. I mean, who doesn’t like to see a cool experience come to life between a brand and either a celebrity, a influencer, a media partner who might have a show that’s like spot on, whether it’s functional or emotional to the consumer? It’s always cool when you can make magic happen across multiple partners.

Tessa Burg: Yeah, and in a lot of conversations we have about AI, we are always talking about how jobs are gonna be replaced. But in this conversation, you actually outlined all the work that needs to be done to elevate brand value, retain and serve customers in a way that drives true growth. So I think this conversation has been very refreshing. And if people listening wanna get in touch with you, where can they find you?

Jeni Gardner: Well, I’m on LinkedIn, of course. So you can always send me a message there, and I’d be happy to answer any questions or spend any time with you.

Tessa Burg: Awesome, well, thanks Jeni so much for being a guest. And I hope we get to connect again next year.

Jeni Gardner: Absolutely.

Tessa Burg: The impact of these changes. And hopefully, there will be lots of cool case studies coming out of marketers, and specifically CMOs, doing the work, breaking down silos, getting the right data, and staying customer centric with their brand values, marketing, and experience.

Jeni Gardner: Thanks, Tessa. It’s been fun.

Tessa Burg: If you wanna hear more episodes of “Leader Generation,” you can visit us at modop.com. That’s M-O-D-O-P .com. And until next time, have a great week.