The blog

The parsnip hype (‘pastinaak’ in Dutch) recently put online advertising in the spotlight again. A Facebook ad, aimed at female fans of the cooking show Dagelijkse Kost living in Eeklo, encouraged them to buy parsnips. The sale of this vegetable rose significantly in two local supermarkets. At the same time De Correspondent published a contradictory viewpoint, based on the eBay case. This company stopped all Google advertisements in 2013, but after eight weeks sales figures remained stable. Conclusion: for years eBay had been spending millions of dollars on useless online advertising. Does online advertising work or not? The truth lies in the grey area. To reinforce this conclusion, we spoke with Koen Pauwels, Distinguished Professor of Marketing at the Northeastern University and member of our company's advisory board. He followed the discussions closely and carried out a study on online advertising. Based on his knowledge and our experience, we analyzed the viewpoints in the article in De Correspondent.

Throwback to the time we were 18 and about to reach the pivotal milestone of choosing a profession or higher education. The questions we struggled with back then remain the same today: from ‘What does the business world look like?’ over ‘Which skills are indispensable to become a successful employee or entrepreneur?’ to ‘What is my purpose in life?’. With their educational project ‘Ondernemers voor de Klas’, non-profit organization Vlajo tries to answer each of those burning queries by inviting seasoned entrepreneurs to share their experiences in front of the class.

Technology is fundamentally changing the behavior of consumers, and with it the way customers expect to interact with companies. How can brands break through the virtual noise given the limited time they have? Creating personalized customer experiences is a major opportunity to do so.

A lot is happening in the world today and unfortunately it’s not all good news. War and violence make it into the headlines every day, climate change is real and threatening, the #metoo campaign showed that sexual intimidation is affecting women all around the globe. In short, the world is in a really bad state and our future doesn’t look so bright either. But then it’s that time of the year again when love and warmth are everywhere and when we try to contribute more to society than we usually do. It’s not only on an individual level that we undertake all sorts of actions, but also brands are putting in an extra effort these days. Some of them even go a step further and do not restrict their efforts to the end-of-year period alone. This year, an increasing number of brands have included societal causes in their marketing campaigns. Look at the ‘We Accept’ campaign by Airbnb, in which the brand uses a specific tone to strengthen its commitment to diversity. Or how P&G promotes racial equality with its ‘The Talk’ commercial. This ad shows parents from an Afro-American background having “the talk” with their children about the difficulties of growing up as a minority in the U.S. Closer to home we have the collaboration between Alpro and WWF, in which the brand donates 10 cents for every bottle sold to support WWF in its battle against deforestation.

In this day and age, companies and brands are encouraged to exceed customer expectations by delivering personalized experiences. Hence, it's about time you change the title on your business card into 'experience maker'. There are many definitions, but this one sums it up perfectly: “A true experience maker is only happy when the customer’s life is made a lot easier”. Or as CMO Claire Cronin stated during the Adobe Summit in May 2018: “At Virgin Atlantic, we are memory makers and the customer is the compass.”

You are planning on throwing a B2B event, and you want it to be the ultimate experience for your audience. Clients, leads, influencers, whoever is invited, they have to be wowed. Well, that’s great, because experience is key for the marketing future and you are on the right track. But what could be a good as well as efficient approach for setting up this event behind the scenes? That’s right, start leveraging your marketing automation tool for events as well.

This third part of our 3-piece article series based on an interview with marketing professor Koen Pauwels focuses on the “WHO”: Which skills should marketers have to be able to analyze their data?

This second part of our 3-piece article series based on an interview with marketing professor Koen Pauwels focuses on the “HOW”: How do marketers use data analytics and how well are they using their tools? Indeed, today the market is filled with an infinite number of data analytics software and tools (e.g. Google Analytics, Marketo, Hubspot, Adobe, Marketing Cloud etc.) that help marketers better understand their customers and answer their needs. Let’s have a look at what Koen Pauwels thinks about it.

Today’s fast-paced, technology-driven society has drastically changed user expectations and led to a more demanding customer base. Businesses today face an entirely new set of challenges and expectations. Luckily, data can give you valuable insights into your customers and prospects. It’s now relatively easy to create a profile of your best buyers, their life-time value, their buying preferences, etc. With the help of data you can now understand, meet, and even predict your customers’ expectations. However, now that most businesses are driven by data, we see other challenges occurring. As tons of data are collected every day, it’s easy for companies or employees to drown in the sea of data they collect, or be intimidated by the pile of information coming at them. And how can we find the relevant data for the business question you want to solve? Moreover, how can your data team make sure the collected data is understood and thus used by everyone within your organization?

Koen Pauwels is a distinguished marketing professor at Northeastern University and BI Oslo. His passion for data and analytics has led him on the road of research and experiments, which have let him discover new insights in marketing productivity, metrics and social media. Today, we can find his work in numerous marketing journals such as the Journal of Advertising Research, Journal of Interactive Marketing, Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, Marketing Science, Management Science and MIT Sloan Management Review. As an active member of the advisory board of The House of Marketing, we regularly have the privilege of discussing with Koen Pauwels on his knowledge and experience in topics such as big data and analytics, and also the econometric modeling of long-term marketing effects. We recently had the opportunity to ask him a few questions about data analytics and the role data takes or will take within marketing. Keeping all his insights for ourselves would have been selfish, so we are happy to share them with you! This article is the first part of the interview focused on the “WHAT”: What does ‘data analytics’ mean and what can marketers gain from it?