Ask The CMO: Penny Wilson On Marketing In The Age Of The Individual And The Need For 'StoryLiving'

We have moved from the age of experience to the age of the individual. Never has it been more vital for organizations to have a brand purpose and seek to live it and breathe it in all they do-both inside and outside of their companies. As a result of these sea changes, the idea of not just storytelling but ‘storyliving’ emerges in the foreground, as does the need not just for personalized exchanges, but rather hyper-personalized experiences.

For my latest Ask the CMO column, a series dedicated to analyzing the latest trends and disruptions in the marketing landscape, I had the pleasure of speaking with Penny Wilson. Penny is a marketing veteran with years of experience at leading brands such as Macromedia, Juniper Networks and now Hootsuite. We spoke about everything from the company’s upcoming 10^th anniversary, to best practices in brand purpose, uber personalized content and a future where social media goes beyond just marketing to impact many other functions within an organization. Following is a recap of our conversation:

Billee Howard: I'd love to first hear your thoughts on the changing landscape in general, and then how you're approaching marketing as a result of the environment at Hootsuite.

Penny Wilson: Sure. We are in an ever-changing world and given that Hootsuite is at the center of social media, I feel like we're at the center of change as well.

Social media itself has really revolutionized the world of marketing , and advertisers have doubled their investment in social year over year. The outcome has been that social ranks as one of the most effective and efficient advertising channels. Obviously, however, there's a lot of change that has happened this year whether it's GDPR, Cambridge Analytica or fake news. These have all contributed to shifts in the type of information that we're going to have access to. So, I see a big shift from the age of experience to the age of the individual, as consumers.

That said, consumers are moving away from public spaces and moving to more private ones. Marketing is going to have to shift in how we're going to reach them. That’s why the messenger space is very attractive right now. Consequently, we are going to have to shift with these changes, while continuing to be authentic on these new private channels as well.

Howard: Super interesting. So how has all of that impacted your role and how your viewing marketing at Hootsuite?

Wilson: Well, we are working closely with all of our partners and ensuring that our customers get what they need and want in terms of data privacy. We do everything possible to ensure that our customer’s data is safe and secure. We're committed to the privacy and security of our customers data and their customer’s data. One way we do this is to continue to work with all of the networks to ensure that we are working alongside them to do so. As far as how it shifts our marketing itself, it changes some of the things that we didn't know about a customer, and so it makes personalization a little bit more challenging. We are working daily to get ahead of these shifts as in the age of the individual, personalization is even more important. People want you to know who they are and what they want. The days of broad marketing are over.

Howard: So, when looking at all of these changes, hypertargeting or limited access to data in certain areas due to recent events, how does that change how you approach customer experience?

Wilson: We are very focused on our customer experience and spend a lot of time making sure that we understand all of the touch points of our customer and that we identify any areas of friction. We then build our content strategy and our marketing strategy to ensure that our content is as relevant as it can be to what that customer is looking for, and timed to the point when that consumer is trying to speak to us. We also use social across the whole organization, as an example.

We strive to make the experience consistent for a customer whether it's at the awareness building stage, when they're engaging with a Web site or any other content, or whether they're talking with a sales rep or customer support. So, we're using a variety of tools to make sure that experience is very consistent.

Howard: Right. What does everything you mentioned look like through the lens of the employee experience?

Wilson: That’s’ a great question. We're really fortunate at Hootsuite that our employees are a big part of our brand. We really measure our success on our customers’ success and our employees are vital to that equation. We treat our employees and our community the same in that and we believe everyone should have a voice. We use our culture to champion that point and live our overall purpose as a company which is to “champion the power of human connection.” That’s how we live and breathe every day.

Howard: You actually got to exactly what I was going to ask you next, which is how brand purpose factors into everything we're talking about?

Wilson: Yes, well you know it's a very interesting question. We redefined our purpose a couple of years ago and we did it as an exercise with our customers and our employees. We use our purpose as our North Star and guiding light. We try to make sure that everything that is talked about whether from the thought leadership perspective or internal communications, comes back to our purpose. We really try to make sure that in everything we do takes us back to that purpose. I think purpose is an evolutionary thing, not a revolutionary thing that everyone immediately connects with. One of the organizations I believe has done a fantastic job of it is Facebook. You see in everything they do, it ties back to their purpose as an organization and that is our mantra here.

Howard: Cool. Going back to something you mentioned earlier about hyper targeting. Do you have any best practices that you can share that that might make sense for people to learn from?

Wilson: I guess from a best practice perspective hyper personalization needs to begin with content. At Hootsuite we try to make it human and relevant. We try to build it in a way where it's sort of in bite sized chunks so it can be scalable and people can get engaged with it as a story. I think that one of the key things we see in the market right now is this evolution from storytelling to storyliving. This is why I mentioned how we live and breathe our purpose every single day so that we can be that living example.

Howard: When I'm not doing this I'm Chief Strategy officer of an emotional intelligence nueordata firm and we are very focused on the idea that we have evolved not only into an individual economy, but also an emotion driven one. So, everything that we've discussed today, to me, is potentially driven by a deeper understanding of how people feel to get them to act. I'm curious as to your thoughts on the value of emotion and how it applies to marketing?

Wilson: Emotional intelligence is a really important component of marketing.

Obviously it's not the whole picture because a lot of marketing is also about numbers and data, but on the emotional side it's critical as it helps reinforce the human side and a brand’s authenticity.

You need to think about your customers from both an EQ and IQ perspective. EQ is using social data to develop emotional relationships with your customers  and IQ is using social data to drive business outcomes.

Key to emotional intelligence is when you make a mistake, admitting you made one. It’s those human things that people really connect with and understanding the emotions that drive such moments can be extremely insightful. I think it's super important, although a challenge when personalization is so important in today's world.

Howard: Is there anything that you'd like to share marketing-wise that you are exceptionally proud of this year or looking forward to in the year ahead?

Wilson: I'm excited about a lot of things. We’re often looked at as a thought leader in the industry and we are excited to celebrate our 10th anniversary, which in the social world is really amazing. We’re calling it our Hootiversary and are focused on making sure that we are servicing our customers in a way that really identifies with what we see as the future. We are also using this time as an opportunity to be really honest about what we think are the challenges that people face. We see social going beyond just the marketing organization and penetrating the whole organization, whether it's sales, advocacy or it is customer support.

I think artificial intelligence begins to play a big role. When people talk about artificial intelligence they often think about chat bots. The real beauty of artificial intelligence is the idea is that it will help us get to that human factor through more relevant info faster. That’s a really important thing that we're working a lot on with our customer support team and will continue to do in the year ahead. That kind of goes back to that whole experience, and with that in mind another thing we will be looking at tackling is ensuring that our customers can get the most insights from the data that they have. So, we're doing a lot of work with our partners to ensure that they're getting value from all the data that they're acquiring. I think that social data, kind of coming back to your emotional intelligence idea, is a critical area that will enable marketers to gauge where emotion is coming from.