Moving Slow to Move Fast with Data as Momentum - with VML's Kiessé Lamour

In a world where we have unlimited access to data and dashboards, are marketers focused on the wrong things? Kiessé Lamour, Global Head of Media, Commerce, at VML, warns that you'll get what you measure: focus on isolated metrics means you'll miss the big picture and the gains that come from understanding context.

Kiessé's shiny new object is data as momentum, not as a post mortem analysis. She suggests marketers approach it as a live pulse of what's working, as "the magic truly happens when you use data mid-flight to pivot your campaigns, optimise your marketing activity, and adjust and personalise your message."
Music to our ears at Automated Creative, where we believe in live creative optimisation that delivers results, while giving clients the insight to know why those results are achieved.

Find out how to stop treating data like a report card, why taking a step back and working slower can make you more effective, and how to differentiate between signals and distractions, on the podcast.

The following gives you a good idea of what was said, but it’s not 100% accurate.

Kiesse Lamour 0:00
Stop treating data like a report card. Start treating it like a GPS, because data isn't just about approving performance anymore. It's also about empowering that performance.

Speaker 0:17
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Tom Ollerton 0:50
Hello and welcome to the shiny new object podcast. My name is Tom Ollerton. I'm the founder of Automated Creative, the creative effects on this ad tech platform, and this is podcast about the future of data driven marketing. I've done like 300 episodes of this thing, man, and every week or so, I get to interview one of our industry's leaders of their vision for the future of data driven marketing. And this week is absolutely no different. I'm on a call with and I'm going to get the pronunciation as best I can. Kiesse Lamour, who is Global Head of media commerce at VML. So Kiesse, for anyone who doesn't know who you are and what you do, could you give us an introduction?

Kiesse Lamour 1:28
Yes, and you got my name really right Tom, thank you for that. My name is Kiesse Lamour. I am Global Head of media commerce at VML. I've been at the company for about four years, and my career has been quite diverse, because I've worked across agencies and also tech companies, and then started my career. The early days of my career started in France, where I worked client side. So I like to say and brag that I have the 360 view of the industry.

Tom Ollerton 1:58
Well, you just created an incredibly high precedent for this podcast. So, you know, set yourself up one way or another, but let's get to it, right? So I always send out a list of questions, and anyone can choose any question they like, but you chose the weird one, right? Which is the last question, which is, how would you want people to remember your career?

Kiesse Lamour 2:17
I mean, now that you said, I'm weird, I...

Tom Ollerton 2:19
don't know. I didn't say that. I said you chose the weird question.

Kiesse Lamour 2:25
Listen, I like to do things differently, but to answer your question, and this is actually a very profound question, when you think about it, right? Because if I were to answer it based on what cultures define success. I probably would have gone for, you know, the speech win, or that Award nomination, or that project that helped, you know the business deliver X amount in cost efficiency. But I decided to fast forward my life to my last day on earth, or even standing over my tomb, my grave. And this is the weird part, and all of a sudden, what I've realised is that none of that truly matters anymore, right? And I'd rather be I'd rather people remember my career, not just by the things that I've achieved or the results that I delivered, but by the way that I showed up, right, that I showed up with integrity, with passion, with intention. Because I'd want people to remember my career by the positive impact that I had on them. So if my journey can inspire other people to think differently or take bolder steps in their own path, then that's the legacy that I would be proud of. I want people to remember me or remember my career as fearless, or that I pushed the boundaries, that I challenged the norms, and that I never settled for the easy win. I want people to remember that I cared deeply, that I led with authenticity and left the room better than I found it right, that I made space for other people, that I lended my voice to those who couldn't use theirs still for what is right. If I can achieve that Tom, then I will be very, very proud from my grave.

Tom Ollerton 4:31
Yeah, I was gonna say you can't stand over looking at your grave and think about content effectiveness. You know, my god that is unquestioned a profound answer, yeah, good for you. Man, brilliant, even on that little pitch there, I think you may well be, so second question, do you have a single bit of data driven marketing advice that you find yourself sharing most often when it comes to being a better data driven marketer? Do you find you know like someone new on your team starts you know, come here, and you give them a little pep talk. What do you say?

Kiesse Lamour 5:02
Yeah, I think when it comes to I think what immediately comes to mind is and things that I tell myself and things that I tell people that I lead never lose sight of the bigger picture, right? What do I mean by that you as a as a person that works in media, as a person that works in marketing, you need to fall in love with the why, right, not just the numbers, not just the data, not just the metric. I always encourage people to not just track metrics for the sake of tracking metrics, but actually interrogating them, challenging your biases, challenging your assumptions, and always asking yourself, what is this number actually trying to tell me? So we need to look at metrics in a in a holistic manner and not in a siloed way. So if I look at the context of commerce, for example, 1000 clicks mean nothing if no one converts, if no one is buying your product. So focusing on intent and not laws is actually critical. Basically, learning to separate and sift through signals. The difference between, you know, what is signals and what is what is actually distractions. And I think this, this makes the, the fundamental difference, in my humble opinion, between great marketers and those that are completely average of their jobs. Because I fundamentally believe that the best marketers are not necessarily spreadsheet wizards, right? Because management by spreadsheet, as I often call it, just to have a laugh, rarely works, right? Because the people that make the most of data, they tend to hunt for insights. They hunt for insight, and they are willing to listen to those insights and enable those insights to pivot the strategies, inform the strategies, pivot their approach, inform the optimization. And I think that is really, really important. Because I think when we talk about data driven, there is always a risk that we become data blind and in the context of being a best or an effective data driven marketer, it's all about understanding that context is also critical, be it economical, be it geopolitical, and we've certainly seen that, for example, with the Trump tariffs, as I call them, be the competitive context, being consumer psychology, all of that, all of that, matters just as much as the numbers that you are reading on a spreadsheet.

Tom Ollerton 8:01
So we're now going to move on to your shiny new object, which is data as momentum. So why? What is that? And why is it your shiny new objects?

Kiesse Lamour 8:14
So it's my shiny new object, and I don't think it's really, you know, shiny per se. And I think it's more of a of a mindset that I would like to see more marketers, more media practitioners, embrace. And this is based on, you know, years of working in media, you know, dealing with different sort of clients, dealing with different sort of teams. And I think when I talk about data as a momentum, what I mean is that data shouldn't be and sort of in line with what I said earlier, right? Data shouldn't be a post mortem. It should be a live pulse, because too often, we tend to obsess over reporting after the fact, but I think that the real magic truly happens when you use data mid flight to pivot your campaigns, to optimise your marketing activity, to adjust to personalise your message. It really truly is about measuring performance to move forward and not just to prove what has already happened, right? And if I could truly shake one mindset into every marketer and every person that works in media, especially digital media, it's this, stop treating data like a report card. Start treating it like a GPS, because data isn't just about approving performance anymore. It's also about empowering that performance. So letting go of the static reporting and starting to embrace what I would like to coin as live intelligence as the heartbeat of your marketing activity is what I really want. For every marketer and every media practitioner to embrace.

Tom Ollerton 10:02
Oh, God, you talked to the right person here. And you know, I feel your passion and your pain, because in we've been doing this since 2018 right? And that's all we do. Your job is far more ancient than just just optimization. But we're like, right? Would you rather set and forget a campaign and let it die a death and then do a report on it? Or would you look at the data signals and optimise it based on what's working and why? For me, there's no argument, right? And we've got a handful of clients that do this all over the world, but love it and live and die by it. But some people are like, they want, the report they want. They want someone to make a thing, and they want someone else to put that thing live, and then they want to report at the end of it on how the thing did. And you said it so beautifully, it's post mortem versus this, on this live thing, like data should keep the thing alive, not be there to mark homework after it's dying.

Kiesse Lamour 10:58
Yeah. And it starts at the beginning, right when you are working with data, it's about leveraging data as an insight, a platform or system to inform your planning, to inform your strategy, and then using that same data as part of the activation process, using data as part of the optimization process, and using that data, yes, as part of measurement and postmortems in order to inform future strategies. But I think when we talk about data as well, and I think I did reference that in the previous questions, context really matters as well, right? Because sometimes clients or agencies, we will look at something and really, just like, zoom into it and forget everything around what that data is telling you. And really, just like, be obsessed with that singular data, that singular number, that singular figure that is in red and completely forgo of the entire context, be it, you know, the business context that could be impacting the performance of your marketing, or even maybe your product being crap, right? Your product not addressing consumer needs or or consumer challenges, right? What is it that they're trying to solve for? And that is very much important, like trying to contextualise that data is really, really key.

Tom Ollerton 12:26
Well, one of the things that I learned from writing a book about data and creativity recently is that we are obsessed with the data that's easy to get but the most important data isn't is rarely the easiest to get hold of, right? Whereas you open business manager, or whatever it is, and this, this kind of like, this deluge of data drops on you, and that's so easy to get right, versus getting on a train, getting on a bus, going to wherever the consumer is and say, Well, why didn't you buy that? Or what is it about that that you loved or didn't love? You know? Like, that's so hard to get it's a very different type of data. But the data driven marketing, organised industry is all based around easy data, right? But everyone I speak to with any experience, with any clout, such as yourself, he's like, no, no context. What's going on around these numbers? Right? Don't fixate on the number. The number is a shadow of a person, not the person?

Kiesse Lamour 13:22
Yeah, exactly. And when you say about, you know, data that is easy to get, as opposed to, you know, everything else that provides the broader context, and that's where I, you know, tend to make the difference between data and insight. Data is not insight. Data is just a piece of stick. You can make data talk and you're there. You know, every other way you want it to talk, it's about really understanding the why, asking the why, and being honest, be having the courage to also be ready to hear those answers, right? And it's very important. And I think, as a marketing manager, marketing director, sometimes when you are interrogating your data, you don't necessarily like the answers that you're getting, but if you're going to improve your marketing activity, you have to be able to be honest and have the courage to accept what the Insight is actually telling you beyond the numbers, it is important.

Speaker 1 14:27
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Tom Ollerton 14:58
Yeah. So one of the things I've been talking about on LinkedIn, gosh, sounds pretty sad, isn't it, right? But I have whatever is that, like, everyone's got data, everyone's got decks, everyone's got dashboards, right? The three Ds, like, there's loads of... inspiration is very hard to come by, right? So it's easy to get data, as mentioned, it's easy to whack it in a dashboard. It's easy to crank out a deck, right? Generally, like, it's easy, we're easy, but that's not what brands don't need those things. Brands needs inspiration, right? So they're going to sell the new thing. They need to be they need to be inspired for exactly what to do. And that inspiration can't be like, Oh, well, Facebook did better than Instagram last week, generally, it's, or whatever, like, that's, that's, that's, it's a data point to get them going. Oh, statics did better than video. That's not an insight. That's a that's, that's information. All this goes in a deck and you can see on the dashboard. But what, what we get really excited about is because we tag everything, so we don't go this, this audience did well, or this ad did well, or this format did well, go, ah, these psychological triggers, written and visual within ADS, those are the thing that made the thing do, the thing that you wanted it to do, right? So we so then a brand could go away and be inspired by what they're going to do next. And it's like, but no one talks about inspiration. They just talk about decks, dashboards and data. Why?

Kiesse Lamour 16:19
Because everyone's obsessed about reporting, right? We've become organisations that are obsessed about numbers and spreadsheets, the management by spreadsheet, and this is really something that we need to try to get out of. And I can understand, right? We all have targets. We all have CFOs that are breathing down our necks. So yes, we need to be close to the spreadsheet. But I think, you know, infusing that with the wider context, with the insight, and trying to explain, trying to understand the why is important. And I think on this point, I also remember a danger that one of my lecturers when I was in business school in France used to say, it's like, when you start your career, there's something that I would like you to be really, really really careful of and he used to tell all of this, all of the student that that be careful how you treat data, because you will tend to get what you measure. So it's like you get what you measure if you're measuring the wrong thing, if you are obsessed about, I don't know, you know, in the context of commerce, of ROAs, and that's all you want. You want me to deliver that ROAs in green. And you're not interested about the wider context, you're interested about the insight, about the audience, about the competitors, what is happening in industry, what is happening in your category, then I can deliver ROAs. I just have to target all your brand keywords, and I will deliver your ROAs. But is that the right approach when you're trying to drive penetration, when you're trying to drive recruitment and increase your customer base? No, right? So being careful of you get... what you measure is also something that we need to bear in mind as marketers.

Tom Ollerton 17:56
So where are you weak on this? Right? Because you talk a very good game, as do I, you know, we can say, however, doesn't get it and we get it. So where are your weaknesses? Like, because, yes, you get what you measure. Do you find yourself falling into that trap yourself? Like, how do you do you get? Oh my gosh, I sat up, you know, I worked all weekend, working out what the ROAS was actually, what I really should have been doing is, you know, understanding the wider context. Where do you get tripped up by yourself?

Kiesse Lamour 18:21
So like everybody else, right? I'm not perfect. I have blind spots. And I think for me, where I really get tricked off is when we are and what I'm going to say is quite bizarre, because we work in a in a fast paced industry, but when we don't provide teams with the space to really think about the strategies that they are putting together. We all tend to just like revert in this fast paced way of working to what we know, to what we're comfortable with, right? And they're not really pushing the boundaries of our thinking and challenging our thinking and really challenging and pushing and trying to understand exactly what needs to be done and how I think I get tricked over by that, you know, sometimes, and I have to catch myself, and I have to catch my teams and say, no, no, we just need to take a bit. We need to take a step back, if we need to manage expectations with clients about, you know, maybe delivering a piece of work a little bit later, so that we get that space to really think strategically about what needs to be delivered, but also having the right measurement approach to what is it that we need to deliver is important. And I think sometimes when you have to deliver work like, you know, churning work like on a conveyor belt, we can get tricked over and just revert to what we're comfortable with.

Tom Ollerton 19:39
And that's getting worse with AI, isn't it that like speed, speed is is seen as far more valuable than quality at this point in time. And I'm, you know, I'm almost, almost wondering if we'll get to a point where, like, we go, like, this project needs slow thinking. We just back off, yeah and yes, I'm sure you could crank you could get 95% of the answer from Chat GPT in 20 seconds. But actually, you need 100% you need to be 100% right? You don't need it to be, wow. That's pretty much there. You know, if someone's designing a party invite for the Christmas pizza or something, who cares what? Crank it out. But yeah, like, if everyone else is going to just do it fast, then that creates some massive opportunity for, you know, for teams such as your own to just go, No, we are going to be a day late, but it's going to be 100%.

Kiesse Lamour 20:23
Yeah, exactly. Because sometimes, and this is, this is, this is advice that I get from from my mom, is like, she will tell you, sometimes moving fast is moving slow. So by wanting to do something in a hurry, you actually end up creating more work for yourself because you're delivering substandard works that will need to be reworked and re reviewed and readjusted, as opposed to if you are taking just another day, right and everybody calm down and chilled just another day that would have enabled you to deliver work that is a high quality. And yes, but you know, those are just the realities of the industry that we work in, and we need to learn how we, we we navigate those challenges. And I think, you know, you mentioned AI, and I think you know, in the context of AI is, how about leverage, how we learn to leverage AI to enhance the work that we do and not necessarily replace the work that we do, especially when you think of it in the context of creativity, right? I'm still not one of those people that believe that AI is creative, right? I don't think creativity can be engineered. I think you still require human input. But can AI help you supercharge that creativity and help you push your thinking absolutely right? It's all about using AI as an as a helper and not a replacer.

Tom Ollerton 21:57
So we're gonna have to leave it there, unfortunately. So Kiesse, if someone wants to get in touch with you, where should they do it, and what makes a message that you'll actually respond to?

Kiesse Lamour 22:12
I mean, straight to the point. You know, you know, try to hook me up on LinkedIn. I'm French. I'm very direct, straight to the point. So hi, tell me who you are, what you want. Boom, I don't need to know your entire life...

Tom Ollerton 22:26
You know whenever you get a message from LinkedIn where you have to scroll you like...

Speaker 2 22:31
Exactly you know, I need the mental ability reading one emails.

Tom Ollerton 22:37
Yeah, indeed. Thank you so much.

Kiesse Lamour 22:40
Thank you, Tom.

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