Episode 277 / Zahra Hemraj / Citizen Watch Canada / Director, Marketing & Data Integration
Why Negative Data Can Lead to Successful Marketing
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As the Director of Marketing & Data Integration at Citizen Watch Canada, Zahra Hemraj is in charge of end-to-end marketing, including PR and communications, data, website design, etc. This varied job comes after a varied career, as she started out in IT before moving to art and now luxury goods.
Despite a lot of marketing career advice focusing on the importance of building a network, Zahra has found that knowing where she wanted to go and applying for jobs, showcasing her skills and interests, was enough to switch industries and become senior in her role. Is networking bad marketing advice? No, but as she puts it, “it’s not a crucial step.”
As a senior marketing leader, her top tip for data driven marketers is to always accept the negative data. Too often, people in the industry try to prove their campaign was successful or to show progress, but disregard or hide the data that shows how things really are on the ground. Zahra’s IT background taught her the importance of negative results: “nothing is perfect, no system, no code and no campaign is ever going to be perfect.” However, by accepting the negatives, you can learn what needs to improve and how.
Looking beyond the data is one of Zahra’s key approaches. Her Shiny New Object is the psychology of data: what really drives purchasing decisions, how does the context influence what buyers decide, and more. “There are people behind the numbers: people clicking on stuff, opening emails, visiting websites… There’s a reason that that happens.”
Zahra advocates for looking beyond the ones and zeros to understand your consumers and build marketing strategy. Learn more in the full episode.
Transcript
The following gives you a good idea of what was said, but it’s not 100% accurate.
Zahra Hemraj 0:00
Maybe it actually was a horrible investment, and that campaign just isn't successful, and we should never do it again, but without actually critically evaluating that data and sharing all of the results, you'll never get to the bottom of it, and you'll never have real results.
Speaker 0:19
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Tom Ollerton 0:52
Hello and welcome to the shiny new object podcast. My name is Tom Ollerton. I'm the founder of automated creative, the creative effectiveness, ad tech platform, and this is a almost weekly podcast about the future of data driven marketing. Every week or so I get the privilege and the pleasure of interviewing one of our industry's leaders, and this week is no different. I'm on a call with Zahra Hemraj, who is director marketing and data integration at Citizen Watch Canada. So Zahra, for anyone who doesn't know who you are and what you do, could you give us a bit of background?
Zahra Hemraj 1:25
Yes, of course. Hi Tom, and hi to everyone listening. I am currently at Citizen Watch Canada, as Tom mentioned as the director of marketing and data integration. I actually started my career in IT, totally different. I worked in IT and telecom. From there, I did an MBA in luxury brand management, and then I shifted over to the art industry, where I focused on CRM at Christie's. And then from there, I left that and am now at Citizen watch Canada.
Tom Ollerton 1:56
So in that varied career, what have been the bad recommendations that you've been given, you've told or you've heard?
Zahra Hemraj 2:05
Sure. So I mean, I my career as I as I mentioned, this has been quite diverse, starting from somewhere very different, and then ending up in what I do now, which encompasses from end to end, any side of marketing, including PR and communications, including data, including kind of the look and feel of the website building catalogs. So it's very different than where I started, which was project management and testing. And what I often hear in my career or in marketing is that you either can't get ahead without a network, or that you have to have a very linear career. And to me, I think this is absolutely wrong, because I think that while having a network helps, it's not a requirement for success. You can only build a network through starting your career to begin with. And secondly, about having a linear career path, I mean if, if anything, I'm an example that you don't have to have a linear career path, and you can get to where you ultimately want to get to, or where you're inspired or passionate for through different steps. And a good hiring manager or a good, you know, a good agency or a good company will actually value and understand your different career paths or your your steps to get to where you were, to be able to to be able to contribute to your role. Because through all of that, you're able to actually have a different mindset. For me, it's been, I mean, I was, I was born in Canada. I started my career in Toronto. I then worked in London, in Paris, in New York. I've done projects in the UAE, and I'm back in Canada now. So while also my industries have varied, my, you know, the cultures that I've worked with and the focus has been very different, and that's all helped me be able to contribute to the work I do and have a different perspective than other people that I work with, and I think it's really important that people are aware that you really don't have to have a linear career path to be successful.
Tom Ollerton 4:08
I'm gonna drag you back a little bit to saying that you don't need a network, because, like, I, for me, I'm just one of those people that really believes in that. And I'd love to hear more about the counter opinion there, because when anyone asked me that question, I'm like, get a network. Get to know everyone, because you never know what will happen and when those those like nodes will connect.
Zahra Hemraj 4:30
Absolutely so I will say that yes, networking is important. Networking is important, but having a network to start your career or to be successful in your career is not something that I think is a crucial step, because, again, I mean taking my own career or my own experiences. Most of the jobs I've gotten have not been through people that I know it's been through literally applying on LinkedIn as an example, being at Christie's, everyone that would reach out to me once I was there, was like, how did you get in, or who did you speak with, or what was your, you know, like, what was your connection to be able to get into that role? And I didn't have a background in art history, I didn't have anyone that I knew that was there, and I really just applied on LinkedIn, and I was able to get through the door. And I think if it's the right moment, if it's the right step for you, and if you're in the right position, you end up being able to step into that like in that you're present in the right moments, the network is important in that it helps you learn more about what you know, what's going on out there about keeping current with your with your industry, so speaking to other peers and having that connection. But I don't think that it's crucial to getting a role or to achieving success in your career, because I don't think that the network can really take you that far like it. They might provide you some insights, but at the end of the day, it comes down to you and your experiences and who you are as a person presenting yourself to the company that you're looking to get into or to the business that you're looking to start.
Tom Ollerton 6:19
Indeed. So be good. Be really good. Be brilliant. And you don't really need a network, okay, maybe that, maybe that's why I'm so focused on having a network. But anyway, there you go, moving very quickly along. So what is your best bit of advice that you have for data driven marketers? What is that silver bullet bit of knowledge that you find sharing with your team?
Zahra Hemraj 6:42
Yeah. I mean, I'm sure it's been said before, but I think that the key to better data driven marketer is really looking beyond the data. So while the data tells one story, it doesn't provide the context, and it doesn't always show you where you started from, and data can also be biased depending on what type of data you're pulling, which brings me to kind of the expansion of that in terms of being a better data driven marketer, and is to not be afraid of negative results. So too often I'll see people in my industry using data to prove something was successful or to show progress, and they hide the data that doesn't support how things are actually doing, but I think that I mean from my IT background, for instance, I learned the importance of actually looking for negative results. Because when I used to head QA for an enterprise project, one of the things that we always kind of ingrained in our testers was that if you're not finding an error, then you aren't doing your job. Nothing is perfect, no system, no code or no data is ever perfect, and no campaigns ever going to be perfect. So if you're not willing to show the mistakes or the errors, then you're never going to improve the system, and you're never going to improve on your campaigns. You're never going to grow your brand's presence or impact. If you're saying that everything you're doing is perfect, then where's the room for improvement? So I think that that's really key to becoming a better data driven marketer, because you know something, having a negative result doesn't always mean that it's not worth doing again, but it does mean that you can look at ways to improve it, or perhaps your data capture mechanisms aren't accurate and they're not capturing the data that you need. Or maybe you didn't achieve X and you're actually trying to achieve Y, or maybe it actually was a horrible investment, and that campaign just isn't successful, and we should never do it again, but without actually critically evaluating that data and sharing all of the results, you'll never get to the bottom of it, and you'll never have real results.
Tom Ollerton 8:45
Gosh, I absolutely love that. I think that's such, and you're right, but as a supplier, that just kind of fills me full of dread, you know, because you want to, you want to tell the best story, you know, you want to go, you know, look, you employed us to do this. And, like, you know, and here's all these amazing things, but don't worry about these, like, not so amazing things over here. But actually, here. But actually, I hadn't, I hadn't thought about that as being a real positive so, yeah, these things didn't work right? What we're gonna do about next time like this is, this is our opportunity to learn. So that is brilliant advice. Thank you. So we're now, we're now going to come on to your shiny new object, which is the psychology behind the data. So what is that? And why is it your shiny new object?
Zahra Hemraj 9:25
So I think that we often forget that behind the data, behind what we're looking at and what we're analyzing, there are people that are helping us get that data. So I and what I mean by that is not the people like gathering the data, but the people that are doing the actions that result in the data that we're receiving. So there are people that are clicking on stuff, there are people that are opening emails, or that are visiting certain websites or so forth, and or that are transacting. Those people, there's a psychology behind that. There's a reason that that happens. There is a reason that certain metrics exist. And we need to look beyond what we're seeing in terms of just numbers or just the ones and zeros that we're looking at. And what does it actually mean? What is the actual reason that something is happening. So why do people act in a certain way? Why did we get these results, and digging into that reason and the psychology behind it, so what's the context behind Why did someone, you know, why did we get X number of impressions on a particular ad that ran digitally, like, what made us get those impressions, or what made us get those click throughs? Is it because that ad was just that successful, and if so, then, what about that ad? Was it the color scheme? Was it the, you know, the message that was there? Was it the time that we ran that campaign? What is it about that that enticed someone to be able to do that? What made a person behave in a particular way? And I think that that often gets lost when we're just looking at data, because kind of back to what I was saying earlier. We end up wanting to show results, and we don't think about the psychology behind it.
Tom Ollerton 11:25
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So there's this idea, I can't remember where it was in the in the book of writing that they came up, this idea that what we all get drawn towards is, is the, the easiest data to collect, like, what the most abundant, easy thing we can just get by, like clicking on a link or looking at a dashboard where, in reality, there's, there's some data that that we might not even be able to get at all, but there's assumption, just because we can't get it, that it's not important, and there's a kind of range between those things. So I you know, because we discussed this before, I think you're right that you have to understand that. Why? Like, Well, why did that ad work? But what are your techniques and methods for getting to that? Why? Because I like that. I'd work. Oh, is it because we should have, should have that after midday, or because it actually had, like a 25% off or whatever? What could if you're talking about psychology, then you're talking about people. You're talking about qual there, really. So how do you bring a qual approach to data driven quant?
Zahra Hemraj 13:02
Exactly. So I think that that that is the essence of it. So for me, with with the work that I do, or with what I try to understand, I mean, there's a variety of different things that go into it. So it could be looking at the trends in the market right now and understanding why certain things are popular, or what's, you know, if you're talking about, like, certain, I don't know, like, a Tiktok trend that's going on, and you created an ad that kind of was similar to that, maybe that'll attract more attention. And maybe that's why that did that ad did well. But it could also be about things like, understanding, you know, like, it comes down to a lot of things. It could be color, like, you know, the the psychology behind color, and the colors that you use in your ads, and did that cause a certain reaction, and thinking through that. It could also be things, what we try to assess, and what I try to look at, is what, so if I'm trying to understand, if it had to do, for instance, with the time or the day, or, you know what was going on? What are the cultural moments of significance that are happening right now, or certain National Days, or certain things that are happening in current affairs that might make a certain caption or a certain type of product more attractive to a consumer? Does that have anything to do with what we're showing or, you know, the type of ad that's existing, is that creating that kind of reaction? Or does it come down to maybe, if we're looking at different times, if we're thinking about, okay, let's do some AB testing, which is always very important, to see if that makes an impact. And if so, then we can try to make certain assumptions that maybe this is based on that at the end of the day, that that type of understanding ends up being more assumption driven than actual, like there's not anything particularly tangible that I can show you to say this is the actual end result. Of why this happened, but it's based on assumptions, and it's based on understanding the market. It's based on understanding what exists out there, and it's also based on conversations with people. So I do a lot of face to face conversations with media or with end consumers at various different types of events that we hold, because I try to hear a little bit more and listen to what they're saying, like, why, why did this exist? Or, you know, why does this appeal to you? And they'll often tell me what they're thinking, and that gives me some insight into why certain people might react to a particular product in a particular way, and the other the other way. That's always a really good way of hearing what consumers think is looking at the types of calls that come into a if you have a call center or a customer relations team, kind of understanding what is the feedback that we're getting or what what are people calling about? And maybe that's kind of relevant to what we're seeing in terms of our results, but if we just stay tunnel visioned into this is what's happening in marketing and in data, and we don't think about our other departments or what's going on out there, then we won't really get to hear that other ways again, other departments to hear from our sales teams when they're going out to some of our retailers, to understand a little bit more about what they're hearing out in the market. And we don't do, I haven't done official focus groups here, but, like, indirectly, you're speaking to people, and you're kind of getting some feedback that then ties back to what you're actually seeing as your results, right?
Tom Ollerton 16:38
So can you give me an example of a specific moment when that happened, when you did that, when you had, you had your ones and zeros, you had your alpha numerical data, and then you heard something from a call center or someone in the field. I understand it theoretically, but would you be loved to see an example in practice?
Zahra Hemraj 16:55
Yeah. I mean, I'll give you an example of something. Okay, so if we looked at, there was a particular product that we released, and the actual sales figures for that product, as we saw them, were not, were not positive, like they weren't. They weren't. It wasn't performing at the level that we wanted to see. And the feedback that we were hearing from the feedback we were hearing from the retailers, from the sales team, what they were hearing was that, oh, you know, it's, we're not, we're just not seeing people coming in for that. Either it had to do with, you know, it's, it's not something that they felt was current, or they weren't interested in it for a variety of reasons. But on the other hand, when we looked at our data, the data showed that for our marketing campaigns that we were running, that that that product was performing above and beyond anything else that we had launched in in, like, the months surrounding that product, and it was the best click throughs, the best, you know, the best like interest in a variety of ways. Like, there was the clicks, there was the likes, there was the the conversion wasn't quite there, because, again, we weren't seeing the sales result from a transactional perspective, but we were seeing the conversion in terms of that linking through to our website, and seeing that type of conversion that we were getting out of it. So it was performing really well from a from a data perspective and what we were seeing, but our sales results were not aligned with that. So we were trying to understand what the difference was there. And the thing that was interesting is that the product was amazing for the people who were because it was based on, you know, there was some history behind it, and it had a historical aspect behind that product. So it tied back to kind of the people that were reacting to it were true lovers of the brand, and they were true lovers of watches in particular at that point. So they were really, really into what this stood for. But they just were not like they loved the story behind it, so it really spoke to them. So in speaking with media, and in speaking with, you know, with consumers out there, they loved the watch. They would come in and they would look at it, and they wanted to learn more about it, and they were like, you know, liking all of the ads that we were doing about it, all of our social posts. They were enamored by this watch, but it wasn't translating with our retailers, and that's just based on the price point that it was at, and it wasn't something that people were able to purchase at that particular time. So it was, you know, it was, it was really interesting to understand what was creating that positive data, but the negative results from the sales department perspective, right? And I just, I think that that was so interesting to us.
Tom Ollerton 17:44
That's a great story. So unfortunately, we're kind of coming to the end of the podcast now, but I just wanted to ask you. See, you've got lots of experience, and it's so great to hear someone articulate the balance between the hard data and the soft stuff, because I've been reading so much about it recently. But I'm curious to know where now that you know all of this stuff, now you've, like, cracked the code. What's the pain point? What is the thing that you're within data driven marketing where you're like, Ah, if only this problem would go away.
Zahra Hemraj 20:26
I think that often the pain point goes back to people accepting negative data. To me, that's a big pain point, because not just like, not just within my team, but when we're speaking to anyone at an executive level, when we're speaking to retailers, trying to express that, yes, we're not seeing that, but actually it's really positive, because it helps us understand x, y, z, that doesn't always get translated across. And wanting to showcase where we can improve, or things that we can do differently is a bit of a pain point for me.
Tom Ollerton 21:01
All right, then, so, so let's, let's do a 101, on that, right? You know, so, so imagine you're speaking to your suppliers now and and you don't want them to bury the negative data, like, what is, what is the way to really make those negative outcomes work positively for you?
Zahra Hemraj 21:19
I mean, a, it's again, back to psychology, but it's very simple by instead of calling it negative results, here's areas of opportunity, or things that we think that you could really improve on, or that would really improve your brand, or new, you know, approaches. Let's try this, this and this, and therefore that's going to help you, because we're seeing in putting some further what, what I like to do is put some further research behind it. So we're seeing that, I don't know like this particular type of product doesn't perform well and it didn't get the right results. But what we're seeing is, out in the market, your competitors are doing X and Y, and therefore you might want to do this, which would really help. So we want to try this now as our next step.
Tom Ollerton 22:03
That is a lovely, practical way to end the podcast. Zahra. Thank you so much for your time. If someone wants to get in touch with you about any of the things we've discussed today, where's the best place to do that? But crucially, what needs to go into a message to get you to respond to them?
Zahra Hemraj 22:19
I'm actually, I will say I'm usually pretty good at responding to messages, but if they do add that they heard me on the podcast, that they heard the podcast and they had some questions from what I was speaking about, sending me a message on LinkedIn would definitely get my attention, and I'd be happy to answer that.
Tom Ollerton 22:36
Brilliant. Zahra, thanks so much for your time, and we'll see you all next week.
Zahra Hemraj 22:41
Thanks. Tom.
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