Episode 244 / Natalia Horvath / Former Head of Customer Marketing and Omnichannel Development, Global Reserve, at Diageo
Marketing From Channels to Touchpoints & Hyper-Personalisation
A marketing leader with over 14 years of experience, Natalia is passionate about the evolution of data-driven marketing strategies and how brands can best connect with digital native audiences. Her future-focused shiny new object is channel-less marketing.
From Curiosity to Clarity in a Niche
Natalia believes the key to a successful career in marketing is cultivating curiosity from an early stage: "Embrace curiosity, and as you get curious, you also can start to connect the dots along [your] progress. And that's where you get to clarity." She advises focusing one's curiosity into a niche field to gain clarity of purpose and expertise.
Understanding Human Experience is Crucial
To Natalia, truly understanding human behaviour, culture, and technology is paramount for effective marketing. She emphasises being "culturally unbiased" and notes: "we are still talking to humans." Marketers need to go back to basics and understand biology and touchpoints before they create a more complicated strategy, regardless of their technology or channel marketing goals.
Channel-less Marketing is the Future
Natalia is passionate about "channel-less marketing" as the next evolution of channel strategy in data driven marketing. She defines it as "how brands interact with people and how people interact with brands," focusing on specific touchpoints rather than channels. The key is delivering "hyper-personalisation" through understanding an individual's "biology, geography, and technology" across platforms.
While technology continues to advance, Natalia notes the biggest challenge in embracing channel-less marketing lies in organisational processes and bridging gaps between analog and digital generations.
Find out more about going channel-less and hear Natalia’s top tips for a career in marketing in the full episode.
Transcript
The following gives you a good idea of what was said, but it’s not 100% accurate.
Natalia Horvath 0:00
If some of the processes were created and being protected by analog themes or leaders etc, that's when there are usually clashes. I think there is a big job probably to do, bridging the gap really between the analog and digital generations, I would say.
Tom Ollerton 0:20
Hello, and welcome to the shiny new object podcast. My name is Tom Ollerton. I'm the founder of automated creative the creative effectiveness attic platform. And this is a weekly podcast about the future of data driven marketing. And I'm in kind of weird rented space in Amsterdam with Natalia Horvath who is head of customer marketing and omni channel development global reserve at Diageo. So, Natalia, my wife is Hungarian and I did an awful pronunciation of your surname. But for anyone who doesn't know who you are and what you do, could you give the audience a bit of background?
Natalia Horvath 0:52
Sure, no. And thanks, Tom. You did brilliantly, by the way. So yes, I'm Natalia Horvath. And up until recently, I lead the omni channel customer marketing at Diageo for global reserve. And currently, I'm preparing for a short sabbatical to spend quality time with my family, and focus on my personal health and well being before I dive into my next chapter. So yeah, basically, I'm having a bit of break after almost 14 years, 14 years behind the wheel.
Tom Ollerton 1:21
So in that 14 years, you must have given some advice to people trying to maybe follow in your footsteps to a degree, what advice do you find yourself giving to students who are trying to break into the industry?
Natalia Horvath 1:35
I love this question. Yeah, I often mentor young women. And they always ask me about like, a secret sauce of success. Which is, which is a great question, but there is no one size fits all answer. So I usually say that there is some guardrails we can still use, right? So there is a simple framework, which, which I usually advise, which I call the three C's. And it's it's curiosity, clarity, and confidence. Now, what does it mean, in practice? And I always recommend that in early years of your career, embrace curiosity. I mean, you should always embrace curiosity, can't argue with that. But I think especially in the early years of, of career, it's very important that you can just question freely, anything, there is absolutely no wrong question. And then, as soon as you get curious, you also can start to connect the dots along the progress. And that's where you get to clarity. So for example, for me took almost seven years of curiosity, I'm getting to the niche field, which, which I'm actually which I selected for myself, as my field. And that's, that's where the focus, basically clarity started to drive focus. So then I started to get more, more confident about a specific topic. And that's why I think, especially for women, confidence is something that we almost like biologically struggle with, right. So that's something that you can only practice, as soon as you get very confident in it. First you get very clear in a specific niche. And you practice it more and more. So you get, essentially, your confidence. So yeah, there is, of course, luck and timing. But this is the three things that I usually say.
Tom Ollerton 3:25
I like it, it's like a career funnel, piling loads of curiosity at the top, then you're gradually fill the role of curiosity down to clarity, and then go deeper and deeper into that niche and arrive for confidence. That's a really simple and lovely model, actually. So that's great career advice. Well, what is your one bit of data driven advice? What is your kind of top tip your silver bullet that you find yourself sharing,
Natalia Horvath 3:46
There is no magical pill, of course, but what I'm usually saying that there are a few areas what we can talk about and, I will break it into three, this one magical, or non existing magical field, if you will. And I think it starts with understanding human biology. Because what we forget, especially in our really data driven world, that we are still talking to humans, right. So that's something that I find fascinating, and I think it's really important to to understand in this modern day is a second thing is about being culturally unbiased. And as you mentioned, the I'm originally Hungarian, but yeah, having a very international family, even on myself, I see that sometimes you just you know, you have you have your culture, right, which which can sometimes really bias you and that's wrong. That's really wrong. You need to you need to fight that and you need to be culturally unbiased, to be able to really understand and give if you've got the right inputs, if you want to receive them successful outputs. And then last but not least, staying technologically advanced. I find that that's one of The probably the most critical part of part of our modern days market here is that we sometimes just get too distant and just, you know, look at the shiny new objects, but don't really go into into the deep details of technology and why actually, those are what drives those specific tools. So yeah, this is how we probably break it down into maybe three small pieces.
Tom Ollerton 5:29
So we're now going to come on to your shiny new object, which is channel-less marketing strategies. So I'm quite confident I know what that means. But can you just give us an overview of what channel-less marketing strategies are and why they are your shiny new object?
Natalia Horvath 5:46
Right? So I guess there are a lot of definitions, what you can just find around the world around channelless marketing is it became quite a buzzword. But what I think is the simplest way to define it is that how brands interact with people on how people also interact with brands. And I usually like to describe it, it's more like, it's not one thing, it's actually an evolution. So it's an evolution of channel transformation. And in the past, we were talking about brand content, delivered through for example, one single channel, take the radio or TV, so only it was it was very single minded. That's why it's its single channel, then it evolved into through the years multi channel. And multi channel strategies are really about the rise of internet and social media started to basically drive it to I would say most of the blue chip companies current strategies, but when things evolved, and of course, in the recent years, digital native generations, millennials reaching Gen Z became increasingly more important for brands for reaching these generations had to switch strategy and this is how omni channel then evolved from from multi channel, which is basically about just matching that consumer demand of seamlessly interacting across various channels. And looking ahead, this is where the channel a spark comes in, right? Because with the rise of AI and tools, what with the rise of AI and the tools, what we have what we see now emerging for brands to deliver hyper personalization, this is where, where we can really meet the digital native audience's needs. And this is where we are arriving to this sort of, for now final stage of channel transformation, which I call channel-less marketing. So yeah, I'm passionate about because it requires really understanding the human experience biology, geography, and technology, and to grasp the constant evolution of how people interact with brands. So
Tom Ollerton 5:53
could you give me a specific example of a channel this marketing strategy? Or how someone might approach you?
Natalia Horvath 8:02
Yeah, so when thinking about a specific example, probably the best, best way to say that now, there are lots of experiments around that, but you cannot really take one. One big example. Okay, this is how you do channel-less marketing. Why? Because it's all about hyper personalization, right? It's all about that, how you how you really reach almost like with a completely tailored message, specific people, right, so there is no one size fits all solution. And that's why there is no one size fits all example, for example, for channels, marketing, mainly, and this is where it comes that we need to understand technology for that. Also, because of technological advantages are still not there so technology is evolving to that. And when we get really excited about Chat-GPT and Dall-E and Midjourney and all the exciting tools, you still don't have the internal processes, for example, and there are those technologies within the within corporations, which can actually make it really happen. So that's why it's for now, I would say there are great experiments happening around that. But definitely you cannot say that okay, this is the like almost like the poster child of channel-less marketing.
Tom Ollerton 9:14
Could you give me an example of one of those experiments because I love the way that you've talked about how we've arrived to channel-less marketing, but someone may not have your experience and I want to help them understand like, how would you go about it? How would you recognize if you saw one of those experiments? Can you talk to a brand that is doing something like this or just help me make it a little bit more concrete for the listener?
Natalia Horvath 9:34
Of course so let's say that let's make it really practical, right? You have for example you have you have a specific city which you want to target right so almost like you're starting with with a specific city with a specific niche audience we want to target with your brand. And I'm not going to say any specific brand just for the sake of simplicity. What you want to do there is to really understand first that audience so you collect the data And this is where it comes in the point of collecting clean data, which is organized. And then you use that data to actually measure that, where you are going to reach that audience, who are them almost like profiling, the specific audience where you're going to target based on their interests, right. And this is, for example, what Tiktok does perfectly, that they are really perfected the interest based profiling and they basically build their algorithms on that. So as soon as you also as a brand, really understand how, who's your audience and then what you want to deliver to them, then you can use for example, these platforms to deliver that message to them and then the work comes in, because what are you going to show to them this is where content is, is really critical. So you create a content with automation. So using this ultimate creative tools, which you can think about, image generation for, for that specific audience, based on it can be delivered through different languages. So really specific, really specific interests, essentially still delivering on your brand value. So this is how I, how I would explain it to almost in a practical terms, research your audience, find those specific interests, touch points and then create based on that the hyper personalized content delivery through these specific channels.
Tom Ollerton 11:27
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So how does that make it channel-less? Because that's a media setup, right? So we're targeting people in Rotterdam who like expensive clothes for argument's sake. And we know they're on Tik Tok. Right. So that's a media planning job, right? And then you use some automation Gen AI to produce a variety of different assets and ads to suit the niches within that niche. So it feels like a channel strategy to me. So how does that expand into being channel less?
Natalia Horvath 12:33
I go back to the content here, right? Because usually and you're right, absolutely, Tom, that normally yeah, this is how you do a channel strategy, if it if it would be like, Okay, so this is for social media, for example, then that's the channel strategy. The thing is that, that's why you need to go back to really are your understanding of your target group, because that means that you are not only going to produce that content, for example, for social media, but the same core of the content, then you can create, for example, pop ups in that specific areas, and you'll link it to, to, to your social media accounts as well, or you can link it to your sites, to ecommerce, etc. Right? So this is where it comes the experience, because it's not about it's not about the brand, right? It really is about what people see from it. It really is about what people experience. And this is why I was talking about biology quite a lot, that as soon as you really understand your target your biology, what really drives them, what are their needs, you will be also able to point out, which are those specific touch points where you need to interact, right? And then we are not talking about channels anymore, we are talking about touch points. And the hyper personalization is actually coming, coming on top of the touch points. And then we can even talk about platform less content, etc. So basically, whatever experience is that target group getting that specific persona getting, right, that's what that's what's important and not, not the channel.
Tom Ollerton 13:52
First, lovely explanation. So by understanding people biologically, understanding the touchpoints that they have with the brand than the consumption moment, or alcohol, for example, and then you would create personalized content to suit those touch points. And then I love that phrase, your platform-less content, right. So you have a kind of central way of making or a central asset bank or a central generative solution to produce plot formulas content that gets served up at certain touch points based on the people and their needs as opposed to like, right we're doing a TikTok thing, that's unbelievably advanced in my experience in the thinking. So it's, it's exciting to have this conversation with you. So what are the barriers here? Why aren't people just doing platform-less content?
Natalia Horvath 14:43
This is a technology part, as you can guess, coming in, right? And they're coming from big corporations, right? So that's fine. That's where I spend most of my career. I think there is there is also you know, like what you can see that brands and companies are at different stages, right? So you can see that with some of the especially smaller brands where you have more room for experimentation, that's where you can actually also try out new technologies, for example, to really try to deliver on specific campaign specific projects to just test out this, but for for big brands, big campaigns, where you really have you really have has their channel strategy for a long time, you cannot just change it like that, right? So you will need to change the whole underlying technology. But the whole corporation essentially, right, so it goes a lot to it as well, in that sense. And this is, I think, where when corporations we see a lot, okay, marketing, IT, now who's who has the ball right in delivering that content, because of course, the data then sits somewhere in a data center, then, okay, who can access it until it gets to marketing? Almost like that specific moment is gone, right? So how you can really interact with the consumers at the moment of choice. Right? That would be that it's seamless, also within the organization. So to answer a bit, maybe better the question, you, it, the biggest bottleneck, essentially, is technology within the organizations we are getting there. But I think it will still take a little bit of time to roll it out across the different brands.
Tom Ollerton 16:23
So I'll push you on that. In my experience, it's not technology, that's the problem. It usually does what it's set out to do. It's the people operating that technology and automate creative is its own innovation, its own business. And we're quite often very, very far ahead of what the people in the organizations are capable of. So we can be right, we can have the right technology, we can have all the proof points, we can have all the integrations or setup ready to go up. But unless you have the people with the ambition to innovate, the ambition to be curious, and to learn, it will fall over. So how do you feel about that? Like, obviously, the tech has to work and the tech might not be quite there. But how do you make sure you've got the right kind of people to deliver the tech when it is there?
Natalia Horvath 17:03
Love this challenge. Actually, I love this challenge Tom, because I agree with you that it's not only technology, why I was talking mostly about technology, because that's what you would find almost like a common ground, right. And then it comes, of course, people who operate that technology. But I would also argue on that, that is the people, I think it's also the processes, because if you take individual people, you will find out and that's what, for example, in my experience, in the past 13-14 years, what I see is that people individually, they're really curious and eager to learn new things and so on. But whenever it comes to processes, and especially, yeah, talking, talking about analog generations and the digital generations better, you can also start to see that sometimes it really is like if some of the processes were created and protect and being protected by analog themes, or leaders, etc. That's when there are usually clashes with maybe a bit more digitally advanced. Gen Z team members and, and and teams, mostly because then the conversation around processes becomes really, really challenging, right? Because your your belief fundamentally, is different from from one to another. So I think there is a big job probably to do bridging the gap really, between the analog and digital generations, I would say.
Tom Ollerton 18:26
Analog and digital generations is the most polite way of talking about it. Unfortunately, we have to, we have to wrap up now, because we are actually getting kicked out of this office. Thank you so much. If someone wants to get in touch with you about any of this stuff, where's the best place to do that? And what makes a message that you will respond to?
Natalia Horvath 18:45
Yeah, thank you so much. So it was really a pleasure. And yeah, if I would love to like you say I love to talk about this stuff. So I would be really happy to get in touch with people on LinkedIn. So just find me on on LinkedIn at Natalia Horvath and you also can find in some of the industry conferences, it will be in a month in Amsterdam, customer loyalty conference presenting and yeah, in few months in London as well. So really excited to to meet either online or in person.
Tom Ollerton 19:19
Brilliant. Thank you so much.
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