Episode 240 / Anna Estlund / Pernod Ricard / Senior Director of Insights & Strategy
Navigating Data Overload with a Creative Compass
Pernod Ricard’s Senior Director of Insights & Strategy, Anna Estlund, swears by her creative compass to sift through the “noise” of excessive data and navigate decision making that drives results.
In today’s marketing landscape, we often get bogged down in the sheer volume of data available. That’s why marketers need to be able to sort through what doesn’t serve them. But how do you do that? Here are her tips.
Create a Marketing Effectiveness Framework
Anna emphasised the importance of having a clear, simple decision framework for marketing effectiveness within a company. She calls this a creative compass and it’s her Shiny New Object for making sense of data driven marketing. It’s designed to help drive quick decision making, assess impact of campaigns while they are live, and adjust strategies in-flight and for the longer term.
Simplicity and Clarity
Anyone in your organisation must be able to understand and apply this creative compass. It should serve as the North Star for making decisions related to marketing effectiveness, guiding actions without causing confusion or information overload.
For example, at Pernod Ricard, one such compass is a simple one-pager for a campaign, that outlines the critical KPIs at each stage of the campaign. It’s important to know who owns them and when action needs to be taken around them. One marketing manager cannot own all the data and there’s a reason there are specialists in each company - Anna’s advice is to not take on too much, but be very clear about stakeholders and making the most of experts in each data unit.
Address the Beginning and the End
A simple way to make your creative compass work is to focus on the beginning and the end. At the beginning of a campaign, Anna asks what are the territories or platforms you want to gather information on, and how the right questions can be asked when doing research to get to the answers that you’re looking for.
When it comes to the end of a campaign, you need to know your goal: what do you want the brand to be known for? What elements do you want to learn about or adjust? Then you can build on the creative ways to bring that to life for a consumer and what are the semiotic cues that will deliver the end result you’re looking for.
Learn more about data driven marketing and the creative compass on the full episode.
Transcript
The following gives you a good idea of what was said, but it’s not 100% accurate.
Anna Estlund 0:00
Even if you're not in a company where you can run regression models on your own data and all of that there's such wonderful marketing associations out there. These kinds of findings of what are some of those best indicators, there's really easy ways to be able to find your way to that to not get distracted by too much.
Tom Ollerton 0:19
Hello, and welcome to the shiny new object podcast. My name is Tom Ollerton. I'm the founder of automated creative creative effectiveness ad tech platform. And this is a podcast about the future of data driven marketing. Every week or so I have the pleasure of interviewing one of our industry's leaders, and this week is no different. I'm on a call with Anna Estlund, who is senior director of insight and strategy of Pernod Ricard. Anna, for anyone who doesn't know who you are and what you do. Could you give the audience some background?
Anna Estlund 0:50
Absolutely. Hi, Tom. Happy to be here with you today. As you said I'm a senior director at Pernod, we are a spirits and wine company second biggest globally and I'm based out of New York and our US business. We have beautiful brands like Jameson, Absolut, Kahlua, Mumm champagne, I can go on and on. But to give you that context since a lot of people don't know what Pernod Ricard is as a company. I lead a team here that drives insights to growth across brand innovation and shopper and working with our marketing partners and doing that. Before Pernod, I spent about 10 years in insights at General Mills and Nestle. So working across brands like Blue Buffalo or Cheerios or Perrier have worked on a lot of global businesses, including an expat role in Switzerland. And way back when I started my career in sports marketing working for the Minnesota Timberwolves and Minnesota Twins, which is where I'm from.
Tom Ollerton 1:40
Wow, man, that is that is quite the career. So I have very high expectation follow. Thanks. Thanks for joining us. So first up in the last five years, what have you become better at saying no to when it comes to your career and work life?
Anna Estlund 1:55
Yeah, I have Tom become better at saying no to excessive data in research. And I've gotten better at how I say it too. But in general, more isn't always better when it comes to data and research, right? So been better at anything that's still thorough, what really is best to drive a business decision. So focusing, I would say more on the ROI of research or my team's time. And I think that's honestly made us more impactful in what we do. So I think of it almost like an art museum where you're curating your best work instead of just constantly adding on new wings. So the way I think about it is the common challenge we face, especially in Insights is, you know, sometimes people can use data and research as a crutch to make decisions. So they don't feel like they have all the information to make a decision, that maybe they don't believe the information. Maybe they're people that disagree on the information, they kind of want a middle ground. So I think one of the ways I've been able to say no, is really thinking about when we already have a lot of great information, how do we package it better, or drive it farther. So I can give you just a few quick examples in the campaign world. So a lot of times people you know, we do a lot of consumer learning before we launch big campaigns. And a lot of times people will want to retest those campaigns, if they are making minor changes. So we've done so much good foundational learning that I can easily tell the teams, okay, we might want to go do new consumer learning if there's a major change in a story, or the brand role in the story, or the music or the characters, right? Like that might be that might warrant new consumer learning. But if it's a small copy change, or VO changes, no, we don't need to do that. And so a lot of times, it's just like helping the teams with education or case studies to help them see that. And I'll give you one last small example is a lot of times people just kind of want in my world and research a lot of the self data I'll call it. Right? So for example, we have this kind of long standing myth, I think, that we need to win with younger consumers or category buyers or something for a campaign or an innovation to work. And a lot of times, it's just critical that we get that broadest reach possible and get that right, you know, especially as you're in kind of later stages of learning, so I don't need the you know, all this extra data on consumers 21 to 24, tequila buyers, you know, $40 Plus, I just need to know what's going to get us to decisions faster. And so it really isn't just up fronting up front, that consultation of how will we take this business decision isn't about winning with the broadest group possible. Sometimes it's about immediate target and then you might go a bit more narrow, right? But that upfront consulting really helps I think save data overload and distracting from you know, where we can just move quickly and have the best impact.
Tom Ollerton 4:54
So I love the outset of this section where you're saying no to data in your role...
Anna Estlund 5:01
Excessive data, Tom.
Tom Ollerton 5:02
Excessive data, thank you. So what was the pain that got you to that? So you must have said yes, a million times or like at some point you said enough is enough. So help me understand the story to help, we got to the point to no to excessive data?
Anna Estlund 5:16
I think their pain has been realization in a couple of ways. One is, when I see me or my team, you know, spending too much time in the data gathering part of the journey, right, we're looking at too many things. And that's down the road, when you're trying to take a decision on launching a new campaign or innovation or packaging or whatever, I see that decision process at the end become too slow. And I would say that part is the part that tipped me off, tipped me off the most that something needed to change. So then the upfront process of gathering the data, or even before that consulting upfront how you're going to make a decision was more of the behavior change, I would say that I made. But honestly, the pain points can be any worse of the drug, it can be a gathering the data, and you're taking too much time, the analyzing of the day, like can take too much time. But I would say the part of the end where I saw teams struggling to take a decision because we were looking at too many things. That's I think what really tipped me off that I needed to change and start to really have a bit of a stronger hand in that consultation upfront to really help teams think ahead to what they really need to make a decision.
Tom Ollerton 6:30
So moving on to the section we ask each week, which is what is your top data driven marketing tip? Was that one bit of silver bullet advice that you find yourself sharing most often?
Anna Estlund 6:43
Yeah, it's somewhat linked, to be honest with you. So I would say, first, the pain point, right is we all have more data and dashboards than ever before. And especially for me and insights that, you know, I probably see that more than most, you know, kind of owning a lot of those data sources. So my best advice is focus your time on the data that drives decisions, and is an indicator for outcomes. So I'll take each of those separately. So first, I'm driving decisions in your role as a marketer, what data should you know, to understand the business and drive the decisions in their world, because that can be different by marketing roles, right. So, for example, in marketing and insights, we've got sales data with fire data, that campaign data, we've got social listening data, and each of those has their own dashboards to write or data sources. So for my marketing team as a brand or a p&l owner, I want them to know sales data and drivers inside and out. Right, like I want them to be able to diagnose distribution versus Lumosity and state level data and brand sublines. And a lot of times insights and analytics roles help with that. But that to me is the Northstar of data. That is the starting point. And every campaign you do a marketing coach might even do or you know, at point of purchase activation that you do at retail, oh, that feeds up into that right, but start with knowing your business inside and out. Now, in my world in insights, oftentimes, you know, what's driving decisions for us is looking more closely at behavioral data, and how that can be used to drive a decision that will ultimately drive sales. So you might have specialists and things like media data or social listening or E commerce or whatever. But I use the lens of what's most likely to drive a big marketing decision that's going to impact sales, something like brand positioning or touch point mix, not necessarily decision within a touchpoint, for example. The second piece of this an indicator for outcomes is what other data you're dealing with, what is going to best correlate to that sales, you know, sales outcome or brand equity, which obviously is another important piece of the puzzle. So you know, it's we're looking at trying to get closer to behavior and insights that can be through observation, actual data online, simulating real world situations and research and having people make trade offs, right. But even within that, like you can get lost, I think so I've been guilty in my career Early on looking at too, too much at things like click through rates or liking and research or something, right. And oftentimes, those just aret distractors for what is going to be most likely to move the needle. So I'll give you an example. Now, as I've been spending more time last couple of years on share search. And the reason for that is, you know, it's a signal of consumers actively seeking you out. But more importantly, it's predictive of market share. And so even if you're not a big company, which Pernod you know, we're second biggest wine and spirits globally, but we're not like Nestle or like, you know, some of the bigger companies I've been at in terms of size. So even if you're a big company where you can run regression models on your own data and all of that. There's such wonderful marketing associations out there like You know, we were talking about W FA, at work, or Advertising Research Foundation that published these kind of findings of what are some of the best indicators and you know, there's really easy ways to be able to find your way to that to not get distracted by too much.
Tom Ollerton 10:13
There's so much there that we could think about. I think we could do a few podcasts based on this. So help me understand some more of the think do you call them detractors use a click through rate, do you say likes in preflight? And so on to help me understand like, what are the ones where you like, no, just ignore that, that that's just stuff? That's just noise?
Anna Estlund 10:32
Yeah. I mean, it depends on what you're looking at. Right. So like, I'll just I'll use research because that might be, you know, more unique for your audience. So in research, you know, we're oftentimes trying to figure out, you know, what is going to be predictive of a certain outcome, right, whether that's sales, or whether that's brand equity, or whatever. So, in any given consumer interaction, I'll use quantitative research as an example, where you're surveying people, you are a lot of times asking, honestly, probably too many questions that we've just become burdened with over the years of just thinking that it's going to actually make a difference. So, you know, purchase intent is one that sometimes gets picked on. So you know, we have we ask people, how likely are you to buy this product based on the ad you've seen, or the innovation concept you've seen, or the new packaging or whatever. To me, that's a starting point, but doesn't get you close enough to an actual consumer decision. So to get to find ways to get closer as an example, you can put people in a simulated purchase environment and actually have them choose between your new concept or somebody else's, or you can take purchase intent and combine it with something like, you know, is this really something that meets an unmet need for you? And those two things combined become stronger than just, you know, the one thing at its core? So I think I've been a lot smarter over the years of how to think about what is best going to get you to that outcome and saying no to either either one using something in isolation, or to using something like liking is kind of a good example like, do you like this new ad or not? Well, honestly, I don't really care if you like it, if it's not going to change your mind, to do something differently. So what can give me, what is the indicator to get me closer to Will you change your behavior is the lens.
Tom Ollerton 12:25
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So we're going to move on to your shiny new object, which is a creative compass. So normally, I have a good understanding of what the shiny new object is, but I'm sure some people listening to this will think, oh, what sounds interesting. Can you explain what a creative compass is? Why it's important and why it's your shiny new object?
Anna Estlund 13:26
Yes. So a creative compass, to me is a marketing effectiveness decision framework in your company. Now, the reason this is a shiny or sparkly object, to me is it's what helps you quickly drive to creative and media actions, assess your impact, and then adjust. So it is kind of just that simple framework, and your Northstar of how you take decisions in a company related to marketing effectiveness. That needs to be super simple, clear, like anybody could play it back, or you could put it on one side, and everybody would get it. Now the reason this is important, the problem I've seen across companies, and what's getting worse, right is we've got fragmented data, fragmented stakeholders, and you and I were both at a WFA forum recently on marketing effectiveness. And I can see it there and everybody facing similar challenges. So less than half say they have a clearly defined framework. We focus more on the people you know, and the data versus the how we drive to decisions. So the action, you know that that kind of sits under Creative compass, and what I have found that works well, is how you take that amazing data and take it to decisions. So here's just a few high level examples of our compass components are kind of that how we built a complementing playbook at Pernod that says, any new campaign over a million dollars is going to get deeper learning and partnership from it. Smaller campaigns are going to look different The second part of this was we built a campaign scorecard very simply a one pager that has a lot underneath it, but a simple one pager across functions, which is so critical. So insights media and our marketing mix team said, for other pieces they own like research or media data or marketing. What are the most critical KPIs on what you own before a campaign launches after? While it's live? You know, and farther than that? How are you going to take those KPIs to make decisions? So who owns it, and when. And then the third example I'd give you is, you know, campaign workshops, which they're kind of taking those same principles. And after a marketing mix results come back, which for us is kind of that last piece of the puzzle on campaigns is, how do we then take our cross functional partners, look back at what we've learned, and what we need to do differently moving forward. So that creative compasses, this more of the how and the loo, but it's really in the simple frameworks you have on how you drive decisions to the organization so you're not getting distracted by, you know, too much data or drowning in it.
Tom Ollerton 16:06
It's interesting, we were talking to the WFA, when they partnered with us on a report that we did called compounding creative. Just before q4, just, we did a survey of X guests of this podcast, as well as people in the wider industry. And one of the things that really stuck out for me is only 1/3 of marketers have access to live campaign data. And it's refreshing to hear about your compass and about what did he say this, like, insistence on simplicity, so anyone could play it back, which is really easy to say very hard to do. So I'm curious to know that why why are we in this position where we have this really strong signal data, lots of noise data that you've talked about, but yet, like marketers just have no idea what's going on in their campaigns. And I think in the WFA report it said that, like, the thing that everyone excelled at was just getting stuff live, campaign activation. Yeah, so everyone could like get it, get something out of the door, but are pretty weak analyzing how it's performing live, and even worse in being able to make it better the next time. So why are we in that position?
Anna Estlund 17:09
Yeah, that's a good question. We first on your first point, I think the reason why only a third of marketers have access to their data is, I think it's been a bit intentional. And I think it's one we've kind of built more specialists into the ecosystem. And so you have the people who really understand that data and how to use it, and how not to get distracted by it, helping be the filter out to what matters. And I say that somewhat we do like I don't, I don't give you all my research results. I don't think the media team shows every single thing they have on, you know, reach and impressions, but they know how to use it. So I think part of it's been a bit intentional. But there's still is the struggle and the pull to want to dive and swim around in the data a lot. And that's not just insights market, you know, brain marketers, and media, and everybody else is the same. And I think it comes back to, you know, being a bit nervous, you're going to take the wrong decision, or that you don't have the right data to make the decision. So it honestly part of it is just about being brave and being bold. I'd rather give my teams not enough and have them ask me questions. And I can double click if I need to, versus give you everything at once. But it's a balancing act, you know, we're still facing it every single day, like we've made a lot of great strides with this approach. You know, we've seen our effectiveness and ROI go up, we've seen our awareness go up, we've had great loving pieces. And I think a part of it has been our intentional focus on creative effectiveness. But a lot of it has been more about this kind of simplicity that you you're not into. So this is a journey, like we you know, we could still get much better at it. That's for sure.
Tom Ollerton 18:48
This discussion is very close to home in terms of what Automated Creative do. I think that when we got into this space, we noticed that there was people that would provide data on like A/B testing was the favorite now we tested a blue ad and we tested a white ad and the blue ad won, and you're like great, does that mean you're gonna make all of your ads blue from now on? Well, no, no, we just know that. Whereas our view is, if we can give our clients data on like thematic things, as opposed to actual things like blue or black, boy or girl, you don't really do anything with that stuff. But what we really love to do is to give brands data on strategically useful insights, like, you know, one of our clients spoke at a conference and they said that what we're able to do is help, for a baby milk brand, help them understand that it was ads targeted at moms, the best thing you can put in that ad was actually a dad, it was like, Oh, wow, this incredible moment. But unless you're thinking strategically about what you can do with that data, you're not going to get those outcomes like a different supplier or a different version of that project might have gone well. We've seen pink do really well compared to yellow, but that's kind of useless, isn't it? So how do you advise your teams to make sure that they are getting this kind of actionable data? Is it is it something that you have to kind of tell them to unlearn everything or is it is their creative compass still off? For them, like, yes, you've got the compass. But that sounds like a tool. But how much training? How much changing do you have to do with your teams to make it work?
Anna Estlund 20:06
I love your A/B example, I guess to say it's simply, I would focus more at the beginning and the end of the process. Beginning in your example, on the color, you know, what are those territories or platforms of things you want to learn on? So we can help design some learning to get you there? Right? You can? Yes, of course, you can A/B test things like colors, but it's way more meaningful. If you push your team to A/B test, are we about, you know, a reward or a treat? Or an indulgence? So I think those are all kind of similar territories, you know, but if you were to say go down different paths have like a higher level of what it means. So I think at the beginning of the process, that's what's the real question and take it to a high level to learn. Now, at the end of the process, I would say, your example is a great one too, because I think of it call it design principles. And that can be something creative, or innovation or packaging or anything. But if you have that learning mindset, and you are going to learn about, you know, are we more about a treat for something I'm going to bring to a party or a treat for myself, for example. And you build on the creative ways that you can bring that to life for a consumer and what some of those, you know, semiotic cues might be, that's going to get you so much farther and faster to building out any campaign underneath, you know what you're doing or any touch point, versus just saying this very specific thing on you know, Instagram is going to work in this way. So both in the beginning and the end, my advice is take it up a higher level, because we often get too down in the details.
Tom Ollerton 21:53
Hearing you talk about that really reminded me something. I can't remember where I heard it. But essentially, the best marketers are people who market in categories where it's hard to differentiate the category if you don't know what it is. So bottled water, for example, it would take some incredibly talented person to be able to distinguish between the top 10 best selling bottled waters, right? I'm sure there's some water pro out there told me I'm totally wrong. But certainly with beer like a pilsner or something like that, you know, it's very, like the difference between like the top 10 is minimal from a taste perspective, but from a brand perspective, just worlds apart. And I think that's what's so fascinating about alcohol and marketing is for that reason that you can't just reel off a list of features or benefits, it has to be the brand. So unless you are capturing that thematic high level strategic data from your campaigns, then you are you know, you're just comparing Oh, well, this shot of the bottle that was like, you know, with a beach in the background, did better than the house in the background. And it's just, that's not the thing that's going to move the needle from a brand perspective, as you say, so I'm just... sorry, you've got me on one of my favorite subjects here. So I'm going to, I'm going to stop myself. So to the last question. So where are we going with this, like, we're not going to get less data, and it's going to be cookie depreciation, that's gonna be different. But you can guarantee that the industry is going to find five new things, 10, new things to replace it. And then we've got all of the data coming from haptics. We're gonna have data coming from all of these different platforms that haven't been invented, yet these behaviors we don't even know about. So we're probably going to, like drown in data in ways that we can't even imagine. So how are you going to guide your team through that?
Anna Estlund 23:22
Yeah, I'm still working through it every day. But I would say a couple of simple tips are, keep in mind that kind of example of being an art curator, not building out your museum further, think about where the source of truth should be. Right? And I think defining that source of truth for us is that campaign scorecard is our source of truth. So wherever your world is, define that source of truth and define it simply so people can play it back. And think about where you how you use kind of specialists across the organization, right? I shouldn't own media data, my immediate team should own that, you know, I should own research data or marketers should really own you know, Nielsen and sales data. So we all need to be aware of each other's data. But the more you can kind of have that divide and conquer approach, the better. And of course, what's coming, you know, as we look towards the future is how do you use AI tools to help you simplify and streamline through what matters. Now, that's probably more of the journey that I'm excited to get on. Because that feels like more of a new challenge. A lot of what I'm talking about is more about kind of being bold enough to say no to too much data and almost trying to influence your organization to find those simple ways to work together.
AI will be a tool to help but isn't going to help you with the how you do it.
Tom Ollerton 24:39
I'm really boast up on this idea of data that you can talk to, and if so, closed LLMs basically so you've got all of your all of your you mentioned research, marketing sales, Nielsen, take all of this data under Pernod Ricard, but actually, you're right. It's a divide and conquer on databases and dashboards who needs another dashboard, but really like being able to verbally talk to data and have it private and closed so it's, you know, it's not accessible, like ChatGPT, but you just go: right. Okay, so we're going to launch a non alcoholic variant of Jameson, for argument's sake, and we want to launch it to you should we launch it to? Like, where should we do? What should be the brief, you know, all that kind of stuff. So that's the direction we're moving in. I think it's quite early days. But I think that marketing is gonna seem very different in the next 10 or 20 years.
Anna Estlund 25:21
Oh, absolutely. Yeah, once we can get our proprietary data in there, or build your own proprietary tools, like that's gonna be a game changer. We're not fully integrated on that yet, you know, we're still living out of Power BI, or we've got a lot of great dashboards. So a lot of filtering, you need to do, I guess. But I'm excited of what's to come.
Tom Ollerton 25:40
I'm really terrified about the idea that one day research and insight and production and delivery and analysis will happen instantaneously, imagine that. I don't know what we're gonna do when that happens. But you know, it's, it's possible. Anyway, look, you've got me talking far more than I normally do on the podcast, which I don't know what that means. But I appreciate it. And I've really enjoyed our conversation. So if someone wants to get in touch with you, and discuss any of the things that we've talked about today, where's the best place to do that? And crucially, what needs to go on a message to you that you'll actually reply to?
Anna Estlund 26:10
Yeah, best way would be LinkedIn is a very easy way, the other way would be, you know, I try to prioritize time to go to marketing effectiveness or insights, conferences. So WFA, or ARS or marketing research event, TMRE, especially in the New York area. Those are good places to find me. And what makes it a message I would say is start with the business problem. What's the pain point or problem you're trying to solve as a peer or a partner? And then we could nerd out on the solution or case studies or the you know, the tool? You know, the other thing I would say is the insights community is a pretty tight knit one. So another good way would be, you know, find a mutual contact. I'm always talking to my insights friends, you know, about problems or solutions or whatever. So, you know, kind of using your network, the good old fashioned way works, too.
Tom Ollerton 26:58
Brilliant, excellent advice. Thank you so much.
Anna Estlund 27:01
Thank you, Tom. It's been fun.
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