Episode 172 / Pranay Harish Rao / Unilever / Global Marketing Workstream Lead
The Rise of Zero Party Data and What Brands Can Do to Harness It
Pranay’s role as Global Marketing Workstream Lead at Unilever sees him looking after the creation of new brands and new marketing strategies from within the company, such as currently setting up Unilever’s tea business – ekaterra – as a standalone entity. His Shiny New Object looks to the future role of first and zero party data, and it’s about advertising in a cookieless world.
Marketing today needs to reconcile an interesting dichotomy: on the one hand, people globally agree that they don’t want their internet activity to be tracked; on the other hand, 74% of consumers say they want to have a personalised experience and customised online shopping. As third party data disappears and we enter a cookieless world, what can brands do to meet consumers’ expectations?
For brands in sectors like FMCG, this is even more of a challenge, according to Pranay. Their products are bought largely on external websites, such as Amazon, Target, Tesco, or Walmart, so they don’t even have the access to the consumer’s data through browsing on their own website. And it’s on a brand’s own website that companies can now expect to collect information that users willingly give away, such as responses to questionnaires so they can receive personalised recommendations.
The answer, says Pranay, is to look at changing the game by possibly creating aggregated marketing platforms in the form of loyalty clubs giving discounts to consumers in exchange for their data. This means combining first party data (sharing your personal contact details) with zero party data (sharing preferences on a questionnaire), in return for a discount on all the brands participating in this aggregated marketing scheme.
Pranay predicts a general move towards websites, where personalised content can be interacted with and where consumers can connect with brands in new ways, more deliberately and perhaps more loyally.
Find out more about how zero and first party data interact in the future world of marketing, what digital marketing strategies companies should adopt, and some of Pranay’s top marketing tips, on the latest podcast episode here.
Transcript
The following gives you a good idea of what was said, but it’s not 100% accurate.
Tom Ollerton 0:03
Hello, and welcome to the Shiny New Object podcast. My name is Tom Ollerton. I'm the founder of Automated Creative and this is a weekly podcast where I interview the industry's leaders about their vision for the future of marketing and this week is no different. I'm on a call with Pranay Rao, who is Global Marketing Workstream Lead at Unilever. Pranay, for anyone who doesn't know you, can you give the audience a bit of background?
Pranay Harish Rao 0:30
Hi Tom. So I've been in marketing for about 17 years now. And I've been across FMCG primarily, but definitely everything from apparel to health and fitness etc. I'm a marketeer, who started his life as a web designer and a computer engineer. And at some point realized that without marketing, you really can't do much. And that's how I got into this field. I enjoy creating new products, new innovations. And that's been my thing. And that's it. That's how...
Tom Ollerton 1:01
So help me understand the jobs. Who have you worked for in that time? What have your roles been?
Pranay Harish Rao 1:07
So I've worked for Kraft Heinz, I worked for GlaxoSmithKline, I worked for Kimberly Clark, several brands like Huggies, a big brand in India. I've also worked for apparel, a company called House of Anita Dongre. And I was the CMO for many brands, actually, I've also consulted on many companies. Most recently, I also worked in an NGO called TP needed where we really worked during overtime to get people to write people. So when across industries and across companies per se.
Tom Ollerton 1:42
And help me understand the role of a marketing workstream lead, you're definitely our first workstream lead that we've had on the podcast. So how does that role sit within the marketing function overall?
Pranay Harish Rao 1:53
Yeah, so this is more to do with the helping set up a company. So what Unilever is doing is there's ekaterra, which is the Unilever tea business, which is being set up as a separate company. So one of the things that needs to be done is we need to do a fit to size a right fit size marketing solution, which means redoing the entire marketing, infrastructure systems, processes, ways of working. So that's primarily what I'm doing right now. So this, in fact, is a huge project where we work across different functions, and are supported by PwC, Bain, E&Y, multiple consultants, and the idea of it is in two to three years, we set up a company which is ready to operate on its own. And this is done once in a while for every company whenever it has separation, M&A kind of work. So that's what the role is all about.
Tom Ollerton 2:47
So it's fair to say that you do need a good grasp on the future of marketing. So you can set this business up in the right way.
Pranay Harish Rao 2:54
Absolutely. So one of the biggest things we learn is there's so much legacy in companies like Unilever, Unilever is not just one single company, it's probably 100 companies who operate together as a single entity, right. So there have been systems which have been created, probably 15 years back, there are some systems jamming created 15 days back, and they all need to work together. Now the benefit you get when you set up a new company is you can completely disregard all that was done in the past. Make sure you take the learnings because obviously Unilever's a brilliant marketing company, but you then set up it in such a way that you have minimum overheads. And you have products which are more SAS less customization, something which is easily doable and off the shelf, and yet light so that you don't have the overheads that huge companies usually have.
Tom Ollerton 3:41
So I'm curious to know, do you read marketing books? Are you an avid reader? Or do you learn by doing?
Pranay Harish Rao 3:49
Well, I love to read books, but I wouldn't say just marketing books. So for me, standard reading, something like I love to read Malcolm Gladwell. I also like to read articles and marketing. So a lot of articles which I've remembered from eternity, I've kept them with me and the classics. I also read books about people who have done well in business. So this could be somebody like a Steve Jobs to Sam Walton to even Africa. So which is one of the first books I've read two books, and even I've done Theory of Constraints with the Liu Goldratt. So I don't know if you've heard about "The Goal", which is a book, which is very interesting. So it's about also learning about principles across different parts of the business, and then applying them to marketing somewhere. So it's been a mix of marketing, and probably autobiography, biographies of good business leaders, and that's what my reading is all about.
Tom Ollerton 4:40
And how do you decide what to read?
Pranay Harish Rao 4:43
So that's a very interesting thing. Because it could be just that my Kindle, kind of suggests some books and that's happened with, I read the autobiography of Shaquille O'Neal. That was really one of the better books I've read. And some of them could be then because I found a particular business, like Tesla is something that I've been interested about. So I read about them, Alibaba, so I read the Jack Ma book. So it's a mix of you going into the market and seeing some products, you want to know how did this setup and it's a mix of some things that obviously get suggested to you by good algorithms and echo chambers.
Tom Ollerton 5:15
So I'm curious to know, what are the lessons you learned from the Shaquille O'Neal book that you can pass on to an audience of marketing people interested in innovation?
Pranay Harish Rao 5:26
Oh, he's a brilliant marketer. So in Shaquille O'Neal, the beauty of it is, people see him generally as his larger celebrity slash basketball player who's done really well, who has actually built up images or imagery of his brands through what he did as a player. But actually, if you take two steps back, and you'll see he had a strategy to have the whole story about how he set up his own line, and he has a story about where he says, he went to Walmart. And he figured out that that's why he buys his products, that he's got the love for Walmart. And he figured out the products he sold and which is I think his deal with if I remember, was it Nike, no Reebok, it's Reebok. And he wasn't happy that a mother couldn't afford the product he bought. And therefore he went for the line which is cheaper, which is his own line of products. Now, if you've come to think of it, read about it, you might think, oh, that came from the heart. But there was a very strong business case behind it, he realized this whole value at the bottom of the pyramid. So the moment and he's lived there. He's come from there. And I think a lot of us have come from there, they've been middle class or lower middle class families and come up. And he saw the value. And he realized, let me launch brands in this section. And if you see even his business acumen, he has been at the forefront of investing in labels investing in companies before they came in. So there's obviously a very shrewd businessman there, who has also created this aura, which kind of also promotes business. So it's, it's like Horace Erica, the Tesla, right. So if you some of the people today have the ability to send a tweet, like an Elon Musk tweet can cause the jump in cyber currency or whatever digital currency. Similarly, the power of Shaquille O'Neal is not only does he find value in business if nobody else does. The point is as soon as he touches the business that also automatically generates values with other business models. So it's a mix of his acumen and his ability to make businesses bigger.
Tom Ollerton 7:16
I read an article very recently that talks about the idea that the next trillion dollar brand could be an influencer brand, I think that I might have this completely wrong, but Rihanna released their lingerie range or at least the fashion range very recently and like it was instantly worth like, you know, a billion and you can see this happen a lot on a Snoop Dogg launched some gin, launched a range of NFT's you know, do you think that the future of big brands will be brands created by individuals or influencers?
Pranay Harish Rao 7:49
Oh definitely, so I worked in this company, the House of Anita Dongre, where we were owned by General Atlantic which is a private equity company, and they had just invested in Huda. Huda is a beauty influencer based brand and the entire marketing of the brand is based on this person who had set up her own influencer channel. And slowly she began promoting brands and it's very interesting because the infrastructure such as I've worked in apparel where I've seen that companies around the world and these are French companies, these are companies with manufacturing in China, Singapore, etc. which can create any product for you so an influencer with a certain amount of following and with certain ethos and certain ethics or certain way of how she wants to promote a brand can get these manufacturers to promote anything and everything she wants. So it's a bit like the private label scenario where the manufacturers are all the same for the big brands and private labels in many cases. But these people bring them out a really valued following. And they show practical applications of the product so some of these beauty influencers show you how to use a product. I remember there was a particular eyeshadow color checker.
Yeah. So talking about the influencer strategy. So they had this brand, remember called Huda Beauty, which was invested by General Atlantic. And that's the same company which invested in the company, I was working at the time. And the entire brand was created on the ethos of an influencer, she had a certain following, she promoted products, and people completely believed her. And I know there was a certain, in fact an eyeshadow color which she promoted, which is specific to her offering. But the beauty of this whole infrastructure is that these influencers today in the way of working, don't need to set up your own company. There are companies, dedicated companies, and I know there was a French company I'd worked with for getting products for a certain brand I was doing work with on perfumes, etc. There are brands which manufacture out of China, Singapore, Taiwan, and these guys can take your brand image and create any product for you out of nowhere, there is no worry on scale, there is no worry on manufacturing capability, we even support you on selling, they even support on everything else. So the future is these influences. And honestly, if you have the capability to get so many people to talk about, you get so many people to follow what you do, that probably is going to be far more powerful than anything else. And that's it. In fact, just today morning, I was reading about the Italian Kardashians, and they are these three women in Italy. Sisters, who now promote most of the big brands in Europe and see if you see between the Kardashians, between them, between the Huda brand, influencers do decide a lot of what we buy. And when we, when I sold apparel, we used to ask young girls that how do you choose a particular dress? How do you choose a particular makeup brand. And 9 out of 10 of them used to talk to influencers or used to interact with influencer videos. And that's where they got their knowledge. That's where all the power is.
Tom Ollerton 11:59
So I'd like to move on to your top marketing tip. I always ask guests what is their top marketing tip, what's that silver bullet bit of advice you find yourself sharing most often.
Pranay Harish Rao 12:10
So one big tip I got is not so much marketing as much as planning on marketing was about always planning your source of growth. And this is something called a SOGA analysis. And it's common in P&G, I think in Unilever, we do it. And there's something called the maximum auditor, sorry, to bring a lot of acronyms here. But basically, SOGA is the source of growth analysis, which is where you plan where your growth comes from. One of the biggest issues in marketing, per se, is sometimes we get lost in the product and the story of the product. But we don't see where will the business come from? And what source of growth analysis does is it basically predicts or tries to plan where exactly will your business come? And this then is decided by some people to maximize the mass model, something I learned as a young man.
Tom Ollerton 12:54
Sorry, Pranay, what's that? I'm not quite catching that word.
Pranay Harish Rao 12:57
The max model - MAX.
Tom Ollerton 12:59
Max model. Thank you.
Pranay Harish Rao 13:00
Yeah, so the max model, and I'll explain what it is the max model is more from M is more from existing consumer, A is attract from competition, and x is expand the category. So a brand can basically gain value from three steps, they can get more from an existing consumer. So that's where you get your consumer to buy more, which means you incentivize him / her to get more products, incentivize him / her to probably have more trials, etc. The second is attract from competition, which is where you kind of try to gain share from your competition, which means you look at what weaknesses are there in their portfolio. And the third is expand the category, which is basically expand the category. And this is more true for brands, which are leaders in their market, where they have to expand the category otherwise the category will not show any growth. And the most interesting part about this is the maximum cost for acquisition is at the bottom, which is expand the category. So think of it as a pyramid. So when you expand the category, you have to spend the most amount of money to get people. Whereas when you have to attract from competition, it's a lesser amount of money, because the consumer always bought into the category, he or she is just switching. And the first which is the more from existing consumer is the cheapest, because basically already have a consumer inside your portfolio, you just kind of incentivize the consumer to buy. So this way of looking at a brand portfolio looking at how you attract competition, or attract new consumers, completely changed the way I started marketing, because then every time I spent $1 of money, I would look at what am I spending on, which is also very critically dependent on loyalty. When you realize the fact that it is cheaper to get business from your existing consumer, you then build your levers of loyalty, you build your CRM, and this is kind of what marketing is based on the more loyal consumers you get, the better your brand so that's a big learning I had and for somebody who I was always one of those who believed in great adds great products and great insights for me to think about marketing as logically and scientifically like this. It suddenly changed the way I think and suddenly also changed the way I prioritize marketing expense. So that's the one silver bullet, I would say.
Tom Ollerton 15:07
So now we're going to move on to your shiny new object, and your shiny new object is.
Pranay Harish Rao 15:16
So it's about advertising in the cookieless world. And now, yeah, so this, I think, is going to be the shiny new object for the entire universe of marketing today. So I do know, I do hope, I think you obviously know the fact that Google and Apple are soon going to drop cookies, we will not be able to track people. Lot of this is also largely due to the the controversies of Cambridge Analytica, and so on and so forth, where people were not happy that they were being tracked, people are not happy about stuff happening. But we are in a strange world whereby people say they don't want to be tracked. There's also the other part, when 74% of consumers actually say that they want to have a very personalized environment of shopping a personalized way of advertising. So you're stuck between this rock and a hard place, where at one point, they don't want to be tracked. The second point, if you give them a generic interface, they don't like it. So that's where we come into the world today of where we have to adapt to a cookieless future. Now, I also have to explain how cookies work. So cookies are generally based on third party data. And to very simply put it is, when you go to a website, there is a piece of code which tracks which website you have been on. Once it tracks your behavior, your visits to multiple websites across different genres, we create a pattern about who you are, with enough analysis, with enough first party data, we still know who the consumer is, right. So that's the third party data, which to also clarify third party data doesn't mean that they know your name, they don't know your email address directly. It's all hash data. Nobody's referring you to you as a person, Tom, but they're referring you to as probably X, XYZ is a particular consumer who does this in a certain way, so it's clear and clean. But the future of tomorrow is that we won't even have this data. So then it makes it even more important that we need to have our own first party data and first party data, the Holy Grail is that every website picks up data from consumers. Now what happens is, consumers don't really go to a website, unless they see some utility there. In companies like FMCG, where our sales purchases, everything happens through probably a third party website, or something like an Amazon, or through chains like Targets and Tescos, and Walmart, there is no real way for us attain this first party data. So then that changes things. So now we need to give them interfaces, we need to give them points of control, wherein they come in, they provide us this first party data. And that's going to completely change the game. So to also honestly bring, there's also another factor, which we call today called zero party data. And this is in fact, even more interesting is that when you go to website, you might see some websites will ask you can I help you choose a product? And then they'll ask you 10 questions. Now these 10 questions, while inocuous, harmless actually help build the entire map of the consumer. And the more the consumers are able to answer these queries, the better will the experience be for these consumers. And the better will be the quality of data that the marketer collects on them. So tomorrow, it is more and more critical that every company and in fact, if you see most companies today, and we've all done that have shifted our point of reference, or the place where we used to interact, interact with consumers, from websites, to social media to Instagram, we will have to come back to our websites, we'll have to come back to places where we can collect first party zero party data, and this is going to completely change the way we work. So I hope I've not spoken too much.
Tom Ollerton 18:53
No, not at all. So just a point of clarity, the difference in first party data is like you'd collect my email on your website, whereas zero party data is I want to see information about these different things. ABCDE, but you're not collecting my actual data at that point.
Pranay Harish Rao 19:11
So it could be both first party data, what happens is you come and probably log in for an email newsletter, right? So that could be first party data. In zero party data, it's also about you, not to be giving that information, but probably we asked you a question and said, Hey, can I help you choose your beauty cream? So if you can tell me these five questions, so it is the consumer coming on his own entering the data compared to this that's the difference between a zero party and a first party data. The line is pretty thin, to be honest.
Tom Ollerton 19:37
Yeah, I was gonna say that, feels very similar to me but so the zero party data will become first party data if it was then attached to a some kind of form of contact like a phone number or email or so on. And so, so there's going to be this move in your view from from Instagram, from third party sites to some more entertaining experiences on brands' own websites is that that kind of felt like what the internet was like when I started working in it in about 15 years ago, where it was all about creating branded experiences on a site, you know, microsite flash, it was all about this incredible experience on, you know, on a dotcom, or a microsite, is that what you're seeing? Or are we going to see a different kind of future to collect this first and zero party data?
Pranay Harish Rao 20:26
Yeah, so that is the biggest challenge we are facing, so that the beauty is, so remember, 10 years back, right, we used to work on our websites, we did these amazing websites for people who come, engage. And then we realized that people came into Facebook much easier. And they did all this much easier. So we are going to reach a position in life. And actually, Facebook kind of helps some of these things, where either we'll have to create our own website, which means going back to the world of having websites, doing SEO, SEM, getting people to your site, or we have to build new relationships with the Instagrams, the Facebooks of the world, where they help us to collect this first party and zero party data without cookies. So now what was initially sent down through websites could possibly be done through a social media interface. Facebook does allow some of that already. But it will completely change the way we think, where instead of outsourcing what we used to what we did recently, we outsource all of this segmentation, thinking to the Facebooks and the Googles of the world, we will have to go back one step, start collecting this data, either through our own website, or through Facebook, etc. And that's going to be trickier and tougher every time.
Tom Ollerton 21:32
So how's it gonna work for Facebook's largest client, which is, I'm told there's lots of very small clients, you know, small businesses that want to target people in a certain area, it makes up about 8% of their revenue, as I'm told that, you know, that these guys aren't gonna be able to create a meaningful website experience, like SEO, probably completely beyond them. So how does how does that work version of the future work for small businesses, which is arguably where the money is.
Pranay Harish Rao 22:00
So it will be much more difficult, but that's where the zero party comes in, so when Facebook would give a consumer an option of entering in and saying I can share ABC pieces of information. So therefore, when they go on to Facebook, they're targeted only by ads for the particular location they are. So instead of cookies, following the consumer and trying to build an image of the consumer, in zero party, it's the consumer that searching, hey, I'm ready to share ABC pieces of information, if you can give me a better interface. And that's going to be where the part comes in. And you're right, in that what will happen is the mom and pop store two, who are dependent on Facebook to do their advertising, assuming that Facebook catches the right consumer in the right location, etc, is going to find it fun stuff. But then within those parameters, the also the part is that the power of Facebook from to market, yes, which is where Facebook knew all about the consumer is also going to go down. So it's going to be a balance where you may have paid, let's say, $100 to Facebook for an ad campaign, which ran in a particular place, because you couldn't, nobody else had the power of Facebook, you might be able to take a step back and be able to do this with a much lower spend, maybe less targeting, and still get the same impact. So it's going to be a mix. And honestly speaking, the real targeting information, all the stuff that we did from Facebook was about finding segments such as whether this person was a trendy user of electronics. I'm just giving a very bad example. And this was higher level segmentation, which is done by looking at his or her behavior across many websites. For the mom and pop store, it doesn't matter, for the mom and pop store, it's still about first party information, which is I want to target all people who live in a certain location. And that location will still be allowed because nothing in cookies has got anything to do with that particular part of advertising. So cookies never played a part in those advertising in any case, so that should not affect them.
Tom Ollerton 23:56
I'm thinking more of a business that isn't necessarily geographically based. Yep, like you and I could set up a clothing company, what a strange idea. But we want to target, you know, people who are interested in this type of fashion that we're in and then that ceases to become available, like, does that create a problem? Like yes, it does create a problem, but what do you think are the solutions to that?
Pranay Harish Rao 24:18
It does create a problem so then the future could be possibly alliances between brands, where you have I don't know you call it the Apparel Alliance, which is about consumers going to a certain website, like you know, the loyalty clubs, which used to be there at some point in time, and providing the information for certain incentives in return. And then that information is legally allowed to be traded with these companies who can advertise, but so that cookies are not allowed, but you are allowed as a consumer to still go to a place giving your information and allow targeted advertising. So then it will be the value of the targeted advertising. So if I as a consumer, there will be certain platforms like loyalty programs, wherein you can go and provide your information. In return for this information the loyalty program will give you let's say, 5% discount across all the companies who are part of my loyalty program, in return for this 5%, which this company gives, all these companies who are part of the loyalty program also get a way to know more about the consumer. So you will see aggregated loyalty programs systems, you will see aggregated marketing programs. So that's what's going to happen, when you no longer will be able to observe a consumer without his consent, which is what cookies did in some cases. But you will be able to take their consent and ask them, Can I market you XYZ products? In return for these products, I will give you probably one or two incentives and give you a better shopping experience. That's how we look to go.
Tom Ollerton 25:43
Well, I'm very much looking forward to seeing how this plays out. Pranay, thank you for going into such detail but also explaining it to a wide range of different audiences for this show. And I appreciate that, but we're gonna have to wrap up the podcast now. So if someone wants to get in touch with you, where would you like them to do that? And how would you like them to do that what makes a good outreach message to you?
Pranay Harish Rao 26:07
Just you can reach out to on LinkedIn actually reach out to me at any point. And I'm always available. I used to give out my email address, but there's too much spam coming in. But anytime you want to reach out on LinkedIn, I'm there available, I do, I am part of some forums, etc. That can't really, I don't even know whether people know this form. So that's the point there. And you can reach out to me at any point, and I'm always open to discussions on new marketing, new ways. I'd love to catch up with you.
Tom Ollerton 26:34
And what makes a good message like what's a really good open for you?
Pranay Harish Rao 26:40
Well, that's a good one. Messages I've reacted to usually are stuff like if there's something we can discuss about new technologies, new marketing, if they want to understand something about, let's say, stuff that we are doing, which would help them or it's more about the marketing, how to say the marketing knowledge stuff, then that really makes for an interesting discussion. And I have spoken to many people across the world on that.
Tom Ollerton 27:08
Fantastic. That's a great bit of advice. And Pranay, I thank you so much for your time.
Pranay Harish Rao 27:13
Anytime. Thanks for your time too.
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