Great. Well, I want to thank everybody who is here today. Um My name is Priya and Dakota and I'm leading the session on reimagining marketing in the pandemic. It's a delight to be here in women in tech global conference.Um And this is a topic that has just been weighing on my mind and I've been thinking a lot about for the past year because much like you in the midst of much chaos and in the coping and surviving mode, I've also been in listening mode and what I have come away with this year has both been on the personal side, but also professionally as a marketer.

I've thought a lot about lessons that I would like to take away um to become a better marketer, but also a better marketing leader. Um and to show up for customers and be a great customer champion. Um No doubt this has been an extraordinary 18 months. Um and it's continuing. Um the pandemic is definitely not in our rearview mirror just yet specifically globally. Um But there are lessons to be had and I wanted to use this opportunity today to share with you some of the sort of high level insights that I've come away with in terms of how I think the landscape has changed from um a go to market approach. Um and how consumers across all industries and categories are buying. And so with that, I'll just kind of dive right in. So in the next 20 minutes, I'll be covering um a couple of areas. One is what does growth in the year of the pandemic look like um for brands that have done fairly well. Um And why have they done well specifically? And the skill that I'm really keen on talking about is uh flex marketing. And I'll talk, I'll dive into that a little bit um Later on. Um I'll also talk about post 2020 marketing strategies and two buckets that I consider are both from an acceleration point of view.

So strategies that are already in play that have accelerated post COVID and pivots, right? So adjustments that marketers and business leaders have had to make as a result of a changing landscape and then because we're marketers or presumably some of us are today, um We want to measure, right? So a discussion a little bit on um post post 2020 marketing metrics to watch for and to consider. So with that, I'll just dive right in. Um So by way of introduction, um as I mentioned, my name is Priya and Dakota. I um have held various marking leadership roles at technology start ups and Fortune five hundreds where I've helped to build regional and product lines of business, um primarily in the tech space. Um I've launched over 20 hardware products and services. A number of them have been nascent in the nascent category, new category products. Um And then I am a global operator. I've led regional marketing and I've been based in Asia Pacific. I've been based in Europe, I've based throughout the, throughout North America. Um And today I'm in uh the San Francisco Bay area. And so I think just by definition, having worked in start ups and having launched products and having kind of gone into new markets for the first time um to launch a product.

Um I, I'd like to think that I may not be an expert in flex marketing, but I certainly have become appreciative of those flex marketing skills. So this is um a topic that's near and dear to me. So in terms of um what I mean by flex marketing, I, I actually had some time to think about what the literature that's kind of around growth, marketing, uh growth, marketing mindset. If you um have interviewed with a company in the last five years, no doubt, you'll inevitably be asked what is an example of where you've applied a growth marketing mindset. And um there's a lot of literature written about what a growth mindset is. And so I wanted to impact that a little bit. Um a growth mindset is about being resilient, about continuous learning about curiosity. Um And if you think about it, all those attributes are very specific to having a flex mindset, right? Being nimble, being agile, being responsive to the market to customers needs. And so in my mind, I'd like to turn the vernacular a little bit on its head and think about growth mindset really equals a flex mindset. The other thing that I wanted to talk about was just that flex marketing is really not a fad. It's not something that's fashionable and it's just here to stay for a year or two.

This is not the first time that we've gone through a major global upheaval and that how it's affected supply chains and um customer demand and frankly human, human life, we've seen it um in many different forms. Um in the last, uh I mean, since forever in the business world, um I personally had kind of lived through the period of SARS um um being based in Asia Pacific um and learned how to sort of cope and, and navigate those turbulent waters. So all to say that flex marketing is a skill that's needed today and it will be needed in the future. It's not the first time we're gonna be going through, we've gone through global upheaval and it's not gonna be the last. The other thing is if you look up agile leadership, um particularly in the tech world and particularly in start ups, you will see sort of this over indexing historically on product management, right? Like how do you take products to market in an agile responsible way? But you don't see a lot. I would argue on agile marketing and I think that literature and that inventory of content is really being built right now. And I venture to guess that as we kind of emerge from the next, in the next couple of years, we'll see some best practices of marketing leadership in being flex and being responsive and and the importance of agile marketing.

So that sort of inventory of content is really being developed right now. And similarly, as we're sort of preparing to be agile marketing leaders, so is the marketing technology stack. So in the last 10 years, I've seen some such remarkable changes in terms of integrations across all of, you know CRM platforms and B I and marketing automation. And now the next sort of quantum leap that um technology vendors are taking is really to be supportive in for marketing leaders to be responsive and flexible in their, in their marketing strategies. And really um what I mean by that and I'll talk a little bit about it is integrating um very sophisticated A I insights into um all areas of the the marketing tech stack. So in terms of marketing strategies, post 2020 there's sort of two buckets that I'd like to think about, as I mentioned, one is accelerations and the accelerations are really strategies that were already in play um that have just accelerated because of the global pandemic. And then there's pivots which are really about adjusting um and changing strategy and changing course and some may not be surprises. So I'll unpack these later but just to kind of go through the through the list.

Um What I'm seeing particularly, no surprise is the investment in digital mobile marketing is is on the rise, omni channel marketing was always there. And now there's sort of even more of an emphasis on having marketers understand the whole sort of channel experience from end to end.

And all the levers that inform that uh channel experience responsible real time marketing has become incredibly important. And I'll talk a bit about that and purpose driven or values driven marketing on the pivot side, what we're seeing is um the importance of meeting customers where they are versus just an aspirational C. Um And this is not just about where customers are in the funnel, but also really where they are in life in terms of messaging and being authentic. And I'll talk a little bit about some examples around that, organizing a unified view of the customer experience and I underline customer experience and how important that is for CMO S today, a renewed attention to loyalty. Um And if I could sort of redline anything on this slide, it would be this particular point. And then similarly shifting gated content to free knowledge share um and um more so on areas around COVID-19 resources, but also about helping customers and stakeholders uplevel their own skills.

So let's start with the obvious um digital mobile transformation. This is in the bucket of, you know, already on the trajectory of digital mobile transformation I DC predicts that um companies will be investing $6.8 trillion in um their mobile and digital infrastructure in the next two years.

Um Mobile and digital consumption of content has and offers has increased and so has mobile um and um ecommerce as well. Um So no surprise there um obviously accelerated with, with um um sub shelter in place um last year. Um But what's interesting here is, and what's remarkable to me is not just the accelerated expenditure in these spaces um by people or users and customers who are already using these technologies, but really, it's about the segments that were never using these technologies prior to the pandemic that have now um subscribed to this digital stickiness, right?

So um accenture predicts an increase of 100 and 69% in mobile and online purchases by new or infrequent mobile and digital buyers. The graph to my right is um a study that mckinsey did on consumer sentiment where they interviewed 13 countries that were most affected by CO uh COVID as related to GDP and of all of the sort of first time um online and mobile shoppers um who had started um um Ecommerce and and mobile shopping since um when COVID started her shelter in place, over 65% have indicated that they will stick to that course.

So as a marketer, we were always kind of wary of going after from a mo mobile and digital ad perspective, um um users who were not already subscribed to these platforms or these technologies because the cost of acquisition was really hard. What I'd like to kind of leave you with the thought is is that this total addressable market has just exploded, right? So a lot to think about in terms of segments and the total addressable market um that are um using mobile commerce and and digital commerce um as a regular um modality. Similarly, omni channel marketing is in the same boat. Um I won't go through all the numbers here just in the interest of time. But if you have an opportunity, I definitely encourage you to look at the accenture report that talks about COVID-19 consumer pulse research. And really what we're seeing is a sustained increase in consumer bias towards omni channel shopping globally. So people who've never done curbside pickup or home delivery or virtual consults are now not only sticking with it, but there's an increased usage. So omni channel marketing in terms of what we always knew has now accelerated in the pandemic responsive in real time marketing. So this is a little bit to unpack because obviously marketing is responsive.

But what I mean by this is this ability for marketers and marketing leaders to respond really in real time um with content and offers and messaging and creatives that matter in the moment. Um And the biggest hit, I would argue if you're a CMO and you're looking at your annual plans, the biggest line expenditure in your budget arguably would be your advertising dollars if you do advertise. And so if you're looking at TV, or out of home, what we saw in Q one and Q two of last year was this remarkable shift from advertisers, walking back and walking out of their contracts and media buys because it was just not performing or because the creative was not resonating or because that particular commercial or that particular ad was produced six months ago or four months ago in high production value.

So, um and there's so many cases of this that I could talk about or cite. But the point being that now this really cold for marketers and advertisers and agencies to sit together and think about how to re invent on the spot. And so we saw traditional TV, advertising going down by 15%. Also 6 million households in the US had cut cable. Um and we rarely subscribed to streaming services. And so we saw an increase in ad spend on streaming services like Roku as an example and as on a network um streaming platforms an increase in digital ad spends an increase in, in uh social media um ads as well. So the ability, what traditional TV, linear TV did was not allowing for in terms of flexible buys and ability to switch out messaging direct response. Hi, Ro I now was being reinvented in the air pandemic. And I would argue this is kind of the new way of thinking about things in terms of real time and responsive marketing and similarly revisiting the mark, the marketing tech stack. So wherever you are in the funnel, your CRM, your B I your marketing automation, really, the next conversation you're going to have with your CRM vendor is really gonna be about how can I not just deliver, deliver real time insights but allow you to action it.

So that's gonna be sort of the the the gold standard, right? Or the expected standard in our, in our tech stack today, purpose driven or values driven. Marketing was already on the rise. We saw this, there's so much data around this in terms of how consumers buy and purchase. Um But um that's accelerated in the area of COVID, I think customers and users, whether you were an enterprise user or you're uh uh you know, uh um an end uh B to C user or sorry uh end customer, you really are looking at brands to understand where you are in your life and what is their value and how can they communicate that to you.

So the brand storytelling, I saw a lot more investment in, in brand dollars um within companies. Um so purpose driven marketing has obviously taken off, but particularly in COVID, it meant how are brands actually responding to COVID-19 and to the global pandemic and what are they doing?

And so that storytelling and that narrative had to be had and some brands shied away from it and didn't fare so well. And some brands like Adobe dived right in um Adobe has been just phenomenal. I wish I could hide more time to talk about Adobe and how they sort of um really cemented their position in in this space as a category leader. But um let me just say this, Adobe ended up switching their offline event or their sort of in person event into an online event within a month. Um They made all of their digital assets uh content free. Uh So created all this great content um which allowed for more marketers and content users to use their um to, to access their content. They created an inventory that was specific for COVID-19. They've done a remarkable job at using their employees um as part of their sort of brand messaging. And so they have um implemented uh sort of help lines and support tools for their employees during the crisis to help them better manage um and get information when information was scarce.

Um So their increased focus on employee engagement was really representative of what's happening in the industry and investments that are happening in employer brand marketing brands that recognize that their employees are extension of their brand and brand ambassadors are are the ones that are succeeding in doing well.

And then Deloitte ran a um uh 2021 marketing global marketing trends survey which indicated that 79% of consumers and this is over 2400 customers interviewed recall instances of brands positively responding to COVID-19 to help their customers workforces and communities that 79% of brand recall that's phenomenally high.

And it shows how important it was for users to understand that the brands that they they they bought into were actually responding in real time to to the prices. Um If we started to look at some of the pivots, um you know, again, not a lot of time to go into the Zoom example, but this is an important one, which is what the customer experience in the past as marketers. We looked at the customer um uh product experience but not experience with the brand. And customer experience would either sit in siloed departments like post customer support or it would be in marketing in the driver's seat. But companies like Zoom, which had very great leadership around this in the early days. Even prior to COVID with Eric Juan had understood that making customers happy end to end needed to be the final month of the company, it there was just no um misinterpretation of what Eric Juan was really trying to achieve with Zoom. So I would argue that, you know, their response to the um security issues with Zoom last year and um how quick they were to respond to it, how it was all hands on deck, how responsive they are on social media to the both the goods and the bads and the reviews that come in.

Um how they consistently talk across all lines of business about their end goal being about creating happiness is something that has helped them stay in the market as a market leader. Um uh And you know, proof is in the pudding in terms of how well uh zoom is doing today, but that unified view of the customer experience um is I think where companies are going to be heading to. And I will say there are some companies that are doing a great job at actually organizing their businesses around customer segments. Um product engineering, uh marketing and sales are around customer segments in developing experiences and not necessarily just on the product area.

I think the other pivot that's really changed is that brand loyalty has changed and this is the one that I I mentioned that I wanted to kind of redline. Um Ernest and Young did a future Consumer Index 2020. Again, I encourage anyone to read. It's very, very insightful up to 61% of customers depending on the category became willing to consider a white label product and let alone switch name brands. So we are seeing a huge flux in what loyalty means for end users today. Um And again, that kind of goes back to what I was talking about the reinvestment of dollars into, into the brand and storytelling and values driven marketing. Um I love this quote by Janet Baylis um from uh Harvard Business Review. She writes in the 10 truths about uh marketing after the pandemic. The old truth was that you were competing with your competitors. And the new truth is you are competing with the last best experience that your customer has had. I'm just gonna let that sit because that's, it's just so true, right? It is all about the customer experience and no customer can be taken for granted right now. Meeting customers where they are is something that I've talked about quite a bit and it's another pivot that's happened in the industry when 1015 years ago, many of us in the marketing field were looking at sort of those luxury car ads as the sort of go to marketing.

Um No offense for anyone who is from a luxury car brand who's here today. But you know, this idea of an aspirational sell, you were selling a lifestyle in COVID. I think there was a real shift in the authentic message and the authentic voice and what customers were expecting brands to kind of relate to them. And it wasn't about an aspirational sell, it was about meeting customers where they are and I use Peloton because I'm a big fan and I believe in the brand. But you will all recall this sort of pr fiasco of December 2019, which was prior to COVID hitting the US. But this idea that they were building um a lot of messaging and um ads around, um uh they were just really off, a little off color off message. Um these beautiful homes, these Pristine Manhattan, um Penthos um which spoke to a user group but would not ever help. Uh Peloton scale. And there was a particular commercial obviously that drew ire for gender stereotypes and sort of um uh health and wellness, image body issues.

And so, you know, Peloton pulled that ad obviously, but there was a bunch of memes that sort of emerged as a result. I posted one or two. The message here for me is it's not just about meeting customers where they are in the funnel, it's about the messaging and getting it right. It's about where they are in their life because whether you're talking to a Cio or you're talking to um uh the end user who's looking at a Peloton bike. The point is is that people were very clear this year and last year that they wanted people, they wanted to be sold as a to as being a person, right? Where where they are in life. They wanted to know that brands understood where they stood in life. And so being off message like this kind of resulted in, you know, a decline in shares. It had real tangible results for Peloton, but they pivoted very quickly. And what they did is they opened up their digital ecosystem. They dropped their digital app, they created a whole branding messaging production area around content and community and experience versus the design and hardware.

And really kind of doubled down on this idea of connected fitness um the community piece and how much they invested in the Peloton community is, you know, Barnet. I mean, they've just really done a phenomenal job there. So all to say that, I think when you think about Peloton today and where it was in 2019, it's a completely different brand and it's a result of them listening to their community and understanding to meet their customers where they are. And then the final piece here is content marketing. Um And um this is the, you know, this is really where, you know, an example like Flickr where this has nothing to do with the photo sharing site in terms of their solutions. But they created a repository and an inventory for photographers to get resources on loan assistance, um to get uh support from other photographers uh to um to to, to get resources and grants and funds. So this was a real example. Of a brand showing up where it wasn't monetized content, but it was something that was needed. Um Similarly, we're seeing shifts from gated content for member only um uh customer only content to free and accessible content, which is very important in building brand equity and then diy and educational content is obviously taken off.

And then, you know, I'll just, you know, I'm a little over time, so I just sort of wrap up here with marketing metrics, any marketing tech stack, I think looking forward is gonna have to build in um abilities to um drive proof of concept fairly quickly for marketing leaders to get back to the business integration between not just the Demandgen side of the business, but also brand.

So brand and Demandgen and how they work together, surfacing, loyalty, retention and churn again this emphasis on loyalty and how important it is is gonna be something that we're going to see from. You know, now for as long as I can think of real time insights versus just rear view insights. So not just analyzing what happened last quarter, but understanding what's going on now and being able to communicate that to the business and then continuing on this trajectory of unified solutions in your marketing tech stack versus point solutions that really focus on the whole customer experience.

And so with that, I will leave you with this image because for some reason I have an an ordinated amount of ocean and uh uh boat analogies in my book of quotes. But this is one I like, um rather like the bold sea captain. One must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against the wind, but one must surely sail. And this reminds us that in times of ambiguity, at least for me, it's really one step after another. So, um with that, I will let you, um, I, if anybody has questions, would like a copy of this deck would like to talk further. You can dm me at Twitter at P Gandy and um on linkedin at in slash P and decota. But thank you all for joining today.