Like every year, the DMA (Direct Marketing Association) organizes its big annual show. This year was a bit special in that the show was renamed to become "&THEN". A few days after the show, I had the opportunity to speak with Muriel GlatinCamp de Bases' Director of Consulting, who had the chance to accompany the French delegation to the show. She tells us how she perceived the show and the major marketing trends in the United States.
Jonathan Loriaux This year the show, which was previously called DMA, has changed its name to &THEN. Is there really a difference compared to the previous editions? Has the formula really been renewed?
Muriel Glatin The formula has indeed been renewed. This year, there was a particular focus on creating interactivity between the different participants of the show, with much more open presentation formats, leaving the floor open and interactivity between the "speaker" and his audience. The will is to make this event a networking space and not just a link where "one comes to get information".
There has been an attempt to make some conferences into real workshops. Fewer "PowerPoint" conferences, although the "best practices" format still works very well, and more question-and-answer spaces.
In this conference model, the speaker is not a speaker, he is a facilitator - he will push the questions to the room. Sometimes he tries to stage them more or less, there was one who presented a board with questions for a jeopardy and then gradually opened the questions. Hopefully, the room would react and sometimes... it wouldn't react at all.
JL : So, it's a bit of a mixed bag depending on the profile of the speaker.
MG That's it. Exactly... the speaker, the space, the subject... Nevertheless, this will to create interactivity, to create a link between the participants is probably a request from the visitors of the show. There is a second message that was carried in this edition, pushed, almost like an injunction, in particular by Mel Robins to the marketers to tell them: "you have to move". You have to get out of your office. You have to get out of your charts, your numbers. You have to look at what's going on around you, you have to go out and meet people even if you don't know them, even if you don't understand what they're saying. This is his "theory" of the five seconds. For five seconds, you must let yourself be carried away by your impulse and your initial ideas. After that, it's always time to censor yourself and slow down. We also had all this talk that was brought to us.
JL Beyond this discourse on openness and spontaneity, are there any particular technologies that have marked you that most of the speakers have returned to, perhaps a little more strongly than in previous years?
MG In the techno topics, we have indeed noted the subject of data quality which is very present especially in the aisles of the show. This is probably reinforced by the fact that today, we are in environments where we have many data sources with more or less good quality. The imperative of data quality is very present in the United States.
JL What makes this a topic that would come back to the forefront today?
MG There are two reasons. Because your database is fed by a lot of data sources that are more or less clean. Hosting them in a single platform means that you have to be very robust in terms of data quality protocol within these unified databases. The quality treatments are all the more important because today we have 10 or 20 data sources, and sometimes more. This was not the case before.
JL The return of data quality is being driven by other technologies that are themselves changing the way data is managed in the enterprise.
MG Exactly, it's the dematerialization that makes for a multiplicity of contact points. And each point of contact has its own data quality issues. And when you aggregate all that, it's even more multiplied. A second point that may explain this focus is the fact that in an economy that has been very much driven by digital in the broad sense of the term, with a lot of cookies, more display, the issue of quality is less of a focus than when we are in a more CRM world, with personal databases. Today, these CRM databases are coming back to the forefront, and this is actually helping to bring this issue to the fore.
What is also new, especially for France, is the programmatic and onboarding data part. All of these technologies will allow us to bring together cookie databases with personal databases. Bringing together first party and third party, advertising and marketing, display and CRM... These terms used to refer to very different, very watertight, very compartmentalized worlds. Today, you can push targeted, ultra-personalized advertising banners, addressed specifically to a customer or a prospect according to the data you have on them. This allows me to optimize my advertising budgets much better, because from the moment I am able to identify my contacts for my advertising campaigns, I can also consider that certain customer targets do not have to be exposed.
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JL You mentioned the term "onboarding data", for the readers of Badsender who are not familiar with the subject, could you redefine what it means?
MG Onboarding data is the technology that will allow us to deduplicate cookies and an email address for example. From the email address xxx@campdebase.comI will therefore be able to hang up all my web browsing. This onboarding data will make it possible to link the personal databases with the entire database of information on cookies. As a result, display and banner ads will become a kind of new channel for relationship marketing. Today, with relationship marketing, we mainly activate the SMS, mailing or emailing channel. Today, in my relationship program, I can also include CRM display because I can reach my customers by name.
JL To come back to &THEN, is the event open to the international market and does it properly welcome foreign delegations? And what is your feeling on the opening of the show to the international.
MG : This is a show that historically is 100% American but that opens widely to foreign delegations. This is clearly part of the objectives of the DMA organizers, to make it a truly international show. This year, a little anecdote, the French delegation was the largest. We were about 40 representatives.
And the welcome is clearly emphasized for foreign delegations. We receive a real VIP treatment. We enter the rooms first, we have pre-show and post-show workshops with the organizers to brief us, ...
JL Seen from France, we often have the impression that Americans are far ahead in marketing practices. After participating in the event, are there any subjects on which you feel that France is not lagging behind the United States in terms of certain techniques? Are there any subjects on which we finally defend ourselves very well, even better than certain American practices?
MG It's always refreshing to go and see what's happening in the United States. At the same time, the observation we made is that we really have nothing to be ashamed of in France. We are far ahead on all the subjects of DMP, first party and third party cookies. You only have to go to a trade show in France, and you'll see all the representatives who propose this kind of device. We are also very advanced in predictive technologies.
Perhaps twenty years ago, indeed, there was more talk of modeling and predictive thinking in the United States. Now, I don't see any difference. On the contrary, in France, we have solutions that are very effective and players that are very effective in terms of data science.
So whether it's the tools or the methods, France is doing very well. Once again, the point on which we have perhaps made less progress is what I was saying earlier in terms of media convergence with data onboarding, which in France is still not very present.
There's a lot of talk about programmatic, but it's still driven by large players and is still not widely used in companies. I would say that the gap is more in the area of dissemination and deployment within companies, where in France we still have to evangelize and acculturate. In the United States, however, I have the feeling that the data culture is much more widespread within marketing teams.
JL On the other hand, were there any topics during the event that were not addressed and that you think should have been?
MG We didn't hear much about regulations and legislation, consumer protection and the Internet user. On the contrary, I was a little surprised by some of the comments made by speakers who explained that, in any case, the intensity of prospecting and the way of addressing the customer is more a question of managing commercial pressure. You push, you push, you push and then when it starts to react rather badly, you adjust your commercial pressure. The subject is not addressed as it can be in Europe.
