Brands are focused on making sure that all dollars work harder across all tactics and channels, which was the main takeaway from the panel “Finding and Reaching Customers in a Fragmented Media Landscape.”
Kimberly Wallengren, VP Marketing, North America for Coach, said: “Ensuring performance marketing works harder and that it’s more effective and productive, that’s the magic sauce.”
From my own panel “Agency Rapid Fire: Nine Major Challenges and Opportunities in Marketing,” I was joined by Joe Laszlo, Head of Content-USA, Shoptalk; Shane Rickard, CEO, Harmon Brothers; and Curt Munk, CSO, Tracy-Locke. Our discussion focused on effectiveness and creativity, starting with the business problem to solve, the job to be done, and clear and measurable objectives.
Our conclusion was that it’s not just about finding any metrics – it’s about measuring the right ones that are linked to business outcomes.
At the Shoptalk session "Improving Demand Forecasting and Inventory Planning," Wayfair’s Nitin Kapoor, VP Supply Chain & Omnichannel Commerce Platform, revealed: “We found ourselves creating a bunch of metrics, like a metric soup, and finally at some point in our journey, we said let's stop focusing on metrics that masquerade as true business outcomes and focus on those that actually matter, like sales, revenue and margin.”
Agreed.