Why Data Is The New Competitive Advantage

So we all know that data is one of the most valuable assets that a brand has. In this next session, we're going to discuss the tools, culture, and skills needed to be insights driven and how to blend data with creativity. For this next session, please welcome up Chris Worthington from Urban Outfitters, Lisa Pillette from Fossil Group and Heather Kaminetsky from Mytheresa. Welcome to all of you. Thank you so much for joining us today. So just to kick off, it'd be great if you can give us a quick introduction to who you are and your role. Hi, I'm Heather Kaminetsky. I'm the President of Mytheresa here in North America. Hi, I'm Lisa Pillette. I'm the Chief Marketing Officer of the Fossil Group. I'm Chris, Lead Marketing and Commerce at Urban Outfitters. Wonderful, thank you. Thank you for joining us. Chris, I'd love to start with you. So Urban Outfitters has such a wide selection at brands and products from vinyl records to vintage clothing. I'd love to know how data informs that assortment. Yeah, we're kind of a wild ride. So, I mean, Urban has been the curator of cool in some ways for many generations. I think we think about our customers as really creatively focused. And I think if you look at the landscape now, I think we really can play into a lot of these pools of niche cultures, like whether you're into skateboarding, whether you're into surf, whether you identify as highly feminine. And so I think we first start with that as our framework. We're servicing really creative niche pools of customers and we develop a lot of data, both first party and third party, and we try to match product, we try to match brands stories to this. So at a macro level, that's how we think about it. At a micro level, I think we can really help inform our merchants whether we're getting reads on things like graphic tees, which may have like a really high lifetime value customer, or our merchants might help make different decisions on what kind of shirts they want to buy into. So it starts kind of macro understanding these pools of different types of customers, finding the right product, but then going a level deeper and helping our merchants decide with that next level of data. Great. And, Heather, I'd love to come to you because I know Myteresa launched Life last year, which is a new luxury home accessories category. So what role do data and insights play in launching those new categories? So in addition to the data that we get on the website, we actually do a lot of customer meetings, learnings, gatherings. A lot of our business is driven by physical engagement that we have with our clients, and they really are the ones that tell us what it is they're looking for. So before we launched life, we had men's, women's, kids. The story goes actually that we were sitting at a roundtable and one of our clients is like it's time you continued to decorate me, but now I want you to decorate my home. And that was actually the first conversation that launched this category of Life, the extension of living. So we continued to speak with our customers and obviously use our internal data to make decisions on categories, products that we're using in the future. So those physical interactions are still really crucial to the brand? Very, very. There's so much information. I think if you would ask most CEOs, they would tell you that the best ideas actually come from the customer because they're the end user of all your work. And in terms of your brand selection, you have a very tightly curated selection of, is it 250 brands? Exactly. Again, what role does data play in selecting those brands? So Myteresa's philosophy is that, well, the truth is we're the finest at it in luxury. And luxury is a big key piece for us. We have 250 brands. If the buyers want to bring more on, we have to exit a brand. And the idea is that if you actually think to yourself how many luxury brands are out there, most people can't get past 20. I've done this exercise many times. So when you look at websites that claim to be luxury and they have thousands of brands, it's not possible. There's not that many. So we use obviously asking our customers what they're looking for, as far as brands, we also use internal search. There's a lot of data in internal search and also Google search that winds up on your website. It has a lot of data as well because it tells you what someone expects you to have if they come to your site and they do an internal search on a specific brand, they're expecting you to have it. So that tells a story as well. And Lisa, I know you're taking Fossil brands into a new era with a more premium product assortment and the Made For This campaign. Can you just talk us through that and how you're really reinventing the brand? Sure. So Fossil's a heritage brand in the sense that it's been around and it's been a part of culture for over 40 years. And so Ana said it earlier in another panel. There's a lot of, I would say, really positive sentiment that has existed, where the brand has lived in people's minds and in their memories. But what we really needed to do is kind of figure out how to make that really relevant for today. So we actually started through identifying one of our tranches of customers off of our website that had a higher CLTV, that had lower churn, and just much more highly engaged than the average customer. And what we saw in them was an opportunity to actually build in a more premium brand, a more premium product line off of that. So it started from actually an insight of seeing some actual behaviors with certain people that kind of was apart from the norm. Then leveraging that, we went much wider in a much more qual-quant segmentation to identify, look at the accessories category, look at holistically and what those psychographics were that align with the people that we wanted to go after. And then once we had that, we really started to think about our value set, what was important to us and how it married with their value set to kind of identify that cultural truth, that human truth and the product truth. So we got to a germ of a campaign, which came it was the genesis of Made for This, which was kind of this idea that Fossil has always shown up in people's most important moments. So instead of it being something that you got in your past for your graduation or your first job or any of these moments you wanted to be, that 'you're made for the moment right now'. So we really turned that into a story for today. And then all of the creative development work was done with a panel of folks in six countries and we co-developed and made sure that all of our content and copy resonated and we transcreated that. Now that we're in market, we're going back to them and seeing, how is it performing from like a brand lift and insight standpoint, but also going back to them of where we can continue to evolve the story so it's informed by the consumer. But it's been with the consumer from its germ before it was even a campaign. And how is it performing? Can you give us some of the stats? No, I'm thrilled. It's we've been in market for about a month. So we really looked the shift was something that you had said is looking at a 360, right? We needed to put a profound media back in market, but we also really needed to lean in to what that segment was, which we call them the Feel Good Collective, and they're a group of people that are incredibly optimistic, social, and care about doing the right thing. So not only do we want to reflect them, but we actually started to do experiences with them. So far, it's been really positive. We looked at holistic PR and content. It's a brand now that's kind of leading from its core. We do a lot of collaborations, so we're always kind of in the market, but this is really Fossil's core IP being front and center. And so we're really happy with the performance of the content and organic traffic up and search is up and all of those indicators that you'd see in the funnel. And Heather I know Lisa mentioned, they're really focusing in on those higher spending loyal customers. And Myteresa sales growth for 2023 was really driven by those VICs. What are you doing to really create an exclusive, personalized experience for them and to really stand out from your competitors? So we offer services within the business to our VIC, but we also unlock the world of fashion with many experiences. So there is a tremendous amount of experiences that we invite our clients to. Sometimes it's runway, sometimes it's dinner, sometimes it's to go somewhere and have an experience with a brand. All these amazing experiences when the customers come, they create almost like their own community, right? You go somewhere, you meet new people, you become friends, you connect, and then you continue. And we, Myteresa, are at the center of that journey. So it really connects everyone back to us, which has really been an incredible experience for us to watch as well as the community continues to grow. And then obviously, just back to services, there's certain things I'm sure everyone does this whether it's expedited shipping or special other services that we give to the consumer. And Chris, I'd love to know a bit more about your data mindset, because data is about looking back at trends, behaviors from your customers, whereas branding's very much about looking forwards. So how do you balance those two? Yeah, I mean, I'm going to say nothing novel because I think we really talked about where we derive a lot of data like customers are spending so much time on platforms. We are really lucky to have really rich first party data, so we can map that happy path for someone when they enter with a tchotchke and want to stay for another four purchases. But I think the key for us and data is also not to forget kind of the qualitative insights. Like we've got a really great, we call it our you Insiders program, and we can both ask customers and non-customers in real time. So it's not just about the present and the trends, but talking about mindsets coming up. I think when it comes about data and thinking about the future, it's really fun and fancy to talk about predictive data science and that's absolutely table stakes. But I think we shouldn't underestimate the fact that particularly these really vocal gen-z customers they are giving us data by sharing their opinion clicking on different ad creatives, telling us what they resonate. You know, we'll basically ask folks to define how they classify this look as preppy and we'll find out with a couple of different cohorts they don't consider themselves preppy. So we can make a decision to say, alright, well, maybe we'll be leaning a little less preppy with this cohort. So I do think that, again, sophisticated data is great to talk about, but sometimes old fashioned consumer insights, particularly from a demographic that loves to share their opinion, cannot be undervalued. And Lisa, I know you worked with Diesel on its first foray into the metaverse. How are Web3 initiatives really helping to grow brand loyalty? Well, I think there's two. You know, Diesel had had an NFT, we created a program that actually is in the process of launching. We just are launching the buy last night which went really well called Vert, which is an extension of that NFT. But going back to the proposition of Web3 loyalty, it's really kind of based on the idea that access, and community, and ownership will breed a greater sense of engagement and connection to the brand. So ideally if you're owning a token or you're owning some digital artifact, one it'll be decentralized, so you'll have more control over what you do in terms of rewards and experiences, which is endears you to that brand because you're in control. But also it's a financial token that's often tied to the performance of that brand. So you're able to be invested in the brand's performance in a really different level. So you have to kind of buy into that belief system which I do, to believe in the power of how web3 can enable loyalty on a deeper level. There's great Asics did a great program with Solana Foundation, and there's a lot of really interesting program, Odyssey, obviously, for Starbucks. But the Diesel Vert program is an NFT that's actually connected to the Diesel verse. So what we're providing or what Diesel's providing to their customers is less transactional, it's far more community based and far more experiential; to have an avatar and be able to work with that avatar through a physical watch and then be a part of that world. So it's still a incredible way to stay closer to the brand, but it's not in that transactional sense. Heather How are you harnessing the power of Web3 at Myteresa? So we have some AI initiatives that are on the website that we are currently testing. One of the coolest programs we ran was with Montcler. We did a VR on top of a mountain, and it was like the shopping experience you went through. And that's kind of the extent of where we are right now, to be totally honest. Yeah. Dipping your toes in the water. Yeah, we're trying to figure it out. Yeah. I mean, how do you measure the success of initiatives like that? I think it's a combination. We had spoken a little bit about there's obviously a direct response marketing, right? So immediately you're somewhere and you click and you purchase but then there's the world of brand, right? So I think for us, while yes, we look at direct response from programs as such, we also look at the impact that it's had and how people have come to the site through whether it's like press or social, different ways that people are communicating it. We take it as part of our marketing funnel. Like we don't only say, "Okay, we got X number of dollars from this initiative". We really look at everything because it's important to build a brand while building direct response. Yeah. Chris do you have that tension between investment in brand marketing versus performance marketing? Well it's nice when it's all together, but I'd say, yeah. I mean, I think there's no one silver bullet metric that rules them all. I think we're very commercially focused at European but you know frankly we are a brand and so we know that over time we need to be ruthlessly consistent and investing in that brand. And I think we look at things like how do we look at consideration through e-comm like through direct load, natural search. We look at how our brand is doing in terms of just brand searches, right? So not just what do we get from the dollars and cents that come from those searches or conversions, but even just are they growing over the year? Where are they growing? So when we do geo specific brand campaigns, we look for a little signals within the noise there. But I think this customer doesn't want to have just a purely transactional relationship with us. So having that brand, showing the differentiation because a lot of the products you can shop anywhere else, you know, for some of those products. So I think we believe that brand has to be that differentiator to come to Urban. And of course, Urban's part of a wider group that includes newly, Anthropologie, Free People. I'm curious to know how you share data across the different brands and really try and encourage customer longevity and loyalty across all of them. Yeah, totally. I think the brands were designed to graduate and grow up with the consumers. So I was at Free People for about five and a half years and whenever we'd be preparing our quarterly board decks, there'd be these venn diagrams of customers over the brands and Free People was smack dab in the middle and we had everyone's. But I think these brands were started with sort of a merchant and creative lens first. So marketing has always kind of been a four letter word until relatively recently. So I think the marketing leaders at our brands, we we never want to assume we are the smartest people in the room. So we love learning from other folks. We've got folks from Anthropologie, Urban, and Free People here that are constantly meeting. I can go to my counterpart, Elizabeth at Anthro and while it's a very different customer, we can talk about their dress business is on fire and what can Urban learn from that or as they're trying to anchor towards a younger customer, how can they tap into some of our really great social teams in terms of what we've been driving in channels like TikTok? So again, I think that humility of just not not knowing the answers and won't pretend to know the answers, it's kind of like the most undersung benefit of working where I work. And Heather, what are some of the most important metrics you use at Myteresa to really understand how the brand is performing? Do you have a loyalty algorithm? We do. We do have data that we look at. I always say that revenue winds up becoming or consumer spend always becomes this default. But for us, we don't only look at that. We look at what you purchased first and making predictions based on the brand that you purchased first and your AOV; how your lifetime spend will go, and your recency and frequency. We're constantly looking at how people engage and for us, all the metrics are important. Every customer is just one person, right? So all the different touchpoints that they go through to eventually have a transaction are things that we're constantly looking at, which is why I always feel so strongly that marketing is one view. I know a lot of businesses, it's really hard and over the years it's become very separate, but in my opinion, marketing is one view. You're all going after that one consumer. So we look at all the data points together. Lisa what would you say the most important data points you're looking at? And especially I mean, it also depends on the maturation of what you're looking at, right? Because you're obviously there's day in, day out. And then when you're launching a campaign, you're looking at specific things holistically. We have like a short term view and a long term view based on our data. Our longer term view is really looking at what are the metrics that define true brand health, whether that's awareness, familiarity and favorability. And then when we work further down the funnel, we have a composite score that will speak to our equity over time. But then as you just said, what is going on with search? What is going on with direct load in organic to the site? Our CAC to LTV ratio is a big metric for us, as is. We have the accessories world and we have multiple brands. We're kind of a community of collectors. And so we actually look at from a collector standpoint, are you are you generating multiple purchases as opposed to something that might be, you know, a little bit more different for a day in, day out accessories customer? So there's also differences based on what cohort and if they're part of that collector group or not. So I mean we're talking today about blending art and science, data and creativity. It'd be great if you can share how you make sure your data teams really collaborate with other departments in the business to make sure you're creating a really positive customer experience. Yeah, sure. I think it starts with empathy, right? I think understanding that there's different maturity or comfort in talking about really sophisticated data, for example. So I think it's having our analytics team spend time with our merchants or our brand marketing teams to talk about what success there is. And I think someone asked a great question about on marketing in stack, but I also think it's about the people you hire, having really curious people. So I think we try to make sure that folks spend lots of time with other teams so that if they're going to not just hand in a report but really make a recommendation, they understand who the end receiver of that information is. I think that's really key. How do you do that? Because so often the departments are siloed and don't really talk to each other. Yeah. I think you unsiloe them. I know it sounds very reductive. Lock them in the room. Yeah, you lock them in the room, exactly. I think you create a reason for being. I think we are all feel incentivized by sales and being part of culture and making customers happy. But I think it's like making sure that we'll take an analytics team. Don't think of yourself as a service team. Think of yourself as a strategy team. So if you're part of the strategy group, you have to understand what your business strategy is, you have to understand what your product strategy is, you have to challenge that. So I think it's sort of just a mentality shift from, again, being sort of service provider to strategic partner. And, you know, that takes as much about kind of EQ as it does, IQ and tools. Lisa? I mean, I think you have to have other things in place culturally to breed that collaboration and you have to have a shared sense of curiosity about what you're going to learn. I know we've talked a lot about AI here earlier, but your whole organization has to be willing to learn something and experience something and fail fast and then move forward. So I think whatever the way in which data is coming to your team, it has to be based on an innate curiosity that allows you to validate or invalidate a hypothesis and try it. The data is critical, but it's more the mentality of how you use it that will actually breed the collaboration, if everybody has a guess, a hunch, a hypothesis, and you try to market, it works, it doesn't, and you keep going. So it's more about, to me, the agility and the way in which the teams kind of have a curiosity about what the outcome is and the actual data funnel itself. Because you can have all these reams of data, but it's about asking the right questions as well, right? Yeah, and being surprised and being okay with that. You know, we all work in cross-functional organizations where it's March mark this, and we all have to be kind of students of the data. No one owns it. So we just kind of look at it like that. Heather? I think what they said is correct, but I also think it's just bringing everyone together. A couple of months ago, we actually did an exercise internally where I realized that a lot of times the creative teams don't really understand where the ads are showing up across different websites, right? Like they create amazing ads and they kind of deliver them to the marketing team and then it's a go. So we did this exercise where we printed out all different landing pages that had our ads in all different formats, and the creative team was super surprised. And then we showed them the data on it and we did this whole educational process and now they love it and we bring them into the world of marketing, right? And you make everyone part of the conversation and then everyone wants to learn more, right? The more you're a part of something and you feel like you're having an impact, you want to learn more. So that's that's how we do it and it works really well now. Heather when I was at a great agency called Gill, like one of the things that are awesome creative directors had in common is they all studied stats so like, they all could appreciate that what good, creative and what it meant to have good creative, certainly esthetically and from a gut feeling. But then we ask our creative teams to create six or seven versions just for one ad, right? We want them to feel like and know that their creativity has the measurement and impact to it. And embrace testing because a lot of the times creatives could be like, " Oh you're just going to AB test us to death" and you're like Well, this is just to get it to a place where it's going to perform even better and we'll have greater insight. So it's also to not be afraid that the data will invalidate their creative spirit. The other thing that we did that I loved was that about a year ago we did some customer focus groups. Everyone does it. I know. But we did this exercise where we showed the entire company, the customer focus groups, which I have never seen before. Like the entire company was invited to watch videos of actually our top customers talking about our business. And I think there were so many surprises for so many people in the business; what the customer looked like, what they did, how they thought about our business, how they thought about our website, our creative and literally every single element, our packaging, our tissue paper. Think of anything the carriers that we are partnered with; they literally pulled everything apart and the entire business was invited to hear what they had to say. And after that, actually there was a lot of interest from teams who don't really know what to do with the data, to ask for the data, to be educated by the data, to learn so that they could do an even "better job". So that was a big exercise for us. That really helps. It was great. Thank you. It'd be great if you could each share a tip for all the brand leaders in the room on how you can use data? How you can be smart in the way you use data within your business? I think rule number one is just to understand what decision you need to make and the impact of that decision. Is this a decision that is about 0.1% of your business? Is this a decision about the point 0.1% of your customers that make up 20% of your revenue? So I think impact and prioritization is really, really important. I mean, I would say lean into all types of innovation, whether it's Gen AI or web3 or new ways of engaging with your consumer. I know there's been a conversation around are we nervous about it? We've all been doing it for so long. Everyone does use it. But now there's an opportunity to become faster, stronger. You still have to own your brand voice. You still have to be the pilot, and that technology and innovation and data is a copilot. You're still the pilot and deal with privacy and all of that. But really lean in to the ways in which data will become packaged in new and innovative ways, because it's really going to continue to surprise all of us. I think data is super powerful and educating key members in your team on how to use the data, when to use the data is actually the most important thing about data sharing. Great tip. Thank you. Any questions from the audience? We're kind of at this point where we've been really gathering a lot of information about our customers. So it's been a lot about how do you report, what are the insight you can get? And now we're at that point of of action. So it's kind of now understanding and getting buy in from leadership around how do we actually trust that data and maybe let us focus or test on maybe different journeys. So it's maybe not as linear as maybe a previous briefing process might have been once, but how do you now start to create and curate journeys? So I wonder if you guys have maybe started to test into this and any learnings that you've had or how to gain buy in to really a shift from a marketing standpoint on previous briefing and now into let's truly get agile and innovate on journey based orchestration? Yeah, I can answer that. I do think we have like 150 journeys, like we're always running and looking at the different consumer experiences. So I think the more behavioral data you have, the more you'll be able to say this is what's actually happening, which will build conviction around your own hypotheses. I always really feel that as you're looking as you're starting to bring leadership and others along, it's really important to have a hypothesis and a point of view that the data can validate or invalidate, and you set it up as a tool. But I think as you're creating more journeys, you're going to have divergent data depending on who you're speaking with. And so it's also just being clear what you're trying to understand, who you're trying to talk to and connect with, and then creating that experience for them specifically. I think sometimes we have a tendency to find a germ of data and say it works across the board. You can find a piece of creative that works really well in one journey and fails in another. So it's also having that level of real clarity of who you're talking to and what you want that consumers' action or response or what you're trying to solve for them. But go in with that hypothesis and allow you to kind of segment your journeys more accurately. I love that question because like I remember a time in Free People where we really loved dresses. Dresses that are kind of core signature style. But the fact was we were getting most of our new customers for tops, just basic tops. And so merchants really wanted to push dresses, dresses, dresses. But we had kind of said like, let us focus on growing new customers through tops and so what we could show is the journey from your first purchase tops you would buy back into tops. I think it was just like, let's hold hands around this one category, which was less cool, less sexier than dresses. But let's hold hands on one category together and let's go really hard after it and see what are those measurements of success? For us, it was we're kind of a niche in a low awareness brand and let's not be salmon, let's not swim upstream. So let's go find where we're getting those new customers and just focus again, ruthless consistency in that. That's a great question. I think it's really hard to have brands that have been doing things for a really long time to adjust. So my recommendation is when you go into leadership to be very specific with your request a little bit to the hypothesis, but like this is what we want to do and not overwhelm with data. I think there's a lot of people that are sitting in meetings sometimes and are overwhelmed honestly by the amount of data that's thrown at them and can't really understand what it is you're trying to do. That's why a lot of people hear no or people get nervous, so I would just be very, very like, "this is what we want to do, here are the three steps. Here are the goals". And that's it. Clear. Very clear. Wonderful. Thank you so much for all of your insights. A huge round of applause for Chris, Lisa and Heather.