Adobe Summit 24: Innovative tech for a more human touch
In this episode of The CMO Show, host Mark Jones is on the ground at the Adobe Summit in Las Vegas.
With new technologies popping up faster than you can say ‘artificial intelligence’, you’re probably left with more questions than answers about how to make sense of them all.
How can they drive better experiences for customers? How can different systems talk to each other? How can tech getting smarter protect my customer data?
Thankfully we’ve spoken to two leading marketers from some of APAC’s most recognisable brands who are testing the waters and diving into the world of AI, integrated marketing stacks and other digital technologies.
Press play to hear from Clay Botkin, Global Head of Marketing Technology at Cognizant; and Kaushik Chakraborty, Chief Marketing Officer at Tata Capital, about how they’re using these technologies to their advantage and developing human-centred digital experiences.
Enjoy!
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Credits
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The CMO Show production team
Producers – Rian Newman & Pamela Obeid
Audio Engineers – Ed Cheng & Daniel Marr
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Transcript:
Mark Jones
Hello, Mark Jones here and you’re listening to The CMO Show, a podcast made for and made by marketing professionals, brought to you today by ImpactInstitute in partnership with Adobe.
We’ve got a very special episode lined up for you as I’m on the ground, here at Adobe Summit in Las Vegas.
Now, with new technologies popping up faster than you can say ‘artificial intelligence’, you probably have more questions than answers.
So today, we’re chatting to leading marketers from some of APAC’s most recognisable brands who are testing the waters and diving into the world of AI, Gen AI and digital technologies.
How are they using these technologies to their advantage and developing human-centred experiences?
My first guest operates at the intersection of technology and human-centred digital experiences.
Clay Botkin is the Global Head of Marketing Technology at Cognizant, and we chatted about his uniquely human approach to new technologies, and his influence over the direction they go from here.
Clay Botkin
So, my name is Clay Botkin. I work for Cognizant in their Corporate Marketing department. I run their marketing technology, campaign operations, as well as customer data. The span of what my team does is pretty large, but it does stop just short of running all of global strategy.
Mark Jones
That sounds like a bit of an aspiration right there.
Clay Botkin
Perhaps. But no, right now it's focused on marketing technology. It's really around customer engagement strategy, and then the platforms that enable it.
Mark Jones
Okay, great. Now, for people who don't understand Cognizant and what it does, give us the high level overview.
Clay Botkin
Well, Cognizant, like many of the companies here, is a strategic implementer of different technologies, as well as a general consulting firm. So, we have 300,000+ employees, worldwide, do a lot of work globally. But it's going to be across all areas of technology implementations, consulting and whatnot.
Mark Jones
The interesting thing about the size and scale of your organisation, it speaks to the opportunity for organisations like yourselves, but it also speaks to the complexity that enterprises face when it comes to integration, to the MarTech stack, to sort of simplifying that. One of the outtakes, or at least high level messages here at Adobe Summit has been around this growing interconnectivity within their stack, right? Now, even if an organisation has the full Adobe suite, they're also going to have endless other platforms to connect to. So obviously, that's where you guys play.
This is an interesting point in time, I think, where AI is promising a lot when it comes to integration, simplicity, software coding, all sorts of things that will improve integration. But I've got a hunch it's actually getting more complex than simple.
Clay Botkin
You're not wrong. AI has been very interesting, and the introduction of it has been very interesting to what we're doing. Now, taking a step back and talking about the integration, and the bringing together of all the different marketing technologies that we have within our stack, if I were to go back to my time as a consultant and looking at the MarTech stacks that I consulted on, even five years ago, they are significantly smaller than what they're today.
Within my group, we manage 40+ technologies, and sometimes spanning up to 60. And one of the challenges that we have is making sure that whenever we bring on a new technology, swap out a technology, whatever that is, that they do integrate well together, that they play well together, that they can share data between platforms. Because ultimately, that customer data is what makes all of that work. If it's an engine, that's the gas. Right?
But going back to your AI conversation, there have been elements of AI being around for a while. So, machine learning, some of the intelligence segmentation and whatnot. And seeing that in use and marketing automation and things along those lines has been extremely valuable. But to your point, it has made it more complex, because not only do you have to start worrying about your targeting and your segmentation and the additional options that those things lend, but now you're talking about, "Okay, what's the content look like to cater to those additional segments? What does that one-to-one conversation look like?"
And that's where this GenAI movement has become very interesting to me, because now we're starting to look at, "Okay, we're completing the picture. We've got the intelligence segmentation that comes with machine learning, and the grouping that comes from those elements," but now we can start to scale the creative to cater to that. Now obviously, GenAI is still relatively new and there's a level of maturation that has to occur in order for it to be ready for primetime. You can't just press go and let it run.
But that's where the human element comes in. And that's where it gets very interesting, because now we're asking these creative folks within the organisation to not just focus on creating things from square one and creating things from scratch, but also take a look at the elements that GenAI and Firefly, and whatnot, has been able to create. And then, apply that human touch, that human element to make it work for our brand.
But by bringing all that in, it allows us to scale, and it allows us to scale much more quickly, to help work with that machine learning type AI that has been implemented over the last couple of years and enabled what we're doing. To your point, it's making it complex, and I would argue that the simplicity isn't necessarily there yet. It is making it more complex, but it's adding more horsepower to the efforts that we're putting out there.
Mark Jones
In that context then, I'm really interested to know the highs and lows of your journey, and remembering too that the listener is really looking for, what can I learn from your experience? So maybe take away, what are the biggest challenges that... This is the, "I wish I knew that a year ago." Share us some of the journey on that.
Clay Botkin
That's an interesting one. I can approach this from a couple different ways, one of them being just working within a large organisation. The thing I learned, moving from being a consultant and working internally for a large organisation like Cognizant, it's not necessarily to learn as much as a validation. And I knew this, as somebody on the outside looking in, that things move slower in a large organisation, right? And it's difficult to get things in and get things moving.
But if there was one lesson to learn from that, it's developing those partnerships, with IT, and developing those partnerships with the folks internally to get things done. Develop that executive sponsor, and working with them to get things done. I don't know that that's necessarily a valuable piece of information for anybody listening, as much as it's a validation that it's the same everywhere. But that being said, in a B2B setting, attribution's hard. We want to know how our marketing dollars are spent and we want to know the value of those when they come back to us. And it's difficult in a B2B organisation, especially ones with a long sales cycle like Cognizant has. So, getting to that is very, very difficult.
Understanding that influence pipeline is probably where we're going, versus trying to get that direct attribution. It's going to save a lot of people a lot of time and headache, because that one-to-one attribution is virtually impossible to achieve, especially with the degradation of third party cookies and some of the things that are happening in coming months, coming years.
Mark Jones
Yes.
Clay Botkin
So, developing a good approach to understanding how you can influence pipeline is probably the thing that I wish we understood a little bit better when I first came in. Versus chasing that one-to-one attribution, and then backing into pipeline influence a little bit later.
Mark Jones
Yeah, that's right, and accepting the reality of what you can and can't do.
Clay Botkin
It is, yeah.
Mark Jones
Thank you for your time. Pleasure to meet you and love your insights. What an incredible moment in time, but also a role that you have to influence the direction of all of these technologies and trends. So, again, thanks for your time.
Clay Botkin
Yeah, pleasure's all mine. It's a exciting time. I'm really excited to be a part of it.
Mark Jones
That was Clay Botkin, Global Head of Marketing Technology at Cognizant.
I especially like how Clay touches on the importance of partnerships in simply getting stuff done.
For larger organisations especially, it can be challenging to get the moving pieces in the right place.
Using partnerships to your advantage is key to getting your tech to where it needs to be.
Now, we've established that big changes are inevitable, but what we haven’t touched on is cultural differences – that is, it may not always be as straightforward as incorporating new tech into your stack. How do you help your audience overcome roadblocks and get them to where you need them?
To that end, my next guest is Kaushik Chakraborty, Chief Marketing Officer at Tata Capital. He's firsthand seen the transformation of the Indian economy - in particular how it’s gone from loan reluctance to loan enthusiasm. Here’s Kaushik now.
Kaushik Chakraborty
My name is Koushik Chakraborty I am the CMO for Tata Capital, which is a non-banking financial services company. It's a technical name, but it's basically we are into lending. We give loans across the value chain to retail and SME and large corporates, and that's our main job. This is over and above the banking system. Over a period of time, the government had seen that, beyond the point that banks can reach to a particular level, and for better financial inclusion, they started this segment of companies which only give loans. We are part of a large conglomerate called Tata.
Mark Jones
One of the biggest Indian conglomerates, right?
Kaushik Chakraborty
That's right, that's right. We pride ourselves to be one of the most trustworthy, from steel to defence to even salt. We make everything, including financial services.
Mark Jones
Cars as well.
Kaushik Chakraborty
Yeah. Tata Motors is already big, but Tata Motors over a period of time has also now acquired the Jaguar Land Rover brands, so it is big.
Mark Jones
We're sitting here in Las Vegas, Adobe Summit. We've just come out of a keynote session. Tell me about your Adobe journey. Tell me about your experience here today. What are you thinking about right now?
Kaushik Chakraborty
Well, as an organisation, Tata Capital, we have been investing into digitization and digital transformation for the last five, six years. We are partnering with Adobe for the last say about four-plus years. We use part of their stack. Our main assets, the website and all, are built on the Adobe Experience Manager. Apart from that, we use Adobe Analytics, which helps us actually measure everything a customer does or a person does on our website, and to understand a lot of their preferences and a lot of their web behaviour, so to say, which helps us in fact enrich our overall customer profiling and database. We also use another product called Adobe Target, which helps us to target the customer and cater to their needs differentially.
Mark Jones
The question I love to ask CMOs is what's your biggest issue right now? What's the biggest problem that you're facing in your role? We ask CEOs what keeps them awake at night. In your case, what's the business challenge that you are focused on?
Kaushik Chakraborty
Well, the first thing that comes to my mind is obviously how we manage data and customer data, and how we collect them and how we use them. To start with, actually how we connect all sorts of data. Some of them are very known to be structured data, like it's a transactional data or a demographic data, but some of them are unstructured data, where the same person is behaving in the social media, how he's behaving in the World Wide Web, and how we marry this data together and enrich the customer's profile.
This is one big challenge area, and we have been working very hard around that. We created a unique customer code, and then how do we segment these customer cohorts into different blocks and personalise the communication. How do we have content which is specially made for them on the website when they're coming. This is the broad problem area, you can say. We have been working as a group, a company, to solve it with the help of tech partners like Adobe, and there are some others also.
Mark Jones
Is there a problem set that your customers are facing? What are they using the capital for, or the finance for? When you think about the demands ... and part of this is actually my curiosity about Indian society and life. There's lots of things going on in the world in terms of cost pressures. There's a unique business proposition that you're bringing to market. So how are you bringing those two pieces together?
Kaushik Chakraborty
Indian economy per se in the last 20, 25 years have actually gone through a huge change.
Mark Jones
Yeah.
Kaushik Chakraborty
When we were growing up, the society was against taking loans. They were a kind of saving society where people, whatever they have, used to save the money and also didn't invest in risky markets like equity and so on.
Mark Jones
Yeah.
Kaushik Chakraborty
So as a society, it is going through change. People now aspire more, people want to upgrade their life. And maybe lending companies who gives loans have come to a huge help. The whole boom that you see around, whether it is buying a house or buying a car, or even life stage investment, like even for your marriage or for your child's education or something like that, you take loans.
Mark Jones
Yes.
Kaushik Chakraborty
All of this is held by organisations like us. Historically, though banks are there for 300 plus years, they have catered to primarily the urban and the top tier of the customers. NVSs like us actually go a level deeper and we take a little higher risk when we give the loans out, and obviously our interests are a little higher. So it's like that. And it's a business not about finding only customer. We have to find the right customers because we make money when the customer starts paying back and not when we give the loan. There's a small fee attached to giving the loan, but that is nothing. The actual money comes in when he starts paying in on time. So yeah, data science plays a huge role in finding them.
Mark Jones
That's really fascinating. It's interesting how I presume you're starting to normalise the taking loans in the country. I presume other lenders will be doing the same thing, but you're creating a culture around, it's okay to have these loans, and here are the features and benefits. Is that part of the stories that you're telling? Or are you telling different stories?
Kaushik Chakraborty
No, that's exactly the story we have been telling. In fact, last two, three years as an organisation we are going through kind of a tipping point, and now we are one of the top two lenders in the country as far as NVSs are concerned. And I was told we have started investing big in the brand. You know India is big on cricket and we have... yeah, so is Australia.
Mark
That's right.
Kaushik Chakraborty
And we have invested in a brand ambassador who's one of the most promising cricketers India. And the story that we are trying to say as a brand is that you as a customer take care of your wonderful worries, so to say. Say for example, in a marriage, the wonderful worries are, what kind of dress will you wear? What kind of decoration you will do. And the difficult worries, leave it on to us.
Mark Jones
Okay.
Kaushik Chakraborty
In Hindi we call it [foreign language 00:11:27], where in English it is, "You take care of your wonderful worries, so to say, and we will take care of the rest."
Mark Jones
On that note, thank you so much for being my guest on the podcast. Really fascinating story and all the best.
Kaushik Chakraborty
Thanks a lot, Mark.
Mark Jones
That was Kaushik Chakraborty, Chief Marketing Officer at Tata Capital. And what better way to wrap us up than Kaushik's beautiful words?
It’s so interesting to me how the Indian economy has shifted so drastically in such a short time, and how organisations like Tata have been curating their tech stacks to cater to their people in a better, more personalised way.
That wraps us up on our guests today for this very special episode of The CMO Show.
If there’s one takeaway I’ve had from this summit, it’s that we’re really only just at the beginning of our AI journey.
Organisations are moving from experimentation to implementation. And we’ll soon see Gen AI content move from text and images to producing video, audio and 3D content.
Now, I don’t think that means I’ll be replaced by AI, but you never know!
A massive thank you to Clay and Kaushik for joining me at the Adobe Summit in Las Vegas, and thanks to Adobe for hosting me.
You’ve been listening to The CMO Show, proudly produced by ImpactInstitute and in partnership with Adobe. We’ll see you next time.