The DNA of Marketing

The DNA of Marketing | Lars Trieloff

© 2012 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved.

1

Our story

Confused men doing strange things
People make sense of complexity
A simpler way to explain things
New models providing a new world view


2

Our Story starts in Sweden. In 18th Century Sweden.

Gripsholms Slott (Gripsholm Castle)

3

Our models define our results
Gripsholm Castle Lion
In 1731 someone gave to King
Frederick I of Sweden skin and
bones of a lion, an exotic gift.
The king decided to stuff it. The
only problem was that the
taxidermist had never seen a real
lion. And here’s the result.
!
We can only build what we
understand. Without a model for
Marketing, we will end up with a
very strange looking stuffed lion.


4

Making Sense of Chaos – building Taxonomies
Carolus Linnæus (Carl
von Linné)
As a biologist in Sweden, Carl
lived in an area of
unprecedented exploration. New
species of plants and animals
(Lions, anyone?) would be
discovered and Linné was the
first trying to make sense out of
it by establishing the science of
taxonomy.
With the knowledge available,
Linné’s taxonomy concentrated
on the structural similarities
instead of their fundamental
building blocks.

5

Linné’s Taxonomy


6

“All models are false. But some are useful anyway”
James Watson & Francis
Crick
In 1953, James Watson and
Francis Crick published a paper
describing the discovery of the
molecular structure of DNA,
explaining how the building
blocks of life are made up of four
bases that are encoding the blue
prints of living beings.
The discovery of DNA effectively
made the Linnéan Taxonomy
obsolete, as genetic similarity
offers better ways to classify life.


7

DNA – coding the instructions needed for organisms to develop, survive and reproduce
Develop

Survive

Reproduce

Adenine

Guanine

DNA

Deoxyribonucleic acid

Thymine

© 2011 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.

Cytosine

8

The same story is happening in Marketing right now.

People make sense of complexity
A simpler way to explain things
New models providing a new world view


9

Data-driven marketing
seems at odds with
creativity
Digital marketing is marketing
made measurable on the
individual level. This had lead to
tremendous advances in the
ability to make decisions
founded on data, but it also has
lead to a new, and increasing
level of complexity. The main
driver of complexity: new
marketing channels following
strange new rules in strange new
ways.


10

Making Sense of Complexity
The 2014 Marketing
Technology Landscape
Like Linné, Scott Brinker is a
cartographer of a new and highly
complex space.
His Marketing Technology
Landscape shows the key areas
of Marketing Technology and
how the players interact on a
high level.
Scott separates technology into
Infrastructure, Platforms,
Middleware, Operations and
Experiences.


11

Is History repeating itself?

Confusion

Organization

Confusion

Foundation

Organization

Foundation?

?
1725

1750

1775


1800

1825

1850

1875
12

1900

1925

1950

1975

2000

2025

?

Foundation
What is the foundation, the DNA of Marketing?

13

Campaigns


14

Plan

Execute

Campaigns


14

Monitor

What are campaigns?
Military roots of the
campaign
Like many concepts in modern
corporations (headquarters,
promotions, company, strategy),
the concept of a campaign has
military origin.
A campaign is a series of
coordinated activities
undertaken to achieve a joint
goal.
Campaigns undergo phases of
planning, execution and control
and involve a target, an area of
operation and specific forces.

15

Plan

define strategy,
goals & teams

Execute

create and optimize
marketing
experiences

Who

Monitor

through dashboards
& activity feeds

Where

What
Campaigns

Why


16

7 Concepts of Digital Marketing
Plan

define strategy,
goals & teams

Execute

create and optimize
marketing
experiences

Audiences

Monitor

through dashboards
& activity feeds

Channels

(segments, lists, targets, etc)

(Sites, Apps, Properties, etc)

Content

Context

(identity, profile, events)

(web, offers, mobile, email,
social)

Campaigns

(who, what, where, why)

Data

Assets

(goals, KPIs, analytics)


(images, videos, templates)

17

Left brain & right brain marketing unified

Audiences

Channels



Content

Context


social)

Campaigns


Data

Assets




18

1

Campaign
Brands, Program, Campaigns, Activities, Operations

19

Examples:

Photoshop
Photoshop CC launch
Announcement Email Blasts
Email to Hungarian edu PS6 customers


20

Campaigns
Brand Level
budget owner

Brand

Program

…

Campaign

…

Strategicbudget control
Level (Macro)
Go to market,

Planningbudget allocation,  
Level
cross channel,
audience planning

…

Campaign
…

…

Activity


Activity

Operations

Operations

Operations

Call-to-actions

Tactical Level (Micro)
channel specific, content assignment

Activity

Call-to-actions

Call-to-actions

21

2

Channel
Channels, Locations, Touch-points

22

Channels are the area of operation of our campaigns
Channels & Locations
Channels are where users and
customers can interact with our
campaigns and experience our
content.
What differentiates digital
marketing channels from other
marketing channels is their
measurability, their potential of
personalization and their
availability of context.
A growing number of channels
(see Gartner’s subway map)
challenges marketers to create
cross-channel campaigns and
experiences.

23

Examples:

Websites
Adobe.com
PS-CC Landing Page
Targeted Hero Banner on landing page


24

Channels & Locations
“A location is a place where users can see or interact with your content.”
Landing page


Box on a page

25

Channel & Location Properties
Example
URL
Parent Location
Channel
Title
Description
Metadata
Metrics
References


http://adobe.com/photoshop
http://adobe.com/
Landing Page
Photoshop Landing page
The CQ6 landing page for Photoshop
Tags, Owner, etc.
Visitors, Organic Sources, etc.
Content, Campaigns, Audiences

26

“A channel is a common way
of delivering content and
measuring interaction”

3

Content
Product Descriptions, Offers, Articles

27

Examples:

Feature Descriptions
Website Landing Page copy
PS-CC Product Descriptions
Targeted Hero Offers
Help & Training


28

Content
Channel-specific representation
Abstract representation

Unstructured

Web
page

Structured

Web component


Product 
definition

29

Status 
update

Display!
ad

Text!
ad

4

Assets
Images, Videos, Animations, Documents

30

Examples:

Banner Images
How-to Videos
PS Product Creative
PDF Leaflet


31

Assets

Folders

Metadata


&
Renditions

32

Files

Composites


Channels


Content

social)

Campaigns


Assets



33


Audiences


Context


Campaigns


Data



33

5

Audiences
Segments, Lists, Groups, Target

34

Examples:

Photoshop Users
Trial CC Customers
Email opener from previous PS6 Blast
Education Creative Pro in Hungary


35

Audiences
“Just a group of people”

Marketer-defined rules,
channel specific
interpretation

Algorithm-determined
rules, channel specific
interpretation

Explicit (list-based) definition, channel
specific interpretation


36

Audiences

channel specific
interpretation

interpretation
Look-alike modeling



36

Audiences

channel specific
interpretation

interpretation
Look-alike modeling

Audience sharing



36

Audiences

Model translation

channel specific
interpretation

interpretation
Look-alike modeling

Audience sharing



36

6

Context
Master Marketing Profile, Identity, Device

37

Examples:

Devices
Geolocation
Purchasing History
First Name
Segment Membership


38

Context is Identity and Behavior
Profile

Experience
Behavior

Technographics


Demographics

39


Future events
past events
Identity

39

personalization


Future events
past events
Identity
data collection


39

individualization

Last Millisecond: Listen? Context!

!

!

!

!

Transient 
Environment
A

Edge Network
Profile
B

Enterprise 
Data
C

3rd Party &
other...
D

Examples: 

Examples:

Examples:

Examples:

Device 
Geolocation
Time & Date
Resolution

X-Channel Profile
Audience
Segment
Behavioral

CRM & MDM 
ERP
Support Cases 
Purchase History
Customer Insight

Weather
Demographics
Twitter
Facebook
Anything, really,..


!

!

!

Introducing Master Marketing Profile

!

Unknown Profile
(Visitors, Unauthenticated,  
Shallow Data, Less Reliable,  
Large number of Profiles)


x xx x x

Master Identity, Profile Data, History)
Marketing Profile
(Audience,

Known Profile
(Customers, Authenticated,
Deep Data, More Reliable, 
Fewer Profiles)

7

Data
Metadata, Metrics, KPIs, Dimensions, Goals, Analytics

42

Examples:

Website Traffic on Photoshop Website
Product Categories in Digital Media
Number of revisions per asset


43

There are three fundamental types of data

Website Traffic on Photoshop Website
Product Categories in Digital Media
Number of revisions per asset
METADATA


44

METRIC

TAXONOMY

Taxonomies – déjà vu
Taxonomies
Taxonomies describe
relationships of terms to other
terms and can be used to classify
objects in the real world
(animals and plants – as Linné
did) or in the digital world
(assets, product categories,
messaging types, campaign
goals, place names)
Relationships between terms
(parent-child, synonymy, etc)
can be used to optimize search
and retrieval of objects.


45

Metadata – déjà vu
Data about Marketing
Objects
Metadata is best known in
relationship to assets (title,
creator, size, tools used) but can
be applied to any marketing
object (campaign, channel,
content, profile, event, audience)
Most metadata is qualitative,
which means it is expressed in
concrete values (sometimes
backed by a taxonomy) and can
be used as a dimension in
reporting.
Quantitative metadata is referred
to as metrics.

46

Where are my metrics?
Metrics are qualitative
metadata

observed

calculated
inferred


47

They describe objects in
countable or calculable values.
Metrics can be either directly
observed, inferred by counting
other objects or aggregating
metrics about other objects or
calculated by combining
multiple existing metrics.
Metrics allow marketers to
describe the effectiveness of
marketing and compare against
set goals.

Summary

Taxonomies and vendor lists are not enough to explain
the rapid change in marketing and resolve the cognitive
dissonance between right-brain and left-brain markers.


48

Summary

Right-brain marketers create campaigns by composing
experiences that place content and assets into the right
channel.
Content

Campaigns
Brand Level
budget owner


Brand


Program

…

Campaign

…

Strategicbudget control
Level (Macro)
Go to market,

Planningbudget allocation,  
Level
cross channel,
audience planning

…

Abstract representation

Campaign

Activity

Operations

Operations

Call-to-actions

Web component

Product 
definition

Operations

Call-to-actions

Web
page

Activity

Call-to-actions

Structured

…

…

Activity
Tactical Level (Micro)
channel specific, content assignment

Unstructured

21



49

29

Status 
update

Display!
ad

Text!
ad

Summary

Left-brain marketers measure and optimize campaigns
by defining audiences based on collected context data
that combines behavior and identity.
Audiences


Model translation

channel specific
interpretation

interpretation
Look-alike modeling

Audience sharing



37



40

50

The DNA of Marketing

The DNA of Marketing

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