InsightIQ Blog

Customer Intelligence Comes of Age: Reporting from the Forrester Marketing Forum

View more Blog Posts

May 12 2010

Forrester’s Marketing Forum, as I wrote in the recent post, Forrester’s Marketing Forum – Are You Planning to Attend, was intended to deliver value to attendees through a variety of means – content, networking, council meetings and analyst 1-on-1s.

So did it deliver? Yes, it did. Quaero folks onsite spoke with peers, clients and analysts, all of whom agreed that the content will help to shape the decisions they make back at their companies.

Why was it so powerful? A lot of it had to do with the content and theme. Adaptive Marketing: How to Design a Flexible Marketing Organization to Thrive on Change felt particularly relevant as we start to see a light at the end of the recessionary tunnel.

Here are some of the things we learned:

Let's start by defining Adaptive Marketing. According to David Cooperstein, who kicked off the event, adaptive marketing is a flexible approach in which marketers respond quickly to their environment to align customer and brand goals and maximize return on brand equity. In other words, as consumers have evolved in the new world of digital and social media, marketers too have recognized that their organizations must adapt – to new approaches, ideas, media and even roles . Here’s why …

  • Trust, or lack thereof. Consumers no longer trust brands implicitly. They are far more likely to value information coming from someone they know.
  • Distraction. Half of Gen Y and Half off Gen X spend their time on the computer while they’re watching TV. 53% are browsing the Internet, doing things unrelated to what they’re watching. Only 34% are doing something on the computer that’s related to what’s on TV. Consumers are choosing to pay attention to two screens at once.
  • Fragmentation. Besides the multitasking I just reported, consumers have never engaged with so many different channels. Take a look at these numbers:
  • 3 billion – number of searches done in Google monthly
  • 186 million – watched Lady Gaga’s YouTube video
  • 30 million – streams on Hulu daily
  • 400 million – population of Facebook
  • 25 million – access Facebook on mobile each month

While all of the sessions I attended were strong, two keynotes, in particular, stood out for their highly relevant content. IHG’s Steve Sickel took the main stage to share his company’s transformation to real-time marketing. Like many organizations, IHG is wrestling with the huge change in consumer behavior, and specifically how they find and purchase hotel rooms. To address this, IHG has made some radical shifts in the way they spend their marketing dollars – 85% of IHG marketing spend is in non-traditional media.

Steve was a dynamic presenter and IHG is taking a truly customer-centric approach. He explained that IHG's customers were behaving in real-time; IHG was behaving in batch.

Dave Frankland’s presentation on Customer Intelligence started out with a bang when he used this video as a metaphor for marketers – most still “shoot at lighthouses.” Although they have the customer data, they do not have the customer intelligence to make good decisions.

Customer intelligence is the management and analysis of customer data from all sources used to drive marketing performance and business strategy. It’s easy to say, but hard to do … especially because most companies are drowning in data. Dave presented three case studies – ESPN (a Quaero client), Farmers’ Insurance and Fresh Direct. All three are using intelligence to evolve the customer experience, adapt to customer needs and maximize customer value.

If you missed Dave’s presentation – or if you attended and would like to see it again – join us for our free webinar: Know Thy Customer: How Customer Intelligence Becomes a Strategic Weapon, June 2, 1:00 pm EST.

So back to the Forrester Marketing Forum takeaways.

Forrester's Marketing Forum is not simply a point-in-time event. Its value is not limited to what was said two weeks ago in L.A. It was an exclusive live event – and, as I mentioned earlier, attendees found it highly instructive – but the content is available to a broader audience now via Twitter, streaming video, other social media channels. Analysts presented there, but also gained additional, new insight through conversations with attendees. Future reports will be informed by this information and reaction to hypotheses presented. The Forum’s value and impact will be felt by a much larger audience for much longer.

Here at Quaero, where our focus is on customer engagement, it was exciting to see customer intelligence come of age. For the first time, CI took the main stage and wasn’t relegated to only a breakout session. As we’ve seen for so many of our clients, customer intelligence is the key to increasing satisfaction, engagement and customer value.

For other takes on the event, check out Implications for B2B Demand Gen by Adam Needles; the Mashable article, The Stats of Online Word of Mouth Marketing; and Kristin Hambelton’s Their View article, Adaptive Marketing and Table Stakes in the May 2010 issue of MarketIQ.

This article is filed under:

View more Blog Posts

Leave a Comment

  • Your email won't be published on our site.

All Fields Required