The Five Pillars of B2B Marketing Success with Kristin Gower

Mike (00:45.397)
Kristin, thanks ever so much for joining me on Higgle, the B2B sales for podcast.

Kristin (00:54.134)
Yeah, my grandparents were. My great-grandparents, yeah.

Kristin (01:09.538)
Welcome. Thank you. Nice to be here.

Mike (01:11.733)
So yeah, we're looking forward to this. We've obviously gone through the pre-record some really interesting questions that we're gonna just talk through But before we do that, who are you? What do you do and anything unusual about yourself?

Kristin (01:24.078)
Okay, well, my name is Kristen. As we were just joking, my last name is Gower, like the Welsh coast or the cricketer, she says, dating herself. I am the global president at Essence MediaCom, currently looking after the B2B vertical. And something unusual, a couple of things. I used to be a competitive horse rider. I was in the New Zealand under 21, and I've lived and worked in every region of the world.

Mike (01:52.697)
There can't be many people that can say that, I'd imagine. OK, let's kick off the questions. So can you talk us through the approach you took to building a global B2B practice at Essence Media Comp.

Kristin (01:54.718)
Yeah.

Kristin (02:06.626)
Well, I think the shift started with our clients, as you would expect, right? Like many media agencies, it's a legacy consumer agency. And then what we saw was what everyone was seeing, dollars kind of pouring into B2B marketing. I think I've heard it described as the golden age of B2B marketing. And Greek mythology aside, I think that's a stretch, right? I think we're at the early stages of B2B marketing. But that's what we're doing.

Mike (02:34.462)
I would completely agree.

Kristin (02:35.942)
Yeah, not yet peak period. So that's what we were seeing, a need for a more comprehensive service, like a different, people who understood a different go-to-market model, people who understood martech integrations in a more complex way. So we built the vertical around the five core pillars of B2B marketing need that we saw, which was research and insights, strategy, demand management, obviously taking into account demand generation, but being bigger than that.

Mike (02:38.647)
No.

Kristin (03:05.842)
Marte, customer experience and content, and analytics. And so with those kind of five pillars, we then looked, okay, what is the clear view we're going to have around hiring, acquiring, and a partner approach? Because this was a startup effectively for Essence MediaCom. We had some big B2B clients, Dell and Google and EY, but the idea of creating an entire vertical with our own data sets and partners and products and solutions.

was a bit of a startup, which is what I used to do for Dyson. So it was my sweet spot I enjoyed. So that's what we did. We looked at, okay, what are we going to hire? And we focused on ABM, demand management strategy and research. When we looked at acquiring, and we're still looking at acquiring, but we are focused on influencer, e-commerce and AI. And that obviously came through Group M and WPP resources. And then...

partnerships became super important. Who are we partnering with in terms of marketing automation, tech implementation, but also industry partners like Foundry and Demandbase, Trade Desk, et cetera.

Mike (04:14.925)
So in terms of when you say partnerships, is this selling through and selling with partners?

Kristin (04:20.466)
Yes, it was. Yes. And so starting with WPP partners. So obviously marketing automation tech implementation is super important in B2B. So partners like Acceleration, GroupM WPP partner became very important for our clients doing that tech implementation. So at a strategic level, we're in there with the clients. We understand the business. We can see how a different tech would help them do. Let's say.

DCO better, help them do personalization better. Um, cause I think that's, that's actually an important thing to note there. We're talking to marketing people. Obviously B2B organizations know marketing automation tech very well, but that tends to be over in the sales department or in the technology department. When you're talking to marketing people in B2B, at least in my experience, they're not the people overseeing that kind of thing and okay, and now they want to start doing.

connections to CRM, now they want to start doing connections to CDP and how do they do that? So we're partnering with our own WP Pig Partners like Acceleration, and also Content is a big part of it too. So BCW, SJR, are big partners for us in terms of content, content strategy. But Foundry, for example, has been an excellent partner for us in terms of looking at different data sets, looking at ABM.

Mike (05:31.341)
Yes.

Kristin (05:46.698)
technology, demand base is another one. I think we are the only holding company with demand based certification across the organization. So those kinds of partnerships as well.

Mike (05:56.782)
Okay. So I used to be a partnership director many, many years ago for a tech company. And one of my kind of insights, observations around partnership, organizing or partnership models are, it sounds great in theory. And then I realized my own experience was, we do an awful lot of PowerPoint presentations for each other. We'd have an awful lot of drinks sessions, which would be lovely. We'd get to know an awful lot of people.

Kristin (06:00.33)
Hmm. Right.

Kristin (06:16.866)
Yep.

Mike (06:21.921)
But actually, it was really hard to get them to sell our products and very hard for us to sell their products. Because in that instance, one was basically a telco and we were a software provider. And it's so obvious, but what struck me was unless you've got real alignment around target ICP and problems that you solve for those clients and one-on-one does genuinely make three rather than two.

Kristin (06:34.887)
No.

Kristin (06:50.5)
Yeah.

Mike (06:52.337)
It's just a piece of paper and discussions and nothing really happens. How have you made partnerships work?

Kristin (06:59.09)
Yeah, and you know that is true. When you say that, I think of a couple of episodes or conversations that never got past beyond the drinks and the enthusiasm and the PowerPoint presentations. But I think where it did work is when we were solving for a particular problem.

Mike (07:14.509)
Exactly.

Mike (07:21.654)
Yes.

Kristin (07:22.61)
So if I take something, for an example, like a client that wanted to do a lot more e-commerce in B2B. So this is a client that understood commerce very well from a consumer point of view, but the idea of a transactional model in B2B was something very different. And for the first time, this was starting within a marketing organization, not within the sales organization, because it was part of a broader marketing campaign. So...

Then we were in there and we started and immediately it became obvious that we needed a site-build partner. We needed a partner that was skilled in the media and the strategy we were kind of taking on. So then we partnered with other WPP groups like Wonderman Thompson to come in and create the entire transactional model for the e-commerce for this client. So I can think of another example where we looked at...

switching to a lot more dynamic creative and starting with the creative wasn't the problem, the media wasn't the problem, the technology was the problem. Again, it was an outdated technology. So in doing that, when we started the journey towards dynamic creative and personalization, we got a third of the way in and then realized the problem was actually not the creative to begin with. It was a technology problem.

And so then we go back and we then found a partner to come in and address that partner in terms of a new implementation. And then once that partners come in, when they're in there, they then start seeing other opportunities that we then work on together. And I think that partnership is really important because as I think about this, I think about other, this particular client had other tech implementation partners who came in a couple of times. And we tried to work with them.

Mike (08:59.243)
Exactly.

Kristin (09:14.526)
And it just, it just didn't work out. I mean, this client in the end got rid of them and came back and said, okay, no, you be the lead, you choose the tech partner, because at the end of the day, this is a business strategy, a marketing strategy that we're trying to deliver. We need a tech partner that can work under that umbrella, as opposed to us bringing in a competitive, honestly, competitive technology company who came in with their point of view, we had our point of view and, you know, never the twin.

Mike (09:37.784)
Yeah, yeah.

Mike (09:44.093)
Exactly. I mean, I used to call it eating, you know, if you're not careful, you eat each other's lunch. And whenever you spot that, that's always the sign of that's not going to work in any way, shape or form.

Kristin (09:48.57)
Exactly.

Kristin (09:55.146)
Yeah. And I think that comes down a little bit to the growth too, in terms of how we, how we grew this. It wasn't a kind of go out there and let's say that we can do everything for everyone, right? We built upon our existing expertise, which was in technology. Then we looked at the verticals that were growing. Sustainability is a big one that was growing. Fintech is growing. But then we very much looked at one of the wedge issues right now that B2B marketers have.

things like measurement, analytics, and then tech integrations. So those became the sort of wedge issues that we started with as people were expanding into B2B. So those are the partners that we identified. And then on the back of that, we grew from that.

Mike (10:41.273)
I mean, you talk about the wedge issues. When I read that in the comments before, in one of my old consulting firms I used to work in, we had this idea of a wedge sale where we'd go in with a small wedge and then we'd open up the account. Not in a devious way, in the opposite, in a very meaningful way that you expand based upon the trust you build with the client and the needs that they've got. But is that what you mean by wedges? You find a point problem and you go in with something relatively small first.

Kristin (10:50.882)
Mm.

Kristin (10:57.454)
No.

Kristin (11:07.243)
If you-

Yes, exactly. And I think both in terms of because we're in the business, we see an issue and we start to address it and then it becomes bigger. But I also mean just in terms of growth. So, for example, measurement and analytics is a key challenge, as you know, for B2B marketing. Like, you know, and particularly when you look at media, like, you know, how are you connecting a program? Exactly. How are you connecting a programmatic buy in month one with a sale in month 36?

Mike (11:31.445)
Yeah. And attribution. Yeah.

Kristin (11:39.874)
So we really doubled down on that expertise in terms of the people we were hiring and our approach to it. And on the back of that, we've actually done work for clients that are at other media agencies who have come to us and said, just do the measurement project, right? And obviously we hope over time that we'll be doing more than just the measurement project. But because we really doubled down on that, that became something that is a way to open the door to growth.

Mike (12:08.105)
Exactly. And we'll come back to the measurement bit when we talk about value creation for clients. So, following on into the next topic, in a recent Essence MediaCom research report, one of your findings was, I think I've got this right, 60% of CMOs say that proving marketing impact has increased in importance more than any other of their responsibilities.

So how do you as an agency demonstrate value and impact for clients? And it links into exactly that measurement piece.

Kristin (12:40.534)
Yeah, exactly. And I think, you know, I don't think that figure is surprising, right? I think, you know, if you're pouring more dollars into an investment, there is going to be expectations that you can account for those dollars and how they were spent. But, you know, as we were just talking about it, it's a lot more of a complex calculation than it is in consumer and a linear relationship and a kind of click the banner, sell the shoe type situation.

Mike (12:52.736)
Absolutely.

Kristin (13:09.278)
So I think the, I mean, starting with how we, I'm going to start with the problem, which I think is the, is the obvious one. The biggest challenges that we find when we go in to look at a measurement project is very fundamental things like misaligned KPIs. So you've got a marketing team that is say, KPI on site visits. You've got a sales team that's KPI on revenue and, and they are, they're competing with each other. So, so that's, that's the first thing.

The other one then is around the data aggregation and orchestration piece of it. So do we actually have a full view of all of the data? The third one is there is no silver bullet. I think this is key in terms of the measurement. It's an art and science. You need to bring in your typical tools like MMM, multi-touch attribution, then you need to bring in some brand of studies, then you need to look at, we've created bespoke.

for one other client to look at how they could map their site engagements to a sale. So there was a lot of modeling, a lot of analysis that went into a bespoke KPI then, but that didn't become the one KPI. So I think the fundamentally where we start with the measurement is trying to get to a unified goal, then a really clear set of data. Then you bring in the art and science of

four or five different tools at different moments and try to pull that whole vision together. And I think in terms of how then we show impact, apart from the results of that, and then being able to measure the incrementality, because I think that's a key part of it, right? We really moved to the incrementality of it all, is the being a business partner in that. Like I would think that every agency partner strives to be a comprehensive business partner. But in my experience, at least,

That is the need is greater in B2B because of the complexity. So, you know, obviously not a surprise to you, but a number of our B2B clients are marketing leads that are dealing with multiple product or service line owners, you know, everyone has, everyone has five bucks in a dream or more or more. And so it's, you know, even when I used to work in clients like P&G, even obviously there's multiple brands and there's multiple budgets.

Mike (15:23.339)
Yeah.

Kristin (15:33.246)
There is a unified view across that organization. There is a CMO, there is a brand lead. And so complexity, reducing that complexity and identifying the cost of that complexity. I think is one of the key ways that we can show value as well. So, okay, if we, if we do have 10 service lines and everyone's got $10, how can we change up the portfolio architecture, the approach of this? So we are.

minimizing the duplication with audiences, we're minimizing the duplication across channels, but still showing each one of those individual service owners who have a product and business to sell that they are getting value from this spend. And I think that's again being one of our key growth strategies is we've now done this with a couple of clients looking at a portfolio approach, changing the way we go to market, but being able to measure for each of those people what they got from their dollar.

even though overall we're reducing the duplication.

Mike (16:35.545)
So I think this is really interesting and worth digging into a little bit more perhaps. So a couple of things. There's complete, no, and neither am I. And neither am I. But you know enough to have a discussion. So there's complexity and there's variety. And I think often people confuse the two. Sometimes there's just an awful lot of variety, but actually it's not that complex. But what you're talking about here is in B2B,

Kristin (16:42.006)
I keep keeping in mind that I'm not the measurement person. I leave the team, I'm not the empty-head.

Kristin (16:55.926)
Yeah.

Mike (17:04.941)
got both. You've got a lot of variety and you've got an enormous amount of complexity and very different datasets. And most agencies I know would find that hard to get their arms around I think.

The second thing is, do you think now that, so how do I phrase this? Are brands just expecting that impact measures and always on dashboards are part of the offer? Or do you think it's part of the differentiation of an agency like yourselves?

Kristin (17:41.218)
I think it is expected. I certainly would expect, I do expect it, right? I mean, I think, you know, if you're spending someone's money, you need to, you know, account for how that money is spent and the value it's bringing back. What I do find though, is a continuum and the level of sophistication that's expected, right?

Mike (17:48.662)
Exactly.

Mike (18:06.485)
Exactly right. Absolutely.

Kristin (18:08.458)
So, and that's, you know, when I go back to this whole idea of the golden age of B2B being a little bit more wishful thinking than reality, right? We still have a number, if not majority of engagements where we are looking at, you know, upper funnel brand type results, and then we're looking at lower funnel lead gen type results. And even if the individually...

those two are a fairly robust or sophisticated approach. It's only a few clients that are then expecting us to connect that through the funnel. So not just have two different metrics, but actually to show the incrementality of everything we do at Brand through the funnel all the way down and to make that as efficient as possible. Because that's the other part of it, right? It's...

B2B spends are not consumer spent yet in general, right? And we can't be spending millions analyzing how hundreds was spent. So we need to find efficient ways to guide it. And I think that is something that we're seeing a lot of responsiveness from clients from, in the sense that they know that this is a beginning of a journey. They know that money is being spent in channels that weren't previously spent in, or in a more connected fashion.

Mike (19:12.825)
Correct.

Kristin (19:32.946)
So it feels like a real partnership together, at least with the clients that we're working on. It feels, you know, with another client, you know, I think two years ago we did a presentation on best practices around B2B measurement and in a couple of weeks we're looking at something around niche audiences, right, and how to measure those. So it's been a journey and a partnership that I think everyone is very enthusiastically partaking of.

Mike (19:58.221)
And I think that's a great way of putting it, which is basically, measurement is an expectation, it's table stakes. Any agency that can't provide measurement for their client, well, they're going to have a problem winning that competitive pitch process. However, there's a very big difference between providing the basics and then providing more integrated analytics that look at lead and lag indicators and start to look at attribution.

but that's quite a different level of sophistication.

Kristin (20:29.334)
Yeah. And I would also say that it's when you're at the pitch point, you don't know enough about an organization's internal structures, KPIs, how people are incentivized, where the data is coming in, all of that kind of thing to put forward a sophisticated response to measurement. And I think that's different to consumer. So I think where the skill comes is, you know,

obviously showing enough case studies or proof points that you're able to win that engagement. But after that, where it's successful is where you don't start saying, oh no, we know how to do this. We did this with case A last week. Everything is new in B2B. So we're going to go in now and now we're going to spend the right amount of time really understanding this particular business.

these particular data sets, what these ambitions are, what these kind of growth strategies are, is it a product-led marketing, is it a subscription model? It's all very, very different. And then construct a completely new measurement approach for that business in that time. And the skill there is in the business partnership and the innovation to create the measurement strategy for that client, which is...

Again, in my experience, not the same is when you're doing it for consumer, where we have a set of tools that we know work and we just employ them and we get some smart people to do it.

Mike (22:03.001)
Exactly right.

Correct. And in fact, I think one thing that this bit isn't a scripted question, it wasn't something we prepared. So you can answer or not answer, it's entirely up to you, Kristin, but what I'm finding is a lot of brands are sending out briefs or RFPs, they're asking agencies to fix price on complex problems in the B2B space, fix price solution in the B2B space, and it's big.

Kristin (22:16.642)
Yes.

Mike (22:34.229)
without any paid discovery? Well, it's ludicrous. You need a discovery process that's got a price to it, and then an indicative range of what the solution might look like on the other side of discovery with a range, because until you've done the discovery, how on earth will you know what the complexity is and where the complexity lies? And that I think is, you know, I don't think a lot of brands on the B2B side are doing that, and I don't think a lot of agencies understand about that.

Kristin (22:53.707)
Yeah.

Kristin (23:02.458)
And if I'm understanding the kind of question or point there correctly, I think back to years ago when we used to do RFPs for consumer, and we would have questionnaires on what the CPM was going to be on Google or what the CPM was going to be on TV, etc. And the idea that you could lock in a CPM and a fixed price and kind of go into that. And I think there's a couple of things there. One is...

at that time, there was probably enough information to do that, even if it was the wrong way to go about it, there was at least some information. It obviously doesn't speak to much agility if you're locking in your spends in that way. But I think in B2B, it's a similar thing. These budgets are increasing and they are increasing. That's what we saw in the research that we ran.

Mike (23:35.072)
Exactly.

Mike (23:44.477)
It doesn't, no.

Kristin (23:59.478)
B2B CMOs are expecting, are having budgets increase and that's increased in tech and staffing and media. Sometimes there's a shift between say, just upper funnel through the funnel, et cetera, but there is, but there's increasing spends. So then you're kind of coming into this situation, okay, well, how are we going to price this out? And do we know how to run an RFP, right? And you did have one of the questions around,

how RFPs run. And we are seeing a, in some cases, an understandable lack of, shall we say, sophistication or robustness in an RFP. Because if people are spending money in the first time in a particular way, they don't have anything to fall back on. It wasn't like the previous one. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Mike (24:30.347)
Exactly.

Mike (24:51.949)
they don't know what they don't know. Yeah.

Kristin (24:55.45)
And so, you know, you'll have an RFP that speaks to, okay, we want strategy and thought leadership, but in the end, what we really want here is a lead generation campaign, right? And then I think the other one then is around slightly old school behavioral, old school B2B tactics, you know, the golf course handshake, for example. We had an example, we were watching an organization that we suspected was gonna come to market.

Mike (25:17.033)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Kristin (25:24.922)
knew they were unhappy with their agency and we were primed and we were ready and we were hoping it was going to come to market. And then in the space of about three weeks they hired someone from a rival agency who then turned around and hired that agency to be their agency. So you know no RFP, no procurement team involved, no process like that. Now that won't happen.

Mike (25:47.565)
No governance, really.

Kristin (25:50.395)
No, that won't happen in five years, right? It'll become more sophisticated when the dollars become more important. But I think, you know, it's like your long-winded way of going back to what you're saying then about the kind of fixed rates. When you don't know, you go for what you know, which is, I know this guy, I want these fixed rates, I want to be able to predict. And I think what everyone in B2B agencies and clients marketing needs to become.

Mike (25:56.662)
Exactly.

Kristin (26:18.382)
more comfortable with is ambiguity and saying, let's give it a go. Let's have a conversation. Let's try this out. Um, you know, slightly random example, but we had a client, um, a couple of years ago that, um, tried a pretty left field social, um, platform for the first time. And it took probably a year of conversation to get there. And then it was really successful. Um, and so, you know, we're seeing those changes everywhere across B2B, right?

Mike (26:21.953)
Yes.

Kristin (26:47.19)
the channels, the spans, the audiences we're going after, the way we do content, all of that kind of thing. So I think it's a, I'm picturing this kind of a solid block of concrete that's starting to break apart, right? And become more fluid and become more agile. And through that, innovation is happening and new structures are being built.

Mike (27:09.929)
Exactly right. So, I'm very conscious of your time because I could go on for a long time about this, but I won't. So, question three, which was around, if you look across all of the kind of the RFPs that you must work on as an agency, the competitive briefs, they're kind of like, they're more informal things that you get. What are the three biggest factors for why you win and why you lose in those, what I would call a competitive tender situation?

Kristin (27:13.942)
Yep.

Kristin (27:40.206)
I think the obvious first one is are we informed and prepared and ideally in person? That sounds simple, but it's not always in our control. And kind of going back to that level of sophistication, who wrote the RFP? Was it a marketing person? Was it a procurement person? And did we understand the question behind the question? Did we understand what was really

Mike (27:58.57)
Exactly.

Kristin (28:10.218)
Can we do it justice? Is it worth the time? Are these people using a large agency, like Essence MediaCom as a benchmark, or are they really keen to move forward and explore new things? The virtual context is really challenging, I would say. I try to avoid that at all costs. I think the other one is around the balance of strategy and tactical. We kind of talked about that before in terms of it can be tempting.

Um, when you're excited about a pitch to throw everything in it, right? We can, you know, we do tech implementation and we do media and we do analytics and we do content and we do CX. There's nothing we can't do. And that is overwhelming for people who are dipping their toe in the water. And I, and I think, you know, that that's a mistake that we've been made in terms of. It's not about what we can do. It's about what they need or asking for. Even if.

Mike (28:43.971)
Yes.

Kristin (29:07.998)
what they're asking for is not clear, right? So if we take in more time to really understand the question behind the question, and then narrowed our proposal down to what that question was, more success. And I think that's a kind of solving, not selling situation, right? There, you know, was it a shopping list of everything we could do, or was it really, we understand your problem, and here is the integrated solution to that problem? I think that's a key one. And that's not always the same as the RFP.

Mike (29:20.877)
Exactly.

Kristin (29:38.646)
And I think another part of it is just chemistry. Unfortunately, most people are bad recruiters. Most people use the fast thinking side of their brain. You made me laugh, I have a similar interest to you. That kind of bias often trumps deep analysis or innovation. And we do what we can around stakeholder mapping and addressing that chemistry, but it doesn't always hit.

I mean, I've got actually an example of myself doing that. When I used to work for Dyson, you know, Dyson is a very, it's a very clear brand, entrepreneurial engineering, very, very unique brand. And I, when I was choosing an agency in one of the markets I used to live and work in, I chose an agency that had that vibe, right? You know, they were startups, they were feisty, they had a strong personality. And

Mike (30:32.706)
Yes.

Kristin (30:37.29)
The other agency actually did what I said we did. They came with 15 people, it was fancy food and fancy decorations, and it was always very polished. And I chose the startup agency. 10 months later, I had to turn around and admit my mistake and go back to the other agency who had the better thinking and the better content, but had just misjudged the personality.

Mike (31:03.253)
Yeah, exactly. And, um, as you know, I've been on many buying panels, uh, for clients as a, as an procurement guy. Um, and I think that's a really important point about the balance between chemistry is critical. But if they, for example, if they haven't got the deep sector expertise and they don't really understand the issues in this sector, but it's great chemistry as a vote on the panel, I'd be like, that's not going to work. Chemistry is important. However.

Kristin (31:26.486)
Yeah.

Kristin (31:31.218)
No.

Mike (31:33.784)
If they don't know our sector, it isn't going to work out well.

Kristin (31:33.874)
Yeah. And then and then it all depends, you know, who has that vote, right? I think, you know, that the procurement thing is really challenging. If you can understand the procurement team and understand what they are looking for and provide them with the information and confidence and partnership, then it's a win. If not, it's.

Mike (31:41.453)
It does.

Kristin (32:00.254)
It's a big challenge because they're often not connected to the business, right? I mean, obviously they can do a part of the business, but they don't know marketing. They're not involved in the kind of brand ownership. So in some ways it shouldn't be a competing thing, but it has been. You know, we have been in pitches where clearly the procurement people are looking for something different than the marketing people.

Mike (32:25.856)
Exactly.

Kristin (32:26.646)
We've been in pitches where there's been an argument that's broken out between those two in the proposal meeting, right? So trying to understand where the power lies and how you can address the needs of both, I think is one of the key strategies there. And particularly because procurement plays, I think, a very large role in that whole kind of B2B pitch process.

Mike (32:48.333)
They do, and they're a different type of stakeholder with very different needs. That's a friend of mine, David Meikle, we were talking the other day about this. Procurement have an awful lot of control in the process, but they have no accountability for the outcome. And that puts them at odds with marketing, and that's a problem. And the agency sat in the middle.

Kristin (32:52.312)
Yeah.

Kristin (32:59.294)
Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Or the accountability they have. Yeah, exactly. Or the accountability they have is that fixed price, what are you going to charge me for my CPM, right? And then that becomes the most important thing because it's something they can measure. I think that actually goes back to the whole measurement problem, right? What you want to do is measure impact, but what you attempted to do is measure what you can measure.

Mike (33:27.261)
Exactly. Yeah, which aren't the same thing. Yes. So, um, can a final question, uh, and then, uh, just like a very brief bit on AI at the end. Um, so final question really, uh, how do you embed a commercial negotiation mindset within your business practice leaders? So you're ensuring that kind of essence media, media comm hit your internal profitability targets, but also deliver outstanding work. So there's often a bit of attention there.

Kristin (33:30.09)
Yeah, not really.

Mike (33:56.429)
So how do you do that?

Kristin (33:58.651)
Yeah, well, let's assume for the kind of table stakes that they have the knowledge, right? And that's not always the case, right? So initially, it's making sure that your leaders understand what goes into those commercial negotiations, understands what their contribution margin is, et cetera. So putting that in as table stakes, then it's around skin in the game, I think.

So are these leaders empowered with the knowledge of costs and margins and financial targets? Do they have the ability, you know, within parameters of whatever works for your organization to make changes and make recommendations to maximize that profit whilst maximizing the client outputs? And I think, you know, we skin in the game is the most basic psychological understanding. And yet it's the one that I think organizations...

skip over the most, right? In terms of, you know, if you asked your leaders, do I feel empowered to really maximize output for the agency and for my client? How many of them would say yes, right? And what do they feel the answer is no to? So I think that is really key. Having a very transparent conversations around what our targets are, and then how we can make sure that client centricity

Mike (35:04.662)
Yeah.

Kristin (35:19.846)
is at the heart of everything we do, because you mentioned there outstanding work. I don't think there's a conflict between outstanding work and revenue generation for the agency, because those two things go hand in hand. Where it becomes a problem is the nickel and diming bread and butter, right? And if you're never able to innovate or to go for a pilot or do a small project, like if everything starts with

sign on the dotted line before I do anything for you, you're never going to grow your business. Right. And I think that's really important that we make sure that all of our client leads know that we are committed to an innovation and diversification of our product and solutions with our clients. And that's how we drive growth and profitability.

Mike (36:12.285)
So, Kirsten, before we finish the conversation, one small thing. Kristen. Do you like what you're cursed in? Oh my god, I'm sorry. I've been practicing for hours not to do that. Kristen. So, AI. It would be remiss of us not to even mention it. Exactly. So just...

Kristin (36:15.774)
Kristen though, Kristen I remember we did that, Kristen Scott Thomas. You did but that's okay. That's it. Yes.

Kristin (36:36.002)
Yeah. There we are. The bingo bus.

Mike (36:41.577)
views as broad as you like in terms of what clients are thinking about expecting realistically or unrealistically about the adoption of AI.

Kristin (36:42.986)
Yeah.

Kristin (36:54.911)
OK. So OK. A slightly paradoxical one. I think what everyone is talking about in a marketing sphere, and we saw that at Cannes, we see that in the awards, we see that in the case studies, is around content creation, whether that's text or image or video. And I think that's a comfortable spot for marketers. That's what we do. We create content.

And it's certainly very exciting. You know, it's fun using the, you know, the Dolly, the ChatGPT, the generative AI content tools that we have at WPP because of our partnership with Nvidia. It's great. I think the much larger opportunity, or potentially less sexy, is around insight generation. So if we go back to one of those earlier things we were talking about, one of the...

Mike (37:34.209)
Yeah, exactly.

Mike (37:46.742)
Yeah, yeah.

Kristin (37:50.35)
problems within B2B is that you have a sales team with information. You have a customer success team with information. You have an event team, a PR team, a media marketing team, et cetera. You've got a huge amount of disparate customer information and you can't have client centricity if you don't have data centricity, right? So if all of that, if all of that understanding of your client.

is broken up into little pockets and then siloed out. So bringing all of that data together, which is obviously where we're going with these, you know, customer data platforms and data aggregation systems. Once all that's come together, the opportunity then for AI to be pulling out insights from a transcript from a customer service conversation, linking that to a question in an event, linking that to something else, that I think is super exciting.

So I think the analytics of it all and the insights of it all, and then the attribution to go back to measurement to be able to look at a customer, a three-year customer journey worth of content with a client and then look at how different interactions with that client resulted in A or B, I think is really exciting. So to yes, it's way more fun to play with the Dulli and video with the AI, but I think the...

the big opportunities around analytics. And clearly with cookie lists going away, and the privacy sandbox, that's a big part of it as well. We're doing a lot of testing across that. And I think clients are understandably very concerned about the lack of cookies and what that means. So that's what I think. There's a lot of conversation, a lot of fun around the generative content piece of it, but the generative insight in analytics, I think is gonna be a game changer.

Mike (39:29.418)
Exactly right.

Mike (39:42.101)
For me personally, that's exactly where I'm focusing my attention. There are lots of companies that are going to solve the, can you create a movie by taking a book and turning it into a video? Maybe? Who knows? Fascinating. But it's of not much interest to my clients and to their clients. So yeah, I think the analytics and insights piece is very interesting.

Kristin (39:56.198)
Yeah.

Kristin (40:05.87)
And I think to the, it's the other reason for that, I think is, you know, other than it's, you know, it's, it's sexier and funner is it's already done. Right. Some, some company, you know, let's call it open AI has created a technology for you to be able to do generative content. But if you want to use AI for insights and analytics, that's an organizational.

Mike (40:19.671)
Yeah.

Kristin (40:33.434)
structure job to fix first, to bring all that data into one place, that it can then be analyzed. That is way harder. B2B organizations, as we've talked about, are quite compartmentalized, right? There's a sales team, a marketing team, a data team, et cetera. So to have a leader who is unifying that entire organization behind a revenue goal, and then is unifying all of that data

Mike (40:35.129)
Correct.

Mike (40:42.09)
Yeah.

Kristin (41:02.706)
into one place and then is employing AI technology to create those insights. And then, interestingly, sharing those insights out with the whole organization again, that is a multi-step, multi-team job to be done, which is not the same thing as thinking, okay, great, OpenAI did my job for me, I can create a new video.

Mike (41:26.297)
Correct. Exactly right. Kristin, it's been fascinating. Genuinely fascinating. Thank you. And thanks for taking the time as well. Where can people find out more about you?

Kristin (41:32.246)
Thank you, I really enjoyed it.

Kristin (41:38.787)
Yes, it's MediaCom or my LinkedIn is Kristen Gower. And no Cs, no Hs, no Es, spelled the same way as Kristen Scott Thomas.

Mike (41:45.721)
Very good. Excellent. Kristin, it's been amazing. Thank you.

Kristin (41:49.334)
Thank you very much. Bye bye.

Mike (41:51.777)
So I'll just stop recording and just.