Videos
Marketing, AI, and Accountability: Alvin Bowles on the CMO's New Mandate
Insights
- Marketing has shifted from producing creative to proving return, with CFOs and CEOs now taking a direct interest in decisions once left to the CMO alone.
- Kantar's MDS framework, which measures whether a brand's message is meaningful, differentiated and salient, has replaced annual brand trackers with continuous, always-on measurement.
- Governing AI and data use cannot sit inside the CIO's office alone. It has to be a shared responsibility across the C-suite and the board.
Marketing has always operated under pressure to prove its worth, but AI has raised the stakes. Alvin Bowles, Chief Client Officer at Kantar, sat down with Jeff Kavanaugh, Head of the Infosys Knowledge Institute, in a conversation recorded during the Semafor World Economy Summit in Washington, D.C. Bowles argues that CFOs and CEOs are now stepping directly into conversations once owned by the CMO, unwilling to treat marketing spend as simply a cost of goods sold. The discussion covers how brands measure sentiment and differentiation at scale, why continuous measurement has replaced the annual brand tracker, and why AI governance has to extend well past the CIO's office if it's going to work.
Jeff Kavanaugh:
Welcome to a series of conversations with leaders who are turning AI's promise into real business results. We're here at Semafor's World Economy Summit in Washington, DC. I'm Jeff Kavanaugh, and today I'm joined by Alvin Bowles, Chief Client Officer for Kantar. Alvin, welcome.
Alvin Bowles
Thank you for having me.
Jeff Kavanaugh:
What is the most surprising impact of AI revolution and how do you see it redefining how companies compete?
Alvin Bowles
I think what's been interesting about this is that it's really focused on the expediency of answers, but also the increased questions associated with that data. What's challenging about AI is that it's a wonderful tool, but in terms of how to actually make it applicable to everyday solutions has been the challenge. Everyone has got these answers at their fingertips. Everyone has the ability to drive prompts, drive outcomes and things of that nature. The key is to be able to actually turn that into actionable insights that you can then act upon and then iterate. AI is supposed to make things faster and that's been an interesting challenge for businesses.
Jeff Kavanaugh:
To put a finer point on it. Since you lead a two-billion-dollar company who is focused on helping brands get stronger.
Alvin Bowles
Yes.
Jeff Kavanaugh:
There's a CMO hat. There's a real marketers perspective to this. How is Enterprise AI reshaping how these CMOs and leaders both improve their internal performance but also externally compete better?
Alvin Bowles
It's fantastic question. The CMOs have really turned their business units into profit centers. They must be ROI and it's always been the case but it's not just a cost of goods sold piece of it. It needs to be a profit center. It needs to be a center for growth. So in our business we've been selling to the marketing and insights individuals and CMOs, but oftentimes now the CFO and the CEO wants to be involved in that conversation to really understand if I'm spending a dollar, am I getting a return on that dollar, and if so, why and where? So part of our conversation now is not only understanding from a CMO perspective, most of them are putting out creative, creating interesting advertising options to be able to drive consumer demand. The point is, is that message resonating with the individual that you're trying to influence, and does that content get scaled?
Jeff Kavanaugh:
How do you measure it?
Alvin Bowles
Well, you measure it number of different ways. From a television perspective, still TRPs and GRPs from a ratings perspective. Online, you're still talking about impressions. But really in the outcomes business now, you're really trying.
Jeff Kavanaugh:
That's what I'm saying. Those are just activities, but you don't really know the outcome.
Alvin Bowles
It's return on investment. Most of these things lead to a bottom-of-funnel conversion, which is why I think many of the largest brands in the world have now started to take direct response advertising, efficacy, and those attributes and applying that to large brands. You must actually focus on conversion, not just is this a wonderful commercial, is this creative creative, things of that nature, you really have to make sure you're actually driving bottom line conversions.
Jeff Kavanaugh:
Well, there's a lot of almost excessive AI investment now.
Alvin Bowles
Yes.
Jeff Kavanaugh:
What's driving the measurable impact? And obviously you mentioned some of those metrics for marketing, but as it relates to the technology, especially AI behind it, which applications of that do you see driving measurable impact?
Alvin Bowles
Well, I think that again, you go back to really trying to drive insights. If you're focusing on driving impact not just globally, because everybody's operating in a global economy now. And so one size doesn't fit all. What you're measuring in North America may be slightly different from Latin America, might be slightly different from Asia and what have you. You still are focusing on how do you actually drive sentiment. So sentiment is actually, is hard to grasp oftentimes because are you actually driving behavior and how do you feel about that purchase? Something may be different from a utility product to a luxury product or what you may be spending on a vacation. Sentiment and being able to evaluate that and we call that really focusing on meaningful, differentiated and salient differences associated with what brands are actually putting into the marketplace.
Jeff Kavanaugh:
Meaningful.
Alvin Bowles
Differentiated and salient. That is our MDS framework that actually separates what Kantar does from many other entities that are actually measuring, evaluating.
Jeff Kavanaugh:
It's quantitative.
Alvin Bowles
It is absolutely quantitative. It's taking both public and private information. We've got a proprietary technology that allows us to be able to actually evaluate that so you can actually make sure that you're giving insights back to a brand to make it actionable. If you're making, if you're a CPG company or you're an automotive or you're making widgets, the idea is to be able to focus on not only what you're doing, but how are you doing it in comparison to your competitors. It's like being, as I love to say, short, tall, small or thin. All of it may be true based on who you're standing next to.
Jeff Kavanaugh:
Well, if we get in our way back machine, go back maybe a few years, maybe you're doing this annually for big brands, I'd imagine it's happening more often now.
Alvin Bowles
Yes it is.
Jeff Kavanaugh:
So what is that window you're dealing with now?
Alvin Bowles
So I think that traditionally in the measurement perspective, you know, we used to often just do brand trackers for individuals. You've got a bunch of attributes, you're evaluating, you know, thousands and thousands of pieces of content for brands and then telling them what happened, ED. The focus now is actually focusing on what's happening and always on opportunity to be able to see how brands are performing, what is the efficacy of your creative and being able to change what you're actually presenting and in which platform you're presenting it on. So this is a daily, always on opportunity. We've got a bunch of different products, our brand dynamics products, our Kantar Live product that allows us to able to evaluate how brands are doing right now, right here, and what they may do should they actually want to focus on pivoting into a particular opportunity.
Jeff Kavanaugh:
Decoupling the tech and kind of the marketing half for a second, there's significant uncertainty out there and rapid change. What can brands do to adapt using a tool like yours or technology like that?
Alvin Bowles
Well, I think the one you have to release your fear of it. I think at end of the day, many folks in our space have always been comfortable doing the things that they've done. Doing the same thing in different, you know, expecting different results is the definition of insanity. And so being able to actually focus on embracing this technology, understanding how to utilize it, but you're going to need a trusted advisor to be able to figure that out. Having this copious amounts of data doesn't solve the problem. The question is being able to focus on how do you turn that into actionable insights? Because the information's limitless. You actually have the power of everything you're looking for in the palm of your hand based on all these AI tools, but it's unclear what you're supposed to actually do with those tools. If you have all these great insights coming.
Jeff Kavanaugh:
Is there ever insight overload? How do you sort out the metrics? How do you make decisions? Because at some point, you're going to be getting all these dashboards, all this information. How do you make sense of that?
Alvin Bowles
You've got to make sure you're coming into those situations with really clear KPIs, key performance indicators. Being able to test everything, you end up actually learning nothing. So being able to understand, what am I trying to test? Why am I trying to test it? And what am I going to do about this? I think that for every brand that's out there, they have an opportunity to be able to actually really clearly define whom they're going after, not just women 18 to 34 or men 25 to 54, being able to actually go down a layer or two into exactly who you're going after and then focusing on a psychographic profile of those individuals. If you know your customer and whom you believe your customer to be, being able to say KPIs allows you to then focus on extracting those insights to make it extremely actionable. So I think that oftentimes it sounds daunting. It's like boiling the ocean. But if you actually can take these in small digestible pieces, it allows you to be able to actually take one step at a time to focus on meaningful attribution and ROI for every single thing that you decide.
Jeff Kavanaugh:
All right. In the beginning, you said, the CFO is kind of interested now.
Alvin Bowles
Yes, very much so.
Jeff Kavanaugh:
Most of what you've said, it's relevant for the CMO. How does the CFO get what they need from your analytics like these?
Alvin Bowles
Well I think they're looking at how do they evaluate allocation of budget? If I'm allocating a certain percentage of dollars as a cost of goods sold, if you will, from a traditional way you've looked at a P&L, how do you actually turn these into growth measures? I think oftentimes people look at AI as a cost reduction opportunity. How do I reduce workforce? How do I reduce workflows? Things of that nature. Not everyone is thinking about this as a growth engine. So, the shortest tenured seat amongst the C-suite is the CMO and it's not an indictment against that role but oftentimes they're scapegoated for whether or not a marketing campaign or initiative actually worked or it didn't work. If you can go back and say does this actually allow us to break new ground and new opportunities in a shorter period of time? I mean we think about our job is decreasing the distance between ideation and execution. The shorter that distance, the more effective you're going to be. Because if you're working on something and it doesn't.
Jeff Kavanaugh:
A great idea too late is not a great idea.
Alvin Bowles
That is correct. So, what AI, and I think one of your first questions was, what is this actually enabling you to do? Decrease the time distance between that ideation and execution.
Jeff Kavanaugh:
Competing on time, yeah.
Alvin Bowles
Because if you can iterate, it allows you to then focus on how do you redeploy assets associated with it? How do you double down on something that you perhaps was experimental and allow you to put more fuel on things that actually drive the growth.
Jeff Kavanaugh:
So instead of these linear campaigns, it's much more of the iterative taking feedback, making adjustments.
Alvin Bowles
100%. This is what you saw actually in digital advertising. So I spent a lot of my career in digital advertising. Being able to, the idea of being able to optimize a campaign while it's happening was a new notion many, many years ago. Now you wouldn't actually do a campaign without even at least thinking about this. Now the question is, while you're optimizing, do you need to change our creative? Do you need to change the language? Do you need to change the color scheme associated with something? Being able to do that in real time is where these AI tools become really enabled and then understanding which thing that you change that actually had the largest impact so then you can actually take that into the next step.
Jeff Kavanaugh:
Last question, a little more of a tech one. You mentioned CFO's relationship. What about the CIO? Because the CMO-CIO relationship, something Knowledge Institute has studied a lot, what's that partnership? Any implications there because what you're doing requires data, requires some tech.
Alvin Bowles
100%. I think that the biggest piece now is understanding the difference between data and intellectual property. Data enables you. It's the fuel for your car. It is the fuel that drives this engine. But utilizing data in your competitive set is very different than protecting your intellectual property. There's got to be a distinction between the two and so the CIO is certainly a part of this, but I will say this. Governing your AI policy just inside the CIO's office is going to leave a company really underwhelmed by the results associated with this. This has to be everyone's problem, including the board. This is an everyone's issue that everyone has to embrace across the board so you understand how are you going to govern all the intellectual property that you have, how are you going to govern utilizing these tools for your employees, and then how are you going to evaluate the efficacy of these results.
Jeff Kavanaugh:
Got it. Well, Alvin, I know you've got to run. Thank you so much for your time.
Alvin Bowles
Thank you very much for your time as well.
Jeff Kavanaugh:
I'm Jeff Kavanaugh from the Infosys Knowledge Institute. Until next time, keep learning and keep sharing.
