Video: Why the Future of Marketing Runs on Connected Identity

Slavi Samardzija:
Hello, I'm Slavi Samardzija and I'm the Global Chair of Media and Commerce at Stagwell,
and I'm very fortunate to be joined by my all-time friend and a colleague, Matt Spiegel, who is the EVP of Growth at TransUnion.

Matt Spiegel:
Yes, thank you, so happy to be here.

Slavi Samardzija:
Thank you. We are in our day four, closing our day four at Cannes Lions, the intersection of creative, creative media and technology. And Matt, maybe we start…I know you have had a lot of meetings; you've had a busy week.

I'm sure you're still processing all of the amazing stuff you have seen (and maybe not so amazing stuff); if you think about some of the highlights you have seen, what would they be for you as it relates to our joint work, as it relates to the work you do with TransUnion and our customers?

Matt Spiegel:
Well, listen, first of all, again, Slavi, thanks for having me. It has definitely been an interesting week. I feel like Cannes is as big as and as crazy as I've seen in a long time. Also, a little bit hotter.

Slavi Samardzija:
That is true, that is true.

Matt Spiegel:
But you know, the industry is abuzz right now. And it's certainly abuzz by a lot of the transactions that have happened in recent weeks — married to a whole bunch of new technology which we're all just calling code AI, right?

And so, we sit in this interesting time where the industry is definitely thinking about how to rewire itself in terms of how we actually execute the infrastructure that has made the ecosystem work. From the lens I sit in, that really is all about connecting data, right? And how do we enable the precision, people-based marketing at scale we want? And the industry is clearly looking at what are new ways to do that? How much can we push that in more automated ways? What are the right data underpinnings? How do we tie that to outcomes?

And so, it's been a week where, without any question, those topics have come up in a way I think are more strategic than they often have.

Slavi Samardzija:
It's a good thing.

Matt Spiegel:
It's a very good thing, right? We also often get into the sausage making of it. But I think this year it's coming up as, OK, wait a minute. This is actually impacting how marketing gets executed, how marketers communicate with people, which I think has been really great, right? And listen, I assume in the work you're doing, there's a there's a connected thematic, right?

I mean, I'm guessing you see a lot of the same things you're hearing from the customers and partners you're meeting with that there is this rewiring happening. And I mean, are you thinking about it in the same way?

Slavi Samardzija:
Yes, yeah, I mean, we absolutely are.

I think if you think about the marketing workflow, which you've kind of mentioned, we have to start with our customers’ challenges. We have to identify the right audiences, identify the sources of growth. We have to connect those audiences then to the briefs and challenges we want to solve, develop the right creative, set the budgets, allocate budgets, execute, personalize, measure and optimize.

So, we definitely have been working on building kind of the next-generation platform to enable us to automate that entire marketing workflow, as well as to still allow for the right level of creativity within the marketing workflow.

And the work we have done is the amazing work a Stagwell team has done on the Machine, which is our overall marketing orchestration system, our agentic targeting system to work with Palantir and then the latest module, the Media Machine, which really brings the media workflow connected to everything else.

And obviously working with TransUnion on identity and data, that has been a critical component of it.

Matt Spiegel:
Yeah, listen, obviously in the world I live, we focus on that kind of that data layer.

And that's, you know, been new over the last couple of years. It's not brand new; you have built this kind of capability, you are building it again, but it does feel like a different opportunity to do it differently this time around.

But the thing that I think we often do get lost in is, listen, what we want to do, which from a TransUnion perspective is, how do we enable great people based marketing at scale, right? And we've seen a world where walled gardens have been able to stitch that together.

But I think most marketers want to be able to do that across platforms. And that's, I think a lot of what you guys are doing.

We see it as really three core pieces, which are how do you know who your customers are, right? And that's an identity resolution problem. Then there's who do I want to reach? And that's really about discovering different attributes and audiences and building different segments. And then connected, of course, to measurement.

But as you think about that journey, I guess I'm interested in your perspective… like you talk to marketers way more often than I get to. Are they seeing the ability to drive precision and scale, right? To use this underpinning in a way that actually changes the game and actually, you know, finds the way to create truly differentiated growth in a way that maybe is different than they were doing a couple years ago.

Slavi Samardzija:
Yeah, I think what you outlined is beyond important.

The question is historically we had marketers that sat on the two sides of the spectrum: those that truly focused on creating cultural moments and building brand and delivering beautiful creative experiences to establish emotional connection.

And then you had marketers who were so brilliant in personalization, optimization and knobs and dials. And on this side, you could optimize yourself out of the business, and on this side you can establish an amazing brand, but you can miss some of the opportunity as the consumers move along the consumer journey. So, what we have to do together as an industry is enable and establish the connectivity between the big cultural moments and the big brand platforms with personalization and optimization.

And I think that's where our joint work comes into play to be that connective tissue to facilitate that. And we obviously we, with deep roots and creativity, deep connection to data and technology and an ability to optimize and executing media, are really trying to deliver that continuum fully for our clients.

Matt Spiegel:
I love it, which to me speaks to, I'm a big believer in if you can't measure it, you can't do it. And we've been investing a bunch in the future of measurement. We're known for our marketing mix modeling and our multi-touch attribution solutions. And we've prided ourselves on being able to figure out how to get exposures from the walled gardens as part of the mix. And we think there's a really sophisticated thing there.

But what's interesting is we've seen marketers are telling us that only about 60% of them are actually confident in their metrics. And I think it speaks to the fact that part of what's happened over these years is with all of the new signal, with all the new ways to do it, we've somewhat lost the ability to really focus on how do I prove outcomes? And of course, the CMO is spending as much time as ever with the CFO and the CEO to go, hey, listen, am I actually pushing actual product out the door, not just, you know, marketing metrics?

And that to me feels like the Holy Grail, which is if we can really do a good job of saying, hey, there is a way to wire this up in a way that creates great personalization and you can marry it with great measurement.

That to me feels like a huge opportunity that the market’s only beginning to unlock.

Slavi Samardzija:
Yeah, I couldn't agree more.

And I think what we have seen a little bit with the agents and kind of the push of in-platform optimization. As much as there is so much brilliance and so much excitement, what was happening, they were optimizing against the low-hanging fruit for the customers that would have already converted through channels that were already working and delivering.

So, going back to your point, it is about incrementality and ROI and the holistic measurement that you talked about, versus just allowing one platform to optimize and deliver what appears to be good performance, but it's actually not delivering incrementality.

So, we couldn't agree more with you and I’m really, really happy to have a partner like yourself that is able to provide the macro marketing mix modeling, as well as the multi-touch attribution, both focused on incrementality and outcomes.

Matt Spiegel:
Absolutely. That's the name of the game.

Slavi Samardzija:
That is the name of the game.

That is all from us. Couldn't be more excited to join you and really, it's been a pleasure working with you for many, many years now.

Matt Spiegel:
Appreciate that, sir.

Slavi Samardzija:
Thank you.

Matt Spiegel:
Thank you.