- You are marketing to human
beings who have reactions.
So if you try to put a wall up
against those reactions as you work,
Make it part of the process.
Make it part of your insights.
- Hey, I'm Sarah Franklin
and welcome to Connections.
I'm here in New York City
to meet with Jill Kramer,
the chief marketing and
communications officer of Accenture.
At this global organization
with over 750,000 employees,
Jill uses a mix of data and creativity
to help them and their clients
become customer companies.
Thank you so much for being
here today in Connection.
- I'm thrilled to be here.
It's so good to see you again.
- First, let's talk about data.
Tell me about your data-driven approach.
- I think for Accenture right now,
we're looking at data in a couple of ways.
the way we run marketing
and communications,
like what can we know
about our work volume,
So really using data to
make sure that the people
at Accenture in marketing
and communications
their talents are being applied.
And then there's of course how we use data
when we're trying to get topics
and have conversations in
the world with our clients,
especially in a B2B space,
not being afraid of the volume of data.
Because if you really
wanna understand people,
you have a lot of sources
available to you right now.
And the good news is with AI
and all of the different ways
you can automate and analyze
it's okay to take on a
large volume of data.
- How do you use that
data to break through?
- I think you have to ask yourself,
is any of this interesting?
Like, if it's not interesting,
"All right, I kinda knew that."
I think you get into trouble
when you force yourself
to make it interesting.
Give yourself permission
to say, "I looked,
and there's nothing really
that new or exciting here
so I'm gonna stay on the path I'm on."
There's a difference between
data for the sake of saying,
"Look, I have data in my presentation,"
to "The data gave me an
insight I didn't have before."
- We as marketers are focused
on how AI can help us
connect with audiences.
How is AI helping you connect
with your own organization?
- Well, I think the first one
is to understand the data,
you can mine it, you could group it,
you could figure out what
the story it's telling you.
Then I think it's around,
you know, what tasks you can automate.
One of the things that I learned
when I came into this role
was just talking to people
how much of their day
was taken up by tasks they didn't love
and it did not require
their particular talent
And then there's of course, now,
the more fun stuff that
we're talking about
or how can it broaden your perspective
and broaden your horizons
and how can it help you
find do an image search
that you would've been way more restricted
in your ability to search that broadly.
And I think that diversity is key.
And I think the more we can bring in
and stimulate our creative brains with,
the better off we're gonna be.
- You've got a saying I love,
"Share your work ugly and often."
and how does that help
create great marketing?
- We work in an odd space
marketing and communications
because everybody kind
of gets it and knows it
and thinks their--
- Nobody has opinions.
- Yeah, never.
- Nobody has opinions.
- Why would they share an opinion?
And I think that because of that,
there's such a possessiveness of the craft
and people wanna make sure it's perfect
before they unveil their baby.
The only way that works
is if you create the place
where you can show your ideas early.
That doesn't mean we're
gonna stop them too early
and it doesn't mean we're
gonna discount them too early.
And the conversation
that I find that happens
and the ownership that
happens along the way
of everybody who now feels involved
instead of sitting on the sidelines
waiting for someone
else to unveil something
to them is really healthy.
And it's a good thing for our craft,
but it's also a good thing
for the people we work
with across the enterprise.
- How do you earn that trust
as a CMO in the organization?
- I think inclusion is really, really key.
If you do your work behind a closed door,
and as you said earlier
and it's very true,
You're marketing to human
beings who have reactions.
So it's very natural for them
to bring the reactions to the process.
So if you try to put a wall up
against those reactions as you work,
So make it part of the process.
Make it part of your insights.
- We've talked about
marketers as change agents.
- Yep.
- What does that mean
and how do you teach that or
how do you cultivate that?
- No marketer walks
down the hall and says,
"Oh, I wanna do the exact
same thing I did yesterday."
by ideation and by innovation.
That's our value to the company.
And I think that bringing
that concept of what's next,
what if we did this, this could work,
is something that's just good
for every function in the enterprise.
And I think when you find,
when you have that conversation,
there's more of that type of creativity
in other parts of the enterprise
than you ever realize before.
When you unleash it and then you do that
in concert with the other
parts of the business,
something really nice happen,
something pretty magical.
- So you just said the question,
- Yes, the only way you
can say, "What if we did?"
is saying, "Okay and therefore we won't."
And I really think a lot of companies
have a harder time stopping than starting.
It's something that we
do and we really focus on
is what are we not gonna do
and give your self time
and space to innovate
the next great, great thing.
So I think it creates a really good habit
of everybody asking themselves.
It's also a hazard, frankly,
of our jobs and our function
to keep taking on the weight, right?
- I never feel permission to say no.
- Exactly, so that's going back to data,
data's our best friend in that situation.
When you use data to
say, "We did A, B, and C,
and look what we got for each one,"
everybody goes, "Okay, I see you.
Let's keep doing A and C,
and we could push B aside."
- You have, at Accenture,
access to more technology
and thought leadership
than probably anyone in the world.
What advice do you have
for people right now
as they're looking to
future-proof their business?
- I think that we should all
be a little more fearless
in what options we let be on the table.
When you give yourself the gift
to look at every potential opportunity
and then decide yes or no,
And you never wanna be the person
who gets asked the question,
why didn't you fill in the blank?
And you say, "I never even looked at it."
You wanna be able to
say, "We considered that.
Here were the pros, here were the cons,
and here was the decision we
made at this point in time."
So the first thing I think
is make the time in the space,
as you lead teams and groups and functions
to look at all the options.
Don't, you know, turn away from them.
Then the second thing is
remember to re-look at them.
What wasn't right for you six months ago
might be exactly right right now.
And then the third part
is own the decisions.
Like, if you do know why you
did or did not do something,
then know that because
when the conditions change,
you wanna be able to know
why you were where you were.
It's just a smart way to approach it.
- Thanks for tuning in on Salesforce Plus.
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