Paula: Welcome to Let’s Talk Loyalty, an industry podcast for Loyalty Marketing Professionals.
Paula: I’m your host, Paula Thomas, and if you work in Loyalty Marketing, join me every week to learn the latest ideas from Loyalty Specialists around the world.
Paula: This episode is brought to you by Epsilon and their award-winning People Cloud Loyalty Solution.
Paula: Epsilon is now offering my listeners access to the Forrester Majority Assessment, a 10-minute quiz that will help you assess your loyalty program across six key areas and receive recommendations on how to improve your approach.
Paula: For more information and to take the quiz, visit emeo.epsilon.com forward slash letstalkloyalty.
Paula: So just before today’s interview, today is also a very special day for one lucky listener.
Paula: As many of you will know, one month ago here on the show, we announced a special competition for listeners in partnership with our friends in the Loyalty Academy.
Paula: I am delighted today to announce that lucky winner.
Paula: She is based in Australia and her name is Pippa Coyle, and her role is CRM and Loyalty Manager for a retail fashion brand called Taking Shape.
Paula: Pippa told us she’s absolutely thrilled to win and she’s been wanting to study with the Loyalty Academy for some time.
Paula: So from all of us at Let’s Talk Loyalty and the Loyalty Academy, thanks to everyone for taking part and congratulations again to Pippa Coyle.
Paula: So welcome to episode 54 of Let’s Talk Loyalty.
Paula: And today I am delighted to be interviewing an Irish businesswoman who is based in New York City and who I first met about two years ago when she was speaking on a panel for the Marketing Society in Dubai in her role as Global Chief Marketing Officer for a top global branding firm called Siegel and Gale.
Paula: Now, before I got to know Margaret, I was also incredibly impressed with her biography.
Paula: She’s done some incredibly exciting work over the years.
Paula: And I was also really impressed that she had been awarded the title of B2B Marketeer of the Year.
Paula: Now, alongside that, I was even more impressed when she was described by the Irish Times as an unofficial ambassador of Ireland.
Paula: So there’s going to be lots to talk about today.
Paula: But before we get into all of that, let me first of all welcome Margaret Molloy to Let’s Talk Loyalty.
Margaret: Hello, Paula.
Margaret: Lovely to hear your voice.
Margaret: And thank you so much for having me.
Margaret: And congrats on your one year anniversary for the podcast.
Margaret: What a marvellous milestone.
Paula: Thanks, Margaret.
Paula: Yes.
Paula: It’s an exciting journey, as you know.
Paula: You’ve been doing some amazing work yourself, obviously, in the digital space, creating extraordinary content we’re going to talk about.
Paula: And before we get into all of particularly the recent work you’ve been doing, I suppose I wanted to just talk about the context for our conversation today.
Paula: So as many of my listeners will know, now that I am in the second year of the podcast, what I really wanted to do was explore some of the more general themes that drive customer loyalty.
Paula: And the first one of those I talked with KPMG in fact, a couple of weeks ago with the concept of integrity, which I know has come up in some of your own work.
Paula: And then I also did some work looking at community, which also inspires loyalty with customers.
Paula: But a lot of the work that you’re doing, Margaret, really has resonated with me in terms of my own deeper beliefs in what drives business performance.
Paula: And the particular theme then of today’s show, and in fact, all of the work you’re currently doing, is really the theme of simplicity.
Paula: So really excited to talk to you about that today.
Paula: And I’m going to be super excited to hear about all of the metrics and how simplicity drives business performance.
Paula: But before we get into that overall business approach, first of all, can you just tell me, Margaret, as usual, I always start the show asking about our favorite loyalty statistics.
Paula: So tell me, what is your favorite loyalty statistic?
Margaret: My favorite loyalty statistic comes from our own World’s Simplest Brands study.
Margaret: And it is 64% of customers are more likely to recommend a brand because it provides simpler experiences.
Margaret: And the reason why I’m particularly partial to that metric is essentially twofold.
Margaret: Firstly, the basis in net promoter score.
Margaret: I’m a huge proponent of net promoter score because I believe it is a vital measure of advocacy, which from my vantage point is the ultimate measure of loyalty.
Margaret: The second reason why I appreciate this metric, of course, as you mentioned in your intro, is the emphasis on simplicity.
Margaret: And no doubt we’ll get into that momentarily.
Paula: Absolutely.
Paula: Well, I think why it really resonated with me, Margaret, as I said, I’ve heard the term cognitive overload, which definitely sounds like marketing jargon.
Paula: But once I understood it, I really knew I am suffering from it.
Paula: You know, I’m totally overwhelmed with so many choices and life is so busy these days.
Paula: So this whole concept around simplicity, actually, you know, I just have a sense of relief even talking about it.
Paula: So incredible to hear the 64% of people would recommend a brand based on its simplicity.
Paula: And I know you’ll talk us through some examples of that.
Paula: And just to give listeners, I suppose, some insight, brands like Google, brands like Netflix, for example, come across in that particular methodology and report and research that you publish.
Paula: So lots to talk about.
Paula: But before we get into that, tell us first of all about your own loyalty background, Margaret.
Margaret: Well, it’s interesting that you pose that question, because I believe you you mentioned in kindly in your intro that we have that shared heritage of being from Ireland.
Margaret: And I believe integral to our psyche is the importance of reputation and indeed loyalty.
Margaret: Those are implicit facets of our upbringing, certainly mine.
Margaret: And I think that notion of the importance of reputation and it’s surrogate, if you will, loyalty has always been part of my DNA.
Margaret: I believe it’s been really an important implicit driver of a lot of what I do personally and professionally.
Margaret: From a career standpoint, indirectly, I’ve been involved in the loyalty world for quite some time.
Margaret: Early in my career, I worked for Telecom Ireland, for the Irish government, effectively, promoting Ireland as a location for pan-European or international call centres.
Margaret: And of course, a lot of the work in the call centre centres around loyalty, albeit indirectly, whether it’s customer acquisition, customer service, etc.
Margaret: Then after business school, I went to work for Siebel Systems, and Siebel Systems’ core technology is around CRM or customer relationship management.
Margaret: And of course, the holy grail for customer relationship management was that single view of the customer, from the call centre to the sales, to the marketing, to the website.
Margaret: And of course, at its most meta, the goal is to drive loyalty and lifetime value.
Margaret: So, when I look at things, as I often do, Paula, very strategically to isolate the meta team, for me, the meta is loyalty on a lot of this.
Margaret: When I was at Aircom, it was around enabling people to have experiences in a call centre.
Margaret: When I was with Siebel, it was the underlying technology, but it was all with an eye to driving superior customer experience.
Margaret: Now, today, I find myself in a different facet, which is around truly the strategic aspect of brand and designing customer experiences for our clients around the world.
Paula: And it’s an area that I’ve never worked in, Margaret, so I’m truly fascinated.
Paula: And I have to admit that, again, because I haven’t worked in branding before we met, I hadn’t come across Siegel and Gale, but I know it is a top global branding firm.
Paula: So just for listeners, I suppose, again, we’re all very much, as you know, on the loyalty side.
Paula: Will you just first of all tell us how do you describe what is brand?
Margaret: For me, I keep it simple, Paula, unsurprisingly.
Margaret: Brand is the promise.
Margaret: It’s that promise that you make to your customers.
Margaret: And of course, if you think about a promise, what underlies a promise, it’s a relationship.
Margaret: It’s an expectation.
Margaret: Often it’s an expectation of the quality of our relationship.
Margaret: Now, for people who do not work in brand, I often relate it back to the work in a different field of Clay Christensen, the wonderful author and thought leader who passed away this year.
Margaret: And when Clay talks about many things, he references what’s the job to be done.
Margaret: So when you ask me about brand, I answer it in terms of the definition, but also let’s think about what’s the job a brand has to do.
Margaret: Well, one of the jobs is to help us navigate.
Margaret: You go into that supermarket and you want to buy that bottle of shampoo.
Margaret: The brand helps you navigate the aisle.
Margaret: So in order to help with the navigation, a brand must be memorable.
Margaret: What’s another job a brand has to do?
Margaret: In many cases, it helps you express yourself by your association with that brand.
Margaret: So for a brand to exhibit that behavior or to help you do that job, it has to be something that’s very memorable and also to some degree customizable to you.
Margaret: So thinking about what the brand has to do.
Margaret: And finally, your listeners may find it helpful to think about the role of the brand along the customer journey.
Margaret: So if you think in the beginning of that journey, the brand has to grab attention, be attractive, job number one.
Margaret: As your customer goes along the journey, it has to help them make a decision, maybe even be a tiebreaker across different possibilities.
Margaret: So it helps in decisioning.
Margaret: And then finally, as the customer traverses to the end of the journey, the brand’s job is to help support loyalty.
Margaret: So for me, it’s about what’s the job it has to do at the different stages of the journey.
Paula: That’s a lovely definition actually, Margaret, and true to your brand, you kept it lovely and simple.
Paula: So thank you for that.
Paula: As I said, it’s always been the one I was like, oh, that branding work is, you know, it can seem very complex, but actually when you bring it back to what does the customer need?
Paula: And I’ve often talked about the importance of memorability as you’ve already referenced as the first job of the brand because at the end of the day, how can a customer buy your product if they can’t first of all remember it?
Paula: So super important, but also to look at it through the journey of the customer as they deal with your category.
Margaret: Absolutely, Paul.
Margaret: And I think it’s important to take an expansive view of brand.
Margaret: Back in the day, people thought of brand as words and pictures, the visual and the verbal identity.
Margaret: I would offer today that the brand is the sum of all the interactions customers, users, employees, the community has with your organization.
Margaret: Implicit in that is a really important notion.
Margaret: And that is the brand is not the preview of the marketing department.
Margaret: Everyone owns brand, including your listeners and your colleagues who work in loyalty.
Margaret: So that responsibility around creating brand experience is a shared responsibility.
Margaret: And that creates complexity.
Margaret: It also creates opportunity, but it creates the opportunity for dissonance in the customer as well.
Margaret: If the message they’re receiving, if you will, the words and the pictures is not aligned with the experience, then you have that dissonance that can be quite problematic.
Paula: Yeah.
Paula: And I love the point about the promise actually, Margaret, because one of the things I’ve talked on this show about with lots of people in our industry is actually a lot of people consider loyalty programs as a way to earn loyalty from their customers.
Paula: But in fact, what you’re saying and what I’m hearing is that increasingly it is the job of the brand and the company to first of all demonstrate loyalty to those customers before they can expect it in return.
Paula: So I actually think brand is a lovely starting point for loyalty professionals to connect with their own work if I’m right in saying it that way.
Margaret: That’s a very interesting way to frame it, Paula.
Margaret: I haven’t thought about that before, but it makes tremendous sense.
Margaret: When I think of loyalty as someone who’s tangential to the field, I see the three layers of it.
Margaret: I see, if you will, the habitual or routine loyalty.
Margaret: I go to the supermarket because it’s on my way home.
Margaret: Then I see transactional loyalty, much of which is driven by the work you or industry does around loyalty programs.
Margaret: I’m loyal because I get the points, as it were.
Margaret: Then the hierarchy, for me, culminates with emotional loyalty.
Margaret: That’s where brand and loyalty really intersect at its best.
Margaret: How can I have an emotional connection with something that will drive different behaviors?
Margaret: If you have an emotional loyalty, you’re more likely to advocate.
Margaret: Think about sports teams.
Margaret: Loyalty to sports or religion or, to some degree, politics.
Margaret: Those sort of intense loyalties are very, very powerful.
Margaret: That’s what some brands achieve.
Margaret: That’s, to a large degree, the pinnacle of loyalty, but very practically, it’s the intersection of loyalty and brand.
Paula: Love it.
Paula: Love it.
Paula: That’s fabulous, Margaret.
Paula: And I suppose what I’d love to ask you about next is really what’s central to your agency, I suppose, and that is, where does simplicity now come into this picture?
Paula: So we’ve talked about brand and its role, and the whole idea of simplicity, as I said, it really just struck me as something that is perhaps underappreciated by marketeers around the world.
Paula: So will you tell us about simplicity and the World’s Simplest Brands study that you do?
Margaret: Thank you for the question, Paula.
Margaret: And I support your premise that sometimes simplicity is misunderstood.
Margaret: I take, like brand, a very expansive view of simplicity.
Margaret: So some of the dimensions that your listeners might appreciate.
Margaret: The first dimension is clarity.
Margaret: To be simple, you must be clear.
Margaret: Second is relevance.
Margaret: To be simple, you have to be something that matters.
Margaret: Transparency, honesty, vitally important tenets of simplicity.
Margaret: Existency, of course, the ability to have that expectation met throughout.
Margaret: And finally, this one may surprise you, Paula, but utility, the ability to be useful.
Margaret: So those are the dimensions of simplicity.
Margaret: Now, you said something really interesting at the onset.
Margaret: You referenced our cognitive overload.
Margaret: I think your point is so relevant today, particularly in this COVID era.
Margaret: We are all so harried.
Margaret: We are all cognitively challenged in terms of the decisions we’re making with perhaps imperfect information, the burdens we’re on, the tensions we’re trying to navigate.
Margaret: So simplicity, from our vantage point, has always been important.
Margaret: But now in the context of COVID, is even more important than ever before.
Margaret: I think of it as the pandemic has lifted the veil on the importance of simplicity.
Margaret: Because COVID-19, to use your vernacular, it’s a cognitive tax that’s been placed on all of us.
Margaret: And when brands try to reduce that tax by giving simpler experiences, and they can manifest in their communications, but also back to our earlier definition, every touch point where a user, consumer, the community interacts with your product or services.
Margaret: And I think the heart of your thesis that people may not appreciate simplicity is because in many senses people interpret it in a very reductive fashion.
Margaret: It’s about removing things.
Margaret: It’s about dumbing things down.
Margaret: I would say to you on the contrary, great simplifiers, their genius is they know what to strip away and what to leave behind.
Paula: And it clearly does an art form alone in understanding that, Margaret.
Paula: And I suppose what really fascinates me as well about that entire study is the fact that you have really been able to measure that simplicity really drives the performance of the business.
Paula: So I’d love you just to talk about what kind of conclusions are you finding just from looking at simpler brands.
Margaret: Well, it’s a very interesting one.
Margaret: For almost a decade now, we have surveyed 15,000 people across nine countries and asked them to rank 800 brands based on how they evaluate them on their simplicity versus their complexity in terms of the survey respondents’ interactions with the brands.
Margaret: That’s extraordinary in and of itself.
Margaret: We have a ranking across nine different countries, and your listeners can visit it on our siegelandgale.com website.
Margaret: If you step away from the ranking and to look at the broader findings, there’s some very interesting insights.
Margaret: We touched earlier on the metric that 64% of people are more likely to recommend a brand that provides simpler experiences.
Margaret: So that’s the loyalty metric, if you will.
Margaret: The second metric that’s really interesting is around premium.
Margaret: 55% of people are willing to pay more for simpler experiences.
Margaret: That’s really interesting because we talked about the job of brand to be done earlier.
Margaret: One of the great benefits of a brand is sometimes people will pay more for a branded product.
Margaret: But if you get a simpler experience, that’s exciting to the business community.
Margaret: That simplification isn’t merely for the sake of it, but there can be a meaningful ROI from simplifying the customer experience.
Margaret: And then the final metric I’d highlight that’s sort of fun.
Margaret: Over the decade, we look at the stock market performance of the top 10 brands in terms of their ranking in the index.
Margaret: And we compare it to their performance across the various stock indices.
Margaret: And what’s really interesting here is that if you look at that basket of 10 and look at its relative performance and chart it compared to the indices, significantly outweighs.
Margaret: Which is to say, brands that perform well in the simplicity study, meaning brands that consumers deem to be simple, Wall Street or the financial markets, the capital markets, also reward simplicity.
Margaret: So lots of reasons at the executive suite to consider simplifying your customer experience.
Paula: Wonderful.
Paula: Yes, and it’s a great message, Margaret, for many listeners.
Paula: I’ve talked a lot about the opportunity, I suppose, for loyalty professionals really to be in those C-suite conversations and to have that kind of measurable performance to say, actually, here’s an insight that we can drive.
Paula: You know, people willing to pay more, people, you know, recommending more.
Paula: They are incredibly exciting for the C-suite.
Paula: So I will definitely make sure that we link in the show notes to the Siegel and Gale website.
Paula: And anybody who wants to look at the World’s Simplest Brands study can actually go in and just see all of those results that you published.
Paula: And I didn’t realize it was actually a decade, Margaret, you’re already performing that study.
Paula: That’s amazing.
Margaret: Yes, and it is interesting to see patterns over time.
Margaret: Certainly, what we like to say is simplicity pays.
Margaret: So that trend of continuity on those metrics we’ve observed.
Margaret: The other thing that’s interesting, if you dig into the rankings, you may find this one particularly fun.
Margaret: Sometimes people will say, look, ours is a complicated category.
Margaret: Let’s take an example, airlines.
Margaret: Very important, I know, to the loyalty community.
Margaret: You look at, obviously, service delivery and communications in airlines is inherently a complex activity.
Margaret: So some categories do better than others.
Margaret: But let’s pause on airlines for a moment, because I know it’s one that your listeners care about.
Margaret: What I find extraordinarily fascinating is comparing different brands within a category.
Margaret: In airlines, for example, Southwest, popular carrier here in the United States, typically performs very well in the index, in the top tier.
Margaret: Ryanair, the Irish carrier, typically performs very, very poorly.
Margaret: Now, that’s interesting to me because they have very similar business models.
Margaret: They are low cost carriers.
Margaret: Why the disparity?
Margaret: Well, in the case of Ryanair, when you look into the open comments we get from the respondents, comments like hidden fees or unclear what you’re paying for or surprising charges.
Margaret: Now, that’s not customer saying we don’t want to pay the fees.
Margaret: It’s saying there’s a lack of transparency.
Margaret: And it’s complicated.
Margaret: Contrast that with Southwest that gets all kinds of positive comments.
Margaret: And the reason why I bring this up, obviously because airlines is an important loyalty sector for your listeners, but also because sometimes people can be deflated because they think our category is tricky.
Margaret: Well, I would say there’s an example where performance isn’t relegated to category.
Margaret: You can break out of your category and use simplicity as a way to transcend your predestined state, if you will.
Margaret: So that’s inspiring.
Margaret: The other area that’s inspiring to me is brands that continue to perform well.
Margaret: So brands like Google, many of the fast food dining chains perform very well, even though a lot of their service delivery is quite complex too.
Margaret: And we see nice optics when they do things like simplifying menus.
Paula: Yes.
Margaret: Customers really appreciate that.
Margaret: So lots to learn in terms of how to simplify.
Paula: And I love that one, Margaret, because again, I think I’ve noticed it almost subconsciously, I would say, as a consumer.
Paula: So when you think about maybe 10 years ago, you walk into a quick service restaurant and it’s almost overwhelming.
Paula: I think there was a perception at that time that the more you offer the customers, the more you could sell.
Paula: But actually, again, it’s that sense of going in and it’s really clear and it’s really simple and perhaps it’s packaged as a meal.
Paula: And that menu approach really means, yeah, I can pick one, two or three and off I go.
Paula: So I think that’s a really, really good example.
Paula: So I suppose we’ve talked a lot about big public companies, Margaret.
Paula: And I know, again, that’s a really good benchmark that you’ve quoted, particularly in the airline business.
Paula: But I think there’s a lot of people listening as well who may work in private companies or smaller companies.
Paula: So if a company really wants to simplify their own business, what would you suggest are the steps that they would think about in terms of taking this mindset?
Margaret: Certainly.
Margaret: The first step I’d say is senior leadership must be involved.
Margaret: Simplicity is a commitment.
Margaret: And your commitment has to match your words and often that requires senior leadership.
Margaret: So that’s step one.
Margaret: Step two is really clarify your brand purpose.
Margaret: What are you in the business of doing?
Margaret: What is your larger societal goal?
Margaret: Because that can serve as a useful filter to inform all behaviors.
Margaret: Third step is audit your messaging to see to the extent to which your marketing messages matches or is disconnected from the experience.
Margaret: And make sure they are not out of sync.
Margaret: Often marketing messages can be very aspirational and customer experience cannot often live up to that.
Margaret: And that’s that honesty, that transparency, that’s important.
Margaret: It also speaks to our earlier discussion that brand and brand experience transcends the marketing team.
Margaret: So making sure that the messages, the promises, that marketing communications and advertising maps to the reality of the customer experience.
Margaret: The fourth step I would reference is really understand your customer experience journey.
Margaret: That’s real work, but it’s work that pays dividends.
Margaret: Understand every stage of that journey.
Margaret: If you look at an airline, we’ll get back to that for an example.
Margaret: And you have a finite set of dollars.
Margaret: No one has infinite budget, particularly these days.
Margaret: So try understanding your journey helps you identify where along that journey to spend your marketing, cutting your experience, your resources to maximize for simplicity.
Margaret: And finally, a step I would offer has everything to do with mindset.
Margaret: And that is shifting your view of your customers from thinking of them as buyers of your product and services to users.
Margaret: That shift fundamentally changes everything.
Margaret: So for example, a company that has a buyer-oriented mindset spends a lot of time and emphasis on promotion.
Margaret: Everything is about the marketing promotion.
Margaret: Contrast that with someone who cares about users.
Margaret: They don’t care about the award the ad got in an ad show.
Margaret: They care about their rating on Yelp.
Margaret: They emphasize content that will help the users use the product better versus spending all the marketing content on promotional activities.
Margaret: So that shift from buyer-to-user mindset is really important because if you look across the funnel of where you spend marketing dollars, if your focus is on buyer, the job is done when you’re focused on customer acquisition cost and someone made that purchase.
Margaret: But if you’re thinking of your buyer as one dimension, but really you’re shifting to your community of users, then all of your activity will actually enter more into your realm of loyalty.
Margaret: How do you prepare content that lets customers, buyers, users, or as I prefer to say, people, know how to use your product?
Paula: Oh, that’s brilliant, Margaret.
Paula: Absolutely.
Paula: Yes.
Paula: Why don’t we just use the word people?
Paula: My goodness.
Paula: It totally is.
Margaret: So much of marketing and indeed budgeting in general focuses on acquiring the customer.
Margaret: So implicit in that is that you’re thinking about a buyer.
Margaret: You’re trying to convert people to buyers.
Margaret: Well, actually, that’s not the job done.
Margaret: You want them to actually use the product or service.
Margaret: And if that’s your goal, you will spread out your behaviors, your budget, your metrics, everything accordingly.
Margaret: And simplicity will then be a very important driver of all of it because you’re extending the scope of where you’re simplifying.
Paula: And I do think people, to use your lovely simple word, Margaret, I do think people feel that very quickly.
Paula: You know, I think in our experiences with brands, we often underestimate actually how intelligent our customers are, in fact, and how quickly they realize whether you’re just looking to close the next sale or whether you are there to genuinely provide a useful service.
Paula: So I think that’s a very important distinction.
Paula: And probably does come back to, I think I mentioned we talked about integrity, so that mindset of integrity to look after your users as people, I think is a really, really nice way to think about them.
Margaret: I believe you’re right.
Margaret: And we see that across B2B and B2C.
Margaret: So in B2B, for example, is not spending all of your marketing efforts merely on sales support and sales enablement, rather making sure the people in the call center and in the customer support area have the information, the scripts, the content they need.
Margaret: And also spending the efforts on customer advocacy programs, loyalty programs as your listeners spend their time, creating community among users.
Margaret: You mentioned community is one of your themes, really important.
Margaret: In other words, if you’re a buyer, when you put across that credit card physically or metaphorically, the conversation or the relationship doesn’t end.
Margaret: If you’re a buyer, it does in your head.
Margaret: But if you see people as users, then that’s only part of the journey.
Paula: Absolutely.
Paula: And what I also loved about the work when I was reading through everything you’re doing, Margaret, is beyond B2B and B2C, you also extend the concept of simplicity into employees and simplicity at work.
Paula: So tell us about the concept of a simple workplace in terms of driving employee loyalty.
Margaret: Yes, it’s so integral because the employees you attract are the brand you will become.
Margaret: So if you believe that, then a lot of emphasis has to be placed on the employee experience as well.
Margaret: And you asked about simplicity at work.
Margaret: We have also studied that area quite deeply.
Margaret: And here’s the shocking insight.
Margaret: 30% of employees find their workplace to be complex.
Margaret: So that’s a very worrying statistic.
Margaret: Only one in five employees believe their workplace is simple.
Margaret: So when I think about a simple workplace, it’s a workplace where communications are clear.
Margaret: People know the organization’s purpose, values, and goals.
Margaret: And most importantly, they know their role in achieving the company’s purpose.
Margaret: It’s an organization where there is psychological safety.
Margaret: People can express how they are feeling.
Margaret: And the benefits of an organization that’s simple include greater advocacy, brand champions.
Margaret: We talked about advocacy in terms of consumers previously.
Margaret: Well, brand champions in simple workplaces are 65% more likely to recommend on behalf of the company.
Margaret: They are more likely to recommend another candidate back to that advocacy, recommend someone to work there.
Margaret: So that’s a really important dimension.
Margaret: And when we look and contrast organizations where employees deem them to be simple versus complex, the findings are really very, very striking.
Margaret: 95% of employees in companies that they consider simple are more likely to trust their company’s leadership.
Margaret: 54% say it finds it easier to innovate.
Margaret: We talked earlier about how 65% are more likely to refer someone to work at the company, and 84% say they plan to stay longer in their jobs.
Margaret: So those are really important business outcomes that every employer is focused on.
Margaret: How do I have more brand champions?
Margaret: How do I engender trust?
Margaret: But vitally important, how do I foster innovation?
Margaret: So the unlock here could be simplicity.
Margaret: How do I create a workplace that is simple?
Margaret: And we touched on that earlier.
Margaret: Clarity of purpose, psychological safety, and the same work around understanding the customer journey, understanding the employee’s journey from the recruitment process right through their careers at the company and how to simplify that.
Margaret: Really important work and pays tremendous dividends also.
Paula: I can imagine.
Paula: And again, having been an employee for many years myself, I really do value when there is an overt and visible sign of leadership to take care of my experience.
Paula: It’s one thing to come in and have an induction and to learn maybe the mission and vision of the company.
Paula: But again, it’s throughout your career and for the company to keep showing up.
Paula: That’s absolutely where I understand where you’re coming from.
Paula: If I feel the simplicity of they want me to stay here, they want to show me a career path, all of those things will definitely drive my intention of staying with that company, which comes back to the business performance piece.
Margaret: Absolutely, Paula.
Margaret: And sometimes it’s the little stuff like benefits, interactions with HR, interactions with IT.
Margaret: The friction, so much of our time is spent on this friction.
Margaret: How do you remove friction so people know their jobs, know their role and also enable them to do it in a better, more seamless way?
Margaret: And even in this conversation, I think it’s pretty clear there are two components.
Margaret: There’s that first component of purpose, that overarching reason to come to work.
Margaret: And my favorite, I’ll tell you my favorite purpose story.
Margaret: Back in 1961, John F.
Margaret: Kennedy, President Kennedy, was visiting at the Space Center.
Margaret: And it was around the time of the launches.
Margaret: And he asked the janitor, as he stopped to talk to him, what is your job?
Margaret: And the janitor said to him, I’m helping put a man on the moon.
Margaret: Now, isn’t that just a gorgeous purpose story?
Margaret: That individual in his role knew the purpose of the organization.
Margaret: So that’s at the purpose level.
Margaret: Then there’s that functional level, how to remove friction, how to simplify processes, how to articulate process in a meaningful way that’s not bureaucracy and the distinction there, and how to free up people’s energy so they can do great work.
Paula: I love that actually.
Paula: Yeah, energy, you know, it’s probably under measured and under reported again in my personal experience as an employee, but it totally takes the experience of working very differently when the energy is positive and as you said, simple.
Paula: So I really like that.
Paula: And I wanted to ask you, Margaret, I suppose with so many people now working from home, how do you think, you know, that the concept of simplicity for employees is changing with this new dynamic?
Margaret: I think simplicity now with working from home is taking on even more importance.
Margaret: When you are remote and you’re not able to experience all of the cues that we experience in person, having greater clarity, having superior transparency, honesty, understanding, being useful, all those dimensions we talked about earlier in the context of the customer, they take on tremendous importance now also with the employees.
Margaret: And something that I’ve been talking to clients about recently in this vein, and I can transcend simplicity, but I think it’s quite relevant, is the notion of rituals.
Margaret: The rituals, our rituals essentially are the behaviors of our company.
Margaret: The day-to-day idiosyncratic practices that make up our company culture, how we set objectives, how we evaluate performance, how we even conduct meetings.
Margaret: Those are the behaviors that reinforce our brand, our purpose and our culture.
Margaret: Well, with COVID-19, that has all shifted and working from home.
Margaret: So that has required companies to take a new look at their rituals.
Margaret: How can they instill community, build culture in a remote setting?
Margaret: And it takes on even more importance because the exercise essentially centers on the following.
Margaret: Ask yourself, what are the behaviors you want to encourage or discourage and buy home?
Margaret: That lends itself to an exercise of what are the rituals that continue to hold meaning in this work from home context?
Margaret: What are the rituals that need to be sunset?
Margaret: And what are the new rituals that we need to create to make sure our organization is inspiring, inclusive, and drives growth?
Margaret: So exploring that, examining rituals could present a really interesting unlock in this time of COVID.
Paula: Yeah, I think that’s genius actually, Margaret.
Paula: I haven’t heard of anybody yet looking at the new rituals that are required, particularly for working from home.
Paula: So definitely something I’ll be paying attention to because, yes, the world is not going back.
Paula: I think we’ve all used the term the new normal.
Paula: So exactly what are the rituals?
Paula: I think that’s a very useful framework to look at in terms of driving the business performance.
Paula: So I’ll be certainly watching to see the kind of work and conclusions you come to in that space.
Paula: And I know actually what you did yourself, Margaret, from a Siegel and Gale perspective was you started to, I suppose, talk to CMOs and do some work to study exactly what they’re doing during COVID.
Paula: Is there anything that you can share with us that you’ve learned from from talking to this incredible network you have of CMOs?
Margaret: Yes, we surveyed early in the era of the pandemic during the lockdown over 20 CMOs across the world and we continue to survey this population.
Margaret: The study is called In Their Words.
Margaret: And I felt that was an appropriate label because to a large degree, it’s an oral history, Paula, of how CMOs are living and working in the pandemic era.
Margaret: I’ll highlight an important point, which is I have tremendous respect for how these CMOs are conducting their jobs.
Margaret: They are navigating a world with tremendous tension, protecting employees, safety and long-term revenue of the company, supporting the community and enterprise health.
Margaret: And the tension between trying to be distinct and differentiated and yet aligning with customer sentiment.
Margaret: So that’s the tension they’re navigating.
Margaret: You can send the study to your listeners, but I would say the top findings were empathy, number one, understanding, focusing on where their customers and employees’ needs are.
Margaret: That was a top theme in terms of focus.
Margaret: Another one was purpose.
Margaret: We touched on that earlier.
Margaret: They have found that the purpose was central as a glue to enabling companies to know where to focus their energies and galvanize people during COVID.
Margaret: Communications, big theme.
Margaret: CMOs had to up the frequency of their communication and the content of their communications.
Margaret: Everything from auditing ad campaigns that would be deemed tone deaf to putting out useful information.
Margaret: And indeed, so that speaks to the content.
Margaret: And then the channels, the efforts to emphasize digital channels and improve the customer experience on digital.
Margaret: So those were among the high notes of the emphasis.
Margaret: But really worth a read because it gives exposure to that mindset.
Margaret: And I find it, as I see it, as an oral history rather interesting.
Paula: Absolutely.
Paula: And I know what you’ve also been demonstrating yourself, Margaret, is alongside digital channels, as you mentioned, there’s also increasing use of audio, which I know we’re both fans of.
Paula: And I’ve certainly heard CMOs talking increasingly about using, you know, podcasting, for example, to really communicate and connect with customers, but also with employees.
Paula: So I definitely think there’s a more open-minded approach to saying, actually, yes, there’s other ways that people will connect.
Paula: And perhaps that’s a new trend as well that will come through, I suppose, in all of the work with COVID.
Paula: So did it come up at all actually in your own research or were you talking more generally about digital?
Margaret: What did come up was an enhanced emphasis on teamwork and communications in general.
Margaret: One of the silver linings of this period is that CMOs reported that greater engagement across their teams, across the organization, and a greater role for marketing to essentially galvanize company-wide around support.
Margaret: So audio being one vehicle for that, I believe the savvy CMOs are using every vehicle at their disposal.
Margaret: I think your point about audio is very much relevant because many of us are experiencing screen fatigue right now.
Margaret: And the ability to provide optionality for our colleagues in terms of how to stay abreast with the latest developments is certainly a wise move.
Margaret: And many CMOs are exploring these options with a view to making sure that marketing plays a pivotal role in this recovery or this reset.
Margaret: And to the silver linings point, marketers have now got a tremendous role.
Margaret: There was a time when the conversation was around marketing at seat at the table.
Margaret: Well, the organizations are leaning very heavily on marketing during the pandemic because of that expertise around gathering customer insight, gathering and the expertise around communications and the need to do that in an expedited fashion.
Margaret: So marketing is having a moment, if you will, in terms of silver lining from COVID.
Paula: I totally agree, actually, Margaret.
Paula: So yeah, I can hear the increasing importance, as you said, coming through the CMO community.
Paula: And what I loved actually was some of your own work as well, moving into new channels and using virtual panels, for example.
Paula: I was listening literally on my way here to my recording studio today with one of your own podcasts with Gen Z Consumers.
Paula: And first of all, I wanted to say what an extraordinary idea, Margaret, because, you know, CMOs clearly are very seasoned, very experienced people that we can learn an amazing amount from.
Paula: But I think that audience and that community of younger consumers is not something that I’ve ever had access to before.
Paula: So a brilliant idea.
Paula: So tell us about the panels that you’ve been running with Gen Z.
Margaret: Certainly.
Margaret: So since COVID began, we have hosted over 60 CMOs for a panel entitled The Future of Branding.
Margaret: So every other week, we invite senior marketers and we discuss many dimensions of marketing and brand.
Margaret: Two special episodes were focused on Gen Z or Gen Z, as I might call them.
Margaret: And for those episodes, the premise was we invite the five CMOs to eat.
Margaret: But in listen mode, they were invited to bring a Gen Z child, one of their children.
Margaret: And I had my son moderate the panel.
Margaret: You can imagine how anxious I was.
Paula: He did a great job, Margaret.
Paula: Honestly, he was amazing that I wanted to say that to you.
Paula: Really, really well done.
Paula: It was brilliant.
Margaret: And we asked.
Margaret: So the premise of that was let the Gen Z talk to each other and then we come back at the end to react to what we learned as CMOs.
Margaret: So a couple of reasons why I thought this was a worthwhile endeavor.
Margaret: The first is we were all looking for opportunity for hope and something uplifting at this time.
Margaret: And we are doing so much of what we do for our children, for the next generation.
Margaret: So it was just the idea of a nice uplift for everyone.
Margaret: Second idea was genuine insight.
Margaret: So this is a really important cohort.
Margaret: So Gen Z is anyone born after 1997.
Margaret: So these are people up to the age of 22 or so right now.
Margaret: And they are incredibly influential.
Margaret: They are influencing over 80% of the purchases in households today.
Margaret: By 2030, they will make 30% of the workforce.
Margaret: And most importantly, they are the first generation that are truly digital natives.
Margaret: So we ask them questions around what brands are doing to inspire them or alienate them.
Margaret: And Paula, from a loyalty perspective, it is so very interesting.
Margaret: This population is going to be a very tricky one for the loyalty professionals.
Margaret: For them, trust is very elusive.
Margaret: They will absolutely do their own research.
Margaret: They will come at research from many different sources.
Margaret: They will not believe what the brand tells you.
Margaret: They will take it as a starting point, but they will look at social media.
Margaret: They will look at your websites.
Margaret: They will ask each other.
Margaret: That’s a really important thing to be aware of from a loyalty standpoint.
Margaret: I’ll calibrate my comments from that lens of loyalty because I think it’s tremendously relevant to your listeners.
Margaret: For this population, I would offer that you have to win them in every purchase.
Margaret: They are not as brand loyal as other generations.
Margaret: They want to be wowed.
Margaret: They want to see freshness.
Margaret: They want to see innovation.
Margaret: They also are very mindful of how a brand is an expression of themselves.
Margaret: And in some cases, that’s a desire to fit in.
Margaret: But in many cases, they want the ability to customize.
Margaret: So they don’t want the same sneaker as their friend.
Margaret: They want to customize it.
Margaret: So that’s really important.
Margaret: It’s also their idea of where they see value.
Margaret: They have a much more multi-dimensional calculus that they are doing.
Margaret: It’s not just price and quality.
Margaret: Price, it’s quality, it’s status, it’s peer, it’s image, and it’s also societal impact.
Margaret: Fascinating.
Margaret: Listening to how much they care about the planet, how much they care about body image, wellness.
Margaret: So they’re a very complicated generation and a generation that’s very hard to lure in, and a very, as we touched on, interesting generation from a loyalty standpoint.
Margaret: One exciting aspect for some of your listeners, perhaps, of this generation is they are easier to break into if you have a niche brand or smaller brands.
Margaret: Harder to continue to win their hearts and minds and their dollars if you are an established brand, particularly if your messaging is not aligned with their values.
Margaret: So fascinating population, invite your listeners to listen to both of the panels, but most importantly, keep an eye on them because they are obviously influencing their own purchases, but also highly influential on their parents, Gen X and other customers as well.
Paula: We’ll definitely make sure that we have direct links, Margaret, to those two shows.
Paula: And certainly from a personal perspective, I really do hope you continue that concept because I learned so much and still I’ve only listened to one of the shows, but for example, just for listeners, I was first of all impressed that several of the speakers mentioned that they love to read, which I had actually thought might be something that mightn’t be so popular with, as you said, digital natives.
Paula: And then there was another comment which I loved from one of the speakers, a lady in LA, who mentioned that she not only uses Netflix for entertainment, but also for education about those societal issues that you mentioned.
Paula: And that was another lightbulb moment for me, Margaret, to kind of go, my goodness, I never thought of Netflix, you know, from a loyalty perspective, for example, you know, is that an opportunity?
Paula: So certainly some really great ideas from those audiences.
Paula: So do you think you’ll continue with those shows?
Margaret: We absolutely will.
Margaret: And another insight that struck me that your listeners may provide, may find interesting is retail is not dead.
Margaret: Wasn’t that interesting?
Margaret: How they’re very omni-channel.
Margaret: So they may research on Instagram.
Margaret: They may come home from school and look at the website.
Margaret: They may go into the store.
Margaret: So retail and retail experience is not dead.
Margaret: But yes, absolutely.
Margaret: And I let your listeners in on a secret.
Margaret: So you have to give value for money, Laura.
Margaret: Paula, right?
Margaret: So my secret is in November, we are replicating this model, but we’re doing it for the silver economy.
Paula: Oh, wonderful.
Paula: Yes.
Margaret: Or seniors.
Margaret: Same idea.
Margaret: Let’s see if our marketing and our brand activity to that demographic is useful.
Margaret: Let’s find out what’s alienating that population because a lot of what we’re doing in our behaviors, in our programs is we’re acting on our assumptions.
Margaret: And sometimes it’s just important to step back and challenge your assumptions.
Margaret: So we had some assumptions about Gen Z and these panels are challenging as you’ve identified our assumptions.
Margaret: So my goal is to continue that very popular panel and augment it with different populations.
Margaret: So watch out on social media to find the November date for our Silver Economy panel.
Paula: Wonderful.
Paula: And if I’ve learned anything about the Silver Economy, Margaret, I am absolutely certain that simplicity will come through loud and clear as very much something that’s of value.
Paula: So yeah, I’ll definitely be waiting with bated breath.
Paula: So listen, my final question then, Margaret, was really just around the resources, I suppose, that you enjoy.
Paula: So as I mentioned at the outset, you’ve won B2B Marketeer of the Year.
Paula: So clearly I’m going to make sure everybody can follow your own work, certainly on LinkedIn and with Siegel and Gale.
Paula: But what also do you recommend in terms of staying up to date on marketing in general or even loyalty if appropriate?
Margaret: Well, I’m an avid podcast listener and I’m a voracious reader as well, primarily nonfiction.
Margaret: I read the Harvard Business Review blog.
Margaret: I find that to be very helpful.
Margaret: I listen to anything The Economist puts out on podcasts.
Margaret: And those are not marketing specific resources.
Margaret: But the reason why I draw on those, Paula, is because I think it’s vitally important to understand the social, business and greater context in which our consumers or people behave.
Margaret: So to me, understanding behavior, drawing from different sources is really productive.
Paula: Yeah, and it’s good advice, Margaret.
Paula: And again, as we talk about both marketing and loyalty, having a seat at the table and at the C-suite, I do think that’s exactly the type of content that that audience is consuming.
Paula: So if nothing but to be able to have a conversation with more senior peers, I do think that that’s really, really good advice.
Paula: So thank you for that.
Paula: I think we have covered an extraordinary amount today, Margaret.
Paula: Was there anything else that you wanted to mention before we wrap up?
Margaret: No, simply to thank you, to congratulate you on how rigorously you are treating the topic of loyalty from its many dimensions and invite your listeners to follow me on LinkedIn.
Margaret: I’ve recently started a newsletter called How CMOs Commit.
Margaret: It is the same name as the podcast.
Margaret: And I invite all of your listeners to join us at any time and wish you continued success on this very important work.
Paula: Wonderful, Margaret.
Paula: Well, thank you so much for joining me today.
Paula: In closing, actually, I just wanted to reference probably my favorite part of your LinkedIn profile where I suppose you just summarize your own personal brand values, which you describe as an intention for grace, grit and gravitas.
Paula: So you’ve certainly demonstrated those today.
Paula: So Margaret Molloy, Global Chief Marketing Officer of Siegel and Gale, thank you so much from Let’s Talk Loyalty.
Paula: This show is sponsored by The Wise Marketeer, the world’s most popular source of loyalty marketing news, insights and research.
Paula: The Wise Marketeer also offers loyalty marketing training through its Loyalty Academy, which has already certified over 170 executives in 20 countries as certified loyalty marketing professionals.
Paula: For more information, check out thewisemarketeer.com and loyaltyacademy.org.
Paula: Thanks so much for listening to this episode of Let’s Talk Loyalty.
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