Microsoft UK’s CMO Paul Davies on CX, brand ambassadors and a new approach to the traditional product launch

In my marketing team – which totals around 60-70 people – there’s a real divergence in skillsets. You’ve got the left-brain scientists who are all about data, logic, analytics and programmatic, and the right-brain storytellers and creative big thinkers. The magic really happens when you get these groups working together. After all, storytelling and big brand ideas are sub-optimal without the right tech application, and great technology will only go so far without a big creative idea. Increasingly, the role of the CMO is to help these teams collaborate.

I’ve come up through a creative and communications background, so I’m pretty right-brained, but I’ve learnt to operate in a left-brain world. As a marketer, you need to understand the new techniques that are emerging; increasingly the CMO role is shifting to one based around a more general management capability. Suddenly you’ve got to understand data science, online analytics and programmatic – they’re part of the toolkit and thus part of the job.

Keeping up with the trends is a challenge for any marketer, but it’s one of the reasons I love marketing – it never stands still. Personally I’ve got a pretty curious mindset – curiosity is a trait I look for in any new hire – and I think it’s why marketing excites me so much. I really enjoy learning about the new technologies and tactics, and making sure my team and myself are on top of emerging trends.

"I’ll attend the sales team's weekly leadership meeting so there’s a marketing representative there, and I’ve co-created a meeting series involving our key marketing and sales people"

In marketing teams, it’s hugely important to create a culture of one team. I noticed a while ago that we were becoming a team of teams, so I made a concerted effort to move us into one team, to bring everyone together more often, and align us all to one set of shared goals. In doing so, we were able to unlock more collaboration across the whole department.

A couple of years ago, sales and marketing teams rarely talked and had quite a difficult relationship. I remember the days when marketing would create leads for sales and would then get frustrated because they wouldn’t be followed up; sales would get frustrated because they didn’t think the leads were well qualified. Now we’re seeing much tighter collaboration across the two functions as they come together to close the gaps in the customer journey.

At Microsoft, I’ll attend the sales team’s weekly leadership meeting so there’s a marketing representative there, and I’ve co-created a meeting series involving our key marketing and sales people. In the old days, sales leaders would go and visit retailers and partners without the marketing team; now marketing attends those meetings too because it’s recognised that we can add a lot of value.

At board level we’ve seen some big changes in recent years with regard to the wider company’s perception of marketing. We’ve gone from being seen as a cost centre to a revenue and profit centre, which comes down, in part, to the accountability that we can now apply to our work and  the fact ROI is more transparent than ever before.

"Instead of inviting traditional press outlets to the launch of Windows 10, we held an event for our fans and influencers - it helped us to launch with the right positive sentiment in mind"

I see a lot of peers using marketing automation (MA) as an email CRM system, but it’s really so much more powerful than that. When you can link your MA into web analytics or event registrations and experiences, you’ll find that it becomes a much richer tool to use. Email is only one vehicle within MA and we’re now linking it to all other touchpoints – website, social, events – to really harness its full capabilities.

One of the main complaints I hear about MA is that because it drives great efficiencies it will lead to marketing teams shrinking. But I see it the other way round; greater efficiencies mean we can repurpose marketing teams and resources into higher value activities, and reapply people into different roles.

At Microsoft, we care about the people who love us and our products, and this is reflected in our approach to the launch of Windows 10 last year. As you’d imagine, the launch of a Microsoft operating system is the biggest marketing activity of the year for us, and involves a huge fanfare and lots of fireworks, but with Windows 10 we decided to do it differently. Instead of inviting traditional press outlets, we held an event for our fans and influencers; it was hugely successful and the outcome was that attendees wrote about it, took videos, blogged and Instragramed, which helped us to launch with the right positive sentiment in mind.

We’re really keen to encourage staff to become brand ambassadors, and one of the ways we’ve amplified staff sentiment is through a tool that helps staff support us through their own social channels. Essentially the tool – Sociable – aggregates all social posts from across our own estates and brands, and makes it very easy for anyone internally to share, like and comment across their own social footprints. This does two things: it engages the internal audience and encourages them to become brand ambassadors, but in such a way that we’re able to manage a consistent tone of voice and delivery. We also gamify the whole process with a prize leaderboard, whereby the people who are most active are rewarded.

When it comes to customer experience (CX), the responsibility lies with the CMO to make sure every communication is deeply consistent and has the right tone of voice and brand values. As CMO, you’re guardian of your audience and your brand, and you need to care deeply about the customer experience.

From a consumer CX perspective I’m a big fan of AO.com. A lot of consumer retailers are facing challenges around aligning the traditional store presence and a growing online presence; one’s tangible and human, the other can be cold and transactional. AO does a great job of using online video to show product demonstrations, and replicate the in-store experience in the online space. 

With advances in technology, B2B and B2C are converging, and the differences between them are becoming less marked. That said, I see a lot of tactics are used in the different spheres are different: in B2B, for example, we know that events are hugely critical in terms of generating leads, whereas in the consumer space they’re much less important.

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