Applying Data Science to Brand Bonding in the Digital Age

A Content Disrupted podcast with Tricia Nichols, CMO.

Watch this and more Content Disrupted episodes on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Google Podcasts.

Brand loyalty is not just a buzzword; it’s a science that any marketing team can master. In this episode of Content Disrupted, trailblazing CMO, Tricia Nichols shares her insights on driving and tracking brand engagement, balancing short-term and long-term perspectives, and using data science to answer the right questions at the right time.

Tricia Nichols is a consultant, angel investor, board member and former CMO at Gap, Estée Lauder, Pepsi, IPP and Belk. She is known for her ability to lead innovative strategies, catalyze growth and deepen consumer engagement with iconic and emerging brands. Her commitment to creating distinctive and compelling consumer value propositions, in addition to fostering new avenues for revenue growth through decision science, is at the heart of her approach.

Episode Highlights:

• (02:55) What is brand loyalty? — In today’s noisy digital landscape, building strong connections with customers has become more challenging than ever. With the fragmentation of channels and the shift to a cookie-cutter world, marketers must adapt their strategies to reach and create connecting experiences with their audiences, across a wide range of digital touchpoints. Tricia defines brand loyalty as multiple frequent positive interactions with a brand that customers seek and advocate for. It goes beyond brand awareness and focuses on building deep connections with customers over time. In her experience, when marketers start using data science to measure brand attachment, they can begin to unlock what made people connect with the brand and what their behavior looks like when they connect.

• (09:38) Micro-storytelling – The Key to a Connected Brand Story – Tricia shares her approach to ‘micro storytelling’, which she developed during her time at Estée Lauder. Brands often have a macro story that lives within the customer value proposition. The problem with this is that while your macro story may resonate with an overarching group, it won’t be as effective when speaking to specific demographics or individuals facing specific challenges. Micro-storytelling allows marketers to break down their brand’s value proposition into smaller stories that resonate with different customers. It’s all about answering the right questions at the right stage, while keeping the storyline consistent.

• (13:27) Making decisions with data — Tricia is known as a CMO who champions digital innovation. When it comes to utilizing marketing data, she takes a strategic approach. Before diving into the analysis, Tricia recommends defining the business decision(s) that will be made based on the data. She avoids getting lost in irrelevant data points by asking important questions like “What are we trying to test or solve?” prior to. She’s also a proponent of prescriptive data and occupational health dashboards that answer questions like, “What does someone’s behavior look like before he or she starts churning?” Keeping that dashboard in place keeps marketing accountable and brands can test and learn what will yield the most positive business results.

• (16:19) Addressing data attribution in marketing — Tricia recommends thinking about how to organize data attribution depending on whose questions are being answered. CEOs and CFOs could prioritize the immediate impact on sales, while marketers should advocate for considering the long-term health of the business and what’s next. That said, marketers shouldn’t just look at historical data. Data science now allows us to predict the impact of future decisions, such as how removing a product or deprioritizing a channel will play out. Similarly, marketers can identify promising new channels or customer acquisition strategies with predictive models, even if initial results seem weak in practice.

• (24:20) The opportunities and pitfalls of generative AI — Tricia believes generative AI can be a useful tool for marketers, but emphasizes the importance of using it strategically. She emphasizes the importance of human control over the brand voice and core message, and using AI for optimization and scaling, rather than creating content from scratch. For example, AI can’t create micro-stories without instructions, and even then, AI tends to give inaccurate or hallucinatory responses that you don’t want to present to your customers. Tricia believes brand loyalty relies on human empathy, understanding and strategic control, something AI lacks. She recommends marketers use AI as a tool to support their decision-making process and improve their marketing efforts, but not rely on it as the sole voice of the brand.

Follow and subscribe to Content Disrupted on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Google Podcasts. Every other week we host candid conversations with pioneering CMOs and researchers on the topics most relevant to business marketers, from the psychology behind today’s digital buying behavior and how to create more relevant creative to maximizing internal trust in the marketing team .