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Insights Unlocked
Optimize with empathy: Gwen Hammes on turning behavior into brand impact
00:30:57
Discover how Gwen Hammes uses experimentation and behavioral insights to drive conversion optimization and better customer experiences.
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- [00:02]
Nathan Isaacs
Welcome back to the Insights Unlocked podcast. In this episode, I'm joined by Gwen Hammis, co CEO of CrowMetrics, for a conversation about blending creativity data and experimentation to drive better customer experiences. We talk about why conversion is more than just clicks, how cultural insights shape leadership, and the power of mentorship in marketing. Enjoy the show.
- [00:28]
Podcast Host / Narrator
Welcome to Insights Unlocked, an original podcast from Youth Testing where we bring you candid conversations and stories with the thinkers, doers and builders behind some of the most successful digital products and experiences in the world. From concept to execution.
- [00:47]
Nathan Isaacs
Welcome to the Insights Unlocked podcast. I'm Nathan Isaacs, Principal Content Marketing manager at User Testing and our guest today is Gwen Hammas. Gwen is the co CEO of Chrometrics and a seasoned marketing leader who spent her career helping global brands blend creativity data and experimentation to deliver exceptional customer experiences. She's worked with companies like Mars, Levi's and Kimberly Clark, and now she's focused on helping organizations turn insights into impact. Welcome to the show, Gwen.
- [01:19]
Gwen Hammis
Thanks for having me.
- [01:21]
Nathan Isaacs
Gwen, you've had an incredible journey from global creative agencies to co leading a growth experimentation firm. What drew you to this latest chapter and how has that shift changed how you think about creating great customer experiences?
- [01:36]
Gwen Hammis
Absolutely, yeah. I think the big thing that's happened over the last few years is that clients in marketing and beyond have had greater pressure to show tangible results in a shorter amount of time. And while I have been very proud of my storied career and the advertising side of things and building brands and programs and things like that, I really felt like this next chapter, I wanted to focus more on kind of like that moment of truth and how do I tangibly connect people to purchase, to make that impact that can be measurable and that that can catapult businesses and brands forward.
- [02:15]
Nathan Isaacs
You know, in doing some research about you, I saw that you had spent some time in Mexico City and you had mentioned how that's changed or influenced your perspectives.
- [02:24]
Gwen Hammis
How.
- [02:25]
Nathan Isaacs
How did working across cultures influence your thinking about how people experience brands and solve problems?
- [02:32]
Gwen Hammis
Yeah, honestly, for me, it was a transformational life experience, to be honest. I mean, not just from a professional sense, but from a personal sense. I actually met my husband down there, so there you go. But I think one of the things that I was most impacted by is that as an American, when we're facing a problem, there's usually a very set step, you know, of process that you go through. So you do step A to step D to step C to step D and then problem solved. In Mexico, there is this combination of ingenuity and grit and perseverance and stop at nothing that they just see what the problem is. They generally have no budget, no time and no resources, and they just get after it. And I think for me, I always say I'm kind of recovering type A personality. That was very liberating. And some of it is, you know, obviously it started by just being in that environment and seeing the way my coworkers were able to handle things. But then as I started flexing that muscle and doing that myself, I think it's been kind of one of the most powerful elements in my own leadership style and in my like relentless focus on what is the outcome we're trying to get to. And let's not be so caught up in how we do it. Let's use some of that creativity and ingenuity to get there.
- [03:53]
Nathan Isaacs
Yeah, I can, I can totally empathize. I remember learning in college, like intercultural communications and understanding just the differences of how I was raised. And prior to college I was in the Navy. And so it's very, like you said, orderly. 1, 2, 3, you follow the steps, get it done. Very proactive. And over the years have learned how different cultures operate. And it's not, there's not a right or wrong way. It's just understanding the differences and, and also putting yourself in your, you know, in your colleague shoes and your customer shoes, whoever may be and, and where they're working from. I still don't understand Hawaiian culture. Oh, in the sense of like, you know, you're like, we agree that we're going to get something done on Friday, but it's we. I didn't understand we meant two months from now, Friday.
- [04:43]
Gwen Hammis
Well, but, but I will say in Mexican Spanish, there's a phrase called aita. So it comes from aura, which means now and a really mean, like right now. But if you ask any Mexican, it really means it could be now, could be tomorrow, it could be never. So, you know, it's kind of some of that, that cultural nuance of the word now never means now. Sounds like the Hawaiians.
- [05:06]
Nathan Isaacs
Yeah. Or maybe they were just kind of giving me the answer that I wanted to hear with no intention. I was trying to sell electric vehicle charging stations at a time when nobody really wanted electric vehicles. So it could have also been that. Conversion optimization is often seen as tactical, and you've described it as a rich source of behavioral insight. How are you seeing brands use these real customer behaviors to drive more meaningful end to end experiences?
- [05:37]
Gwen Hammis
Yeah, for me, I mean, one of the things that excited me about Kind of coming onto this, this side of marketing, right, Being more focused on optimization and conversion was the fact that it is kind of looked at as this unsexy part. Very tactical, very non creative, again coming from kind of the creative industry. And I was like, well, how do we flip that on its head? It's actually very powerful. It's very insightful. That's when you learn are people really doing and acting on what they might have said that they are interested in. And so for me, I'm kind of actually on a quest and I got a couple clients that I'm talking to about this of how do we actually take some of the insights that we're learning very far down the funnel and we're able to shine a light on them and make them into a bigger brand idea that can actually go all the way across the consumer experience. I'm more surprised to see how organizational structures are so siloed and that there's not really that cohesive connection. And so I was having a coffee the other day with somebody actually from McDonald's who was telling me that all the parts and pieces that are really separate and disparate and you think of an organization of that size and the fact that there's not a cohesive consumer experience, I know that's something that they're trying to do, was just a fascinating piece because I'm seeing that more and more. And as I always say, the consumer doesn't know which person, which agency, which partner worked on what part of the experience. They just know how that feels. And there's so many opportunities for consumers to drop off. You know, we always say we're more, much more engaged in the brands we work on than any consumer. So how do we make it easy for them so that they can really kind of go all the way through and again and end up purchasing or donating or whatever that action is we're trying to drive.
- [07:30]
Nathan Isaacs
Yeah, I, I, I can imagine a brand like that. And it's the, the units within that or the teams or divisions or whatever you want to call it or however they describe it. I mean, these are billion dollar organizations in and of themselves, right? And so yeah, they're going to have a very siloed way of operating to kind of make those things work. And it's hard to kind of, you know, make sure that you're all connected together.
- [07:57]
Gwen Hammis
I was just going to add to that. I think one of the interesting things too is like on the personalization side, you know, one of the things, and obviously we've run over 30,000 experiments. And so we have a wide library and we have some predictive AI that can help us kind of prioritize what are the, what are the tests that rise to the top. But some of them that are the, the kind of lowest hanging fruit that are consistently driving exceptional results is symmetrical messaging. So is your paid media driving to a landing page that is continuing that consumer experience? And is that paid media, if it's in meta versus Snapchat versus, you know, any, any other platform, is it continuing that experience that you've kind of set up from the beginning? And it's just fascinating the amount of clients that, you know, when we start to work with them, they're not doing that. And the minute they start seeing what the results are really, you know, can help to, to grease the wheels of what's possible with their business.
- [08:56]
Nathan Isaacs
Yeah, yeah. And something like that too is small, little incremental improvements have a huge impact on the bottom line. So. And probably true for all of us. The, you know, I was, I was looking at your history and stuff like that and, and I seen that in your past life, you worked on a Skittles campaign. And I saw how that was like, I think one of their early super bowl commercials with, yeah, Aerosmith's lead singer on it. And, and it was inspired by some of the conversation people were doing with Skittles. And, and they would make shapes and faces and stuff like that. And it, and, and what I read about that was somebody attributed with the campaign said, you know, the creativity is inspired by what the customers are saying and doing it. It starts with them. We can't just pick a celebrity and create a campaign where we're creating what, what the people are doing. And that, and that kind of gets to me, to my question here. It was with the Continental campaign, you elevated a commodity into something customers could actually feel connected to. How do you find these emotional levers that turn routine choices like the paper into memorable brand experiences?
- [10:11]
Gwen Hammis
Yeah, so I mean, we have a number of different ways that we do that, but you're trying to find, you know, I'm a, I'm a student of behavioral science. I actually studied economics in college. And so you're trying to find what are the behaviors that exist, you know, what are ones that exist? If you want to change or add to it, you can kind of do some of that habit stacking. But creating brand new behaviors is very hard. So what we did, and actually this, while the Skittles campaign is very different from what we did with Cottonell, the Kind of root of it is very similar. So in the case of Skittles, we saw that people were kind of using their creativity to create different shapes and things like that. It was actually the PR agency that was seeing what this trend was and they started doing gifting. And so one of the first things they did was they actually, you know, they knew that Marshawn lynch was a big fan of Skittles. And. And they did Skittles covered football cleats. And so that kind of continued to evolve and ebb and flow, and that's how that ended up becoming that big idea. Similarly, on Continental, we started looking into what was happening kind of in the down there area, and we were finding these crazy results, right? I mean, butt bleaching, vaginal steaming. Like, people were spending time, money, effort, energy, but when it came to their toilet paper, they were literally picking whichever one was on sale. And that was kind of that nugget of an insight where we were like, there are these behaviors that exist that no toilet paper brand has tapped into. And if we can associate toilet paper with those behaviors, all of a sudden, that can be a huge growth engine for this brand. And so, again, I think that's where we. Using the power of behaviors in order to drive ideas, possibilities, and ultimately, business has been what I've seen as, like, most successful.
- [12:06]
Nathan Isaacs
You've talked about building capabilities in response to clear client pool. How do you know when a new idea or capability is genuinely rooted in a customer need and not just some shiny object syndrome?
- [12:20]
Gwen Hammis
Yeah, I mean, really what we're always trying to do, and I think everybody in professional services is, is trying to do, is understand what are the client problems that they have and what are the ones where you have a right to play to help them solve. And so it's been interesting because while we, you know, really started as a conversion rate optimization company, through experimentation over the years, we've grown and developed, you know, other capabilities across the consumer experience. So one that has grown tremendously in the last few years is our design and build. And it kind of makes sense when you think about it, because running experiments on a website, well then actually redesigning that website, what does that look like? And so for us, we started talking to clients and they were doing a rebrand and saying, oh, we're working on our website. And we said, hey, we have some team members, they have some experience from other agencies they worked at before they came here. We believe in the power of experimentation. We believe you shouldn't just do the light switch change on your website. I think we've all been there, we know how, how dangerous that can be. We believe in an experiment led redesign process and you know, we started kind of pitching it and we saw there was a lot of interest and traction because it helped to de risk that big change. And so, you know, sometimes it's just getting one client to say yes and the minute they do, you see success, you have a case study, you have more confidence, you have learning. Then as you're talking to other ones, all of a sudden it seems, you know, I don't want to say a little bit easier, but it seems like you're getting that positive feedback like this is a good area in order to build. And that's been, you know, one of our biggest growth areas, honestly, at Chrometrics over the last few years. I think because we were able to solve a problem that we did have a right to play and to be part of.
- [14:14]
Nathan Isaacs
And speaking of Chrome metrics, you kind of came on, on the leadership team earlier this year and you've described in the past how the word change can actually trigger fear. If we want teams to embrace innovation and create better customer experiences, how can we reframe change as something energizing instead of destabilizing?
- [14:37]
Gwen Hammis
Yeah, I usually start with not using the word change because change is scary. People don't like that. One of the things that I've learned and what I have been able to do in my six months at chrometrix is, you know, it's kind of like voting in Chicago. You can probably hear in my accent, it's early and often. So you want to tell people, here's where we're going to go, here's how we're going to get there, and then it's a kind of an intentional step forward to there. I always tell my teams, I say, I'm never going to come to you with a light switch decision. Like it's never going to be something out of the blue or something that everyone's caught off guard on. If I do, please call me out on it. And if there is, there's probably a good reason and I'll give you the why behind it. But I think that's the biggest thing. I mean, for instance, right now, you know, what everybody is working towards is how do we accelerate not only AI adaption of the tools that we have, but how do we also accelerate identifying the new tools, whether that we want to bring on or we want to build. And that is one of the things we talk as leadership team. It is a behavior change project. We're not going to say that, but like, you see companies that they're tracking the usage of the employees, they're, you know, downright threatening. And I'm like, we never want to be in that position. So how do we make it easier for it to be embedded into what people's existing habits and routines are? Our own people and our clients as well, so that it's something that becomes natural and not something that is forced or it's because it's a requirement.
- [16:11]
Nathan Isaacs
Right. I think we've done some research on AI adoption with organizations and we found like, the biggest area, the biggest deficit is that we're encouraging people to learn about these tools and incorporate into their jobs, but we're not actually showing them how.
- [16:27]
Gwen Hammis
Right.
- [16:28]
Nathan Isaacs
And combined with like the, the pressure of just getting their work done, they're not taking that time to go out and do it. And when companies can, you know, lead and say, okay, let's, let's sign up for this training program. This is how I'm doing it, then those companies are more successful overall because the organization, the team themselves can see that through their leadership team that they're taking that lead.
- [16:53]
Gwen Hammis
Well, I just want to add one thing to that. I wanted to add one piece to that because it's fascinating when you also think about, I think sometimes there's a goal to almost like hide when you're using it because people are like, oh, I don't want somebody to think that I didn't do my work. And so even for us as a leadership team, we're trying to be more explicit about like, when and how we're using it, as opposed to just saying, oh, hey, you know, for instance, we just ran a survey, we do a lot of surveys internally to get input on like, what are some key pain cuts and pain, pain points and paper cuts. And so of course, you know, I got the results, we threw it through ChatGPT. Give us a summary and analysis. Obviously we double check it, but instead of just saying, here's kind of like the results in the summary and some of the initial thoughts from an action plan standpoint, we're saying, hey, we used the power of ChatGPT. Instead of having somebody spend, you know, three hours manually doing it and it's, it's half of it is also just putting it out there so that people feel like, oh, it's okay, it's encouraged and it's not, you know, a reflection, like, I'm not doing my work.
- [18:04]
Nathan Isaacs
The. I just watched another podcast in which the CTO of HubSpot Dharmesh Shah was on there and if you just get a chance to watch him and talk about how he sort of embraces now he's, he's a, an early adopter of anything new. Right. So he's way different than the rest of us. But what he suggests doing with these sort of chat things is just experiment every day, try and think about what, what's something different I can do with my job that I have to do that I would do normally manually. How can I try and make chat GPT or Gemini or one of the other LLMs, how can I make them do that? You know what would be my prompts and just experiment and tinker. And not only is your company and organization gonna benefit from that, but you will benefit from that three years from now, from all that experimentation when, when other people being let go because they haven't learned this. You're already on the frontier with that frontier model.
- [19:07]
Gwen Hammis
Totally. Well. And we're doing, you know, we're a heavy like slack culture internally and so we create a lot of bots to kind of auto, automate and populate and so we're doing a lot of Vicod even within that. And one of the new ones we're doing just in the spirit of earning season now is for any of our clients that are publicly traded. We, it's, it's pretty good. We had a couple iterations and I think we're getting, we're getting to a lot better point where it's like not just summarizing the results but really pulling out some of the insights about different digital products, about digital priorities, about, you know, in threads that we can pull on when we're having the client conversations in a way that's not, you know, a three page document or almost. You feel you have to listen to the earnings report itself, but getting really crystal clear on what some of those things are so our, our teams can really be smarter about that, that business overall.
- [20:01]
Nathan Isaacs
And, and that sort of information just backs you up. Right. You're, you're still going to bring the insights that you know about that business and in those conversations. But now you have something like oh yeah, I hadn't thought about that point, but that's the point that you know, this, this, this bot identified for me and I can bring it up the, you're speaking of bots and, and models and stuff like that. Your dynamic talent model is such a thoughtful approach to sustainability. How has it helped your team stay focused on delivering great work even when the business environment gets unpredictable?
- [20:36]
Gwen Hammis
Yeah. So the Dynamic talent model was something that I had created not long after I started because as we all know in marketing there's a lot of ebbs and flows and you know, you feel like once you got your sea legs, there's another change. You know, the tariffs came in and you know, some uncertainty in Q2 and all of that good stuff. And so what I wanted to make sure we were able to do for FTEs is drive a level of predictability and stability of the work and then have a contractor ring that could kind of take on some of that ebbs and flows. And you know, we've had it in place for about four and a half months and it's, you know, it's been working as planned, which is great. And we've used it in a number of different ways where we can, you know, we get more business in, we're ramping up contractors, we have, you know, a project that ends, we can ramp them down. And for our FTEs, it's invisible. And that's kind of the goal that it really shouldn't be something that our team has to be thinking about. Obviously we want them aware more because it's ultimately a benefit to them to have that sense of security and predictability and all of those things. But I think that's where, you know, we're always looking for kind of what is some innovation we can even do from an organizational standpoint that can help us be more strategic over the long term. And as we know, you know, in a professional services environment like Chrometrics, I mean our, our people are our product. Obviously we have the tech of the tools, but so, so we spend a lot of time on that piece of it. And this is so far proven just a great way in order to drive some more of that predictability and stability for our, for our full time employees.
- [22:19]
Nathan Isaacs
I can imagine how, how challenging it is to try and come up with a plan and then have all these sort of, you know, black swans disrupt the plan. Right. And you, you've spoken about steel stomach leadership holding steady through turbulence. How do you personally stay focused on long term customer value when short term pressures start to mount?
- [22:41]
Gwen Hammis
Yeah, I mean, you said it in terms of the customer value and at the end of the day that's what we're here for. Right. And so while we talk a lot about our clients and that's kind of the reason for us being ultimately we're here for the customers of our clients and so understanding what they're going through, kind of recognizing, and this is where I go back to what people, what people say isn't what they do. So not getting lost in maybe some of the rhetoric or maybe some of the opinions or some of the sentiment, but really kind of seeing what's happening. So for instance, it's been fascinating seeing what's happening with Walmart, for instance. Right. You always think about Walmart is more kind of like middle, low class. But what they have been seeing through these turbulent times is actually the affluent shopper is starting to go to Walmart. And so for them, what I thought was super, super smart is instead of just saying great, same assortment, you know, same brands. And I know they brought some D2C brands to their stores and things like that. They've said, hey, we have this affluent shopper. They already feel they're getting a great deal by coming to Walmart as opposed to going to Mariano's or, you know, Ralph's or a higher end store. How can we drive super premium products so that we're increasing their basket ring? And so there was this example I recently saw where they are selling Lindt dubai chocolate for $15 at Walmart and they're able to capitalize on like they understand who this, who this new segment is that's coming near the store. They're understanding what their price tolerance is and also what their tastes and desires are. And I haven't seen the results how well that's working or not. But you know, you would never expect to see a $15 candy bar in a Walmart until now. And so I just thought that was kind of a great example of not, you know, not just worrying about, oh my gosh, people are going to be pulling back, but really helping to pivot based on some of these different behaviors. So very similar to that. That's what we're always looking at to say how can we pull in insights from our clients, consumers from what's happening and almost create some of those opportunities as opposed to just being victims of what might be happening in the marketplace.
- [24:56]
Nathan Isaacs
I'm just thinking about that at that candy bar and you know, for Those shoppers at $15 is still cheaper than what they might have been spending somewhere else. And it's lint candy bars are on my regular grocery shopping list because my wife likes a particular candy bar and that's her peaceful dinner treat to herself. So no matter what, I have to buy that. Yeah. So that, that's, I love that. I love that story. You're a strong believer in mentorship and community. What are some of the ways you're helping the next generation of Women in growth stay connected to both their ambition and their empathy.
- [25:35]
Gwen Hammis
Yeah, and it's an interesting thing, I think where my life stage is now, it's, it's probably even more important to me to kind of give back than it has before. I always say, you know, I'm a working mom. I felt for the last number of years it's been work and then momming and you know, not, not having a lot more time, you know, energy to, to devote beyond it. And so a couple things that, that I'm doing and some are with Chrometrics and some are kind of without, but I became a mentor at 1871, which is the Chicago tech hub for budding entrepreneurs. And just recognizing especially something like marketing, especially a woman in leadership is something that maybe entrepreneurs, especially when they're early stage, they can use a little bit of the expertise and the perspective and things like that. Also being part of the Executives Club of Chicago internally we do a couple things. So one of them is we have a women of growth marketing, which we've kind of built this community and we're trying to build it much more so with some of our clients, some external partners, our folks in internally to kind of shine a light on the women that are doing amazing things in growth and then even more so, which I'm really proud of is we have something called the Go Metrics accelerator program, which is for future leaders internally that have been nominated by leadership. And we have kind of a mix of things for them. There's a mentorship component, there is a curriculum on key topics every, every week. And then there are kind of two core projects that they focus on, but projects that are, are not only related to but like directly part of our corporate strategy. And so it's been great to see that we just finished our first cohort, we're starting our second one tomorrow just to see the way that they have been able to grow and blossom from that. And I think for myself again, this stage in my career, it's like even more rewarding to see this next generation be learn and be curious and approach things in a different way than I might have. And so I get to learn from them as well.
- [27:47]
Nathan Isaacs
Well, and speaking of learning, I saw somewhere like last year, I think you had set a goal for yourself to be a standup comic. Is that right? Or. Oh, that's right, the, and, and, and always learning. Right. I, I, I really appreciate that about people, is that they're always trying to learn something new or challenge themselves in a different way. So like in speaking to that to the next generation. Looking back, what's one piece of advice you would give your younger self about leadership or about creating experiences that matter both for teams and customers?
- [28:23]
Gwen Hammis
Yeah, I, I think first and foremost I would say, like, put yourself out there. And a lot of times people say to me, they say, oh, Gwen, it's really easy for you to say that. You're a natural extrovert. And I'm like, it's not, you know, a lot of the things that I think I'm doing now, I wish I would have done or taken that advice or even thought about it years ago. And putting yourself out there and if you have an idea or you have a goal, like what are those? I would say, what are those micro steps that can kind of get you there? You know, first and foremost, I think in terms of creating experiences that matter for both teams and customers, it's really about putting yourself in their shoes and meeting them halfway. I think that is like the best thing out there. It's interesting. We talk a lot about, you know, Sam Walton. He was known as, you know, the person within Walmart who visited the most stores more than anybody else. You know, for me, I try to spend as much time with my clients because I want to put myself in their shoes and understand. But then also, you know, I buy all my clients products, I try their services, I donate. So I'm having that direct experience as well as our team does that. And I think that's just, you know, kind of a life lesson of putting yourself in somebody else's shoes because you never know what they're going through. And it seems very cliche, but I think when you really practice it, you will, I don't know, you'll just be pleasantly surprised in so many different ways.
- [29:50]
Nathan Isaacs
Yeah. Oh, so much good wisdom there, Gwen. I appreciate your time today on the show and I really enjoyed our conversation. How's someone learning more about you, your thought leadership and the work you and the team are doing over at Chrometrics?
- [30:03]
Gwen Hammis
Yeah. Well, you can go ahead and follow me, Gwenhommes, on LinkedIn. You can find us@crowmetrics.com and so appreciate this. This has been great spending time with you. Thanks for having me.
- [30:17]
Nathan Isaacs
All right, well, we'll make sure to put all those links in our show notes and until next time, thank you, Gwen. Have a great day.
- [30:23]
Podcast Host / Narrator
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