Experian CMO Dacy Yee on Meeting Consumer Needs with Engaging Storytelling

Summary

Marketing Voices and Perspectives: Detailed Summary of "Experian CMO Dacey Yee on Meeting Consumer Needs with Engaging Storytelling"

Episode Release Date: July 10, 2024
Host: Joshua Spanier, VP of Media Lab at Google Marketing
Guest: Dacey Yee, Chief Marketing and Revenue Officer Direct to Consumer at Experian Consumer Services

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1. Introduction

In this episode of Marketing Voices and Perspectives, hosted by Joshua Spanier of Think with Google, listeners are introduced to Dacey Yee, the Chief Marketing and Revenue Officer for Experian Consumer Services. Dacey brings her extensive experience in marketing and revenue strategies to discuss how Experian meets consumer needs through engaging storytelling.

2. Favorite YouTube Creators and Brands

Dacey Yee kicks off the conversation by sharing her admiration for YouTube creator Mark Rober. She appreciates his ability to make science entertaining, particularly highlighting his experiments with squirrels and fat gusts.

Dacey Yee [00:06]: "I have a warm place in my heart for Mark Rober because I think that he makes science super fun."

Joshua Spanier echoes this sentiment, sharing his personal encounter with Mark Rober and the creator's genuine persona.

Moving to favorite brands, Dacey expresses her loyalty to Nike, citing the brand's consistency and reliable sizing as key factors in her longstanding relationship with them.

Dacey Yee [02:10]: "I have a lot of Nike boxes in my closet. ... I feel find a pair that I want. And I've just come to be very loyal to them."

3. Career Journey and Overcoming Shyness

Dacey delves into her professional journey, revealing her initial shyness and reluctance to voice her aspirations. A pivotal moment occurred during a conversation with her mentor, encouraging her to articulate her goal of becoming a Chief Marketing Officer (CMO).

Dacey Yee [03:20]: "I blurted out at that moment, okay, fine, I want to be CMO. I felt overly presumptuous to even say the words that I would like to be CMO one day."

This breakthrough led to practical support and opportunities that helped her develop the confidence to take on leadership roles, emphasizing that effectiveness doesn't necessitate being the loudest voice in the room.

Dacey Yee [05:50]: "It's okay. I don't need to be the loudest person in the room, but I do want to be really effective."

4. Emotional Connection to Brands and Consumers

Joshua pivots to discuss the emotional connections consumers have with brands, particularly referencing Google's products. Dacey underscores the importance of how consumers feel after interacting with Experian.

Dacey Yee [06:33]: "Are we paying enough attention to how a consumer feels after they interact with us?"

As a consumer advocate within Experian, Dacey leads teams focused on measuring and enhancing consumer sentiment, ensuring that financial interactions with Experian leave consumers feeling empowered and positive.

5. Evolution of E-commerce and Customer-Centric Marketing

Reflecting on the progression of e-commerce from the early 2000s to today, Dacey highlights a significant shift towards a customer-centric approach. The focus has moved from transactional interactions to building personalized relationships with consumers.

Dacey Yee [08:29]: "We have moved to a very customer centric view and experience for consumers… about a relationship and getting to know a consumer."

6. Modern Marketing Practices and Tools

When discussing modern and progressive marketing, Dacey emphasizes the integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to better understand and meet consumer needs. AI serves as a tool to personalize experiences and deliver impactful, tailored marketing strategies.

Dacey Yee [09:43]: "AI is a really exciting topic. ... keeping it really simple, making sure you meet the needs, making sure you're really being impactful and helping consumers."

7. Multi-Channel Marketing Approach

Dacey outlines Experian's multi-channel marketing strategy, which centers around consumer preferences and seamless engagement across platforms. A significant focus is placed on their mobile app, utilizing push notifications and targeted advertising to enhance user experience.

Dacey Yee [10:26]: "Consumers want to engage with us through our app. ... making sure our push notification strategy is tight and that advertising really draws a message to download the app."

8. Measurement and Accountability in Marketing

Balancing art and science in marketing, Dacey discusses the blend of qualitative and quantitative metrics used to measure campaign effectiveness. Experian employs a Voice of the Customer approach alongside data-driven analytics to ensure a comprehensive understanding of consumer interactions and sentiments.

Dacey Yee [11:58]: "We have a qualitative and quantitative approach, but we also love to hear from voice a customer and making sure that we overlay that on top of all of the numerical metrics."

She also touches on the importance of intuition in making bold marketing decisions, advocating for a balance between data reliance and gut feeling to pursue significant opportunities.

Dacey Yee [13:19]: "If we feel like we have something to prove and we think that this could be great, let's make a case and go for it."

9. Campaign Highlight: Protect the Bag with Travis Kelce

One of the standout campaigns discussed is Experian's partnership with NFL star Travis Kelce for the "Protect the Bag" video series. Dacey explains the strategic choice of using video and a high-profile celebrity to convey the launch of Experian Smart Money, a digital checking account aimed at helping consumers improve their credit without incurring debt.

Dacey Yee [13:38]: "We think video is one of the most engaging mediums. ... our partnership with Travis Kelce was really important to us because we had a new message to bring out."

The campaign successfully leveraged the emotional and expansive reach of video content, combined with Travis Kelce's influence, to communicate complex financial products in an accessible and compelling manner.

10. Conclusion

The episode concludes with Joshua Spanier thanking Dacey Yee for her insightful contributions. Dacey's emphasis on authentic storytelling, consumer-centric strategies, and the effective use of modern marketing tools provides valuable lessons for today's marketers aiming to build meaningful connections with their audiences.

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Key Takeaways:

• Authentic Storytelling: Leveraging engaging mediums like video to convey brand messages effectively.
• Consumer-Centric Approach: Prioritizing personalized experiences and understanding consumer emotions post-interaction.
• Balancing Data and Intuition: Utilizing both qualitative insights and quantitative metrics to inform marketing strategies.
• Overcoming Personal Barriers: Encouraging marketers to find their voices and contribute meaningfully, regardless of natural inclinations.

Notable Quotes:

• "I have a warm place in my heart for Mark Rober because I think that he makes science super fun." — Dacey Yee [00:06]
• "It's okay. I don't need to be the loudest person in the room, but I do want to be really effective." — Dacey Yee [05:50]
• "If we feel like we have something to prove and we think that this could be great, let's make a case and go for it." — Dacey Yee [13:19]

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This comprehensive summary encapsulates the key discussions and insights shared by Dacey Yee during the episode, offering listeners a clear understanding of her approach to modern marketing and consumer engagement.

Transcript

[Dacey Yee]

If we feel like we have something to prove and we think that this could be great, let's make a case and go for it.

[Joshua Spanier]

Hi, everyone. This is Modern Marketers by Think with Google. I'm Joshua Espanier, VP of Media Lab within Google Marketing. I lead teams around the world who plan, invent, execute and measure marketing programs on behalf of Google's brands. Each episode I talk to game changing marketers and founders who are delivering modern marketing today. Today I'm here with Daecy Yee, the Chief Marketing and Revenue Officer Direct to Consumer at Experience Consumer Services. Let's dive. Right. I'm really excited today to start off a new conversation with Dacey, who is the Chief Marketing Officer. I'm checking the full list here. Daisy. Chief Marketing Officer, Revenue Officer and Direct to Consumer at Experian Consumer Services. Is that right or have I missed anything?

[Dacey Yee]

Yeah, it's the longest title on earth, isn't it? Yes. My name is Daisy Yee and I am the Chief Marketing Officer and Chief Revenue Officer for the Experian consumer business.

[Joshua Spanier]

Okay, well, I'm thrilled that you're here joining us on this Modern Marketers podcast. I'm enjoying having these conversations and sort of getting under the hood of people doing amazing things in our industry. So thank you for being here. So I'm just gonna ask you a bunch of questions. Maybe I'll throw in a few answers or two of my own to the same question. We'll see how we go. You ready?

[Dacey Yee]

I'm ready.

[Joshua Spanier]

Okay, so I'm gonna start off with something easy. Who's your favorite YouTube creator at the moment?

[Dacey Yee]

Okay. So I have a warm place in my heart for Mark Rober because I think that he makes science super fun. And who doesn't love his experiments with squirrels and fat gusts? So he's my favorite.

[Joshua Spanier]

I love Mark as well. I met him once. He came to a YouTube Brandcast event a few shows ago. I honestly couldn't. He was the nicest person I ever met in my life and my kids love his content. I enjoy watching it as well.

[Dacey Yee]

He seems super nice, right? Like, we could all be friends. I feel like that's the kind of guy, his Persona that he portrays, astonishingly nice.

[Joshua Spanier]

He could not have been nicer to everyone at the brand cast and his content shines through. It's one of the great things about YouTube. You just find these people you feel you sort of connect with in authentic ways. Are there any brands that you love personally using your life that you know, you would, you know, they're your Brands, what are they?

[Dacey Yee]

Okay. So people that know me would know that I am. I have a major thing about shoes. I love shoes. And so Nike is one of the brands that. I have a lot of Nike boxes in my closet. And when I think about why I like them so much, it's consistent. I know my size and everyone. I know that it's absolutely going to fit if I order and I feel find a pair that I want. And I've just come to be very loyal to them. I lean towards brands in which I have a really good feeling about the experience that I have with them.

[Joshua Spanier]

That makes sense. I've spent too many times. This is almost embarrassing to admit, watching some epic Nike film on YouTube, which makes me cry. There was a series they did where they met people at the finish lines of races and offered them contracts, especially sort of amateur athletes and people with certain disabilities. And the Nike representative was there to give them of the sponsorship contract there. And then they filmed it all. It's just genius use of YouTube, genius use of social and content, and just so emotional over what ultimately is a pair of shoes. Right. But somehow it's so much more than that. So I can respect that.

[Dacey Yee]

That's really cool. I would love to see that. I do think that there's a feeling around the Nike brand that's special. And so if I'm gonna love sneakers and be a sneaker head, then it's great to have one that has that feeling.

[Joshua Spanier]

How did you get to where you are today?

[Dacey Yee]

I've always been shy at Experian. I was definitely one of those people that would sit in her cube and heads down. And I remember having discussions with my mentor and saying, you know, I really want more. Like, I have aspirations. The best advice that I ever got. And he said, you're gonna have to, at some point, get comfortable and proclaim what you want. And I felt so uncomfortable thinking about that. And he pushed me and pushed me and kept asking me, are you going to say what you want? And I blurted out at that moment, okay, fine, I want to be cmo. I felt overly presumptuous to even say the words that I would like to be CMO one day, right? And there was this instant moment where he took a deep breath and said, finally, I got you to say it. And he's like, well, let's go, because now we can talk about all the things that we're gonna want you to do so that you can be ready to be cmo. And all of a sudden, I had this amazing support that I felt, and it was really practical support that said, okay, well, now that you've said it, we're able to help support you to get there. And let's talk about the things and the experiences that you're gonna need to gather and work, work through so that you'll be qualified and ready when the time is right. And it was that moment that I started to really listen to the feedback that said, hey, we're going to need you sometimes to be more on stage. Right? We're going to need you to be the voice of the marketing effort, and we're going to need you to speak up when we need that important opinion of where we're going to take the organization and the marketing and our strategies. And I started to realize that I could be shy and introverted all I wanted, but what the organization was asking of me was they were asking for my contribution and to make sure that I was helping drive the mission forward. And when I could figure that out, then I realized it wasn't a matter of how shy I was. It was really, that's. That's the way that I can contribute. That was a series of moments in which I found my voice. And I realized that it's okay. I don't need to be the loudest person in the room, but I do want to be really effective. And that's going to take me sometimes speaking up, getting comfortable with, driving the conversation, driving forward the strategies. And I think from that point, I haven't really looked back.

[Joshua Spanier]

Thank you. That's a fascinating set of insights there. And I know there's a lot of people in our industry who feel they shouldn't speak up or they can't speak up or they're nervous to do so. And what can you contribute? Is a nice framing for that. We have a number of products within Google. You have experience where, if we're being honest about it, people don't have the emotional connection to some of our products that, you know, you would want. How do you think about sort of the emotional connection to a brand like Experian? I'd love you to expand upon that.

[Dacey Yee]

Yeah, I think it's a great question. I was in a session recently with executive leadership at the highest levels, and we were going through our strategy with them, and we were talking about our product and our plans and all these aspirations that we have. And he asked us, are we paying enough attention to how a consumer feels after they interact with us? And I thought that that was a great question and a great prompt. I happen to be a consumer Advocate within our organization. I lead a lot of the teams that care about and measure how consumers think about us. How does a consumer feel when they interact with us or when they think about us. And it's a good motivating factor for us to make sure that first of all they do feel good. We've been able to help them assist, especially around a subject as important as their finances and credit. And so that's a responsibility we take very seriously. And we want every consumer to feel good after they've started their relationship with us.

[Joshua Spanier]

Makes perfect sense. I love that someone on your executive committee is. That's what every CMO wants to hear. It's part of the fun part of marketing is finding why it matters and then connecting it with your brand, connecting it with your users in a way which allows us all to be a little bit Nike in how we go to market and make people feel things. It's great.

[Dacey Yee]

Yeah, I love that. I love that you've connected that to marketing too because it's important to feel like we are making a difference and we're drawing connections and there's emotion. Right. And it's not just not surface level.

[Joshua Spanier]

Okay, let's go back in the day just a bit. I'd love to get your perspective on working on sort of E commerce and sort of E selling and from the early 2000s as you were to sort of where we are today and wherever you want to take that. I mean it's been such a journey and you, you were there at sort of beginning of all this. So what was it like back then and what's changed to now? Do you think or do you feel.

[Dacey Yee]

We have moved to a very customer centric view and experience for consumers? It is absolutely about a relationship and getting to know a consumer, figuring out how you can have a personalized experience for them and then delivering on that, meeting their needs.

[Joshua Spanier]

So when you talk about personalization, you're talking more about the sort of the products that you're offering and giving to people.

[Dacey Yee]

I think consumers expect us to know them, to know what their preferences are, what types of products to put in front of them. And it's not always just about a product and a feature, but also what is the next best thing to show a consumer and to put in front of them. And so getting to know a consumer, what they qualify for, what their intent is and how to best meet their needs, I think that's part of our job and making sure that we put a really, really good and personalized experience.

[Joshua Spanier]

For them makes sense. I Understand. Can you just talk a little bit about what do you see as sort of modern and progressive marketing today? And then maybe what are some of the tools or systems or processes that you're using or thinking about to unlock those modern practices and ways of approaching marketing today?

[Dacey Yee]

I think modernization actually comes down to the core, focusing on the individual and the consumers you're trying to reach. And so AI is a really exciting topic. There's no doubt that everyone wants to talk about it. You're trying to reach the person that you're trying to meet the needs of. And if we could do that, then all the modernization should help us get there. And so keeping it really simple, making sure you meet the needs, making sure you're really being impactful and helping consumers.

[Joshua Spanier]

So Experianz, it's a big company, right? You've got a multitude of products. Business side, consumer side. What does your multi channel approach to marketing kind of look like? How do you think about this multichannel need to engage individually with your consumers?

[Dacey Yee]

You'll hear many marketers talk about meet consumers where they're at and make sure that you allow for their preferences to be realized. We see that through data. Consumers want to engage with us through our app. And so making sure that then we are bolstered up in all of the experiences that we can within the app is really important. For example, that means making sure that our push notification strategy is tight and that advertising really draws a message to download the app and that consumers can do that very easily and seamlessly. That is all done by multiple teams within the organization. And so we work really, really hard to make sure that if we can put the consumer and the customer and that person at the center of what we're doing, then hopefully we're all doing our jobs very well to make that seamless for them. We want to make sure that consumers have a really great experience. We also want to make sure we measure ourselves in making sure that things are easy for consumers. Because there's always messiness in organizations. It's hard to get things done, it's hard to build great products. And we want them to just again leave feeling like they're better off for having that relationship with us. They're better off from coming in and engaging with us. And they should feel really good about that.

[Joshua Spanier]

One voice of the brand and one voice of the. So you use this. I love what you're saying there. Do you guys use a media mix model? Do you use other types of sort of measurement? How do you guys hold yourself? I guess accountable there's an art and science to marketing. Right. And the numbers will get you.

[Dacey Yee]

So far we're having those discussions all of the time and we're in the midst of them now. We're very excited about understanding all, all of the different funnel metrics and every part of the experience we try to measure and we have a qualitative and quantitative approach, but we also love to hear from voice a customer and making sure that we overlay that on top of all of the numerical kind of metrics that we're looking at. There is an art and science to this and there's also about feel and emotion and making sure that we're delighting our consumer consumers. And there's also this idea of hey, we also need to follow our gut. How are we going to go for the big bets if you're constantly feeling like you can't fail fast and drive for maybe a bigger decision and swing for the fences? We're going to prioritize and make some decisions based on as much data as we can. And then also we're going to do our best to go with some of the emotion around this and just place a big bet because we think that it can make a really big difference in our business, our marketing campaigns and also in consumers lives. I don't want to regret not going after some gut feel decisions. If we feel like we have something to prove and we think that this could be great, let's make a case and go for it.

[Joshua Spanier]

I love it. You did this fun campaign, really heavy video first campaign with Travis Kelce through the NFL season, you, you know, the Protect the Bag video series. And I'd love for you just to tell us about sort of the insights into sort of that approach and sort of how that came about for that campaign and really the use of leaning into video specifically.

[Dacey Yee]

Yeah, well, thank you for asking. Thank you for noticing our campaigns. We think video is one of the most engaging mediums. Right. It has the ability to handle amazing storytelling and so it is one that we think is really effective in getting our message out there. The other thing that I think is a good mix with how that campaign ran is that a big celebrity personality can also help us break through and make sure that our message is heard. And so our partnership with Travis Kelce was one that was really important to us because we had a new message to bring out and it was important for us to break through with Travis Kelce. We announced our launch of Experian Smart Money, which is a digital checking account. And the idea behind it is that consumers can improve their credit without going into debt by using this checking account and then having it connect to boost. And so this is an important message. And as you think about our mission and bringing financial power to all, we want as many people to hear and understand this message as possible. And so when you think about how to do that, it really becomes was, let's get somebody who can help us break through with that message and make sure it's really clear. Because that's a story that we want everyone to understand. All the benefits of that. And so the timing, having football creative with partnership with video and NFL we think was a smart combination to make sure that we could reach as many people as possible. We had great results. And it's a combination of that thinking, right. Making sure that we had scale. There was a strong message, it was a complicated message and we wanted to be really clear about it.

[Joshua Spanier]

Well, I mean, you don't have to say, but if you managed to sign Travis Pre Taylor Genius marketing move of the year. Thank you so much for being here today and having this conversation. It's really been fun.

[Dacey Yee]

Thank you so much for having me.

[Joshua Spanier]

A huge thank you to my guest this week, Dacey Yee, the Chief marketing and Revenue officer Direct to Consumer Experience Consumer Services. If you like this episode, please subscribe to get the latest updates and the next recording as soon as it's ready. We'll see you next time. For Modern Marketers by Think with Google.

[Frankie Guadagnino]

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