Nikki Mendonça, Accenture Interactive Operations | Adobe Summit 2019

Nikki Mendonça, Global President, Accenture Interactive Operations sits down with Jeff Frick and John Furrier for Adobe Summit 2019 at the Sands Expo in Las Vegas, NV.

Memo to marketing: Get ready for the data-driven era of hyper-personalization

When Nikki Mendonça (pictured) departed the agency world after 16 years to join Accenture in 2017, one of the first decisions she made was to change the name of the group she was being hired to lead. Instead of Intelligent Marketing Operations, the new group would be known as Accenture Interactive Operations.

The re-branding reflected not only Mendonça’s view of the group’s mission, but it also captured the shift taking place in the marketing industry today. A growing abundance of data, combined with the technology to process it and derive valuable insight, is ushering in an age of hyper-personalization where the customer’s interactive experience is key.

Delivering relevant content that appeals directly to what customers want to hear or see has become marketing’s holy grail. Yet, one recent study found that only 9% of marketers have actually developed their hyper-personalization strategies. This is the opportunity that looms large for Mendonça’s division, the global managed services arm of Accenture Interactive.

“Being able to really excel at hyper-personalization is really what we’re focused on now,” said Mendonça, global president of Accenture Interactive Operations. “Data is the answer to that. Data, hand-in-hand with artificial intelligence and machine learning, really gives us an unbelievable combination and puts hyper-personalization on steroids.”

This week, theCUBE features Nikki Mendonça as its Guest of the Week.

Using first-party data
The pot of gold at the end of the marketing rainbow is first-party data, information collected by a business from its own customers. This data is especially valuable because it generally includes past purchases, product interests, and relevant information around which effective, targeted marketing campaigns can be built.

“We really are gravitating towards a world of first-party marketing activation,” Mendonça said. “The first-party data that clients hold is unbelievably potent, and therein lies the secret of success to creating a highly engaged community.”

First-party data by itself is valuable enough, but when it can be combined with another firm’s first-party data, the payback can be significant. In March, Adobe announced that it would partner with Roku Inc. to match both firms’ first-party data and build programmatic campaigns for the streaming service’s over-the-top platform.

Accenture Interactive has also partnered with Adobe to use digital technology for enhancing the overall customer experience. One use case can be found in Subway IP LLC, the restaurant chain with operations in 100 countries and the provider of 7 million sandwiches per day. Subway utilized Accenture Interactive’s capabilities in personalization and organizational design to build an experimentation operating model. With the assistance of Adobe Analytics, Subway conducted user experience tests to tweak promotional messaging on its homepage, gaining instant results and meaningful insight on how design changes could impact business results.

“I’m loving what Adobe is doing,” Mendonça said. “They are almost accelerating the ‘platformization’ of marketing. To be able to design the right marketing technology, leverage it fully and, with foundational tech like Adobe, build additional vertical bespoke technology onto that, it really starts to give clients a competitive advantage.”

Consolidation is coming
Is it possible to have too much of a good thing when it comes to marketing tech? One of the most complicated graphics ever devised is the legendary LUMAscape, a chart created by the investment bank Luma Partners LLC to visually illustrate the ad and marketing technology landscape.
...........................

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of Adobe Summit 2019. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for Adobe Summit 2019. Neither Accenture Interactive, the sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)