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"Don't be the Taylor Swift of Martech." - Jacqueline Freedman
Jacqueline and Juan break down three of the latest Martech moments: Braze's all-in AI decisioning push, Zeta Global's acquisition of Marigold, and what Taylor Swift's marketing playbook reveals about loyalty and fandom.
Drawing from recent Martech World Forum events in London and San Francisco, they cut through the hype around AI, vendor economics, and what real enterprise teams are actually doing to make Martech work.
Highlights
Discover how Taylor Swift's variant strategy rewrites loyalty and first-party data engagement.
Learn why most AI decisioning pilots stall—and how to tell if your org is ready.
Understand what the Zeta–Marigold deal says about Martech consolidation and the future of loyalty tech.
Explore how enterprise teams turn "global rollouts" into many small, scalable wins.
Hear why authenticity and data discipline still beat automation and hype.
This episode wouldn't have been possible without the help of our sponsor Hightouch.
This episode wouldn't have been possible without the help of our sponsor Hightouch. Looking for a smarter way to activate your customer data? See what Hightouch can do for you at hightouch.com/msom.
Timestamps3:25 — Lessons from HSBC & Tailored Brands (Men's Wearhouse) on rolling out AI at scale. 7:12 — Braze's AI Decisioning: Analyzing the early use cases and the hard truth about ROI. 10:28 — Vendor rush: CDPs, decisioning, and the hidden cost of data operations. 14:04 — The Real Cost of AI: Why governance and data readiness are the biggest factors in Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). 16:34 — Zeta Global acquires Marigold: strategy, price, and implications. 21:01 — The Taylor Swift Effect: loyalty, data, fandom economics, and corporate greed. 28:37 — Office Hours Q&A: Do you think the real power of a show like this is in analyzing the companies—or in challenging how the industry itself thinks about using (or refusing) AI in daily work?
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Creators and Guests
What is Making Sense of Martech?
Unfiltered takes on the biggest shifts in marketing technology. We spotlight what matters, who's leading (or lagging), and what's next. In Martech, clarity is power — and we're here to deliver it.
00;00;04;29 - 00;00;08;06
Speaker 1
Welcome to the Making Sense of MarTech podcast. I'm Jaclyn Freedman.
00;00;08;11 - 00;00;09;28
Speaker 2
And I am one Mendoza.
00;00;10;04 - 00;00;18;18
Speaker 1
And this is Office Hours and we cut through the noise and discuss the latest and greatest in the MarTech landscape. So let's dove in. First of all, where the hell have we been?
00;00;18;23 - 00;00;20;29
Speaker 2
I would say like six or seven countries.
00;00;21;06 - 00;00;22;05
Speaker 1
A lot of different places.
00;00;22;26 - 00;00;44;22
Speaker 2
A lot of different places. Six or seven different countries. It's been a crazy whirlwind the past four weeks. We had our Multicloud Forum event in London. Jaclyn, you went on your honeymoon in Spain, which is which is cute and exciting and everything awesome about that. And then we've just had our San Francisco event about taking form of S.F. and now I'm in Denver.
00;00;45;03 - 00;00;49;11
Speaker 2
I just returned from a trip to Aspen doing some hiking. And and now we have four.
00;00;49;12 - 00;00;52;05
Speaker 1
Will you be speaking now? Why are you in Denver?
00;00;52;13 - 00;01;11;00
Speaker 2
I'm in Denver to do a keynote on the autonomous era of MarTech with our friends over at progress site Vanity. They're running an amazing conference every year here in Denver called MarTech Progress next. So it's awesome. And I'll be joined by folks like Scott Brinker from Dream of Smile and then some other folks as well in the industry.
00;01;11;01 - 00;01;34;03
Speaker 2
So to that great lineup, just a casual lineup of MarTech heavyweights. But yeah, so we've been all over the world. We've been obviously quite inspired by so many amazing people in the industry speaking, collaborating, doing workshops, talking about marketing technology, what it means to the enterprise a lot of our content recently has actually been about A.I. and this is kind of everything we're doing it at the moment.
00;01;34;13 - 00;01;40;29
Speaker 2
So what were your takeaways? I guess we had a London event analysis Francisco event, but oh, your takeaways from from both events.
00;01;41;01 - 00;02;12;07
Speaker 1
Yeah. There were so many amazing speakers, conversations, sidebar conversations, dinners that came as a result. And while there were plenty of actual presentations and keynotes that I thought were spectacular, I was really left with two things. One of which was just the general motivation, determination of our community, but also the community itself. The people getting to meet the folks that I have slacked with for years or worked with and never actually met in person.
00;02;12;14 - 00;02;43;12
Speaker 1
As someone I have worked with for seven years, we finally met in person in London. And so really and also we forgot to add we were in the middle of a tube strike for our London event, so people literally walked to hours in the heat because it was gorgeous and sunny to attend the event, which I don't know very many conferences, events, work places, folks would be that motivated and determined and focused to come on their own time.
00;02;43;22 - 00;02;49;23
Speaker 1
And so it was really incredible to witness. And so it just reminded me how much community matters.
00;02;50;01 - 00;03;07;06
Speaker 2
Yeah, it was really amazing. Yeah. And also just inspiration. A lot of these folks coming in so a lot of folks that were hit with a chip strike kind of crazy in London during that week because all the grain blocks were taken away, everyone had a green bike and then they were just popped in random parts of the city.
00;03;07;12 - 00;03;25;21
Speaker 2
So it just felt like there was an avalanche of bikes because all the tube, all the trains were shut down. But I think for me, like the big takeaways was just some of the brands that were, but really just giving us a showcase into what they're doing with their marketing technology program of work. For example, at London, we had HSBC, an amazing guy, James Taylor.
00;03;25;27 - 00;03;38;20
Speaker 2
Give us a view of that global MarTech rollout across 30 countries. And his big catch line was there's no such thing as a global rollout of magic, only 30 small ones. And so really it.
00;03;38;21 - 00;03;38;25
Speaker 1
Was.
00;03;39;03 - 00;04;02;00
Speaker 2
Sense. Yeah. Yeah. Like HSBC is such a well-known global brand, but also they have just a really fabulous, really high caliber marketing technology team. And to see them sort of rolling out all those capabilities that they building locally into all the other regions was fascinating. Another really good takeaway was Jane Rex from Tailored Brands. So she heads up the marketing technology program there.
00;04;02;10 - 00;04;23;03
Speaker 2
Prior to that, she was its lifecycle and personalization. And she did this great session on personalization strategy. And she had this like concept, which was, are you a best friend or a best brand? And she kind of gives you a comparison between, well, what does a best friend do for you and what should a best friend? So brand that kind of has that similar experience as a friend would have.
00;04;23;08 - 00;04;39;06
Speaker 2
What did I do similarly? So things like recommending products that would actually be fitting to you that if you're having a challenging time as a customer, for example, if you can't pay pedigree or financial hardship, you know your friends are going to be there for you. The brand should be there for you through customer experience, personalization in the same way.
00;04;39;14 - 00;05;02;10
Speaker 2
And then just many, many examples of just getting personalization, right? Both the commercial viability of it and getting the returns that you need from those programs of work, but also like what kind of brand you want to be and how does that shine through in your personalization program? So just an amazing sort of twist to events. There are two very different cities, extremely different polar opposite San Francisco.
00;05;02;11 - 00;05;16;22
Speaker 2
This is the tech hub of the world. And London is really a global hub for VR and all of Europe in terms of global headquartered brands. And so yeah, very fun to be a part of that. All we do have our New York event coming up on the 18th and 19th of November. We'd love to see you there.
00;05;16;28 - 00;05;33;08
Speaker 2
Similar caliber folks all sharing about what they're learning in the companies they work in. All senior marketing technology executives. Just amazing stuff. So I really do think of our events season right now, but we have actually a really exciting announcement to make. Jacqueline, do you can you tell us a bit about our first ever sponsor?
00;05;33;19 - 00;05;56;02
Speaker 1
Yeah, we do. High Touch has become a sponsor for us. And not only is that exciting, but it actually means we're no longer in vain just doing this out of the kindness of our own hearts. And granted, we will continue to do that and be unbiased. However, it just means we get to cover our editing costs. And I got a fancy new mike as a result too.
00;05;56;13 - 00;06;19;07
Speaker 1
And so we're definitely excited about just the amount of brands who've come to us as opposed to us go to them and excitement and they see the momentum we're building. They get our point of view and of course we'll continue always remain agnostic and research base and evidence based. However, we're allowed to have a spin, we're allowed to recognize talent.
00;06;19;07 - 00;06;26;12
Speaker 1
And so it's just a really great opening and entry point for us. Only being two months into this, what are your thoughts?
00;06;26;16 - 00;06;49;09
Speaker 2
The demand for sponsorship has been crazy, especially as we've resurrected the podcast and it as it's grown. But high touch obviously have come on board. Great team, great technology and also very good experimenting with marketing as well. So it's great to have them on board with us. So we had a fantastic session from Jane Rex. She heads up marketing technology at Tailored Brands, which is a agglomerate which includes the Men's Wearhouse and just a bank as well.
00;06;49;14 - 00;07;12;01
Speaker 2
So an amazing retail powerhouse. So now let's move to our first discussion point of the week, which is while we were in San Francisco, Bryce was in Forge, was at a food conference in Las Vegas, and they have announced a bunch of new stuff, a lot of it centered around A.I. decisioning and A.I. tooling. What happened at Bryce Forge?
00;07;12;01 - 00;07;39;03
Speaker 1
Yeah. One very envious that we didn't get to go. We had two competing events at the same time, but that's okay. It definitely was anticipated based off of the offer fit acquisition earlier this year that I decisioning and just generally leading into I was going to be a main point and it was very much so we kind of said it earlier on, but it really does look like they directly want to compete with the adorable high touch partnership in particular.
00;07;39;15 - 00;07;57;21
Speaker 1
And I found it really fascinating and curious, have they actually updated the tech? And from what I can tell like offer fit as part of Bray's is still not HIPA compliant. We haven't heard any updates. I've asked around and it just seems like a white labeling of it. What are your thoughts?
00;07;57;28 - 00;08;24;02
Speaker 2
Yeah, I think it's interesting. There's such a sort of deluge of vendors getting into A.I. decisioning, obviously braze. Now with the off field acquisition, we're starting to see what their strategy starting to look like. But I would say that it's still super early, there's still not a lot of use cases. So for example, in the the official announcement that feature two brands, one is a South African sort of a B2C e-commerce company.
00;08;24;10 - 00;08;36;26
Speaker 2
And then the other one is Kayo Sports. Now for those not listening out of Australia, Kayo is the sort of it's owned by Foxtel. It's a streaming platform basically. It's kind of like a Netflix for sports. So you can watch Netflix and streaming like ESPN.
00;08;37;04 - 00;08;37;26
Speaker 1
But yeah.
00;08;38;07 - 00;08;56;04
Speaker 2
ESPN would be similar, but it's its own streaming product. You know, it's kind of like a Netflix of sports, basically. But Kayo, I've been a long time customer of off of it. So off of this is not a new customer testimonial that you know, that what they were showcasing has been around for a long while. But you know, all the considered you know, this acquisition happened less than six months ago.
00;08;56;04 - 00;09;15;17
Speaker 2
So we wouldn't expect too much in this announcement. But but the amount of product marketing that's going around this so all this kind of thinking that this would be a smaller feature in focus here, that they'd really stretching this up and putting some branding around it next year. But they're really fast tracking that and and really calling it now bright eyed decisioning and and whatnot.
00;09;15;17 - 00;09;26;26
Speaker 2
But again, I think they are decisioning category is still messy. You know, there's some great brands that are doing some amazing work in this space, but there's not a lot of them. And it's not as mainstream as everyone thinks.
00;09;27;01 - 00;09;50;19
Speaker 1
Yeah, and there are a fair amount of brands, but the big brands I know have yet to actually achieve ROI. So that's why they're not on a lot of different brand announcements. Like maybe one day they will, but they're still in their pilot season, even if it's more than a year at this point. And so like I feel for the Braves and offer fit team in that they weren't able to highlight a bigger brand.
00;09;51;02 - 00;10;04;04
Speaker 1
But at the same time it'll be very interesting to watch the space and especially where High Touch comes into play. And really how directly competitive will these two players become? Yeah.
00;10;04;14 - 00;10;28;14
Speaker 2
It just seems to me like if you chuck in the bucket, you know what SAS is doing. So SAS have been innovating in the space. I've been in the air decisioning space for a long time, but now they've started to launch a marketing product. Around this you've got that, you've got app as well, which is a new sort of air decision, energetic CDP type product of sea breeze, high touch, iterable, mau engage doing things in the space as well, you know.
00;10;28;18 - 00;10;49;10
Speaker 2
So there seems to be this rush and I honestly think that most of the vendors should probably tread a bit more carefully. Yeah. You know, like really the phrase AI decisioning studio took center stage here. Bryce Right. But most of the customers coming to that event, most customers or most of the brands that we chat with, they're still trying to get value out of that core marketing platform.
00;10;49;10 - 00;10;52;29
Speaker 2
You know, they're not. They are far beyond them. Yeah.
00;10;52;29 - 00;10;54;25
Speaker 1
Email by email asking.
00;10;55;25 - 00;11;17;10
Speaker 2
Email is king a never die by air decision. He promises to make that smarter email, but most brands are just not there. There's a great post earlier this week that a shuttle LinkedIn just about this topic, which is your decisioning is great until you need to make your sales target for the end of the quarter because it's you can't you have to turn that off and then do a bunch of tactics to drive that revenue in a retail environment.
00;11;17;10 - 00;11;38;14
Speaker 2
That is the reality. You know, you have so many other things competing for what's happening on your website, what goes out with the email marketing, what customers are receiving. You know, take for example, brand partnerships is another great example here where, you know, you have another brand partnership. You need to prioritize that, but that doesn't really fit within a flux of an air decisioning model that's deciding the content to a customer.
00;11;38;14 - 00;11;50;25
Speaker 2
So I think that like with all of the internal politics of a lot of enterprise brands, a lot of the different competing priorities, plus a lot of companies that just try to do email, well, you know, that is not enough at this stage. So it is a big bet.
00;11;50;25 - 00;12;02;08
Speaker 1
It's almost impossible in so many regards, especially at scale, it gets harder and harder. And so, yeah, it just it's adding more to the mix and more complexity at times.
00;12;02;08 - 00;12;21;27
Speaker 2
It's adding complexity. It's adding. So I could see where it's going, but we're probably two years, three years away from saying really seeing where this category starts to go. I actually think it's exciting because I decisioning has for sure customer decisioning has been around for a while and it's kind of just collected dust over, you know, because the air has never been that great.
00;12;21;27 - 00;12;39;25
Speaker 2
And then also it's kind of limited, but now it's really, it's really starting to ramp up. But at the end of the day, I would say that so much here that can be explored, so many opportunities, but at the same time it's going to take a while just to get a bit of a flavor for what the kind of use cases are, what kind of strategies come out of this.
00;12;40;01 - 00;12;50;10
Speaker 2
You know, it's going to take some time, but it's, I think, good on Bryce for embracing it. Of course, you know, it is the the product as you're at the moment. So everyone is getting into it for sure.
00;12;50;10 - 00;13;17;23
Speaker 1
It's going to be an interesting survival of the fittest, but also survival of who can do it, the cheapest for the most. And that's really all the different practitioners I speak to if it is working. For example, we had a really great episode with Adrian Rau of how buttocks he would use every single thing. It's just not cost effective and I know numerous brands that are breaking up with partners because it just doesn't make sense financially.
00;13;18;04 - 00;13;32;11
Speaker 1
The ROI does not make up for the cost in and of itself, even if it is technically working. So I think there's a lot of different factors at play that everyone's going to need to navigate, but one of which in particular is the pricing structure and models.
00;13;32;11 - 00;13;49;00
Speaker 2
Yeah, it's interesting that even it's been four or five months since that acquisition happened. I would not be surprised if a lot of the vendors are doing free projects for enterprise, especially some of the bigger name brands, because like the number one priority for a lot of these vendors is getting runs on the board to get that ROI, you know.
00;13;49;02 - 00;14;04;06
Speaker 2
So I would say the go to market strategy here is do a lot of free stuff, a lot, very low cost, get that our why, create those success stories and then sell that to the customers that are willing to pay for it. But yeah, you're right, the cost there's so many different things if you look at it, total cost of ownership, assessment of AI.
00;14;04;18 - 00;14;21;29
Speaker 2
There's all like a powered Verma at Matrix Square. He does a great piece of research on this, which is the total cost of ownership for air decisioning is not just the technology. The vendors would like us to think it's just the technology, but it's the data readiness, it's the skill sets and the training. It's governance and compliance, legal resources.
00;14;22;06 - 00;14;43;13
Speaker 2
You know, there are so many of different regional resources as well, localization. So there's all of these things that need to feed into it and the cost, not just the technology, but the cost of governance is much higher than the cost of actual technology. And so, you know, like all of that considered I have would say that, yep, a lot of these vendors, they're probably really prioritizing getting runs on the board.
00;14;43;19 - 00;15;00;07
Speaker 2
Look, if I was running go to market for this product for a vendor, I would do that. I'll go, let's go get the three best brands in the world and then get some reasonable get some successful outcomes. So that's kind of the thinking there around Bryce for us and what happened at Las Vegas last week and very interesting, very interesting to see where the space is going.
00;15;00;15 - 00;15;13;15
Speaker 2
But let's talk a little bit more about I. Of course, this episode is also because a lot of announcements there was a great announcement recently that 40% of GDP growth this year in America has come from investments.
00;15;13;16 - 00;15;18;15
Speaker 1
I believe it just based off of every funding and raise announcement.
00;15;18;22 - 00;15;39;02
Speaker 2
Yeah, me too. It's crazy talking with a vendor earlier today. What their name where they are very early. They do like customer service I a customer service stuff so like you call capital center and and then there's an agent instead of an actual person and the amount of stuff like did a couple, you know, they've raised $250 million.
00;15;39;02 - 00;15;56;28
Speaker 2
They're blowing it all on massive, you know, Super Bowl ads and billboard campaigns, you know, and that's to me, like the sign of a real backbone when the vendors stop investing in the Super Bowl, like literally tens to hundreds of millions of dollars. That's when you know that. It's just yeah, it's the end is near for sure.
00;15;57;10 - 00;16;16;13
Speaker 1
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00;16;16;14 - 00;16;34;23
Speaker 1
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00;16;34;28 - 00;16;44;01
Speaker 1
And now back to the hotseat. All right, we've got another acquisition that has occurred. This time it was Marigold Insider. What are your thoughts? One.
00;16;44;09 - 00;16;48;03
Speaker 2
I don't get it. I just don't get this acquisition. What do you mean?
00;16;48;03 - 00;16;54;22
Speaker 1
It makes so much sense. It's dinosaurs with dinosaurs. They're trying not to go extinct.
00;16;55;02 - 00;17;16;02
Speaker 2
Yeah, well, Marigold is a relatively new brand, but the company can go hybrid. It's a conglomerate. And then Cheetah Digital and several other apps kind of came together as a loyalty proposition, customer experience proposition, which is cool. I mean, you know, they're been around for a long while. That's I don't think that discounts them. But Zeta Global is they have been through a very funny season.
00;17;16;10 - 00;17;22;29
Speaker 2
You know, they consistently say every quarter they beat their forecasts every quarter. That's true. And they're growing every quarter.
00;17;23;05 - 00;17;43;11
Speaker 1
16 straight quarters, which is astounding if it's both true and reflective of increase or increased financial status every single quarter. But I'd be curious to know what it means exactly, if that's a dollar more every quarter or a couple extra million a quarter. And I just don't know.
00;17;43;13 - 00;18;07;08
Speaker 2
I honestly, I look at the Zeta global situation and they're scaling and growing really quickly, not because they're mature investors, because the adtech investments there are data provider, they collect data and they sold off to other other ad networks. They grow that network in themselves. And that's where all their revenue is coming from, is through those mechanisms. But as they do actually have their conference as of this week of this recording, so they'll have a bunch of announcements around this acquisition with Marigold.
00;18;07;08 - 00;18;27;05
Speaker 2
Obviously, they tie up all their acquisitions with their major event in New York City. So, you know, very good at playing the Wall Street game. Of course, they've got some very good exacts that just know how to hype things up, which is good, which is always fun to say. But coming back to this strategy, I don't understand it really, because as I said, like most of their revenue, most of their growth comes from at ticket investments.
00;18;27;05 - 00;18;49;09
Speaker 2
And they have been acquiring a lot of ad tech in recent years. Zeta Global and Marigold Loyalty. Yeah, they said I got to say, they pay. They've got a woken up marketing automation platform. I've sat through the analyst briefings and the pitches. I get it. They're trying to go after some of that market, but when you look at some of their customers, they're not enterprise barbershops and, you know, auto repairs.
00;18;49;09 - 00;19;08;06
Speaker 2
And, you know so I could see potentially with some cash injection into Marigold might help they go to market there's probably a lot of shared customers there potentially but at the same time you know, what was it, $100 million in cash and $100 million of Zeta shares positions. So a tortured million dollar acquisition of the Marigold loyalty aspect.
00;19;08;06 - 00;19;27;17
Speaker 2
Not the whole pie, just loyalty. That's a lot of money, too. But, you know, that is George. You know, bear in mind that BRAZILE Quite often of for more than 300 million. So that's getting up there in terms of acquisitions. But again, I'd yet to see what this all means. I mean, I haven't seen a lot of strength in that market automation, the customer experience platform because the business is so focused on adtech.
00;19;27;17 - 00;19;45;22
Speaker 2
Honestly, I haven't seen any event to really thread this native data really well except for maybe Adobe. Adobe's been able to do both experience cloud and DMP, but even then, you know, they're a much larger organization. They have the capability to do that. Is Leidos trying to go after the whole pie? Can they do it? I don't know yet.
00;19;45;27 - 00;19;50;00
Speaker 2
Maybe we need to talk to more customers about that. But it's it's very interesting to see what they're doing.
00;19;50;00 - 00;20;11;20
Speaker 1
Yeah, I definitely agree with David Chan of Deloitte's thoughts on this, where they're looking a lot like Epsilon these days with their their product and service mix. And I don't know if that's a compliment. I wouldn't consider it one if I were on the inside. But you know, we're in the consolidation era, so it makes sense that it happened.
00;20;11;20 - 00;20;14;28
Speaker 1
We'll see what happens. Ultimately and how it plays out.
00;20;15;05 - 00;20;29;10
Speaker 2
We certainly will. Well, I hope the folks at Marigold get a payday out of this. You know, I've met some of the account executives and some of the ideas. I work very hard to win deals and they go head to head a lot with brands that are a lot of the other customer experience platforms. They're a little bit of an underdog in that regard.
00;20;29;10 - 00;20;44;28
Speaker 2
You know, they're not the most well known. They don't have a big global presence, you know. So a lot of hard work building up. I feel like that. So, you know, should discount that. That's a lot of hard work going into building what is what is arguably a very good loyalty platform as well. So congratulations to them both, I think.
00;20;45;06 - 00;21;00;20
Speaker 2
And let's see what happens. Speaking of loyalty and branding, we have a wild card story, which is Taylor Swift's new album. It's just been announced and she has ruffled a lot of feathers. And I don't know if her fans are really reacting that well to it.
00;21;01;15 - 00;21;25;12
Speaker 1
Yeah, well, we have to at least start with the accomplishments. She sold 2.7 million copies of her album across physical and digital editions, and that doesn't even mention the nearly 30 variants, which we will get to, but that in of itself is the second most behind Adele. And then also at the same time, she launched a movie at AMC Theaters and raked in 34 million opening weekend.
00;21;25;27 - 00;21;43;13
Speaker 1
And just those two accomplishments alone are insanely impressive, but it further just proves how much of a business person she is and a marketer and at this point, a musician willing to create art. A little bit of a hot take. I'm so sorry, Swifties, but there's a lot more. Come in here. What are your thoughts?
00;21;43;22 - 00;22;00;12
Speaker 2
Yeah, I think it's interesting. Taylor Swift, she she is definitely more of a marketer than an artist at this point. I think, like, I read a really great review that she's basically that Mr. based of female musicians, it's like what you will but she's cracked the algorithm of, you know, what kind of music, particularly women, young women are interested in.
00;22;00;24 - 00;22;22;13
Speaker 2
And she just keeps repeating that, churning that out every single release. She's released five albums in the last five years, you know, and it's been very disruptive. You know, she's also been consolidating a business empire, you know, buying back all of their records and also, like rewriting them. So ironically, she wrote her records, rereleased her records under a new recording, and then she ended up just buying them all back anyway.
00;22;22;15 - 00;22;42;21
Speaker 2
So what's the point of all of that? Well, it's probably just a publicity thing. So she's very good at like even the, you know, Charli XCX. She's this space, right? And then one of her songs, she's kind of punching down a Charli and Charli. Last year she had the breakout released with Brat, and that was ten years of being a musician, a performer, and then she had a breakout release.
00;22;42;22 - 00;22;57;08
Speaker 2
And Taylor Swift is sort of and what part of her album was talking about Taylor Swift. Now, Awkward was meeting her and things like that. And that Taylor Swift is kind of punching down, saying That was awkward. You know, it's a bit of a weird situation where she's a billionaire. Like, what else can she really do at this point?
00;22;57;17 - 00;23;02;28
Speaker 2
You know, there is nothing there's nothing left in the laptop, really. There's nothing about punching down on other celebrities.
00;23;02;28 - 00;23;36;11
Speaker 1
Yeah. No one can really penetrate or touch that level of status. And I don't know my favorite description of the album in general. And just kind of to your point, like she is the Mr. Beast of Music at this point, but she's also her album has the spiritual energy of a bachelorette party penis decor. It's just like we got the bargain basement album, and it really disappoints me because she is capable of such hits and such great musicality.
00;23;36;11 - 00;24;21;20
Speaker 1
She's had a wide varying. She does so many different genres and it just feels like a repeat of her old hits. But watered down. And I've seen a lot of references to the trashy beat version, and this is where that 30 variant component really comes into play because she games the system. It's not just her. However, she is the number one queen of gaming, the algorithm of which include the Billboard charts, the Spotify charts, and of course, social media, too, to that end, it's fascinating to take the music out of the story and recognize the branding, the loyalty, the amount of fans who are purchasing multiple versions of the same album with a slightly different
00;24;21;20 - 00;24;43;17
Speaker 1
color disc or a slightly different color. This or a demo of this, which is a genius branding perspective. But how would we think about that if we were in the MarTech space where you could buy three different versions of the exact same platform? Is that madness or is that genius if they're willing to buy it?
00;24;43;23 - 00;25;06;05
Speaker 2
Yeah. Well, like I know the person who manages Taylor Swift's CDP and it's a very interesting way, way which goes do tell what. So I can't talk about it much without revealing names because it's all hush hush. But underneath Taylor Swift, I got to say, is a very, very sophisticated marketing technology program. They are extremely good at direct marketing.
00;25;06;11 - 00;25;25;17
Speaker 2
They build up this 50 communities like nothing you will ever say they're very good with data and it actually is in conjunction with the music labels as well. So the music labels fade into that and the music labels are actually becoming data assets in themselves. But Taylor Swift's business, like every other massive high profile company, is running off data.
00;25;25;17 - 00;25;51;14
Speaker 2
Data is their biggest assets, how they sell tickets. Every single ticket that she sells for Arista that goes into the CDP. You know, everything that she sends out in terms of marketing, all that engagement on a website and all the direct sales, all of that gets fed in to that CDP. So it's very interesting. You wouldn't necessarily see that on the front end just looking at the media, but just looking at Taylor Swift like, yes, cool, sophisticated with data, but also terms of just owning the conversation.
00;25;51;14 - 00;26;07;08
Speaker 2
Right. She's one of the few artists that just can set an agenda in the public media. You know, for example, Rolling Stone had a full page cover on their website over the past three days that was paid for by Taylor Swift. Rolling Stone gave the album a ten out of ten, you know, and so.
00;26;07;09 - 00;26;19;14
Speaker 1
No, I missed that. I saw Pitchfork giving it a 5.9. I did not see Oh man, it turned out we're having sponsored sponsored reviews in music now.
00;26;20;15 - 00;26;42;22
Speaker 2
Yes. And so Taylor Swift, you know, it's she's a billionaire and she's creating music, talking about high school romances and being flooded by other celebrities after a point. It gets old, you know? And I think that with any large organization, a company that gets so big that there's really no more rope, there's nothing left on the ladder. There's only one way, there's only one direction, you know.
00;26;42;23 - 00;26;48;20
Speaker 2
And, you know, no preying on the Taylor Swift downfall. But, you know, there is a lot of the backlash is where.
00;26;48;20 - 00;26;54;26
Speaker 1
She she is completely supported regardless of where she ends up on the charts.
00;26;54;26 - 00;27;02;02
Speaker 2
Exactly. And so there you go. Taylor Swift said maybe it's part of the the billion dollar valuation. There you go.
00;27;02;02 - 00;27;22;17
Speaker 1
Sounds like one. I need to sign up for her emails just to start tracking and learning more into the back end. But also, I'm going to leave us on the best note, which was from the defector dot com website. No good art comes from greed and I think the same can be said for the big shots like Salesforce and Adobe.
00;27;22;17 - 00;27;43;27
Speaker 1
The art as in the creativeness, the innovation. It doesn't come from the corporate greed of continually knowing you've got the best. You have to be fighting, you have to be competing, you have to be trying to challenge your own self and your own skills because you are that good. And so it's it's a good metaphor. Don't be the Taylor Swift of MarTech.
00;27;43;28 - 00;28;03;13
Speaker 2
Don't be the child systematic. And you know what? Taylor Swift, ten years ago, crack the algorithm on what successful music should look like. She cracked the algorithm, and same with the larger vendors in our space and the bigger brands. They crack the algorithm at some point in time. And it's very hard as you get on and you get older to really continue to be able to crack that.
00;28;03;13 - 00;28;20;14
Speaker 2
So that's why I like Charlie actually is a bit of a threat to Taylor Swift I think is because she's new blood, new approach, new thinking of music is much more raw, it's less produced, more honest as well. And, you know, I actually say culturally that a Taylor Swift rebellion is sort of underway because a lot of people want authenticity.
00;28;20;22 - 00;28;37;11
Speaker 2
And I think a lot of people very interested in having a billionaire produce another album that cost that, you know, 12 different songwriters and all these different producers. And it's like totally overproduced and not real. And so, Deb, it's a very interesting type of music, but moving on to our office hours question so we do have a question.
00;28;37;11 - 00;28;38;27
Speaker 2
Yes, Jacqueline, tell us a little bit.
00;28;39;04 - 00;29;00;23
Speaker 1
Yeah. So Tracey Fudge at I Thrive asked, do you think the real power of a show like this, the making sense of MarTech podcast, is in analyzing the companies? Or is it in the challenging of how the industry itself thinks about using or refusing? I in daily work, I've got some thoughts, but I'll let you go first.
00;29;01;06 - 00;29;26;25
Speaker 2
I think this was a reference to our last office hours where we're talking about, you know, rejecting our tools and and the risks involved with using them. I think it's a bit of both. You have to understand what the technology vendors are doing, what their strategy is, what their worldview is, what they gain, how they're monetizing. Because if you don't understand those things, then you can't really adapt to how you're going to do your daily work, you know, like we know that some vendors are really good at locking you in and not knowing that is going to impact your daily work.
00;29;26;25 - 00;29;52;09
Speaker 2
You've got to blindly fall into deals or acquire technology that you will regret in the future. An ally is an ultimate sort of version of that. I think I look in is something that we'll be talking about the next couple of years as we get past this sort of like initial innovation phase. Companies going, Oh yeah, my entire customer decisioning is on a proprietary algorithm that we can't influence and that we want to shift, but we can't now, you know, so I would say like that's just one example.
00;29;52;09 - 00;30;10;19
Speaker 2
Vendor lock in is just one of those things. But to really understand even just that, you need to understand the vendor strategy. A lot of it is all highly incentivized things like lock in, in the same way that they are also really incentivized to having very cheap tooling, very easy to use. Bottoms up approaches to go to market is a massive part of SAS marketing and revenue growth.
00;30;10;19 - 00;30;27;03
Speaker 2
So I would say that this is one in the same thing. I mean challenging and thinking about how you use air in your daily work. It comes with understanding the technology initially and then understanding your business and what your business actually needs. You know, eventually you'll come to a point where you just need to focus on your business needs.
00;30;27;03 - 00;30;46;18
Speaker 2
It can be as simple as that. I had a conversation earlier this week with a colleague and he said that, you know, recently he's been teaching a lot of marketers to do one thing, find the test ten most valuable customers that you have in your database, and then create a story for each of the ten. And each of the ten should have a story of how they were acquired, how well they were trained, and how they keep spending.
00;30;46;18 - 00;31;05;15
Speaker 2
And then you all you should do is learn about those ten and walk. Okay, well, and then apply it to the rest of your data. You know, how can you create more of those top ten? Now, that's a great thing to think about. But at the same time, like, you know, A.I. and all these other problems that you're trying to solve, how should that feed into things like that, which is driving those real, tangible outcomes for the customer?
00;31;05;22 - 00;31;12;28
Speaker 2
And that should be the main priority here. But analyzing technology for our customers and your business that goes hand in hand, you really need to understand both.
00;31;13;06 - 00;31;45;24
Speaker 1
Yeah, I agree with you. But also I think there's value and whether it's our show or others questioning the product marketing, questioning the self motivated, the self prophesies, I did all of this with a I super quickly, super easily and it's amazing. It's worth questioning it all. Not in a esoteric philosophic oracle it shouldn't exist way. But is that actually beneficial for your own workflow, for your business's workflow?
00;31;46;07 - 00;32;10;06
Speaker 1
For example, we could automate a lot of our podcast situation. We could automate all of our outlines based off of the past two weeks worth of news. We could do all these sorts of things, but then you miss out on the human filtration component and also the intentionality. I think we have a very clear intention. Yes, of course you can prompt that into your GPT to have that as well.
00;32;10;08 - 00;32;24;06
Speaker 1
But I guess there's also just a certain level of pride and not hubris, but pride of what you're creating and having your own fingerprints on it. And for me, I see having my fingerprint and voice as more than a binary code.
00;32;24;12 - 00;32;48;18
Speaker 2
Yep, I definitely agree with that. I've met plenty of folks that produce content and they just put A.I. against it. And guess what? There's not a lot of growth. There's not a lot of genuine loyalty. The kind of loyalty we want to see from the Swifties. You know, the reason why this massive loyalty for Taylor Swift. Exactly. You know, you know how much the Swifties revolt, if they found out that Taylor Swift was creating songs of GBG, that would be riots in the streets.
00;32;48;18 - 00;32;56;10
Speaker 2
People be tipping the cars, you know, and people throwing hand grenades in the shops, you know, that's what's going to happen because loyalty comes from that connection to other human.
00;32;56;13 - 00;33;08;22
Speaker 1
Let's not give a preview of what's wrong with the world. Steal Taylor Swift is harmless except for the eco terrorism. We can just calm down.
00;33;08;24 - 00;33;26;04
Speaker 2
But it's, you know, authenticity that and I think just coming back to the heart of this question, what's the real power of the show? Well, the real power of the show is to help senior marketing technology leaders grapple with what's changing in the industry. Really, you know, and how they should bring that back to their business. Because at the end of the day, change is happening all around us.
00;33;26;12 - 00;33;46;14
Speaker 2
And we know that with most large enterprises, there's inertia, there's a lot of delays. But then if they don't move quick enough, then they get disrupted. Happens time and time again. It's the story as all this time. And so our role here is to sort of analyze the companies in order to drive those insights that influence and help companies make smarter choices.
00;33;46;14 - 00;33;51;23
Speaker 2
So just one piece of the puzzle, but definitely the podcast is helping support folks do that. So yeah.
00;33;52;05 - 00;34;20;14
Speaker 1
Yeah. And really we want to make sense of what doesn't make sense. And that's how we met. Juan was saying some crazy things, I was saying some crazy things and we realize, hey, we've got some crazy ideas, but they resonate. And so really, if anything, we're just grateful to have a platform to talk about this and also question us because we're questioning everything we see on Arlington Feed and our news feed and the critical thinking skills we all need.
00;34;20;14 - 00;34;24;16
Speaker 1
And so if you're not thinking critically of your tech stack, it's time to start.
00;34;24;17 - 00;34;45;04
Speaker 2
Oh, yes. Well, in saying that, thank you for joining us for another episode of Making Sense of MarTech. You can find us on the magic weekly dot com forward slash me so you can also subscribe there and get an email every time we release a new episode can also check us out on podcasts, on Spotify and Apple Podcasts, and also please subscribe and link to our YouTube channel as well.
00;34;45;12 - 00;34;46;27
Speaker 2
But for now, stay curious.
00;34;47;14 - 00;34;48;13
Speaker 1
And don't forget our read.
00;34;48;13 - 00;34;54;13
Speaker 2
It. Oh yes. And don't forget I read it, but don't forget to subscribe to all those things IMO. And we'll see you next week for making sense of magic.
00;34;54;19 - 00;34;57;21
Speaker 1
All right, stay curious.