Episode 151 / Amy Chiwaye / Anheuser-Busch InBev DraftLine South Africa / Head of Business Development
Podcast: How Data Led Creativity Can Help Brands Grow
Amy Chiwaye is the Head of Business Development at Anheuser-Busch InBev DraftLine South Africa, where she is proud to be part of an organisation that uses both creative energy and “hardcore” data in defining their marketing message. Her Shiny New Object is data-led creativity, employed to ensure marketing activities always deliver on ROI.
In Amy’s view, too many times, briefs are backed by strategy but not data. This leads to the end result not always clicking with the audience and, ultimately, not delivering a good return on investment.
Since joining DraftLine, Amy has discovered a new way of running the marketing strategy. While staying creative, her team makes use of data from tools pegged within social listening to understand what consumers talk about and what is important to them. This then informs the creative message and makes it penetrate further.
A good example of this strategy is how the brand was able to make informed decisions on their actions during the various stages of alcohol bans in South Africa during the pandemic. They used online conversations and data from around the world before moving on to their next steps.
Amy also describes herself as an empath, someone who is very open and observant of others’ energy. This leads her to often feel like she will mimic other people’s energy, which is why she resorts to a daily practice of meditation to keep herself grounded. Meditation allows her to be open to understanding how people make decisions – including buying DraftLine products – but also to returning to her own self afterwards.
To hear more about Amy’s meditation practice, her best marketing tips and why data-led creativity is the future of marketing, listen to the podcast here.
Transcript
The following gives you a good idea of what was said, but it’s not 100% accurate.
Tom Ollerton 0:00
Hello, and welcome to the Shiny New Object podcast. My name is Tom Ollerton. I'm the founder of Automated Creative. And this is a weekly show where I have the pleasure and the privilege of interviewing our industry's leaders. And this week is no different. I'm on a call with Amy Chiwaye who is Head of Business Development at DraftLine, South Africa. Amy, for those listening to this podcast, who don't know who you are and what you do. Could you give them a kind of quick career overview and tell me a bit about what you do today?
Amy Chiwaye 1:23
Yes, sure. Hello, Tom. And also well done on saying my surname correctly. My name is Amy, as you have already said, I started in this industry a while back after letting go of going into finance. I was just driven by strategy and having this passion to understand the consumer. It gave me a different way of thinking about what I do. In the past few years of me being in the industry, I have been I've worked in mostly client service as well as strategy in some of the biggest advertising agencies, both globally and locally here in South Africa. And now as you said, I am currently Head of Business Development at DraftLine, South Africa.
Tom Ollerton 2:11
Fantastic. So can I ask you in that varied career, what has been the best investment of your time, energy or money?
Amy Chiwaye 2:22
That would have to be therapy and meditation?
Tom Ollerton 2:26
That's two, surely, but I'll let you have two.
Amy Chiwaye 2:30
But I came from a very intense industry, that being finance and everything and being it's very methodical in a way that doesn't really allow you to really tap into your individual nature. So when I made a change from that industry into this one into marketing and advertising, I realized that I had had to center myself a lot quickly, then I thought possible. So yeah, I decided to invest in that in my life. And yeah, it's a daily practice today.
Tom Ollerton 3:06
Tell me how that works. Is that like an hour long session or doing a group? Or is it a different type of...
Amy Chiwaye 3:14
I've got two ways in the way that it works. Every morning, before or after gym, I will meditate for a minimum of like 30 minutes, just to center myself just to ensure that I'm feeling okay and ready to take on the day. Other way I attack this is I go to therapy every second week.
Tom Ollerton 3:37
And when you say therapy, what do I mean by that?
Amy Chiwaye 3:40
I haven't got a therapist. I have got a psychiatrist that I go to every single week, who we talk about anything and everything.
Tom Ollerton 3:51
And how do those two things work together? Do you find yourself ruminating in a meditative way? On the conversations you've had with your therapist? Or does it work the other way? Do you unlock things in meditation think, oh, I should probably talk about that.
Amy Chiwaye 4:04
100%. And so I'm very intrigued by the life of a consumer. So you find that in your in my what how do I put this in the space that I find myself in? In my career, I do a lot of like consumer deep dives. I want to understand why people buy products. I want to understand what makes people tick. Therapy and meditation because I am an impact helps me to separate the two out. And it just gives me a greater sense of understanding of different people. I'm able to tap into different people's ways of thinking, ways of acting, and all of that stuff and allows me to just you know, get to the bottom of who a person is, how they think, why they think that way and what makes them tick.
Tom Ollerton 4:55
So just let me check I've got this right. So when you're meditating, you're thinking about the consumer?
Amy Chiwaye 5:01
No, grounding myself so that when I get into the office, I can think about the consumer.
Tom Ollerton 5:12
I thought she's really dedicated to the job. Okay.
Amy Chiwaye 5:16
My job yeah. No, it just helps me to ground myself in a way that I don't take on other people's emotions specifically. So I run a lot of focus groups with a lot of people. And as I mentioned, I am also an empath. So it's very easy for me to pick up on people's energies and all of that stuff. What meditation does for me is it separates my energy away from anyone that I come into contact with during the day.
Tom Ollerton 5:45
So can you clarify what what you mean by being an empath for you? What does it what does that word mean to you? Because it means different things to different people.
Amy Chiwaye 5:54
Right, so being an empath is, well, the way it means to me is that I'm very easy, it takes very little for me to actually pick up on what energy you're putting out there. So if you are feeling sad, or angry, and all of that my energy will almost pick up on that exact thing, and sometimes even mimic it. So I don't, it's not a great way to live life mimicking everyone that you come across. So I meditate in order to make sure that my own energy is protected. Yeah, as I go about my day,
Tom Ollerton 6:32
So this next question. It's a planned question, but feels very shallow compared to what we've just been discussed. But we have to move on with the podcast. I would love to spend the entire time talking about this. But what is your best marketing tip? What is that bit of killer advice that you give to people or you've always worked and lived by?
Amy Chiwaye 6:54
The consumer does not speak boardroom. This was told to me by my mentor, over 10 years ago, I'd put together a strategy and I presented to him I was quite Junior in the field at that moment in time. And I went on and on and on. And you know, just being in the marketing and advertising industry, we've got a lot of jargon. Towards the end of my presentation, he sat me down and he was like, there's one thing that I'll need you to always remember, consumers do not speak boardroom, your job is not going to go further than like this boardroom here. And it tends to unearth itself in different ways. Just the way I interact with the people that I'm trying to sell our products to. And the way I just go about thinking about how people actually run their lives. Yeah, that is the my best marketing tip and I tell it to anyone and everyone who will listen.
Tom Ollerton 7:55
And who told you that what was your mentors name?
Amy Chiwaye 7:58
His name is Mike Shooby.
Tom Ollerton 8:00
And what Mike up to these days.
Amy Chiwaye 8:02
Mike currently owns a strategy focused business here in South Africa. And he did have an agency which he has since sold to Saatchi and Saatchi, and then he went on to become more of a consultant, a strategy consultant in the poem space.
Tom Ollerton 8:26
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So we're gonna move on now to your shiny new object. So what is your shiny new object? And why do you think that it represents the future of the industry?
Amy Chiwaye 9:15
My shiny new object object is data led creativity. For quite a while in this industry. When a brief comes in, it's backed by a strategy but not really by data. Moving into DraftLine has given me a different view on how we run this industry, on how we see briefs on how we engage creativity in a way that is still creative and still brings to life stories and you know, the storytelling element is still very strong there. But it 100% will deliver on your bottom line. So I'm extremely passionate about marketing and advertising delivering on the Turn on investment, and having this new way of thinking about creativity being data led, and all of that stuff has given me that shiny new object, glossy eyes.
Tom Ollerton 10:12
So you're talking to a subject very close to my heart and the practice of Automated Creative, obviously. So I'm just keen to know, how do you guys do? What What are your data points? And how do you make sure that you're collecting the right data and making sure that the creative is, in fact data informed?
Amy Chiwaye 10:30
Yeah, we have access, I'm very, very lucky to have access to tools that are very new to our like our space here in South Africa. Our tools come from New York, which is our global HQ. They are mostly surround it's, yeah, it's basically pegged within social listening. So social listening, is how to explain this. So it's a tool that we use, that gets to the bottom of the conversations that are online, specifically, we are trying to find a way to get into conversations that aren't online. But that's a story for another day. We scan the Internet, we build stories from it, we see what's happening, and then we make decisions based on what we see, right. And then on top of that, we have got your hardcore data, which is what you would find from you know, the likelihoods of your biggest social media, powerhouses, your Mark Zuckerberg and all of them. We're constantly constantly scanning, the internet scanning, like everything that is out there, in order to gather as much information as possible. I'll give you one example. Obviously, during this time of COVID, we've gone through various alcohol bans, the site in South Africa, just like majority of other countries across the world, we obviously did not know exactly how to navigate such waters, but managed to do so via our social listening capabilities, and all the data that we are able to mine. So we were able to look at what's happening out there in the world, make decisions for how we, you know, proceed, do we shut down? What are the stories? And then yeah, we move forward that way.
Tom Ollerton 12:25
So can you give me an example of something that's come from the social listening data set that surprised you or something that you weren't expected that was unable to generate a new kind of creative idea?
Amy Chiwaye 12:40
100%, so this one here is the example I'm going to give you right now is not the biggest creative led example, but it will, it will demonstrate why data is important. We are having a bit of a problem in South Africa with vaccinating people. And we were able to take the data around vaccination and all of that to help drive what the government is trying to push in that window, we need to get everyone vaccinated. We've managed to actually out of the amount of adults that have been vaccinated here, we vaccinated a third of them directly. And we changed the hesitant ones into positive led people. So they got vaccinated. So yeah, just literally through the use of our data.
Tom Ollerton 13:36
And so how can you tell me what the the execution was?
Amy Chiwaye 13:41
Um, so one of the excellent in terms of creative execution, one of ours was radio, online in South Africa, we still don't have the biggest penetration into like most of the like remote areas here in South Africa. However, we noticed that the way in which he talked about such a topic, it being something that is not necessarily understood, people are afraid of it, because we're in uncharted territories here. It helped us literally just construct a message that we send via radio through to everyone in the country, and got them to rethink how they look at vaccines. So we've got them also to to stop being so hesitant about them, but just giving them a bit more information, but also giving it to them in a way that's palatable to them.
Tom Ollerton 14:33
So what would you say, are the biggest challenges you have with being a data led creative organization?
Amy Chiwaye 14:40
I think the one of the biggest challenges that we do face is the fact that the penetration of online like data and the use of our tools and everything and actually the access to our tools is very difficult here, because as I mentioned, we don't have a lot of people that are online and that's mostly where we mine our data. So that is one of the biggest things. But you know what constantly in my data team is constantly working on how do we get data to our tables? How do we, you know, make it palatable for everyone so that they can make decisions from there? Which I think it's the access to it? And how do we analyze it in a way that people are going to understand it properly? Those are the two like barriers to entry.
Tom Ollerton 15:24
And when you're looking to hire people into this data led creative organization, what are the skills that you're looking for?
Amy Chiwaye 15:33
So that's, weirdly enough, something that I had a chat to my boss about about two, three weeks ago. Um, you have to look for somebody who not necessarily has a university, obviously, they need to have like the education and everything. But you need somebody who is willing to innovate, somebody who's willing to step out of their comfort zone and learn something new every single day. We need the passion, we need the intrigue, we need people that are intrigued by, you know, these things that are coming out, because at the end of the day, we can't teach them to you. It's like trial and error right now.
Tom Ollerton 16:10
And do you think that the candidates that you're meeting is that the majority of candidates you would have thought that young people coming into the industry would have a natural interest in and certainly aptitude for new platforms and new ways of thinking? Or do you feel that people are arriving wanting to behave like Mad Men and do it the old school way,
Amy Chiwaye 16:31
We've still got people that are behaving like Mad Men. But you know, it's all in we've got a very intense HR process, bringing people into our realm of career and industry. Only because we need you to be a fit, not just for our culture, but for what we're trying to do. So we do have certain checks and balances that we have in place that are mandated by HR and everything, and literally just having a conversation with a candidate would it helps you to to notice where whether they're going to be a good fit to the organization or not? So yeah, we've got I think we've got about five step process before you get your final. Okay, you're hired now.
Tom Ollerton 17:19
Wow. Good luck, trying to get a job on your team. But you know, you'll get the right ones, I'm sure. So if someone wants to get in touch with you about a job, wants to go through the rigors of getting a job with you, or just wants to talk to you about daylight creativity, or being an empath, or any kind of meditation. How what's the best way to get in touch with you.
Amy Chiwaye 17:44
Um, the best way to get in touch with me is via LinkedIn, amy.chiwaye, on LinkedIn there, I'm also very happy to connect with anyone and everyone on Twitter, my handle is @ladychi05. I'm always happy to just have a conversation, I don't mind who hollers at me, most more often than not, you connect with me on one of the social platforms, then I will give you my email address, and then we can go from there. However, I'm also very happy to get my email address away. It is Amy.chiwaye@gmail.com.
Tom Ollerton 18:24
And final question, you're a new business development person, that must write LinkedIn messages all of the time, what makes a good LinkedIn message to you?
Amy Chiwaye 18:35
I saw your profile. And I really would like to connect. It's really that simple. I don't
Tom Ollerton 18:41
That's just the automated one that LinkedIn writes anyway, that's the worst one. Surely?
Amy Chiwaye 18:46
Because I mean, quite, honestly, is I just I respond to pretty much everyone that like reaches out to me. So it really doesn't matter what you say. I'll definitely respond to you.
Tom Ollerton 18:56
Fantastic, Amy. We made this podcast without there being a massive cut in power. We made it happen. Thank you so much for your time.
Amy Chiwaye 19:06
Thank you very much, Tom, thank you so much. This is really an honor and a privilege. And yeah, hopefully I get to chat to you again soon.
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