Episode 186 / Tatyana Kahl / VISA Europe / Marketing Director, Activation and Usage
Podcast: Why Brands Need to Stay Relevant Beyond the Point of Purchase
Tatyana Kahl is the Marketing Director, Activation and Usage, at VISA Europe, where she’s focusing on developing performance branding – her Shiny New Object. Her view is that brands need to bring together the element of pre-purchase brand building and all the consumer journey that takes place at point of purchase and beyond. Creating tiny brand moments throughout all touch points with the consumers will keep brands relevant and build loyalty.
Similarly to some of our guests who talked about continuing to build a consumer relationship beyond the point of purchase (such as the concept of brands becoming more like subscription businesses put forward by Søren Mohr), Tatyana thinks that brands erroneously separate the brand building phase from what happens once their product is sold.
One of her best investments in her career during the Covid lockdowns was enrolling in Scott Galloway’s three-week sprint in brand strategy, which allowed her to develop a new perspective. Today’s world is one of permission marketing, where brands can no longer afford to be disruptive by blasting an ad on TV and having a captive audience. Instead, they need to be more subtle and play a longer game, which includes developing a close connection to the consumer through every possible touch point.
Tatyana’s two brand examples of who does this well are Apple and Audi. We all know about the shiny Apple stores and the immaculately curated consumer experience with the former, but her personal experience with Audi is quite interesting. Looking to buy her first car many years ago, it wasn’t just an advert upfront that caught her eye. In fact, it was all about the actual in-store experience, where Audi employees were the only ones that gave her attention as a first-time buyer, and the way she perceived the brand through the multiple touch points from point of purchase to post-purchase and return purchases, too.
How do you start creating this sort of connection? Tatyana believes in storytelling and emotional bonding, but she doesn’t think brands need to spend a lot of money on it (like Apple and Audi can afford to do!). Instead, her advice is to analyse your consumer journey end to end and ask the question: where can you create more brand moments, and how can you continue to stay relevant after the sale is done?
Listen to some more top marketing advice from Tatyana and how she proposes to navigate the new world of permission marketing, on the latest podcast episode here.
Transcript
The following gives you a good idea of what was said, but it’s not 100% accurate.
Tom Ollerton 0:05
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 podcast where I have the pleasure and the privilege of interviewing one of our industry's leaders about what they think is going to happen next, what is the future of our industry? And I'm really pleased to be on a call today with Tayana Kahl, who is a marketing director at Visa. Tatyana, for anyone who doesn't know who you are and what you do. Can you give the audience a bit of an overview?
Tatyana Kahl 0:36
Hi, Tom, many thanks for having me on your podcast. Well, my professional journey started in the end of 90s in Kazakhstan, when one of the world's leading FMCG companies was opening its offices in Central Asia. And I've started in the business development team, but very soon moved to trade marketing and strategy, working at headquarters for Central Asia. That was the time when we would be losing conglomerations that region. And with that company, I had the chance to travel the world and work for very different businesses across very diverse geographies, like, you know, very traditional retail brands in Nordic or beauty luxury brands like Gucci, Dolce & Gabbana, in Moscow. And then once I've decided to move to Germany for personal reasons, this company supported me by giving me a global role in solid professional business on haircare products. This is when I realized my love for branding, we had a fantastic portfolio of products with great heritage, and had hairdressers, who is a very passionate and emotionally engaged customer group. So once this business was sold to Coty, it was a good time for me to reflect what kind of business I would like to work for and where do I see myself. So that was about the same time when I came across a book, what to do when machines do everything. It's a very inspirational book that describes how digitalization will impact our society in the next 10 to 20 years. And the different stages of industry 4.0. So I realized that of the 20 years in FMCG, I would like to move to a more dynamic and more digital business that is very well set for industry 4.0. And this is how I ended up by VISA, now enjoying my fourth year here. And currently I lead the newly created business unit that is taking care of activation and usage across European region.
Tom Ollerton 2:28
Wow, fantastic. So it's so interesting to hear that story and where you've ended up. But what I would love to know is, out of all the marketing tips you've been given throughout your career, what's the best one?
Tatyana Kahl 2:40
The best one was to stay curious. I'm following research not only latest marketing and technology trends, but also trying to understand the cultural trends, what makes people busy, what challenges they say they face in everyday life, what inspires them, I think for us in marketing is very important to understand the pain points and the moment of choice of the target audiences today. You know, advertising previously used to be very disruptive, if you watch TV 20 years ago, you would see commercial, you have almost no chance to escape it. And now as we move into the area of full permission marketing, it is much more important for the brands to be enablers in the consumer side. And that's why we need to stay relevant, contextual, to get noticed. So that's why I tried to spend a lot of time just you know, being curious, looking around seeing what people do, what they leave, and what bothers them and what inspires them today.
Tom Ollerton 3:40
So staying curious, makes a lot of sense. And you're not the first person on the podcast to say that, and I think it's really important, but how do you deal with volume in that case, because you could spend all day learning about advertising technology and not even scratch the surface. So how do you make sure you stay curious about the right things?
Tatyana Kahl 4:01
That's right. But again, technology is there to help. Right? So just following the trends on LinkedIn on Twitter, right. So I choose to follow the topics that are important for me right now. And unfollow that the ones I'm not interested in anymore, as well, using the Google Alerts where you can really put the search on the topics that you need, or the brands that you're curious. So it really helps to filter and thanks to the algorithm, the machines tend to bring you the topic that you're looking for, it's just important to to raise the hand and say, Well, not anymore of that I have enough.
Tom Ollerton 4:38
Yeah, that's really interesting that you rely on the algorithm to help you find the right thing. So do you ever worry that the algorithm is focused on the most extreme things? We've seen the kind of the bubble of toxicity that can really drive engagement, certainly in social and do you ever worry that your algorithm is going to serve you up a version of the future that's the most extreme as opposed to the most relevant?
Tatyana Kahl 5:06
Well, somewhat worried. And I think I'm trying to cooperate with this algorithm. So you know, I'm not interested in the bad news and the terrible news and the shocking stories, I really try to create a positive world for me and hopefully around me. So for example, talking about LinkedIn, where I'm quite active, I try to follow and support the women, business owners, starters have great ideas and kind of celebrating their successes, liberating their steps, hoping that my broader network will see that, you know, and this is how I tried to create this positive story around me. I think the algorithm per se is not bad. It's just the question how people use them and how they steer them.
Tom Ollerton 5:46
Yeah, there is a really interesting comment I saw on LinkedIn by one of our advisors, which is a guy called Simon Kemp. And he said, You know, when you see something that's shocking, or clickbait, you're negative, then just don't interact with it, you know, don't like it, don't share it. Don't be appalled by it publicly, because you're just giving that thing fuel, essentially. So I love that idea of creating a positive world and supporting female leaders and entrepreneurs and so on. So excellent. So moving on from that, what has been the best investment of your time, energy and money in your career?
Tatyana Kahl 6:22
Um, you know, when the pandemic and the whole lockdown started, I had quite some time and I decided to sign up for a brand strategy three week sprint with Scott Galloway, he's a renowned professor from New York University Stern Business School.
Tom Ollerton 6:38
Yeah, I'm a fan of his podcasts, really great stuff.
Tatyana Kahl 6:42
Oh, they are fantastic, right? They're a lot of fun. But as well very, very informative, informative, and inspirational. So Professor Galloway launched his Section 4 initiative to offer MBA kind of comparable experience, but in a remote and very condensed form. And that was amazing. That was really this sprint happening to make kind of partnership if you wish, to look at my work and the challenges I faced at that time from a very different angle. So a lot of people are trying to create the tension by claiming in all the brands, the branding is that and it's all about customer experience. And what this sprint showed me, Professor Galloway gave a different perspective. Basically, he developed a framework where you would do your brand assessment, through a cycle of pre purchase, purchase, and post purchase. Quite simple and straightforward, right. But then he explained why the traditional advertising, at pre purchase phase really kind of loses the importance and the influence and why being present at purchase and post purchase is so important. So when I worked at that time, at the challenges of the project that I had put in this lenses on and helped me to realize, you know, how we would focus on the different things maybe that you never cared before, right?
Tom Ollerton 7:58
So tell me more about the brand being present at the point of purchase and post purchase, I have not come across that before on this show. So help me, obviously brands put a lot of effort into getting down the funnel. But I think what Scott Galloway is saying here that, that actually the point of purchase, when the money changes hands, and then the after sell is as important, what's his? What's his backing for that?
Tatyana Kahl 8:26
Well, look, as I mentioned before, this permission marketing phase is right, now you have a chance to skip traditional advertising. So before if you would sit in the cinema, you would watch TV, you would be exposed to that, right. Now, probably not. And he gave great examples how brands can build branding at the moment of purchase, take Apple Store is a great example. Right? This is a fantastic experience, where you're in a shiny, beautiful building was one of technology, great designs and so on. So and that, you know, just asking questions on your brand. How my brand? Where is this moment of purchase, how my brand is represented, what kind of promotion, kind of experience you create through that. And even more importantly, when the purchase is done, do you stay relevant for the consumer, do you build the relationship? Are you on top of their mind? And that was really eye opening for me because I can give you example from my personal life, right? So I'm a big fan of two brands, Apple and Audi, right. So Apple already set the example they're fantastic at the building the brand at the moment of purchase, but at the time when I was buying my first private car 15 years ago or so, I went to the different dealers and many of them didn't see in me a potential customer. Maybe I looked too young, maybe not serious. And there was one brand that stood out. I loved the design of the product. It was Audi and I was really welcomed in the store. I was really taken seriously and since then, I'm a big fan of of that brand. So it was not the commercial that made me connect to that band. It was the experience that I went through. And you know, going through that and this kind of examples, which brands do you have that are important for you or your own brand that you work on. And doing this mapping, doing this evaluation, how you go through the pre purchase, purchase and post purchase journey, it really shows you a lot of new opportunities, how you can build your brand and how this brand can help to build your business further.
Tom Ollerton 10:34
So that's a really lovely story about Audi, but I always get really annoyed when people talk about Apple and Nike, like, you know, these are, these are like mega brands of so much money. And of course, the Apple Store is nice, of course it is yes, I get the whole thing that they made it like a luxury experience. And they put lovely people in there, but they got so much money, like insane amounts of money. Like even if that hadn't worked, they would have thought something else, right? Like it's not going to really kill them and run a few stores. However, that isn't most brands. Right? And I can guarantee that when Apple were selling their products, I don't know, like 30-40 years ago that there wasn't this incredible onboarding experience. And this like staying relevant, like, they just had to do what they had to do to make the numbers that they need. So I'm not talking from experience, that's gonna be a guess. There were small ones, basically. Whereas, you know, the brands that a lot of the people that listen to this podcast, don't have Apple level resources, they don't have Audi level resources and you know, decades and decades and decades of heritage to lean on. They're just a challenger brand, or they're an entrant to the market. So when teams are stretched thin, and there's a limited budget, you can't nail your top of funnel stuff and your point of purchase and your aftercare, because the brand might not even be big enough to support that. So do you have an example of a smaller brand that's done that? That isn't Apple or Audi?
Tatyana Kahl 11:59
I can give you an example. Recently, I started journaling, right. So and I'm not a big fan of writing on paper. So I researched in the app store, and I found a beautiful app that supports the journaling, again, based on artificial intelligence. And once I started to use that, it's such an amazing, very warm experience that you have, how it supports you, the questions it asks, the way it greets you during the day. So this experience is really for me what what creates the brand, and it doesn't invest in advertising, right. So if you're talking about Apple, yes, they had a lot of budget, and they decided to invest in the stores, but they could have decided to invest in the you know, every year in new brand campaigns. They didn't that much. I'm still amazed if you look at the businesses, regardless, small, big, a lot of companies still separate: this is the brand building, and it's an invest and we have brand team. And then we need to drive the growth, we need to drive the business. And normally performance marketing will take care of sales funnels, and so on. So I think what this framework from Scott Galloway helps is to understand how you can bring the brand building together with the customer experiences and trying to create this brand moments at the very tiny small touch points, right. So it doesn't have to be I think, very expensive experience is really about how you show you care and how you show you help people at that moment of touchpoints. Do you know what I mean?
Tom Ollerton 12:43
Yeah, it's a lovely provocation. And every year, I ask Scott to come on the show, and every year he turns me down. So maybe this year will be the one. So we're going to move now on to your shiny new object, which is performance branding, which sounds like it makes total sense. But when I try and unpack it doesn't make any sense. But I know you know what it is. So can you please tell me and the audience, what performance branding is, and why it's your shiny new object?
Tatyana Kahl 14:02
Well, you know, people try to sometimes be provocative in saying that branding is dead, it's all about customer journeys, and customer experiences, and so on. And I think that is somewhat true, but not necessary. As I went through the sprint with Scott Galloway, I started to think more and more is like, what is the right moments of building the brand? And can we do that through the different you know, customer journeys? Because I've started to research first, right? There's so much material available on the customer journey, user experience, but it's all very logical. It's all about performance, marketing, sales funnels, how you create the conversion rates, high conversion rates, and so on. I'm still looking to find the stories and examples that we'll talk about how you build emotional bonding for those touch points, how you build the relationship with the client, and thus you create loyalty that you create a business you create the brand for the stores. So for me Performance branding is how you do brand, not by investing in a huge TV campaigns and low movies, that kind of promotional and storytelling, but how you create the storytelling of the brand, when we really have a millisecond on the digital screen, right when the people are very short on attention, and how do you stay relevant in their lives? How do you measure that you are there for them, but create this emotional bond through this touchpoints?
Tom Ollerton 15:29
And why do you think there is a lack of advice about emotional bonding through the consumer journey?
Tatyana Kahl 15:39
Well, I think people when if you look at the traditional marketing, right, then you think about writing the brief what the insights on what your target audience and you try to create a beautiful movie, that is a long story. And I think there is very little examples, I mentioned this app on the journal that creates emotional connection immediately on the spot, without telling the story, without showing an environment. Set up right. So being present right here right now in the life of the consumer, wherever they are, but being still relevant to them and emotional, I couldn't find much. And I would love if there are any great stories that you've seen on the network, I would love to see more and learn more about that.
Tom Ollerton 16:28
Because we see this a lot in our work, where you've got the metrics that are available, anything you touched on them, you know, conversion rate, click through rate, view rate, view completion rate. And this is all data. But what it doesn't do is really represent the human behind that. And I heard on a podcast the other day a lovely expression, which is data is the shadow of people. And that there's this real drive towards these digital metrics that are really easy to put in a dashboard. It's really easy to report on, but it doesn't necessarily tell the whole story. So how do you go about balancing the available data, which is the rates that I mentioned, basically, and the need to understand emotionally what's going on in the consumer's heart?
Tatyana Kahl 17:17
And that is where I'm still big fan of traditional brand building, right? I think it's very easy to measure how many clicks, different touchpoints delivered. But talking to the people, asking the experience, how they feel, what they feel, what they think when they go through this experience is still key. So just thrown into the consumer resources going into the focus groups, seeing them how they interact with the product, how they behave at this touch points, for me is the key to build this emotional stories. And trying to understand how how you remain relevant for them. As I've mentioned before, kind of being curious and understanding the people's challenges, a moment of joy is how you connect these touch points. And I don't know maybe maybe in a couple of days, we will be able to measure not only how many people clicked at the different moment, but what they feel and what they you know, what, what their next inspirations were? I don't know. But let's see what technology brings us.
Tom Ollerton 18:13
Well, I had a really memorable version of this podcast a while ago, when a guest was talking about a meeting that they'd had with the guys that make WeChat, Tencent. And what they do is they have the ability to track 45 different facial emotions. So basically, a UX on a website or an app or WeChat experience would change depending on facially how people responded to it, you know, so if you should, oh, look, here's this discount, and they showed disgust, then you get a better discount or something like that. And I just thought that's so exciting. And then GDPR, just like came in. And the idea that we as marketers, were going to get access to that data, I just think it's such a long way off, if ever or do you think there's going to be a relaxation of that kind of data capture that was very different 5-10 years ago?
Tatyana Kahl 19:12
Well, with the new generation, I think there might be more openness to this kind of technology, because if you ask Gen Z's right now, they understand the benefits if you're interested in the Samsung daggering with giving you more information about offering the products that you're interested in. And I think at some point of time, when they see sharing some of the data or opening the privacy a little bit, how can you benefit from that? But being still in control of it? I think it's very important in these moments, we say okay, it's okay that you see me right now. It's okay, you observe my reaction, but I want to make sure I know how you use it and it's good for me and not to manipulate me.
Tom Ollerton 19:59
So in terms of performance branding, and your vision of the world, let's someone's listening to this and thinks, ah, you know, I need to incorporate Tatyana's approach, what's the best way to get started?
Tatyana Kahl 20:13
The best way to get started is really to try to think how your brand comes out at the very different touchpoints. Just sit down, write the journey, you don't need to have expensive resources. But think if you would be the client, the customer, the consumer, what would they feel? How would they see you? Are you the right one? Are you giving the right messages? Is there any other question that they would come and ask or how you're relevant in their life? So just mapping this out and thinking, you know, this is my framework, this is my pre purchase touch points in the journey, this is what happens when people, you know, consider to buy or buy in it. And this what happens after and you will see, do you have the gaps? And where your brand comes across strong? Or where there is no branding at all?
Tom Ollerton 21:06
And what is your ambition for performance branding? What do you, where do you want you to be with it in the next few years? Like, what's the kind of exciting future that you want to get towards?
Tatyana Kahl 21:21
Well, I'm trying to create a couple of projects right now with our partnership and the network that we would try out different journeys, different stories, we will see that we do drive the business, we do drive the results, but as well, we build the brand, according to that. So my ambition is to have, to create these several pilot projects that we can say, well, you know what, we've managed to bring this performance branding to life, this is how we measure the success. And we see that that works. So that's why I'm looking for the inspiration, the ideas and the opportunities to bring it to life.
Tom Ollerton 21:59
So we're coming to the end of the podcast now, if someone wants to get in touch with you about helping you realize that vision, where would you like them to do that? And what makes the perfect outreach message to you?
Tatyana Kahl 22:12
The easiest platform to reach me out is LinkedIn, I'm quite active there, just dropping a message. contacting me on a specific topic, I think that would help. It's a bit annoying that people just send connect request without kind of saying why. What do you want? What do they want to achieve with that? And if there's a specific topic they're interested or they've seen my, my posts, but they react and they want to exchange their ideas, or maybe bring some great examples on performance branding, I would love to connect.
Tom Ollerton 22:42
Fantastic. Tatyana, thank you so much for your time.
Tatyana Kahl 22:46
Thank you, Tom.
Subscribe to the ‘Shiny New Object’ Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube and Soundcloud.