Understanding “live consumerism”, “‘discoverability’ and developing relevant, sustainable, and scalable strategies

Chelsea Perino is Managing Director, Global Marketing & Communications at The Executive Centre, Asia’s leading premium flexible workspace provider with over 170 centres across 35 cities in APAC and a network of 41,000+ business professionals.

Chelsea, an anthropology and linguistics undergraduate from New York University with an MA in public and organisational relations from Montclair State University is passionate about organisational culture.

She believes strongly that creating a ‘dynamic and collaborative working experience’ not only fosters community but improves both team morale and productivity.  She describes herself as ‘an expert in workplace culture and 360-degree brand strategy’ and has a particular talent for understanding the idiosyncrasies of team dynamics.

In this fabulous interview in collaboration with Programmatic Pioneers Asia, Chelsea talks to us about emerging technologies, AI, ML, NLP and the steps she takes to target the right customers, at the right time.

We dive into contextual targeting, ‘discoverability’, opportunities arising in Web 3.0, sustainable scalable strategy and crucial concepts – brand safety and suitability.

With the increased consumption of content via digital media and the advancement in AI, ML, and NLP technologies to place campaigns on targeted material – how do you control the overall CX experience and brand safety?

First, have clear brand guidelines including visual and tone of voice that will ensure consistency across all channels. Second, understand and clearly define your target audience so that the content you are promoting is being served to the right people.

Third, work with distribution partners that you trust and do so in a collaborative way so that you’re optimising constantly together; this also means defining in advance the parameters of your brand – who do you want to be associated with and also who you don’t want your brand associated with. Also, AI is a powerful tool to ‘meet customers where they are’ and ensure that content is being served in a safe manner.

It’s said that the future of advertising is about ‘discoverability’. What technologies are you using to advertise in ways that are relevant to customer moments, intentions, and devices?

Conversations around customer experience have dramatically evolved since the advent of the internet and big data, and AI and conversation marketing is the future of omnichannel. It takes marketing a step further and instead of looking at different channels as part of an ecosystem, it learns the behaviours of consumers and is able to predict future actions, needs, wants, etc.

This allows brands to proactively put content in front of an audience that they will inherently enjoy. An organisation’s ability to derive actionable insights from consumer data at scale will be a driving factor in efficient use of resources and increased profitability. Beyond just the value that comes from collecting accurate consumer data, the use of AI to build customised and automated user journeys.

Web 3.0 is touted as unlocking new opportunities to design richer, ultra-immersive and personalised customer experiences – what is your perspective on this?

We are still in the infant stages of understanding how Web 3 can change customer experience. In my view it just creates another space for brands and customers to interact, but in a much more immersive and “real” way. It also has the ability to connect even more effectively the online and offline experience.

Web 3 is also a useful tool to connect with younger audiences – the gamification capabilities create more interactive environments and supports e-commerce by creating a dynamic environment that encourages “live consumerism” – ie the purchasing of products in a real time environment and often in connection with others.

How can one develop a relevant, sustainable, and scalable advertising strategy that prioritizes customer experience?

Put the consumer first and understand what channels they use and within what context. Consumerism is a complex action now because there are so many different places a person can engage with a brand, so understanding those different channels and engaging in relevant ways is super important to creating an effective 360 advertising strategy.

The way a brand interacts with a consumer on Instagram is very different than LinkedIn, and it’s also very different from in-store, for example, but all these channels need to work together and also share different versions of the same overarching message. Lastly, be adaptable – trends change as does consumer behaviour, so being nimble and able to pivot your strategy will ensure your brand stays relevant.

How is the Executive Centre adapting its marketing initiatives to move beyond delivering campaigns toward impacting customer experience?

We think about customer experience as a holistic process; this means that we need to be engaging in a meaningful way at every single touchpoint, and our messaging and brand identity needs to be consistent across all of our platforms.

Whether we are communicating with our consumers via EDMs, or social media, or the actual real life Engagement Teams that work in our centres, we ensure that our people are always first. When talking about the traditional marketing funnel, our goal is that as our consumers move from awareness to conversion, their understanding of our brand and its relevance increases, and then that experience is replicated when they step into an actual centre.

Programmatic advertising can sometimes place brands in unsafe environments that affect user experiences (especially youth). How can AI-driven moderation protect both community and brand?

AI utilises aggregated customer behaviour to guide users through the most seamless and efficient path to help them achieve their goals more efficiently. This means that these programs are learning every minute- this aggregated data is then used to create super personalised journeys.

So once they learn an experience is a bad one, they can ensure it is never delivered like that, to that person, again. They also understand pre-determined parameters and what is appropriate within those parameters (i.e. age) – so by building association (and non-association) criteria we can safeguard communities from seeing content that is not appropriate.

What will you be sharing at Programmatic Pioneers Summit and why is this a must-not-miss event?

I will be sharing a case study on the making of a successful brand: Why customer experience is key and the role programmatic advertising strategy plays in creating positive engagement and I’m looking forward to diving deeper into how programmatic can help create better, more personalised customer experiences.

This event is super diverse, covering many different topics relevant to marketers, and the speaker line up is composed of impressive professionals from a myriad of industries. It’s a great platform to hear about the latest strategies that help marketers do their jobs more effectively, and also to meet the leaders in the advertising space.