In the metaverse marketing space, first-mover Absolut has seen value in experimenting with Web3 activations, despite some marketers’ mixed feelings about investing such experiences. In an article for PRNEWS, VP of Marketing Matt Foley discusses the brand’s metaverse strategy, approach to measurement and the company’s plans for the future

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Peer-to-peer car-sharing company Turo relies on customer behaviors and preferences of users on its platform to identify patterns and make specific product recommendations. Here’s what the company has learned about consumer behavior on digital platforms, according to an article in AdExchanger, and how it’s strategizing to “stop the scroll” with ad content that cuts through the clutter.

The post How Car Sharing Company Turo Uses Personalization Tools for its App Experience appeared first on Chief Marketer.

Consumers expect highly-personalized experiences when interacting with brands today—particularly if they’ve volunteered their time, money and personal information in exchange for them. But it’s what you do with that data that counts.

For first-party data-rich companies like DoorDash and e.l.f. Beauty, the key to leveraging consumer data to create exceptional brand experiences—while also adhering to privacy stipulations—is honoring that “implicit value exchange,” according to DoorDash CMO Kofi Amoo-Gottfried, who spoke on a panel at the POSSIBLE marketing conference in Miami last month.

The two companies have mined scores of data sets to fuel innovative marketing programs as creative solutions for their customers. For instance, the data insights team at DoorDash noticed that some consumers were ordering twice on the platform from different stores within a short period of time. So to solve the problem—and ultimately enhance the user experience—the brand created a new service called DoubleDash, which allows users to purchase items from nearby stores without the added service or delivery fee that incurs from multiple orders.

The advantage of having access to a trove of first-party data is that it’s actionable, which inspires marketers and their cross-functional teams to make decisions as close to real-time as possible. “We have something like 25 million monthly active users on our platform, so we have an enormous amount of first-party data,” Amoo-Gottfried said. “It’s coming right from the platform; it’s coming from behaviors.”

Another data point DoorDash is monitoring is communications to drivers, whom they refer to as “Dashers,” in real-time. “If a Dasher goes to a store and a store’s closed, we actually get a note,” Amoo-Gottfried explained. “But then how do we get the feedback from the Dasher that the store is closed? And in real-time, and take that store down and say, ‘this store’s closed, here are some other options that you have.’ We’re constantly learning as we go, from everything [in the app].”

First-Party Data Magic

Similarly, e.l.f. Beauty draws insights from its passionate community of loyalty members. “That’s where the first-party data magic really comes into play,” according to Ekta Chopra, the brand’s Chief Digital Officer, who spoke on the conference panel alongside the DoorDash CMO. “Our app has 1.2 million downloads, and 95 percent of our loyalty members love to shop in the app. So we learn how they like to shop, and which channel… As a brand that is in every single retailer, we don’t care where the consumer shops. But we do want to have that relationship with the consumer. The first-party data really allows us to do that.”

Honoring that relationship by providing an enhanced experience while adhering to data privacy regulations is critical, however. “The most fundamental thing is the implicit value exchange,” Amoo-Gottfried said. “How do we help use this data to actually create a better experience, and how do we ensure there are a ton of guardrails?” That translates to actively deciding not to use certain subsets of data if they don’t serve that purpose, he said. “There’s entire categories of things that we won’t target on, even though we might be aware of what they are, because we think it’s problematic to target on that identity factor… Get the things that you actually need and don’t touch the other stuff. We try to figure out which pieces are most predictive.”

Chopra agreed that the relationship between brand and consumer starts with trust, and that’s something she takes very seriously. “As marketing leaders, you have to pay attention to that, because one data leak is something that will really hurt your reputation, and especially as a public company, it becomes a bigger responsibility.”

Data Privacy Hacks

For marketers who are laser-focused on data privacy and compliance, Chopra has a few tips. First, she recommends working with your legal team to ensure there are data privacy considerations when crafting your data processing agreements (DPAs) with vendors. “Depending on how big you are and what kind of data you’re storing, it can get really complex,” she said. “So having that strong partnership with your legal team is important.”

Second, your cyber security policy should include a data privacy component to it and be right-sized appropriately—depending on the size of your customer base—so that you have adequate insurance in case any data leaks occur.

Third, consider the sensitivity of the data consumers are sharing with you and practice good data hygiene accordingly. “They’re giving you certain information that’s really private in some cases, depending on if you’re in the medical field—and beauty there’s some elements, too,” Chopra said. “You should know where that data is transferring in your ecosystem, whether it’s this system or that system. There are tools, of course, that can do that. But from a good data hygiene perspective, understanding that is super important.”

While companies seek to mine more and more consumer data, great responsibility comes with that exercise. “As you become bigger, of course you want more data… but you should also know that it adds a layer of complexity with private information,” Chopra said. Moreover, at a certain point you may be asked to delete it—and you need to be ready for that and have the tools in place to prove it, she said. “So when people do come in and do an audit, you can show it to them.”

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Mobile shopping—and in particular mobile product discovery—is at the forefront of ecommerce sales through 2024, despite the fact that research suggests unsatisfactory shopping experiences on mobile devices are causing nearly one third of American adults to opt out of purchases. An article in Multichannel Merchant reviews key steps to improve mobile product discovery along the customer journey, from strategically differentiating omnichannel experiences to creating a hyper-personalized mobile experience.

Photo credit: camilo jimenez on Unsplash 

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When consumers think of Walmart as a brand, “innovative” may not be the first thing that comes to mind. But while speaking at a session at MMA Global’s POSSIBLE conference earlier this month, CMO William White aimed to dispel that myth, providing several examples of how the company is innovating across the board—despite its mammoth size. “You see it in all manner of our business, from supply chain to how we go to market,” he told the crowd. “Innovation is popping up in different parts of the company at all times.”

Take being the first retailer to offer drone delivery service, or rolling out a new open creator platform, called Walmart Creator, which, through influencer collaborations, incentivizes users to scale their businesses and drive sales. Each innovation, White explained, ties back to the brand’s relentless focus on how consumer expectations are evolving.

“Our business is fast,” he said. “We run from groceries to apparel to healthcare to financial services, et cetera. So we’re looking across variety of industries for, what are the things that are moving the needle? What are the things that are attracting customers? What are the things that are raising their expectations? And that’s done on a global scale.”

One way in which that has materialized is through its delivery options. Walmart currently offers drone delivery for 36 of its stores, and it also offers in-home delivery service for thousands more, which includes the added service of associates putting groceries away in the home. “That’s something that scaled pretty quickly,” White said. “And that was a small idea that we saw potential for and invested in it.”

Recently, Walmart has turned its attention to the overall customer experience. In order to keep up with customer expectations, senior executives across the company gather each Monday, White explained, to discuss and evaluate business results, from the in-store experience to the friendliness of associates to the speed of checkout to pick-up and delivery. “We gain a lot of insights into the things that we’re doing that drive positive and negative customer experience,” he said. “Everyone understands they have a role in the customer experience. And ultimately that’s a reflection of our brand, and really drives our way forward.”

The ability to evaluate customer experience is particular to the retail industry, according to White, who spent eight years as a global brand director at Coca-Cola. “The speed of retail is a lot faster than CPG… You see your scorecard every day, when you hit that early morning email with the previous day’s sales numbers. I think that the opportunity to make subtle, meaningful changes in the customer experience really moves the needle.”

Social commerce as a means to drive that customer experience is an area of focus for the retailer, White said. “As a marketing industry, we talk so much about different parts of the funnel… The cool thing about social commerce [is that] the whole funnel is right there… It’s brand building, it’s driving consideration and you can drive scale all in a very short, condensed path… It’s shortening that distance between inspiration and purchase.”

Case in point: Walmart recently jumped into the creator economy space with its new seller platform, Walmart Creator. “It’s an open platform where anyone can do it, and they’re incented and monetized based on what they sell. The great content is going to continue to rise to the top.” When asked whether creator economies are here to stay, White assured the crowd that the company believes it’s worth the investment. “Social commerce as a space is a large, meaty number with high growth,” he said. “I certainly don’t think it’s a shiny object or a flash in the pan. There are some creators that are scaling and driving greater power than others.”

The post Walmart CMO on Retail Innovation, Customer Experience and Social Commerce appeared first on Chief Marketer.

Data clean rooms have risen in importance amid the post-cookie digital marketing landscape, as a means for marketers to extract value from user data while protecting consumer privacy preferences. But for marketers new to the concept, evaluating the variety of options that exist in the space today could feel a bit overwhelming.

A column in AdExchanger from Alliant Chief Innovation Officer Donna Hamilton provides a useful introduction to the category and shines a spotlight on what newbies should know, from setting ground rules with data governance and compliance teams to employing a flexible strategy that leverages collaboration with peers rather than building infrastructure from scratch. Read more in AdExchanger.

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It’s been a newsworthy week for the controversial CEO of Twitter. And that’s not counting his SpaceX Starship rocket exploding mid-launch.

Twitter announced a new content moderation policy on Monday, April 17, dubbed “Freedom of Speech, Not Freedom of Reach,” which aims to restrict the visibility of tweets that violate its rules against “hateful conduct.” The following day, billionaire owner Elon Musk talked up Twitter’s recent efforts to promote transparency to a crowd of advertisers, marketers and media folks—this editor included—at MMA Global’s inaugural POSSIBLE conference in Miami.

Though extremely attentive to the CEO’s remarks, we’re not convinced all in the crowd were receptive—despite outbursts of cheers from some in attendance. Many advertisers fled the platform after Musk took over the company in October and began making moves that prioritize his views on free speech—“the bedrock of democracy,” in his words—over content moderation, from reinstating formerly banned users to a new paid verification service for accounts with blue check marks.

The new enforcement policy, according to Musk, will make tweets that potentially violate its rules less discoverable on the platform. “If somebody has something hateful to say, it doesn’t mean you should give them a megaphone. They should still be able to say it, but it needs to be not then pushed on people,” he said. “So, if somebody wants to say something that’s technically legal, but that is by most definitions hateful, we’re not going to promote that. We’re not going to recommend hateful content to people. We’ll put it behind a warning label.”

But will advertisers consider the platform safe enough to reinvest? Moderator Linda Yaccarino, Chairman, Global Advertising and Partnerships at NBCUniversal, summed up advertisers’ concerns with this: “Have you de-risked the opportunity or chance of their campaigns landing in these awful hateful places?”

Musk responded that Twitter is indeed taking action to allow brands control where their ads show up. “People may not be aware of this already, but we have adjacency controls in place that are really quite effective… Ads will not appear next to anything remotely negative.” He added, though, that campaigns launched without using adjacency controls do not mitigate that risk. “That should never be done,” he said. “You must put controls in place, because we have excess inventory on negativity.”

Trust and Transparency

When it comes to implementing warning labels that accompany tweets that possibly violate Twitter’s Hateful Content policy, Musk said he has open-sourced a list of words associated with such content, as well as the recommendation algorithm and the Community Notes algorithm. The latter function—formerly known as the Birdwatch program—allows Twitter users to add context to “potentially misleading tweets” by leaving notes that are then evaluated and rated by Birdwatch contributors.

“I think in order to really build trust you have to have transparency,” Musk said. “If you want to trust something, you’ve got to know how it works. And so that’s why we open-sourced the algorithm, and we actually fixed I think over a hundred issues with the algorithm. So it’s actually very helpful to open-source it.” When asked whether his own tweets are subject to Community Notes, Musk said that they are—and that he’s been corrected before as well.

The Feedback Loop

Musk also shared his long-term vision for Twitter, which is “to have a platform that is so useful that you find it is essential.” That means providing a “meaningful communication pathway,” with voice and video calls, encrypted and public communications, and payment capabilities.

But in addition to having concerns regarding the protection of their ad campaigns, advertising experts are also looking for more of an open feedback loop of communication with Musk, Yaccarino argued, “to help develop Twitter into a place where they will be excited about investing more money, product development, content moderation.”

If Twitter becomes an open-sourced conversation, in which users can conduct their lives, their business and their commerce, that’s a huge advertising opportunity for Twitter and for brands, Yaccarino said. “But they need to feel that there is an opportunity for them to influence what you’re building—that vision, what we’re doing here,” she added.

Yaccarino pointed to the beloved former Influence Council from Twitter 1.0, which allowed key stakeholders to have recurring access to Musk. However, the CEO seemed unwilling to reinstate the Council. Pointing again to protecting “the true voice of the people,” he responded that he worried such a move could create “a backlash among the public… There’s legitimate concerns that advertisers have that I want to hear. I think these things should be discussed in an open forum.”

The post Twitter’s Elon Musk Touts New ‘Freedom of Speech, Not Freedom of Reach’ Moderation Policy appeared first on Chief Marketer.

SEO is top of mind for any consumer-facing brand or retailer looking to cut through the clutter online. And one way to boost performance is through leveraging different types of user-generated content. A column in Multichannel Merchant reviews the benefits of increasing the volume of product ratings and reviews, implementing Q&As on product pages, and enabling authentic, visual UGC.

The post How to Boost SEO Performance With UGC appeared first on Chief Marketer.

Retail media ad networks have ballooned over the past couple of years, as brands seek more ways to reach online shoppers with highly-targeted campaigns informed by first-party data insights. One such platform committed to the long game is RM+—a network launched by The Home Depot in 2019—which just scored a dedicated chief focused solely on its growth and monetization.

Retail media’s potential for The Home Depot is huge, Melanie Babcock, Vice President of Retail Media+ and Monetization, told Chief Marketer this week. A lot of cross-department support helped get the network to where it is today, she said, “but now we need to think about the next big jump for us over these next three to four years. And then, how do we make sure that we stay in the game long-term?”

Following is an excerpt of our conversation with Babcock about her new role and what’s entailed; the challenges of maintaining The Home Depot store experience while building an ad platform; her approach to researching competitors; and how the brand is courting consumers who are semi-endemic to the home improvement space.

Chief Marketer: What are your responsibilities in this new position?

Melanie Babcock, Vice President of Retail Media+ and Monetization, The Home Depot: As the retail media practice has grown, it requires a dedicated leader. The potential for retail media for The Home Depot is big. Getting us to where we are today required a lot of cross-department support. For instance, we lean on our media team and our creative team. But now we need to think about the next big jump for us over the next three to four years. And then, how do we make sure that we stay in the game long-term?

In any new startup phase or new thing that comes into the market, everyone jumps in—and then a lot of people jump out, because they realize it’s more complicated than they thought, or maybe it’s not a good fit. We think that it is a fit [for us]. So we want to make sure that we continue to think strategically and long-term about the success of retail media as another Home Depot growth channel.

CM: So part of it is doing research on how the marketing landscape is evolving?

MB: In my previous role, I was Vice President of Integrated Media, and that was inclusive of this retail media network. And also paid media buying and strategy, agency management, our personalization practice using first-party data to drive incremental sales, measurement, and category marketing and strategy. And then I had teams that worked with me around data science, analytics and creative. That was to run The Home Depot marketing program. In my current role today, it’s less about research and more around how we continue to provide the value to our suppliers, whether they be a current supplier today or a new supplier of the future.

My end goal is The Home Depot customer and their satisfaction with The Home Depot experience, which is inclusive of retail media because we use a lot of our first-party data to fuel and empower our retail media practice. I think about maintaining an eye on some of the first people that came in—your mass retailers and Amazon, obviously, as a leader in this space—because they could be setting the standard in the marketplace. Do we accept those as our standards and do we want to follow that, or create a version of that that works for Home Depot? That’s always the case, especially in this scenario, where our suppliers are their suppliers. We want to make sure that we have those standard experiences and offerings.

But then I have to also think about our customer, who they are and what can we offer for them. How do we service that customer, and how does retail media support that customer journey? It’s twofold: keeping your eye on the industry and what’s going on there, but also the customer, to make sure that we’re developing relevant products that our suppliers can buy into that affect the customer journey and make it a more positive one.

CM: And your focus now is more on the monetization piece?

MB: We’re on the cusp of thinking about what monetization means for a retailer outside of just product on shelf. That one we’ve got down pat. When it comes to thinking about the assets that Home Depot has invested in, that may just be cost of doing business. For instance, putting up a bay in a store—that’s an expensive investment. How do you convert those assets that Home Depot has invested in over the years into monetizable moments for our company?

I think that’s the most exciting part of this. Yes, we’re in a business of retail media as most define it today, with on-site ads and off-site ads, but we have a lot of other assets at our company that we can bring forward into the marketplace that would be of high interest not only to our suppliers, but to these non-endemic (we call them semi-endemic) people who maybe already have a relationship with us.

The short game is a great advertising experience, right? How do we make sure we’re contributing to the customer journey and the customer experience? But what’s that long-term game around other monetizable moments in assets in our company that we have never really thought of before?

CM: Can you provide any examples of those assets?

MB: We’re doing a test right now and bringing screens into stores. In the world of retail, that is quite a large proposition. Our stores are highly efficient and run with precision, and to introduce a new concept takes a lot of cross-functional partnership. We’re putting small- and large-format screens into our stores that do not disrupt the shopping experience. If you think about going into a Home Depot, you don’t want a screen in your way. You want to be able to access your product. And they can’t disrupt the associate who’s in that aisle all day. They don’t want to hear something on autoplay.

We’re working through a system that provides screens that tell a message that the suppliers want to tell [customers] about a product, and then introduce a new product that happens to be in the aisle. Or even talk about a benefit to Home Depot, like our loyalty program or our private label credit card or a workshop on the weekend with your kids. How do we bring those messages into the aisle to get people more connected back to The Home Depot? So we’re testing, and we’re in 50 stores now. We’re going to go out to a larger footprint, because we’ve already met the basic criteria within our stores. That’s going to be a big play for us as we think about what screens and stores mean—not only to our suppliers, but maybe even non-endemic suppliers.

CM: What would be the benefit for non-endemics?

MB: For instance, if you’re in the same parking lot with a McDonald’s or a Dunkin Donuts, would they also want to advertise? Especially to that “pro” customer, who comes into our store every day, two doors down, maybe to buy their cup of coffee in the morning. We’re thinking pretty broadly about that. There’s a lot of interest in parking lots as well. We get a lot of questions around putting in different charging stations and things like that. That’s something else we need to consider. In the past, we may have considered that to be a customer benefit, and it is, but now all of a sudden it’s a customer benefit and a monetizable moment. And that makes the asset even more attractive. We’ve had these ideas before, it’s just they never had a monetizable aspect to it.

CM: How much are you courting these potential non-endemic customers?

MB: We’re in early days. We do have a couple of really good partners who are looking to go after “movers.” We have invested a significant amount of time and money to be able to identify a mover with accuracy, as well as our contractor customer. (We call them a “pro.”) Those are two audiences that are difficult to get in front of in a traditional media landscape, and we have really fantastic first-party data on those, so we have the ability to reach them easily. We’re speaking to a lot of financial services, automotive and those type of companies, and saying, how would we best be able to bring you into our environment and make it feel natural?

One of the things that my CEO has asked us to do is to maintain “The Home Depot.” In other words, don’t turn us into just an advertising platform. We still have a commitment to the customer. We still need to make it easy for them to shop. So, don’t disrupt that. But how do you then be additive to that experience? We need to be thoughtful about those non-endemic partners, but we also believe that we’re in the very beginning of understanding the value of those relationships. The few that we’ve engaged with have seen really good results. But we’ve been focused a lot more on our existing suppliers, our ad tech stack, our offering. Is it priced appropriately? What are the insights and measurement tools that we’ve spent the majority of our time focused on these last few years?

Now we need to start thinking a little bit bigger, especially with the looming third-party cookie removal and the value of first-party audiences. How will that change in the marketplace, and does the value of our data help those non-endemics with their marketing goals? As a person who has run media buying for many years at The Home Depot, I believe it will.

CM: For those marketers considering getting into the retail media space in general, what are its advantages?

MB: Again, [from the perspective of] a former media buyer, the person who’s out there trying to drive the most efficiency and high value to my media dollar, the media landscape has changed so much with technology and data science and everything else. The accuracy of media buying has become highly efficient. But a CPG (in our world, we call them suppliers) can spend their dollar in many ways across many digital and traditional channels, always with the hope of connecting to that end customer who is either in the beginning, middle or at the end of their purchase journey. Before retail media networks, they could get as close as humanly possible, but never right to the source. Retail brings that “last mile delivery” to reach the customer.

A CPG can say, not only is it a digital media ad that I can measure based on a great audience, but they’re at the point of decisioning. And that is the last piece that’s been missing in that marketer’s toolbox. Not only can you connect me to the customer at that point of decision, but I can influence that decision, with new product introduction, new feature introduction, or maybe upgrade that customer to a higher-end product.

We have a lot of information about our customers. I’m not talking about specific people, obviously, but what’s in the basket and who is a pro and why they buy like this. We have a lot of that knowledge, and that better informs those CPGs and suppliers with their own media buying and planning—and, frankly, their own product development. It could affect them in ways that go beyond just the advertisement that they’re buying.

CM: And how does Retail Media + differentiate itself in the space?

MB: When The Home Depot started this journey, there were less than 10 retail media networks in the market, and they were heavily focused on grocery and mass. That’s because they have such great frequency of customer visits. We don’t have the same frequency, so that concerned us. We don’t have that weekly or biweekly trip cycle. Our contractor does, but our consumer doesn’t. So we had to step back and think, what is our right to win in this space? Number one: We are a specialty retailer. I don’t think we’ll ever be as big as some of these mass retailers, or even grocery. We don’t have the same mix of suppliers. But we do have something that’s really important—and that is a really high intent signal. People come to Home Depot to solve a problem in their home, and that requires a little bit of research—the smallest amount to the biggest amount.

And there’s a lot of thinking through that. I have this problem now, and I’ve got a project, big or small. Am I going to do it myself? Do I have the right tools? Do I have the right product? All of a sudden, now you’re in this consideration stage of research and you come to our website. We have a very high percentage of customers who start online and end up in the store, because of that intent. That’s very different than mass in grocery. Our website is about connecting those customer journeys between online and the store. A customer gives us a lot of signals. And with those signals, we learn a lot. That’s really important to our suppliers. If I know more about The Home Depot customer, I could be a better supplier to the Home Depot. Better products, features, timing… There’s just so much more to learn and gain, and therefore we both win.

The post The Home Depot’s VP of Retail Media+ and Monetization Talks Retail Media Networks appeared first on Chief Marketer.

TurboTax is perceived by most consumers as a do-it-yourself tax service, while its live full-service product, which enlists experts to assist users with doing their taxes, is less familiar to the public. Associating TurboTax with the latter is the brand’s primary marketing focus this year, and it’s amplifying that message through campaigns timed to tentpole events during tax season, including the Super Bowl and, most recently, the NCAA March Madness tournaments.

For new filers who are also student athletes—some of whom profited off of the NCAA’s updated “Name, Image and Likeness” policy—the brand has a new pitch. “This is the first full year that student athletes can make money off of their name, image and likeness,” Cathleen Ryan, SVP of Marketing at Intuit TurboTax, told Chief Marketer this week. “It’s a new reality for them. It just didn’t exist before.”

“Some of them are making a whole lot of money, and some of them are making a few hundred dollars here and there,” she added. “But either way, those NIL deals create tax implications. And it’s not just for the students. In many cases, the parents need to rethink their tax strategy as well.” Following is our conversation with Ryan about TurboTax’s March Madness campaign, how the brand is reaching Gen Z audiences on colleges campuses and through social media, new market opportunities, and more.

Chief Marketer: How is the messaging of the NCAA campaign different from previous years?

Cathleen Ryan, SVP of Marketing, Intuit TurboTax: We’ve been an advertiser in and around March Madness for years, but this is the first time we’re taking a collective approach to college athletes and students, inclusive of the NCAA partnership. But much beyond that, we’re going bigger with activating in new spaces, specifically where Gen Z and college students are natively, both physically and digitally.

Our entire program is rooted in education and empowering young adults who are just figuring out how to do life on their own, and providing them with the tools and resources they need to file their taxes with confidence, and know that they’re getting every possible dollar they deserve on their return. The NCAA sponsorship is a part of that, but we have college ambassador programs, a really big activation, and working with Influencer the platform that supports young student athletes.

CM: How are you incorporating the NCAA’s Name, Image, Likeness policy? That’s new for you, right?

CR: This is the first full year that student athletes can make money off of their name, image and likeness. Some of them are making a whole lot of money, and some of them are making a few hundred dollars here and there. But either way, those NIL deals create tax implications. And not just for the students, but for the parents. The big reason we’re so active in this space is that they need to be educated on what it means for their taxes and where to get help. And in many cases the parents need to rethink their tax strategy as well.

Student athletes are especially busy, given classes, practices and games. The last thing they want to talk or think about is doing their taxes. For us, it’s all about bringing help and resources directly to them, whether that’s on campus, working in partnership with the NCAA or with influencers. And then we have five or so individual university relationships where we’re reaching out through athletic departments, through student groups, et cetera, to ensure that the help and support is there. NIL is a new reality for student athletes. It just didn’t exist before. We want to make sure that they have the education and tools available to them so they’re not surprised at tax time.

 

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CM: Beyond the messaging of this campaign, what are the strategic marketing goals?

CR: We are looking to market full funnel through this effort, so everything from awareness, consideration, trial and purchase, ideally. We’ve experimented with a number of on-campus activations where students and student athletes can engage with our tax experts, ask questions and get expert answers. We’re providing a ton of content and resources for NIL athletes who need to do things like estimate their expenses, learn how to track expenses, things like that. It’s both awareness and consideration, but also engagement and education.

CM: Beyond this campaign, what are the other ways are you marketing to Gen Z?

CR: In addition to the NIL and influencer campaigns, we’re very active in the media channels and spaces with high Gen Z concentration. So, lots of TikTok, Twitter and social media in general. Media consumption has changed, so there’s streaming, OTT, Netflix. We were one of the first partners to sign on with Netflix ad-supported. We’re thinking about all the places and spaces where Gen Z spends their time, and where we can have a conversation, engage and hopefully entertain, too.

CM: In your research, have you noticed anything different about how younger consumers approach finance and taxes today?

CR: We have done some unique research around Gen Z—and they’re even less likely to want to talk about money and finances than previous generations. Unfortunately, it’s just a part of our culture. But where we can really make a difference is allowing people access to experts and tools, where they can find answers that they’re maybe not comfortable getting from friends or family.

One of the interesting things that we’ve seen with Gen Z in particular is a new way of working and living your life that is different than previous generations. You see a lot of side hustles or side jobs, and an entrepreneurial spirit. And that has tax implications. So it’s important for us, as TurboTax, to ensure that this generation understands the opportunities in and the implications of how they’re making a living, which does look materially different than previous generations.

CM: Where are you looking for growth and new markets this year?

CR: Ultimately, we want people to understand that TurboTax has a full suite of offerings. We have calcified brand perceptions of TurboTax as a DIY software product. But the reality is we are so much more than that. We have a growing full service business, where in a few easy clicks you can share your documents with a tax expert and they will prepare and file your return for you. We have an assisted product where you prepare your taxes with the help of an expert and it even includes a final review of your return, if you want that extra level of confidence before you hit the file button.

When you think about who that applies to, it applies to everyone. There is a huge opportunity, certainly for new-to-the-category filers such as student athletes, but also people that are overpaying a legacy tax pro who maybe doesn’t have the breadth of experience that TurboTax has. As an example, we prepare hundreds of thousands of returns with crypto expenses, gains and losses in them every year. Your local person down the street maybe has seen one of those. We’ve seen it all, and the expertise that comes with that ensures you get your best outcome. That’s the piece that we’re trying to get out in market this year: Come to TurboTax and don’t do your taxes. Let one of our experts do them for you. We are so much more than DIY and have been for years, but we need to get that message out there.

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