I greatly enjoyed my conversation with Deirdre McGlashan, Chief Media Officer, at Stagwell Global. As her bio at Stagwell Global notes, Deirdre “has led roles across creative, production, development, operations, media, strategy, technology and data, and in her previous role as Global Chief Digital Officer at MediaCom, drove a digital-first mindset across the network’s 8,000 global employees and worked alongside agency leadership to revamp the firm’s digital approach.”
Deirdre and I discuss topics of pressing interest to modern marketers, including the proper allocation of marketing resources, the importance of understanding customer journeys, and leveraging what Deirdre calls “brand truth.” Deirdre is a strong advocate of developing a comprehensive marketing mix which includes media, email, CRM, and using staff as influencers. She shares examples of effective CRM strategies and we explore the role of AI in marketing. Deirdre advises startups and nonprofits to focus on owned properties and synthetic A/B testing. She stresses the importance of authentic influencer partnerships and the need for marketers to balance AI use with learning and cognitive development.
Discussion topics include:
- How CRM can be a rich storytelling mechanism, often overlooked due to its association with product updates.
- Why brands unwilling to grant influencers sufficient editorial control should probably not be engaging with the influencer channel.
- The potential of AI to hyper-personalize messaging at the segment level.
- The evolution from multi-variant testing to dynamic creative optimization (DCO) and generative AI.
- The need for brands to be nimble and quick in capitalizing on social trends.
- The importance of having structures in place to support influencer campaigns.
- Why marketers should use AI tools to learn and improve their skills, rather than just shortcutting tasks.
- The need for nonprofits to tell compelling stories to attract attention and support.
- The importance of understanding how AI agents think about brands.
