 Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE, covering Adobe Summit 2019, brought to you by Accenture Interactive. Okay, welcome back everyone, CUBE's live coverage here in Las Vegas for Adobe Summit 2019. I'm John Furrier, Jeff Frick, my co-host, next guest is Dikki Mendonsa, who's the global president of Accenture Interactive Operations. Welcome to theCUBE, thanks for joining us. Thank you, thanks for having me. So learning a lot about the Accenture Interactive, what is Accenture Interactive Operations? What does that do? What sort of function? Accenture Interactive Operations is the managed service arm of Accenture Interactive. And together we design, build, and activate, scale the best experiences on the planet for our clients. What we were finding is, you know, a lot of clients were very happy with our design-led creation of experiences, but they really wanted more help to activate, operate, and scale those experiences across the world. I think scalability is now becoming the crux of many of our CMO conversations. And so it was very important for us to build out Accenture Interactive Operations to scale those experiences for our clients. Can you give an example of what it entails? And I'm just trying to follow it through. So like, operation is meaning like, okay, the interactive team sets up everything, they hand it off to you, and you guys wire it together. Is it in the cloud? Is it analytics? Just through how the operations workflow is. Yeah, well Accenture Interactive very much design and build the solution for clients. And absolutely, we then come into play to make sure that we develop a man and machine operating model. So basically bespoke marketing engines for clients that are data powered. And also, we design hub and spoke models for clients across the world to give them the speed, scale, and agility that they now need in their comms. So very much, you know, we architect the right org model that is needed for the client. That's the marketing operating model, as well as the content operating model, so that we can effectively take an experience and scale it across multiple touch points, seamlessly, with huge brand consistency across every single consumer touch point. So they stand it up very quickly then. So their goal is, okay, get it into market quickly, stand it up, get it going. Absolutely, and rapid stand up is really so important because there's a speed in sort of compression of go to market. And now clients can't have weeks and months of lag time between a creation of a product and the deployment of the product. And so that's why we critically have come to the party with a very man and machine and data driven model to give them that speed. So it really is from idea, ideation, proof of concept, out to market. We've truncated that whole supply chain and marketing supply chain quite significantly. So Nick, you talked about scale and global reach, but at the same time, everyone wants personalization, right? So the challenge of personalization at scale is very different than just scale for scale sake. So how are you helping clients address that part of the equation? Well, first and foremost, with any approach to hyper personalization, the way that we actually consume and segment the data is critical. So at Accenture Interactive Operations, we'll play a key role in dealing with first, second and third party data of a client to be able to devise the right cohort groups that they need to effectively target in a world of hyper personalization that's directly related to their growth ambitions. Then we will make sure that the data actually feeds the content creation and customization so that the right message conversation experience is going out to the right client at the right time in the right way. And I think that, you know, we've really honed that for a lot of clients. BMW, Disney, Melia, Hotels, GSK, et cetera, et cetera. And it's proving unbelievably successful. You guys are a huge partner of Adobe and partner of the year pretty much every year. Obviously great presence globally. You got to be excited when you look at the charts on yesterday's keynote, when they lay out the platform because they're setting up exactly the kinds of mechanisms around data pipelining, semantic translations, and then real time personal, I mean, they're building everything into a platform to make it data-driven. And that's the hard part of all this. I mean, what you just laid out is a hugely complex story. And to do that quickly is a huge task. So you got to like what Adobe's doing now with their platform. I am loving what Adobe's doing and they are making it easier. They are almost accelerating what we're now referring to is the platformization of marketing. And, you know, marketing technology is now circa 30% of the marketing budget. That's a lot. I mean, that's obviously the highest it's ever been and it's only going to go one way. So now to be able to actually set up, design the right marketing technology, leverage it fully, and also, once you've got foundational tech like Adobe, to also build additional vertical bespoke technology onto that really starts to give clients a competitive advantage. So let's talk about the challenges marketers have because we've seen the evolution of the internet infrastructure since their Web 1.0 to whatever version you call it now. But in my mind, I just see this montage of this MarTech stack, the logo slides that comes out every year. It's oh my God, it's like huge. So the question is, has MarTech failed to live up to its expectations with all these point solutions or is it just natural evolution that these things are kind of consolidating into kind of pillars of technologies with more business conversations over the top because that's the question that we hear a lot from practitioners is like, look, I don't need another platform. I don't need another tool. I got tons of tools, I got tons of platform options. I just want this stuff to work. So how do you see those key challenges from marketers? I think it's incredibly challenging and just challenging and to your reference to the Loom Escape. I mean, the Loom Escape has over 6,000 MarTech and AdTech companies in it and we are going to see an acceleration of that consolidation in that landscape. You're absolutely right. The point solutions are going to quickly accelerate to an end-to-end solution. So everyone, there's a bit of musical chairs going on at the moment with regards to the M&A landscape and it's getting more acute actually by the week. So marketers are very, very challenged still to be able to procure the right technology, to be able to also make sure that they're getting maximum utilization from that technology. Some of the technology is very, very expensive. So they have bought the licenses but actually they don't necessarily have the skills, the talent, the capabilities to drive the technology effectively. It's almost like having a Ferrari but not having a driving license. So we're helping clients to be able to properly drive the technology and to be able to also ascertain if they have the right technology in the first place because the landscape is moving so quickly. Or they've got the wrong technology and they got to repurpose it and reskill. I mean, it's a huge operational challenge. Absolutely. Hence your operations comes in and this comes up a lot in our conversations. I love the new capability. I just wish I knew how to implement it. Completely. And then operationalize it and staff around it so that everything's in my marketing mix and in an agility way, not a waterfall kind of process. Completely and that's what we do in terms of our human and machine model, we look at the ad tech, more tech stacks that we're building for clients, make sure that they're truly proprietary, bespoke, doing the job that they're intended to do in terms of marketing for growth. And then literally we help clients maximize everything that they can get out of that technology and making sure that really data and analytics is driving the content creation, driving the content customization because you're now in a world of algorithmic optimization when it comes to atomic content, lots and lots of little pieces of content that are needed to fire at loads and loads of different cohort groups. We can take that all on and actually make it pretty painless for a client to do that across multiple countries. Thank you. What about from the other side of the equation, the receiver of all this micro targeted atomic information? The consumer. There's just so much stuff. I always think it's like, it's like driving through a snowstorm with your headlights at night. You know, it's just like. How do you get through the, how do you get people's attention? How are you helping people get attention in this increasingly cluttered, busy and just, you know, oversensitized, you know, kind of inbound world in which we live as consumers. And it's one thing for B2C. I think of the poor B2B marketers. Oh my goodness. What a crazy challenge they have now. Yeah. I mean, I think it's a great question. And I think that now it's less about attention necessarily. It's more about relevance because if you manage to achieve hyper relevance in your communication, you know, customer first communication, then by default you are going to get the right attention and you're going to get the right result from that experience, conversation, communication, et cetera, et cetera. So really I think being able to really excel at hyper personalization is really what we're focused on now. And data is the answer to that and data hand in hand with artificial intelligence and machine learning really gives us an unbelievable combination and puts hyper personalization on steroids. I got to ask you on that point because content becomes a key part of the marketing mix at all levels, earned, owned and all paid, all that good stuff. But content has, is it about data too? Because being relevant is also contextually aligned with the targeted distribution of those audiences. So the question is, we're seeing with our videos, content drives a lot of community engagement. How are customers thinking about the role of community? Because as the users become part of their brand engine, this is now part of a new closed loop that's developing. How do you guys see that connecting? Because if you get the content right and you get the targeting through your operations, you then will have to be able to put certain content and certain channels with the right data. That means the programming has to be relevant, which is another task. But if they get that right, the community engagement goes off the charts. How do you see the community part of that developing? What does the brand marketers do after that? I think the community aspect is critically important and it's hand in hand with the importance of first party data. And everything that, I mean, we really are gravitating towards a world of first party marketing activation. The first party data that clients hold is unbelievably potent. And therein lies the secrets of success to creating a highly engaged community. And yes, we are taking a leadership role now in producing long and short form content when it comes to making sure that it's laser focused to that particular cohort group. It has to be hyper relevant and absolutely to your point, some of the community members want to create that content themselves. So we also play a part in, whether it's the finer points of influencer marketing, making sure that we're helping these stakeholders create the right content and then helping them distribute it effectively and efficiently. And then scoring users and reputation, relevant reputation comes in. Yes, because they become, I mean, key influences in B2C and B2B are so important as, as it pertains to the virality of the communication. So they're almost like channels. You know, the influencers are almost like channels in of themselves and they can actually, you know, put the communication on steroids if they are effective at their influencing role. So if I get what you're saying, then the new formula is a collection of niches is the new reach number. So rather than a blast to the reaches, it's a collection of niches that are programmable and addressable. Absolutely, it's almost like the collection of cohort groups together gives you that mass communication. I'm curious, kind of the take on softer, some of the softer types of communications and content around, you know, mission and we heard, you know, Satya in the keynote earlier today talking about mission and a lot of people are really not so much concerned but they care. They care about what the mission of the company is and some of these kind of social and, you know, not necessarily direct attributes of the product or direct benefits of using the product but more of a by the company, not necessarily the product that they sell. How do you see that evolving in kind of the marketers toolkit and kind of the rising importance of that type of engagement with the community? Yeah, when we talk to clients, CMOs and CDOs specifically, we talk about purpose as well as the product differentiation. I think in today's world, you have to have both. And by purpose, you don't necessarily have to have a lofty purpose because not everyone can. I mean, look at a lot of CPG clients. They can't have a lofty purpose but they can be purposeful. They can be hyper relevant in your life and that's what we try and attain and achieve. So I think it's very, very important. You're doing a lot of work at the moment with clients almost stepping back and saying, well, what business are you actually in? What is your raison d'etre? What is your purpose in life? And how do we amplify that then through all forms of communication? Because then once you've got that sussed, you really do have the critical ingredients of designing, creating the best experiences on the planet and activating them pretty quickly. And transparency becomes a big part of the user trust equation as well as user experience and relevance because if you're transparent, they want to see the data. This becomes a whole new dynamic. The transparency is critical because anyone can find out anything in two minutes on the interweb. So you have to, transparency is not, trust in transparency is not an option. All right, so I got to ask you about the conflict between innovation and regulation and the market dynamics because we've seen innovation always run hard and fast and then regulation tries to catch up and kind of fit in. First party data is super important. As this new shift to digital is happening where it's kind of moving from the old email blast to the old communication static channels to more dynamic, you're starting to see the rise of distribution platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter among other, Zillion other third party API driven platforms. They're all having third party data. So how does the customer, your customer, brands balance the need for first party information that they have and or are now putting their content out in these channels is a huge thing because not everyone has open data. So how do you guys review that trend and how early is it, what needs to be done, is it okay? Making progress? Yeah, I mean first and foremost, the clients that do have very rich first party data, particularly financial clients, telco clients, et cetera, we really help them amplify that first party data to help them activate. With clients that don't necessarily have rich first party data like a lot of CPG clients, we help them build that first party data. And that's also sometimes where the purpose comes in and the community building comes in because when you get those two things, when you hone those two things, you can actually start to build a community and then you can start to build richer first party data so that we can help clients activate off of that. Third party data, we're getting a little bit more forensic with regards to whether or not that third party data is truly additive. And sometimes it's the smaller third party verticals specific to travel, et cetera, farmer, et cetera, et cetera. Where the third party data is actually most potent. So it's important to almost look at depth more than breadth when it comes to- And then blending the data together in an alchemy way kind of way. Exactly, but it has to be additive because there are some third party data sources which aren't truly additive to activation, therefore we can discard them. Nicky, great content. You're amazing. Your insights are broad and really relevant. Thank you for sharing the data here on theCUBE. Appreciate it. Thanks for having me, it's been fun. Live coverage here to Adobe Summit 2019. I'm John Furrier, Jeff Frick. Stay tuned for more day two coverage after this short break.