 Live from Las Vegas. It's theCUBE, covering Oracle's modern marketing experience. Brought to you by Oracle. Now here's your hosts, John Furrier and Peter Burris. Hello everyone, welcome to theCUBE. We are here live in Las Vegas for Oracle's modern marketing experience. Hashtag MME16, I'm John Furrier with my co-host Jeff Frick and Peter Burris this week. For two days of live coverage of all the latest action on modern marketing experience which really is about the cloud, Oracle. It's really about data. It's really about customer experiences. This is a interesting show and theCUBE is here because this hits our radar when it comes to cloud, big data and ultimately end user experiences. So guys, Mark Hurd had a keynote here again talking about the cloud, bringing back the whole idea that transformation is critical in this new digital space. We all know that marketing is plagued by this digital transformation problem which is the customer experience is now as a full digital progression. It's now a world where the expectations are such where they want things, not just stopping at an email form in some lead gen tactic and then pass on to an analog sales rep. So there's a shift happening. Destination oriented marketing and sales person oriented marketing with humans. Digital takes that online. We're seeing this next generation abstraction of big data with cloud enablement, user experience, all the perfect storm for a cloud mobile social world and now with big data. Peter, your thoughts on this because this hits at the heart of what we talk about every day at theCUBE, almost every event under the covers, under the hood, out into the customers. It's about the data. And that's exactly right, John. And if you think about where marketing technology has been, it's been around for 30 years. But what's been missing is that the customers haven't had a chance to participate directly. And now with mobile, with social, with IoT and other technologies, the customers as they do things are now throwing off gems of information that these technologies, if properly set up, properly implemented, properly managed, can then sweep up and turn into better brand experience on a per customer basis. That's what these technologies are promising to do. And the whole reason for the show is to share best practices about how to do it better. Yeah, and Oracle has been on a buying binge. So obviously they got a portfolio of solutions in the marketing cloud, data cloud. There's a lot of variety of different clouds. It's all one cloud from a market perspective. When I sat down and had my interview with him a couple months ago, it's all one cloud. It's all on-premises in the cloud. That's our big vision. That's the sweet spot. But if you look at how Oracle got here, it's a combination of a bunch of acquisitions. And we know that's kind of hard to do, but they put a nice portfolio together, but it raises the question, what is the infrastructure now and how does that relate to hardened infrastructure, like things like URL management, tokens, APIs, data in the cloud are on-prem. Now you have old school technology, which is very easy in the old days. Search marketing was a very big trend, continues to be relevant, but yet Google's getting rid of ad words on the right-hand side, though it talks about a mobile experience. The user's experiences are being redefined. Yet the technology's hardened, a new layer of innovation or an abstraction layer of interactions. What's your thoughts on that? Here's what I think is happening, John. I think what's going on is that as customers demonstrate a willingness to participate in by doing things that throw off this data, they're expecting some sort of quid pro quo back, and that is whatever they do is supposed to be valuable. And a lot of these marketing technologies from many years ago were very much built from the inside out. So you want to run an email campaign, what does that look like? So you want to put up banner ads, how do you do that better? And those tend to be annoying to the customers. So to sustain this compact, what the technology's now trying to seek out is on the one hand, the ability to capture that data, but on the other hand, serve up content that is ultimately very valuable to the customers so the customer feels like they're getting something in response. The customer doesn't want to just buy. They want to do a better job of understanding, they want to do a better job of evaluating, they have a real life cycle and ultimately using and applying. And so a lot of the technology change that we're seeing happening right now are a pivot away from technologies that are intended to support a specific marketing or selling or engagement function, to technologies that are intended to actually provide value to the customer in a way through content and other activities that bring insights back to the brand. Jeff, your thoughts? You know, it's funny, there's a lot of talk about technology but as we heard from the keynotes yesterday, it's a lot about process and people some of the things that kind of jump out at me is really kind of a refresh of one of Dave Vellante's favorite things to talk about. Not the what but the why and really why as a company are you involved in these types of products and services and can you engage with your client because they're also interested in the why and some real specific examples about, you know, it's not just selling a craftsman tool but it's the whole do-it-yourself culture and helping people do it themselves and what's that all about and getting your hands dirty. Another phrase that comes out, digital body language which is a really interesting concept because it's about the people, how are they responding to what you're doing? How are they reacting? Is it touching them? Are they getting offended? There's a lot of nuance, it's not easy. You know, we hate to bring up the target example that gets brought up over and over and over again but this can be done poorly as well which opens up a huge can of worms. The body language speaks to the data and this is really the key because when you have destination-oriented marketing it's email form or search marketing. Now you have, and that's a sell the customer and the customer discovers the solution. People don't like to be sold to, right? So when social and the mobile revolution we're seeing with cloud people are part of a new discovery process and this new discovery process is peer-based, videos involved, social technologies, digital body language, the non-linear consumption of the digital assets now are more integral than ever yet they're uncontrollable. Yet the customers are opting in on their own. This is the notion, Peter, of the customer's progression to a end-to-end digital trans progression, okay? And that's the transaction. It's going to happen in new ways. So let's talk about that, John, because there is a fundamental shift in perspective that is made possible by the confluence of these technologies and new customer behaviors. And that fundamental perspective, that shift is that it used to be that the assumption was the value was exchanged. By buying something I got value. Now when everything was about products and everything was about what I do with those assets and everything was about the captive organization in the technology world, for example, then making use of them, there was a little bit of truth to that. But the reality today, and this comes back to the cloud, especially when you start thinking about the cloud, the cloud is translating everything into services. It's not about what you buy, it's about what you do. It's about the value that you get in utilization. And Peter Drucker made this observation 40 years ago. It's not value in exchange, it's value in utilization. And so increasingly that relationship has to be about what are we doing with the customer throughout the entire life cycle that the customer is engaged with us from discovery all the way out to deciding that it's time to move on to something else, and am I providing value at each step of the way so that the customer is getting more out of my stuff out of my services than they would get out of the competitors? And that's what these technologies are trying to capture. They're trying to turn into content and they're trying to measure and validate to an increasingly complex array of customers. So one of the things that Mark Heard talked about was on his keynote, first to innovate wins, says Mark Heard. Whoever changes first gets the spoils, wisdom from Mark Heard. Only 30% of the Fortune 500 from 1990 are still in business. So he's kind of pointing out guys that essentially you got to transform or you die. I wrote a post I just shared on our crowd chat from 2014 on the marketing cloud and this seems to be the theme. Cloud and big data are big part of the value proposition. Customers need to stand up something fast. So the Amazon web services model kind of kicks in. So what does it take, what is the building blocks for a company to engage digitally? I mean, obviously table stakes are building blocks such as standing something up quick, frictionless experience, mobile, native mobile, thoughts on this Peter, because this is the holy grail. How do I stand up something very quickly? Well, so, but it all starts with the proposition of why is Jeff went back to why stand something up? Customers want to engage through mobile devices, multi-channel, they walk into a store, they bring a mobile device with them. Their mobile device is helping them compare options, hear what other people have to say about something. The whole point is, is that it all starts with what the customer's trying to do and moves back. The reason why the cloud becomes so powerful is because the cloud provides that extended any time anywhere reach that now is possible and it wasn't possible when you were running your own networks. So the fundamental proposition of the cloud from the perspective of marketing is that the cloud makes it possible to get rid of technology as a question about reach. With the cloud, you have reach anywhere. That says nothing about some of the implementation decisions you might want to make, about whether or not I stand up my own servers or how I do hosting, whatever else it might mean. But the fundamental proposition of the cloud to marketing is your customers are everywhere. If you want to be with them everywhere, the cloud provides that facility. That agility. That exactly right. So Jeff, I want to get your thoughts, because this show I think has an identity crisis. It's interesting. I'm here and it feels a little bit like ad tech and it feels a little bit like an enterprise software collaboration event. It's kind of blending both worlds. You know, you've got that flair and the glam of Lee Jen, you know, hey, you know, slapping down Benjamin's, you know, getting deals done. You know, all the good looking people are here kind of ad tech-ish, but you had this technology involved. It also feels like a collaborative software show. Do you see that? What's your thoughts? Are you getting the same vibe? What's your take? It is an interesting thing. I mean, it feels very enterprise software. It still feels like an Oracle show, right? Red banners all over the place. People are dressed up nice. And in fact, they were all in their Sunday best last night at the Marquis Awards, which is a whole different story. You know, to me, it's this whole concept of personalization at scale. So how do you be personal? How do you touch, but then do it for, as the Clorox guy said, 45 million households. It's a really interesting juxtaposition of doing it at scale, but then trying to get really personal, having the context to do it. So I think it's an interesting challenge. They've talked about the modern marketer. So how do you take advantage of these tools? Another interesting thing to come up, you should be distribution, right? Which the cloud is now broken out. But the other thing is the touch point. You used to be, you had to rely on the retailer. You had to rely on your distribution chain to get to the end consumer. Now you've got an opportunity through applications and mobile to build a direct relationship, even if you don't have a direct transaction relationship to help move that transaction and to actually help your channel. So I think the challenges are significant. And as we see time and time again, John, it's always more about the people and the process and the execution than it ever is about the technology, right? And you know, Kevin went through the whole progression of technology steps all the way back to 1986, an act of how can we engage more directly with our customers more effectively? This is the next iteration. Obviously cloud is a game changer. Mobile is a game changer. But at the end of the day, the processes and the people are the harder part to change. Yeah, let me pick up two points. Again, one of the key things is that the process changes, customers are now creating data for the brands. But you're absolutely right. That's the big change. That's why it's feasible as opposed to just talking about it. The second thing is that you're knowing about personalization is really crucial, but it still comes back to that value. Is every interaction a source of value to the customer? Because customers can abandon you at any time these days. So John, building on that, the thing that it feels like to me here, it's interesting, there's been this notion in the technology universe about this emerging tension between the technology groups and the marketing groups and who's going to win. And it's interesting to come to a show like this and see a number of the press releases because it's not all technology people here. But a lot of the press releases read like technology press releases as opposed to marketing press releases. And I think that's one of the things that we want to hear from the guests over the course of the next couple of days. Are we really serving customers and marketers? Or are we a wolf in sheep's clothing? And it's really just a bunch of technologies still trying to push stuff. And I think what we want to see is that we are really focused in solving the business problem of superior marketing. Because a lot of the language is still very techy oriented. And I think it's got to evolve beyond that. Well, and you have some tech companies here. Mintago, one of the Platinum sponsors has data science founders who understand data and they're doing things that are really algorithmic predictive analytics and they have the palm reader over there, the future teller predict the future. That's kind of their theme, predictive analytics. But I mean, to me, I want to hear about the data because marketing people have always been siloed in the data. This is how the databases are driven. And as the data is cross pollinated, if you will, becomes really where the insights come in. So predictive analytics, recommendation engine, all can be applied to personalization. The question is, can they have that? And then two, the cloud brings opportunity for shadow IT in the enterprise here. We talk about it all the time. But there's also shadow marketing. People are standing up solutions because it's faster to stand and step up quick. Then again, what happens to the data? Again, back to the data. Everything seems to be data driven from our standpoint. What does this modern marketing experience deal with the data? Is there constraints? Is it restricted? Is it siloed? How are they breaking down the silo? And what's the context, right? And then it's always the nuance in the context that makes it either, as I would say, to go back to magic or creepy. And it's all about the context of the timing. Yeah, well, going back to your point about shadow marketing and context, we're going to hear a lot about account level marketing. Where we are bringing together sales activities and marketing activities more clearly into some of these tool sets to provide very rich contextual support for a particular account that faces a particular set of problems. And again, that's one of the big tests of whether or not the data and everything else can come together to actually deliver the value that these technology sets have been promising for a long time. Well, we're going to have the top leaders on here from Oracle, some customers and some people to get the data. So the GM is from the senior leadership to find out what's going on. It's theCUBE. Two days of wall-to-wall coverage. I'm John Furrier at Peter Burris and Jeff Frick here at the Oracle Modern Marketing Experience Show. We'll be right back with more live action from Las Vegas after this short break.