Nuno Pedro – Transcript

Q&A Session with Nuno Pedro @ Calvin Klein

March 5th, 2020

Hi Everyone, it is a pleasure to be here. Looking forward to answer the question you might have for me!

Welcome! If you had to build an online community today, where would you host it? + How would you monetize it?

I would tend to think about the big players out there AWS, azure,…. for any community to have consumers paying for it it needs to solve some kind of problem they have. so would start there…what is consumer problem you are solving and how much are people willing to pay for it

Hey Nuno, welcome!What books/blogs/podcasts/resources have you found to be most practically helpful for you when you were first getting started in marketing? Which ones do you find most practically helpful now?

well it really depends on the topic. I find linked a good resource. also like L2 and there smaller blogs depending on the topic

Hey Nuno, which Marketing Automation tool do you recommend?

I won’t recommend a specific vendor, but think the key decision you need to consider is whether you go towards a best of suite or best of bread approach i.e go with smaller nich players or the big ones like Salesforce, adobe, etc…

Where do you see influencer marketing going in the next 10 years?

I think brands have realized that there is a lot of consumer attention towards personalities and stars as well as influencers. many brands are sponsoring and have partnerships with influencers. My guess is that in 10 years…there will be a significant evolution of this and that actually some influencers will become brands

Hi Nuno, welcome. What is Calvin Klein’s strategy for influencers marketing? do you have a teama inhouse? do you work with influencers directly? what percentage of the marketing budget goes to influencers marketing? Thanks!

CK looks to understand who are influencers that are relevant in the context of the brand and establish partnerships with them. we have a team focused and that and will not into % of budget being used …sorry 🙂

Thanks for taking the time Nuno, curious what does Calvin Klein’s influencer marketing look like? Primarily what types of challenges do you currently face, and what tools/processes do you use? 

I think CK as a significant social presence and partners with many different influencers…we are doing a good job there I believe. Key challenges are many but think scaling and monetization might be the biggest ones

Developer in a research institute, consultant for about 10 yrs, focused on project mgt for a while, move to a big brand in Germany and now to a brand in the USA

What’s your career path been so far?

Developer in a research institute, consultant for about 10 yrs, focused on project mgt for a while, move to a big brand in Germany and now to a brand in the USA

Hi Nuno,
What’s the biggest issue Calvin Klein (or retailers in general) face right now that you believe technology can solve?

Hi! building more of a direct relationship with consumers. Gathering more consumer data, with more data we can understand consumers better and drive more consumer centric product design, marketing, in/store setup, etc…

Hey!
Thanks for taking the time to join us.
Quick questions:

1. what are your most challenging metrics to track (and transform into action points)?
2. How do you feel about TikTok? Any plans there?

measuring impact of marketing in wholesale channels is quite challenging. Tiktok…big emerging channel, definitely something to watch out for, but primarily the approach should be to have a flexible enough plan, media investment, tech, etc.. to be able to quickly adapt new emerging channels

What are you doing right now that’s tightly tied to growing sales or profits? Either as tests or proven successful initiatives?

in brick & mortar leveraging digital channels to drive in-store footfall using geo/localization tactics has proven to work well for us

What are some questions and internal vetting process an for marketing idea to pass before being implemented?

I believe that the more nimble we get in the decision process the better. If someone has a good idea they should be able to execute it – Obvious enough there are some gates around brand identity, style guides that need to be taken but not so much about creating obstacles to the idea itself

What’s your current tech stack?

very high-level: Agilone, SFMC, GMP

Would you use an automation tool for FB creative testing?

optimizing content for the different channels definitely something that we need to do more of, not only for FB.

As a visionary what would you consider to be a breakthrough in marketing innovation?

Hi Alina, good to hear from you. Thank you for calling me a visionary…I think the next frontier is really about nailing down the connection between product / sales / consumer needs…I called it personalizing the consumer experience to allow consumer needs, product attributes and commercial goals. A breakthrough moment would be when we are able to do it at scale, in an orchestrated way across channels and in a consistent manner for all consumers

Hey Nuno! How do you think the virus will affect supply chains in your business and other brands like yours?

A flu is a flu…there is a lot of information flowing around, it is definitely worrying but at the same time I do think that mankind is equipped to deal with it. Will there be impact on companies, sales, supply chain, etc… yes there will but it is also a bit about us hopefully rational beings to take a step back and think about some reactions being taken.

Does an enterprise brand like Calvin Klein need to worry about SEO, or does brand recognition eliminate the need to do so?

Hi! I think SEO is a topic that all brands need to worry about. I am pretty sure google search algorithm cares more about what the consumer wants then what CK wants. My opinion is that SEO is looked at some times as a standalone discipline when in reality it is actually one of the most connect channels/topics in the whole of digital. mastering that is paramount to leverage a hugely important traffic source

Hey, Nuno! I know a lot of retailers send tons of emails! What kinds of emails have you seen perform the best for sales, and why do you think that is?

yes…all brands send many emails…CK is not an exception. I think email as a channel is seen as a money printing machine because the more you send the more revenue it is able to generate and the opt-out / lack of engagement is more of a mid-long term problem. This is the unfortunate truth today…from my perspective a good email program needs to focus more on engagement metrics that ultimately drive revenue, focus on managing the consumer life-cycle and acknowledging that daily promotional emails might be a good short term commercial strategy but that it doesn’t help consumer life time value

How important (and how far along do you think the industry is) at doing recommendations and personalization we’ll?

I think personalization is one if not the most relevant and important topic from a marketing perspective today. There is a challenge to concretely define it, to scale it and to move beyond optimizing existing journeys or a specific channel and calling it personalization. it is not an easy nut to crack

Hey,  I was curious about email marketing technology at Calvin Klein and how you are incorporating email marketing tech in your overall strategy? Any challenges? Does it represent a large part of your marketing strategy?

Raising our game when it comes to leveraging technology to improve our marketing efforts Is definitely a key priority (I hope it continues to be :)) email is just one of the channels that we need to use to drive our campaigns…internally it is important to move away from the mindset of having a email service provider and move into the space of thinking journeys that can be orchestrated across multiple channels

What has been a surprisingly weak digital channel for CK in terms of performance or ROI?

hmm…I don’t think a channel is weak just because it doesn’t generate ROI. if you think about engagement, reach and also conversion in a holistic way, every channel will have its sweat spot and I think our current strategy is beginning to pay dividends across channels and across reach, engagement and conversion

What is your attribution strategy and tooling to track customer journeys across all channels?

challenging topic…I don’t think we will ever be done. moving from last click to multi-touch point to incrementally is the path that we are on. biggest challenge is to connect and get data from all communication as well as data back from sales channels…wholesale is though.

Thank you for your frank reply! I hope some day you will write a blog post about it so we can learn more about CK’s journey into it.

I am thinking about writing more overall, definitely a topic worth an article. tks for the suggestion

What tech investments have really paid off for CK?

Hi Angela…I think that it is not about the tech investment paying off or not, rather about are you using the tech in the right way to serve the business. Honestly all tools/systems/,…. can generate some level of return on investment it is more about if the organization is ready to use it, do you have the right skill / experience level / use cases / processes / measurement to continuously improve / etc…

When you vet new software solutions for your brand, what are some of your consistent thoughts in gathering software requirements? For example, for this tech to work in our existing ecosystem it needs X, Y and Z.

depends a bit. RFP will be somewhat specific depending on the solution that we are looking for. if ok from your side will keep RFP requirements out of the conversation 😉

Curious how you view the rise of DTC and has it informed any decisions you’ve made?

well…for brands that come from more of a wholesale focus to move to a D2C focus is not easy because it requires creating a lot of “muscle” that the org really doesn’t have. That said I do think that the conversation shouldn’t be really about wholesale or D2C but rather about and. The key for success from my perspective is assuring that there is differentiation across sales channels, i.e product differentiation, different experiences, etc… it is challenging to be able to do this as establishing that differentiation requires a significant amount of work

What’s the most difficult challenge CK is facing in the digital space?

probably the main one is…change management and assuring the whole organization understand the why and the value of leveraging digital as a means to achieve business goals and being where the consumer is.

What would you say is CKs primary competitive advantage?

do you know anyone on earth that doesn’t know the brand?

Awareness wise we don’t really have a problem. key challenge is how to convert brand awareness into consideration and purchase. that is were data and digital come into play

How do you select influencers for CK underwear and market segmentation? For example I have a friend who stream himself playing fornite on underwear. For what I see he uses Fruit of the Loom. How do you approach the market segmentation?

well don’t think we will be able to curate everyone that posts a pic in their underwear selecting influencers is not an easy process and one that a dedicated team spends quite a lot of time and effort on. that is as far I will share on the topic.

How “healthy” would you say your data is? And how much of a bottle neck has “bad data” been as you try and reach your business objectives?

I honestly don’t really know any big corporate that can say adamantly that they have good data. Integration, data quality, data governance, data lineage are all topics that are paramount to assure data driven marketing and need to be tackled over the course of time…fixing all data in a corporation does take its time.

How do you weigh your consumer behavioral data and intentional data? Which route of these two routes acted on has provided most ROI?

depends…longer term processes like product design used to leverage a lot of intentional data, but social media and search trends are now a good complement…just an example of how you should not really separate those two and rather look at potential synergies. That said for digital marketing would add that behavioral is still the path of least resistance.

I always like to ask for any advice you would give to young/new marketers looking to excel in the career field? And what are some important skills that you have learned/attained that have helped you get to where you are.

find out what you have a passion about, learn by doing not by managing, keep your head down and learn as much as you can. be curious never stop learning. change often. select a good boss. select a good company…focus more on intrinsic motivation as the extrinsic elements of motivation are more ephemeral and they will eventually come if you have a passion for what you do

Hey Nuno! Does CK do A/B testing and optimization on their site? If so, what does that process look like for you?

we do, we should always do more. defining an hypothesis, defining the what, who, when , what does success look like…assuring that you are not having tests messing with each other and go for it/.

For digital channels that don’t generate ROI, but act as some ‘connective tissue’ between channels, how are you standing up those channels without explaining the value in dollars it brings without it falling into conjecture?

taking the CFO out for diner 🙂

more seriously…making people understand that there should be success metric beyond ROAS, ROI, Revenue or bottom line. Brand equity is what drives consumer willingness to pay, if you don’t invest in that the only differentiating factor you have is price and when that happens you are on a race to the bottom

What do you know that most big brand retail marketing managers don’t?

I don’t know…my goal is not necessarily to know more than others, rather know more about what we are doing, why, how, and what we are doing…learning, testing & learning…achieving results and hopefully have some fun in the process

Fun question, favorite type of food and why it’s better than every other type of food.

food…asian fusion because it is just different and it almost like explodes in your mouth

Any cool use cases of how you guys are using AI? Or plan to in the future?

AI is a very elusive topic…some usage in consumer service, marketing mix, … definitely a topic to explore more in the future

Almost out of time…my brain is literally exploding. Thank you for all the questions and participation, I hope it has been enjoyable!

Again thanks everyone for your time! was great. see you soon.