Consumer Intelligence

Fireside Chat: B2C Martech Trends with British American Tobacco

Good marketing is both an art and a science. As marketers, we are expected to be both creative storytellers and skilled data analysts, capable of using tech to reveal consumer behavior, preferences, and purchasing patterns to be able to communicate with them effectively. It is not surprising that the martech landscape continues to grow with a total of 8,000 solutions to date and data as its fastest growing category.

To discuss new outlooks, trends, and advanced technology in marketing, we partnered with The MarTech Summit APAC for our first virtual event in 2021. The event was live for three days focused on three main verticals: B2C, BFSI and B2B.

Soumita Roy Choudhury, VP of Sales and Head of APAC for Mobilewalla, held a fireside session on the B2C track. She was joined by Chantelle Chiew, British American Tobacco’s (BAT) Head of Information & Digital Marketing Technology, APAC & Middle East. Together, they explored data utilization, innovations, and challenges in Asia particularly at BAT and within the consumer packaged goods (CPG) space.

Missed the session? Access the recording here ->

 

Utilizing and Investing in Data

British American Tobacco is the largest tobacco company in the world with substantial marketing spends. Chantelle pointed out that data is key to modern marketing and at BAT, data and insights are used consistently to understand their audience and engage with them. Some of their use cases and investments include:

  • Social listening to understand their brand health, industry insights and growing trends;
  • Lookalike audience data to see how they can improve early interaction with audience and personalization of content; and
  • UX analytics to understand customer experience when using their digital platforms.

Market research is another area of data-driven innovation for BAT. While they relied on traditional market research in the past, they have recently deployed new data science methodology through digital resources to uncover opportunities, challenges, and patterns about their consumers even before any interactions with their brand. Chantelle has shared that they are still in the early stage of this journey, but they are seeing digital means as a good resource for market research.

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How Other B2C Companies Leverage Data Solutions

Mobilewalla works with a variety of B2C enterprises across several industries. Soumita’s experience with marketers and data scientists in Asia varies as they come from different stages in their data journey. Most of them are in initial stages, still figuring out what to do with their data and just starting to invest in people and infrastructure. Others have more sophisticated data strategies, with a developed sense of how to utilize data to find different ways of reaching consumers, understanding what they do, predicting their behavior and even looking out for ways to acquire third-party data and AI solutions. As with BAT, most CPGs are still in early stages, but the good news is everyone is already talking about their data strategy and investing in technology.

Key Data Challenges

Both Chantelle and Soumita agree that data silos are one of the top challenges in data strategy. BAT and CPGs have huge amounts of marketing data that tends to be super fragmented and a lot of times, messy. Data flows from different channels and in different platforms, acquired and collected by different teams, which oftentimes reduce the value of what the data can actually bring.

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Another challenge they see is in building an organizational culture that drives the overall path to data strategy and data-based related marketing. This includes commitment in getting the right talent, investing with the best partners and tech stack, which may take years in most organizations.

Last but not the least is the challenge in ensuring high-quality data that is adequate, consistent, and up to date, especially at scale.

Navigating the “New Normal”

Chantelle pointed out that consumers have written a new future for marketing and there’s no playbook to depend on in this new norm. Therefore, it’s important to renew our data strategy and leverage it effectively to connect with consumers better. For many CPGs, the future is focused on eCommerce and migration to a more digital-first activation approach that supports huge demand for speed-to-market and enables agile responses to the changing market.

Are you a B2C marketer and want to learn more about the benefits of third-party data? Contact Mobilewalla, tell us your goals, and we’ll connect you with data experts to answer your questions.

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Arianne Reyes

Arianne Reyes is the lead of marketing in Asia-Pacific at Mobilewalla. Mobilewalla is a global leader in consumer intelligence solutions, leveraging the industry’s most robust consumer data set and deep artificial intelligence expertise. Our refined consumer insights provide enterprises with unparalleled access to the digital and offline behavior patterns of customers, prospects, and competition. Start making more informed business decisions and effectively acquire, understand, and retain your most valuable customers. Get in touch with a data expert today.