4 Inspiring Quotes on Brand Growth
ANA events bring together some of the smartest and most-talented marketers in the industry to share insights and best practices that help ANA members get the most out of their own marketing efforts.
Naturally, when ANA members and other top marketers get together, the potential for a great soundbite or two is very high. For this reason, we'll be collecting and sharing the top quotes from ANA events during each month throughout 2023.
Below, you can find the top quotes from ANA speakers for April:
"When it comes to data ethics, I don't think that I will ever have it fully figured out. That's because the ways in which we are collecting data are changing all the time."
— Mark Proulx, head of media responsibility at Johnson & Johnson Consumer Health
Be honest: As a marketer, ten years ago the term "data ethics" probably would've felt extremely strange to you. But as data has risen in its importance to digital marketing, consumers have become keenly aware of how their data can be misappropriated by businesses. At last month's ANA Masters of Data and Technology Conference, Johnson & Johnson's Proulx said brands now need to go above and beyond simply obeying data privacy laws to earn consumer trust — they need to hold themselves to a higher standard for data quality, data storage, and how data is used in campaigns. Speaking of data management...
"Clean rooms deliver value and drive business growth."
— Matt Kilmartin, cofounder and CEO of Habu
Though this term is being used more and more, it seems like many marketers still aren't entirely sure what a data "clean room" is. Kilmartin offered a simple definition: Data clean rooms are a secure, cloud-based environment that enables partners to access the most granular data with privacy and governance. They help solve privacy-safe methods to combat signal loss, maintain control over sensitive and important 1P consumer data, and are a compliant option to enable addressability and measurement. In other words, if your brand is going to hold itself to a higher standard for data compliance, it needs to use a data clean room.
"We're drowning in enabling technology, that helps drives growth, and yet, only about a third of CMOs report any kind of financial results."
— Dr. Debbie Qaqish, partner and chief strategy officer at The Pedowitz Group
With all this talk about higher standards for data compliance and data clean rooms, you may be asking yourself: How am I ever going to get my CFO to approve all these expenditures? Well, the good news is the wealth of data available to marketers makes it easier than ever to tie marketing efforts to business results. And yet, only about a third of CMOs are doing so. That is an embarrassingly low number, and one our industry needs to elevate post-haste!
"The immense inequality we face now and the environmental crisis we face on three fronts (climate change ... water shortages ...and the loss of biodiversity ...) — all of these result in a kind of social and environmental bankruptcy, which can be averted. There's no question, we have the ingenuity, we have the capacity, we have the knowledge, and we don't even need a lot of new technology. We know how to live on our home planet. Yet we've become accustomed to living in a way that doesn't support life on our home planet."
— Vincent Stanley, director of philosophy at Patagonia
We end this month as we so often do with a quote that highlights the value of brand purpose, and this one is a banger. "We've become accustomed to living in a way that doesn't support life on our home planet." What more needs to be said?
We're being told we're getting paid to say more. Well then: Patagonia is perhaps the best example of a brand embodying its purpose. You've likely already heard about how their owner decided to donate all the company's future earnings to help fight the climate crisis. That's incredible in and of itself. But the dedication goes deeper: Did you know that to help convince them of the need to move to organic materials, Patagonia took all its employees on two trips — one to an organic cotton farm and one to an inorganic cotton farm. The stark contrast between the two was enough to get the staff to buy in. That's a company doing whatever it takes to embody its purpose.
The views and opinions expressed are solely those of the contributor and do not necessarily reflect the official position of the ANA or imply endorsement from the ANA.
Ryan Dinger is a director of editorial and content development at ANA.