Bringing It All Together: The Power of Marketing Orchestration

(dramatic music) - Do you ever feel like your marketing efforts sound a lot more like a chaotic jam band than a well-tuned orchestra? Welcome to the Orchestration Podcast from a Radio by RRD. We're gonna dive into what it takes to bring strategy, media, and creative together in productive harmony. I'm your host, Matthew Tilly, and today I have Carolyn Altmar on the show. She is the senior vice president of Digital Media Sales for a Radio by RRD. She is a sharp, systems-minded sales leader who spent her career helping brands connect the dots to make amazing things happen. I've worked with her for over a decade now, and I have seen firsthand her passion for breaking down silos and genuinely making marketing work better. We're about to tune our marketing instruments and make some beautiful marketing music. So let's get into this. When you look at all these different brands and how they're executing, and you work with a lot of different brands, and they're planning and their execution of media and creative, what do you feel's broken or at least out of sync? I mean, maybe it's not as bad as broken, but just at least not working like it should and somehow out of sync. What do you see is not working right now? - I mean, I, broken's a strong word, but honestly, what feels broken is the sequencing. Strategy, media, and creative, there's still treated like a really race almost where each team hands off the baton to the next, and hope that the person who comes next doesn't drop the baton, right? Like it's like throw it over the fence and like, okay, I did my job, check box. And in reality, consumer attention moves way too fast for that sequential process. And really, the disconnect shows up in wasted impressions, mismatched messaging and creative that may be technically beautiful, but out of step with how and where it ultimately is being delivered. And it's not the team's fault. No, we get a lot of great talented people. They're just not in sync. It's kind of like, you know, if you ever been to a watch band or orchestra or a show and you watch them warming up for the concert. And each musician is tuning their own instrument for its own optimal performance. And they're all doing it at the exact same time. With no regard for the collective sound, they're just kind of like in their own world doing their own thing. And all they're caring about is getting their own tuning correct. And what does it sound like to all of us that are there? Yeah, it's a massive thing. You have to know kids, like, "Oh, this is terrible over their ears." And, you know, but then when they shift into concert mode and everyone's playing in an orchestrated, coordinated way, it's beautiful. And for being honest with ourselves, I think the vast majority of marketers are still in that warm up mode, not at the concert, at least not yet. So what is it you think that is making it so that, and I'm just gonna focus on creative and media, although there's other aspects. But what do you think it's making it so that these become almost separate things in the first place? What's so creative or media becomes secondary to the other thing? What does it we have? What has got us here? And then more importantly, you know, what have we really lost because we're treating them so separately? Well, I think the split really comes from legacy structures and systems. You have different agencies with different PNLs and different KPIs. And recently, certainly media has become more and more data driven and complex. And creative continues to stay typically on the brand side. So as that gap has widened and continued to widen, we all really lost the power of right message, right moment. Media knows the moment, creative knows the message, but if they're not collaborating from the get go, and more importantly, not just collaborating from the beginning, but collaborating throughout, there's a lot of missed opportunities, you know, priorities are misaligned from the very beginning with one team heavily focused on brand voice and storytelling. And the other one is focused on clicks and seep and, right, right, right. And then even worse, you know, it creates friction when performance likes because nobody knows what actually went wrong and who or what is to blame. Right, right, right. Now, what we're talking about here isn't just a creative and media problem. I mean, that's that is kind of at the heart of it, but there's also a data element to this. So data plus media plus creative. So how are the different silos, I think you mentioned sort of the legacy sort of setups of how we've sort of set marketing up in the past. How these silos of planning and execution, slowing down or even sabotaging the results because data isn't really at the heart of this. Ooh, sabotaging is such a good word. (laughing) I mean, the biggest cost of silos, it isn't just inefficiency, it's inertia. And to your point, it can sabotage everything and really strangle momentum. If your data team sees something mid-flight that should influence creative and targeting, how long does it take to act on? Right. And in way too many orgs, and I'm gonna use the word org broadly because in most cases, you're working with multiple different orgs. You have one core group and then you have this group here and it could be multiple different companies too. And in way too many situations, that signal just dies in a spreadsheet. Yeah. You know, when strategy, media, creative and measurement aren't sitting at the same table from the very beginning, you had to optimizing in circles instead of making actual progress. Yeah, yeah. How do we get them at the same table? Do you have any sort of in your experience examples of, hey, this is how we got them working together from just that natural inertia that we would have but get them to where we are actually working together. Have you seen that come together? Well, I think what's key is everybody has to have a seat at the table from the very beginning. And that's extremely difficult when each one of these functions lives at different companies. Because you have competing interests, competing priorities and you're dealing with really a group of people aren't really on the same team. So where I see it done well, when I see it done well, it's something that I'm really proud of that we do at our dean, you're more specifically a radio by our RRD, is those functions all live under the same roof, all live under the same team. So it all works in functions best when each one of these stakeholders, if you will, not only has a seat at the table in the very beginning process, but continually are working together. So quite frankly, if you don't have these functions all under the same roof, you're always going to have conflict, you're always going to have to tension, you're always going to have competing priorities that's going to prevent you from truly working together in cohesion. So having the same goal, some of the same incentives, some of the same objectives and even reporting structures, potentially just all kind of working in the same direction. Totally. OK. Just in this idea of conflicts, different groups that are at odds with each other. One of the things that I hear a lot of talk about is brand marketing as opposed to performance marketing, which definitely have different goals and outcomes. And a lot of times these things are set in opposition to each other, these different disciplines. You're talking about these different silos and how that can cause these problems. But how much tension is actually caused by-- how much of that tension that I'm describing is caused by the disconnect in the reporting structures, the systems, the incentives, the goals, and how much of that is necessary and real between performance marketing and brand marketing. Almost all of it. And what's interesting is brand marketing and performance marketing ultimately have the same end goal. The intent is to drive business. Everybody, everything that they are doing is intended to do that. The big difference is they're playing in vastly different time horizons. When you're looking at performance marketing, it's in a very, very tight time horizon more often than not. And brand marketers are playing the long game. And the tension really comes from misaligned KPIs, budgets, and tech stacks, too, actually. When you're operating with different goals, budgets, metrics, they do end up unintentionally working against each other. Yeah. And if you've ever seen it where in the same company where they are actually trying to do that those goals brand and performance, long-term, short-term, and actually are competing with themselves, maybe even for things like literally down to the impression level. - Yes. - Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I wish the answer to that question was no. But the more you get to know and have friends particularly who are at higher levels within the marketing department, they'll get a lot more on us that that's what's happening and that's something they're actively trying to fix. - Absolutely. Now you do in your role, you're working pretty closely both on the aridio side but also with the customers that we work with, with sales, strategy and execution. You're collaborating across a lot of those different roles and you would kind of alluded to the fact we are seeing some orchestration, that actual concert mode versus the warmup mode we're seeing that happen. So when data creative, when media and measurement, when all that's kind of coming together and actually integrated, what are you seeing that's possible? How does that really, when they're actually aligned, not just talk and not just on paper but they're actually aligned, can you talk about what you have seen as the awesome outcomes? 'Cause I'm assuming that's a pretty cool thing. What does that look like in your experience? - Well, it's a fantastic thing. But what it tangibly looks like is speed, clarity, and accountability. When you have strategy, defining the goal, data identifying the opportunities, media and creative, actively building towards that together, and then measurement continually feeding each integration. What it looks like is teams that aren't just checking boxes, they're actually learning, they're adjusting, and ultimately delivering real business outcomes. And it's not just alignment on paper, like us saying, well, because we are aligned, but when done properly, it's shared ownership in practice. And if you wanted to keep going on the whole music analogy, it feels a lot like jazz. There's structure. - Yes. - But there's also room to improvise and to really go on a riff that ultimately makes the music that much more beautiful, but it's done in a way with structure and collaboration. It's when the orchestration is working, people don't just know what they're doing, they know why they're doing it. And that's when real magic happens. - Right, and I imagine too, you kind of understand your limits, as well as the possibilities within that. So you really have some room to grow. - Absolutely. - Yep. Now, as somebody is going down this path, and you have, again, worked with some brands and marketing teams who are starting to go down this path, what are you seeing as some early signals? Again, we're assuming we're kind of right on it, we're at the beginning, we're at the trailhead, we're about to go down this path. What are some early signals that we are moving in the right direction towards this more connected, orchestrated approach that you just described as jazz? We're about to start working on some jazz together. - Yeah. Well, I think the first thing that happens is you'll notice that the language that the team uses changes. So you're going to start hearing more, let's solve this together, let's build this together. Can we get the media team in on this brainstorm? What are we learning from the data? When you start hearing questions like that and comments like that, really think that language signals a cultural shift. The creative teams are asking about performance. Media teams are pushing for better inputs, not just better rates. And there's also a real shift that happens from post-mortem reporting to more proactive scenario planning, but together as a group. And collectively, what you're going to see is a shift from reactive mode to proactive and predictive mode. - Okay. - And one thing you just mentioned that I think is interesting is certainly there are technologies, there are vendors like a radio by RRD that can bring a lot of clarity and technology and all this stuff to bear, but you mentioned the cultural shift. So there's sort of a human element to it, both on the vendor side, of course, but also just within the organization. And I wonder if you might speak to anything from your experience that has been done or you've seen really work well to really nudge that part of the process along? - Well, I think there has to be collective commitment at the very top. - For sure. - And that collective commitment, if that doesn't happen, if there isn't alignment, that this is what we're doing, this is why we're going to do it. - Yep. - The teams are never gonna fall in line. - Right. - So what I've seen work really effectively is a true conscious effort of the folks who are sea level, S-B-P-V-P-level, really coming together and acknowledging that this is a goal, this is a priority, and it does require not only a mindset shift for us, but for our teams as well. And if ultimately we want to get to a culture that's working in true collaboration and orchestration on behalf of our customers and our partners, that requires intentionality and that requires everybody to be aligned. And fortunately, it's nice to be part of a team where you have that alignment, but you certainly, not every team is like that. - Yeah, absolutely. Now, on the flip side of this, we talked about the happy path here, signals that you're doing the right thing, but I imagine you've also seen the opposite, right? So they're still stuck in silos. They think they are doing the right things. They think they're adopting the new strategies or approaching this the right way, but they're still clearly stuck in that siloed way of operating. What are some of those signals that you've seen in those scenarios? - I mean, I think the biggest red flag is when results are flat and everyone thinks that someone else is fault. If the creative is good, but media underperformed or the media plan was airtight, but the message didn't land. And no one has a shared framework to unpack why. That's obviously a sign of disconnection. Another dead giveaway is overreliance on retroactive reporting. So if all the insights are coming at the end of the campaign, that's a red flag. So when you hear phrases like, "Oh, fix it next quarter," that usually means teams are still operating in silos. Even if they've adopted new tech, it's not necessarily a tech problem. It very much could be a cultural problem where they're not working together. And lastly, I mean, I said this before, but if creative media, data analytics and strategy members don't all have a seed at the table for all key planning meetings, every key planning meeting, you're not orchestrated, you're still operating in silos. Yep, yep. What I'm just going to ask you outright, kind of one of the things that I've sort of, as I say, the quiet part out loud here. And that is, what is the role of a radio by RRD in helping an organization really not only start down this path, but really stay down this path of a more orchestrated, coordinated marketing, planning, execution, measurement, and rinse and repeat. What is the role of a radio by RRD in making that happen? So a radio by RRD, really what is core to us is, we focus on true synchronized collaboration. Not that sequential approach that I spoke about in the very beginning of the podcast, right? So what we do that makes this unique and different is we've really built a model that eliminates those handoffs. In our world, data informs strategy, which informs creative and media and lock step, not in sequence, but as a single operating system. And that's really what's key. It's not just a change in process, it's really a mindset shift as well of shifting towards continuous orchestration, continuous partnership. It's not a straight line. It should never be a straight line. It's really locking up. Imagine like an interwoven spider web of awesomeness. That's what happens when you work with a company like us where we truly are integrating strategy, data, creative, media, and measurement all into one ecosystem. - Okay, got it. The one last question I want to give you, or get your take on is sort of think of it as you giving advice to the person that's listening to this. They are trying to make this shift internally. Maybe they're evaluating their vendors, maybe they're evaluating software, maybe even evaluating their own organizational structure. What is, just, I mean, there's probably 20 things you could offer, but what is if they had to do one thing, if one piece of advice should give them one shift in how they apply. approach, media and planning, creative planning, what would that one shift be, and why is that the shift that you think is where they've gotta at least start? - Besides, call me. - Yeah, you can do that, we can start there. That's a change, right? Yeah, yeah, besides call you, absolutely. - I will help you. (laughing) - No, I think the biggest thing, single thing that you can do is shift the mindset from sequential handoffs because that's truly the way most systems are built right now, right? It's, I did some research and now I'm passing it along to a strategy team and then they're gonna go brief the creative agency, then maybe at the same time, but maybe afterwards, then we're gonna brief the media agency and it's, stop thinking of each thing as individual silos or steps in a process and start thinking about them as, if these things are integrated, if they are all working together, it's a continuous process, it's no longer a, it's not a straight line. I guess that's my biggest, like to me, step one is make that mindset shift of not straight line, continuously working together. And then the other thing, again besides call me, is get each one, if you do have multiple different vendors that you're working with for each of these things, which I'm betting most marketers probably are, make a conscious effort to get every single one of them in the room. You may not be able to do it for every single planning meeting, but make an effort to do it more and more, it will make a difference. Gotcha. Well, Carolyn, thank you for your time on this. This has been interesting and enjoyable and appreciate the opportunity to talk with you. Hi, it's Matthew Tilly again. I'm back now to summarize the three big takeaways from this conversation. The first is that the biggest barrier to effective marketing is the silo approach itself. When strategy, media, and creative are treated as if they are separate entities, each of them loses a little something that's very vital. So the mission must be to break down the silos and start achieving that true orchestration for a cohesive marketing impact. Second, even though we all talk about collaboration, we're not really doing it until all functions have a seed at the table. That means data, media, and creative have to work together and have a seed, not just at the beginning of the process and not just in sequential sort of series of hand-offs, but truly from start to finish all the way through the process. The result is going to be faster, clearer, and more accountable outcomes. Finally, don't overlook the cultural shift that is necessary for successful orchestration. That means you're going to have to get commitment from leadership. You're going to have to align the goals and the priorities across teams. If that doesn't happen, you'll never really realize an environment where everyone has a meaningful seed at the table. Now, as I've been going through these episodes, I have been indicating who on your team, as a marketing leader, should hear these episodes, who you should share them with. This one, I think, really needs to be shared with everyone you work with. You're going to want to make sure that people in the strategy, in media, in creative, in data, all those different aspects, both inside your company, as well as your partner organizations, hear this episode in the conversation. You're definitely going to want to work with your peers and other leaders across your organization, because you're going to want them to collaborate with you to drive the cultural and the structural changes needed to break down silos and foster true collaboration. Thank you so much for listening in on this conversation. If you want more information about how a radio by RRD can ignite strategies, inspire action, and influence outcomes, check us out at aridio.rrd.com. That's iridio.rrd.com. 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