Matt Mobley - Outcome Driven Technology & The New Role of IT & Marketing

(Adam at 00:00:01) Hello, my friends. You've probably heard my voice on the episode intros by now, and soon you'll be hearing a lot more of me. My name's Adam, and I'm the executive producer of the podcast. I'm going to be hosting a lot of the episodes coming up, along with some other very special guest hosts, for the Modern CTO Summer Takeover. Today, we're talking to Matt, the CTO at Merkle, and we discuss why your company's technology should always be outcome-driven, how to deliver personalized ad experiences while still respecting user privacy, and making sure to align culture during mergers and acquisitions.

(Adam at 00:00:39) All of this right here, right now on the Modern CTO podcast. Here we go.

(Intro Narrator at 00:00:45) This is the Modern CTO podcast.

(Matt at 00:00:57) I started—I mean, actually, my computer side of my career started back in the Air Force. So I was basically a computer programmer in the Air Force, a lot of logistics systems, but really, my probably my specialty was within the data realm and data management side of it. Coming out of the Air Force, I went to a small consultancy out of Chattanooga, and one of the first companies that I actually went out to was another marketing technology firm out in Little Rock, Arkansas. And so that was back in like '98 or '99. And at that time, we were building the first sort of what would be big platforms, big data platforms, to help financial service industry and companies really to ship out direct mail to say, "Here's your credit card offer," all of those type of things.

(Matt at 00:01:44) And then from there, I spent time with that company, went to another one, and then finally ended up at Merkle. So over the past, what is now, gosh, I guess 22 years, has all been centered around what is marketing technology and advertising technology with some specialties in some key areas which are important, which is around identity resolution. How do we know who we're talking to and what we're talking about? And then how do we manage all of the data that powers everything that is marketing today, relative to those things? So that's, you know, it's been quite an extensive—the vast majority of my career has really been within this very specific sort of domain of technology.

(Adam at 00:02:28) Very cool. I'm talking to the right guy today.

(Matt at 00:02:31) There you go.

(Adam at 00:02:31) I'll get to use a little bit of my marketing.

(Matt at 00:02:34) That's right. That's right.

(Adam at 00:02:36) I heard you mention that you got started in tech in the Air Force. What was it like moving from the military to the civilian sector?

(Matt at 00:02:46) It actually—I mean, to tell you the truth, it translated pretty well. You know, I think one of the challenges coming out of the military for a lot of people, sometimes their job doesn't translate into the civilian sector very well. If you're a helicopter pilot or you refuel planes or do some of those things, the luxury of being in the programming side is it translates perfectly because they're hiring us to do the exact same thing on the outside. The other thing is, on the inside when we're in it, the vast majority—like, we worked with a lot of civil service and contractors in there. And even at, you know, if I think of like the upper side of the standard systems group, that was actually run by a civilian.

(Matt at 00:03:21) So it wasn't even, you know, there it eventually laddered up into something, but it was run by someone in the civil service. So it wasn't much of a transition at all. It actually felt a lot of the same. I mean, the only difference is I didn't have to put on my dress blues every day and make sure my cover was in the right place and all my ribbons were in the right place. And, you know, I didn't have as much insignia on me when I went into my job in the consulting side of the house.

(Adam at 00:03:46) Yeah. I can imagine you going into the consulting job, making sure your sleeves are rolled just perfectly.

(Matt at 00:03:52) That's right.

(Adam at 00:03:52) And then nobody cares.

(Matt at 00:03:56) So, but anyway, I mean, I think the nice thing—the better part of being on the outside versus being on the inside is you're constrained into what platforms you could use. Like, when I was in the military, we still had to get a waiver to not use ADA, which was the programming language, which a lot of people don't even know ADA is—probably like one of their early sort of three GLs that were in there—and it was not made for the things that we were doing. We ended up doing it in, you know, a lot of other things that are out there, but you don't have as much of a constraint when you get to the outside. Whatever technology you want to go into, you really have a lot of options in there.

(Adam at 00:04:32) Yeah. That makes sense. That sounds like a lesson that the military side of things could take from the commercial side.

(Matt at 00:04:37) Right.

(Adam at 00:04:39) More freedom there. Do you think there's any lessons that the commercial sector could be taking from the military in terms of technology, maybe in your sector?

(Matt at 00:04:50) Yeah. It's a good question. I mean, I think there's some interesting—you know, I think when we look at things like how they look at—this will probably scare the average consumer. But, you know, part of what we do is also looking at like, "How do we identify you when you come to the site so that we're saying, 'Hey, we know it's Adam,' and therefore, we can highly personalize this message?"

(Matt at 00:05:13) And there's this build-out of what we call the identity and the identity graph. The military side has somewhat of an equivalent piece to it, which is around signal intelligence. And there's a lot of practices in these things as you try to derive a series of understandings from disparate sets of data to be able to identify something else or to glean something else from it. I think there's sophistication in what they've done, especially as they look at the AI and some of the ML side of where they've gone. Even back in the day, the algorithmic way they approached those things—I think I'm sure it's advanced. I mean, obviously, I'm nowhere close to it now, but I'm sure it's massively advanced from where it was when I saw it. And I'll bet you there are practices that are in there that could translate in our ability—the ability to better understand the individual coming to us, even though when we may not know exactly who it is at that point in time. All, you know, for our purposes, less—there's no—it's for us. We just want to make sure we tell you the right thing when we have a chance to talk to you.

(Adam at 00:06:14) That makes sense. Yeah. And if there is some super cool top secret military personalization tech, I'm sure it'll leak out eventually.

(Matt at 00:06:23) Yes. I don't know that we'll be getting our hands on it in marketing, though.

(Adam at 00:06:30) Well, that's cool. So how did you get involved with Merkle?

(Matt at 00:06:34) So I had been working—let's see, in, I guess, it was '09. Let me think about that. So I had moved back to the States in, I guess, it's '06. Forget my time. Actually, that's '09. I'm sorry. Worked for another one of Merkle's competitors in there until basically 2012. And really—I mean, interestingly, like, we just ran across each other in sales pitches and bids as we're competing for a set of customers that are out there, performing the same set of services. They approached me in 2012 and said, "Hey. Listen. You know, we're really interested. We think, you know, based upon what you—you know, you're especially within the marketplace—would you be willing to come over to Merkle and help us to get some form in the way that they look at this technology world from the MarTech side?" So they approached me back in 2012. Actually, I think I turned them down the first time, and then they took a second run at it. And, you know, at that time, they really convinced me.

(Matt at 00:07:38) And truthfully, you know, when you think about it, one of the things that I've always chased in my life relative to my career is it's always super important, like, who my boss is as I think about it. And, you know, I always look at that. That's more of a deciding factor to me. I can have really tough days working and working through technology and have hard things to do, but I find—I know I have the support and I'm working for the right person in there. And a little bit when I looked at it when they came to do it, you know, David Williams at the time was the CEO over there, who I think is brilliant. Good leadership team, and it's one of those things that you knew you could fit into, you know, the culture and the people out there and actually go out there and make a difference as we look at their world and how they were pursuing marketing technology.

(Adam at 00:08:21) So Merkle must have a pretty strong culture if it drew you in like that.

(Matt at 00:08:25) Oh, 100%. Absolutely. And, you know, I think it's—no. It truly, for us, the culture is as important as the business. You know? And I think, you know, we always—David always has the phrase of "business is personal" as you go in there, and so he really believed you have to spend as much time cultivating the culture and growing it and making sure it's as much a part of the business as you are building the business and selling the business, doing everything else that you're doing as you go out there and connect with people.

(Adam at 00:08:54) So before we talk too much about like the culture is great and the leadership, let's get a baseline understanding for the listeners. What does Merkle do?

(Matt at 00:09:04) Right. Right. Yeah. I'll tell you. I mean, it's one of these things. So Merkle, I mean, just on a basis, we're actually part of—about four years ago, we got acquired by Dentsu, which is a large marketing agency out of Japan. They have a part which is Dentsu International, is where our brand fits into it. But Merkle, on its whole, really has sort of two parts to it that exist. One is what looks more like traditional agency services or some media services, things like that. There's search, search engine optimization. There's what we think of those things. But then there's effectively what is the root of Merkle, which is this heavy reliance on data and technology in order to power everything that they're doing within the agency side. So we are—we don't have a lot of product. Like, we aren't software builders or anything, but we're the services side that organizations come to in order to say, "Listen. I need to enable this capability this way to personalize on my site. I need to provide these experiences to my customer. You know, Merkle, can you help us actually create those experiences, enable those experiences through a set of technology, and help master the data in order to better optimize all of that as they go through?" So we provide a full suite of services around those things in order to help companies really market well to their customers.

(Adam at 00:10:28) Yeah. I saw on your company bio there's a pretty star-studded list of brands there that you guys work with.

(Matt at 00:10:35) It's one of the luxuries that we have, you know, being at Merkle, is we have the opportunity to go work with all those guys. So, I mean, sometimes when people go client-side, you know, we have customers like Disney and Universal Studios and NBC and all of these people that are out there. And, you know, it's great for us to go in and see those things. Client-side, sometimes you're there and you're in the weeds of that one company, and you don't get to see what everyone else is doing. We get the luxury of going in there, help these organizations try to accomplish something, but also get to see what everyone's doing in that industry and get a better understanding so you have a better sort of view of like, how is MarTech or marketing technology and advertising technology materially affecting their business in order for them to drive the outcomes of get more customers, sell more product, retain customers, whatever those type of things are.

(Matt at 00:11:22) So it's definitely—it's always funny to me when I see people leave the agency and go to the client side because I can't even fathom. And, I mean, I'm sure it's great, but I can't fathom only having like one place and one problem that they go fix all the time versus like the opportunity to fix so many, or to work with so many different variety of organizations in there.

(Adam at 00:11:44) Right. Yeah. You get to keep it super fresh every day.

(Matt at 00:11:46) That's exactly right. And, truthfully, you know, it's easier—it makes it a whole lot easier as I think about growing my knowledge set on what I have to know, you know, in my role running this large technology organization. One of the biggest challenges is staying current on all of these things. The luxury that we have is someone in one of our customers will ask us the question, and we'll be like, "No. Actually, we don't know that tech." And so we immediately then have to go back, research, understand the implications of it or we're actually building something out, and they're asking us to integrate into something new. So that a lot of that knowledge into what to focus on—because you could surf the internet for ages, and there's so much in there, but it may not be meaningful information what you have. But a lot of that knowledge comes back into like what to focus on, where the market's going, and then get those understandings. So I feel it's a huge boon to my side to really get me focused on what's meaningful in there, and many times learn too as we go through those things with the customers that are out there.

(Adam at 00:12:49) Yeah. I was just yesterday—I was talking to this guy, Patrick, from a company called Calero MDSL. They do technology expense management. So pretty different. But, I mean, still similar because they deal a lot with data and making sure that they're being very smart and predictive with how they're analyzing the expense documents and pulling everything together and making things easier for their customers.

(Adam at 00:13:13) But anyway, big thing he was talking about was throughout his career, he's learned over and over again, lead with the need for the technology, not the technology. And you get to the technology after you establish what needs to get done rather than doing things for technology's sake.

(Matt at 00:13:31) Yeah. No. I think you're right. I mean, we have the exact same sort of mantra. You know, we call it—we want to know what the outcome is. So in the case of, you know, working with, you know, maybe an amusement park or something like that and you're saying, "Hey. How do I retain more annual pass holders?" You know, we want to know that that's what they want to do and then we work ourselves back into, "Well, these are the type of experiences that we need to do," be it with email or when they come to the site or even when they're in park. Like, what does that look like to drive? How do we enable those experiences? How do we optimize them down to the individual? What data do we need? And you can start working yourself back into something that's going to do it. Because I think the biggest challenge when—if you don't have the outcome in mind is where, you know, I think a lot of times IT organizations and just people in IT, you end up building like a monument to IT that you can never sort of get a return on the investment. Partly is as you build—you may build along a path that is, you know, it's fantastic, super sexy, cool tech. You know, everyone high-fives themselves in the IT group on this thing. But at the end of the day, business is like, "I don't even know how to use that. I can't—you know, I don't know how to make money on the back of that machine that you guys built. I'm glad you guys are all happy because you built something." So, you know, I think that's the challenge.

(Matt at 00:14:43) And so, you know, we at Merkle always had that too about, you know, it's got to be outcome driven. It's got to be, like, what does the CMO care about? And then we'll work back into, like, what sort of cool things do we have to do from a tech side to ensure that we're just really going to get that return on those activities that are out there.

(Adam at 00:15:00) Alright. That leaves me some interesting questions. I'll give them both to you, but we can answer them one by one. Number one, what does a CMO care about? And then number two, what is some of the cool, interesting technology you guys are getting to do over there?

(Matt at 00:15:15) Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, the CMO, at the end of the day, I mean, it's really, it's actually, at its base point, it's exactly what you can think of, which is, you know, depending upon where you are is, you know, how do I get more customers? How do I sell more things to those customers? How do I keep those customers over a longer period of time? And if I lose them, how do I get them back? Right? You know, if you really think about it, it's really, how do I have that pretty standard sort of view of a customer life cycle? They're just trying to do that. And what they want to do is, the other part to it is, they want to spend their money efficiently within those as they drive experiences out there. They don't want a lot of waste. They want to be able to get a return on all those marketing dollars. So the CMO is looking at it. But what's happened to the CMO is, you know, in the past, it was about just sort of the big brand message. Today, it's about this whole entire digital experience that people are having. You know, as we look at sort of digital transformation within marketing, you know, a lot of the engagement, you know, if you think about, like, what happened last year, no one went into a retail store. It all was online. You bought everything online. So, you know, the organizations that had mastered that digital experience are the ones that really succeeded through COVID, you know, and they were the ones that really were able to adapt to some of those things. So, you know, to them is that traditional sort of things in marketing, but they're trying to apply all of those experiences now in this sort of digital context. And, inherently, obviously, when you get into that digital context, you get into technology, and you have to be able to sort of do those things. So, you know, I think they, it's interesting. There's a stat I'm trying to think of, the recent stat is, there's, I don't want to say it's outstripping some IT organizations, but the spend, the technology spend within the CMO, you know, you're starting to get to parity in some organizations, and if not above in some organizations, than what the IT organization is actually spending. And so, you know, in the larger, it's probably not true in the large, large ones in there, but there's a lot of dollars flowing, and there are many CMOs that are making IT decisions that in, you know, years past would have been in the domain of sort of the CTO, CIO sort of world that's out there. And so, you know, it's really, it's actually a great time. You know, it's funny. Like, I would have never thought in my early career that someone would have said, hey, you're going to be in marketing technology. Matter of fact, I probably would have laughed at them because that doesn't sound like, you'd be like, marketing technology? Really? You know, I don't get it, but it was how the lucky way I found myself into that first company building massive databases for direct mail, basically. Like, I can't imagine myself being anywhere else. You know, there's always a new edge in the marketing side as the CMOs want to drive richer experiences for the customers. And as a function of driving those richer experiences either through, you know, potentially going into AR or VR or potentially how they're applying, uh, math and, you know, analytics or, you know, AI and ML into these type of things. Like, it's an edge that they're running out on the bleeding edge many, many, many times in order to do it. So it's always exciting and it's really, it's always, you know, what I've always liked, which is it's always pushing you to try something new when you go out and chase some of those things. So, you know, I think it's, uh, you know, I think that's, it's about the experience. When we even determine within Merkle's side, we talk about a total customer experience sort of transformation is what we try to do. Transform the data into technology, transform the digital experiences, and give that complete experience to the customer that they want and desire across any touch point that they have that's out there.

(Adam at 00:18:53) So being deep into MarTech, are you guys working on any of that cool bleeding edge stuff that you mentioned?

(Matt at 00:19:01) We do. I mean, to some extent. The funny thing is that there's a lot of, I think when we think of, like, VR and there's some exposure to some of that stuff and people are pushing into it. The reality is that, I don't want to say the need is much more rudimentary. Right? As it goes, they're like, it's, you know, companies still have a problem that their data is spread out all over the organization, so they need to, you know, bring that stuff together, and they have a problem where they can't get access to it or the users and the constituents. So, you know, we're solving what, in theory, are actually more mundane things, but are having a massive impact to it. But we're getting to use, you know, as we think of it, like, when I think about the newer technology side, I mean, before you would buy, you know, if you go back to, um, you know, in the late nineties, early two thousands, you went out and bought this big piece of iron in the server, and you put up a big database on it. And you had to predict, you know, what the company was going to do with it for three years in the future, which you were always wrong. You always undersized it. You know? Or you oversized it, and you're spending too much money on the fact that you oversized this thing. You know, the luxury we have now is with cloud, you know, we get to be very focused on, like, let's build for what the need is today. Let's get real focused on what that is, and then we'll scale it as you grow. As the market changes, because we're in cloud and compute can be added in and storage can be added in and, you know, really, we can take it into a lot of different paths in there. You know, we have the ability to really, you know, sort of be nimble on the technology side. You know, we call it sort of cloud first, build for now, scale for the future, and then rapidly adapt is sort of our mantra, you know, as we build sort of the solution. So you're not doing that big three year prediction that's out there. But there are cool things. I mean, if I think, like, in the data world, I think there are technologies, which I'm sure people like Snowflake and things like that. I think there's, you know, really revolutionizing how we think about some of the data platforms that are out there. I think there's even as we look at some of the changes in, like, the technologies within Amazon, like the Redshift side of the house, you know, these things. There's, like, all of these things are growing and changing. There's actually, you know, I argue, you know, it'd be funny. Like, it's one of these things. There's an analogy when you think about what happened, you know, back in, like, the late nineties, early two thousands. It was all about, like, what hardware platform could I pick. Right? I'm going to buy Sun or I'm going IBM, and it's all about the OSes. But when you look at, like, the winners out of that, it's not like the hardware platforms won. What won was the operating system of Windows or Linux, basically, is really what is the winners of which we still have around today. And you're one of those two things and one of those two flavors out of it. I think a little bit on what we're seeing in sort of cloud, I think cloud is eventually going to go that way too. So it's not going to be about did Amazon win and did GCP, you know, Google Cloud Platform or Azure win and take the market share. I think that's part of it. I think that story will always be in there. But I think the next layer of what's going to happen are these newer technologies that give us the ability to be hybrid cloud, to move data more readily across these things. And even within these clouds, better share data across to our customers and get their data across and easing that whole thing. And I think we're just starting to see sort of the onset of these technologies that introduce this sort of what I consider the winner of this sort of infrastructure layer at that software, which is going to be things like Snowflake and things like that are out there. So, you know, having the opportunity to work with organizations like that is always, um, you know, is always good. And truthfully, I mean, we have strong partners, obviously, in the cloud platforms also. You know, it's always exciting going and talking to the product groups as they think about, you know, where they're going next, uh, in some of those things. So it's, you know, it's good from that perspective.

(Adam at 00:22:46) Now I remember earlier you were talking a little bit about identity graphs. I've heard of knowledge graphs in terms of use for search, but can you tell me a little bit about what identity graphs are and how you use those?

(Matt at 00:22:59) Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, it's the funny, knowledge graphs, I mean, in its basis, the graph itself, if you, I mean, they have sort of the same sort of root of what it is. I mean, to us is there's a, you know, the identity graph is really about the set of signals that identify you as an individual to an organization. So this could be everything, obviously, like your name, your address, your phone number, um, you know, your email address, but also goes out into, like, your device IDs. Uh, if there's an IoT ID, your cookies all sort of fit into this thing. And truthfully, what we do is we collect that information and sort of stitch it together so that when you come and engage with us, we can figure out who we're talking to and give you a very relevant message. Because in, you know, the name of the game in marketing is when it's personalized and when it's relevant, you're more likely to engage with the brand. When you have confidence in the brand, you feel like the brand is there for you, and you're more willing to buy at the end of the day and sort of, you know, and to convert in those things. So we do everything we can in order to identify it. I think the other layer to it, especially as we look at sort of privacy regulation, like, you see what happened out in Europe with GDPR. California had CCPA that's in there. There's going to be other, you know, there's probably four or five other states looking at similar sort of regulation to what's happening out with California. Having those signals, you know, together tied together in the graph, but being able to use them in sort of a privacy and compliant way so that we're not breaking the trust with the consumer, and we're also not breaking laws into it. And those two things sort of sit together to make this sort of identity graph so that we can do our job better, and we're not just sending out, you know, the same email to, uh, you know, a billion people out there. We're actually going out there and saying, hey. You know, you, Adam, I think you want to see stuff on marketing or podcast or audio, and they say, hey, Matt. I think you want to see stuff on, uh, Snowflake. Right? Or what, you know, whatever those type, uh, you know, sort of messages are that is in there. So that graph gives us sort of the road map to identify the individuals that we could potentially engage with.

(Adam at 00:25:09) So how do you think about striking the balance between relevant and stuff that a consumer wants to see and creepy?

(Matt at 00:25:18) Right. Right. Yeah. It's, it's a fine, I think it's a super fine line in in all honesty. In some case, and some of it is, you know, well, on a basis, on a fact, just try to try not to be creepy is, you know, like, it's an odd conversation actually. But it, but not to try not to be creepy is we try to be very upfront about what we're gathering data, how we're using it as organization, and we encourage all our clients to do that same thing. I think that partly, I think being creepy is also just a trust barrier issue. Right? When they feel you're creepy, they're not trusting what you're actually doing. They feel like they're more monitored versus the fact that all you really want to do is you just want to be able to call them by their name and say, hey. We know you're really interested in this. Would you like to see more about it? Right? And so I think that is, I think, an openness with, you know, really sort of the general public or the customers that are out there about how you're using data, how you collect it, and what you're going to go do for it. Because we know, I mean, it's funny. Like, it's as much as people talk about sort of this creepy factor or whatever that's in there, the reality is when you actually go out there and talk to the consumers and you survey them, it's in, like, the sixties, seventies. I mean, actually, I'm going to say it's in the 70, 80% of them saying that, yes. I want it personalized. I don't want a generic message that's out there. So as quick as, you know, you get this sort of people that go, hey. I'm really concerned with the data and with, you know, my privacy, and I don't feel comfortable when I collect all this stuff. But then we need all of that stuff to do what they're demanding of us, which is provide them an experience that they care about. You know? And so it's always, it's sort of a, you know, it's an interesting dichotomy that sort of happens in there, and I think it's really, it's on the industry, you know, both from sort of marketing industry and the technology industry to really be honest and upfront about how that stuff is. And I think we've come, you know, miles, we're way into really being upfront with organizations about how, um, how, or with customers about how we're doing it. Let's say we weren't in the past because I don't honestly, I don't think there's always bad actors in there, but the vast majority of people are doing it, weren't, their goal wasn't necessarily, you know, to do something wrong. I think the risk was that, you know, which is what I always, you know, or worry about is when you over collect data and then if something were to happen like a hack or something like that, then that's, that's I think that's where the real risk is for consumers. And they should be worried less, not less. They should be worried about their privacy, but they should be worried about how that organization is securing their data so that they can give me what I want out of it. I think that should be, you know, just as much of a concern. But I don't know that that's as much in sort of the picture. I think that's just an assumed problem, you know, or assumed thing that they're doing for it that's in there.

(Adam at 00:27:58) Yeah. And that's not something that people, I think the general public really even thinks about in terms of the, uh, their data being collected. I think most people aren't really like, man, where are they keeping it? Where's the server? What what kind of encryption do they have on it? Most people are just, like, either delighted when they get an ad that gives them a deal on something they really want, or they're, like, I don't want to keep using the word creepy.

(Matt at 00:28:25) No. No. No. But it's true. It's a—

(Adam at 00:28:27) A little bit freaked out when they see something that's, like, hyper personalized. I feel like it's like the emotional reaction is much more strong within the general public rather than the thoughtful approach of, man, the real concern is the security of my data. Right. Um, these people that are advertising aren't the ones that are going to do anything wrong. Yes. So, I guess, what's, like, the state of the security of people's personal data in the marketing industry? Like, is it pretty good for the most part? Or...

(Matt at 00:29:02) Yeah. I, I absolutely. I mean, because the problem is you're sort of done, you know, especially if you think about it. Like, if there's an incident at, uh, a Merkle or there's an incident at a company, like, guess what happens? Your customers don't send you their customer data, which is effectively what you use in order to create these marketing programs to do everything.

(Matt at 00:29:22) So it has a material impact on the organization. We make massive investments in order to not only secure it ourselves, but there's probably four or five third-party firms that we work with. We do intrusion testing and seeing if they can get into us, and then helping us say, "Yep, hey, we found this weakness. Maybe you guys need to do this." And then we'd make more investments in that security.

(Matt at 00:29:48) So it is top of mind for us because, at the end of the day, as I said, if something happened, it will have a meaningful impact on the business. It'll have a meaningful impact on our employees. When the business—when revenue falls—that affects jobs, it affects families and things like that. So for us, it's not just as simple as, "Hey, we want the business to do well." We think of it as also, "How do we keep everyone employed in the business as we think of these things?" We've gotta be good stewards of that data when we have the responsibility for it.

(Adam at 00:30:19) That makes sense. That sounds like a lot of pressure and makes me feel good about my data.

(Matt at 00:30:24) Right, right. Well, it's true. And honestly, I think maybe as you go downmarket in smaller companies, I think they struggle to make those big investments that are out there. But when you're talking companies of our size, we have the opportunity to go do it, and we also have a lot more at risk. A large flight of this will have a greater impact on people if something were to happen there. So it behooves us to do something more meaningful as we think about the security and privacy of the individual.

(Adam at 00:30:59) That makes sense. And I think you made a really good point immediately that I'll paraphrase as these companies have been collecting the data for long enough that if any of them have a breach, they're done. So the natural selection has probably worked pretty well in the industry that we're pretty safe for the most part.

(Matt at 00:31:16) That's the Darwin rules of security, yes, right.

(Adam at 00:31:21) I want to talk a little bit about—I know earlier we were talking about how CMOs are starting to get higher budgets for technology than even the CTOs and CIOs of organizations. Do you see, with you having such a holistic view of the industry, do you see any friction happening in the executive suites as CMOs are getting more control of the tech budget?

(Matt at 00:31:45) Yeah, it's true. I mean, the reality is that there's been somewhat of a change. But in the past, if you think of really what Merkle's business was, we helped companies—we helped CMOs build technology platforms to market from. And the reason why they came, and really at the end of the day what was the core of Merkle's business—I'm almost ashamed to say it, but the fact is—it was so hard for the CMO to work with their traditional IT partners that they had to outsource it.

(Matt at 00:32:16) And partly that is that IT functions in a very different way than marketing functions, which is they're concerned about risk mitigation, cost rationalization—these important things as they think about the expenditures that they have. And the fact that they house the data, they have to be as secure with that stuff that is in there. There is a lot of rigor that exists in these processes. But the problem is that the CMO has gotta be super nimble. And so organizations that could then create an IT organization that could be as successful as Merkle was—as successful in applying all the right governance and processes as IT, but be able to react at the speed of marketing, as the CMO. Now that's where it sort of came out. So, a lot of our early days, we really would stiff-arm IT in those companies and say, "No, we got this. We know marketing guys don't want to come talk to you. You guys are—" I don't want to say this sounds terrible, but "You're the dinosaurs out there. Let us go handle some of these newer things."

(Matt at 00:33:06) But I think that world has started to shift. I mean, as that spend for the CMOs has dramatically increased every year for the past ten years, maybe the past twenty years, and there's been significant increases in that technology as a percentage of the CMO's budget that's in there, the IT organizations, CTOs, CIOs are taking notice saying, "Hold on a second. You're spending potentially tens of millions, in some cases a hundred million dollars on technology to power an organization that's out there. Like, that doesn't make sense that these non-IT people are actually running those things," when in reality, many times marketing couldn't get the IT skills like you would see within there.

(Matt at 00:33:39) So I think there's been an awakening, is probably the best way to look at it. CIOs today, as recently as probably about two years ago, working with some of the telecoms that are both here and in the States, having conversations with the CIOs over there, they're talking about the next domain that they consider. So they had business systems or operational systems or ERP, and now they start to think of—I don't think they've fully adopted, but they start to think of marketing as a domain of technology that they have to manage in the same way that they manage those things. That's not to say it hasn't shifted. I think the awakening is happening in there. There's still, I think, it's still cumbersome in those processes. But I do think that there's starting to be more collaboration at that.

(Matt at 00:34:24) And truthfully, even our approach to it today—which is why I say I'm a bit ashamed of how we did in the past because we effectively made our enemy immediately a big thing—but the reality is that you're still relying upon those guys. They have all the data for the company, right? They have the processes, and we've gotta build the pipeline with them. So our approach now today is much more collaborative. And many times when we go in and talk to the CMO, I say, "Listen, we're happy to do this, but you gotta get us introduced to your IT organization. We want to be—we're as technical as they are. We talk about the same geeky stuff. We like to venture through the geekdom and imagine what we can do over here and build these things. Like, let—we gotta get engaged because we need them with us as we go through this stuff."

(Matt at 00:35:10) And I think the CMOs are starting to wake up to that. We have to act a little bit more like a proper IT organization because it's just, with that level of spend, it gets unruly. And trying to manage a shadow IT organization within a marketing domain is a bit weird, actually. It just doesn't necessarily have the rigor and the ability that it does if it starts to merge into a larger IT engine that's out there.

(Adam at 00:35:56) I was trying to come up with the right word for it, but you said it right at the end there. It's like shadow IT organization. Like, you guys serve as basically an extra IT arm that's just focused on the marketing side.

(Matt at 00:36:11) That's right.

(Adam at 00:36:12) So you're, like, super tech-heavy IT people throughout the company then, right?

(Matt at 00:36:18) Yeah, yeah. I mean, there's a lot of flavor. I mean, we have—from our side, like on Merkle, there's probably, I don't know, from the America side, I'd call it between onshore, offshore, 600, 700 just technologists in there that are running around with gobs of certifications. But then we also have—there's another three or four hundred statistician-style, analytics-style people who do data science and can wrangle data. So I mean, there's a lot of us that know this stuff.

(Matt at 00:36:44) And it's interesting. We spend a lot of time even—we did some work recently with an organization. Because a lot of organizations are trying to take the tech back a little bit. They don't necessarily—and especially with cloud, it sort of gives them the opportunity to say, "Hey, listen, we'll set up our domain within the cloud, but we want you to build in that versus—" you know, we used to go build a server in our data center and that sort of stuff. So there's a lot more collaboration. And what we have is, as that starts to happen, we also become someone of the educators for these IT organizations because we are all cloud. Like, if someone came to us and said, "Hey, can you buy a server?" we probably would if they want to pay us the right amount. But our goal is to shut down our data centers and be all cloud in there. And so we've been chasing that for, I don't know, gosh, four or five years now.

(Matt at 00:37:23) So we're playing trainer and helper to the IT organization as they're trying to tackle these larger enterprise data platforms in the cloud and sitting next to them in all reality and doing it. And in many cases, even have these joint teams that work together because there's a lot they can pick up from the luxuries of what we started a little while back.

(Adam at 00:37:58) Yeah. I think that comes back to earlier—you were talking about you're always at, like, you have a strong culture of learning and always learning new things. So you used to kind of differentiate on being able to stand up that cloud for companies. But now as companies are adopting that as a competency of their own, you're able to pick up other competencies and ways to differentiate and provide value there.

(Matt at 00:38:24) Right. Yeah. No, you're exactly right. And truthfully, we have to. I mean, if not, I think we'll be in trouble of being relevant in the future. As these IT organizations take a more focused view of that marketing domain, I think we have to be able to fit into it much like they have system integrator partners today, the big guys in there. We have to appear, feel like that marketing SI partner, that marketing tech partner that they can bring in. And we have to look like them and feel like them as we go through to do these types of things.

(Adam at 00:39:01) So looking forward to the future, what's—how are you gonna continue to stay relevant? What's gonna be the focus, I don't know, next five years?

(Matt at 00:39:09) Yeah, the luxury, I think, the luxury for us is data is always king. So the one thing is, it is—I mean, it's—everyone says it, but there's the truth 100%. Like, at the end of the day, for every cool thing that we do—because we're talking about engaging with a customer—so the more we know, the more powerful we can be in that engagement that's out there. So really, at the end of the day, in the next five years, it's continuing growth of how we really get to these platforms that can have more immediacy in the data that we have, that we reduce all possible latency as we collect data, understand it, and move that data out to drive an experience in there.

(Matt at 00:39:54) And I think a lot of that, when we look at it, is we're starting to see the early days of this ML and AI where it's less of—part of the latency of data is when the human has to interact with it in order to make a decision or query it or to go do something with it—removing all of that human intervention to where we're allowing the powers of the machine to really start to generate what is the next best thing to do with a client or what's the next thing to talk about. Like, I think that's where we're gonna be here in five years. We're gonna see much more adoption of AI and the implementation of the marketing strategy within technologies where, effectively, AI is where the marketing strategy will manifest itself within there. And at the end of the day, the marketers will still be—they'll be more focused on content and the experiences that they're creating and then fine-tuning the machine versus actually running the entire process that's in there.

(Adam at 00:40:51) That makes sense. We're getting pretty far along here. Is it cool if we talk a little bit about leadership before we wrap up?

(Matt at 00:40:57) Yeah, absolutely, I have to.

(Adam at 00:40:58) Awesome. So I know you mentioned earlier you were around for a merger with Dentsu. Is that correct?

(Matt at 00:41:06) That's correct, yeah, yep.

(Adam at 00:41:08) So what was it like trying to make sure the cultures at Merkle and Dentsu aligned and worked well together? Because I know you said you guys have a really strong culture there at Merkle.

(Matt at 00:41:21) Yeah, yeah, it's good. I mean, I'll answer this in two ways. First of all, I won't quite answer your question, but I'll give you an interesting view on how it is. But you'll see. So every time we acquired as Merkle prior to the acquisition by Dentsu is that as much as it's a business we're interested in and it's a business that is profitable and all of those types of things, an equal-weighted box within that whole thing of boxes we have to check was their culture—that we knew that their culture was going to mix with our culture that's in there. And if that—I mean, I saw many times that we'd be evaluating an organization and would be like, "God, this is a great business." But when we looked at it culturally, it made no sense at all, and we weren't sure that long-term it was going to be able to mesh with us. So we would move them off the list, even though it's a profitable business and they did very well after us. But what we know is, in that mantra that business is personal, there's going to be a lot of days that we have to get into the ground war and get things done together. So we better be able to work together under this common, unifying culture that's in there.

(Matt at 00:42:16) So it was important to us. And I know when we were effectively on the market to be sold in there, when they went out and talked to the individual organizations, that was a checkbox that they wanted to see. They wanted to know that from a cultural standpoint, as Merkle gets absorbed into this next larger company as we're acquired, we need to be able to check that box culturally and make sure that our culture is gonna fit in there. And obviously, I mean, there's always—that's a little bit of a panacea as we think about it. But the truth is, as long as you know it's gonna work, you're gonna solve 80% of the problems when it comes to the culture. There's going to be problems where, if we look at whose leadership ends up on top of where and how—there's always some rumblings that are in there. But you can work through those a hell of a lot better when you know you at least have an 80% match on that cultural piece that was in there.

(Matt at 00:42:42) So I think—I mean, just being on the inside of it, knowing Merkle pre-acquisition, even during the earnout, and post-acquisition in there—I look at the leadership that's in there. I think they're still—they're a little bit—they're not technologists like we are, so there's always a bit of—the big thing is, like, these core super creative agency people. I mean, they've always had tech that do this stuff and, sort of, this world of technology, this foreign land is sort of coming in together. But I've been very pleasantly surprised in working with the leadership across these things, and I feel that there's really an openness as we go into there. So I think they've done—whoever made the decisions at the end, most likely, obviously, David Williams, who's the CEO at the time—I think he got it right, both in the acquisitions.

(Matt at 00:44:16) You know, not everyone was perfect, but he got it right in the acquisitions, and he got it right when he looked at the acquiring side of that stuff.

(Adam at 00:44:24) That's awesome. But what does it look like in practice evaluating the culture of another company? Like, how do you check that box? Are you going and conducting interviews with a lot of the employees there to get to know how they think and operate or talking to the leaders to get their perspective? Like, what do those conversations look like, and how do you actually go about it?

(Matt at 00:44:47) Yeah. I, you know, to tell you, it's really that simple. One is, I actually, I think for an organization, first of all, you know, even before you can sort of do that is you have to define what your culture is. You have to go pick, you know, it's almost like pick the seven words that are, you know, we're fair, we try to play nicely. You know, whatever those things are, like, define it. Actually, you know, write down what your culture of your company is. Then you know what you're sort of looking for. But at the end of the day, when you're going out to those organizations, as much as you talk about, you know, the numbers and what products they have and all this other stuff is the dinners, the sitting down with the wider teams and having a conversation that isn't necessarily around that, hearing what they do and you talking about what you do. It becomes, you know, I wish it would be great if there was an algorithm to figure out that culture fits, but it's really at the end of the day, it's a feeling, right, that you get in there and you look at those people across the table and you sort of put yourself, you sort of place yourself in sort of difficult situations where you say, "Hey, you know, if everything was going to hell, do I feel like I could go and actually go help solve the problem with this person? And I feel like we would actually go together. We may not have the same idea on how to solve it, but I know that the two of us together is gonna be more powerful in solving that problem than us independently in there." And so I think a lot of that in those interactions and even more social interactions that are out there, I think, become the real sort of litmus test of how you look at how does those cultures fit across sort of the organizations. I'm sure there's someone, you know, with an HR background who can tell you something more scientific into that. And, you know, this is my IT version. But I do believe that it's a bit of, you know, it's a bit of that feel that sort of gets in there on how the culture sort of works across.

(Adam at 00:46:31) That makes sense. Maybe you guys will be the ones that come up with the algorithm.

(Matt at 00:46:35) That's right.

(Adam at 00:46:36) That figures out the culture fit there.

(Matt at 00:46:39) That's right.

(Adam at 00:46:40) That'd be hugely valuable. That's a good idea. Trademarking.

(Matt at 00:46:43) I tell you, dude, I'm sure, you know, if we go and look at all the personality tests anyway, there's probably already one that they consider. Oh, if we just ran a Myers-Briggs or a Birkman on everyone, you could tell you how well you guys fit together. But that would be awkward, I think, in an acquisition if we made everyone take a personality test and made it easy from that. So...

(Adam at 00:47:03) Like, sorry you guys had too many ENTJs.

(Matt at 00:47:07) That's right.

(Adam at 00:47:07) Not getting bought.

(Matt at 00:47:09) Right. We've had to exclude you because, you know, you guys have too many judging people on there.

(Adam at 00:47:17) Yeah. So back to some leadership stuff, though. What's, what would you say you are learning right now as a leader at your company?

(Matt at 00:47:27) Yeah. I, I mean, to tell you the truth, I think there's, alright, well, I'll tell you the biggest thing right now. I definitely, like, I'll tell you from a challenge perspective that's in there. It's interesting right now in the market, and I think this is a function of coming out of COVID. I think there's been sort of a pent-up demand for this opportunity to change, really. And if you've seen it within sort of this, a lot of industries are sort of suffering from this high attrition that's out there. And I think that, you know, when we think about our engagement with the wider sort of, you know, employees and, you know, our partners who go out and go do these things, is the fact that, you know, in times when you have low attrition and everyone's sort of working towards a goal, you, I think you lose sight of some of the sort of the personal connections that you can make with the individuals on the team at all levels. And actually making that a focus part of those things. And as we get into, you know, when something happens where we're seeing sort of high attrition sort of within the industry, even within our organization, as we look at it, it makes you sort of take a step back and remember and say, "Listen, you know, go back to what we said. Business is personal. Reconnect with that organization." So I think there's a lot of, you know, a lot of what I'm focusing now is how, you know, how do we create that connection again within the organization? How do I ensure that, you know, I'm connected with my direct leaders, they're connected with theirs, and even myself is connecting as far down in the organization as possible. And so creating that environment where there's, you know, openness and collaboration across those things and that, you know, people want to be part of the company and want to stay there and don't wanna just go make a change that's in there. Like, that's a lot, I think, where, you know, as my thinking is right now from what I'm learning and sort of, almost relearning in some cases, on there. That's, you know, that's probably the biggest focus for right now.

(Adam at 00:49:23) That makes sense. It's hard to remember to practice those, like, hygiene best practices kinds of things when there doesn't feel like there's immediate need for them. But then as soon as that level of attrition starts to rise and you realize you haven't been doing it, it's a lot harder to play catch-up there.

(Matt at 00:49:42) Right. Yeah. You're exactly right. You become, I mean, you just, it's easy to forget as everyone starts to sort of dig the ditch to go do it. You know, hey, sometimes you gotta stop and just have a conversation with the, you know, the guy digging behind you and just, you know, figure out what's going on.

(Adam at 00:49:58) Yeah. Back to just having dinner, sitting down, seeing face-to-face in front of them. I mean, I guess we can't really do that so much anymore. I mean, we're getting back to offices and stuff, though. But...

(Matt at 00:50:09) We're seeing a pickup. I mean, that's a good part. I mean, I look at it. I've had, you know, I'd always traveled through most of my career, especially within the marketing tech. I was, you know, I'd get up on a Monday, get on a plane, and come home on a Thursday or Friday, because I was very sort of client forward and, you know, at conferences, things like that. And, actually, this is, it's sort of come on fast. I've had four business trips in four weeks consecutive now with different clients that are in there, so it's good. I'm happy about that because there is a, there's a little bit of it just to do it. The same thing as we're talking about, like, with the, we don't have the opportunity to necessarily pull all the employees together. We don't have that office. It is all open in there, but there's an intimacy that you lose, you know, even when you're dealing with your customers where when you get on a thirty-minute meeting with them or you get on a thirty-minute meeting with someone else, like, thirty minutes is done and you're over and you're on to the next one. Versus when you're in the hallway, you're actually coming out of the meeting, you're talking about their kids or you're talking about some sport you played, and there's just more of a connection in those types of things. So I think the good news is I think we're gonna start coming out of that here relatively fast as, you know, a lot of the mandates have sort of come down a lot.

(Adam at 00:51:18) That's awesome. Yeah. Are you guys remote first in general or office first if you have the opportunity?

(Matt at 00:51:24) Yeah. To tell you the truth, I think we're still trying to figure out, like, what we are now. In the past, we were pretty office-centric. That in there, certain groups weren't. I mean, we've had quite a few remote workers, and certain groups, like, within sort of our consulting ranks, they were all pretty much remote because most of the time, they had an office they could go to if they wanted to, but most of the time, they were on-site with customers. And so there's a lot, you know, within the organization that sort of sat like that. But, you know, I think now, I think we, we haven't made, there's no decision that's been made, but my gut tells me that remote is gonna be a large portion of the organization. You know, I don't know if it's gonna be 50%, but it feels like it's gonna be at least 50% of that organization is gonna be sort of remote. It's a little hard to tell right now actually on what it will be because people say they wanna go in the office, but when they have, if they have to go in the office and wear a mask or go through a lot of procedures, like, who wants to go into that office then, right, and have to deal with, "Oh, only 10 of us can be in there at a time." And so I think there's some constraints. I think when some of that loosens up, we'll get a better feel for who really wants to be in offices and who really wants to be sort of remote and those types of things. But I'm sure it's gonna be a greater number than what we obviously had, you know, in the past that's in there.

(Adam at 00:52:38) Yeah. And there's not even just the fact that you might have to do some COVID safety precautions to go into the office. I think there's a lot of people that say they wanna go into the office, but then when they wake up an hour earlier because they have to commute and get ready, they're gonna be like, "I don't know, staying home today."

(Matt at 00:52:56) You're exactly right. I mean, it becomes, you know, it's a whole lot easier to sort of roll out of bed, put on a button-down shirt, and sit in front of your computer, right? Versus if you actually have to fully get dressed and, you know, go into the office.

(Adam at 00:53:08) Yeah. I, the other day, I pulled on a pair of jeans to come in and do an interview because this is our office here. And I didn't realize until I got here that they were my extremely ripped, unprofessional jeans. I was like, "Man, thank Christ I don't have to stand up in these interviews."

(Matt at 00:53:26) That's right. That's exactly right. That's exactly right.

(Adam at 00:53:28) I promise I'm wearing professional stuff right now.

(Matt at 00:53:30) I'm sure.

(Adam at 00:53:33) But alright. One more question before we wrap up. What would you say is the one piece of advice you wish you could have given yourself when you were stepping into your first, like, managing people role in your career?

(Matt at 00:53:45) Yeah. I mean, it is super easy for me on this one, actually, because I think about it all the time, like, how it's funny. Like, in my early career, everyone would have said the same thing about me. They would have said, "Hey, you know, the one thing that you need to work on are your soft skills." Right? So that, but it's not the, "Hey, you're good in technology. You're good at managing numbers. You're working on soft skills." But what it really translated to me is the fact that the thing that I wish I would have known then is, I say this all the time to everyone in the organization when we do full all-hands, this is be an open book. Be honest about all of the numbers. Like, show everyone everything. There's no reason that, I mean, obviously, there are things that you can't share because it's maybe, you know, some sort of, you know, company secret or whatever it is. But the reality is that is a very small fraction of information. And even when the news is bad, maybe if revenue's declining or your profits are declining or there's challenges within there, like, let everyone know. Let them have the opportunity to look at it and be either part of the solution or understand, you know, what the business is going through. And I think, you know, that openness and that communication actually makes it better when you have to make harder decisions, or when good things are happening. I mean, you get both sides of that as you go through there. And I think, you know, not having a focus on being over-communicative about all of the information you possibly can and giving everyone a chance to sort of absorb it and understand it, you know, I think is a mistake. And I think it's really, I wish I would have learned it much earlier in my career because I've seen the impact of being that way that, you know, people, I mean, everyone's, they're in the job. They're all real smart. They all know what they do. There's not a single person in there that probably, they all, most of them have college degrees, and they've gone through this stuff, and they're, you know, they wanna be for the business. At the end of the day, they want the business to do well. So giving them that power to really think about what decisions they make could impact some of the things that we are talking about at that sort of level, I think, is super important in there.

(Adam at 00:55:48) Yeah. I think that's a lot more relevant advice than just improve your soft skills. Because dude, you got killer soft skills. This hour just flew by.

(Matt at 00:55:56) There you go. Thank you.

(Adam at 00:56:00) So, yeah, is there anything that we didn't cover or get out there that you wanna get out there before we wrap up?

(Matt at 00:56:07) No. I mean, I'll tell you this. If I, the only thing I think I would say is if anyone's interested in technology career, go to marketing. I mean, it is, it is. I still today, like, it's funny. You know, twenty-two years of marketing technology, and I still wake up every day super excited about the fact I'm coming in doing more marketing technology things and working with the brands and all those other pieces to it. And, you know, I'm sure people get that same feeling in other areas, but I'm telling you, it is a rush every time to go do it. So it's, you know, that's what I was saying. It's the luxury that you have when you actually enjoy what you do for a living. You know? So makes it easy to get into work every day and also makes it easy to deal with the hard things. So...

(Intro Narrator at 00:56:48) Thank you so much for listening. And if you found this episode useful, please share it with a friend or colleague who you think would get value from it. And if you have topics that you'd like to hear discussed on the podcast, either add me on LinkedIn or send me an email [email protected]. Every time I get an email or LinkedIn message, it absolutely makes my day and inspires me to keep going.