Thanks to the overwhelmingly positive feedback on my Slush presentation from the Google teams, I was invited to be a keynote speaker at Google’s most exclusive event in Finland, UNCOVER.
Google bills this event as the “can’t miss” event for the largest brands and agencies in Finland. Uncover is an event hosted primarily by the ads side of the business, but for obvious reasons includes brands with a large presence on GCP as well. The audience at these events typically consists of directors, VPs and some C-level executives from the largest brands and agencies in Finland.
Alongside speakers like Sanna Suvanto-Harsaae, chairman of the board at Finnair and Antti Järvinen, Google’s Country Director, the lineup was clearly executive-focused. I knew I would need to up-level my presentation for a room full of executives who may or may not know the difference between first and third party cookies. Representatives of large, established, multi-national businesses have very different challenges than startup founders.
The message was simple: the consumer privacy and regulatory environments are changing in a way that means the years of cheap digital customer acquisition are gone. The brands best positioned to continue their growth are the ones that double down on collection, synthesis and activation of first-party data. Tried and true tactics like retargeting will deteriorate once the deprecation of third part cookies renders it useless. Brands that are able to engage and activate customers on owned channels like email, SMS or other owned channels will be best positioned to personalize their customer messaging.
The message was well-received by the audience and seemed to deliver a fine balance between thought leadership and practical steps to preserve marketing efficacy. In the networking session that followed, many of the questions I fielded were about how best to construct teams that could deliver on these outcomes. Overall, it marked a unique milestone in my speaking career getting to address such a high profile audience.