Build A Relationship If You Want Ad-Weary Customers Coming Back: Glomb

Tim Glomb can talk, at length and in entertaining detail, on everything from building skateboard ramps to working on Bam Margera’s Jackass-related MTV show, Viva La Bam, to bow hunting to developing marketing techniques designed for the post-cookie universe of strict privacy rules and ad-weary customers. Glomb honed his understanding of grassroots marketing while working with Margera’s show two decades ago. He later spent four years with another pioneer in the attention economy, billionaire entrepreneur and investor Mark Cuban, building out the marketing relationships for Cost Plus Drug Company, a public benefit corporation trying to cut out middlemen in the notoriously arcane, highly regulated, and complex Pharma sector.

Glomb used his experiences to leverage the reach and relationships for Bowtech Archery, making sure its customers got just the right messages at the right time, and then began scaling those techniques for companies of all sizes. These days, Glomb is Vice President of Global Content for CM Group, an international integrated-marketing company with 40,000 clients worldwide, from PepsiCo and Starbucks to the “Joe’s Pizza Place” local businesses of the planet.

I caught up recently with Glomb by teleconference from the Netherlands, ahead of next week’s four-day Signals22 virtual conference on relationship-marketing strategies. We talked about how brands in consumer packaged goods, retail, media/publishing, restaurants and sports, among other sectors, need to rethink how they interact with customers. As he put it, “If brands acted more like people, the world would be a better place.” The conference is entering its fifth year, and previously has featured the occasional on-stage notable, such as actor Wayne Knight (Seinfeld’s Newman) and the drummer Tommy Lee, a long-time friend of Glomb’s. Below is our conversation, edited for length and clarity:

Forbes: What big-picture trends are most important for your clients now?

Tim Glomb: Every brand advertises to some level, so what does that landscape look like, whether it’s (the EU’s) GDPR privacy restrictions, the cost of advertising, an impending recession? Even if they fixed all their cookie problems, maybe I have less budget. So how do I make my money go farther? That’s the No. 1 thing we’re hearing from everyone. What’s the advertising landscape and what’s your privacy (mechanism) going to do? If you adopt a relationship-marketing strategy that’s rooted in a value exchange, you will win. You will weather the (economic) storm at worst, you will win at best. No. 2 is loyalty. Everybody is trying to retain people (as we’re) going into a recession. How do you keep people coming back? How do you keep them from looking at the other products that are super sexy? So again, it’s value exchange and emotional loyalty, rewarding people. In fact, I think 56% of global respondents said, ‘Hey, if a brand just recognizes that I’m doing something with them, I’m happy.’ You don’t have to make a purchase to get points for loyalty. Loyalty can be ‘Thanks for coming to our website’ or ‘Thanks for opening the app three times this month. Here’s a discount code, or here’s some exclusive content relevant to what you did in the app.’ It’s just recognition. So emotional loyalty is the second biggest topic that everybody’s exploring and going, ‘How can I create an offering?’ That doesn’t mean every tenth pizza is free. The punch card has been around forever. How do we go deeper? How do we actually build a connection to understand and retain people?

Forbes: What’s the state of privacy regulation in major global markets now?

TG: In America, we need to get this figured out on a federal level. (The current situation), it’s a nightmare. And unfortunately, a lot of dollars and labor is being wasted with companies like ours to help them piecemeal together that U.S. story: I can send this but I can’t share that in these particular states. So I really wish the United States would get it together. In my days with Mark Cuban, we were dealing in zero-party data almost 15 years ago. It just didn’t have that phrase. And the idea was, rather than be completely compelled or held to a piece of legislation, why don’t you go out and create a individual contract with every Jane and John Doe that you do business with? And if you do that, that will supersede what the legislation is trying to do. The legislation is trying to protect data on a blanket level. It’s like an umbrella to say, ‘Hey, don’t use their data.’ But when when PepsiCo and large and small brands can say, ‘No, I actually have a contract, I have an IP address, I have a timestamp. I know that they actually opted into these particular privacy terms and conditions. We have a one-to-one (relationship). So the law, we’re already above it.’ I look at the privacy laws and regulations as like a street fight in an alley. And every brand is trying to figure out how to navigate from one side of the alley to the other side. What zero-party data does is say, ‘Hey, I’m gonna build a contract with everyone, because of course, they can rescind it and take their data back and tell me not to use it. But if John tells me he’s a homeowner, and he need to do a roof project, I’m gonna use that to go monetize with Home Depot or Lowe’s and get the offers that he actually wants. That’s like taking a helicopter ride over the street flight. You don’t even have to navigate through it. You just went over it. And that’s where I think the power of zero point data is.

Forbes: What did you learn working with Bam Margera and Mark Cuban?

TG: My job and my partnership with Bam – I’ve known him since he was eight years old – was to build up his brand. And what we did is we used television as a commercial for his lifestyle, good, bad or indifferent. And the brands that were attached with him rode the wave. It was a time where Facebook was niche, it wasn’t even invented (initially), like we were on my site, so connecting with consumers was incredibly difficult and I think MTV really fucked it up by not creating a loyalty program back in the day when we told them they should. The reason Bam Margera was so popular is because he sold VHS tapes, and in 1997, he had this network where he did a grassroots approach. Mark Cuban, when I worked for him for four years, we did the same thing. There wasn’t a loyalty program. There wasn’t really this place wherever we live. We created relationships. MTV, Bam, Cuban, you’ll learn a lot from them. I’m still using it today.

Forbes: Does a zero-party data approach change depending on scale? Does a small company with fewer resources and a more limited audience take a different approach from a global giant?

TG: At the heart, I don’t care if you’re BowTech, and you’re just trying to exit and get to the next owner, make your 20% back, whatever it’s gonna be. It all comes down to what is your end goal? If you’re PepsiCoPEP
, you’re not looking for a buyer. You’re Pepsi, you want to rule the world, you want to have better connections, you share value. And that’s where zero-party data is going to afford you so many more options. Now, if Pepsi just stays like Coke and says, ‘Well, we hope these freakin’ technologists and the legislation all comes together and someone figures out the next level of ad targeting,’ then you’re on the same exact playing field as Coke and all your competitors. You’re waiting for someone else to come up with the next technology that’s going to make a better ad. Consumers don’t give a damn about your marketing plan. And the last thing they need is a better ad. They need a better value with brands that they trust. I don’t care if you’re Tony’s Pizza Place with one location or PepsiCo, a global giant, you need to build relationships. And that data will will help you understand and get to your next goal.

Forbes: So using zero-party data avoids conflicts with the proliferating, sometimes conflicting privacy laws?

TG: You still have to be compliant. You still have to give users governance. You still have to give them a place in your site for them to opt out of your data and have technology like ours that will hear that signal: ‘Jane Doe just opted out. Please stop advertising and emailing her.’ We all have that. But yes, it basically says the reason these laws are in place is because (some companies were) doing things that were pretty nefarious. (Companies were) buying and brokering data, who knows what’s legal and not. Is it right? Is it wrong morally? There’s a lot of questions. Zero-party data is so crystal clear. There’s no one in the middle. There’s no GoogleGOOG
in between. It’s Patagonia and Tim Glomb (in the relationship), and that’s it. There’s no Facebook, there’s no broker, there’s no cleanroom live ramp. (With previous approaches), you’re literally trying to build a Band-Aid on a wounded marketing system. (With zero-party approaches) you’re literally trying to use technology to serve the idea that you have to invest into a relationship with your customers. Why are you putting so much time and energy into that? You would never ask that (if you were) building a relationship with your neighbor or somebody you just met on the street. Why don’t you adopt that (approach)eca, because human nature has been doing it really, really well, for a long frickin’ time. Why are you trying to use technology? That’s the wrong space to be in. Instead, build a relationship and the value will come.

Forbes: I understand using email to build a direct relationship. How do you do it across all the other marketing channels?

TG. A lot still has to be figured out as far as identity, because you’re still going to advertise. But every single person, their database, there’s not going to rely only on email or SMS or even personalization on the website. But that is making a big impact. If they know Tim is back and I opened the Doritos app or went to the website or went to an owned property, they can personalize it on the data that I gave them, not just infer and say, ‘Oh, Tim went to this page. So he must like Cherry Coke.’ No, I accidentally went there. And now it’s on my permanent record. That’s bad snooping technology. But there’s still identifiers that need to be mapped. Imagine a (company like) BowTech, and we did this with Google. We had a million people in the database, we take a subset of people who said they wanted, I’m making this up, the fastest archery bow ever made. Cool. We loaded those email addresses up and said, ‘Hey, Google, we have a direct relationship with these people. These are the people who want this ad to go to them.’ It wasn’t like, ‘Hey, Google, do you happen to know who might want the fastest bow, and serve this ad today?’ (With the zero-party approach) there’s no inference. It’s based on real data. It’s really smart. But we still have to figure that out. Those walled gardens (like Google and AmazonAMZN
) are always going to find a way for you to use your own data. So the more of it you have, and the more truth and fidelity in that data, the less you’re worried about middlemen and inference.

Forbes: Tell me a bit about the Signals22 conference.

TG: Signals is (CM Group’s) big, big event. It’s global and includes coverage of every single industry that we touch, from hospitality, to insurance, to retail, CPG, yada, yada, yada. We’ve got products for Tony’s Pizza Place, you want to swipe a credit card online and start an email database, you can do it for $10 a month. If you want your app completely personalized with zero party data, etc., that’s what we power for them. The conference (features) about 30 different sessions on 30 different topics. There’s about 20 different client stories. We’ve got two sessions with Forrester (Research analysts) talking about zero-party data and how that is the rocket fuel (for the process of) acquiring unknown consumers, turning them into known and then turning them into loyal advocates for long-time value. And Forrester (analysts) also talk about the power of personalization, specifically in the retail market. If you do get the zero-party data, you can sell those wide-bottom pants versus the skinny jeans because, you know, Mary wants skinny and Jane wants wide. It’s all virtual, it’s completely free. We make no revenue on this, we do not have partners coming and paying to be part of it. This is a complete cost center to us, we want it to be valid. We want it to be credible. It’s truly to empower the 40,000 clients that we have. They’re all scratching their head around cookies: ‘How do I do better retention? How do I make the most from email? What are the trends I need to watch out for? What are the consumers saying they’re willing to give or get or want?’