Customers, Cookies, and Content: A President’s Perspective 

featuring Jascha Kaykas-Wolff 

March 10, 2023 

The rapid decline of third-party cookies has turned a CMO’s growth playbook upside down.

And building trust has never been more challenging--especially in the United States.

A 2021 Oxford University study asked 92,000 people whether they trust the news media in their country. The highest rated country was Finland. The U.S. came in dead last, at 29%.

• How much complexity are we facing globally with customer privacy? (hint: more than ever!)
• How can our messages build trust in this daunting digital desert? 
• Why should CMOs care about customer data platforms (CDPs)? 
• Where’s the balance between personalization and privacy? 

In this show, you will hear how iconic tech CMO-turned-President, Jascha Kaykas-Wolff, has built agile teams that cultivate trust and drive healthy growth. He will share how transparent privacy policies, cookies, and content can work in harmony.

Some takeaways:

1. Strategic leaders take responsibility for their customers’ experience—or customers will leave. This starts with being clear on the value exchange between our company and those customers. That will ensure that your first party data strategy endures.
2. Commit to building a solid customer data platform strategy before implementing a customer data platform. Here is a free, helpful white paper from Lytics. https://www.lytics.com/resources/guides/customer-data-platforms-101/
3. Gartner predicts that 75% of the world’s population will be under privacy regulations by December 2023. Mindful marketers need to work closely with their legal, data science, and content teams to stay abreast of these privacy demands. Click here for the ZDNet story (3-minute read)
4. Avoid “irrational AI exuberance.” Many of us are rushing to use generative AI without establishing ethical and contextual guardrails. Jascha and I addressed the major reputational and ethical risks associated with this approach. 

Instead, ask your leaders “Are we going to build use cases right now, or am I first going to explore the implications of bias, context, and structure?” Before you fully take advantage of machine learning and generative AI (e.g., ChatGPT), find a way to create and publish organization guardrails. 

1. Leverage your data science team to a) acknowledge that bias exists within the tools and b) remove bias daily.

Here’s how Jascha’ s team addresses this ethical challenge: He and his team practice “intentional de-biasing.” They make best efforts to remove biases in their toolset. Jascha believes “this discussion needs to happen in scrum meetings, board discussions, and leadership meetings. It’s critical to remove biases as soon as we find them.”

P.S. Before you go:

1. Don’t miss a future episode –the first Friday of each month, 1:30-2:05 pm ET. Join our “know ahead” list at themindfulmarketer.com.

2. Got an idea for a future show or guest? Drop me a note: lisa@lisanirell.com with “Future Show Idea” in the Subject line.