Clare Muscutt talks with Fiona Blades about the holistic view of CX, brand and marketing metrics.
Episode #509 Show Notes:
Clare:
Welcome to the ninth episode of the fifth series of the Women in CX podcast. A series dedicated to real-talk conversations between women in Customer Experience. Listen in as we share our career stories, relive the moments that shaped us and voice our opinions as loudly as we like about all-manner of CX subjects. I'll be your host, Clare Muscutt and in today's episode, I'll be talking to an incredible community member from New York City.
She started her career in pet food marketing and then moved into advertising before setting up her own company, MESH Experience in 2006, which aims to encourage businesses to take experience-driven marketing approaches. She's a Fellow of the Market Research Society, a Mentor of the Marketing Academy and President of the Marketing Research Council in New York. As the CEO of a woman-owned business, she's passionate about supporting an inclusive agenda. Please welcome to the show, CX Sister Fiona Blades.
Clare:
Hi Fiona!
Fiona:
Hi. Good to see you, Clare!
Clare:
So fabulous to see you. And I've just been thinking about the last time I saw you, saw you in London, but last summer, our meet up in New York. What a fabulous time we had!
Fiona:
I was so impressed that you came actually, it meant, it really meant a lot to me! I suppose, you know if you're thinking about CX, what better experience than to think that the organisation that you're a member of - that the person who's founded it - has taken the trouble to come and see you in Lower East side. I mean, I was super impressed by that. I really was!
Clare:
Well, there was no trouble at all because I absolutely love Lower East Side! So, thank you again for having me! So, let's jump right in then. You're in London today, but you live in two locations, right?
Fiona:
Yes. I would never have dreamed, 20 years ago, that I would actually be able to be living both in London and in New York and it's been absolutely amazing. I just never thought that this would happen.
Clare:
Yeah. You've got offices in both now, right? As well?
Fiona:
Yes. Yes. We have offices in both, but I'm not actually in the office today. I'm at home in Deptford in London. But again, it's lovely! I'm looking out and I can see the river. I can see the river Thames, and I always dream that one day I might be able to live by the river and now I'm in Deptford, which is wonderful!
Clare:
Made your dreams come true. And you have an absolutely fabulous view from your apartment in New York as well!
Fiona:
I know. Well, I like small apartments, great views because then you don't have to do too much of the housework. Do you?
Clare:
Just spend the time looking out the window.
Fiona:
Exactly, yes!
Clare:
So, I guess for the listeners’ benefit, do you want to share a little bit about how you found your way to the Women in CX community?
Fiona:
Yes, absolutely. Well, I was contacted, I was having a chat with Priscilla Tavares, and I'd worked with her when she was at Latin Airlines. She's now at Mercado Livre, and she was in Brazil, and she said 'Fiona, have you heard about Women in CX?'. I said, 'no'. She said, 'well, you should do because it is absolutely amazing, and you should see if you can get in because it has fantastic members’. It's the latest thing and any woman who is interested in CX should be a part of it! And on that basis, that was why I got in touch. And I was, again, I was really impressed with the whole process of you explaining to me what Women in CX was about. Then becoming a member, the way that each day you then helped in terms of that understanding the membership process and what you could get out of the membership. And so, for me, I don't think I've had a better membership experience of joining an organisation. It was fantastic!
Clare:
Well, that is flattering indeed! Thank you so much for saying that. I remember you giving me feedback about our onboarding. I guess for, as a community of Women in CX, we couldn't fail to get our customer experience right. Could we?
Clare:
We would defeat the object otherwise. So, I am sure the listeners would love to hear more about your fascinating career journey and how you ended up where you are today, as the CEO of an organisation with offices in London and New York. Please tell us more.
Fiona:
It's always a funny one, knowing where to start actually, but I'm going to start with my degree which was in English and Drama! And actually, my father had always said to me, he didn't mind what I did as long as I was the best at it. So, I could be anything, but I had to be the best at it! And that might sound quite easy, but it's actually- I think it's quite difficult. But in a weird kind of way, ultimately, I think I found a way around being the best at what I do because I created a company. So, nobody else does it, so that I could be the best. But anyway, I started with English and Drama because I loved English and Drama, so I just- I really enjoyed, not just the acting, but I liked directing as well.
Fiona:
And I didn't know where I wanted to go next. But actually, where I first started out, I started in Sales and then I realised from that it was actually Marketing that was going to be the area that I loved. And I think it was similar to Drama because it was like putting a play on. You've got to get the advertising with the product that you're launching, the PR, and you've got to get the factories all geared up. And I was, so, I worked on pet food marketing for eight years, which I absolutely loved! I really enjoyed that! And then I went into Advertising. So that was the next stage. I mean - it was quite interesting maybe for your listeners - this was many, many years ago when I was at Spillis Foods. I was the first well, I was the only woman in Marketing at that time.
Fiona:
Then there were other women that came in. And over the eight years, I'd been Marketing Manager in a couple of areas, but I looked at the board and there wasn't a single woman on the board. That wasn't really something that happened. And also they were 20 years older, you know. So for me, I was looking at the next stage, and advertising was what I'd loved doing. I'd really enjoyed that part! And I was lucky enough then to go to Leo Burnett in Advertising, and I worked on Kellogg's and McVitie's and I really enjoyed that. Then I moved into other things. So actually - this is a challenge, a challenge that hit me - because although I was in Advertising and I'd been a Marketing Manager...
Fiona:
...I was working with Marketing Managers at other package goods companies. And they were thinking, 'well, what has she got to offer? Because I'm a Marketing Manager and she's a Marketing Manager?'. And, of course, there was a massive cultural shift, moving from being on the client side to being on the agency side. I really needed to learn about that. I mean, there were simple mistakes that I made. I was used to getting everyone together to launch the product or ad or whatever. So when I went into Advertising, I'd go to the Creatives, I'd say, 'oh, here we are - here's the creative brief. If I can just leave that with you and pick up a wonderful ad in three weeks, that'd be great. Thank you!'. I had no idea how you had to behave in that new cultural environment. And of course, you have to, in those days, you went out to the pub with the Creative. You had a bit of a drink and found out about what they thought. And then ultimately you'd write a brief, which was very much from where they'd come from, and it was a different way of working.
Fiona:
So after a year, I was made redundant. Which was kind of a good thing for me, in the sense that I had an enormous amount of support from my Planning Director at the time. He was amazing. Actually, I did go back and do freelancing with him. But at that moment I was kind of like, do I go back to marketing, which is where I've got all my credentials, or do I push on in advertising? And I thought, I really love what I'm learning about branding and advertising. I felt liberated because I could work across different brands and different categories. And so I thought, that's the journey I'm going to go on. So I freelanced for nine months. And that was good for building your self-confidence, actually, because it's you. I mean, you'll know what it's like setting up a business.
Fiona:
You've just got to go for it. So that's what I did. Then I went back into advertising. I did lots of different roles after that. And the last one - I was at Claydon Heeley. It was an Omnicom agency. It was a phenomenal agency, I absolutely loved it! I was the Planning Director, So I had the Strategic Planners and the Data Planners reporting in. And I thought there was a gap in the market for research. Everything was about TV advertising, how is your TV advertising working? And I was working for Mercedes-Benz at Claydon Heeley, and I thought, well, I know it's not just the TV ad. I know that it's walking into a dealership. I know that it's going online and configuring a car. I know that it's seeing your neighbour’s car. I'm thinking, wow, I think I'd like one of those!
Fiona:
That looks pretty good! So I thought if we could capture all those experiences, we'd then be able to understand: which ones you want more of, which ones you want less of, which are working well for customers, and which aren't. And I realised that you could do this using a mobile phone. And actually, I'd had, there've been a couple of experiences that have led to this happening. So the first one, in terms of understanding experiences in time, I've been at a previous agency and that agency was called IMP. It was a promotional agency, and the people there believed in what they called Participation Marketing. And they believed -
Clare:
What is Participation Marketing?
Fiona:
Exactly! What is Participation Marketing? So they believe that if you participated in something, a promotion or something else, that involvement in the brand could have just as deep an impression as seeing a TV ad. And I know that sounds kind of simple today, but actually, it's... in those days, everybody thought it was all 'tv, tv, tv' and they perhaps didn't realise the depth of relationship you could build as a brand through something like a promotion. All through Customer Experience! That just wasn't really thought about. And in order to have Participation Marketing, it was felt there should be a Brand Experience workshop.
Fiona:
So...
Clare:
What was that?
Fiona:
Well, that was the question that the Head of Planning said to me! She was on maternity, she said, 'Fiona, please could you sort out what a Brand Experience workshop is?'. So I thought, right, well, I'll get my friend, John Kearon, at the time. John Kearon has since set up System1, which some people might be aware of, which is a very successful market research consultancy. But at the time John and I were just- we'd been planners in advertising. I said, John, could you come and help facilitate a brainstorm with the planners, so we can work out what on earth a brand experience workshop is - that's what we have got to do. So he came along and I remember it was one of those days in agency world - on a Friday, we were late...
Fiona:
...we didn't start until late in the afternoon, there had been different crises we'd had to handle. So anyway, Friday afternoon, and we were doing this workshop, and we got so far, and then I said, no, we need an output. We need an output that is going to be the same. So we decided that the workshop would be a massive focus group, a bit like Oprah, having an Oprah experience, that's what we thought we'd do. So we got that far! But I said we need to know what is the output. And I think in desperation, I remembered something, and this was going to the Tate gallery. And at the Tate Gallery, they had this exhibition called Foley Artists. So you know those artists that do the sound effects on the radio? So they got a room, and it was a white box room, but all the way around it, it had the words of this play and, basically a score.
Fiona:
So it would say 'seagulls, you know, come in here...crunching through rocks and sand here', and it would have this right the way around the room. And then you could see the TV monitor, where you'd see the Foley artist, you know, getting up the seagull noise and that kind of thing. Anyway, I looked at that, I suddenly thought about it and I said, yes, okay, a brand experience happens over time. And maybe what we need is a score - like the Foley artists. So let's have a Brand Experience score and we'll have the five different senses. We'll have feel, think and do, because, on every creative brief I'd ever seen, you had to say, 'what do you want the consumer to feel, think and do?'. And that was it. That was the score. But I suppose when I really thought back to setting up MESH, going back to that notion of experience and how I saw it and how I felt that it was articulated, goes back to that point.
Fiona:
So that was a pivotal moment for me on experiences, because people talked about Brand Essence, not Brand Experience in those days. And I thought, no, the Brand Experience is a really important thing. The second was just a magic piece of experience. I was - as Planning Director at Clayton Healy, I'd invited 2CV - they were a research company - to come in and present their capabilities. They came in and they said, Fiona, we've got this new thing. We've got a panel of a thousand people and we can text them now and they will text us the answer to this question. So there was a question, I don't know, which song will be number one this week? Something like that. Is it going to be A, B or C? And they were connected, this was in about 2001,
Fiona:
...they were connected to our big screen in the conference room. So we're talking over 20 years ago, and they sent out the question, we saw the results coming back on the screen!
Clare:
Wow. Real-time.
Fiona:
Yeah. This is over 20 years ago. So that is absolutely amazing. Well, I tell you what, we're pitching for Pepsi, could you do something a different way around? So, rather than putting a question out, could you brief your people to tell us whenever they have Pepsi or Coca-Cola? And then could you ask them where they are, who they're with, and we'll find out about those experiences. And they said, suppose we could, and they did! And the information was really helpful because we could then start to see that Pepsi tended to be drunk when it was younger people together. Coca-Cola might be more the bottle in the fridge at home. You know, there were some different insights that were coming out. And from that, that was why I thought, okay, there are two things coming out, and this is so cheesy. But anyway, this is what I thought.
Clare:
Go for it!
Fiona:
There's a product called Ethno-Text, TXT, because it's like mobile ethnography,
Clare:
Ethnography...
Clare:
Which is a longitudinal study over time. Right. Is that right?
Fiona:
It is. It's exactly, it is. So absolutely! And then the other one was Evalue Text, because I thought this can help you evaluate 360 campaigns. Because it can help you see when somebody sees a poster, when somebody sees a TV ad, or when they go online. So it can do that. And I didn't do anything with that idea for five years. And then later, that was when I thought, 'I've got to just go and do it'. So I suppose thinking back, there'd been many things along that journey that have been important in relation to experience, but I think I've said far too much! So I'm going to stop at that point!
Clare:
No, no, not at all! I thought I could maybe just play back to you what I think I'm hearing here. So, I really love this idea of the Foley thing at the installation at the Tate. And thinking about experiences like a musical score, that's orchestrated in order to create an experience for the senses. And I think what you were explaining was that, being able to use text technology to reverse engineer what that Brand Experience would be based on - what was actually happening and how people were using a product. In this case, drinking different colas, and pioneering this new approach to market research to drive brand campaigns. Advertising all aspects of the Brand Experience from the other perspective. So rather than, 'top-down creative minds, let's come up with an idea and figure out how we execute that in different touchpoints at the time, predominantly advertising', how you could then bring that into the real world and the real world of the consumer. Is that right?
Fiona:
It is. I think that we don't create the ads.
Fiona:
We measure them. Exactly. So that- because it's so different. If you've seen a TV ad and you've just read a really negative news article, or seen something on social media, then you might react very differently than you would if you'd just seen it. And that company has just done something amazing for you, you know? So yeah, understanding that context I think is really important.
Clare:
That's a good way to describe it. So, I had a couple of questions boiling away in my brain that I think quite often get asked in CX. The first one being, so- given brands are basically, they don't exist, they're just constructs in people's minds, aren't they?
Fiona:
Yes.
Clare:
How do you bring that into reality as an experience? How do you see that? And just to further position that Marketing and Customer Experience is sometimes seen as two separate things, or teams, that maybe don't sit together and perhaps that don't work together that often. There are a lot of tangible aspects to experience that marketing might not be that interested in. Just how do you see this whole Customer Experience thing, and how is that in your mind in the context of marketing and brand? Big question.
Fiona:
It is a big question, and there two things that have immediately come up. So first, I have to tell you, Jeremy Bullmore, has this wonderful quote: 'People build brands as birds build nests, from scraps and straws they chance upon.' And I love that! It is all those different experiences, and different things that are coming together that create the brand in your head. And of course, Jeremy Bullmore died very recently, so he is very influential, I think in our industry. So I suppose that's one thing that I've always felt inspired by. I think later he said some, he kind of went back and, and deconstructed that and said, no, actually birds are very purposeful. They don't just go just chance upon things at all. But you can think about the same thing for brands.
Fiona:
How can you build those scraps and straws that are going to create the right impression in somebody's head? I love what you've said about the marketing and CX and the silos. Yes. I mean, I remember, I come from the era when you had your brand tracker and you had your CX tracker, and they were very different and nobody spoke together- they were different departments and different silos. I literally do not feel, see, or think like that. I think everything is an experience. Whether that is walking past a poster, and it's an ephemeral experience, or whether that is going into a shop and having a much longer experience and having an assistant helping you with something. They're all experiences as far as I'm concerned, but some will have a greater impact than others.
Fiona:
And, in general, I would say that owned channels and CX-type channels, the ones that have come in that area, tend to have a bigger impact. But they play different roles because if you are walking into a store, or you're going onto an app, or you're going online, you are making that choice. So you are going into that brand world, whereas you need to be attracted to that, and that's where advertising comes in! Because you might never have heard of a brand, and if you see some communication, or you see that recommended, or you see that on social media, or something like that - that is then going to help you to think that may be a brand that I want to explore more about. But I see it as one total; I think about the whole Customer Experience. I think you need to look through a customer's eyes to understand how CX, or traditional CX, fits into the whole picture.
Clare:
And just for the audience's benefit, if they're not so familiar with the marketing terms of paid, owned and earned, do you want to just describe a little bit more about what that means?
Fiona:
Yeah. Very, very happy to describe it. And of course, there's lots of debate on what exactly are these things!
Clare:
Exactly!
Fiona:
So let's take a simple definition. Paid would be where you are paying, for example, a TV channel to put on your ad. So your ad is your own - you've created the ad - do you want to put it on a paid channel, like TV, or do you want to put it on your own channel, like your website? That would be an owned channel. And then earned would be generated by external sources. So it could be in the news items, it's PR, it could be a conversation that people are having. So that would be how we would describe earned media.
Clare:
No, that's really helpful.
Sponsor Message:
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Clare:
So how exactly does your company help clients to measure that whole Customer Experience, and what's the benefit that they get from doing that?
Fiona:
Well, we've got… we came up with an approach, which to begin with was using mobile phones, and initially, it was text messaging. We don't use text messaging, it's mobile diaries now, but we call that approach real-time experience tracking. And because, through that, we are asking people to tell us whenever they see, hear or experience anything to do with-, and it could be vegan products or it could be banks, or it could be electronics or it could be chocolate. So whatever the category is. Then from that, we can see how people are experiencing the client's brand in relation to the competitors. And that helps clients in three areas. So it can help them with their marketing investment decisions when it comes to campaigns. So for instance, we've been lucky enough to work on the Boots campaigns.
Fiona:
So we've worked on the Christmas one recently and previously on the summer ones. And that's lovely. So then you can understand exactly when that campaign is out there, how are people responding, and what are they saying about it. Are they picking it up? Are they noticing it in comparison with others? So that's one thing. Advertising. The next is path-to-purchase because, particularly with online, offline you know, where should a brand intervene? So we've worked with LG Electronics for many years. When should they be talking with their own advertising? When should they be thinking about best buy and the in-store environment? How can they intervene on that path-to-purchase? And then the third area is CX. So I think that nowadays clients have got lots of data, first-party data because there's just more and more, which is fantastic.
Clare:
And first party being?
Fiona:
Yes, thank you for kind of pulling me up there, Clare! First-party data being the information of the customer that you have. So knowing that Clare is a customer and knowing your email address or knowing your mobile number...
Clare:
Right, got it.
Fiona:
Being able to contact you, send you a letter, that will be first-party data. And with the difficulty that clients are having now; in gaining attention from customers, fragmenting media, and the demise of cookies. You know, all of these things, it's more and more important for client brands to have good first-party data because then they can contact their customers directly. So you can have loads of information about your first-party data, but you won't have the same information about competitors. So you won't know how-, I mean, we do quite a lot of work on retail banking, for example. So you might know how your bank's app is working, but you won't necessarily know how people are experiencing the competitors or their branch experiences.
Clare:
And the benchmark.
Fiona:
Exactly. So you might want to benchmark that. So those are really the three core ways that we can help clients in those areas.
Clare:
It is so fascinating! And where do you think this is all heading? The future of Customer Experience and particularly the future of Customer Experience in the context of Marketing and data?
Fiona:
Well, I think there are going to be new ways of looking at things, new metrics. I think Marketing and Customer Experience will become much more integrated. I think everything is a Customer Experience. Everything is Marketing. It's all the same thing. So I think that will become more integrated and I, therefore, think there will be new metrics. And so one actually-, which Keith Weed, who was at Unilever, talked about in Harvard Business Review, which is share of experience. And actually, that is something that MESH has picked up for 16 years. And what we mean by share of experience is if you think, let's take banks that people are telling us about every experience that they're having with banks - whether that's the TV ad or the branch. We can see out of a thousand experiences, what percentage of those are for Lloyd's Bank, what percentage are for HSBC, and what for Barclays. So we can see that percentage, and that has a closer correlation with market share, than Share of Voice.
Clare:
Nice.
Fiona:
Because if you think about it, Share of Voice, is just the paid advertising. It's what you're pushing out. So just because you are pushing out millions of advertising, doesn't mean that people are picking it up.
Clare:
Yeah. It doesn't mean it's being experienced.
Fiona:
Doesn't mean it's being experienced. So I think share of experience will be really, really important. And then of course you can break that down into, well, how are people experiencing your brand? If you had to draw a pie chart of that, what percentage would be social media? What percentage would be in-store, what percentage online, and what percentage on the app? What percentage would all those things be? And if you don't know how people are experiencing your brand, how can you know where to invest to make better decisions? So I think some of those things are going to change over time.
Clare:
So in terms of investment then, that might be saying, in terms of share of experience in our online channels, we can see that there's a huge gap between us and our biggest competitor in how much cut through we're getting, therefore we'd want to invest more in that channel. Is it that kind of decision?
Fiona:
Absolutely, absolutely. Yes!
Clare:
And you said market share is connected to this. So, is it then being able to attribute different channel impacts on purchase or?
Fiona:
Yes.
Clare:
Cross, data, mapping, with things like the financial...
Fiona:
Absolutely. I think so because this will be fed into modelling. What we know from our own data is which channels are having the biggest impact on brand metrics like trust, NPS, and brand considerations. So, we know that because before we ask people to tell us their experiences, we find out which brands they consider and which brands they trust. And then at the end of the week, each person does this for a week, but we've got this running continuously, we ask the same questions. So we can see, oh, somebody didn't trust this bank here... now they trust the bank. What experiences have they had that have generated that? So we can really start to unpick which experiences a client should be focusing on. And of course, it's not just through which channels; it's the messaging, it's the context that we've talked about. It's all of those other things. And we know that if the experience is a positive one, so we ask people how positive the experience was, which has three times the impact on brand consideration of a neutral one. So you want lots of experiences and you want positive ones. That's what you're looking to try and do.
Clare:
Typically, I guess the… not that I agree with it, but the typical things that people are measuring in Customer Experience and Net Promoter and effort scores and satisfaction and things like that. How do you think this ties together with those kinds of metrics and the tracking that gets done specifically on experience?
Fiona:
Well, I think things like a Net Promoter Score can be really useful for businesses. Because, if everyone in the business gets behind it, whether or not you think it's the best score or it's not the best score, whether you are doing operational NPS because it's straight after a flight, or you're doing strategic because you're asking people at a different time about overall their recommendation - I think those metrics can be useful. But I suppose where the experiences come in, it's the experiences that will create that impact, that Net Promoter score. So if you have a great experience, that is more likely to make you want to recommend or for you to have satisfaction with a brand. So we always say it's the experiences that you have today that will be impacting the metrics that people are measuring tomorrow.
Clare:
That's more of an input metric and an output metric system.
Fiona:
Yes.
Clare:
So measuring all the inputs to those experiences, that ultimately could generate something like whether or not someone does advocate for you.
Fiona:
Yes, exactly.
Clare:
And perhaps even make up some of that earned media that we've been talking about.
Fiona:
Yes, exactly! Because the more you can get people to talk about you, the more you grow your share of experience without needing to pay.
Clare:
Which has clear financial benefits to that. Amazing! So outside of there being new metrics for Customer Experience, is there anything else that you'd like to share about what you see for the future of Customer Experience?
Fiona:
Well one thing actually, when I was working on, and thank you very much for being part of the own channel project with the IPA and F Works, I really, really appreciated that. But, one of the things that I found was the clients that were embracing agile working, which was really interesting. Because you were getting creativity; you were putting people together with different disciplines and with a business problem or an outcome, something that needed solving. And I think there will be more and more of those squads and agile working to get to solutions. So I think some of the ways that we work will change as well.
Clare:
And where do you see things like Customer Communities fitting in all this? Obviously, being a start-up and running a community myself, I just think it's fascinating! This evolution beyond research communities, particularly in the software and SAS space, more so than in FMCG. Is that going to become a part of our marketing mix?
Fiona:
I actually think it will be. I think it's a really good point. When I was doing the IPA paper, again, that was a question that you raised, but it was also a question that other people raised. Because now there's much more investment in Customer Communities and you can have a direct relationship with your customers. Those experiences are going to be potentially more impactful than simply the paid advertising that we've seen in the past. And it gives you a direct channel to these customers. So, I think there is going to be some blurring of the lines between research and actual participation in communities as well. I think some of that will break down.
Clare:
Well, it could be the ultimate participation of marketing, couldn't it? Because...
Fiona:
It could. I love that!
Clare:
...brands talking to customers through this new direct channel, but also customers interacting with one another around products. So I think it's fascinating and the potential of that too... Yeah, just that I suppose unleash and a new aspect.
Fiona:
I think you are so right about that Clare because actually, it is some of those things. YouTube videos where people show new things to do with a product, that you didn't know, can start to change the number of ways that products are used.
Clare:
Yeah. And then customers sharing tips with one another about products and these software communities-, because I joined a few communities that are about communities now-, and what we are doing is quite unique and different as Women in CX. We're actually up for an industry award, Global CMX awards; we're in the top three finalists in the whole world for our approach to user groups, because we're a Customer Experience group who co-design with our community and drive our own product. And yeah, just kind of seeing out there how different companies are using communities now to enhance their product development. Because, rather than asking specific research questions or having to invest in ETHNA or specific research communities, these communities are actually being that source of product feedback and innovation and ideas from the customer's point of view. Through them interacting with one another and sharing the challenges and obstacles and opportunities and tips with one another. And they're able to build that stuff, for example, into the onboarding of their products experience directly. I think it's fascinating.
Fiona:
Absolutely! And not surprising that Women in CX is up for the award and also is right there at the leading edge of what's happening.
Clare:
Oh, thank you very much. So a little humble brag from Women in CX now, but we deserve it. We should. No one's going to blow your horn for you, are they? So we should be shouting from the rooftops about our own successes. Well, that was an awesome conversation, I have learnt so much! Obviously, I have been around you and what you've been doing with this paper and I learnt so much from that. Is that paper available publicly?
Fiona:
Yes, it is. And if you go onto either the MESH website or the IPA website, I can send the link to you later if you want to send that through to the people that are listening. But on either of those websites, you should be able to search for 'Owned Channels: The Next Frontier in Marketing Effectiveness Measurement'.
Clare:
And what does the IPA stand for? Just for anyone listening.
Fiona:
Oh, that's a good point. I think it's the Institute of Practitioners for Advertising.
Clare:
Advertising, the big industry body for advertising. That's all we need to know. And yeah, sure. If you could send us a link. We can just drop it in the show notes from the podcast and people can just click through and directly access it there. So to round off then, is there one pearl of wisdom/piece of advice or one thing to take away from this conversation you'd like to leave our listeners with?
Fiona:
I think that would be that if you've got a different perspective on the world, or you've got something new about CX, you should nurture it; nurture that and believe in it. Don't just think that you are odd and different. Because I think if you do, you can find something special and you can follow your own path and you get your own purpose.
Clare:
Yeah and just to reel right back to the start where you said about what your Dad advised you to do, to be the best at whatever you could be. You know, you went out into the world, you did that, you built your own thing and absolutely have made yourself the best in what you do. So that's really inspiring. I'm sure our listeners have loved hearing more about your career journey, what you are up to -this cutting edge of ethnographic user research/longitudinal studies. Thank you again for having me when I came to visit in New York. We had a wonderful meet up. Please do send my best to your lovely husband.
Fiona:
Thank you.
Clare:
And that's it! So thank you for coming and thank you for everybody who watched or listened along! We'll see you all on the next episode of Inspiring Women in CX. Bye for now.
Fiona:
Thank you, Clare. Bye-Bye.
Clare:
Thanks for listening to the Women in CX podcast with me, Clare Muscutt. If you enjoyed the show, please drop us a like, subscribe and leave a review on whichever platform you're listening or watching on. And if you want to know more about becoming a member of the world's first online community for Women in Customer Experience, please check out www.womenincx.community. Join us again next week, where I'll be talking to another one of our amazing community members, this time from Australia, about employee and workplace experience capabilities for the future. See you again soon.
