Data-Driven Decision-Making, Creative Storytelling, and Customer-Centric Marketing with Jill Thomas of PGA TOUR Superstore

EPISODE DESCRIPTION
What happens when a marketing leader blends creativity with data to drive customer-first strategies? In this episode, Jill Thomas, CMO of PGA TOUR Superstore, dives into the evolution of retail marketing, the power of data-driven decision-making, and the role of storytelling in brand building. Jill shares insights from her experience at notable brands like Disney and Cinnabon, revealing how marketers can balance analytics with creativity to stay ahead. She also dives into the rapid changes in the golf industry, the challenges of scaling personalization, and why understanding your customer is more critical than ever. Whether you’re a B2C or B2B marketer, this episode is packed with practical lessons to help you lead with impact.

GUEST BIO
Jill is a dynamic, strategic-minded marketing executive with more than 25 years of senior leadership experience across channels and several industries, including retail, e-commerce, restaurants, travel and hospitality, and consumer goods. Jill is a results-driven leader with a consistent record of growing sales revenue and brand performance with some of the world’s most admired companies, including The Walt Disney Company, Bloomin’ Brands, Cinnabon, Yum! Brands, and PepsiCo. Most recently, Jill was the SVP/Chief Marketing Officer for Atlanta-based Edible Arrangements.

In her role as Chief Marketing Officer (CMO), Jill is responsible for directing all strategy and execution of marketing and advertising plans, creative promotions, campaign planning, national and grassroots plans, social media, sponsorships, and loyalty program. Jill also heads up the eCommerce business and is responsible for eCommerce P&L and eCommerce operations.

TRANSCRIPT

Introduction to The Next CMO Podcast
The Next CMO podcast explores topics that are on the minds of forward thinking marketing leaders from vision and strategy to leadership and emerging technologies.

The Next CMO is sponsored by Planful, a platform to build, manage, and measure your marketing plan, track all your marketing spend, and connect your budget with outcomes to measure your ROI. Check it out at planful dot com slash marketing. Your CFO will love you for it. I’m your host, Scott Todaro, a thirty two year marketing veteran, seven time head of marketing, and coauthor of the book, The Next CMO.

Alright. Welcome to another episode of The Next CMO. We have an action packed agenda just like we do every single week. Today, we have Jill Thomas.

Now Jill brings an amazing resume of deep consumer based marketing experience. In fact, she’s worked at some of the greatest brands of all time. I think we all know that, you know, companies like the Walt Disney Company are about as good as you’re gonna get. Right?

As far as branding goes, as far as positioning goes, and being able to dominate an industry.

So Jill brings over twenty years of marketing leadership experience. So she’s gonna be able to talk to the CMO function at a fairly deep level. She’s worked in consumer packaged goods. She’s worked in retail. She’s worked in travel and leisure, hospitality.

As I mentioned, Walt Disney, Yum, probably a lot of you have heard of of Yum before. PepsiCo, maybe you’ve had a Pepsi or two out there. Publix and what put about twenty five pounds on my frame, Cinnabon.

And so all of these are brands that you use every day. It’s a tough job to make sure you’re maintaining these brands, coming up with new marketing strategies, lots of competition out there. And so I’m glad to have Jill here today to go through all of these elements. So the first question I wanna get out to Jill is you’ve worked across all these different industries.

Marketing Strategies Across Industries
Are there any similarities you’re seeing, from being able to apply different marketing strategies? How have you kind of approached a consistent set of processes as you go from company to company to make sure that you’re creating efficiencies and making your team as effective as you possibly can?

Right. Well, thanks, Scott. It’s great to be here. And, I guess I would say, yes. I think they all have the same fundamental, responsibility, which is to really understand the consumer better than any other part of the organization and adapt the brand to the customer in in a way that is both, you know, modern and data driven, but also empathetic and customer first always. So, I it doesn’t matter what brand you work on. If you sort of understand that as the foundation, you’re gonna be okay.

The Evolution of Data in Marketing
Right. So, I mean, just as far as you you mentioned data driven, and we’re we’re seeing now that lots and lots of different companies out there are switching from the creative side. I don’t know how old you are, Jill, but I’m really old. So I actually remember marketing before the Internet came out, and there wasn’t a lot of data. It was all gut feel, and that was never a great position. But we were very creative back then. So how have you started to mix in data analysis, decision making based on data versus taking the more creative approach, especially in consumer marketing, where creativity can run wild?

You know, that is, like, the best question you could ever ask me because I am one of those few people who, I was here before data and and the Internet. I I know that’s I know I know you might think I’m in my, you know, late twenties, but I’m a little bit older than that. So I, I always say like the greatest thing that ever, I, I majored in advertising. I always like to point that out.

I did not start out with a marketing. You know, foundation. I started out with this idea of building great creative and and really trying to figure out how to share an important message through a creative strategy. And then I worked backwards.

I eventually went back to get my MBA. So I didn’t start sort of in the idea of how do we use data and analytics to drive an outcome.

So but I read a book in the late nineties, called, like, called Being Digital, and it changed my life, and the direction of my career. And so I I say I’m not a native digital person, but I’m a shifted digital person. And I have been doing it for over twenty years or focused on data.

And back then, back in the day, Scott, you were probably there with me.

We used to talk about, you know, it kind of started through measurement and, balanced scorecarding was I was like super into that in the nineties.

And that led me to some customer satisfaction measurement, which led me to one to one, which led me to data. And that was like the foundation at what’s really caught my interest. I realized so quickly the value and the importance of really understanding consumer, leveraging data. And it it it didn’t seem like, you know, it it didn’t seem like unicorns and magic. I I could see how it was going to be possible through data simple ideas of databases.

The Role of CRM in Modern Marketing
Well, then I got a really great opportunity to kind of be involved at the Walt Disney company with new media strategy, which at that time, what we were talking about was the convergence of set top boxes. So we were talking about TiVo and your your your your cable TV and how all the boxes were gonna stack up. And we thought and the people were gonna skip through commercials. And then what were we gonna do? And it was gonna be this crazy world, kinda like y two k world. And and so we talked a lot about convergence.

So those two ideas came together with this core idea that still drives me every day, which is CRM.

And not email marketing, CRM, customer value management, life cycle management.

That is like the foundation of everything I believe. So and that has, you know, it’s been twenty four years, at least. I’d probably go deeper than that. But twenty four that I’ve been practicing in marketing, not just reading about it.

How do you infuse data and insight and customer information into your your effort? And it’s you know, we all have limited resources. So if you think about customer value management as the way forward, all that’s happened in the last twenty four years are new tools and new, ways to get there. But the idea remains the same, and it’s a simple idea.

And I always tell everyone, marketing is really not that complicated. It’s foundationally two things. One, right message, right moment, right person, right? So no big secret there.

And two, it’s not about you. And if you can remember those two things, you’re golden. Now, of course, we know the first one. Well, both of them are hard to do because we’re all a focus group of one.

But, you know, right person, right message, right moment is is still a very complicated strategy to execute, made easier with new tools and technology in our stacks. But, foundationally, always about the data and really understanding data and how we’re gonna use it.

I I have a Nirvana state, to get to that place. I I’ll be honest. There’s some great brands that do it really well, but most brands don’t. And it’s not for lack of understanding or trying. It just just has more to do with complexity and resources.

Understanding the Modern Golf Consumer
And so where I am today at the PGA Tour Superstore, we are a leader in the space of golf retail, but we’re still golf retail is not a huge industry. Right? So we are still sort of driving down this journey every single day. How do we get that right person, right message, right moment? And and then if there was ever a time for it, now is that time, especially in golf. You know, when I got to the PGA tour superstore, there was one customer I could describe him very easily.

And I knew what TV programs he watched. Right? He he was watching the golf channel. And today, that is no longer the case.

Golf participation has gone through the roof. We have so many different types of golfers. There’s women. There’s juniors.

There’s all different levels of engagement with the game. And if so, if that doesn’t translate to right person, right message, right moment, you know, I don’t know what would. And the last five years, that’s been our total mission is to build, I call it the robot.

I don’t know what else to call it, but, to build the machine that would allow us to really be relevant to the customers that we’re trying to serve. And at the end of the day, that is what we’re trying to do. Now the second part of your question was even more important to me, which is then how do you create interest? Right?

Creativity in Marketing Engagement
You still have to be creative. You can’t just, you know, find that person. You have to engage that person and be super creative. And we have so many ways to do that right now through social media, organic content, you know, great brand work, just having a nice brand book.

It’s not that complicated. Like, start with that foundation.

You know, I love to see it all come together and what there’s no better time to be a CMO than right now. It’s it’s so fun. It’s so thought provoking on both sides of your brain.

And we’re, you know, I’m just I’m just still trying to figure it all out.

We we’re all trying to figure it all out, I I have to say. And but I think there’s something really important you said that I wanna reiterate here. It’s really this simple. When your marketing isn’t working, that means you said the wrong thing to the wrong people.

The Importance of Customer Understanding
Right? It’s really that simple. You made it so simple. Right? It’s you’ve gotta figure out and understand your buyer.

And it’s interesting. You you said you set up a, you know, bunch of tools and being able to use CRM to collect a lot of this data. Do you still use, traditional vehicles like surveys and focus groups to pull in this data to, or have you gone exclusively to seeing what are the buying habits or trends that you’re watching on a website or other things along those lines for buyer journey, things along those I I are you using all of those elements or this have you narrowed it down to more digital tracking?

No. I think we have an always on method of listening. I think having multiple listening posts is really, really important. In the golf industry, we have great resources like the NGF, the National Golf Foundation that kind of provides a higher look at the golf industry in general.

But we know our customer better than anyone, and we we use platforms for continuous monitoring of feedback. We have a customer care center, so we get sort of feedback every day. We obviously have all the digital touch points and and listening posts.

But what’s really important is to add the context and the emotion to it, and sometimes you can only do that by talking directly to the customer. So I don’t think, I know for a fact that this brand has never spent more money on customer research than it has in the five years that I’ve been here. And, because I can’t do my job if I don’t kind of connect those dots. I can see behavior, but I want to know why the behavior and I want to know how do I segment the audiences.

Business Growth Strategies Simplified
So I always say the other side of growing a business is also equally in my mind simple. Right? You there’s only two ways to do it. You either get more people or get the same people to buy more stuff.

So, like, when you when you kinda break it down into those two pillars, I know you could raise prices. Let’s assume that we’re not doing that because nobody wants to do that. But let’s let’s on the marketing side of, like, how we connect with people, it’s either acquisition or retention. So when you kinda simplify it in that way, you know, I really need to know what will it take to acquire someone.

And if someone’s not shopping with us or we’re we don’t have a hundred percent of their share of wallet, why? And I think the best way to find that out, the fastest way to find them out is you just ask them. I I’m I’m I’ve figured out if you just ask people what you can do to make their lives better or how we can serve them better, they will tell you. And then if you do that, they will give you money in exchange.

It’s amazing. It’s amazing. It’s amazing formula. It really works. I’ve never seen it not work.

Yeah. Business. It’s as amazing as transaction.

You know, it it’s so funny. Well, you said you’ve collected all this data. I am also a golfer. What’s my handicap?

What is your handicap?

Well, tell me, did you watch You did a good you did a good job. You asked the customer what what is it?

Well, I bet I could guess. When was the last time you played golf?

Probably about a month and a half ago.

And did you watch professional golf this past weekend?

I did not.

I’m gonna go. You’re somewhere around a plus ten to twenty.

You’re somewhere in that neighborhood.

You’re very you’re very nice. It’s it’s north of twenty. I won’t go how high it is, but it’s north of twenty these days. I used to play golf regularly, but, you know, what happens is you get a job.

They also pay this there’s exchange of money there too. I do work, but they give me money back. So it it works out. But it also drains my ability to play golf as much as I’d like to.

So, I mean, just as far as other tips that you have, I mean, there’s there’s been a big change in marketing these days. What what are the things that you think marketers should be looking at? What are the things they should be doing? What are some of the things that they’re not doing as the marketing landscape changes as technology, other things get, you know, brought into the mix now, how people evaluate things, how people execute.

What are some of the things that you’re seeing that have been, useful for you and, you know, some tips and tricks you can give to some of these marketing leaders that are on this podcast that you think will help them do their job better?

Balancing Data and Creativity in Marketing
Yeah. I think, you mentioned it earlier, and it’s a really, important dialogue is that data and analytics can only do so much, that you have to balance, storytelling and just the fundamentals of branding and positioning.

They really I I feel like, today, most people are kind of most marketers, I should say, more specifically, fall into different camps. They’re either super digital, super analytical, and kind of really wanna sit behind a computer and, like, find the audience, develop the audience, and AB test the audience.

And or they’re extremely creative storytellers. And what we need to be is both, or we need to figure out the process of linking those two ideas together. As CMOs, we have to figure out how to build an organization, designed to to do that. So I always do things like I every every and I’ve done this forever. I don’t I don’t know that everybody knows I do this, but I always have my org chart left to right from analytics to creativity.

And I always am trying to organize the team and the process around the handoffs that exist between each of those functions.

And so I’m just, you know, I’m not again, I don’t I I’ve been doing this a long time.

But I and I’ve but I haven’t mastered it. And I don’t know that I I ever will, or I’ll never stop trying. I mean, I think that’s another important skill set of anyone in this business is you have to be completely adaptable and completely, like, intellectually curious is probably the most important skill right now for a marketing leader is you gotta be willing to change and willing to listen and willing to adapt. But, I really do think that, you know, we tend to lean brands tend to lean one way or the other. They tend to be either extremely data driven or extremely creative. And and in a perfect world, the great brands, the Walt Disney World, the other Walt Disney companies, they understand both.

There’s some Home Depot, I think, is, you know, they’re, a relative of ours. Our our owner is the founder of Home Depot and Arthur Blank.

So, you know, we sort of look up to them because they they are a big mass retailer with they’re they’re they’re doing everything, like, really well.

And, you know, I think it’s a great benchmark for other retailers to look at. And there’s a lot of them. Target does everything really great, in my opinion. They really understand the balance between those two ideas.

Understanding Marketing Objectives
So, you know, that’s always my aspiration for whatever brand I’m working on is, like, to to like, I really like to understand, you know, the first business problem, are we trying to acquire or retain? I mean, obviously, we wanna do both. But what are we doing right now if we’re talking about an initiative or a strategy or a program? Like what is the purpose? And trying to get people to actually like land that plane or just say it out loud or write it on a piece. I I I’m really I’m kind of annoying because I’m always like, write it down, show me on paper. And, you know, Disney has an incredible marketing, education, like a way to teach people how to be great marketers.

It always starts with data, but it’s the second part is being able to write a great brief. And there’s a difference between a creative brief and a mar marketing brief. Like, the marketing input is what I’m always looking for from my marketers is who’s the audience, why do they care, and then what are you gonna do about it, and why do you think that’s gonna work? And it’s so it’s not like deck you know, deep decks. It’s just like have the confidence to put something on paper and let us discuss and be, you know, vulnerable that maybe it’s, you know, you might get opinions about it. But, I really, you know, think that’s an important discipline for all of us.

Perceptions of Marketing
People always say that they understand marketing. Right? Because they see it. Right? I mean, I remember my best friend telling me that my job was b s because he thought the the ads that he saw on TV were annoying.

I was like, do you understand how much needs to get done before we actually produce that ad? And, you know, I think a lot of people don’t understand. They think it’s easy. And because of the visibility of everything you do, you get critiqued.

Right? And so it’s like and and everyone at the company feels emboldened to critique you. Right? Right.

You know, the the the person that’s, you know, mopping the floors can come and say, jeez, that was really terrible what you put together. It annoyed me personally.

And we we we see this happen all the time. You know, it it’s interesting. You said that you, you started out in advertising, that you got religion in digital after reading the book. You became a digital pilgrim and kinda move towards that.

Balancing Creativity and Data
I think a lot of our audience struggles with one or the other. How did you when you made that voyage from one to to adopting the other without losing the other skill set, how do you staff your team now to augment both? Because I I assume that at this point, I don’t know how big your team is, but I’m assuming it’s pretty big and you’ve managed some pretty large teams. How do you balance that of being both creative and data driven and then creating that type of structure for your team to make sure that they don’t lose both elements to be successful?

Yeah. It is literally the hardest part of my job is to find all the, you know, either the right the right people.

It is very rare to find sort of that unicorn or sometimes I call it a marketing athlete that really can span the scope of all of those things. And I think it’s probably this is just, you know, my personal opinion that a lot of our younger marketers are grew up in the digital age, so they don’t really understand the analog world. So I I think you have to kind of have your feet in both places to really kind of get the entire sort of picture.

And and that’s just, you know, it’s a different, it’s a different generation.

Like I said, I’m shifted into digital. They are native digital. They don’t even a lot of them don’t remember a time without a mobile phone. So, you know, I I’m not I’m not saying that you know, Thank goodness for old people like me.

The Importance of Problem Solving
Sometimes I joke, like, how how old can you be a CMO? Like, you know? But but, honestly, I am I mean this. I think it’s really important to understand that, the solutions are often analog.

They’re they’re you know, if you really are like, remember that we’re here to solve customer problems. That’s that’s what we’re doing. And we don’t wanna fall in love with the solution. We wanna fall in love with the problem.

So just trying to find people that can, you know, sort of whether they innately can do it or they understand the process or they’re willing to walk through the process without missing steps. I always say the process never changes, but the amount of time you spend in each phase could change depending on what you’re doing. But no matter what you’re doing, the process is not gonna change. We’re gonna start with insights. What do we know? Sometimes it’s it’s it’s it’s stuff we know first party. Sometimes it’s third party.

But but we spend time thinking about it and and the with the world, you know, as our oyster, we we can Google anything we want. I can ask chat GPT to shortcut a search for me and summarize it really tightly. So there’s really no excuse for not being able to just take a minute. I mean, if it takes you thirty minutes to really identify the problem that you are working on and how you’re going to solve it as a starting place, you know, that, like, shame on us all if we can’t just stop for a second and define the problem, and then who’s the audience and so on as the marketing process goes.

Team Structure and Interdependence
So for my organization, I like I mentioned, I structure them what I call across the process. So, you know, and then I try to create overlap so that if one person is strong at one thing and another person is strong at another, then there’s a handoff that occurs between between them. And I really do try to get people. I always say I’m, radically interdependent.

You know, that’s that’s probably a Disney thing because at Disney, it’s super highly matrixed. And if you if someone asked you your job, you’d say, I’m the marketing person responsible for x y z. And they’d say, well, I thought Bob was the marketing person for x y z. And you’d feel like, yeah, we like, we all we’re so interdependent. We just cross.

So there’s the, because of the matrix, there’s a lot of overlap and therefore a lot of like, you can catch people if they fall, you know, you can support people where they might not be strong. And so I kinda use that mindset with my own team. I try to create this sort of cross cross interdependence.

And my team isn’t that big. I actually, if you take out, I have a responsibility for e commerce. But if you take out the ten people that work on our e commerce business, it’s a team of twenty marketers.

When I got here is three, so we’ve made progress.

So from three to twenty or in in in five years. So and I need about ten more. That’s my honest opinion. But, you know, I am always trying to figure out how to support my team with either education, exposure.

Leveraging Technology in Marketing
There’s some great organizations, whether it’s the a and a or brand innovators or some of these other things that really throw them into a world where they have to continuously learn, or using technology. AI tools is my current obsession, is I’m asking every single person, not like what we’re not creating. We’re not Google. We’re not creating investing in AI.

We’re leveraging tools to make our jobs easier, more efficient, or to strengthen us where we might be weak.

So I don’t know. I guess it’s just open dialogue and trying to really help people identify where they’re strong and where they need, to lean in to either other people on the team or other resources that we might be able to find for them.

Well, one thing I I wanna go back and explore with you a little bit is you mentioned that, you know, the the audience that you’re serving right now, you know, the golfers have changed, who the audience is. Have you watched been there for a few years now? Have you actually watched that evolution? Or when you came in, was there already a change happening and you had to figure out how to adapt to it?

No. I literally watched it happen. It happened almost overnight, and it happened due to COVID. Right?

So COVID was a horrible thing that happened to our universe, but it it was a wonderful thing for letting people get back to what’s important in life, right, which is mind, body, and spirit. The golfer of twenty nineteen was an avid golfer who played strictly for game improvement for the most part. Right? They just wanted to get better.

Evolution of the Golf Audience
And, you know, they’re they’re it was, kind of a one dimensional customer. There’s nothing wrong with that one dimension. They’re the core. They’re still the most important customer, that we have from a size standpoint.

Like, they’re that’s still the the most, you know, that’s the most people in golf are still those avid, but they were easy to find. You know, they watch professional golf on television and, they played in private courses and they are, you know, they shopped in our stores, pretty religiously because we were the, maybe what you might say, the only game in town. Right? So a special I always say, I’m not sure if we’re a specialty golf retailer.

I don’t know if that’s a thing anymore because golf isn’t really specialty anymore.

So, COVID happened. And not only did we see the Avids really continue to to double down on the sport they love and play more, but we welcomed millions of new golfers. And those golfers tend to be younger, more likely to be female, a junior, a person of color, playing for the social connection, for the physical, you know, to be outside. And then, like, right now, I talk a lot about touching grass.

Like people just like emotional overload of all things happening, whether it’s politics or technology. People just wanna, you know, touch grass and and sort of break away from it. And golf is like a perfect solution for those things. It is very mind, body, and spirit.

And so I have literally watched the evolution of our industry and our business very particularly and how we’re serving that underserved, that that new to golf person, woman who, you know, could could not find, apparel anywhere else but at the PJ tour superstore. And now can get it at Costco and Target and all these other mass retailers who have seen the incredible growth of golf and are now our competitors in a space that, you know, that was never the case, you know. So we were we it’s changed how we have to do everything, you know, basically, just so you know, to answer the marketing question, which is how are you doing that?

Enhancing Customer Experience
Well, we’re leaning into what we’re famous for, which is experience.

We absolutely believe that no one can touch the experience that we have. We have experts in our stores. We call you know, they’re we our tagline is shop with the pros, and it’s obviously a double entendre between the name on our door, which is the PGA Tour Superstore, and our connection, our authentic connection to the tour. But it’s our the real pros are those people in our stores who we spend a ton of money training.

So they are experts not only at golf, but in how to serve different audiences. And that’s all new. That’s all transpired in the last five years. And then investing significantly in first party data so that we can segment and target audiences and really speak to people where they are in the game. And we can tell that. We can tell that by their behaviors, what they’re buying, what they’re searching for on our site, what they’re looking at from a content perspective. We’re working with creators.

Like, I I think we’re in golf. We’re I think we’re a leader in that space, understanding that in the last ninety days, four point three billion pieces of golf content have been watched on the Internet.

So not on the professional tour. Right? So we are, like I said, authentically connected to the tour And the Avids, we have a product and an offering that speaks to the avid golfer, but we’ve layered on top of that how we serve all those other audiences. And that’s, I think, why our business is up, you know, hundreds of percent over the last five years, and the industry’s up about thirty six percent.

Wow. That that’s absolutely incredible. I mean, you’re right. COVID did change golf. I mean, at the end of the day, it even changed the way people play golf.

People leave the pin in right now because they didn’t wanna touch it. Right. Now everybody putts with the pin in. I mean, nobody just putt with the pin in.

Advice for Aspiring CMOs
So it totally changed the way we play the game. It’s interesting. So I I at this point, I usually like to ask the question, if you had one or two you could have two pieces of advice for either an aspiring CMO or CMOs that, you know, because you have a lot of deep experience having done this at several brands that you would help help maybe a first time or second time CMO take that next jump to becoming more successful.

What would you recommend?

You know, it’s it’s I’m glad you asked that because I’m I’m I’m saying this to my team every day right now, which is, you know, we need to we are leaders, and we need to create leaders. And so what got you here was your marketing fundamentals, your expertise at positioning and how to turn a brief into create create creative. That’s that’s what got you here, but what will keep you here and let you maybe you start in a smaller role and you continue through, your journey as you get larger brands or larger roles or larger teams is your ability to lead and your ability to teach other marketers, younger marketers, how to move from, I was a technical expert at media or CRM or brand or whatever that sort of discipline within the marketing umbrella is. But how do you translate that into leadership and storytelling and taking people with you and collaborating with other parts of the organization?

So communication and collaboration are probably the most important skills.

We will assume you got here because you’re an awesome marketer.

But that’s, you know, that’s the table stakes. And now it’s really about creating the vision for people and leading the organization and, and really being the advocate for the customer no matter what in the face of anything. Sometimes I take some hits. You know, I I’m the person at the table that will always be thinking customer first.

And, it doesn’t mean I don’t understand p and l’s or math or hours or anything like that that it takes to serve the customer. It just means I know that my job is to always represent the person at the table that’s not represented, which is the customer. So I I think those are the pieces of advice that I would give. There’s the the same ones I would have given ten years ago as I am giving today, and it served me well.

And I’m in I personally am in the best place I’ve ever been in, and I hope to continue to do this for a long time. So, I appreciate you asking me.

Pursuing One-to-One Marketing
That that that’s an excellent response. One thing I do wanna drill down a little bit more because I think you’ve said some really interesting things around understanding the customer. And you brought up this notion of one to one marketing. And, you know, obviously, that’s the holy grail that marketers have a look been looking to do. Most organizations don’t have the data, so segmentation is about as good as they can get right now. So there are there practices that you put in place to get closer to that one to one, marketing, holy grail? I mean, are you using technology to identify previous purchase, other things to do things that are more finite, more than just a segmentation based, set of activities?

Yeah. I mean, for the five years I’ve been here, automation personalized automation at scale has always been my number one topic, on my agenda.

Because we were a smaller company in the very beginning, we did not have the foundation of data. And so in instead of, you know, focusing on the next big TV campaign from a resource perspective, I’ve really spent the past, you know, I I would say for my first four years well, COVID, we can’t we have to take that out. It was just wild. And, like, we were just hanging on for dear life. But in the subsequent four years, it took me two to three to really build the foundation of data.

We have great partners in our IT team who have created the architecture that we needed, the the repository to have portable and accessible data as marketers. And then we’ve layered on top of that the tools that we need to collect and capture data. So that is through our CRM tools, through our our we have we relaunched our website this year, all with the purpose of being able to deliver personalization at scale. And so definitely, you know, if I look at my journey, you know, five years ago, we were emailing I always say we were spamming the universe with a PDF, you know. It was like, okay, everybody’s getting this email today.

And therefore, it has to be eight miles long because you gotta, like, serve everybody’s needs. And today, we’re way more sophisticated than that.

A lot of journeys.

We’re working with a lot of agencies to help us move that ball down the field faster.

Personalization and Customer Journeys
We now have the data and we have the deployment tools. We just need to figure out the the processes in the middle that help us, build out more and more journey so we can be more one to one. So, you know, I always say there’s no dead ends. Right?

So if I I say, Scott, you’re now I know you’re a plus twenty. Well, we need to get you to a plus. You you know, you may need to get to a fifteen. I know what’s in your bag, and so I’m gonna help you get there whether it’s lessons or equipment or a combination of both.

And, like, let’s have that conversation.

The best place where that happens today is in our stores. Like, I we have we know that if someone talks to one of our associates, they’re seven times more likely to make a purchase. Wow. That is a huge number, and it totally speaks to our industry and why, it’s so important as the marketing leader for us to figure out how to do that digitally because because there’s millions of customers to serve today.

The Growing Popularity of Golf
We the you know, it continues. Participation is continuing to grow. So there’s no sign that golf is slowing down, but the competition is widening. And so our we wanna keep people playing golf.

And we all know, and you know as a golfer, that if I’m not having fun and I, you know, I can’t access it, you know, you know, I have to I’m not gonna stay in it. Then, so, you know, golf is changing and our ability to to meet their needs as it’s changing. I mean, I think virtual golf, in home simulation and virtual golf is where it’s at. Right?

So we need that’s like a perfect, road map for, one to one. Right? Because if you if I can convince you that you can have in home simulation, whether it’s in your garage or in your backyard or in your fabulous basement that you have, I’m sure with your bar and all the things, then I can get you to swing that golf club more and more and more often. And once that world exists, you know, as a marketer that how how much more relevant I can be.

I can I can actually see your swings? I know what you’re playing. I know how often you’re playing. I can recommend things to you in a way that I, you know, I could I could never do, without that.

Challenges in Execution
So, that’s those are all the things that we’re thinking about and the things that we’re trying to build the foundation towards. And I would give us, like, we’re we’re still like, we know where we’re going, but executing it, the vision of that is always a lot harder than the the vision to have it itself. So, you know, we’re on the journey. It’s an it’s a it’s it’ll never end.

It will never be perfect, but we’re on the right journey. I know that for a fact, and we’re just really trying to lead the organization to be customer first always.

I it it’s interesting you bring up that it’s hard because I’m still trying to figure out, is it harder to be a CMO, or is it harder to play golf?

You know, I mean, literally, the the the intersection of both creates a lot of dissatisfaction.

In fact, I, you said that, you know, people go out and play golf and have fun. I haven’t had fun since nineteen eighty eight playing golf. It’s an addiction. I gotta go do it.

I’d I would love to say that I was playing at the level I was when I was a young man and I’m not so, but it’s great to have this conversation with you. Me, frankly, I think I probably need some new clubs because I’m sure that’s the problem. It’s not me. It’s the new club.

So I’m happy to go up to the PGA tour superstore and see if I can pick out some clubs that will will fit my needs. But thanks so much for your time today, Jill. This has been an amazing conversation.

Insights for B2B and B2C Marketers
Hopefully, a lot of the marketers that are b to c got a tremendous amount of value out of this. And for those of you that are b to b on on the call, there are always strategies that you can deploy from b to c. Don’t look at b to c as this totally different animal. The customer, whether you’re b to b or b to c, and you heard Jill talk about this over and over and over again, understanding the buyer and what their needs are is absolutely critical.

And if you don’t do that, none of the rest of your marketing is gonna work. I don’t care how clever you are. It just will not work. So, Jill, we would love to have you on another podcast.

This has been amazing.

Your points are fantastic. I probably could ask you another twenty questions. And so, thanks again for the time today. And for those of you, please go check out another episode if you like this one, thenextcmo dot com. Join the community, and hopefully, we’ll see you all up there participating with the other seven thousand CMOs and marketing leaders that we have in the community. Thanks again.

Thanks so much, Scott.