LeBron welcome to the silicon angle studios the cube here in Palo Alto I'm John furry your host we are in studio for a conversation with Aykroyd who's the CEO vision formerly with Oracle marketing cloud recently took the Jobs CEO decision congratulations thanks John great to see you thanks for coming in on the holidays kind of winding down the year what a year it's been Trump's meeting with tech leaders Oh having them kiss the ring get the trillion dollars offshore on site advertising is upside down date is the hottest thing on the planet you know you're in the center of the action certainly at Oracle we had multiple conversations but now you're leading in coupling so Kevin Aykroyd leaving Oracle marketing cloud or incision that's that's way down the track that has change right no big deal well we're as you know we're always out front of the trends but the marketing concepts have been around our businesses since in the centuries since business was around but now is data as we talked us changing so the biggest trend that we see happening is that marking isn't just a marketing thing it's a company-wide data opportunity so it's certainly changing a lot of the game and I know we've talked about that so you know what's the what's the change why did you decide to take the CEO opportunity of decision was the company did it what attracted you to these yes thanks for asking and good to be here by the way i I've been here with you fair amount this is the first time I'm not wearing my Oracle marketing cloud uniform so good to be seen in a second uniform right how does the how does the blue and orange decision uniform look John I look I've been working hard all right yeah yeah taking these good well you got to grow you know that's executive everything stops with yeah well well and just to be really clear because I know that my name with you guys especially has been synonymous with Oracle marketing cloud I I started it I did all the acquisitions I grew it you know is kind of my baby I didn't leave because there was anything wrong I think Oracle marketing cloud is going to continue to just absolutely kick ass and take names think they've built the right mousetrap you know as you've heard me they didn't they didn't start from CRM and go backward they didn't start from the website and go out they started with data right data objects crosswise add this the first big DoD MP and data marketplace I think they're data-driven you know strategy is going to continue to see them just absolutely survive after me and I sure hope something cause I well they're set up to win I mean if the integrations are always a challenge and I think our last interview at the modern marketing experience great show yeah we talked about that specific thing where you want to be vertically specialized but yet horizontally integrated and you set that up and and I think I and day right have set that up so they're poised really well CC so I didn't leave Oracle because of any lack of faith in their ability to go conquer that very big opportunity or any personal dissatisfaction is probably the best job I've ever had my career this is one of those classic cases where I saw an opportunity that was so good I had to leave something that I that I loved so for everybody that's listening I'll just say that again Kevin didn't leave Oracle because there was anything wrong Kevin left Oracle because of what I'm about to riff on now it was this big opportunity and basically John we can we can go as deep as you'd like to in today's interview but at the highest level this big opportunity that I saw is you just look at the data driven and then you know data meets content meets applications meets media the channels come together right the life cycles you look at everything that's happened and it's easy to kind of now say well just go look at what Salesforce marketing cloud and adobe marketing cloud an Oracle marketing cloud right look at that billions and billions and billions and billions of acquisition look how fast and far that's come and basically look at the needs that drove that that massive convergence and it has fundamentally changed the industry it's fundamentally changed the chief media the chief marketing the chief commerce officers ability to go drive results that they couldn't have done without Salesforce Adobe and Oracle doing what we did right but all of that has been done at paid media right the advertising at commerce and it owned media right our websites or mobile applications none of that through with all the tech giants in the industry and of the 20 billion dollars in M&A capital op X and capex since then none of its touched the third leg of the stool which is earned media right earned media communications good old-fashioned PR the exact same need for that data technology and measurement transformation that sales and service and commerce and paid media you know and owned they've all been through that this mission critical part called communications or in media has not been through it as we were building this my private equity company GT CR is very quick quietly over the last two years put together six leading solution providers in this earned media communications world just like I put eloquent responses in blue Chi and Maximizer they've been doing the same thing over here aimed at this earned media opportunity and if anything I think that every CEO every CIO every CMO would tell you they understand there's very clear there's a lot of clarity that I can't advertise my way there and I just can't get there by sending 300 promotional email and SMS campaigns you know versus 200 last year I can't promote my way there I can't advertise my way there if I want to influence customer experience customer loyalty and relationship and ultimately customer purchasing behavior I got a not just advertise and promote to them I get to get at what's called influencers right consumers whether they're b2b consumers or b2c consumers I am more and more being influenced and driven on who I listen to who I respect and hold credible and ultimately who I buy from based on people I trust that's that's called an influencer whether that's a reporter an academic a social person a blogger a community leader brands know I got to get to the influencers if I want to get to my customers and that's all about earn so the opportunity to go repeat exactly what I did at Oracle marketing cloud for Paden owned but do it over here and earned was simply too big an opportunity to pass up well first of all I love that one and drill down on scission and specifically and when you your plans are there but let's stay on this mega trencher second because I think you're hitting the nail on the head here because I think this some that you know we actually when we started Silicon angle media seven years ago this was the premise of our business yes we saw that the connected network that's right of social is fueling this new earned area where earned is truly earned yet there's no real website no silver bullets right it's a distributed as tightly coupled Network and there's pockets of it so you know what influence is about the most followers it's about the relationship of the connected consumer yeah who's also a consumer and a producer of content yeah their opinion there and so this is all kind of a new behavioral thing yeah so you go back to you know he earned and I mean the honed and paid and searched and all that stuff did contextual and behavioral absolutely really that's two things that's right the behavior of the crowd you got you can't look further than the Trump election to say whoa who saw that coming that's an example of an earned dynamic I would say that caused people to go well what the heck yeah I should send him a letter for thanking him for making my point so so emphatically for me we're all going exactly right hey what's up her for that crying in there wine in California for sure a blue state but this brings up the dynamic right this is the mega trend that now this earned media component isn't just about ads it's software that's right it's about software and networks and with cloud computing there's an opportunity for people to participate in there so so how how do you guys a minute rephrase it this right how does customers what what's the current pain point I mean what's the top three yeah I'll see you advertising you know I don't want drive traffic to my site that's an old mentality right that's the only thing they can do right now yeah it is looks so again I think it is getting at that at the risk of being repetitive it is okay boy if that's all I do is rely on the big monolithic web infrastructure I've developed the campaign engine that just keeps getting cheaper and cheaper so I keep sending more and more and okay it's programmatic now so I guess I can throw more at Google and Facebook I I'm not saying those aren't important parts of the mix you of course need to continue but they're declining and efficacy there right so not only the decline in efficacy while they increase in spend the cus the consumer right again whether that's a b2b consumer Ibiza is becoming increased don't view him as credible don't view his trustworthy if they've got these big lofty goals in this new digital world we're right the fragmented influence is hard and hard to contain and they just flat-out need to they recognize that the thing that's probably going to be the most important going forward which is solving this puzzle is the thing they've D invested in the most right it's gone from the king of the hill 20 years ago to as a true second-class citizen while they got all drunk on paid advertising and you know more e-commerce the role of the buyers interesting is let me just get your thoughts I'm sure because one of the things that we've observed at silk'n angle and our business model is we do really really well with our I'd sing I don't call my advertise sponsors if you will because we're very community driven with the cube as you know is that we have buy-in from not just CMO yeah in some cases just the head of communications right so the role of PR public relations is a communications function so the thing about social is you have a dynamic of organic and everyone knows organic is the cool right yeah organic growth bottoms up but the interesting thing is communication pros have a top-down command and control mentality yeah so when you blend command and control with organic growth you can actually have both now you can't this seems to be the new power base that's right the comms person which was hey get the press release out there go talk to ten reporters is now a million people yep the CMO would go with agencies to spend a lot of dough on print ads and TV commercials they have to work together well and the chief communication officer is still one of the nice things you know seven out of ten times they're reporting directly to the CMO the other three times they actually appear to the CMO and they report directly the CEO so it's not Adi empowered function it shouldn't it shouldn't be right and then I think that the modern communication organization I'll talk about who they are and then I'll circle back on the pain point because there's some acute pain there that we're trying to address they don't look at it as just PR now to be really clear and I would like this on record to the traditional journalist reporter media never been more important right it's not like they've lacked but even then right who that reporter is on that publication website versus the print versus the broadcast versus their blog versus their Twitter handle versus their Facebook page versus their Instagram account right even that traditional reporter is nine different influences at nine different audiences in nine different media right so they haven't become less important to become far more fragmented yeah that's exactly right and nailing that is is no trivial thing that's got to get done they they they really are they're they're as digital and as modern and as social as everybody else but then you also got to realize boy right these communities are incredibly powerful these these mini bloggers have as much cloud as the New York Times does in this particular area right the social followings these academics these thought leaders the definition of a digital influencer has widened quite a bit above and beyond the core journalist trip but but don't forget that that person's really important so and then you got the consumer influencers and their user-generated content themselves right so that the customer is their own influencer which is really interesting and that's a b2b dynamic as well as a b2c dynamic so that's the world we all of a sudden you know find ourselves in but I think the modern the digital world that you're talking about isn't a b2b versus b2c it's digital it's digital period one yeah concept and it's no motton it's no longer digital communications or digital marketing it's just communications and marketing in the digital world right and that's a that sounds simple that's a pretty fundamental shift now let's go back into though the tools that they have so they're as savvy and is digital as their peers that are running commerce or paid advertising or the website they've really been bereft of toolkits I'm going to give you an example we work with an extremely large one of the four largest beauty products companies in the world and when they do a good new product launch right let's let's look at advertising they will harness data they will develop 30 different audiences right and they will go to discrete tonality creative offer you name it at 30 different you know so they'll do 30 different banner ads they'll do the same thing with social audience they'll do 40 different data-driven audiences that get discrete touch content an email to do 50 or 60 right 50 or 60 different data-driven segments and even in the website they'll say hey Jon's profile that's profile seven Kevin's profile is profile 12 you will see a completely different website than I will based on data driven right what are they doing Communications one press release and one infographic goes to all 12,000 communication outlets no data no versioning right no nothing so this concept of the right version of the content to the right audience at the right time I'm putting you know in advertising and in commerce on the website I'm talking to soccer moms vs. sexy grandmas versus Wall Street women very different for my beauty products in communications I'm talking to all of them the same which is kind of crazy because the emulators would be a labor driven market - that's right - call it arms and legs right which is what it yeah yeah and a head and arms and legs and a lot of people kind of reaching out but now the trend is to have a much more sass that's exactly right and and and I don't have the platform to actually go do that right so as far as some of the pain we're trying to provide now with our communication cloud just like with the other marketing clouds I don't have I can actually do data-driven intelligent messaging and content delivery to the audience to the influencers that get at the discrete audiences just like I do the data-driven direct communication to the end users themselves probably more importantly I'll stick with my example for a sec John that beauty company at fortune 500 Beauty company they get Rachel who is the head fashion reporter on the fashion section New York times.com right Rachel covered and Rachel embedded my press release on my infographic homerun pop the champagne right it's like okay but well there's two million people that went to that fashion section in New York Times comm today when she covered right how many of them actually read the content and picked it up don't know how many of them actually engaged in it read the infographic click the video click the links don't know who were they from a demographic psychographic sociographic right behavioral don't know and probably most importantly what did they do after they read it did they go to the desired shopping cart or the right community page or back to the website or unit was there any actual digital behavior driven from that bigger meeting full of discovery data the or it stops at I got picked up by the reporter yeah and I have no idea how many of the two million people were influenced covered engaged right etcetera and no idea about the behavior that I took so the link between the influencer comes and the end-user has never been closed that's the second part of the pain point that really fixes now we are fixing the gap between the influencer and and the end user and you're going to see us call that the influencer graph John you'll see a you'll see a press release a targeted one that's data driven and very rich media go out around the influencer graph because if we can start saying hey John's my end user customer now I know right quantitatively with data that I can optimize in real time which influencers matter which reporters which academics which bloggers in which channels in which media and which content as people have different on fluentd rankings in certain contexts you got it and all that's a black hole we know it we have no idea how to measure it make it data-driven make it contextual and optimize it in real time with a digital platform so that this command-and-control CCO who thinks this way now actually has his his or her system of record to actually go execute this way as Maslov Harkavy needs as that sounds because the commerce paid and owned guys have had this for a while this is a this is like discovering fire here for the chief communications officer because they've never had their data and tech enablement platform to do this the way the other guys have so that's that's number two and the number three and I think this is really important is we all know that communicate I want I need to measure and optimize the comms function the way I just talked about it we all know that if done right it amplifies the bejesus out of the owned and the paid - yeah you shouldn't be thinking about them in silos but there's no way to measure that if I did a really good job and earned look at the impact it have in the efficacy on that massive page budget now mutually exclusive and there's a relationship between them because in social and communities collaboration that's a four linchpin it is you cannot articulate just how important that is and until tech vendors put the apps the api's the data and then the right through the ID syncs together you can't measure it right and as fundamental as that sounds that's why what's happened over there in Adobe Oracle Salesforce land had to happen and it's why what we're doing here incision line has to happen so that not only can coms catch up but comms can communicate in that data and play an active role in that - an active role because no leaders happen is they're going to realize holy smokes the paid performed here without their and the paid performed here with the earn and quite frankly that earned outperformed the paid right so we're not going to be a participant role is going to be a I'm going to resume my rightful place at the head of that you're the head of that tribe on our second segment when it get more indecision and specific solution but in this segment on kind of wrapping up the big megatrend Housley social and the technology and network effect of social combined with the data combined with the fact that comms communications right is now an active leader and important role in the creative Nick that's right I've earned that's right and integrating in page I can have a cohesive but decoupled programs it's not silver bullet either well pleasure rising tide floats all but I've earned has been under developed under developed under invested in under tech enabled under date enabled and really that's what it gets to is the people in charge understand that they didn't quite have the data ten tools to do it the data the tech tools are now available and now the the industry just got to kind of get up the sophistication curve so final questions in this segment is where's the progress bar on this sector how early is it first inning bottom of the first second inning and to there's always in these early adopter markets that certainly that you saw I believe left the Oracle for it but this is an I agree by the way is a great great opportunity they're always the champions internally who can see it - yeah how where's the progress bar and what's the advice to the folks that are inside these companies who actually have the religion say this is the future and have to communicate it to the rest of the kink unfortunately the thinking the thought leadership bar is probably in the third inning to get it uh doing something about it and going from good thinking to good practitioner ship and execution is retraining first out the first out to the first pitch in the first inning you know of the first game of the season we're literally at ground one the good news is though is they're not going to try to go convince the CFO from a money or the CIO from a resource or the CEO from a strategy this whole I keep saying is this data tech and measurement transformation the corporation no matter what the corporation is invested it in sales look what happened they invested in the service look what happened they invested in it and paid look what happened they've invested in it known so the good news is is while they are at the very very very beginning of the ball game they're literally the last function inside the corporation to actually go do it and they don't have evangelism around the benefit of this type of transformation it's worked in every other area so while they're the very beginning they want to convince anybody it's a good idea everybody else that's down the hall and sits around the CEOs table has been through that transformation so there's not that evangelism it's just now his or her tits operationalize they do some results that's on the right table and and it and it's shown results in all these other lines of business so there's not this fundamental disbelief that it won't show results in the communications line of business there's actually quite the opposite there's heavy belief that it will because it has shown right it has shown results and all these other lines of business so yeah especially look is that's obvious - it's like okay we got to do this yeah that they should be able to move faster does this caterpillar should turn into a butterfly really fast because everybody's thinking about it the text in place and it's worked in other places but we are really really really at the very beginning it's exciting Kevin Ackroyd CEO of sisian year inside our studio talking about the landscape of really digital changing and how earned media blogs and folks like silk'n angle and others who actually producing original content an engaging audiences now an opportunity to convert over on this new market shift going on big mega trend we back with segments to talk about the company and their solution and technology we're interesting to get that perspective Kevin thanks for joining us here in the palace news thanks for watching thank you [Music]