hi from Las Vegas Nevada it's the cube covering IBM world of Watson 2016 brought to you by IBM now here are your hosts John Fourier as Dave Volante hey welcome back everyone we are here live at the Mandalay Bay at the IBM world of Watson this is Silicon angles cube our flagship program we go out to the events and extract the signal from the noise I'm John Fourier with my co-host Dave allanté for the two days of wall-to-wall coverage our next guest is michelle fools so who's the chief marketing officer for IBM knew the company fairly new within the past year yes welcome to the queue last month I think you check all these new hires a lot of new blood coming inside me but this is a theme we heard from Staples to be agile to be fast you're new what's what's your impressions and what's your mandate for the branding the IBM strong brand but yes what's the future look well look I'm I'm thrilled to be here and I'm thrilled to be here because this is an extraordinary company that makes real difference in the world right and that I think you feel it here at the world of Watson in the sort of everyday ways that Watson and IBM touches consumers such as end-users makes their health better you know allows them to have greater experiences so so that's incredible to be part of my kind of company having said that and exactly to your point it's a time of acceleration and change for everyone in IBM is not immune to that and so my mandate here in my remit here and coming in and being a huge fan of what IBM has to say well how do we sharpen our messaging how do we always feel like a challenger brand you know how do we think about what Watson can do for people what the cloud can do what our services business can do and how is that distinctive and differentiated from everybody else out there and I think we have an incredible amount of assets to play with that's got to be through the line you know it's no longer the case that we can have a message on TV and that you know attracts the world the digital experiences are having every single day when they're clicking through on an ad when they're chatting with somebody when their car call center when they have a sales interaction is that differentiated message that brand resident all the way through second thing is marketing's become much more of a science you know and that to me is super exciting I've been a CEO most of my career and you know that the notion that marketing has to drive revenue that marketing has to drive retention and loyalty and expansion that we can come to the table with much more science in terms of what things are most effective in making sure that more clients love us more deeply for longer I'm gonna ask you the question because we had we've had many conversations with Kevin he was just here he was on last year Bob Lord the new chief digital officer we talked to your customers kind of the proof points in today's market is about transparency and if you're not a digital company how could you expect customers to to work with them so this has been a big theme for IBM you guys are hyper focused on being a digital company yes yes and how does it affect the brand a brand contract with the users what's your thoughts on that well first of all Bob Lord is awesome we've known each other for 10 years so it's so wonderful to be working with him again and Dave Kenny as well I think that the at the end of the day consumers have experiences and and you know think of every business you know out there as a consumer and they're having experiences all the time their expectations are being shaped by the fact that they go on Amazon and get prime delivery right their expectations are being shaped by they can go on Netflix and get you know personalized recommendations for them or Spotify and so our job of course and we have some of the greatest technical minds in the world it's to make sure that every experience lines up with the highest of their expectations and so much of that is digital and so my passion my background is entirely in the digital space I have a CEO of Travelocity and then CEO of gilt chief marketing a digital officer at Citigroup so the notion that you know the world's greatest digital experiences is something I'm very passionate about you mentioned Zelda so big TV ads and you think of the smarter planet which was so effective but it was a big TV campaign so you do what's the what's the sort of strategy that you're envisioning is in sort of digital breadcrumbs maybe you could talk about deadly yeah well think about Watson it's a perfect place to think about the Watson branding what does Watson really mean right Watson is and Ginni has said this so well of course it's cognitive and but at the end of the day it's about helping people make better decisions and so you can do some advertising with Watson and Bob Dylan and Watson and you know the young young girl with Serena and and you can get that messaging high but then you've got to bring it all the way through so that's why it's something like this is so powerful to see Woodside up their alley or all these companies talking about staples how they are using Watson embedded in their processes their tools to make their end-users experiences better and how nobody else could do this for them the way Watson's doing it that's taking a brand on high and advertising message on high and delivering value for businesses for patients for consumers all the way through that's what we have to do I got to ask you about that ad advertising trends I so we all see ad blocker in the news digital is a completely different new infrastructure expanded dynamic with social what not you can talk about Bob and I were talking last night about it too you Trevor you know banner ads are all out there impression base and then coded URLs to a landing page email marketing not gonna go away anytime soon but it's changing rapidly we have now new channels yeah what's your thoughts because this is now a new kind of ROI equation is there any thoughts on how you look at that and is it going to integrate into the top level campaigns how are you looking at the new digital that the cutting-edge digital stuff huge amounts of thoughts on this topic so I think you know if you think back 15 20 years ago there were always something called market mix modelling which helps advertisers and marketers to understand the effectiveness of their TV campaigns and frankly not too dissimilar from Nielsen you know there were so there was art and science at best in it and then all of a sudden the digital world evolved and you could get at a tactical level very very clear about attribution and whether you drove something and the challenge for us now is much more sophisticated models that are multi-touch attribution because the reality is an average consumer doesn't do one thing or have one interaction with a brand they're gonna see a TV show and watch a commercial while they're watching that commercial that business user or that end consumer is on their iPad or on their phone they're seeing a digital ad the next day at work they're being retargeted because they were aughts company they search for something they see a search campaign our job is to connect those dots and understand what really moves that consumer that business user to take an action and there are many sophisticated multi-touch attribution models where you model you know a standard set of behaviors and you test correlations against a bunch of different behaviors so you understand of what I did all the money I spent what really drove impact and by cohort I think that's the other credit there's no more the sense of sort of aggregated everything you really have to break it out yeah I didn't space my cohort to see what moves me and improve that experience right which has been you you get the example in the day of the Hilton retirees you already know that the retard the hotel was full so so obviously Watson plays a role in them Satyam plays a role in that so it's all about data it's all about you know that's where I think Watson can be extraordinarily helpful so if you think about the tool as a marketer has they're becoming more and more sophisticated and retargeting with something out of 10 years ago whenever was introduced that helped all of us a little bit and getting that message but it is only as good as the API is behind it and the the experience behind it when now when I was at gilt I was CEO of gilt we would put over a thousand products on sale every day that would be sold out by the next day sales down this 24-hour flash sale we had to get really really good at knowing how to how to retarget because last thing you want is to retarget something that sold out right or gone the next day and understand the user that was in and out and they're coming back and of course in that cohort that's where Watson to me is very exciting and you probably saw this in some of the demos of where Watson can help marketers you know where Watson can can really understand what are the drivers of behavior and what is likely to drive the highest purpose why were you so successful at guild and and how are the challenges different years because there's a sort of relatively more narrow community or city group to I was called the chief marketing and digital officer at Citigroup and and you know a tremendous budget and a lot of transactions you have to drive every day a lot of people you want to open credit cards and bank accounts so around the world I think that the the relentless focus on on marketing being art and science you know art and science and I think that's you know that passion for analytics passion for measurement having been CEO that passion for being able to say this is what we're doing and this is what we're driving so you've been kind of a data geek in your career you mentioned the financial services you can't to measure everything but back to the ad question you know the old saying used to be wasting half my advertise I just don't know which half yeah and my archives is wasted but now for the first time in the history of business in the modern era you measure everything online that's right so does that change your view and the prism of how you look at the business cuz you mentioned multi-touch yeah so now does that change the accountability for the suppliers I mean at agencies doing the big campaign I think it changes the game for all of us and there's no destination this is every day you can get better at optimizing your budget and and I would be the first to tell you as much of a sort of engineering and data geek because I've always been and deep-fried in the reality is there is art even in those attribution models what look back windows you choose etc that you know you're making decisions as a company but once you make those decisions you can start arraying all of your campaigns and saying what really moved the needle what was the most effective it's not an indictment that say what are we can do differently tomorrow you know the best marketers are always optimizing they're always figuring out at what point in the final can we get better tomorrow well in answer about talent because that's one of the things that we always talk about and also get your thoughts on Women in Technology scheme we were just at Grace Hopper last week and we started to fellowship called the tech truth and we're doing it's real passion area for us we have a site up QP 65 net / women in tech all women interviews we're really trying it the word out but this is now a big issue because now it's not stem anymore it's team arts is in there and we were also talking to the virtual reality augmented reality user experience is now potentially going to come into the immersion students and there's not enough artists yeah so you starting to see a combination of new discipline talents that are needed in the professions as well as the role of women in technology yeah your thoughts on that because this isn't you've been very successful what's your view on that at what's your thoughts about thank you for what you're doing right it takes a lot of people up there saying that this is important to make a difference so most of all thank you you know I think that this this is obviously a place I've been passion about forever I remember being a and being pregnant and that becoming this huge you know issue a news story and you're trying to juggle it right and how could a woman CEO be pregnant so it's so funny how people ridiculous took attention but but I think that the point is that the the advantage as a company has when there are great women in engineering and great women in data science and great women and user experience and design are just palpable they're probable in a variety of ways right when the team thinks differently the team is more creative the team is more open to new ideas the output for the customers are better right I mean they just saw a snapchat today just announced that in 2013 70% of their users were women so all the early adopters were women you know now it's balance but the early the early crowd were women and so we have got to figure out how to break some of the minds now I'm incredibly encouraged though while we still have a long way to go the numbers would suggest that we're having the conversation more and more and women are starting to see other women like them that they want to be it's a global narrative which is good why we're putting some journalists on there and funding it as and just as a fellowship because this it's a global story yeah okay and the power women I mean it's like there are real coders and this real talent coming in and the big theme that came out of that was is that 50% of the consumers of product are women's but therefore they should have some women features and related some vibe in there not just a male software driven concept well and should too when a powerful individual male individual like Satya steps in it and and you know understands what the mistaken and someone like refer to his speech two years ago where he said that you should just bad karma don't speak up and opening up transparency he got some heat yeah but that talk as you probably know but my opinion it's it's it's a positive step when an individual like that it was powerful and opening transparency within their company yeah that's it is that great networking I host a core I've been doing this for a year years with a good friend of mine Susan line from AOL we host a quarterly breakfast for women in tech every every quarter in New York City and we've been doing it for a long time it's amazing when those women come together the conversations we have the discussions we have how to help each other and support each other and so that's that's a real passion we were lost in a few weeks ago for the data science summit which Babu Chiana was hosting in and one of the folks was hosting the data divas breakfast we a couple there were a couple day two dudes who walked in and it was interesting yeah the perspectives 25 percent of the women or the chief data officer were women mm-hmm which was an interesting discussion as well so great 1,000 men at 15 you know as you see that techno but it's certainly changing when I get back to the mentoring thing because one of the things that we're all so passionate about is you've been a pioneer okay so now there's now an onboarding of new talent new personas new professions are being developed because we're seeing a new type of developer we're seeing new types of I would say artists becoming either CG so there's new tech careers that weren't around and a lot of the new jobs that are going to be coming online haven't even been invented yet right so you see cognition and what cognitive is enabling is a new application of skills yep can your thoughts on that because this is an onboarding opportunity so this could change the the number of percentage of women is diverse when you think about what I mean it's clear your notion of steam right your notion of stem that is a male and female phenomena and that is what this country needs it's what this world needs more of and so there's a policy and education obligation and all of us have to the next generation to say let's make sure we're doing right by them in terms of education and job opportunities when you think about onboarding I mean to me that the biggest thing about onboarding is the world is so much more interconnected than it used to be if you're a marketer it's not just art or science you have to do both it's a right brain left brain connectivity and I think 1020 years ago you could grow up in a discipline that was functional and maybe siloed and maybe you were great at left brain or great at right brain and the world demands so much more it's a faster pace it's an accelerated pace and the interconnection is critical and I've one of the things we're doing is we're putting together these diamond teams and I think it's going to really help lead the industry diamond teams are when you have on every small agile marketing team and analytics head a product marketing had a portfolio marketing had a design or a social expert these small pods that work on campaigns gone are the days that you could say designer designs it product comes up with the concept then it goes so it's design team then it goes to a production team then it goes to an analytics team we're forcing this issue by putting these teams together and saying you work together every day you'll get a good sense of where the specialty is and how you learn how to make your own discipline better because you've got the analytics person asked a question about media buying and media planning advertising as we're seeing this new real-time wet web yeah world mobile world go out the old days of planned media buyers placed the advertisement was a pacing item for execution yep now things you mentioned in the guild flash sales so now you're seeing new everyday flash opportunities to glob on to an opportunity to be engagement yeah and create a campaign on the fly yes and a vision of you guys I mean do you see that and does it change the cadence of how you guys do your execution of course of course that's one of the reasons we're moving to this diamond team and agile I think agile will ultimately be as impactful to marketing as it was to engineering and development and so I think the of course and that has to start with great modeling and great attribution because you have to know where things are performing so that you can iterate all the time I mean I believe in a world where you don't have marketing budgets and I know that sounds insane but I believe in a world where you set target and ranges on what you think you're gonna spend at the beginning of the year and every week like an accordion you're optimizing spend shipping code you've been marketing you should be doing like code so much of marketing is its episodic you boom and then it dies in a moment it's gone to the next one and you're talking about something that's I love that you know the personas to your point are much more fluid as well you got Millennials just creating their own vocations yes well this is where I think consumer companies have led the path and you know if you think about a lot of b2b companies we've had this aggregated CIO type buyer and now we've got to get much more sophisticated about what does the developer want you know what's important to the developer the messaging the tools the capabilities the user experience what about the marketer you know what the person in financial services and so both industry and professional discipline and you know schooling now with Watson you don't have to guess what they want you can actually just ask them yeah well you can actually the huge advantage you got you observe the observation space is now addressable right so you pull that in and say and that's super important even the stereotype of the persona is changing you've been saying all week that the developer is increasingly becoming business oriented maybe they don't they want they don't want to go back and get their MBA but they want to learn about capex versus op X and that's relevant to them and they to be a revolutionary you have to understand the impact right and and and they want to ship code they want to change the world I mean that is every engineering team I've ever worked at the time only worked with I mean I've been as close to engineering as from day one of the internet or early on in the internet great engineers are revolutionaries they want to change the world and they change the world they want to have a broader and broader understanding of what levers are at their disposal and I will say that I you know and I am one of the reasons I came to yam is I am passionate about this point technology cannot be in the hands of a few companies on the west coast who are trying to control and dominate the experience technology has to exist for all those amazing developers everywhere in the world who will make a difference to end user this is IBM strategy you actually have a big presence on the west coast also in Germany so you guys are going to where the action centers ours but not trying to just be so Malory point is what exactly because my point is IBM has always been there for making businesses stronger and better we don't monetize their data that's not our thing our thing is to use our cloud our cognitive capabilities and Watson to make actual businesses better so that ultimately consumers have better health care and better results I know you're new on the job silence this is not a trick question just kind of a more conversational as you talk to Bob lower Bob Chiana Jeanne yeah what's the promise of the brand and you used to be back in the days when you know Bob piano we talk about when we I worked at IBM in the 80s co-op student and it was you'll never get fired for buying IBM mainframe the kind of concept but it's evolved and I'll see we see a smarter plan what's the brand promise now you guys talk about what's the brainstorm on its head I think that I think the greatest innovators the world the most passionate business leaders of tomorrow come to IBM to make the world better and I I believe this is a brand for the forward the forward lookers the risk takers the you know the makers I think that you come to IBM because there's extraordinary assets and industry knowledge real humans real relationships that we exist to make your business better not our business will be a vibrato be exist to make your business better that has always been where IBM has been strong you know it's interesting that brings up a good point and just riffing on that Dave and I were just observing you know at the Grace Hopper with our tech truth mentorship which is promoting the intersection of Technology and social justice you're seeing that mission of Technology business value and social justice as an integral part of strategies because now the consumer access the consumerization of business yeah software based is now part of that feedback you're not doing good Millennials demand it I mean Millennials now when you look at the research in the next generation high Millennials are very very you know they want to know what are you doing for the world I mean who could do a 60 minute show besides IBM who could have who could be on 60 minutes changing cancer changing cancer outcomes for people beside IBM that that is an extraordinary testament to what the brand is and how it comes to life every day and that's important for Millennials we had Mary click-clack Clinton yesterday she is so impressive we're talking about how though these ozone layer is getting smaller these are us problems it can be solved they have to be so climate change can be solved so the whole getting the data and she's weather compass oh she's got a visit view on that is interesting her point is if we know what the problems are we as a community global society could actually solve them completely and it's an you know the more we make this a political and we say here is a problem and we have the data and we have the tools we have the people and capabilities to solve it that is where IBM Stan's tallest well I think with Watson use its focused on some big hairy problems to start with and now you're knocking off some some of the you know maybe more mundane but obviously significant to a marketer incredible that a company can start with the hardest most complicated problems the world has and actually make a difference my final question when I asked Mary this yesterday and she kind of talked about if she could have the magic Watson algorithm to just do something magical her and what would it be and she said I'll send Watson to the archives of all the weather data going back to World War two just compile it all and bring it back or addressability so the question is if you could have a Magic Watson algorithm for your chief marketing officer job what would you assign it to do like what would it be it's like first task well first of all reaction of course I'm a mom of six year olds an eight year old and so I want Watson to optimize my time no but a chief marketing officer I mean I think it really does go back to getting Watson's help in understanding how we use a dollar better how we use a dollar smarter how we affect more customers and and and connect connects with more customers in the way we you know we communicate the way we engage the way we've put our programs out that would be extraordinary and that's possible that's becoming more and more possible you know bringing science into the art of marketing I think will have great impact on what we're doing in also just the world I mean nobody wants to have you know maybe targeted ten times for something that's sold out well we asked one more time here so I got some more couple of questions because it's not getting the hook yet I gotta ask you see you mentioned Travelocity you know the web you've been through the web 1.2.0 yeah yeah so on so URLs and managing URLs was a great tracking mechanism from the old impressions weren't working and go to call to action get that look right there but now we different where that world is kind of like become critical infrastructure for managing technology since you're kind of geeking out with us here what's your view of the API economy because now apps don't use URLs they use tokens they use api's they use new push notification based stuff what sure how does api's change the marketing opportunities both right it's clearly changes the engineering environment and sort of opens up the world of possibilities in terms of who you partner with and how etc and I think it changes the marketing world too and entirely right you think about the API economy and the access you have to new ways of doing business new potential partnerships new ways of understanding data you know that that is absolutely you know at the fore of a lot of our thinking it might change the agency relationships to if they got to be more technical in changing as much as fast as companies are and they have to you know they are an extension they're your best you should be able to look in a room of agency and your team and not know who is who when you can tell who is who you have a problem and so agencies themselves have to become you know way more scientific harder-hitting faster pace and outcomes orient and somebody sees now are saying you know what pay me on outcomes I love that I love that mode to say we're in the boat with you pay me on outcome and the big s eyes are right there - absolutely yes Michele Palooza new chief marketing officer at IBM changing the game bring in some great mojo to IBM they're lucky to have you great conversations and thanks for coming on the cube live at Mandalay Bay this is silicon angles the cube I'm John four with Dave Volante be right back with more after this short break