Initiative’s Dimitri Maex on the misconception of measurability

To Dimitri Maex, the most effective marketing model makes room for hard-to measure tactics, like fame.

The global CEO of Initiative sat down with Editor-in-Chief Stephanie Paterik to discuss the problem with data, the potential of AI and the benefit of crafting a holistic strategy.

As you look across the brands you’re working with, what are you most obsessed with solving right now?

As a good client partner, our obsession needs to be with marketing effectiveness, with making sure that what we do for our clients delivers the highest ROI. And I think that’s where, as a result of using the wrong mental model, we’re in a bit of a pickle in marketing today. I think there’s been way too much focus on the stuff we can measure, which tends to be the short-term stuff — the short-term tactics — and not enough focus on the things that actually work in the bigger scheme of things.

The problem with marketing that has really accelerated over the last decade is that measuring is good, you’ll never say it’s bad, but the fact that you can’t measure [the effectiveness of a strategy] doesn’t mean that it doesn’t work. And so, what’s happened is that a lot of marketing dollars have gone to the tactics that are very measurable at the expense of tactics that are very effective, but they may not be as measurable.

The power of having a well-formed, holistic mental model for marketing — one that encompasses the power of things like fame, for example, which is quite hard to measure, and the long-term effects of advertising, for example, which are real, but again, very hard to measure — is so important.

A lot of people think that if you can’t measure it, it didn’t happen, but it seems like you’re providing a counterpoint?

Marketing is a funny business. It’s a very fuzzy business. It involves human decision-making, which is irrational. The reasons why people buy are often hidden, but they are important — they are very powerful.

I think that measurability is a good thing but, in many ways, it has also given marketers a false sense of control. It is really important to pay attention to the stuff you can measure in the short term but have a model for how it works in the long term.

We’re talking about progressive marketing, and it’s hard to not bring up AI. Mailchimp reported that 88% of marketers believe that to stay competitive and meet their customers’ expectations, they must implement AI. What is your view on this, and how do you think it’s going to shake out for marketers in particular?

I love it. I think AI is magic. The way it has evolved even over the last year, it’s unbelievable. The pace of change is incredible.

In the bigger scheme of things, in marketing, we try to look at it through three lenses. The first one is: How can you put these tools in the hands of as many people as possible within the agency? MyBot.Chat, which is part of our Interact platform at IPG, basically gives secure chatbot functionality and makes that available to every employee. So that’s the first thing — make it available to everybody so they can start experimenting with it, because they’ll come up with use cases by doing that.

The second layer is about automation. I think that’s where the impact of AI is going to be significant: How can you use robotic process automation to really automate the processes that take up a lot of time, that aren’t fun for our people and that are maybe also error prone? The secret there is to really map the processes of the workflow. We’ve done a lot of work at that — not just at Initiative, but at Mediabrands in general — really trying to understand: What are the workflows? Which parts of them can we standardize and then automate so that it frees up time for our people to do the more interesting work that they want to do? That’s the second tier, which is a really important process.

The third tier is really building products that give our clients a competitive advantage, whether that is insights, products, targeting products or whatever they may be.

If you had to sum up both the hopes and fears of clients, what’s one of the main anxieties that you’re hearing? And then, on the flip side, where is the sunshine?

There is a lot of disruption and transformation happening in the world and in business in general, and we see that reflected with our clients. All of our clients are asked to do more with less, they’re asked to really adopt entirely new ways of working, so there’s a lot of general business disruption going on with our clients. New products are coming out, big technological changes that have really big ramifications on [our clients’ businesses] in general, so that trickles down to marketing.

There’s a lot of change happening at the moment and that’s the new norm. But I see great examples of work every day, and innovative uses of marketing every day, very innovative — using new ways of reaching people, new media, new technologies to really do marketing in a very modern way. That gives me a lot of hope.