Tara DeZao, Product Marketing Director for AdTech and MarTech at Pega, joins us to unravel the complexities of customer journeys and data privacy. Today, we examine the crucial role brands play in responding to customers’ needs by meeting them in pivotal moments and providing solutions that resonate rather than repel. With cookies on the decline, explore how companies are innovating their strategies through new technologies and partnerships, ensuring they stay ahead in a rapidly changing landscape.
As data deprecation challenges traditional marketing, we question the longstanding reliance on cookies and showcase innovative solutions like Retail Media Networks and AI-driven personalization. Through compelling examples from Sephora and United Airlines, we underscore the necessity of understanding the context to craft a truly personalized customer experience. AI’s transformative potential in reimagining loyalty programs becomes clear, offering fresh strategies for maintaining market momentum and deepening customer relationships.
Finally, we venture into the nuanced realm of AI governance, analyzing its profound impact on consumer feedback and loyalty programs. Delta’s recent challenges serve as a cautionary tale of the importance of clear communication and human oversight in AI deployment. Tara shares insights on ethical AI integration, pointing to Europe’s Artificial Intelligence Act as a framework to navigate high-risk AI use cases. We wrap up with a thought-provoking dialogue about the balance between opinion and validation, underscoring the power of intentional conversation in today’s fast-paced digital world.
Read the complete transcript below
Tara DeZao
So I think that it’s really making brands understand that the customer is on multiple and simultaneous journeys and that they don’t love it when you orchestrate the customer journey a lot, so to speak. 
Mike Giambattista
When you’re engineering their experience.
Tara DeZao
Yes, because they’re you know. They might want to end up somewhere and you might, as a brand, want them to end up somewhere else.
Mike Giambattista
Tara DeZao is Product Marketing Director for AdTech and MarTech. That’s not full, and probably more now because of a recent promotion.
Tara DeZao
You know, I’m trying to just make customer engagement better for all brands and customers with Pega.
Mike Giambattista
See, that’s a much better title.
Tara DeZao
Yeah, it’s a lot, but it’s great.
Mike Giambattista
Well, love getting together with Tara. We’ve already had a very lively conversation and figured we might as well just hit the record button. I know, and do this for your benefit as well Totally, and we’re here at Advertising Week New York, yes, 2024.
Tara DeZao
So exciting. It’s an exciting time.
Mike Giambattista
There’s a ton of stuff we’ve already talked about, but we’re going to leave that for some other conversation.
Tara DeZao
It’s the 20-year anniversary of Advertising Week.
Mike Giambattista
That’s a big deal.
Tara DeZao
It is a big deal.
Mike Giambattista
I don’t know if you caught that, but Tara is overseeing AdTech and MarTech at Pega, so AdTech and MarTech Just let that hang in the air for a minute. That’s a giant, giant sea of technologies.
Tara DeZao
It is, they’re in operation there.
Mike Giambattista
Yes, and you’re over all that stuff, yeah.
Tara DeZao
It’s not just me. We have amazing, so I’m on Customer Decision Hub Engagement Strategy. We have an amazing product strategist and an amazing person over our integration capabilities that are great MarTech and EdTech mentors. So it’s a group effort.
Mike Giambattista
I’m sure it is.
Tara DeZao
It would have to be, oh yeah.
Mike Giambattista
Because it’s a giant real. I showed up here with something of an agenda, sure, so I have three main things I kind of want to just throw your way, get your thoughts on it. Plus, I think then it would be really good to talk about some of the other things that we’re seeing at advertising. Yes, great, so I’m just going to go.
Tara DeZao
Yeah, great.
Mike Giambattista
Okay.
Tara DeZao
Do it.
Mike Giambattista
Nonlinear customer journey is requiring tools that can keep up with pivot after pivot.
Tara DeZao
Yes.
Mike Giambattista
And I think it’s one of those things that nobody really actually puts down on paper when you’re thinking about a new technology, an upgrade, some addition or change to the stack, and yet it’s one of the most crucial things. So how do you address that in your role?
Tara DeZao
It’s one of the most crucial things. So how do you address that in your role? Yeah, so I think that it’s really making brands understand that the customer is on multiple and simultaneous journeys and that they don’t love it when you orchestrate the customer journey a lot, so to speak.
Mike Giambattista
When you’re engineering their experience.
Tara DeZao
Yes, because they might want to end up somewhere and you might, as a brand, want them to end up somewhere else, and I think that those two things can sometimes be opposing and sometimes they work out. But I think when you figure out how to give the customer what they need, you’ll get what you need back from them, even if it’s not in that moment specifically something about customer empathy in there or at least trying to understand what they’re after absolutely.
Yeah, you know, like this is interesting timing because we have some hurricanes happening in the south right and people are using tools to get things that they need right. So like maybe they’re fleeing and they need to find an ATM quickly or something, and that’s a moment where, as a bank, you want to get them to the ATM. You don’t want to try to sell them a platinum credit card. So if you get it wrong, in that moment they’re like oh my God, I cannot believe this brand right now. But if you get it right, it’s a big win, especially at a moment like this.
Absolutely, they will remember. When you’re in your toughest situations, you remember the people that help you Right.
Mike Giambattista
Right yeah, and great example right now, because people are going through it.
Tara DeZao
Absolutely.
Mike Giambattista
They’re absolutely going through it. This is a topic that we could extend out for well beyond what this conversation allowed For sure. But cookies.
Tara DeZao
Yes.
Mike Giambattista
We were talking earlier that it really isn’t quite the topic that it has been in past years of Advertising Week and there are probably some reasons for that. The deprecation of the cookies has been. They’re being deprecated. Yes, be careful. Get a new system in place, do something different. We’re not deprecating them.
Tara DeZao
You know what?
Mike Giambattista
That’s a bad idea. We’re just going to keep them around, and yet a handful of brands that have figured out they don’t even really need them.
Tara DeZao
You know they’re not super accurate and a lot of brands that don’t have a lot of first party data utilize cookies. But I think, by this point because we’ve been talking about this for so many years they have found ways to collaborate with partners and ad tech firms to come up with new ways to create that 360 degree profile, and we’ve been advocating for this. So I think we’re finally meeting the moment of okay, well, whatever happens with the cookies, we’re testing other stuff. We’re getting closer to having more options to do that, to do retargeting things.
Mike Giambattista
So as you’ve been first aware of the deprecation issue and the problems that was going to bring with it challenges. What was your experience talking to companies as they kind of became aware of the potential crises and issues, like was it that, you know? Once they understood, their light bulbs went off and they were like we better get on this. Or what were the reactions? Because you probably talked to these people directly.
Tara DeZao
Yeah. So it’s a mixed bag. You have people that are like we got to get on this, and then you have some brands that are like we’re going to milk this until the bitter, bitter end, I think. Just if you think about data deprecation as a whole, overall, I think most of the really successful companies started thinking about this. Like when Apple, for example, stopped selling device IDs and things like that, brands sort of were like okay, we see the writing on the wall, this is, you know. Consumers are sort of unhappy, like, if you remember, Cambridge Analytica that was like a thing.
Mike Giambattista
Why are we not still talking about that? I know, I know, a giant moment, not a good one.
Tara DeZao
It’s such a layered onion there. So, you know, I think there have been smart brands and collaborative brands that have seen this coming and been anticipating it, and I think the thing that I hear the most talk about is that we have to shift the way we measure engagement, because the cookie has been a way that people are creating measurement and I don’t know that that’s a. You know, relying on cookies is a great measurement tool.
Mike Giambattista
No, anyway no and um, we should talk about this, and sorry for your schedules, because this is worth listening to. Cookies have been a lazy way of tracking they’re easy they’re ubiquitous but, as you said earlier in this conversation, they really don’t give you any real granularity as it relates to motivation or expectations or any of the emotional realities that customers are facing in the moment.
Tara DeZao
It’s just literally a dumb metric 100% like lacking all context and like context is the most important thing when you think about personalization and personalizing the customer experience Context. You cannot personalize without context.
Mike Giambattista
Right, and yet that’s what we’ve done. I mean, cookies were introduced. It was like, oh my gosh, look at all this rich data, which really turned out to be not that rich, but it was easy, yeah, I mean it’s funny because I use this example so much that people are going to get sick of hearing it.
Tara DeZao
But my wife loves the brand Sephora, but if we’re using the same browser and Sephora is serving me makeup ads, I don’t wear makeup. You know, my wife is this like beautiful feminine person that wears a lot of makeup. You just wasted a bunch of impressions on me, Right? Because you can’t tell that it’s not me or that it’s not my wife.
Mike Giambattista
So I for one, I’m happy to see the cookies are being dealt with and or tracking, rather being dealt with in new and creative ways. Absolutely Some of those and again we talked about this a little earlier RMNs are finding their way into budgets in a big way right now. Yes, for that reason.
Tara DeZao
Yes, and actually interestingly, I was at a panel with United Airlines, fetch and T-Mobile and they were talking about loyalty programs and the omni-channel experience and they’re actually using their loyalty programs as an acquisition tool because they’ve built them so richly with you know, tools and partnerships, and now it’s a brand differentiator and that’s the first time I’ve ever heard of a loyalty program being an actually acquisition tool right.
Mike Giambattista
Almost by definition, it’s a retention tool it’s a retention tool.
Tara DeZao
Our entire careers we’ve been the whole thing.
Mike Giambattista
Yeah, we have to really just deal with that a new map.
Tara DeZao
we need a new map, we need a new map Right Right, interesting.
Mike Giambattista
So you know from your understanding of what the panel was talking about these brands are still very much about loyalty.
Tara DeZao
Yes, yes, the idea is not going away?
No, but it seems to be morphing somewhat yes, and I think I think what we’re seeing is a way to create more accurate predictors that enhance the customer experience even further. So actually and I I’m amiss here because I can’t remember his name, but the gentleman from United Airlines wrote down his quote that AI is the core of personalization, and they’re creating these retail media networks that are utilizing AI to connect experiences together in a way that maybe, in the past, cookies might have done, and it’s creating a way to just be sticky and attractive and continue that accuracy in targeting and things like that that we would never see with cookies, and things like that that we would never see with cookies.
Mike Giambattista
So in every other conference I’ve been to this year, probably for the past two years, the topic you just can’t get away from is AI. Of course, at first it was the shiny object look how really neat pictures I can make but it’s more from a shiny object into what’s its real utility, and I think that for me, this year has kind of been the, if you look at the zeitgeist out there like wait. There’s real utility and value here if we use it in certain ways.
Tara DeZao
Oh yeah.
Mike Giambattista
Is that your understanding as well Did?
Tara DeZao
it turn, or was I just not paying attention? So it’s turned. And I think that, specifically for marketers, one of the things that I’m hearing over and over again is utilizing AI to get things to market more quickly. So if you think about that in a creative situation, you know, if you think about us as old school marketers, what we used to have to do to get creative into the market is all human driven labor, sure, and you know, I was at a brand the other day and I couldn’t believe this, but they were saying that it takes them six weeks to get an email into market. So it’s still happening. It’s not in the past.
Mike Giambattista
No.
Tara DeZao
But I see brands all the time that are accelerating their time to market for getting their creative and their communications out with AI.
Mike Giambattista
This will show how little I know about the whole space, but I was really impressed recently in a conversation with a brand that is accelerating its go-to-market practices by creating digital twins. So basically they were creating whole scenarios of the new initiative, digitally driven by AI, so they could test out the concept. Oh yeah, it’s a far cheaper and quicker way to see if your concept’s going to fly.
Tara DeZao
Oh, 100% simulation. Yeah, testing and learning with simulation is the future.
Mike Giambattista
It’s a big deal. Yeah, we talked about our kids a little bit. Gen Z is another future. It’s a big deal.
Tara DeZao
Yeah, we talked about our kids a little bit. Gen Z is another animal, you know, I think, a1,. It’s really cool to approach this as marketers, but we can also approach this as parents, which is cool because we get to see, like my son’s, a digital native. Your kids are a little bit older but you get to see how their engagement with brands and products and services happens over time. And I remember with millennials it was like they’re spending all their money on experiences and I think we’re seeing with Gen Z that, like quality for value, if they can get that same quality for whatever product they’re buying from you for the same value, they’re going to churn Right. They’re not loyal in the same way that maybe, like our parents were with brand loyalty, our parents were with brand loyalty.
And I think, when you, when you think about these brands that are creating media, media, retail networks and like T-Mobile has these T-Mobile Tuesdays that are just like chock full of like partnership deals and offers and it’s a way to differentiate yourself in a world where, um, all things equal, there’s very little difference between certain things, right, so like if I’m we’re just talking about flying on airplanes and if the experience is the same and the price is very similar. What’s going to differentiate that experience for me, right? And it’s like if you hand me a glass of water and try to charge me for it, that’s going to be a no, something that small.
Mike Giambattista
We’re not really talking about Spirit Airlines here, per se.
Tara DeZao
No, but you know, if I’m flying on your airline and I care about miles and I’m in your loyalty program and I get a point for every 500 miles versus the other chap who is giving me a better mileage deal, that’s enough to just tip it.
Mike Giambattista
Right. And the interesting thing is, right now, that’s all knowable. It’s all knowable. It was utterly unknowable five years ago, maybe three years ago, and now it’s very knowable just because of the technology available to us. So not knowing that and responding to that to me seems lazy. Yeah, to me it seems lazy.
Tara DeZao
Yeah, and you know, I would say too, like customers, don’t give you the feedback when everything’s fine. Right. So like I used to be a Delta customer, I’m no longer a Delta customer, because their loyalty program was sort of ruined and you know I didn’t love the flight experience anyway. But I didn’t even know, I didn’t pay attention to how the mileage program worked until I realized that they were, through PR, taking so much away from the consumer. So when you have that big of a miss in your loyalty program, I don’t think that brands necessarily understood how important that is.
Mike Giambattista
Right, and we were talking about this a little earlier. I mean, you know, delta in that case had to have been aware, they had to have made the early calculations on how many people were going to bail out of the program. You certainly would never undertake something like that without having a really good idea of its you know financial impact. At the end of the day, yeah. But the PR blowback, as you said. That’s how you found out about it, and you remember right?
Yes, they didn’t come out to their membership and say guess what? We’re hacking your points value and, by extension, you’re becoming less important to us 100%. It was the message that everybody got.
Tara DeZao
And you know, we’re all travelers. We know that the travel experience is terrible, regardless of who your provider is. So the experience is going to be terrible, and then you’re going to devalue my investment in you. It’s not, it’s not, it’s not going to work.
Mike Giambattista
Yeah, you can’t win me back with a bag of peanuts.
Tara DeZao
Absolutely not, no, it wouldn’t be back with a bag of peanuts, absolutely not, no, no. So the gen ai thing is like kind of evolving now, because I think brands are understanding that you have to have multiple types of ai in your customer engagement program. I feel like when gen ai first came out, like you said, it was like this shiny penny and now brands understand okay. So the gen ai piece is just one part of it. Right, LLMs are another part of it. Um, data acceleration is another part of it, and so I think too, when you’re dealing with like a regulatory environment, that’s a consideration financial services for instance yes, you know Pega has a pretty big yes.
So you know you have to mitigate these brand risks. Right, that may come from gen ai that have not exactly everything to do with just how your brand appears in market. Right, it’s more of a hey. We risk eroding consumer relationships, we risk running afoul of compliance in insurance or financial services if we don’t know how our AI works, understand how it makes decisions and really proactively try to be ethical and responsible with our AI strategy.
Mike Giambattista
Right, and a little side note there. I read an article published, I think it was, just a couple weeks ago in Nature magazine that somebody I can’t remember who had done an analysis on the larger LLMs the names you would have heard of. Yeah, and what they were trying to test out was the more data you feed your LLM, the more data it has to pull from in theory, the more accurate it will get right, and what they found was not the case.
And at some point it crossed a threshold where the LLM gained confidence in itself. But lost accuracy? Yes, because the compute power just wasn’t there to digest and process all of this knowledge.
Tara DeZao
And that’s a perfect example of why you need either a human in the loop or a human on the loop checking to make sure that you’re within compliance range, that we have an ethical bias check feature, because there are data fields that inherently could lead to bias. Whether you’re a bad actor or just unintentionally it leaks into your model.
Mike Giambattista
Everybody’s got some bias built in somewhere, yes, so how do? You program?
Tara DeZao
Well, the Internet as a whole is full of bias.
Mike Giambattista
You think, I think. I feel, I think I agree with that.
Tara DeZao
So AI is like a bias mirror, right, Right, and I think at Pega we’re so diligent about talking about the partnership between humans and ai because it’s critical to keeping brands safe and making sure that we stay on the right side of consumers and don’t get into a situation like we did with cookies, where consumers didn’t know how we were using them. Even though it was benign, it blew up in our face and here we are.
Mike Giambattista
Right. And then there’s the bad actors, which we have to think about. We don’t really want to think about somebody else’s problem. We’ll buy a solution that covers that. Truth is AI in the current state of its infancy, right now, you can’t just go buy a solution for data accuracy or bias control. You don’t get to push a button and solve for that. So this is a moment when companies really need to be thinking on their own how they’re going to deal with that human in the loop or on the loop For sure and I can tell you just from the conversations I have with companies that are deploying building, you know, LLMs that are really super sophisticated and buying them and licensing them very few people are talking about what the governance issues really are. It’s, and I’m afraid that’s going to come home to roost at some point.
Tara DeZao
It will, and luckily, Europe put forward a template for us with the Artificial Intelligence Act, which what I love about this thing is that it’s a framework where the use cases that are prohibited are very narrow and prohibited for a great reason. And then the next category down would be a high-risk category where you would see like banking and insurance and very material services to our existence.
And that’s more of a guidance of, like what you can and cannot do and what you need to show and why. And I think that if brands can get in front of this, I’m seeing like brand centralizing compliance, so that you know three people in three different functional areas can work together more easily, which, if you think about like trying to work with legal and compliance and marketing without AI, without centralized AI, it’s just a lot more time and effort.
Mike Giambattista
That’s actually my, the definition of my wife’s job, which accounts for a lot of her stress. You got a little personal there, so fascinating stuff. You know, you and I have had, I think, a history of getting together like once a year for a conversation, roughly whatever it is, and I think we should do this more frequently one. But my role here at Customer Land is basically to look in from the outside and try and discern the trends and what’s happening and why, and be a voice for those changes that are happening and how brands can take advantage of them.
Your perspective, on the other hand, is very much from the inside, and I think just sitting here comparing notes with you is really interesting, but it’s also super instructive because you know my opinion and perspective gets validated or tossed out. Sure, because I’m talking to you, who really gets to see how these things really work yeah well, I think these conversations are valuable.
Tara DeZao
I was telling someone last night over happy hour that, um, you know, sometimes as a writer and a thought leader, I’ll come out with an opinion, and that’s just my opinion. So, like I might, think I might think it, but it’s, you know, very rewarding when that’s validated. But we have to be careful not to just sort of like this is what I think. I’m just going to throw it out there.
Mike Giambattista
Therefore, yeah, yeah.
Tara DeZao
Right. Too many people do that.
Mike Giambattista
Yeah, why are you looking at me when you say that? Anyway, Tara DeZao is Product Marketing Director for AdTech and MarTech at Pega and I always enjoy these conversations.
Tara DeZao
Thanks for your time.
Mike Giambattista
Oh, my God Thanks for having me. Good thinking, yeah, and the coffee.
Tara DeZao
Absolutely Anytime.
