In this Now What? podcast episode, Wix host Rob Goodman interviews Paul Turzio, SVP of Data and Marketing Sciences at R/GA. Turzio describes his globally‑distributed team of data analysts, segmentation specialists, CRM strategists, statistical modelers and Martech experts, all unified by a belief in turning data into value for both brands and their customers. He explains the origins and design of the "Power of Brand Relationship Design" survey – a custom global study of over 16,000 consumers across six categories and nine markets conducted in 2020. The research was motivated by several industry shifts: rising cost‑per‑acquisition making new‑customer growth expensive, a strategic pivot toward retention and ARPU growth, increasingly diverse and individualized consumer expectations, and a lack of post‑purchase research. Findings highlight the importance of post‑purchase experiences, the need for personalization at scale ("segments of one"), the impact of technology shortening product life cycles and creating feature parity, and the emergence of "usage brand" aspirations where brands aim to embed customers in an ecosystem rather than just drive transactions. Turzio argues that brands must keep promises, leverage data‑driven insights, and focus on relationship design to turn one‑time buyers into loyal fans.
Chapters
Oftentimes brands are overlooking the importance of nailing the experience, the pre purchase experience, but then certainly the post purchase experience, so that you're fostering that kind of a relationship and creating value at every touch.
Hi everyone and welcome to now what? The podcast from WIX about how technology is changing everything. I'm your host Rob Goodman and in this series we're talking all about evolution in business design, development and beyond. In this episode we talk to Paul Terzio, SVP of Data and Marketing Sciences at RGA where he leads a team of over 40 people responsible for data and analytics services at the global agency leader. Paul and his team work with brands across a broad range of industries including Samsung, Disney, USAA, Nike, Verizon and IKEA. Paul recently led a global survey that asked 16,000 customers about their relationships with brands. The findings and subsequent report titled the Power of Brand Relationship Design have shifted the assumptions surrounding everything from marketing technology to the role of personalization in turning one time customers into loyal fans. In this episode of now what we talked to Paul about how to conduct the right experiments with technology, the role of post purchase experiences, and why brands need to keep their promises to customers. This is an eye opening conversation that signals a real shift in how we think about marketing automation, branding and customer experience.
I can't wait for you to hear it.
So let's get started. Paul, welcome to now what?
Great to have you here.
Thanks Rob. My pleasure. Good to see you.
So why don't we start off and
tell listeners about what your role is at rga.
I lead a bit of a smorgasbord from a capability perspective. I am fortunate enough to lead our data, our marketing sciences and CRM teams on a global level. At rga, we're a bit of a diverse, motley crew of a little over 40 and growing. So shameless plug for any one of your listeners who might be interested in a gig. Definitely feel free to reach out. But again, like we're a motley crew of data analysts, of segmentation specialists, of CRM and personalization strategists, of, you know, statistical modelers, of Martech magicians who have I missed our measurement and testing experts. But you know, one of the things that makes this crew special is that we're unified and we share sort of a common belief and that's all about creating value from data. And so again, we roll out of bed every day thinking about how we can use data to create value. And it's not just for the brands that we're privileged enough to help. You know, here at rga, but also, and this is important obviously to our topic today, the users that those brands are serving each and every day, you know, that is becoming an expectation for brands and businesses to thrive. And so our job is to use data differently in such a way where we're helping brands turn it into an enabler of value for their users or value in and of itself, when you think about, you know, how data can be converted into intelligence for users. So Nike customers know a bit more about how to beat their previous mile, that sort of thing. So just a quick anecdote and example there, but it's what makes this crew different and special with that.
Awesome.
Well, today I'm really excited to dive into this report that you and your team were behind the power of brand relationship design.
And, and when I read it, I
was really kind of awakened to the power of data and the power of these insights through customers. Yeah. And immediately, you know, it resonated with me how you were describing your work because it's all there on the pages of this report. Just incredible insights from this massive survey that you all did.
But I'd love to hear, in your
words, how you describe this survey and what the goal of this thing was.
I'll start with a bit of background because we did commission this, or we designed it and fielded it throughout 2020. And it really came about from a few insights and observations within our industry, yes, within our client portfolio, but more broadly our industry. And I think that starts with an observation that our industry went through an extraordinary shift. Probably more than one shift, obviously, but one that was very much at the heart of the objective of the research. And that is when it came to achieving all of their growth ambitions and growth targets from a business perspective, for the first time in quite some time, they took their eye away from new customer acquisition as a source of that growth, which, as you and your listeners likely know, has become brutally expensive. CPAs cost per acquisition numbers have risen quite a bit over the last several years. It's become more difficult, seemingly to acquire net new. And so again, their eye was taken away from growth by way of new customer acquisition to growing with the users that they had. It's in keeping with being grateful for what you have rather than always wanting more and more and more. And so in many respects, our clients and marketers more generally, their next best dollar was spent in retention in growing ARPU metrics like that. And so that was a pretty massive shift and one that had direct implication for the research that we designed and put to market. There are A few other trends too. That's probably worth mentioning because all of them fed into the research brief and ultimately the design. We talk all the time about customer needs and their expectations and how expectations are always growing, right? It's never enough. But they're also growing more diverse. Increasingly, brands that we support and just brands in the world are looking to not just serve the macro needs of the many, but the individual needs of the one. Right. And so how do we serve and support individual segments of one at scale? So you and I might conform to the same business segment, but some of your micro needs are very different than my micro needs. And it's incumbent upon brands to understand those and serve those in order to break through and connect with me as a prospect and over time as a user.
And so all this thinking kind of went into the framing and the brief and the reasoning behind delivering this survey.
That's just it. I mean, like it sort of rationalizes, you know, why this kind of research was required. And it also, you know, was used to configure the learning agenda that the research was built around. I think there's one other point too I'll make, and that is post purchase, one of the things that we learned as we tried to better understand some of the dynamics and ways to win that we can help consult clients with. It tends to be, or has been one of the most under researched areas of advertising, of marketing. There's so much research that's been done over the years around brand, certainly human and consumer truths and everything that happens pre purchase that leads up to the moment of truth. But once we have them right, once they become a customer, that's where a lot of the research kind of falls off a cliff in terms of depth and breadth and availability. And so we also felt that by designing this research, by investing in this global research, that we would be closing a critical learning gap for our industry, or at least helping to close that in terms of the actual research. There are a variety of ways in which we could have went about doing this. Especially during 2020 when budgets were tight and we were using the sharpest pencil that we had and then were asked to sharpen it further. We decided not to skimp out on the research. A rather robust custom global study where we surveyed, I think it was a little over 16,000 people across six categories. Nine markets around the world, for the most part representative to the population within those markets. Again, we were fortunate enough through the analysis of all of that research to discover these new dynamics and expectations that we were previously looking for. In past bodies of research. And so all of those dynamics and expectations that today's brands don't just have to meet, but they have to exceed them in order to win with customers in the long term.
Yeah, definitely.
I mean, what did you see happen
last year that really evolved that relationship between brands and their customers?
This sort of builds on some of what I was describing in the setup. Yes, we talk about needs and expectations growing more diverse. On one hand, tech advances make it easier for brands seemingly to meet and exceed those expectations. So if it's all about segments of one at scale, the Martech landscape and all that it offers brands and marketers alike makes it seemingly easy to meet and exceed those expectations. Obviously, there's a lot of work behind that in order to make it happen. But tech advances, I think have led to the adoption of a lot of those Martech solutions. Then also, when you talk about tech advances in terms of shortening the lengths of product life cycles, I was talking to someone about this this morning where Apple customers are talking about what features the iPhone 13 will have the day after the iPhone 12 release.
Right, right.
And so the product life cycle, and obviously that's an extreme, but life cycles are shortening and that's because of tech advances. As a result, I think differences amongst products and brands are becoming less discernible. There's a lot of parity in features right now and it puts more onus on the relationship that you as a brand foster and maintain over the full life cycle and less attention on the product itself for carrying that load. There's also, I think, something important to note and that is the rise of usage brand aspirations. Oftentimes brands are in it for the transaction and historically that was always the case. Again, just get them to transact and we all win. Today, brands not only want the transaction, they want consumers to buy, but buy into a connected ecosystem of products and services. And so that's really what defines usage brand. And so more and more, the brands that are coming to us for help have that as an aspiration, as an ambition. Again, all this has implications for getting a better understanding of the kind of relationship that we can and should look to have and build on behalf of brands.
Right. You're moving away from that idea of selling a specific product and more so selling or fostering might be a better word, the relationship and the connection between the brand and the customer or the user.
Yeah, that's absolutely right. Many point their benefits in a way where it seems turnkey and easy enough to serve the right message. Right time and place to different customer segments based on what you know and what you can learn and grow with over time. But I think as those investments were made over the last three years and the dominance of data and personalization in marketing is all the rage, I think a lot of our clients and a lot of the industry right now are being pressured.
