What you need to know:

• Stuart Archibald developed and delivered Tesco’s Clubcard loyalty programme and was one of the quiet architects behind Tesco’s deal for Dunnhumby. Locally he and business partner Bram Williams count the likes of News Corp as clients.
• The two see a glaring disconnect between the billions invested both in brand and in customer experience platforms versus the “personalised spam” and “templated vanilla comms” that brands are pumping out.
• 'Customer experience' is part of the problem, because people “are being treated like spreadsheets” and fed into the martech machine, per Archibald. “We need to talk about human experience, not customer experience”.
• The two are launching a specialist consultancy aiming to fill that gap, backing CA.5 to deliver “a 20 per cent uplift” in revenue by linking brand through to experience, pulling together specialists from around the world – “ex-Tesco, ex-O2, ex-Microsoft” execs – initially operating out of Sydney and London.

Let them eat spam

Customer experience isn’t delivering – in most cases leaving marketers trying to hide the fact that massive martech investments are significantly underperforming, according to Stuart Archibald. He thinks the upshot is “personalised spam” ignored by customers and which cuts directly across above-the-line brand investments.

Archibald has spent 30 years linking brand and direct marketing for blue chips around the world. He developed and delivered Tesco’s Clubcard loyalty programme and was one of the quiet architects behind Tesco’s deal for Dunnhumby. He’s also put together massive retail launches with Microsoft and helped drive major growth for UK Telco O2 – all of which, per Archibald, combined data and human-centred brand linked through the line to direct comms.

He thinks the brand-direct disconnect is being exacerbated by marketers trying to fix the problem with more martech. “Don’t buy more tech, maximise what you’ve got”, urged Archibald.

He and business partner Bram Williams are launching a hybrid consultancy based in Sydney and London in a bid to address that challenge. The two are backing CA.5 to deliver “a 20 per cent uplift” in revenue by linking brand through to experience instead of “templated vanilla comms” based on short-sighted segmentation.

“Businesses and brands have all the technology they need. The biggest issue they face is they are not realising that investment – and that’s because they are not treating people like humans,” said Archibald. “We need to talk about human experience, not customer experience.

Annual martech investments in Australia alone top $5bn. Conferences aside, many marketers privately admit that those investments are disastrous – “ruinous” as Archibald puts it. Regardless of tech stack, he thinks the underlying irony is that customers have been forgotten: They are treated as “spreadsheets and algorithms” instead of humans.

Automation good, bland templates bad

Marketing automation is key to deliver scale, per Archibald, but not to the detriment of brand. He sees brand investment being diluted across the board within customer comms.

It’s not a new message. Archibald Williams last year commissioned Nielsen to research whether customer comms are working. Per that study, circa half (48 per cent) of brand-to-consumer emails are going unopened, and half (53 per cent) of respondents said they want more inspiring content from brands. Archibald agrees those numbers appear conservative.

“There's been a loss of brand tone, bringing to life the essence of the brand in the experience end-to-end,” said Archibald. “It's all templated stuff, lacking in creativity. Brand tone has been lost in a lot of comms. I don’t think marketers are taking it through [end-to-end] like they say they are.”

Archibald thinks the likes of Coles and IAG moving to combine customer and marketer remits signals increasing market awareness of the customer-brand disconnect – and agrees retail and insurance categories are two categories with most ground to recover.

Five point plan

The consultancy, which will draw “ex-Tesco, ex-O2, ex-Microsoft” resource, per Archibald, is focused on five key areas of customer marketing. Archibald calls it “customer anthropology”, hence the CA.5 moniker – data, brand, customer journeys, content and technology.

“I’ve not seen a client globally that doesn’t have a pain point in at least one of these areas,” said Archibald, breaking down each component:

1. Data: “Clients have got all the data they need, but not true insight,” per Archibald. As well as the obvious problems of silos, “too often they're running an entirely behavioural data play, but they're not looking at the psychographic side,” he added. He said brands face a similar algorithmic challenge to that now limiting social media: “We all get served the same stuff based on our behaviour. Where’s the discovery? Because that is the bigger opportunity.”
2. Brand: In simple terms, “I’m just not seeing the same brand tone being taken through to the communications. Yes, you need to automate and template, but things have to stand out – and that is a big issue. Personalisation doesn’t always increase response,” said Archibald, which links back to data. “It’s just putting me in a segment and feeding me the same stuff.”
3. Customer journeys: Whereas brand tends to be unified, customer journeys are siloed, per Archibald. “Different departments are doing different things, which leads to over-communication, overkill and confusion.”
4. Content: Linked to all of the above, Archibald thinks content is being treated as the poor cousin to brand comms. “Why are we dumbing down that work?”
5. Tech: “Now more than ever is the time to maximise existing tech investment. All the stats we see suggest that people aren’t making it pay back. Don’t buy more, make it work.”

Archibald backs customer comms fully aligned with brand to move the needle.

“I've never seen an instance where you do not get uplift in communications through better creative work,” he said. “I can guarantee that brands are going to save money – at least 20 per cent in efficiency, a 20 per cent uplift in work and a 20 per cent uplift in revenue, or a reduction in churn – and they're going to maximise their martech investment as well.”

The business will sit alongside but separate from creative shop Archibald Williams.