Live From Wunder! Data Privacy With Joshua Rockoff

Richard Jones: Welcome to another series of Individuality Unleashed. Today we're going to be talking about what markers can track and advertise given all the changes in data privacy. And I'm pleased to be here joined in a studio by Joshua Rockoff, a career CDO. Josh, welcome.

Joshua Rockoff: Hey, thank you so much for having me.

Richard Jones: Not a problem. Right, let's dig straight in. Sure. So Josh, give the view as a little bit of a view of your background and your

Joshua Rockoff: Experience. Sure. Yeah. So I've been in the industry for 28 years. Started out as an e- commerce developer, worked on one of the first commercial e- commerce platforms, and then was a lead developer on another e- commerce platform. And so gave me some good foundation. Started up a couple companies in the space and then really cut my teeth over the last couple years as Chief Digital& Information Officer over at Diane von Furstenberg. Did the same title at Marquee Brands, revolutionizing Destination Maternity and BCBG.

Richard Jones: Oh yeah?

Joshua Rockoff: And had some previous stints at Kmart, at Karmaloop David Yurman, as well as Urban Decay Cosmetics.

Richard Jones: Okay. That's credibility granted.

Joshua Rockoff: Thank you.

Richard Jones: No worries. All right, so let's start. Before we get into some of more of the detail, let's just start with a bit of the basics.

Joshua Rockoff: Sure.

Richard Jones: Why should a marketer care about data privacy today?

Joshua Rockoff: It's obviously a hot button issue. Look, advertising's been around for hundreds if not thousands of years. You walk around the streets of Pompeii, you see it on billboards, the billboards were the size of the buildings. So what's amazing about it is there are 136 countries with data privacy laws on the books.

Richard Jones: Wow.

Joshua Rockoff: You have three US states who have data privacy, and in early June, the US government released the first draft of the federal data privacy laws. So obviously Apple, huge company they put out in the iOS 14. 5 was released, 96% of iPhone users opted out of mobile tracking.

Richard Jones: Yeah, you could argue that actually what the big tech platforms do, the folks like Apple is even more consequential than governments.

Joshua Rockoff: Absolutely. And considering their place in the world, I mean, Google, they have the Android, they have Android Auto, they have Android the operating system, and they have Google Chrome. And interestingly enough, they're end of life third party cookies. So marketers are now running scared because they're like, " Wait a minute, we grew up with this technology, what do we do now?"

Richard Jones: Right. Exactly. So let's just take a moment, and if you could describe, just because we all talk about this stuff all time's marketers, but sometimes definitions are important, so could you describe the difference between third and first party cookies?

Joshua Rockoff: Yeah. First party cookies is sort of a staple. That was what started the web. And in essence, it's personal identifiable information or PII. That's an email address, that's a phone number, that's information about what you like and your ability to opt in to what you like. So you can get cool SMS messages, marketing messages, they can pop ads at you and they're all based on your likes and your interests. Third party cookies is a little bit more awkward. So what that is basically people will drop a cookie on your desktop and your mobile browser on an app, but you're not opting into it. So you're getting served up ads for things that are clearly unrelated. So I'm a guy and I like the New York Giants, but if I go to the New York Giants website, I'm getting ads for David Yurman and Stella McCartney and I'm like, " I'm a guy, I want guy stuff. I don't want to be looking at a pair of heels." And so that's the interesting thing is that with third party cookies, it's all anonymous and they're trying to figure out what you like and what you don't like, which means it just feels awkward. It's a hard thing to work through.

Richard Jones: So explain how marketers then... We all know third party cookies have been deprecated, lots of talk in the industry about how we all need to move to first party data. When we think about first party cookies in particular, how can actually marketers start to implement and leverage first party cookies?

Joshua Rockoff: Yeah, it's a great question. And the cool thing is we're talking 1996 technology. It's always been there. The web was founded in 1994, or 1992 if you believe. Al Gore. And ironically, the technology's been there since basically the invention of Netscape. So what's cool is that there's such a concept of local storage. So third party cookies, you're basically putting in bites, right? You're getting some tracking information, you're getting a little taste. Local storage is essentially, you can see your entire browser history. And it goes for months. A huge amount of data that you can save on there. So you're not dealing with sizes of file size, you're not looking at restrictions, you're able to manage something that most marketers love. You get six months of history. And so the idea is it drops an ID on a person's desktop and the idea is, well, once a person identifies themselves with an email address or a phone number or a physical address, that ID then converts over. So you get a much better sense for who those people are. And it's opt in. People want the information. So it's a fun way of getting in front of them and saying, " Hey look, we're not only getting just your transactional information, we're now getting your interests. What do you like? What don't you like? How do you interact with the web? What sites do you go to? What periphery sites do you go to?" So it's a classic Google argument, right? Google makes it easy to create an email address, They want you to log in. And what do they get? They get your entire search history. And most people don't close the window. So they just keep on getting your entire life until either you shut down your computer or you clear your cash, which I don't know anyone who does. So then it just turns into this mountain of information that it's a marketer's dream. Because now you get to see, " Oh, you're really interested in shoes? Great. Here are the five websites that you're interested in. Now let steer you to I." It's a phenomenal opportunity.

Richard Jones: All right, thinking about that from an opportunity perspective, how do you measure success?

Joshua Rockoff: You know what, actually there's a couple of staples. There's conversions. Conversions are a good way of saying, " Okay, I get a person, I get them to buy. What's a conversion rate?" Very simple, very straightforward. It's a conversion rate. I come to a website, I want to engage with you. How long does it take for you to go from being a casual, interested user to actually being converted into a paid customer? And then how do you do it a second time and a third time and a fourth time? And it's all about customer journey and customer lifetime value. It gives you much more detailed empirical data versus that casual view. Then the last thing is click revenue. A lot of big companies really track, and small companies as well, when you click on an email, what does it mean in terms of conversion? Wunderkind does an amazing job at this because at the end of the day it's here's a triggered email, it was a personalized message of, " Hey, thank you so much for purchasing, or thank you for joining." And then looking at that email and saying, " Okay, did a person convert? Did a person click on it? And what kind of revenue did that drive? That one message?"

Richard Jones: How have you actually used Wunderkind in the past? And give us a little bit of view of your experience.

Joshua Rockoff: Yeah, Wunderkind's my staple. Wunderkind is the company that I go into... Most of the companies I use or I've worked on are distressed. They're turnaround situations. They need help. And so Wunderkind, what they're amazing at is their services and service business. There's opportunity there to say, " Look, I can't do it all." And email should be one of my top performing channels, if not the top performing channel. It's cheap, it's easy, and it's personalized. And so what Wunderkind does very, very well is that they're good at getting people to understand the message you're personalizing. So it's one to one versus one to many. And you can really get personalized on it. You can get, instead of putting together like a mass blast, you can say, " Oh, you're interested in X. You're interested in wallets. You're interested in sunglasses." Different than another person who might be interested in blue sunglasses or yellow sunglasses. You can get that very interactive, personalized message and do it very effectively.

Richard Jones: Now, one of the things that I personally found very interesting about Wunderkind before I actually joined, which kind of attracted me to speak to the company, was the way that they were delivering technology and services, but not in a traditional software as a service model. It was really kind of revenue as a service. " We are going to hit these minimum guarantees for you. And if we don't, we're going to work for free until we do. And we're going to participate in the success which is graded based on how well we do." So completely fundamental shift from the traditional software and service business, which is like, " Here's some software that you can access over the internet. You pay us a certain amount of money each year, you can log on. Good luck."

Joshua Rockoff: And that's a performance marketing approach too. A lot of performance marketing agencies, your ad agencies will do it not only based on spend, but they'll also say, " What kind of revenue do we do it?" But if you look at the traditional email companies and the traditional marketing activities, organic search, email, you don't normally see that. What's great is Wunderkind's your partner. I work in on these distressed companies, I need partners, I need people who will go into battle with me. And it can't just be hires, it has to be third parties. The difference between a Wunderkind and some of the other companies out there is they're kind of like, " Here's a flat rate. This is what it is. You just pay it whether it works or it doesn't work, that's not our job. That's your job." Wunderkind is your true partner here. They're saying at Destination Maternity, we had to flip the business in two weeks. And most people would be like, " Oh my gosh, that's crazy. How do you do that? That's impossible." And the reality is, what we did was we pulled in a Wunderkind. So we had our other partners who were just on a traditional pay as you go model, Wunderkind basically was like, " We'll put our stake in the ground. We hit these numbers, you pay us. You don't hit those numbers, we'll continue to work until we hit those numbers." And that's a huge advantage.

Richard Jones: Yeah, I actually think it's a bit of a challenge to the industry at large because it's put your money where your mouth is.

Joshua Rockoff: Yeah, exactly.

Richard Jones: If you think your software and your service is going to deliver X, well, don't just say that in your marketing slides, say it in your contracts.

Joshua Rockoff: Yeah, exactly. And look, at the end of the day, so much of this is about your relationship with your third parties. You're going into a battle and you have to have not only small wins, but big wins. The problem is when you're going into companies, any size company, you need to be able to find those key partners who are not only going to grow with you but, to use your term, put their money where their mouth is. Usually there's only one or two. And as long as you find those parties and find those partners, you can scale a business very well and make CFOs happy, and of course they're excited too.

Richard Jones: Right, right. Which if they're happy, we're all happy.

Joshua Rockoff: Exactly.

Richard Jones: That's definitely the case.

Joshua Rockoff: Awesome.

Richard Jones: Josh, thank you very much for joining us in the studio and imparting some of your wisdom. Well, folks that's been Individuality Unleashed.