Chloe Davis may be newer to the DMCNY board than most of its members, but she’s no rookie in the marketing world. During her more than five years as engagement manager at Winterberry Group, she’s worked advised ad agencies, adtech, martech, and data companies, and media publishers. Prior to Winterberry, Davis served as an account executive for strategic communications firms BackBay and WPP’s RLM Finsbury.

With expertise in research, analysis, project management, and more, Davis has provided valuable insight to DMCNY’s board. Here she shares some insights into her career and the marketing industry.

What led you to marketing?

I’m a strategy consultant to businesses in the supplier landscape of marketing, advertising, technology, and media. So, I may not be a marketer, per se, but marketing is what I live and breathe. What I do is help my clients better meet marketers’ needs, which means I spend a lot of time thinking about how brands connect with consumers and drive consumer behaviors.

It was for the same reason—a drive to understand how individuals interact with the world, and what influences their reactions, their preferences, and, ultimately, their behaviors—that I ended up studying psychology.

What has been your biggest accomplishment?

The success I’m most proud of has been my contribution to the development of our marketing and data transformation offering here at Winterberry Group. It’s a capability set that brings to bear our deep expertise in data-driven marketing, our knowledge of marketing technology, and our analytical approach to problem solving, to help brand marketers transform their marketing architecture in support of market-leading customer experience delivery. I’m proud of my role in developing and formalizing our proprietary scoring methodology and overall approach.

Do you have a favorite customer story?

As a consultant, there is nothing more rewarding than seeing your recommendations—the product of all your hard work and effort over months of deep analysis—put into practice by the organizations you advise. My favorite client story is every time we get to see an organization act on our strategic roadmap recommendations, expanding their value proposition to the market, and achieving their growth goals.

What advice would you have given your younger self when entering marketing? 

Great marketers—and great consultants to marketers and their service partners—are also engaged consumers. We interact with marketing all day long, and we all have relationships with brands we interact with, consciously or not. Understanding our own engagement with brand marketing, and identifying what drives our communications preferences, our brand affinities, and our purchase behaviors, is an important foundation for understanding what makes marketing effective.

Give one prediction on the future of marketing.

Customer experience will become a key competitive differentiator, elevating the role of marketers within brand organizations.

Brands are increasingly competing on customer experience—and customer experience encompasses every interaction an individual has with that brand, from engaging with a compelling [direct] mail piece, to buying a product online, to calling customer service. What that means is that the definition of marketing and the role and remit of brand marketers will continue to expand. The onus will be on marketing teams to collect, manage, and activate customer data in a way that aligns with brand voice and business objectives, and honors customer preference and privacy.

What’s the biggest data-related challenge marketers are facing right now, and how can they overcome it?

The new and pending regulations around customer data and privacy—particularly GDPR and CCPA—are top of mind for every organization that collects or leverages consumer data. Marketers face a particularly interesting challenge: evolving to meet consumers’ expectations for seamless, personalized brand interactions, which requires the collection and activation of consumer data, while complying with new privacy standards.

The good news is marketers don’t have to face this challenge alone. Marketing service providers are rapidly expanding their capabilities around customer preference and consent management in ways that are compliant, and many marketers are turning to these partners to help them navigate the dual challenge of privacy compliance and customer engagement.

What do you enjoy the most about being a member of DMCNY?

I truly enjoy meeting people through DMCNY. Direct marketers tend to be both creative and results-driven, and in my view that’s a winning combination. Everyone I meet has their own unique story and career path, and I learn so much from them, whether we’re talking shop about marketing or discussing the latest original Netflix series.

In what ways has a PR background prepared you for the marketing field?

PR is a fantastic background for any career that involves writing and storytelling. Even at a junior level, you’re learning how to be clear, concise, and compelling in written communications. When you learn how to write, you learn how to think. That’s a great foundation for almost anything you want to do in the business world.