Google's cookie flip-flop, and the power of personal vs. corporate branding

Firstly, a huge welcome to Haydn Woods-Williams, who makes his triumphant return from paternity leave to lead the Marketers of the Universe. The episode kicks off with a deep dive into Google's latest pivot on cookie deprecation, led by our senior email marketing manager, Mark Bundle. Mark and Haydn discuss how to build robust first-party data strategies amidst the ongoing uncertainty surrounding third-party cookies. Following that, the Marketers explore the intricate world of personal branding and its impact on corporate reputation. Our head of digital marketing services, Rich Harper, spearheads a discussion with a panel of Brew Digital experts, including account manager Ciaran O'Neill, full stack developer Danica Walpole, and head of design Steph, who makes her maiden podcast appearance. Learn from real-world examples, such as NBC's innovative use of Snoop Dogg during the Olympics, and gain valuable insights into managing personal brands to enhance corporate image.

Tune in for actionable advice, engaging discussions, and a sprinkle of humour as we navigate the complexities of modern marketing. Don't forget to subscribe, leave a review, and share this episode with a friend or two!

Timecodes

0:00 Intro

1:50 Google backtracks on third-party cookie depreciation

10:55 Personal branding and corporate image

25:33 Outro

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Auto-generated transcript

Steph Smith

It's a bit like any kind of brand being like, hey, we're doing a rebrand, but we really, really love blue, and then just making everything blue.

Haydn Woods-Williams

Welcome to the Marketers of the Universe podcast. I am not Tom, I'm Hayden Woods-Williams, digital Marketing Team Lead at Brew Digital. I'm officially back from paternity leave now and back hosting your favorite marketing podcast. We've got a cracking episode today, kicking off with our senior email marketing manager, mark, who is leading the conversation, touching on Google's backtracking of cookie deprecation.

Haydn Woods-Williams

Like a bit of a bad Tinder date, google have postponed multiple times, tricked us into changing their plans, forced us to wonder what we did wrong and then nonchalantly said they're not interested anyway and they're sorry for wasting our time. Well, google jokes on you because our team are discussing how you can build first party data for your brand and we'll leave that awkward three day WhatsApp conversation where Google won't shut up about cookies in the past. Then we're hopping over to the minefield that is personal branding and how the behavior of your employees can impact your brand. We're going to look at examples from across the globe in a conversation led by our head of digital marketing services, rich Harper Head of Digital Marketing Services, rich Harper and with a big panel of cross-discipline brew experts. Lots to get excited about.

Mark Bundle

So, without any further ado, let's get on with the podcast. Today we're talking about Google and their cookie policies, and not for the first time, actually. We have spoken about this before, when they last postponed them, and I will have a little smug personal comment of when we talked about that before, I did say this was coming. They would eventually cancel it, and they have. So, aidan, why have they cancelled it? Why do you reckon they've changed their mind in the end?

Haydn Woods-Williams

I just don't think that they could find the right way to do it, and when you are a monopoly, as I think they recently got maybe not fully assigned as by some kind of US court you can kind of do what you want, because they've got such a large market share that, as it currently stands, there's no reason that they actually have to follow through with it.

Mark Bundle

Yeah, it's quite interesting If you read the announcement from the VP of the Privacy Sandbox, which is supposed to be their alternative solution. They say they're going to keep all the APIs open. They're going to keep developing it in parallel with their own system. But it was in consultation with advertisers, in consultation with privacy experts and organizations around the world. But it's quite interesting, those same privacy organizations have come out and condemned this move and said that the keeping of cookies is actually a bad thing for privacy. What do you think? Cookies, yay, nay.

Haydn Woods-Williams

I think there's a lot of fear mongering about them. I think ultimately, people don't understand them. We have had that conversation in the past. We won't go into it. I know you have a past in law so you've probably got a slightly different opinion to me on this. You've probably got a slightly different opinion to me on this, but I think I mean, this is my way of using my data online. I'm not that fussed. There's nothing they're going to have about me. That is change anything. It's nice to have personalized messages, but actually from a marketing point of view, first party data is going to perform better than the third party kind of cookie data anyway. So that's the way that I would lean yeah, I mean with the law background.

Mark Bundle

Maybe in the email crm guy you would expect me to be a proper data privacy. No, but I'm really not like you say. They're everywhere and all they're looking at. Banning is, as you say, third party cooking. There are still essential cookies that will run from every website that you visit. There are still first-party cookies that will run on every website you visit.

Mark Bundle

And ultimately, people complain advertising isn't personalized enough. Well, that's because you keep stopping people having your cookies. How are they supposed to know what you're doing or tie your activity to you, to personalize it, unless you let them have that data? I think ultimately, cookies. I don't see how you can get around them. I think they're here to stay. And this goes everyone loves a good cookie. Oatmeal raisin massively overlooked. Going to get that in there. But building first party data CRM that is my thing. That's always going to be your best option, surely, asking people questions directly, saying what is your name, what is your email address, what company do you work for, and offering value in return. I mean, is there any real other way do you think of getting good first party data?

Haydn Woods-Williams

I think you have to look like form fills is you know that that customer data that you've just mentioned there into the crm is the kind of key first point of information. But you can't forget those other points of contact that you have with customers and prospects, like trying to look across your, your products. Where are you seeing interactions with your audience? What kind of data points are you collecting beyond just email data and contact data, like behavioral data is all going to be valuable in you just learning what your audience are looking for, understanding their interactions and actually being able to respond to those interactions and create something that kind of aligns with what they're doing. I did that very non-specifically. I'm definitely still in paternity mode.

Mark Bundle

I think you make a valid point. A lot of people, when they think of first-party data, think of those demographics that you do get from form fields or from similar. But actually that activity data, that online stuff that you are still getting okay, whether it's first-party or second-party can be a bit of a quibble and we had a whole thing about what second-party data was last time we discussed this. But ultimately it can be a bit of a quibble and we all think about what second party data was last time we discussed this. But ultimately it's all for the the benefit of the contact. If you're doing it properly, harvesting data, no one is going to argue that it's not a scummy practice and you shouldn't be doing it, and gdpr will hammer you if you have data that you don't need. One of the things is you should only collect data that you need and it should be reasonable, and so, yeah, scummy practices can and should be punished with with that as well it's.

Haydn Woods-Williams

It's like we were saying earlier about first party data performing better than third party anyway. Is you know, if you're desperate and you go out and buy, uh, a thousand data contacts and actually we were talking about this when it comes to instagram, sorry, linkedin followers as well you go out and buy 500 followers. Yes, you might have a higher number of pieces of data or a higher follower count or whatever it might be. I know we're kind of drifting slightly off of cookies there, but you're not going to have the right audience and there's going to be a lack of trust because you're going to come across spammy, because they haven't given you the permission to interact with them. And I think that permission and that two-way agreement to interact is where you're going to see the best performance.

Mark Bundle

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, how often do you receive an email or a pop-up or whatever, a piece of mail, even from some random company? You're like who the hell are? You Don't know bid it, you don't engage unless you know the origin point anyway. So yeah, the first party data is always, I think, going to be stronger because people know where it came from. I don't mean don't get me wrong, that doesn't mean immediately you're going to get into inboxes, you're going to get read and scrapping their cookies. Are we saying this is bau? Are we saying that is just the way forward? Now?

Haydn Woods-Williams

is this carry on as we were before, keep calm and cookie on I think um, I think a lot of people on and I have this conversation with clients every now and then is there is just a lack of understanding.

Haydn Woods-Williams

And because there's a lack of understanding, there's a bury your head in the sand mentality sometimes, which means that actually, throughout this entire period, it's similar to when GA4 came out and everyone was moving off of GA universal analytics. Everyone waited or I say everyone. A lot of companies waited until that last moment to change what they're doing, and I think, ultimately, what this turnaround from cookies is just going to take a little bit of pressure off of marketers and force them to carry on what they were doing and just not worry about it. But actually you look at the iOS changes a few years ago for Apple and how that has impacted digital advertising, for example, where you have significantly less visibility because people are naturally rejecting cookies when they're given the choice. So I think a lot of people will just go cool, carry on as normal. But I do think there is still the benefit of going okay, let's act as if cookies were deprecated by Google.

Mark Bundle

You're right. People have just left stuff for so long. It's almost a case of oh, the deadline's gone, hooray, we don't have to change it at all, and I think that's probably another thing we could talk about. There's a whole other thing, on a whole other podcast is that people tend to, if you give people a lead-up time that's too long, they're going to leave it to the last minute and hope for the best. When GDPR came out, I worked for a data platform company. We told them for years ahead you've got to change this, be prepared for this, we need to do this. Blah, blah, blah. People would tell us no, no, it's fine. And then the last three months the amount of overtime we got to build those clients was hilarious, yeah.

Haydn Woods-Williams

And then you've got that one person who does the mail merge a couple of weeks too late and gets landed with a big fine.

Mark Bundle

And hey, actions have consequences.

Haydn Woods-Williams

I'm going to turn this around on you as our CRM and data expert. What should someone go and do right now to start collecting first-party data if they're not doing it already, or improve the volume that they're getting?

Mark Bundle

So start making sure you're using a CRM properly. Even if you're only a small business, there are plenty of free ones available to get you spun up and started. It means you can track everything in one place. Obviously, get those forms out so you are collecting data from people, but make sure you are offering value. If you're asking for that data, asking for it in isolation or providing poor quality, that's an easy way to get unsubscribed again.

Mark Bundle

And make sure you've got a proper cookie policy in place, not just in terms of actually functioning, but a cookie and privacy policy that is available on your website. Make sure it's viewable. So, yeah, there's a lot of kind of stuff to set up, but then, once it's there, you can start getting that really good data and really personalize and activating your communications with it. Nice, I think that is about all we have for that section. Hayden's always good chatting with you. I think that is about all we have for that section. Hayden's always good chatting with you. First party data make sure you're still collecting it. Google might still be allowing those third party cookies, but hey, first party is always best.

Rich Harper

So today, on our second topic, we are going to be discussing how personal brand can impact wider brand perception. I'm joined by a fabulous panel from the team at Brew Digital. We have Kieran O'Neill, a regular on our podcast, who is an account manager. We have Steph, who is making her maiden appearance on the podcast. Steph is head of design. Welcome, steph.

Steph Smith

Hiya, you all right.

Rich Harper

And completing the panel and returning from previous episodes, is the lovely Danica, who is a senior Fullstack developer. How are you doing, danica?

Danica Walpole

I'm good Nice to be back your full stack developer.

Rich Harper

How are you doing, danica Good, nice to be back. This topic is around personal branding. For those that are unsure of the difference between personal branding and corporate branding, I want us to just kind of explore, one, what it is, and two, how does it differ, before we go into a bit more juiciness around this topic. Steph, what do you think what is personal branding as head of design, and how does it differ from corporate branding?

Steph Smith

Personal branding is essentially about it's kind of an extension of your not to get too deep into it, but the psychology of it. The get too deep into it, but the psychology, the psychology of it, the person that you're trying to be, the person that you want to create for yourself. It's the outward brand, the outward persona that you show to the world. The best example of this is like influencer marketing on social media loads and loads of people that are essentially presenting a view of themselves, their lifestyles, to the world. That is a personal, personal brand. They're not attached to a company, but some of them obviously are affiliated, which is where we can kind of get talking about it later. But corporate branding is very much about a business making sales or selling services. They are very much about the transaction between like customer and purchase, whereas personal branding is usually about like influence, reputation and just engagement with that figure.

Rich Harper

That personal figure. I think that's a pretty good summary. It's that individual, isn't it? It as a person, what your values are, what, how you want to portray yourself? Especially now with the rise of social media, it's potentially that personal brands that people share online is the one that they want people to see. It may not necessarily be true of that individual. Do we have any good examples of successful personal brands? Just in general, in the kind of social sphere? Kieran, you've mentioned what we know from previous episodes you like talking about cars and racing. Is there any specific personal brands in industries you follow that you think are successful?

Ciaran O'Neill 

Absolutely One of the biggest upsets actually because it's a good one to talk about in terms of personal brand is Emoji P, where we had Marc Marquez, who spent about a decade with Repsol Honda and he's now moved over to Giacatti, specifically Grassini Giacatti team.

Ciaran O'Neill

There's an intersection there between sports and business which is always kind of great to dive into, but it's a high profile collaboration. It significantly will elevate the brand perception of Grassini. But the big one we're talking about here is jacati. They've got marquez on it on a jacati, which is huge. So that's going to attract sponsors. That's going to increase public interest and as a result because they tend to time in for it is now come out that he is going to be a jacati for longer than just one year there's an immediate financial gain, but there's also long-term brand equity that they're going to unlock and by aligning Mark with Ducati's brand values, there's going to be substantial brand appeal. Businesses can create a narrative that enhances that brand perception and helps produce an environment or a strategy that is going to build further investments and partnerships.

Rich Harper

I'm going to throw it over to Danica maybe outside of that sports business world, because there's lots of those link-ups in sports between personalities and brands, football teams often not just trying to buy the best players for their own performance but they will also look at the commercial gain by having such players play for them. So it's kind of a common link Outside of the sporting world. What examples of successful personal brands can you share?

Danica Walpole

Well, when looking at this question, the first person that sort of came to mind was actually Oprah Winfrey. She is a talk show host, but if you look at her wider personal brand, that sort of spread into more of a wellness sphere where she sort of effectively sells her optimism and outlook on life through different forms of media. You know forms of media. It's amazing how one person's outlook and how they sort of built themselves up is something that they're able to monetize in different ways. But then I also think, more recently, if we're looking at less positive examples, it's just that with the whole sort of CrowdStrike fiasco you've got their CEO, george Kurtzz, then discussing how this is the most devastating thing to happen in decades to their brand and also his personal brand. He's built a lot of that reliability up in terms of you know the cyber security sphere. So it's that sort of lourish between you can have a personal brand, but even if you represent a company, if something goes wrong there, that also can have a devastating impact on your own personal brand.

Danica Walpole

So I feel like when we go back to talking about personal versus corporate branding nowadays, especially with the rise of social media, those two are very much meshed.

Rich Harper

That's a really interesting point because there's the positivity of of having a strong personal brand attached to your corporate brand, but there's also that risk of well both ways one having the the corporate brand then impacting you personally. You know, to Ciaran's point, that moto gp rider is famous and is going to bring a lot of equity to the brand, but if the brand equally do something damaging, it could have a negative impact on that individual. So, from a kind of risk perspective, how do companies balance the personal brand on one side and how it impacts the corporate brand on another? It impacts the corporate brand on another.

Rich Harper

I'm going to start there before we flip it around, because first things come to mind, or a person that comes to mind that has a big personal brand, potentially not in a good way, is Elon Musk, who's been a regular feature on this podcast. I guess there's an argument does he have a positive or a negative impact on on the brands that he owns or the brands that he talks about? He's even waded in recently on Twitter about the unrest in the uk and is having a say on the fact that apparently there is going to be a civil war in the uk now. He is quite a big personality. It's quite powerful if he says something. So I guess my question is this doesn't necessarily need to center around elon, but how do we balance that risk, Steph?

Steph Smith

I mean I've definitely got a little bit of input on the Musk bit, specifically precisely because you called it Twitter, so you didn't call it X anymore and that is so so telling of how Elon Musk's own personal brand has really changed and altered and people are not buying into whatever he's saying what he's selling quite as much anymore's.

Steph Smith

I'm taking my own personal feelings out of it, but like that is really really telling right and I think, in terms of whether corporations can like, I suppose, like protect themselves in the personal brand and also like vice versa, it has to be like an ongoing strategic decision and it has to be like monitored consistently.

Steph Smith

So I mean, I would always recommend fairly short-term contracts, especially when you're reaching out or affiliating yourself with someone new from a personal brand perspective, if you're a company, but also just understanding why that person is providing value to you but, more importantly, to your customers. It's all about knowing your audience, knowing your market, doing your research and understanding what value they're actually providing, rather than oh my goodness, this person is so cool, I really want them attached to my brand. It's just not good enough. It's a bit like any kind of brand being like, hey, we're doing a rebrand, but we really really love blue, and then just making everything blue. Why is it blue? You need to have a really really solid strategy behind it. So yeah, that would be my advice and obviously just keep monitoring. You need really good, strong terms of contract.

Rich Harper

Danica, you raised earlier around CrowdStrike as an example. How can companies Steph touching it, but how else can companies potentially manage the risk on both sides?

Danica Walpole

That's the burning question. Really. I don't think any business really has it sorted completely. But one thing that does spring to mind and it's actually quite a good model with this is that if you're going to attach any form of personal branding, I think it's quite a good idea to attach it in almost a temporary sense. I think that's where in recent years we've seen the rise in things like influence and marketing, because with the rise of things like cancel culture and stuff, if there is something that goes wrong that's attached to a personal brand, if you're working with somebody on a contract basis, it's a lot easier to sort of disband that connection rather than it be someone who effectively is your business. If you're working with people on that sort of transactional level, then you can detach if things go wrong and actually I think that links nicely to listeners that have been following the podcast for a while now.

Rich Harper

We actually touched on crisis management as a topic, so be worth checking that episode out if you haven't before. Okay, so we'll look to kind of wrap it up and just get some little snippets that people can take away from this, this section. If, if companies are actively looking to to promote personal brands, to leverage their own corporate brand, what, what advice would we give our listeners?

Rich Harper

Ciaran, I'm going to start with you.

Ciaran O'Neill 

Ensuring that there's no misalignment which can create a reputational risk. Steph's point about terms conditions in contracts is a good idea. It's making sure that you've got a balance, you don't have an over-reliance, you make sure that the person isn't too big for the business, which can create a distraction from the company's main strategy and main communication and so on. I don't think everyone should align with company values, but if we're talking specifically about people who are being ambassadors and they're being paid to do so and and they're in a public facing senior role, that person and the company should express a cohesive, unified and consistent message to ensure you have authenticity and integrity and by kind of keeping those things together, working on a strategy together, you know that ensures that it all stays on track.

Rich Harper

And what about employees? They can have personal brands. Steph, what advice would you give. Like, how do you get employees to share common values, you know, with the corporate brand?

Steph Smith

I mean that all kind of comes down to hiring right. It's not really about ensuring that your employees share your corporate values. It's about hiring the right people. You hire people that you know will not only like it at your company but thrive and be a champion of your brand and your values, just naturally. So you don't hire anyone that doesn't suit them but also like kind of following on from karen there.

Steph Smith

The people that you hire, or the people that you have like hire as ambassadors, for example, if you get influences, they don't have to align with where you currently are, because what you've always done won't get you to where you want to go potentially. And if you want to make a change, then you need to be able to do that in some way. A really great example of that is NBC hiring Snoop Dogg to essentially be the US ambassador and cover the Olympics right now. They're just doing something completely different and it's, I mean, in my eyes. I think it's genius, I think it's brilliant. They're going in a completely different direction to what you would expect and it's such a fantastic nugget of content. Like he is all over social media right now. So is NBC, so is the US team, so I think that that's a really, really good example.

Steph Smith

But in terms of employees, at the end of the day, it's kind of the same whether they're working for you within your company or you're hiring an influencer. We're marketers. We know that marketing is all about understanding people. It's people that you're marketing to. It's people that are buying products, whether or not it's a B2B sale or a B2C sale. But at the end of the day, the people that work for you are also human and I think we do all make errors and we all make problems and we all, in this age of cancel culture, we're kind of all at risk because we're not all perfect. We are all human and I think that is just the condition of working with other people. You don't want to work with other people.

Rich Harper

That's a great answer, and Snoop Dogg is a genius move. I'm pretty sure I saw him at the dressage the other day in full rider gear sitting and watching.

Steph Smith

Oh my God. I've been waiting for this moment my whole life.

Rich Harper

You were just sitting there like.

Steph Smith

I was like I'm going to pull up with one of the everything to me.

Rich Harper

I'm just going to wrap it up quickly with Danica. Can you give our listeners any pitfalls that they should potentially look for?

Danica Walpole

I think really, marketing is king. It's you know you need it to sell a service or a product. But when it comes to personal branding, I think it's a great tool to use, but just make sure that your product or service is always what shines through. As we said, people are people. Things can happen. But if, at the end of the day, what you're selling is so valuable, then that can sort of stand the test of that is sadly all we have time for today.

Haydn Woods-Williams

So thank you so much for listening. We hope you found some useful snippets from our sessions and you're able to go put them into your own marketing strategy. We love that you've made it this far through to the listen. We really enjoy making this content. Would love it if you could recommend the show to at least one friend two, if you've got that many. Thank you to Steph for her first appearance on the podcast and to the rest of the Brutal Digital team for their research and input into today's session. Do go back and check out our past episodes, Subscribe on whatever platform you listen to your podcasts on, and we will see you in the next one. I've been Hayden back from paternity and these guys and gals are marketers of the universe. Thank you.