Digital Experience Innovators: How Leading CMOs and CDOs are Modernizing Experiences and Brands for Digital-First Customers by Brian Solis

DIGITAL
EXPERIENCE
INNOVATORS
How Leading CMOs and CDOs
are Modernizing Experiences and Brands
for Digital-First Customers
BY BRIAN SOLIS
PRINCIPAL ANALYST,
ALTIMETER, A PROPHET COMPANY
RESEARCH REPORT

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Disruptive technologies are accelerating and reshaping the evolution of markets while
also influencing customer behaviors and expectations. These events have ushered in an
era of digital Darwinism, where the most adaptable and resilient brands survive and thrive.
According to some leading chief marketing officers (CMOs) and chief digital officers (CDOs),
rapidly evolving technology and the shifting roles of CX and digital marketing are opening
the doors for experience innovation and ultimately brand relevance.
In this report, Altimeter shares insights from interviews with progressive CMOs and CDOs
who are blazing the trail. They report that the same disruptive technologies defining
digital Darwinism have also positively impacted how leading brands can compete. A shift
to a modern digital customer journey means brands have access to a massive amount
of real-time customer data. Innovative brands invest heavily in collecting, interpreting,
and understanding it to invest in experience innovation to become highly relevant and
on-demand for always-on customers. Empowered with real-time customer insights, they
embrace disruptive technologies—from AI and machine learning to best- in-class mobile
platforms—to completely innovate dated and fragmented customer journeys of yesterday;
make brands more available, deliver more personalized customer experiences; and drive
customer loyalty and business growth.
Modernizing experiences to such an extent requires a new approach to CX, marketing and
leadership. Innovative brands are transforming conventional organizational models around
customer data and experience, bringing together the disparate parts of the organization
that touch the customer journey to share data, collaborate, and build capabilities to rapidly
test and learn. A new breed of marketers are increasingly taking the lead in these efforts
to modernize the entire customer journey and deliver seamless customer experiences. In
the process they are evolving the role of marketing within the organization to help brands
compete in an era of digital Darwinism. This sets the stage for next-level experience-led
innovation where the value proposition, brand and the customer’s experience are all one by
design and execution.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Executive Summary..............................................................................................................................................
Introduction............................................................................................................................................................
Innovative Brands Invest in Real-Time Customer Data
and Place It at the Center of Business Transformation............................................................................
Smart Brands Focus on Digital Discoverability to Become
the “Mentally Available” Brand to Customers.............................................................................................
Experience Innovators Leverage Customer Insights and Technology Innovation
to Deliver Personalized Experiences and Stay Relevant..........................................................................
Next Steps.............................................................................................................................................................
Methodology.........................................................................................................................................................
About Us................................................................................................................................................................
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INTRODUCTION
At the core of digital Darwinism are the
evolving digital customers. Until recently,
much of the customer journey was dated
and fragmented, often leaving consumers
frustrated. Today, consumers are more
connected, informed, and empowered than
ever before. They expect information and
services on-demand, and they increasingly
expect personalized engagement regardless
of channel. These now-pervasive, always-
on, real-time customers value modern
experiences that are seamless, efficient, and
assistive across their devices. And many
times, this is the deciding factor of which
brand or product to purchase.
As customers are exposed to convenient,
instant, and personalized experiences,
their standards for excellence are pushed
beyond yesterday’s metrics of success. Any
experience that strays from their current
expectations for what’s extraordinary is
suddenly sub par. As such, yesterday’s
services and value propositions, customer
journeys, and mechanisms for engagement
seem basic and ordinary for them. This sets
the stage for brand disruption.
For innovative brands, going digital places
the spotlight on all things customer-related.
It gives them unprecedented access to
data and insights around customer intent,
behaviors, and expectations, and it exposes
roadblocks and weaknesses in the customer
journey. It also reveals previously overlooked
or untouched aspects of the journey,
opening the door for new opportunities to
engage with customers.
Our research shows that, to stay ahead of
the competition, today’s most innovative
brands are making significant technology
and operational investments to improve
and modernize this customer journey and
deliver truly effective CX—the representation
of the total experience customers maintain
throughout their entire journey and lifecycle.
More specifically:
1. Innovative brands invest in collecting
and interpreting real-time data to better
understand their customers—and they
also deploy new technologies like AI and
machine learning to quickly analyze and
respond to it instantly and automatically.
2. They focus on discoverability. Getting to
customers first matters more than ever.

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3. They engage with customers in more
personalized ways, delivering relevant and
on-trend customer experiences that drive
business growth. By delivering relevance
and usefulness to customers in important
“moments of truth,” brands become a
valuable companion in their journey.
4. They bring previously disparate and
siloed functions together in an effort to
deliver a cohesive and seamless customer
journey and CX that foster customer
loyalty and become the standard by which
customers judge all other experiences.
5. Regardless of their industry, they
become “tech companies” in their
own way. They embrace technology
innovation to deliver faster, intuitive, and
best-in-class customer experiences.
In a market where many brands are investing
in digital to compete for attention at scale,
CX can become a significant competitive
advantage. By focusing on experience as
a driver for customer value and business
growth, marketers at these innovative
brands are earning the ability to gain more
influence beyond conventional marketing.
As a result, they are in unique positions to
lead cross-functional marketing initiatives
that prioritize customer innovation while
directly contributing to the bottom line.
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INNOVATIVE BRANDS
INVEST IN REAL-TIME
CUSTOMER DATA
AND PLACE IT AT THE
CENTER OF BUSINESS
TRANSFORMATION
Most organizations are not innovative
by design. Legacy business models,
complicated executive hierarchies, and a
dated perspective of customers make it a
challenge to break new ground. But if they
aim to survive, thrive, and compete for the
future, they must innovate. So, how can
traditional companies do so? The answers
we heard in our interviews lie in data.
As customer journeys have become
overwhelmingly digital, brands have access
to extraordinary levels of real-time customer
data. By studying this customer data, they
are able to discover new opportunities to
deeply engage their customers at the right
time, in the right place, in the right way. This,
in turn, has allowed marketers to shift away
from conventional marketing efforts and
instead work with (and often lead) others
in the organization to create more relevant
customer experiences and business growth.
At Hyundai Motor America, for example,
marketing has evolved from what its CMO,
Dean Evans, described as a “creative exercise
and crossing your fingers” to becoming “data
driven” and “performance based.” Like other
automotive brands, Hyundai has had to face
the stark reality that visits to dealerships
have dramatically decreased from five down
to two1
as digital radically reshaped the car-
buying customer journey. While in the past,
consumers did their research about which
car to buy and why right at the dealership,
today they are doing so online before ever
setting foot on the lot.
Evans—who was ranked one of the world’s
most influential CMOs by Forbes2
in 2018—
explains: “In auto, it used to be the sales
chief who was the revenue generator. But
what we’re finding today is that sales teams
[still] can affect conversion at retail by
getting retailers to close those leads better,
and that’s important. But it takes data and
a progressive marketing department to get
the person in the dealership to begin with.”
Like Hyundai, the digital interactive
entertainment company Electronic Arts (EA)
also made a bold move to ignite customer-
centered growth.3
In 2018, the company
placed its marketing, publishing (product
and sales), and analytics groups under the
leadership of CMO Chris Bruzzo.
“Our game analysts are sitting shoulder to
shoulder with the game developers, Bruzzo
explains. “It’s a central function, so they get
the expertise of data science, and analytics,
and research. They get the benefit of
proximity to the men and women who are
making the games. That has [allowed] us
to move much faster, collect insights, turn
them back over to the product teams, and
take action,” Bruzzo explained.
By integrating marketing, publishing
(entertainment products), and analytics, EA
hopes they will deliver incredible customer
experiences throughout the entire lifecycle,
accelerate business growth and, in the
process, future-proof the brand. The bridge
connecting these groups is data, which Bruzzo
refers to as “data-fueled creativity” and which
serve as the foundation to foster innovation.
Most organizations are not innovative
by design. Legacy business models,
complicated executive hierarchies, and a
dated perspective of customers make it a
challenge to break new ground.

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But EA, Hyundai, and other innovative
companies know that data is more than just
numbers. Understanding what that data
tells them about what customers are doing
right now and will do in the future is critical
to driving marketing decisions and business
growth. To do so, the most innovative brands
are increasingly focused on real-time data
and employing scientist and AI tools to make
sense of it.
Innovative Brands Focus on
Real-time Data
To deliver meaningful customer experiences,
progressive brands are seeking to understand
what customers are doing right now, not
what they did weeks or months ago.
At HomeAway, a leading online marketplace
for vacation rental, real-time data is used
to improve not only customer experiences
but also business performance. All of
HomeAway’s segmentation, for example,
is now based on up-to-the-moment data
on how customers behave across multiple
channels, including the company’s site, app,
social media channels, and more. David
Baekholm, SVP of Growth Marketing, and
his team actively identify real-time customer
signals to associate key behaviors with
outcomes, such as likeliness to convert,
either now or in the future. These insights
drive HomeAway’s marketing decisions,
creative strategy, and predictive bidding
decisions.
“Marketing is now a feedback loop,”
Baekholm contended. “These signals help
[us] understand in real-time what our
customers want and how to give them a
frictionless experience that helps them
convert when they’re ready.”
For example, if a customer visits
HomeAway.com, Baekholm’s team can use
the real-time customer’s behavior data to
identify whether that customer is merely
researching and might convert several
weeks in the future and to differentiate that
customer from those whose behaviors
identify them as being ready to book
immediately. HomeAway then customizes
content and messaging that’s useful to
customers at different stages in their
customer journey to keep them engaged
until they’re ready to rent.
Real-time data also helps HomeAway deliver
what customers want by examining what
they don’t want.
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“The reality many brands don’t realize is that
your customers are already telling you what
they like and what they don’t like.” Baekholm
explains. “As marketers, it’s our job to get rid
of all of the noise and all of the clutter that
is actually confusing them.” For example,
one of the first exercises his team engaged
in was looking at the data to understand
what customers don’t want from digital
experiences. Their findings? Customers
hated irrelevant landing pages, annoying
ads, and cumbersome checkout processes.
“Fixing [these] fundamentals is really
what prepared us to drive future growth,”
Baekholm affirms.
This fast-paced, data-driven mindset has
helped marketing at HomeAway become
a strategic business partner in driving
long-term growth. “One reason why
[digital marketing is moving to the core of
the organization] is that smart marketers
measure and analyze every point in the
customer journey, which enables us to invest
exactly where we know we’re going to get
the most short- and long-term returns,”
Baekholm, shared. “That data is much more
effective when it’s being applied quickly.”
One form of proof may well be in their
profits. According to parent company
Expedia Group, gross bookings on the
HomeAway platform amounted to $8.7
billion in 2017. That number continues to rise.
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Innovative Brands “Humanize” Data
by Engaging Data Scientists
As data becomes more pervasive, engaging
experts who can translate that data becomes
increasingly paramount. The story behind
the data “humanizes” or makes sense of
evolving customer behaviors and guides
where investments in products, services, and
customer engagement can be advantageous.
Julie Rieger, president, chief data strategist,
and head of media at 20th Century Fox Film,
explains that to get beyond the numbers
and to the heart of the story, the company
employs data scientists and psychologists.
“Numbers only tell you so much,” Rieger
says. “We get the data, and we sort it and
then translate and understand it. That has
been one of the most valuable things to
improving what we do and how we perform.”
The centralized, holistic, and relevant data
that Rieger’s group collects and “humanizes”
with the help of data scientists supports
every aspect of the business. “My job is to
provide signals about what our consumers
think, feel, and do,” Rieger explained. “I
hand that off to production. I hand it off to
marketing and let them own it. I’m here to
give them more information.”
Rieger’s work has become instrumental to
the entire organization precisely because it
empowers transformation and innovation
throughout, contributing directly to business
growth. “The vision that we set early on
was to affect everything that we did at the
company,” she revealed. “If you’re going to
transform, you can’t just transform in one
division. You must transform as a company.”
HomeAway also leverages the expertise of
data scientists to better understand their
customers. “One thing that changed is our
focus on how we handle data,” Baekholm
shared. “We have a large, growing team of
data scientists to build models and roll out
machine-learning algorithms that better
understand things in real time.” Their team is
leveraging automation and machine learning
while building a team of data scientists to
move at the speed of the customer.
Innovative Brands Invest in
AI Tools to Understand and
Act on Customer Data
Like HomeAway, the forward-thinking
brands we talked to are investing in machine
learning to cluster data into meaningful
buckets and identify actionable insights,
especially when dealing with a constant
influx of real-time signals.
For example, HomeAway has shifted from
the manual optimization of marketing
insights toward the bold new world of AI
to move from a reactive model to one that
can assess real-time opportunities and also
predict customer behavior. “Automation is
crucial to real-time predictive marketing,”
Baekholm said. “We can accurately predict
whether a customer is going to convert
tomorrow, two weeks from now, six weeks
from now, or not at all.” The right data
combined with the right tools are not
only becoming better at finding the right
customers, they’re also focused on not
spending money on the wrong customers.
HomeAway isn’t alone on this front. 20th
Century Fox Film’s Rieger also shared
intentions of building real-time and
predictive capabilities: “Being able to not only
understand your customer behaviors, but
also predict it is what we’re building toward.”

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SMART BRANDS
FOCUS ON DIGITAL
DISCOVERABILITY
TO BECOME THE
“MENTALLY AVAILABLE”
BRAND TO CUSTOMERS
There’s an old adage in marketing: “Out of
sight, out of mind.” This is truer today in
an increasingly noisy and distracted
digital world.
Consumers aren’t just looking for the best
product or price in the early stages of
their journey; they’re also seeking relevant,
meaningful, and immediate assistance
to help them make important purchasing
decisions. To stay top of mind, smart brands
are investing heavily in innovating the
earliest stages of the customer journey—
search and discoverability.
As many leaders we talked to observed,
digital—and increasingly mobile—search
creates an abundance of new engagement
opportunities online and offline. Brands
that study customer data to understand
what those opportunities are—and for what
customers—increase the likelihood that
customers will be aware of relevant offerings
at the right moments in the customer
journey. Brands that don’t, however, are
taking an extraordinary and unnecessary
risk by hoping they will show up in searches
when consumers seek product information
and solutions online.
Nestlé Waters North America is one of those
brands that focuses extensively on the early
stages of the customer journey. Antonio
Sciuto, its former CMO, believes marketers
ought to think of digital search as shopping
in a store or through a printed catalog.
When customers visit a physical store, they
look for a specific product or consider
various brands within a specific category.
As they decide which offering is best for
them in that moment, they can only decide
among the products available to them right
there and then. The same is true when
customers shop online.
“If you are not there, if you are not on the
first page, consumers will not find you,”
Sciuto expressed. Consumers are likely to
find someone else who is, leaving brands
vulnerable as they are not even part of
customers’ consideration—even if they
might be the best option for them. This
is especially dangerous since, in an era
of mobile and pervasive connectedness,
consumers now research even the smallest
of everyday decisions.
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To compete, Nestlé Waters’ team is treating
search with the same enthusiasm that it
does retail shelf space. “Search is the most
important touchpoint,” Sciuto exclaimed.
“We need to think about search with the
same obsession that we think about our
store shelving.” he explains. “If you’re not
immediately present, you’re not part of
the decision."
Carnival Cruise Corporation, like Nestlé
Waters, understands that to be part of
customers’ decisions, it must be at the
top of their minds. But that’s easier said
than done. According to the company,
only 25 percent of consumers in the U.S.
have taken a cruise. At first blush, it would
appear that, to drive untapped growth, the
cruise industry needs to simply target the
75 percent who’ve never taken a cruise.
The reality is that cruises compete against
a growing number of travel and cultural
experiences and most consumers simply
don’t consider them an option.
“We actually don’t need all of the world
to be cruisers,” explained Kathy Mayor,
former chief digital officer at Carnival Cruise
Corporation. “We need to find those who
are in vacation mode right now and who we
can predict are most likely to be a cruiser.” To
win those customers early in their vacation
planning, Carnival, like other cruise brands,
hyper-focus on those consumers who are
open to cruising. They do so by studying
customer data to understand how, when,
and where to compete.
To find these customers, Carnival starts
by analyzing their customer data. Over
the years, the company has assembled
customer segmentations across and within
their cruise brands, including, Princess,
Holland America, and Costa. The company
also tracks customer data across those
brands to predict people who are most likely
to cruise and with whom. Then Carnival
combines its data
with signals it picks
up from search to
predict customer
needs and deliver a
personal experience
at any touchpoint.
“When it comes time
to decide on a cruise
vacation,” according
to Mayor, the goal
is for Carnival to be
consumers’ first “mentally available option.”
Carnival does so through “transitivity law.”
It suggests that if you like “A” and “A” is
associated with “B”, then you will probably
like “B”. The “A” in Carnival’s case is
cultural relevance.
“We’ve associated ourselves with the
passion points of music, with comedy, with
food,” Mayor shared. “Carnival brand has
worked with Lip Sync Battle with Paramount
Networks, Comedy Central, with Guy Fieri,
and because of that, we now become
mentally available as the brand-salient
option when it comes time to plan your
vacation,” Mayor explained.
Carnival believes that by combining real-
time data with cultural relevance, they are
more likely to establish meaningful and
productive engagement with customers
early in their journey. For example, her
team developed five-second videos that
highlight different, targeted passion points
like “outdoor adventure or family fun or live
entertainment or culinary delights,” Mayor
shared. “If you’re in a food site, then you
actually get the five-second ad that is about
food. But if you’re in a mood music site,
then you get the five-second ad about live
entertainment.” The campaign was a big
success, driving brand recall (+37 percent)
and interest (+42 percent).
We actually don't
need all of the world
to be cruisers...We
need to find those
who are in vacation
mode right now and
who we can predict
are most likely to be
a cruiser..

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EXPERIENCEINNOVATORS
LEVERAGE CUSTOMER
INSIGHTS AND
TECHNOLOGY
INNOVATION TO
DELIVER PERSONALIZED
EXPERIENCES AND
STAY RELEVANT
Innovative brands understand that it’s not
enough to win customers in the earliest part
of the customer journey. They launch focused
innovation programs that aim to expand
opportunities and reach new markets by
being highly relevant at every touchpoint.
Doing so introduces new value to customers.
Over time, this added value becomes
standard, making previous experiences seem
outdated and eventually obsolete.
But earning relevance among an increasingly
connected, mobile customer is no easy task.
The key is to understand what is meaningful
to customers at critical moments in the ever-
evolving customer journey and to deliver
personalized experiences based on that data.
Dan Wegiel, Panera Bread’s Chief Growth
and Strategy Officer, shared that the
company aims to maintain and earn
relevance with all the experiences the brand
offers via digital, mobile, and even analog.
“Before we even get to digital, the core of
[maintaining relevance] is actually what we
sell: It’s the food, which has to be special, has
to be differentiated, and for us, increasingly
rooted in wellness,” Wegiel stressed. In order
to make its great products even better,
Panera empowers consumers to customize
their experiences. “We’re allowing you as
a customer the power to control what you
eat,” Wegiel explained. “[That customization
is] built on our transparency.… You can see
all the ingredients in your food; you can then
modify that.… You can literally deconstruct
and reconstruct an entrée item.”
Panera views this personalization and the
data it creates as an instrumental factor in
driving loyalty and growth. “With our loyalty
program, you can save your favorites and
customize an order from that,” he explained.
This in turn provides Panera Bread with
a treasure trove of information about
customers’ individual food preferences, from
menu items down to specific ingredients.
“What that’s allowing us to do is…deliver
the types of items that they’re specifically
interested in,” Wegiel explains. “If you
love spicy food and we know some of the
ingredients in the foods that you like, when
we introduce a new item that fits that profile,
we want to talk to you about it,” Wegiel
exclaimed. “It all increases the stickiness that
customers have with us and the relevance of
our communication with them.”
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Developing a great product, being fully
transparent, and personalizing the experience
serves as a strong customer-centric
foundation at Panera. Like other experience
innovators, the company understands
its future lies in innovation through mass
personalization. “If I know all these things that
you like to eat, I could go down the path of
customizing a menu just for you,” he shared.
Wegiel noted that while Panera sets out
to increase the relevance of the brand for
the long term with its loyal customers, it
is also expanding its reach. “What we’re
finding is that by translating signals into
insights, we’re learning what it takes to
expand our reach and continually appeal to
younger customers,” he shared. “And, we are
becoming more relevant to them.”
Deeply understanding what their customers
want allows brands like Panera to engage
in a personalized, highly-relevant way with
them and, in turn, drive customer loyalty and
growth. Not knowing what your customers
or potential customers care about the
most, on the other hand, opens the door for
plugged-in, informed competitors to swoop
in and deliver against unmet opportunities.
Experience Innovators
Put Marketers at the Helm of
Cross-Functional, Integrated
Efforts Focused on CX and
Customer Loyalty
A happy customer is a loyal customer. Loyal
customers become proud stewards of the
brand, advocating their experiences and
going out of their way to spend more time
and money with the brand. Smart brands
know that to go from successfully converting
customers to making them loyal ones, they
must work closely with the many disparate
parts of the organization that engage with
customers at various touchpoints. And their
marketing departments are increasingly
taking the lead to bring together these
various parts and—armed with a deep
understanding of the customer—create a
cohesive, seamless customer experience
from discovery to loyalty.
“It’s hard to provide customers with a unified
experience without first having a holistic
view of the customer,” Nestlé Waters’ Sciuto
shared. “And, none of this is possible unless
you unify your marketing teams.”
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Integration is key. Customers don’t care
about silos. Customers simply choose
brands that are present in their discovery
process, and that offer relevant, value-added
experiences throughout the customer
journey. “To grow your business, everyone
has to adopt a mindset focused on what the
customer wants,” Karin Timpone, Marriot
International global marketing officer,
explains. “Our customer doesn’t care about
how the organization is designed; they care
about the experience they’re going to get.
It’s really up to us to connect the dots to
make sure that the experience for them is
seamless and worthwhile.”
At the most customer-centric brands,
marketers and performance teams work
together sharing data and ensuring all
touchpoints play together. Once they do,
technology becomes a powerful enabler
of integrated, relevant, and value-added
customer experiences.
At Marriott International, for example,
developing customer loyalty is a core
strategy that touches every milestone of the
customer journey. To define and strengthen
the relationship with these loyal customers,
however, the entire organization is involved.
“Marketers can kick off the conversation,
setting a course around a ‘Loyalty Mindset,’”
Timpone explains. “But here’s the key: It is not
only marketing; rather everyone has to join
together to deliver what the customer wants.”
At Marriott, that means delivering loyalty-
centered experiences beyond the booking.
“It’s important to consider the experience
more than just getting somebody at that
moment of booking,” Timpone emphasized.
“We want [customers] to be thinking even
more around their travel and the experience
they’re going to have.”
Her team has
developed global
partnerships in
entertainment,
sports, and
culinary to create
experiences for
Marriott customers.
They also launched
a cutting-edge
content studio
that develops
rich content to offer customers ideas for
activities and attractions at their destination
spots. “It’s all about showcasing destinations
and inspiring someone with the potential
experiences that can happen when they
arrive. Every year, our ‘Moments’ platform
offers more and more memorable ways to
experience travel,” she said.
Marriott has now reached over 110 million
loyalty members. It’s clear that putting
loyalty and their members at the center
of everything has been transformative
and a decisive factor in driving customer
satisfaction and business growth.
Timpone, like other leading executives in
our research, believes that the marketing
organization must take the lead in unifying
customer experiences from discovery to
loyalty. “Marketers can be great conveners in
an organization,” she observed.
That’s certainly the case at EA, where they
integrated business-centric functions
like sales, analytics, and insights under
marketing “to constantly close the gap
between what we make, the messages
we create, and the players and their
experience,” EA’s CMO Chris Bruzzo
explained. By transforming the foundation
of its marketing division, built upon data and
insights, EA is driving innovation and growth
through more meaningful and rewarding
player experiences.
At the most
customer-centric
brands, marketers
and performance
teams work together
sharing data
and ensuring all
touchpoints play
together.

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Leading Brands Embrace
Technology Innovation to Deliver
Best-in-Class Customer Experiences
and Amplify Growth
The technology revolution is a never-ending
story. Since the dawn of the Internet and
e-commerce, it’s been unfolding chapter-
by-chapter, from smartphones to wearables,
from AI and machine learning to augmented
and virtual reality. Technology has not
only made customers more connected
and informed, it has also made them
more curious, demanding, and impatient.
Customers are being conditioned to get what
they want, where and when they want it.
Smart brands are becoming technology
companies, in their own way, to keep up
with these shifting customer expectations.
These brands embrace innovation at the
highest level to deliver faster, intuitive, and
personalized customer experiences, and to
drive business growth and loyalty.
Innovation and CX are at the core of how
a 57-year-old pizza company became a
leading e-commerce company. At Domino’s
Pizza, customers once had only two choices
for ordering a pizza: calling or walking
into a store. In a mobile-driven world,
those options had to evolve as customer
expectations shifted. Today, 60 percent of
all orders are placed online, and half of those
come through via mobile devices.
“People are ordering pizza, we have to
make it, they then track it, we deliver it, and
when you look at that entire experience,
technology plays a really big role,” chief
digital officer Dennis Maloney shared. “For us
to get really good at it, we needed to change
the way we were thinking about ourselves.
If you started thinking about yourselves like
an e-commerce company, you start asking
the question, what makes a really good
e-commerce company?”
14

15
To ensure a seamless customer experience,
Domino’s invested in process and service
innovation along with technology,
especially best-in-class mobile innovation.
Product information, number of clicks to
order, payments—anything that can slow
down the ordering process can jeopardize
the transaction or worse, lead to lost
customers altogether. As Maloney shared,
“Friction burns customers.”4
Some of the
questions that Maloney and his team
sought to answer, for example, were how to
remove that friction and make ordering as
effortless as possible.
“We have a zero-click ordering app now,”
he exclaimed. “If you’re a loyal customer
and you don’t have to do basically anything
to get a Domino’s pizza, that’s great!” In
fact, today there are over 15 ways to order
Domino’s pizza, ranging from sending a
pizza emoji over social media to a voice
command on Google Home.
This kind of innovation can revamp people’s
perception of a brand and, more importantly,
provide your most loyal customers with what
they need — instantly. To get there, Maloney
explained the importance of cultivating a
culture of innovation and new organizational
models. In this case, Domino’s formed
a strategic partnership between IT and
marketing to work together to build, test,
and learn.
"Honestly, I think that’s our secret sauce,”
Maloney revealed. “Our marketing and IT
groups actually work together. Everyone
on both of those teams is trying to
achieve the same goals. We win together;
we fail together.”
At the rapid and accelerating pace of
technology and consumer evolution,
innovation now needs to become part of
every brand strategy aiming to compete.
“Evolution is happening so fast that by the
time you actually realize what they’re doing,
it’s already a mass event and there’s tons of
people that are doing something,” Maloney
underscored. “We have to try and get ahead
of them in the process, and that helps by
having really good partners, by doing really
good research, and honestly by being really
good with the data and what you’re doing as
a brand.”
As a result of becoming a “technology and
e-commerce company” and investing in
innovative CX, Domino’s has made massive
strides in business growth. Domino’s is now
the largest pizza company in the world and
the fastest-growing quick-service restaurant
brand. The company has also doubled market
share from 9% to 18% since 2009, the early
days of the company’s digital transformation.

16
NEXT STEPS
Smart brands are delivering exceptional
customer experiences by embracing
disruptive technologies, organizing around
data, and focusing on CX as a catalyst for
driving business performance and growth.
As a result, these experience innovators
are also setting the standard for how
brands should engage customers in every
touchpoint throughout their journey and
lifecycle. Here are a few things you can do to
keep up and avoid ending up on the wrong
side of disruption:
Modernize the Role of Marketing
Around Total CX: In an era of abundant
data, AI, and machine-learning platforms,
the role of marketing can finally deliver
customer experiences that meet or exceed
modern customer expectations while also
contributing to the bottom line. Create a
cross-functional group led by marketing that
maps the customer journey, assembles data
across touchpoints, studies industry best
practices, and organizes around journey
renovation and innovation.
Invest and Organize Around Data:
Prioritizing clean, comprehensive, and up-
to-the-minute data is critical, as it is the
source of relevant and in-the-moment
customer insights. Data and analytics
become key functions as they provide real-
time and eventually predictive service to
an integrated, cross-functional marketing
organization that can test, learn, and grow.
Make Data “Storytelling” Part of the
Process: Real-time data and insights can
help sell purposeful digital transformation
to the entire organization. The C-suite and
other critical business functions, however,
need to hear customer data and insights in
personalized, compelling, and hyper-relevant
ways to create a sense of urgency.
Become the Standout, “Mentally
Available” Brand: Study smart signals
to become discoverable in every micro-
moment. Then introduce relevant content
in relevant channels to win customers’
consideration and preference early in the
customer journey.
Engage the Entire Organization Around
Fostering Loyalty: Like in life, business
success comes down to relationships. To
drive customer loyalty, you must deliver
a relevant and seamless experience that
becomes the new standard for engagement.
That means every part of the organization
that touches the customer journey must
work in unison to identify customers’ needs
and preferences and focus on real-time
customer personalization.
Become a Tech Innovator: The only way to
thwart disruption is to become a disruptor.
To disrupt you must make technology
investments that create new value for
customers through relevant products and
services that align with their decision-
making and desired experiences.
Don’t Forget Customer-Centric Metrics
When Measuring Performance: Many
companies focus on financial metrics, units
sold, or revenue growth. But putting the
customer at the center of your business
operations and measuring CX at the highest
level is critically important to changing the
way your company operates. Measuring
business performance along with customer-
centric KPIs, such as customer lifetime
value, also moves the purview of marketing
beyond the top of the funnel and positions it
as an enabler for total CX.

17
ENDNOTES
1
https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/marketing-resources/experience-design/hyundai-car-
shopping-customer-journey/
2
https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbespr/2018/06/21/forbes-releases-2018-worlds-most-
influential-cmos-report/#39be1e2b7125
3
https://www.ea.com/en-gb/news/updates-to-our-executive-team
4
https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/marketing-resources/experience-design/dominos-
customer-expectations-mobile-experience/
METHODOLOGY
This document was developed based upon secondary research, and in-person conversations
with nine experts from leading brands. Our deepest gratitude to the following:
Brand Leaders (9)
Julie Rieger, President, Chief Data Strategist & Head of Media at 20th Century Fox Film
Kathy Mayor, CMO at Carnival Cruise Line
Dennis Maloney, CDO at Domino’s
Chris Bruzzo, CMO at Electronic Arts
David Baekholm, SVP Growth Marketing at HomeAway
Dean Evans, CMO at Hyundai Motor America
Karin Timpone, Global Marketing Manager at Marriott International
Antonio Sciuto, EVP & CMO at Nestle Waters N.A.
Daniel Wegiel, Chief Growth and Strategy Officer at Panera
Open Research
This report is published under the principle of Open Research and is intended to advance the
industry at no cost. It is intended for you to read, utilize, and share with others; if you do so,
please provide attribution to Altimeter, a Prophet Company.
Permissions
The Creative Commons License is Attribution-NoncommercialShareAlike 3.0 United States,
which can be found at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/.
Disclaimer
ALTHOUGH THE INFORMATION AND DATA USED IN THIS REPORT HAVE BEEN PRODUCED AND PROCESSED FROM SOURCES BELIEVED
TO BE RELIABLE, NO WARRANTY EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED IS MADE REGARDING THE COMPLETENESS, ACCURACY, ADEQUACY, OR USE OF
THE INFORMATION. THE AUTHORS AND CONTRIBUTORS OF THE INFORMATION AND DATA SHALL HAVE NO LIABILITY FOR ERRORS OR
OMISSIONS CONTAINED HEREIN OR FOR INTERPRETATIONS THEREOF. REFERENCE HEREIN TO ANY SPECIFIC PRODUCT OR VENDOR BY
TRADE NAME, TRADEMARK, OR OTHERWISE DOES NOT CONSTITUTE OR IMPLY ITS ENDORSEMENT, RECOMMENDATION, OR FAVORING
BY THE AUTHORS OR CONTRIBUTORS AND SHALL NOT BE USED FOR ADVERTISING OR PRODUCT ENDORSEMENT PURPOSES. THE OPIN-
IONS EXPRESSED HEREIN ARE SUBJECT TO CHANGE WITHOUT NOTICE.

18
ABOUT US
About Brian Solis, Principal Analyst and Futurist
Brian Solis is Principal Analyst and Futurist at Altimeter, the digital analyst group at
Prophet. He studies disruptive technology and its impact on business. He is also a digital
anthropologist who seeks to better understand how technology affects and shapes
behaviors, norms, and society. Through his research and published work, he humanizes
disruptive trends to help leaders understand how technology, markets, and people are
evolving and how to drive innovation and growth.
In addition, Brian is an award-winning author and world-renowned keynote speaker
who is consistently recognized as one of the most prominent thought leaders in digital
transformation, innovation, experience design and digital humanities. Brian has authored
several best-selling books including X: The Experience When Business Meets Design, What’s
the Future of Business (WTF), The End of Business as Usual and Engage! Brian’s latest book is
entitled Lifescale: How to Live a More Creative, Productive, and Happy Life.
With a loyal online audience of over 700,000 people, his work makes him a sought-after
thought-leader to leading brands, celebrities such as Oprah, Shaq, and Ashton Kutcher and
over 1,000 startups.
HOW TO WORK WITH US
Altimeter research is applied and brought to life in our client engagements. We help
organizations understand and take advantage of digital disruption. There are several ways
Altimeter can help you with your business initiatives:
Strategy Consulting. Altimeter creates strategies and plans to help companies act on
business and technology trends, including AI and data strategy. Our team of analysts
and consultants work with global organizations on ideation and priority-setting, needs
assessments, strategy roadmaps, and pragmatic recommendations to address a range of
strategic challenges and opportunities.
Education and Workshops. Engage an Altimeter speaker to help make the business case to
executives or arm practitioners with new knowledge and skills.
Advisory. Retain Altimeter for ongoing research-based advisory: Conduct an ad hoc session
to address an immediate challenge or gain deeper access to research and strategy counsel.
To learn more about Altimeter’s offerings, please contact sales@altimetergroup.com.
Altimeter, a Prophet Company
One Bush Street, 7th Floor
San Francisco, CA 94104
info@altimetergroup.com
www.altimetergroup.com
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415-363-0004

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