Don’t Let Big Data Bury Your Brand

The credit card giant Capital One is known for its pioneering use of marketing analytics and big data, so it might be surprising to learn about its recent realization: that too much reliance on those tools had left it without a meaningful brand. The authors explain how the number one job of the CMO—to strike the right balance between promotions that goose revenue in the short term and brand-building campaigns that support healthy margins in the long term—has become dramatically harder in the age of data-driven targeting. Capital One got its own wake-up call when its CEO, Rich Fairbank, commissioned a brand equity study. The research revealed that the company was overwhelmingly known by consumers for just one attribute: “They send me lots of mail.” Efforts to strengthen the brand and give Capital One a stronger foundation for future growth yielded five lessons—all learned and refined through conversations with other marketing executives, including Tony Pace, of Subway; Mark Addicks, of General Mills; Tariq Shaukat, of Caesars Entertainment; Russell Weiner, of Domino’s; and Jim Speros, of Fidelity, as they dealt with the same tension in their very different organizations.