Overheard at Postback 2017: Unforgettable quotes

Starting with the very first Postback, we’ve been fortunate enough to hear and learn from an amazing group of speakers, panelists, and moderators. That tradition continued this year. From a surprise keynote by Seattle Seahawks head coach Pete Carroll, to panels on ad fraud and media mix, to lightning keynotes from leaders at Google and Instagram and even Southwest Airlines, Postback 2017 was full of unforgettable quotes. Here are some of our favorites.

On leadership

“If you want to be really good at something and you want to perform at a high level, and you want to affect the people around you to perform at a high level … then wouldn’t it help if those around you understood what it is you feel is important, what are the things you believe in, what are the things that make up your philosophy?”
— Pete Carroll, Head Coach, Seattle Seahawks

“Try to be as well-rounded as possible … if you focus just on what made you really successful as a marketer, you’re going to be a very small CMO. You’re going to want to take inspiration from all of the very, very rich disciplines we have out there in the world.”
— Michelle Broderick, Chief Marketing Officer, Simple

“It’s a simple equation of brand and plan. … Ultimately, there are going to be days where you take scoops out from the brand. And there will be days where you deposit scoops of wellness or goodness in the brand. And the net is that the number of scoops you put in have to be bigger than the number of scoops you take out. So when I think about performance marketing or top of the funnel marketing, ultimately top of the funnel marketing is like putting fertilizer on your lawn, whereas performance marketing is mowing your lawn. And I think you have to balance that. Because if you keep mowing the lawn, mowing the lawn, not putting the fertilizer in, your short term might be fine, but you’ll probably see that you’re not getting back the reward in terms of brand intent.”
— Sid Jatia, Vice President of Global eCommerce, Under Armour

“Lead by example, but really empower your teams to do the same thing. … And just be a good human. I think, at the end of the day, that’s the most important.”
— Kieran Hannon, Chief Marketing Officer, Belkin

“If you took the time to step back … and tried to really orchestrate what it is you firmly believe in — and not just for you — that is a great moment individually. It is a great moment for any individual to say: ‘Wow, I never realized this is really who I am, and this is what makes me tick.’ That’s one thing. But when you can share that with the people around you, they will function on a much different level. … They will see it, and feel it in you. That is so powerful …”
— Pete Carroll, Head Coach, Seattle Seahawks

On marketing technology

“Mobile will eat the marketing world.”
— David Spitz, Chief Marketing Officer at mParticle

“A lot of people say they have AI-powered tech or say they have AI, but all they’re really doing is machine learning, predictive analytics, or data mining. Only a few people actually have AI, or are doing it right.”
— Stewart Rogers, Director of Marketing Technology, VentureBeat

“We try to build empathy into even the most boring stuff.”
— Michelle Broderick, Chief Marketing Officer, Simple

“Mobile marketers and marketers in general are spending up to 50% of their entire marketing budget on mobile. And yet, two thirds of those marketers fully explained to us that they’re completely out of their depth. They have no idea how to manage mobile — it’s tacked on as an extra channel. It’s not part of the strategy at all. They don’t have the in-house expertise. The strategic direction is a trouble … and the silos are really stopping people from moving ahead in mobile.”
— Stewart Rogers, Director of Marketing Technology, VentureBeat

On competition

“I don’t care about the competition. We want to focus on that which we can control. I can’t control what they’re doing; I can’t control how they think about stuff and how they operate. Plus, if I do, I’m spending valuable focused time on something that I really have no factor into. We’re trying to develop the way we perform, and what we do, and what we can control — to the max.”
— Pete Carroll, Head Coach, Seattle Seahawks

“Competitors are disrupting the industry, and customers are changing their expectations based on those disruptions. Then they’re projecting those expectations onto you.”
— Jennifer Wise, Senior Analyst, Forrester Research

“Always compete. It’s not about the winning or losing part. It’s a mentality about striving for what you want to become.”
— Pete Carroll, Head Coach, Seattle Seahawks

On fraud

“Fraud to me is anytime that you are not receiving what you have contracted to purchase. I think that’s a wider view of fraud than some people take of it. … At the widest, if you’re contracting to target mothers, and you’re receiving impressions targeted to fathers, intentionally, that is fraud. And that’s the other distinction I would make that helps in the conversations with partners: Intent is important. If there was a bug or a glitch or honestly human error, that is not fraud. There has to be intent behind it.”
— Will Phung, Vice President of Media, M&C Saatchi

“I know a term called Napoleon’s Law that says, ‘Never attribute to malice what can first be attributed to incompetence.’”
— Dan Koch, Chief Technology Officer, TUNE

“Fraud is not just a last-mile problem. Most of the fraud that’s being talked about today is at the post-click or install fraud level, and we feel that there’s a lot more happening upstream — right from the publisher’s source, right at the request, impression, click level — that’s very much left undetected. So most of the ecosystem, most of the tracking partners and advertisers, are still looking at the downstream metrics. You know what? That’s just 20% of the problem. That’s still 80% of the problem that is out there at the source. … What you see as fraud today downstream is just the tip of the iceberg. And what is lying below — what is invisible down there — is far more dangerous.”
— Piyush Shah, Chief Product Officer, InMobi

“These black-box solutions don’t show you what’s behind the curtain. They don’t explain what has actually happened. This makes for a hostile conversation between a marketer and a partner because they have a tool that says ‘fraud, fraud, fraud,’ which they use to scream at the partner and blame for not providing good quality. But it’s not always based on facts — or on good data. It makes working together next to impossible.”
— Peter Hamilton, Chief Executive Officer, TUNE

On personalization

“Know what the customer needs before they do. It’s all about solving a problem before it happens and answering the question before it’s been asked. … Be a hero for your customers. Come in at the right time, with the right answer, and you’ll be rewarded.”
— Kevin Krone, Chief Marketing Officer, Southwest Airlines

“Personalization is one of the most hyped terms I’m hearing from companies today. Why? Because everybody is doing it. Google, Netflix, Lyft, Amazon … these personalized experiences are changing the way we do the most basic tasks.”
— Jennifer Wise, Senior Analyst, Forrester Research

“I did some research on hyper-personalization and what consumers will accept and what they won’t … as long as you’re giving value, people are quite happy to give up information.”
— Stewart Rogers, Director of Marketing Technology, VentureBeat

“Personalization is a battle all of us are fighting — well, it’s more of a war than a battle, and I think we’re fighting a battle right now. The reason I say that is, to me, there are two aspects to emotion, which are relevancy and newness. And I think we’re fighting the battle of relevancy without focusing on newness.”
— Sid Jatia, Vice President of Global eCommerce, Under Armour

“Over the past few years we’ve spoken with thousands of mobile marketers and one thing is clear: the days of one-to-many marketing are categorically over. What marketing teams need is a way to personalize and fine-tune their marketing efforts to each customer based on a complete set of actions a person has taken in the past. I’m thrilled to say that we’ve engineered a system that can unify a person’s actions across devices, channels, and networks into one system of record. Now, marketers who use TUNE can weave together customer actions into one customer journey, and use this information to build highly personalized marketing campaigns for every prospect or customer.”
— Dan Koch, Chief Technology Officer, TUNE

 

Thank you again to our amazing group of speakers, attendees, artists, and event coordinators. One thousand of you came out to the mobile marketing event of the summer this year, and Postback would be nothing if not for you. Here’s to next year!

Watch some of the most memorable moments from Postback 2017 in our highlight reel, or read up on all the excitement in recaps from Postback Day 1 and Postback Day 2.