“In these troubled times, we’re here for you” seems a compassionate message to customers. And these days this expression is found in various versions as companies attempt to show empathy and connect with customers. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work. But neither does blithely ignoring the crisis and assuming clients are continuing with business as normal.

In 2020, choosing a tone for customer and employee communications means walking a fine line.

“There are years of learning around where you get the sweet spot from a messaging perspective to talk about customer outcomes while also talking about what you do as a company,” said Allison Dew (pictured), chief marketing officer and executive vice president of Dell Technologies.

Dew spoke with Dave Vellante, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, during the Dell Technologies World Digital Experience event. They discussed the challenges of connecting with customers in 2020, how Dell’s decade of experience as a flexible workplace helped the company pivot to all-remote during a pandemic, Dell’s announcement of Project APEX, and event marketing now and in the future. (* Disclosure below.)

Lessons learned in 2008 apply to 2020 marketing message

Remember the financial crisis of 2008? That was when Dell learned the hard way that customers don’t listen to tone-deaf messaging. Testing a commercial that aimed to appeal to customers impacted by the crash, the company received unexpected results.

“We found that some of the people who’d seen our creative were actually less inclined to buy Dell and less positive about Dell,” Dew stated. “Why? Because we started with those really hackneyed lines of, “In these troubled times …”

Putting that experience to work in 2020, Dew is pivoting her team from the traditionally creative focus of marketing to one that values both art and science.

“What I talk a lot about is this intersection of data and creativity,” she said. Combining the two is Dell’s secret sauce for creating a powerful message and the reason the marketing department was able to react fast when the pandemic hit, according to Dew.

“There are places where it’s about the voice of who we are as a brand and a lot of that is creative judgment; then there are places [where it is] about institutional knowledge of the data,” Dew said.

Having its customer data in-house is another advantage Dell has over its competitors, according to Dew. “All the work we had to do to re-target, to re-pivot based on which verticals were being successful in this time and which were not, we were able to now do in a matter of hours,” she said.

This timeline continues to shrink, and Dew predicts Dell will be performing real-time analysis on customer and marketing data soon.

Dell PC > Dell servers > Dell EMC > Dell as-a-service

Marketing is not the only area in which Dell has proved itself a master of magical transformation. From personal computer manufacturer to infrastructure giant to the acquisition of EMC, “one of the things that’s really interesting about Dell is that we have proven our ability to constantly and consistently reinvent ourselves,” Dew said.

Now, Dell is doing it again. Today’s announcement of Project Apex puts as-a-service front and center in the company’s strategy.

“We are a company which is always moving forward and always thinking about what’s next,” Dew said. “We’re going to see a very significant change in consumption models, and the way we stay on top of our game going forward is we lean into that huge transformation.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the Dell Technologies World Digital Experience event. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for Dell Technologies World. Neither Dell Technologies, the sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE