When Nikki Mendonça (pictured) departed the agency world after 16 years to join Accenture in 2017, one of the first decisions she made was to change the name of the group she was being hired to lead. Instead of Intelligent Marketing Operations, the new group would be known as Accenture Interactive Operations.

The re-branding reflected not only Mendonça’s view of the group’s mission, but it also captured the shift taking place in the marketing industry today. A growing abundance of data, combined with the technology to process it and derive valuable insight, is ushering in an age of hyper-personalization where the customer’s interactive experience is key.

Delivering relevant content that appeals directly to what customers want to hear or see has become marketing’s holy grail. Yet, one recent study found that only 9% of marketers have actually developed their hyper-personalization strategies. This is the opportunity that looms large for Mendonça’s division, the global managed services arm of Accenture Interactive.

“Being able to really excel at hyper-personalization is really what we’re focused on now,” said Mendonça, global president of Accenture Interactive Operations. “Data is the answer to that. Data, hand-in-hand with artificial intelligence and machine learning, really gives us an unbelievable combination and puts hyper-personalization on steroids.”

Mendonça spoke with John Furrier (@furrier) and Jeff Frick (@JeffFrick), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the Adobe Summit in Las Vegas. They discussed the importance of first-party data, her company’s collaboration with Adobe Inc., how clients are leveraging technology to build marketing platforms, and the inevitability of industry consolidation (see the full interview with transcript here). (* Disclosure below.)

This week, theCUBE features Nikki Mendonça as its Guest of the Week.

Using first-party data

The pot of gold at the end of the marketing rainbow is first-party data, information collected by a business from its own customers. This data is especially valuable because it generally includes past purchases, product interests, and relevant information around which effective, targeted marketing campaigns can be built.

“We really are gravitating towards a world of first-party marketing activation,” Mendonça said. “The first-party data that clients hold is unbelievably potent, and therein lies the secret of success to creating a highly engaged community.”

First-party data by itself is valuable enough, but when it can be combined with another firm’s first-party data, the payback can be significant. In March, Adobe announced that it would partner with Roku Inc. to match both firms’ first-party data and build programmatic campaigns for the streaming service’s over-the-top platform.

Accenture Interactive has also partnered with Adobe to use digital technology for enhancing the overall customer experience. One use case can be found in Subway IP LLC, the restaurant chain with operations in 100 countries and the provider of 7 million sandwiches per day. Subway utilized Accenture Interactive’s capabilities in personalization and organizational design to build an experimentation operating model. With the assistance of Adobe Analytics, Subway conducted user experience tests to tweak promotional messaging on its homepage, gaining instant results and meaningful insight on how design changes could impact business results.

“I’m loving what Adobe is doing,” Mendonça said. “They are almost accelerating the ‘platformization’ of marketing. To be able to design the right marketing technology, leverage it fully and, with foundational tech like Adobe, build additional vertical bespoke technology onto that, it really starts to give clients a competitive advantage.”

Consolidation is coming

Is it possible to have too much of a good thing when it comes to marketing tech? One of the most complicated graphics ever devised is the legendary LUMAscape, a chart created by the investment bank Luma Partners LLC to visually illustrate the ad and marketing technology landscape.

In 2011, the LUMAscape only showed 150 companies. There were nearly 7,000 firms in the category as of last year. Inadvertently, the LUMAscape’s visual depiction has fostered debate within the marketing tech industry about ineffectual fragmentation.

“You’re going to see an acceleration of consolidation in that landscape,” Mendonça said. “Marketers are still very challenged to procure the right technology, to be able to make sure they are getting maximum utilization. The point solutions are going to quickly accelerate to an end-to-end solution.”

Accenture Interactive has been focused on not just building end-to-end solutions, but ones that will help clients differentiate their brands in a cluttered competitive landscape. An example of how Accenture Interactive does this can be seen in its work on behalf of a customer with operations in one of the most competitive verticals in the world — the hotel industry.

Melia Hotels International is one of the largest hospitality firms in Europe. Working with Accenture Interactive, the company implemented digital solutions and services to improve sales channels while enhancing every stage of the customer experience.

Over the course of one year, sales increased 27% and the hotelier added over 1 million new members to its loyalty program, according to information posted by Accenture Interactive.

“When we talk to clients, chief marketing officers and chief data officers specifically, we talk about purpose as well as the product differentiation,” Mendonça explained. “We look at the adtech/martech stacks that we’re building for clients, make sure that they’re truly proprietary and bespoke, doing the job that they’re intended to do in terms of marketing for growth, and then we help clients maximize everything that they can get out of that technology.”

Accenture has been active over the past two years in expanding its agency services offerings. In addition to launching Accenture Interactive, the company acquired New Content, a Brazilian content marketing firm, in 2018. Accenture is also reportedly one of three finalists in line to acquire MDC Partners, which owns 50 agencies.

As the lines between marketing and technology become blurred, Accenture is clearly pursuing an aggressive strategy to capitalize on client interest in delivering services through a combination of the two.

“Marketing technology is now 30 percent of the marketing budget,” Mendonça noted. “That’s a lot, that’s obviously the highest it’s ever been. And it’s only going to go one way.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of Adobe Summit 2019. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for Adobe Summit 2019. Neither Accenture Interactive, the sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE