ORLANDO, FL: Brands must be “customer-obsessed” to thrive in the increasingly complex marketing universe, according to Kristin Lemkau, Chief Marketing Officer of JPMorgan Chase & Co.

Lemkau discussed this subject during a keynote session at the Association of National Advertisers’ (ANA) 2017 Masters of Marketing Conference.

“You must be customer-obsessed – not customer-focused, not customer-centered, but customer-obsessed,” she reported. (For more details, read WARC’s in-depth report: JPMorgan Chase’s secret of marketing success: Obsession over consumers.)

During her presentation, Lemkau predicted that Amazon, the ecommerce service, was likely to become a major advertising platform in the near future, joining the current “big two” of Facebook and Google.

And she further suggested that brand custodians could learn invaluable lessons from the online retailer’s relentless focus on the customer across its operations.

“Amazon perfected this practice, and we should all use it,” said Lemkau. The online retailer’s approach, she explained, is effectively supported by a simple, but powerful, mantra: “Big data, big data, big data.”

Building on this theme, she asserted that data scientists will “have lifetime employment” in the marketing sector, as companies attempt to make sense of the numerical streams now flowing into their businesses.

“The consumer is sending us millions of signals every minute about what they want, what they’re interested in, what they want to buy,” said Lemkau.

But customer-obsessed brands don’t just listen; they recognise the humans behind the numbers, and reply to their specific habits, preferences and needs.

Such an overall goal, in Lemkau’s case, is epitomised by a clear mission statement: “Chase is here to help you make the most of your money.”

That premise, she continued, “starts with our purpose. We have a more intimate relationship with our consumer than any other brand because we have their money.

“And people care a whole lot about that, not just for money in and of itself, but for what it can do for their lives and the people they love.”

Data sourced from WARC