The blog

Hi, I’m Pieter. While I’m a familiar face in the THoM family, I haven’t always been your classic marketer: I used to be the mastermind behind the popular Moodclub parties. Let me tell you how a humble party concept introduced me to the wonderful world of marketing! Let’s jump back to the year 2000. As a restless law student, the nightlife in my city let me down tremendously. I had to spend my Thursday nights with bad beer and even worse music. A true disappointment for the energetic youngster I was. Those cheap parties, however, led to a bold idea: why not start my own party concept? No sooner said than done, I sat together with a befriended designer to set up my own event: Moodclub. It was a concept that fully aimed at creating lasting memories. A gathering focused on customer experience, to put it in today’s words. Throwback to the early 2000s: me as DJ Pierre de la Rivière.

Have you taken your first steps into the magical world of business design thinking? This customer-centric approach to problem solving is omnipresent; however, you might find it difficult to get the hang of it. But don’t worry, in order to get you started right and well, we drafted a little cheat sheet with 8 business design thinking dos and don’ts. Let’s dive right in!

I was juggling being a mother of 3 with a full-time consulting job and a newly started entrepreneurial venture. How was I ever going to balance those on top of many other things?

Hyper-personalization takes experiences to the next level. They are the result of personal, behavioral and transactional data processed in an intelligent way, powered by artificial intelligence (AI). The combination of data and technology enables companies to provide an advanced one-to-one experience at scale.

While I was taking part in the Great Breweries Marathon last weekend, I realized that there are a lot of comparisons between running a marathon and setting up a Marketing Automation tool, so I listed the eight comparisons I saw (yes, during a marathon you have quite some time to think…).

We recently shared thoughts about business design thinking with Professor Marion Debruyne, Dean of Vlerick Business School and author of the award-winning book 'Customer Innovation', for our 16th Yearly Marketing Survey. Watch the video for her expert opinion about the innovative approach.

Si les marketeurs misent intensément sur l’innovation, ils rencontrent des difficultés lors de l’implémentation 68 % des personnes interrogées se sentent soutenues par la direction lorsqu'elles lancent de nouvelles idées 53 % des répondants indiquent que les objectifs de l'innovation ne sont pas toujours bien définis 22 % des personnes interrogées avouent ne pas savoir clairement quels sont les domaines d'innovation permettant la croissance de leur entreprise

Marketeers zetten innovatie hoog op de agenda, maar worstelen nog met de executie 68% van de respondenten voelt zich gesteund door management om nieuwe ideeën uit te proberen 53% van de respondenten geeft aan dat de objectieven van innovatie nog niet goed gedefinieerd zijn 22% van de respondenten heeft geen duidelijk idee welke innovatiegebieden zijn bedrijf nodig heeft om te groeien

Dear Nathan, Zach and Adriana, You’re heartily welcomed into Generation Alpha – Digital Natives born after 2010!  Arriving in 2014, 2015 and 2018, you guys are definitely the newbies.  The title “Screenagers” is truly appropriate to describe you - Nathan, you learned how to turn the iPad/iPhone on and watch YouTube at only 8 months old – we would have never imagined!

Today, marketers are facing the challenges of increased competition, new distribution channels, proliferation of media channels and changing customer preferences, all of this to make data more scattered and more difficult to convert into meaningful information that supports decisions on how to allocate your marketing budget – and most importantly to measure and report the return on the investments made.  But it is possible to link information about customers needs, preferences, habits and behaviors across all channels to the performance of a business’s sales and marketing activities. It all comes down to making sure the right things are being measured and visualized. By defining and tracking your marketing KPIs on a daily, weekly and monthly basis, you as a marketer can act on the data to immediately improve marketing performance – and this is exactly where digital marketing dashboarding comes into play.