• by Danielle Oster , October 24, 2024

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Back in February, AT&T’s network experienced a nationwide outage lasting 12 hours.

That might seem odd fodder for a brand case study, but AT&T Chief Marketing and Growth Officer Kellyn Smith Kenny characterized the company’s response as exemplifying its commitment to a customer-centric approach in a keynote presentation at the ANA’s "Masters Of Marketing” conference.

“Brands need to pursue innovation in service of the customer,” she explained, rather than innovation for its own sake. “Did you make money in a way that got customers fired up to be a superfan of your brand and concept? That's what you need to do when you are innovating,” Kenny said during the presentation.

Analyzing large amounts of consumer data can be helpful, but such “big data” alone “doesn’t tell the whole story,” according to Kenny, since it doesn’t help understand customers’ emotional needs. “What we really need is thick data,” she explained, referring to information that helps brands and marketers “understand [consumers’] model for the world,” and helps marketers “tell their story.”

“What you need is qualitative research, ethnography research…to understand, underneath it all, what is truly driving [consumer] behavior,” she added.

Through the combination of “big” and “thick” data, she said, brands can innovate in service of their customers, write better marketing briefs, and tell better stories reflective of, and resonating with, their audiences. To illustrate the concept in action, she pointed to  AT&T’s launch of AT&T Turbo for gaming and streaming as a case study.

Topline data about gamers can tell you that there around 215 million gamers, with an average age of 33, with a relatively equal gender split, and 60% gaming across multiple devices. But “thick data” can help build out a picture of the gaming community through understanding why people game in the first place. Two of the top reasons, she said, are to find an escape from the problems of the world in a safe and secure environment, and to find community.

Recognizing lag as a top source of frustration for gamers, AT&T developed the service to provide what she characterized as “the fastest, most reliable” gaming experience. Launched in May, the offering quickly proved a hit – surpassing three month sales targets within a month of launch, according to Kenny.

“Creators and gamers were posting [unpaid] reviews of this product,” she added. “They looked like paid endorsements…this is what happens when you innovate in service of the customer.”

As for that February outage, she said the brand’s prior preparation helped them respond during the crisis, pointing to a “massive amount of research to understand what customers experience when connectivity is disrupted.”

“We knew the exact language to reassure them we understood,” she said. “We even knew the amount of money they’d view as fair compensation for a disruption.” Within a day of the disruption, she claimed, AT&T issued customers credit for a full day of service -- which helped transform what had been universally negative press coverage about the incident to positive or neutral coverage.