Episode Title: Customer Engagement: The Marketoonist Talks MartechIn today’s episode, marketer-turned-marketoonist Tom Fishburne tells us why pain points are shorthand for empathy, and how he helps bring perspective to marketers by finding humor in these pain points. Here are the key takeaways from the discussion:Marketers need to get out of their ‘ivory towers’ and spend time with their customers in real environments- over the phone or in person.Quantitative data is great, but qualitative insight will only come from real conversations in live environmentsIn fact, listen to not just your customers, but also sales and other functions- all of whom impact the CX. Customers only see the end interaction- they don’t care about silos in the marketing or overall organization. Telling the marketing story internally or externally: while the delivery should come down to your personal style, in essence it is about making a conscious effort to get everyone – all stakeholders irrespective of tile or function - to understand and come on board to deliver the ultimate CX as a team.There are 2 areas where marketers tend to overcomplicate thingsStrategytechnologyHow can we describe our marketing strategy or technology in a way that can be understood by absolutely anybody?The extra seasoning that makes some marketers more successful than others is that everyone in the organization should think of themselves as an integral part of the CX being deliveredThere is a false dichotomy between digital and non-digital marketing but in fact people tasked with CX - people with CX in their titles – need to find opportunities to deliver delightful experiences throughout the organization and not just in marketing workflows. A lot of thing that happen in the organization can be used as effective levers for marketing and brand building but spotting them needs a holistic outlook and approach.What are some of the indicators of culture in an organizations? How comfortable do people feel sharing opinions proactively?How openly can they have conversations about the elephant in the room?How well do they build the brand from the inside out? Too much personalization is dystopian. David and Tom agree that there is absolutely no confusion in the customers mind about what personalization is actually useful – it’s the marketers who need to figure it out and use the data and technology purposefully to act on the insight. Marketers need to figure out how to use the incredible power of martech tools without seeming exploitative.Segment 2: Report of the week from CommerceNext 1. The report highlights the top 5 barriers to achieving marketing goals in 2018 / 2019.Marketing integration of toolsActing quickly enough on marketing initiativesGetting a full unified view of the customersOrganizational structure misalignmentFinding and keeping the best marketing talentThese barriers are a great opportunity for martech vendors 1. Integrating technology components with a more concentrated effort than just offering ‘integration through APIs’ – it’s about truly helping marketers do more within the ecosystem2. Helping marketers know the technology better and use it optimally to act faster on marketing initiatives Segment 3: News of the week: Apple enters Facebook territoryIn light of Apples’ recent announcements at their developer conference, we find that the lines between bigtech are blurring- they all have different value propositions at the front end but in fact at the backed the lines seem to be blurring between whether big tech like Google, LinkedIn, Facebook, Amazon, and now Apple, are actually software companies, ecommerce companies, social platforms, marketing automation solutions or a data-driven marketing and advertising companies…what re they really wanting to be?