MarTech360 Interview with Carl Ronander, VP Brand & Communication at Funnel

“Embrace creativity. The number one task of your brand is to be more memorable. If there is nothing different or interesting about your brand you will fail”

Carl, with over 16 years of experience in brand strategy and management, what are the key trends you see shaping the future of brand communication, and how is Funnel adapting to these changes to stay ahead in the market? 

The clear trend right now is one of marketing going back to being marketing and moving away from jumping on trends. For a decade or more marketers have been obsessing over the latest new thing – be it the purpose-driven brand, social media or only focusing on performance marketing. However, the evidence clearly shows that this is not how we as marketers provide value for the business. Long-term investments in brands and marketers being accountable for their impact are clearly on the comeback. Part of this shift has to do with regulations impacting digital marketing and attribution, but not only. It is the great work of institutions like Ehrenberg-Bass with Byron Sharp and Jenni Romaniuk and thought leaders like Prof. Mark Ritson, Tom Roach, Peter Field and Less Binet to mention a few, that is driving the marketing effectiveness movement. And to prove the effectiveness of your marketing, you need to be on top of your data.

Funnel has since its inception been the leading data tool for marketers. Our proprietary Data Hub, which is the core of our product, is something that every marketer who really wants to be data-driven needs to have. Marketing Week’s 2024 Career and Salary Survey showed that lack of data and analytics skills is by far the largest skills gap (37% stating it as their biggest skills gap). Being autonomous and literate in data is the thing marketers need to develop, especially with the rise of AI. So, just getting control of your data is the first skill that surprisingly few marketers actually have. Then you need to use that data to understand how you can improve your marketing performance. That is why we at Funnel are focusing on helping you move from data to intelligence. Just a couple of months ago we took a large step in our product development and launched our Marketing Intelligence Platform. I would dare to say that this will allow marketers to work in a completely new way and make more advanced analytics and marketing measurement available to all marketers.

Carl, can you tell us about your professional background and your current role at Funnel? 

Professionally I grew up in creative agencies, working as a Planner and Brand Strategist. I absolutely loved working in that environment and had the fortune to work with some truly iconic brands. But, after about 10 years I got the advice from a mentor of sorts that if I ever wanted to try the client side the time had come to not be labeled only as an “agency guy”. I got in contact with Johnny Warström who is the founder and CEO of fast-growing SaaS company Mentimeter and joined in a new role as Head of Brand and PR. During my 4 years at Mentimeter, the company grew from 50 to over 350 employees. Transforming the Mentimeter brand was one of the greatest work experiences I have ever had so when the opportunity arose to do the same thing at Funnel it was difficult to say no. The move really made sense as my driving force lies in showing how creativity can have a great business impact. Funnel’s Marketing Intelligence platform allows you to prove this. So I joined Funnel in 2023 and just before the summer we launched the new brand platform together with an updated identity and new product positioning.

Tell us how Funnel differentiates itself from other companies in the same space? 

Many of today’s tools are not fit for purpose for marketers. Cloud data warehouses and business intelligence tools are frequently excellent options for IT departments but are ill-fitting for marketers who have been much less thought of and find them difficult to use without a technical team supporting them. Most agencies do not yet possess the new methods required for predicting user behavior which marketers and advertisers need. These center on advanced statistical expertise.

Marketers are empowered by Funnel to directly get access to their data without technical assistance. Funnel’s Data Hub does this by automatically importing data, making it business-ready, staging it and presenting it in a dashboard for marketers. Marketers therefore self-fulfill their data needs and can act with clarity to quickly iterate towards higher marketing performance, often yielding better results in a short period.

Ultimately, Funnel provides that foundation to be on top of your marketing data. Nearly every business does not have the maturity or marketing spend to realize the value of more advanced measurement solutions, but every business that uses a marketing Data Hub stands to benefit.

Also Read: MarTech360 Interview with Sean Evers, VP of Sales & Partner at Pipedrive

How does Funnel’s platform empower marketers to optimize ad spend and make data-driven decisions across multiple channels? Furthermore, in what ways does Funnel simplify the management of marketing and advertising data, maintain data consistency, and enhance the efficiency of campaign monitoring? 

The Funnel platform is calibrated to make suggestions as to how marketing spend increases the visibility, reach, engagement and trust in a user’s brand, without just focusing on ROI. Marketing data is thrust into action to ensure user products are obvious and front of mind when required by consumers.

Core to Funnel is our proprietary Data Hub in which marketers can gather data from all relevant marketing platforms and then model the data to prime it for analysis. This platform is the most customizable method of data collection, drawing on over 500 connectors. Visualizations in the dashboards are tailor-made for marketing analytics and provide advanced measurement capabilities: there are few, if any, marketing platforms that offer the same kind of empowerment over data as Funnel.

Working with data is one of the largest time inefficiencies for marketers today – where most of the effort is spent on just collecting and making the data business-ready. With Funnel, that job is automatic, instant and delivered in real time. Knowing that you have up-to-date data that you can trust allows you to prove impact and also improve your marketing as you will get insights as to what is working and what is not. The more you work and understand your marketing attribution (working with a more consistent model) you will eventually be able to predict the impact of your marketing and an increase or decrease in marketing spend. This is what is needed if we as marketers want to be taken more seriously in our companies.

What role do emerging technologies and data analytics play in shaping Funnel’s brand strategy, and how do you ensure these tools align with your communication goals? 

Advanced analytics are the new way forward to compensate for restricted access to data and diminishing marketing budgets. As marketing measurement becomes increasingly influenced by AI, machine learning and SaaS, advanced analytics are actually becoming less expensive and more scalable, making them accessible to a wider range of players.

Agency partners and intelligence platforms such as Funnel can help lead this transition in marketing strategies. With even well-resourced marketing teams often needing more money to pay for a full-time statistician or advanced technologist, agencies and platforms can spread the costs of domain experts across multiple clients.

What is the biggest problem you or your team is solving this year? 

This year we have already introduced a completely new offering with marketing measurement, which has allowed us to update our positioning as a Marketing Intelligence Platform, in addition to our updated brand platform and identity. All these changes have been very well received by that market, but I think our greatest challenge is that too many marketers still don’t know that they need a Marketing Intelligence Platform. The will is there to become more data-driven but I think a lot of marketers still don’t know where to start. So our main challenge is to continue to build the category and help educate the market.

What advice do you have for other leaders who are looking to drive growth for their brand? 

Dive into the marketing effectiveness movement and learn the fundamentals. Start by reading “How Brands Grow” by Byron Sharp or follow LinkedIn’s amazing think tank “The B2B Institute” and then develop from that.

And I would also say embrace creativity. The number one task of your brand is to be more memorable. If there is nothing different or interesting about your brand you will fail.

Is there anything that you’re currently reading, or any favorite books, that you would  recommend? 

Apart from what I have already mentioned, I would recommend – Good Strategy. Bad Strategy, by Richard Rumlet.  On understanding the power of creativity, read Alchemy by Rory Sutherland (also watch or listen to Rory, very entertaining). And if you have an open mind I really loved Rick Rubin’s book The Creative Act.

Thanks Carl!