In short
Ron Cohen (Claritas) explains why marketers must focus on identity resolution to turn customer and prospect data into actionable audience targeting, personalization, and continuous optimization. He argues that “insights without actions” happen when brands have data but can’t match it to real people across devices/channels.
Guest background
Ron Cohen is SVP of Practice Leadership at Claritas, working at the intersection of data, identity, and AI. His focus includes identity resolution, personification, audience creation, and campaign execution.
Key claims
Identity is critical; static segments are a starting point, but optimization should run “A to Z” (not A/B). Personalization should be mass-optimized via many niches, not one-to-one. Relevance depends on the “messenger and message” (imagery, language, music, even smell/lighting). Machine learning is real; generative AI can be hit-or-miss and needs expert human supervision.
Notable examples
McDonald’s can sometimes rely on simpler advertising, but most brands can’t. He cites multicultural relevance research (ads showing people who look like you affect attention and belief). He mentions retail sensory cues like smell and shelf/entry experience.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VOIntroducing Ron Cohen
0:45 to 1:20
Introduction of Ron Cohen and his role in modern marketing.
“Now, Ron spends his time focused on one of the biggest challenges in modern marketing, turning scattered signals into smart action.”
Marketer Challenges in Identity
1:20 to 2:14
Discussion on the challenges marketers face with identity resolution.
“What lane do you live in every day and what problems are marketers bringing to you the most right now?”
The Importance of Identity for Marketers
2:14 to 3:20
Why understanding identity is crucial for effective marketing.
“So we hear a lot about data, but not enough about identity.”
A to Z Testing: Beyond A/B Testing
3:20 to 4:25
Exploring the concept of A to Z testing in marketing optimization.
“We talk now about A to Z testing because image A is better for some people.”
Consequences of Poor Customer Understanding
4:25 to 5:00
How lack of customer insights can harm brands.
“No, don't stop at B because you'll never get to the right answer for the majority of the people you're trying to communicate.”
Evolving Audience Creation Strategies
5:00 to 5:57
How audience creation strategies have changed in modern marketing.
“And if you're not paying attention, they're probably going to steal your customers.”
The Role of AI in Marketing Optimization
5:57 to 6:41
Discussing the integration of AI for optimizing marketing efforts.
“And each time you learn something or the machine learning kicks in and it gets better and better and better.”
Balancing AI and Human Touch
6:41 to 7:39
Finding the right balance between AI use and human oversight.
“your return on ad spend is starting to look like this is a no-brainer.”
Understanding Relevance in Marketing
7:39 to 8:23
What relevance means to customers in advertising.
“personalize at scale or they get hung up on this one-to-one yeah one-to-one sure that was huge yeah it was huge but 300 segments as a concept it was a good idea let's you know focus on one person at a time.”
The Importance of Personalized Messaging
8:23 to 9:50
Why it's crucial for brands to personalize their messaging.
“We do a lot of multicultural research and advertising.”
Show all 14 chapters
The Reality of AI in Marketing
9:50 to 10:34
Differentiating between real AI and marketing gimmicks.
“know that if you send me a message that has nothing to do with me, there's really no excuse to go, wait a minute, especially if I'm an existing customer, right?”
The Need for Human Supervision in AI
10:34 to 13:14
The necessity of human involvement in AI-driven marketing.
“So let's separate AI from machine learning.”
Future of Audience Targeting
13:14 to 14:01
Predictions for the evolution of audience targeting in marketing.
“I don't know any other way to answer that.”
Leveraging Data for Customer Insights
14:01 to 15:24
Learn how to effectively use customer data for growth and segmentation.
“Even if nothing changes, which is never the case, we know who their lookalikes are.”
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00Ron Cohen:Hey, welcome to the CMO Whisperer Show. I'm your host, Steve Olenski. Part marketing practitioner, part ad agency veteran, part journalist, I was a writer for Forbes for 10 years. I've had so many insightful conversations over the years with business leaders, to athletes, to celebrities, to of course, CMOs. The only difference now is instead of sharing those insights through written form, I'm doing it this way. Today's episode comes to you live from Possible, where the badges are swinging, the buzzwords are flying, and somewhere nearby, someone is promising to reinvent marketing before lunch, if that's possible.
0:39Ron Cohen:Today, I'm joined by Ron Cohen, SVP of Practice Leadership at Claritas, a company operating at the intersection of data, identity, and AI, helping brands understand who their customers really are and how to reach them with more precision, relevance, and result. Now, Ron spends his time focused on one of the biggest challenges in modern marketing, turning scattered signals into smart action. In a world full of noise, he works on helping brands make better decisions about audiences, personalization, targeting, and growth. Ron Cohen, welcome to the CMO Whisperer podcast. Well, let's just go, right?
1:15Ron Cohen:Let's get over the amenities and our favorite colors and let's just move in. Talk to us about you, what you do first. What lane do you live in every day and what problems are marketers bringing to you the most right now?
1:25The CMO Whisperer Host:I have a lot of hats. Most of my focus is on identity, identity resolution, personification, audience creation, campaign execution, taking the signals you get and refining, demising, but do it again, only better.
1:41Ron Cohen:So is that, that's kind of a consolidated view of what marketers are coming to you with, right? Yes. Give us a little step below, a little granularity. Does it depend on the vertical? A little bit.
1:52The CMO Whisperer Host:But you start with, we resolve the identities of existing customers and potential customers. We come to the websites of our clients and don't sell them. Who are they? What pages are they looking at? Is there a difference between them and the general website? Is there a general population? Which way is it skewed?
2:13Ron Cohen:Right.
2:14The CMO Whisperer Host:Who should they be targeting? What does that segment look like?
2:17Ron Cohen:So we hear a lot about data, but not enough about identity. Why is identity such a critical issue for marketers today?
2:26The CMO Whisperer Host:And how you can reach them with what offers. That's all identity-based. We have a ton of data, but if you can't resolve the identity of your clients, customers, or prospects, how are you going to act on that data? How are you going to put it into action? It's like insights without actions. Yeah. Actions without insights. Yeah.
2:46Ron Cohen:Those who listen to my show and those who know me, it's, I'm a very simplistic guy. Just like, I'm listening to you going, yeah, it really is that simple.
2:54The CMO Whisperer Host:It really is that simple.
2:55Ron Cohen:Is that something that, you know, brands overthink, overcomplicate?
3:00The CMO Whisperer Host:They don't want to necessarily take the time or spend the money, get that level of detail. They think, I'll just advertise. People will buy. If you're McDonald's, maybe that works. It does work if you're McDonald's. Right. Most people aren't McDonald's. No. You need deeper insights into your prospects, into your customers, into what makes them tick. They're going to respond to them and what channels they're going to respond to, and what tone you need to communicate, sometimes even the language you need to communicate if your message is going to resonate with them and get them to take that next step, whether it's a click or a buy or whatever it is.
3:36Ron Cohen:Yeah. So my guess is there's a lot of brands, and we're not going to name names, but who do it without those extra granularity steps, for lack of a much better term, and then look at their results and look at their evidence, oh, my advertising is not working.
3:51The CMO Whisperer Host:Well, it's not that simple, though. No, usually not. Right. A, B testing.
3:57Ron Cohen:Okay, is image A better than image B?
4:00The CMO Whisperer Host:Right. We talk now about A to Z testing because image A is better for some people. Image Q is better for other people. Image C is going to be the best for yet other people. It isn't an A or B. I like that. It's A to Z and every letter is good for something. That's what our optimization technology is about. That's how we leverage our data. We have so many segments, so much data.
4:25Ron Cohen:Something is right for each type. I love that A, B, don't stop at B.
4:31The CMO Whisperer Host:No, don't stop at B because you'll never get to the right answer
4:34Ron Cohen:for the majority of the people you're trying to communicate. I love that. I absolutely love that. So if brands don't have a clear view of who their customers are across channels and devices, what breaks first, if you will, without that clear view? Probably their budget. Okay, what comes next? Is it the relationship?
4:53The CMO Whisperer Host:The relationship or some smart competitor messaging at the right time and the right channel, et cetera, et cetera. There's so much competition and someone's going to do it right. And if you're not paying attention, they're probably going to steal your customers.
5:07Ron Cohen:Even a McDonald's?
5:08The CMO Whisperer Host:Even a McDonald's. Absolutely. One slip, we won't name it. No, no, no. But you don't have to look too far back. Nope. One slip.
5:15Ron Cohen:Nope. That comes from know your customer. Exactly. And it's not A to Z. So how should marketers think differently about audience creation today versus the old, say, static segment model?
5:26The CMO Whisperer Host:There's nothing wrong with the static segment model as a starting point, right? That's our playbook. Let's code your customer file. Let's resolve the identities of your website visitors and let's start in static segments. And then start testing A to Z. What works for segment one? What works for segment two? It's creative. It's channel. It's audience. You have to optimize everything all the time. We have new branding now. New shirts. Help this week. It says, optimize everything all the time. It's a lofty goal, but it's the right idea. It's exactly how you should think, especially with AI, because it can think, outthink people.
6:02The CMO Whisperer Host:It's not that it's so smart. it's the computes things faster machine learning really I'm talking about you can optimize everything all the time or at least you can have a goal well yeah like shoot for the moon what the hell
6:14Ron Cohen:so if you start with static segments I've already put you ahead of half the class because those
6:20The CMO Whisperer Host:segments are built based on real observations and then you start optimizing for whatever it is you're trying to sell service but whatever in different channels with different messages to different segments. And each time you learn something or the machine learning kicks in and it gets better and better and better. And pretty soon, you know, your return on ad spend is starting to look like this is a no-brainer. Just leave this on all the time.
6:46Ron Cohen:But you said something so important.
6:48The CMO Whisperer Host:You got to stick with it.
6:49Ron Cohen:Yeah, you got to stick with it. The longer you do it, if you're doing it right,
6:53The CMO Whisperer Host:the better it gets, the smarter it gets, the better the results get. Optimize everything all the time and you're never done. That's never done. Yeah, you don't optimize first quarter. and stop. And then, yeah, let it rot.
7:04Ron Cohen:No, I love that. What's the biggest misconception brands still have about personalization? That's a good question. Some brands think they can't do it at all.
7:13The CMO Whisperer Host:It's not worth doing. They want mass appeal. If I do two niche, I'll limit my audience. I'll limit my sales. You can do mass personalization, mass optimization, one little niche segment at a time. That's what you have to open your mind to, the possibility that there are many many many niches each one can be messaged to the optimal way
7:38Ron Cohen:what the what the start interrupt you would the misconception be that the brains think they can't
7:43The CMO Whisperer Host:personalize at scale or they get hung up on this one-to-one yeah one-to-one sure that was huge yeah it was huge but 300 segments as a concept it was a good idea let's you know focus on one person at a time. I would say focus on one type at a time. You can't have 300 million seconds. You can't have 300 million creatives.
8:05Ron Cohen:You can't track 300 million messaging strategies. No. Unless you have a lot of free time. I know. I was just going to say exactly. I like that. This question, I cannot wait because this word is so pun intended relevant to me and it's the word relevance, right? And I want to get your thoughts on when done right, what does relevance actually look like to the customer. This is a question a lot. We do a lot of multicultural research and advertising.
8:32The CMO Whisperer Host:And you ask, how important is it to you to see advertisements that have people who look like me? Forget about the message, just the people. You say, if they don't look like me, I don't pay attention. And if I am paying attention, I don't believe them. Or what they're saying isn't relevant because they're not like me. It might be relevant to them, but not to me. So it starts with that. Can I relate to whoever the messenger is? I meant content, imagery, music, audio, language, themes. Now, I'm thinking multicultural, but it applies more beyond that. It's more obvious when you're talking multicultural.
9:10Ron Cohen:Yes, it's more glaring.
Read the full transcript
9:12The CMO Whisperer Host:Yeah, when you get it wrong, it's more obvious. That's what I meant. But it's really no different for the general market or any segment. It has to be the messenger and the message and everything else. the language the sound feeling everything the emotions convenience store research
9:27Ron Cohen:turns out the smell is more important than anything wow the smell for certain types yeah
9:33The CMO Whisperer Host:of course yeah that's interesting the lighting something music right but the shelf management the first thing that hits you when you're walking the door it's the smell critically important so
9:44Ron Cohen:yeah all senses look i'm a big believer that forever marketers have not given consumers enough credit and what I mean by that in this context of consumers are savvy enough today to know that if you send me a message that has nothing to do with me, there's really no excuse to go, wait a minute, especially if I'm an existing customer, right? And we all do it. We've all gotten them and going, what? Like not even so much. You just tried to sell me the exact same thing I just bought, but you're sending me something that has nothing totally relevant to me. And I just think marketers don't or underestimate, I love your thoughts on that, that you think brands just think consumers are like, oh, they're good over it.
10:23The CMO Whisperer Host:Mostly they won't.
10:24Ron Cohen:Right. They'll think they've moved on and they're not familiar. All right. We got to tackle the two-letter word that's very pervasive in this conference and everywhere else, and that's AI. And I want to start with, I want to get your thoughts on not naming names, not naming tools, but kind of like where's the Ron Cohen of what's real and what's kind of snake oil or close to it?
10:45The CMO Whisperer Host:So let's separate AI from machine learning. Okay. Machine learning is real, and it enables all kinds of applications that are not possible without it. Too much math, too many things to look at and analyze in real time to be useful. You can optimize a campaign. It doesn't make much sense to make those decisions if the campaign is over. I wouldn't think so. Humans can't do it. It has to be machine learning. I think that's real. You look at data science and pattern recognition, machine learning is great for that. So AI is very useful. If you design an agent to do something that's going to save you hours per day, per week even, that's useful.
11:27The CMO Whisperer Host:But when you ask an AI a question to a client, I can't take credit for this, but I love the sense of it. You say, it's kind of like ask the intern to do something. Maybe the intern does a good job. Ask the intern. and you say, well, we should hire this guy. But most of the time it doesn't do such a good job and you say, who the hell hired this guy? It's right. That's what you get when you talk to a chat GPT or, you know, I don't mean to single that out. Any AI large language model is hit and miss. If you ask it certain kinds of questions and expect certain kinds of answers, it's like asking me.
12:05The CMO Whisperer Host:If you get lucky, probably not.
12:08Ron Cohen:It's an interesting analogy. It is.
12:10The CMO Whisperer Host:Right? I can't take credit for it.
12:11Ron Cohen:No, there's a lot of, there's a lot of validity to you just, I don't want to say you put it out into the ether, but in a way kind of like the intern analogy of sure, I could ask an intern to do this. I don't know what they make, hit it out of the park. Right. Great. Probably not. Probably not. Interesting. So, okay. I'm a CMO, I'm a head of brand digital, I'm listening to this and I'm going, okay, AI, I've learned enough that it could improve targeting and messaging, right, when done right. But I don't want to lose that human side of market. How do I balance that?
12:46The CMO Whisperer Host:And with human supervision, we talk generative AI. We're going to let the AI generate your creative and just serve it because it knows everything. That's going to end badly. It's always going to end badly. You need human supervision. You need human training. You need human validation. If you're going to use real AI, not machine learning stuff, but real AI, You need expert humans training, prompting, validating, checking before it goes up and door. I don't know any other way to answer that. I'm not a skeptic. I'm a heavy user of AI, which means I've had a lot of experience with unexpected results.
13:23The CMO Whisperer Host:But that's going to happen. It's going to happen.
13:25Ron Cohen:You have to know that going in.
13:27The CMO Whisperer Host:Yeah, and you have to plan for it.
13:28Ron Cohen:You have to plan for it, yeah.
13:29The CMO Whisperer Host:It's nothing new under the sun. If you don't make any mistakes, you don't learn anything. You're right every time and you win every time. What have you learned? zero expect to get unexpected results expected to not do what you wanted it to do the first time probably not the second or third time either expect that and that's okay that's how it is right it has to be okay right stay away from it don't use it because there's no you know it'll
13:55Ron Cohen:always be right exactly exactly okay put your prognostication hat on where do you see audience targeting heading over the next few years machine learning we know a lot about your existing customers know a lot.
14:08The CMO Whisperer Host:Even if nothing changes, which is never the case, we know who their lookalikes are. We know where you can find them and how you should message them. All right. Let's say, hypothetically, we've got all the lookalikes and we've messaged them all and now you need to grow up because it's all about growth. It has to be about growth. Who's next? And for that, you need transactional data. You need behavioral data. That's, I I think where segmentation is going, where audiences are going, it's predictive based on real-time data analysis, machine learning, and optimization, again, trial and error.
14:44Ron Cohen:All right, last question. I'll get you out of here on this. If you could give every CMO listening one piece of advice about using their data better starting tomorrow, what would it be? Collect more and collect a lot of information.
14:56The CMO Whisperer Host:Who's a good retailer? What do you really know about your customers, especially if they're not in your loyalty program? Even if they are, you don't know very much. It's worth investing in learning more about your customers. Where are your prospects even? People come to your website. People who come to your store and don't buy anything. Pay cash. That's not so much. You collect more. Know more about your customers. Know more about your shoppers.
15:20Ron Cohen:Yeah, your window shoppers even. Whatever that means. Yeah.
15:23The CMO Whisperer Host:Know more. That's my advice. Okay. It starts with that.
15:26Ron Cohen:Gotcha. Well, Ron Cohen, SVP of Practice Leadership at Claritas. Thank you so much for your time. Appreciate it.
15:32The CMO Whisperer Host:My pleasure.
15:33Ron Cohen:Well, that wraps up another episode of the CMO Whisperer Show. I hope you shared this episode with your friends. And if you have not already, please subscribe to be kept up to date on all the latest episodes. And if you're so inclined, leave me a review on your favorite podcast platform. Thank you.
From the publisher
Today I'm joined by Ron Cohen, SVP of Practice Leadership at Claritas, a company operating at the intersection of data, identity and AI, helping brands understand who their customers really are and how to reach them with more precision, relevance, and results. Ron spends his time focused on one of the biggest challenges in modern marketing, turning scattered signals into smart action. In a world full of noise, he works on helping brands make better decisions about audiences, personalization, targeting, and growth.