Welcoming Andy Frawley, the New Award-Winning CEO of Marketing Evolution

The marketing industry is undergoing massive transformation. With increasing reliance on digital channels, new privacy regulations, the impending death of the cookie, and the impact of the pandemic on consumer behavior, change is constant. And while change can be disruptive, it also promises new opportunities.

Our team at Marketing Evolution is experiencing change as well. Namely, we’ve welcomed industry veteran, Andy Frawley, as our new CEO -- and we couldn’t be more excited for the opportunities ahead under his leadership. 

Andy Frawley has more than 30 years of operating experience, including 25 years at the senior management level. He’s led multiple data-driven organizations, including V12, Epsilon, and ClickSquared, where he’s helped businesses leverage insights, technology, and analytics to achieve growth and deliver client success.

Recently, we sat down with Andy to discuss his extensive background and get a snapshot of his long-term vision for Marketing Evolution.

You’ve been thinking about marketing analytics since the 1990s – how did your background lead you to become a formative player in this space?

Actually, I’ve been thinking about marketing analytics since the 80s. I was a computer science major in college and I saw the value of data and technology firsthand. It was shocking to me that while businesses had the power to adopt data-driven decision-making, they simply weren’t taking advantage of the opportunity. I saw the potential clearly, though -- so I changed my major to Finance.

After I finished my undergrad, I took on my first position at Epsilon. To be honest, I didn’t have much formal training for that position. But as I grew into my role, I found I had a real aptitude for helping marketers make decisions using their own data. This was during the 1990s, so a lot of my colleagues found that a bit unusual. At that time, I was mostly helping analyze the performance of direct mail or telemarketing campaigns and dabbling in financial modeling. 

That role made it clear to me that data-driven marketing was the future. So, after I was done at Epsilon (at least, for the time being) I spent a few years in a consulting role where I focused primarily on helping businesses measure the impact of marketing initiatives. The process was pretty slow and manual at that time. I’d get information on a monthly or quarterly basis, run the numbers, and help them build campaigns for the next quarter.

That’s when I started thinking: There’s got to be a better way.

As we moved into the 2000s, it became clear to me that marketers needed a tool that could turn these quarterly events into weekly – or even daily – analyses. So, I started building product research applications designed to make the optimization process much more efficient. This work propelled me into several high-profile leadership positions, where I used my experience to help businesses grow at an unprecedented rate.

Analytics is clearly your forte – but with all of the vendors on the market today, what brought you to Marketing Evolution?

The science. I’ve worked with countless different marketing tools and seen the inner workings of many. And to put it bluntly, the science can’t hold a candle to Marketing Evolution. In this industry, way too many solutions base their framework on faulty data science and leave a lot of gaps – especially when it comes to scientifically allocating marketing spend.

There’s a lot that’s special about Marketing Evolution. It can aggregate a massive amount of data from multi-channel campaigns and break it down with an incredible amount of granularity. You can measure performance based on media project, target audience, or location, to name a few. Then, you can break this analysis down on a per-dollar or per-impression basis. Not only that, but it provides actionable recommendations to help you allocate spend based on your goals.

In the past, you’d need a data scientist on your team to gain these capabilities. But even your data scientist might not end up working with the most timely and complete set of data. With Marketing Evolution, all of the best quality data is chosen automatically on the back end. This means brands can easily look over the horizon and see how today’s decisions impact tomorrow’s results.

So, it’s a really unique and necessary solution. Even with new data privacy measures that are creating challenges for many brands and their adtech and martech partners, Marketing Evolution is in a great position.

Looking toward the future, what are your plans for Marketing Evolution?

Looking into 2022, I’d like to showcase how Marketing Evolution helps businesses in a practical way. We’ve helped numerous Fortune 500 companies acquire more customers and make the most out of their media spend. The data science behind the solution is incredible, but the outcomes are what will truly resonate with marketers.

I’m also looking to continue to expand how the solution responds to market dynamics. For example, we recently added the ability to see how external factors, like the weather, impact performance. As our solution gains these layers of intelligence, marketers will be able to predict their campaign outcomes with even greater precision.

On that same note, I’d like to further develop Marketing Evolution content and creative measurement capabilities. The Marketing Evolution platform does have this capability already, but we’re only in the second inning, so to speak. At this stage in the game, marketers know that a customer’s emotional connection with a brand will cause them to spend more, more often. Consumers don’t mind paying a premium if they believe in your brand’s mission.

We’re working on expanding the scale of our creative testing now – and we should have exciting news in early 2022.