Experience

If I could borrow Doc Brown’s DeLorean for a single trip, I’d corner my 20‑year‑old self and slide a Post‑it across the dash: Complexity is a tax. Simplicity compounds. 

Seventeen years and three pivots later, our 150‑person performance media agency finally hums, but I still feel the drag of every extra tool, meeting, and ‘innovation’ I once chased. 

Half the dashboards were vanity mirrors; half the projects? Cargo cults! 

True growth came from pruning – fewer platforms, cleaner data flow, tighter feedback loops. 

—

Last December Jeff Smith, Epsilon’s new CMO, told AdWeek that marketers drown because their tech stacks are disconnected and bloated. 

I came across Jeff’s interview this past Sunday, and nodded so hard I nearly spilled my morning espresso! 

Early‑career ‘me’ worshiped unnecessary complexity. 

Today I know revenue loves speed, and speed loves focus. 

Fancy looks great on LinkedIn; simple funds payroll and bonuses. 

If I’d learned that sooner, in my twenties, my agency would have reached scale and sustainability years sooner – and I might have slept in on more Sundays. (Or at least got out more often on my mountain bike?). 

Reflection

Open a typical enterprise AdTech and MarTech stack.

You’ll see a relay race where no one hands off the baton:

• Meta and Google vacuum up 1st party signals. 

• A CDP locks those signals in cold storage.

• The CRM hoards customer data in its own silo.

• And then, ad platforms continue to spray budgets across every audience, regardless of their lifetime value.

Ad buying platforms, the CDP, and the CRM - are disconnected and full of incomprehensible complexity.

What is the villain?  It’s not the need for MORE tech, right? 

Let’s restate the question…

WHO is the villain?

It’s me. It’s you. It’s marketers’ lack of a single, simple vision.

If AdWeek asked ME (instead of Jeff Smith) “Why do marketers think their tech stacks aren’t doing what they need to do? What is missing?”, here is what I would say:

What is all of this technology for? What is the marketing outcome that we are shooting for?

The answer? Start with the end in mind: relevant journeys at micro‑audience level.

What are “micro-audiences”? Smaller cohorts of 50k to 500k humans sharing real‑world context: divorced co‑parents, solo caregivers, new pet parents. Each group of which have unique and specific needs and wants – that only your brand can help them solve. 

Netflix spends an estimated $300‑500 million a year perfecting one‑to‑one recommendations. (You won’t.)

You can’t afford one-to-one.  

But you can own ‘fewer‑to‑fewer’. 

(‘fewer’ unique journeys – or affinities, needs, wants, wishes or desires – matched to ‘fewer’ clustered micro-audiences). 

Tailor creative, landing pages, and nurture customer journeys to these living groups of micro-audiences. 

Impact? Relevance climbs, conversation rates go up for each micro-audience, counts of conversions, and thus revenues, increase - with the same ad investments.

Action

Four practical moves to make ‘fewer-to-fewer’ customer journeys king and queen:

Step 1, Leave the bunker. Schedule 20 video chats with customers who are representative of the micro-audiences that drive the lion’s share of your brand’s profit. Ask about mornings, worries, tiny joys. Their language and stories around their needs and wants, beat any KPI dashboard.

Step 2, Learn to probe. Take a quick qual‑research course or hire a pro interviewer. Clean, bias‑free questions turn scattered anecdotes into patterns around needed customer journeys, that you can defend at budget time.

Step 3, Map three flagship journeys. On one page, chart each micro‑audience from first ad impression to second transaction. What should each of them see (and not see) on YouTube? In banners? On the landing page? In the cart? In the email after the transaction?. Circle the a) trust (conversion) accelerators vs b) tension points. 

Step 4, Wire tech to the map. List every tool, pixel, API, and vendor, from the first impression to the thank you email. Keep pieces of the tech that fuel those customer journeys; sunset the rest and eliminate unnecessary expenses. Fewer tools, tighter data flow, more glide. Then ship quarterly scorecards tying journey tweaks for each of your micro-audiences, tracking conversion lift and incremental revenue created. When the economy tightens a belt hole, ‘same spend, more profit’ turns your role from line item to lifesaver for the brand.

References

In December 2024, Epsilon appointed Jeff Smith as its new CMO, succeeding Jon Beebe. Smith, with extensive experience at Oracle, Nielsen, LiveRamp, and McKinsey, sees significant opportunity in Epsilon’s comprehensive martech suite – including a CDP, DSP, SSP, cleanroom, and retail media network – which directly addresses common CMO pain points. (Epsilon CMO Jeff Smith on Marketers' Biggest Tech Stack Challenges).

Owned by Publicis Groupe since 2019, Epsilon powers its PeopleCloud platform, pivotal for audience management and media strategy. 

Smith emphasized two main challenges marketers face: 

• fragmented tech stacks – incapable of seamlessly integrating brand-building and performance-driven marketing, and 

• overly complex vendor landscapes – that hinder innovation. 

If you’d like to discuss your career journey with me one-to-one, please feel free to email me at [email protected] or message me on LinkedIn.

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