Case Study

How Interactions Marketing and Tableau Software brought Big Data into the eye of the storm In the third installment of a four-part series of weekly Hangouts discussing how retailers are benefitting from Google Enterprise tools, Dan Powers, Director of Sales for Google Cloud Platform, was joined by Giovanni DeMeo – the Vice About Interactions Marketing For over 25 years, Interactions has been the global leader in retail food sampling and demonstration events programs for leading retailers around the world, including the Shopper Marketing magazine reader-ranked number-one ROI program for Costco. Our strategy for retail sales and marketing through events, operational expertise and innovative technology delivers experiences that excite shoppers, build brand loyalty and deliver ROI. Interactions executes over 2 million retail sales and marketing events every year for our retailer and CPG brand partners. Events range in size from a 1-person food sampling or demonstration event to multi-city street teams of Brand Ambassadors using guerrilla marketing tactics to engage consumers, increase product trials, build brand awareness and drive sales.

President of Global Marketing and Analytics for Interactions Marketing – and Paul Lilford, Tableau Software’s Global Director for Technology Partners, to discuss how the company leveraged Google’s cloud-based Big Data applications to turn massive weather-related data sets into actionable intelligence. Using Google BigQuery – the cloud solution for large data analysis from Google – and Tableau’s visual analytics software, Interactions Marketing recently completed an initial use case that layered transactional-level sales data with multi-source, detailed regional weather data to gain visibility and insight into hidden shopper behavioral patterns. The company counts among its clientele grocery retailers that have multiple formats – including gas stations, convenience stores and supermarkets – and customizes its queries to match the specific formats of individuals stores. DeMeo walked through several key points, including: •

The disruptive nature of analytics



DeMeo says advanced analytics has fundamentally revolutionized the decision-making equation by powering forward-thinking solutions.



“Historically we’ve made decisions based on our own experience and by utilizing data to tell us what’s happened in the past,” he said. “Moving forward we have the opportunity to not only learn what happened in the past but to use predictive modeling and prescriptive modeling to use transactional data and proprietary retailer data, and enrich it with other data sets to help us generate decisions based on past results. This enables

About Tableau Tableau helps people see and understand data. Seven words that drive everything we do. And they’ve never been more important. In 2020 the world will generate 50 times the amount of data as in 2011. And 75 times the number of information sources (IDC, 2011). Within these data are huge, unparalleled opportunities for human advancement. But to turn opportunities into reality, people need the power of data at their fingertips. Tableau is building software to deliver exactly that. Our products are transforming the way people use data to solve problems. We make analyzing data fast and easy, beautiful and useful. It’s software for anyone and everyone.

us to continue to improve on our decision management process.”

“Moving forward we have the opportunity to not only learn what happened in the past but to use predictive modeling and prescriptive modeling to use transactional data and proprietary retailer data, and enrich it with other data sets to help us generate decisions based on past results. This enables us to continue to improve on our decision management process.” –Giovanni DeMeo, VP of Global Marketing and Analytics, Interactions Marketing

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The power of Google Cloud



DeMeo went on to describe how Google BigQuery, in conjunction with the cloud, has provided a pathway for grocery retailers to apply nextgeneration data tools to disrupt legacy models of channel utilization while avoiding a major upfront costs.



“There has been a somewhat equal distribution across all mediums because, historically, the data sets have either been not available or too large to determine where the return is the greatest and continually reassess,” he explained. “Brick and mortar retailers work on small margins so the upfront investment can often be highly prohibitive; but with the advent of tools like BigQuery – which is scalable – as well as software like Tableau’s, and by utilizing third-party resources or services, we make those investments and then pass along the ability to leverage the data on to the retailer.”

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How advanced visualization software turns data into insights



In order for data to be valuable you need to be able to make sense of it. And that’s where Tableau comes in. With Tableau, Interactions Marketing’s clients can organize data using quick filters to apply a range of variable with the ability to publish an editable version for online use.



Paul Lilford, Tableau Software’s Global Director for Technology Partners, said the company depends on Google Enterprise and Cloud tools to enhance the real-time functionality and usability of its products.



“With the advent of Big Data, it’s all about the agility and the speed to do your analytics and gain greater insights,” he said. “The beauty of our relationship with Google is our live connection to BigQuery. Many of our other cloud sources are pushed sources so there can be a lag but in terms of BigQuery it’s a live feed so if you update the data on the back end it shows up on the front end.”

To learn more about how Interactions Marketing and Tableau Software are applying Google solutions to power better retail marketing, view a webcast of the entire Hangout. Next week, join us as Christine Atkins, who led the successful efforts of international grocer Ahold to go Google and move to the cloud, will talk about the company’s story of transformation, told from the viewpoint of a seasoned CIO in the next Hangout.

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