From Charms to Tech: Inside Pandora's Digital Journey, with CX and Personalisation Manager, Julie Hermann #BONUS

Welcome to a special episode of Marketing in the Madness live from ShopTalk at the Mach Alliance Members Lounge! Host Katie Street interviews Julie Hermann, CX and Personalisation Manager from Pandora, the world's largest jewellery brand.

Julie shares her journey at Pandora, the brand's history from humble beginnings in 1980s Copenhagen, their growth into the world's largest jewellery brand and their digital transformation in marketing.

Discover how Pandora personalises customer experiences and integrates technology to stay ahead in the digital age.

Plus, learn about the influence of social media trends on TikTok on Pandora’s success, and the role of technology in Pandora's marketing strategy.

Join us for an insightful conversation that dives deep into one of the most beloved jewellery brands.

00:00 Julie Hermann, Pandora
02:04 Intersection of Marketing and Technology
03:59 The Origin Story of Pandora
07:53 Pandora's Digital Transformation
10:36 Personalisation in Marketing
13:17 Technology and Integration at Pandora
14:55 Social Media Trends and TikTok

Julie Hermann
https://www.linkedin.com/in/juliemariehermann/
https://uk.pandora.net/en/

Katie Street
https://www.linkedin.com/in/katiestreet/
https://www.instagram.com/streetmate/

Street Agency
https://street.agency/
https://www.instagram.com/street.agency/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/streetagency/

Transcript

0:01

I'm very, very proud to work for Pandora. It actually started as a tiny jewellery shop in the 80s by a guy called Per Enevoldsen in the Copenhagen inner city. They realised this wide space, which was basically the Trump bracelet. So it was crazy, like they could barely follow the demand. To actually watch the evolution of brands like Pandora, that I've been very close to for many, many years, buying jewellery is often quite an emotional thing. There's four elements to any good customer experience. Number one being the audience. Who are you actually talking to? There's one-to-many, then there is one-to-some, and then there's one-to-one alisation. Element number two is journey. Number three is content. And number four is channel. The world is changing and gone are the days where it's like this one technology does all of the things I need it to do. A dream. It is just super, super important that you have all of your systems speak to each other because otherwise you get tech silos and data silos and that makes it incredibly difficult to create cross-channel customer experiences. I am a huge social media shopper. I buy everything on Instagram. And I know my daughter buys everything on TikTok. Last year there was a sun and the moon trend and our social team was super fast and excellent at just tapping into this and our rings were sold out immediately. These kind of trends we've been able to identify and tap into several times now. It's what we call cultural currency. Hey guys and welcome to a very special episode of Marketing in the Madness live from Shop Talk in the Mach Alliance Members Lounge. Now, if you usually listen to this podcast or watch this podcast you'll probably be able to hear that I've slightly lost my voice. That is partially because I didn't have a cold about two weeks ago but also because I've been talking way too much. So bear with me today because I am interviewing someone incredibly special for a brand that is very close to my heart and probably very close to a lot of your hearts. It's Pandora. Now, if you don't know who Pandora are, I mean, how do you not know? It is the world's largest jewellery brand and I am very, very lucky to have with me here live the fantastic Julie. So Julie, I'm going to come to you to introduce yourself and tell me a little bit about you and your role at Pandora. Thank you so much, Katie. It's lovely to be here with you at Shop Talk. It's amazing. I'm Julie. I have been working at Pandora now for two and a half years. First in a marketing strategy role supporting our CMO office and now I actually work at the intersection of marketing and technology. So basically what I do is alization which is all about making sure that a gold buyer in the UK sees different types of content than a male gifter in Italy that might just need that very fast gift tomorrow. So in essence, that's what I do. In more complex terms, it's called cross-channel customer experience. So it's all about making sure that all of our channels, so email, social, web, talk to each other and we can create consistent experiences for everybody across the globe. Yeah, and having those connected experiences and using connected technology is a huge part of that. Now, I want to go a bit way back because when we spoke pre-booking the interview at Shop Talk, you told me a really interesting story about how Pandora started and also how Pandora got its name, which I think everyone will find really interesting. Can you share a little bit of the Pandora history? Absolutely. It's a marvelous brand and I'm very, very proud to work for Pandora because it actually started as a tiny jewellery shop in the 80s by a guy called Per Enevoldsen in the Copenhagen inner city. He had a jewellery store called Gullsmilling 101 in Nørrebro and he was not satisfied with the quality of the jewellery he was receiving. So he set off to try to find better quality. So he went on a trip all over Asia trying to figure out which kind of country actually had interesting jewellery and it turned out that Thailand is an amazing craftsmanship space. And he fell so much in love with Thailand that he stayed there actually and started his own production. And so he started eventually, so like this is now I'm shortening 20 years into a little story, but eventually it actually ended up with him being in Thailand and him having salesmen here in Copenhagen selling the jewellery. And it started out as a small shop called Populærsmøkker which translates to so much as popular jewellery. And they were basically a wholesaler at the time. And then at some point they realized this wide space which was basically the charm bracelet. So that was invented in 2000. And it was basically they already had small charms and they already had like a bracelet, etc. So it was kind of like, OK, can we play with this? OK, but they fall off. So can we like invent a screw cap? And can we like invent small safety chains, etc.? So that's all they did in the 2000s. And I think back to your question about the name. So actually the bracelet instantly started selling itself. So it was crazy. Like they could barely follow the demand. Because at that time, in 2000, there were like approximately 60 people in Thailand and not very many in Denmark. I think it was mainly around 7 or so. So from that they actually then were like, OK, we need a name for that bracelet. So what should we call that bracelet? And they were like brainstorming a little bit and all over the company people were coming up with names. And they had this girl called Nana who was actually coming from time to time to clean, to help in the office and these kinds of things. And she was overhearing the conversation of the founder and a guy called Kenneth and Lisbeth and a few other of these very early employees from who I've also gotten this story told, incredibly privileged. And she said, my mom thinks she should name it Pandora. That's how the name came about, basically. So right in the beginning it was totally crazy. Also like the first marketing concept, they were like, maybe it would be good to have like a splash of color in there. So they went for orange, but in the printer it came out a little bit pinkish. So to the day today, pink is our brand color. So this is just to say Pandora has been on this incredible growth journey of starting very small as a small jewellery shop in Copenhagen to now being 33,000 employees worldwide. And growing like crazy over the last 20 years and more. I mean, it's mad to think, isn't it, that in that last 20 years, just over 20 staff, and really the Pandora charm bracelet grew the brand to what it is, well, partially grew the brand to what it is today. Absolutely. However, having those 33,000 employees and being the largest jewellery brand in the world, of course, digital has now become a huge part of your journey. And probably a huge shift from being, you know, the traditional stores where we all used to go. And I remember that, you know, I've got the Pandora charm bracelets and I used to go into store to buy them. Now that journey is very different today when I'm looking to buy a charm for my daughter or for my mom, I predominantly am going online. So talk to me, I guess, about how the brands changed and how as a marketing and digital team, you've had to evolve to become more of a digital first brand over the past few years. So back there in the 2000s, the bracelet basically sold itself. So it just spilled over the borders. So then came Germany, then came Sweden, et cetera, eventually the US, until today we're represented in 150 countries and we're owning most of our stores. So this journey has been large. And I think one thing I would like to point out about this journey is also the shift from actually franchising and not owning our own stores to actually owning most of our stores and our retail points of sales today. And I think this has been very, very fundamental for Pandora because it's actually allowed us to own the entire customer experience. And because Pandora is meaningful, like our purpose is to give a voice to people's loves. So we want to actually be able to serve the customer in a way where there is an emotional connection and where there's an element of alisation and an element of emotionality. And that you can best serve if you're actually controlling the retail experience. So that was a big one. And then number two is actually also the space traditionally has not really been very big on e-commerce, right? So it's mostly, most of our competitors are smaller slash mid-sized players in the individual markets. And because usually you go down to your local , you browse a bit, you buy something, but having these large global brands is fairly new, let's put it that way. And Pandora has actually been an early adopter of e-com there as well. So today approximately 30% of all of our sales are e-com and that's one of the largest in the industry actually. So we are fairly digital compared to our competitors. Yeah. I mean, I know that because I shop digitally. There are a couple of other brands that I work with that I also love. But it's been amazing as someone who is a big shopaholic to actually watch the evolution of brands like Pandora that I've been very close to for many, many years. So talk to me about the alization side of things. This is what I absolutely, I mean, I am, as someone who knows about marketing and I am a marketer, I am the easiest to be marketed to. So tell me about how you create these really, because exactly like you say, you're an emotive, you're buying is often quite an emotional thing, especially with the charms that you're buying for an occasion. I've bought my daughter when she graduated from junior school to go to high school when it's a big birthday. These are things that you're buying that have real meaning. So how do you alize that in the digital world? Absolutely. And that's a very, very good question. And it's a journey, right? I think there's four elements to any good customer experience. Number one being the audience. Who are you actually talking to? So here there's like basically we're thinking of it in three different elements. There's one-to-many, so that's basically mass communication. Then there is one-to-some, which is your segmenting based on specific audiences. And then there's one-to-one alization. That's when you get a specifically tailored experience just for you. Element number two is journey. So what is this customer actually looking for? Like where are they in their purchase journey? Are they just browsing brands? Are they ready to make a purchase? Have they just bought from you and they kind of want to interact with you? Did they just sign up to like, I don't know, a Facebook group that talks about Pandora? All of these things, like where is the customer right now? So that's number two is journey. Number three is content. We need to be able to serve people the content that resonates with them. And we are a global brand, and we do believe in talking with one voice, but that doesn't mean that it can come out in many different elements and facets and in many different touch points. And not every channel doesn't need exactly the same communication, so you really need to figure out that balance. And number four is the one I've actually also just mentioned, it's channel. So which channels are you using for what? So a customer interacts with several touch points before making a purchase with Pandora on average. So it is really, really important that we figure out what are these channels? How do we use them best? And how do we make sure that we are uniting all of these four elements together? And that's where it becomes tricky, right? So how do you create these micro-interactions between audience, journey, content, and channel? And one element that makes that possible is tech. So you cannot do that without having the right technical foundation. And this is where all your data infrastructure, all your technology, the way you're actually working with customer experience on a more rule-based engine way, the way you're working with content management, all of these things become incredibly important if you want to activate. On that note, seeing as we are sat in the MET Alliance lounge, which is all around composable technologies, what kind of technologies are you guys using? Are you using a composable infrastructure? Because like you say, you need lots of... The world is changing, and gone are the days where it's like this one technology does all of the things I need it to do. That would be a dream. So how do you... Kind of more broadly, I guess, without going into the leads, because we probably don't have time. What more broadly is your approach to technology at Pandora? So in general, we work with a lot... We love to know what's out there. Yeah, I think this is also, for instance, why we're at Chop Talk today. So getting inspired and understanding what kind of technologies and data is out there. I mean, today there's new technology emerging basically on a daily basis. So it's also very much about figuring out how that actually fits into your existing tech stack and how you can make it all work together, right? Because as you rightly say, it is just super, super important that you have all of your systems speak to each other, because otherwise you get tech silos and data silos, and that makes it incredibly difficult to create cross-channel customer experiences. So one of the biggest things we're always looking for is how can we integrate it with what we already have today? Yeah, I think that's been a real step change over the past few years. Brands that I've spoken to and interviewed on the podcast are looking for technology platforms that don't trap you, that don't mean you get stuck, that enable you to work with other platforms and give you the flexibility to innovate and move quickly, which a huge brand like Pandora really needs. Yeah, absolutely. One last question before I let you go and enjoy the rest of the show. Just because I am a huge social media shopper, one of the things you talk about channels, like I buy everything on Instagram, and I know my daughter buys everything on TikTok. Are you guys seeing TikTok come through as quite a big channel for you now? Talk to me about outside of your own channels, your social... I'd love to hear what you guys are seeing at Pandora. One of the crazy things that keeps happening on TikTok is trends. And since last year, there was a sun and a moon trend. So there was like, you're my sun to my moon, there was this kind of video. Turns out Pandora has a compatible sun and moon ring. And our social team was super fast and excellent at just tapping into this, and our rings were sold out immediately. And these kinds of trends, we've been able to identify and tap into several times now. It's what we call cultural currency, like making sure we're actually relevant and we're talking to the right customer on the right platforms. I mean, TikTok is definitely growing for us. Yeah, yeah. TikTok, I mean, it is the future. I'm going to be going to Cannes in a couple of weeks, and I'm going to be spending a lot of time at TikTok to go and listen to all the new things that are happening. Julie, it's been an absolute pleasure to have you. Thank you so much for joining me at Shop Talk and sharing so much about the Pandora story. I, yeah, I feel like I've learned a lot about one of my most favorite brands, so big thank you. Thanks for having me. It was an absolute pleasure.