divulge a little of his career-long journey in data.


Quick talking and quick brained, Lees has over 20 years’ experience of the data market spread across a multi-national career, arriving in data by way of software. “My route into data and databases was probably not a typical one,” he says, with mild understatement. “I started out working in Africa, in Namibia and South Africa, and from then I’ve worked in a lot of different countries doing a lot of different things but in their own way, they all led me to data. One of my subjects at university was computer science and my first job was with Siemens developing CIS software. I then did some work with image processing software and I still look back on those days as helping to lay the foundations that equipped me to build and develop the systems I did later in my career.”


Lees’ first step on the path to database marketing enlightenment was in the mid-80s when he saw a gap in South Africa to use CIS software to combine data and marketing in what was a new and highly innovative way at the time. Remember, the mid-80s was 25 years ago now. While he was working on the mapping and management of rainfall stations, Lees saw how exactly the same principles could be applied to areas such as banking, where the software could be tweaked to demonstrate how marketing activity should be allocated and prioritised in relation to geographic branch site location.


“I pitched it to a bank, gave them a little demo and they bought it,” explains Lees in his characteristic style. It’s probably fair to assume that there was a little more to it than that, but Lees has a way of cutting to the chase that filters out most of what he probably sees a noise, a talent that has undoubtedly served him well in an industry as quixotic and complex as database marketing.


The bank then employed him to optimise site location and optimise marketing budget allocation, which gave him his first insight into the science of understanding customers.


In the early 90s Lees helped build what must have been one of the first ever Single Customer Views, though the nomenclature was probably a little different back then and his subsequent time with Standard Bank of South Africa was when his career path was sealed. A “pretty progressive” bank, as he recalls, Lees reported into the Head


of Research & Development, seemingly because there was no one more appropriate for him to report into, database marketing not falling into any other department head’s portfolio at that time. But it’s clear from the enthusiasm with which he recalls that period in his


career that Lees saw it as a turning point of sorts. THE BIRTH OF AN INDUSTRY


“I don’t think it’s unfair to see that we basically spawned that data industry in South Africa during that period. We were doing things no one had done before like using customer data to manage risk decisions and model for mortgage decisions. It was taking 17 days to analyse risk before we started and we got it down to one day! We were using data in innovative ways and it was really exciting.”


It’s funny how data seems to inveigle its way into the heads of so many talented individuals, the promise of being able to make better decisions using data impossible to resist.


Following that awakening, Lees has gone on to establish a mammoth


reputation within the Geographic Information Systems arena and has acquired huge expertise in the data marketplace. Having put his new found love of data to good use by co-founding marketing consultancy Intact Solutions, Lees went on to spend five years as Managing Director, growing the business to become market leader in the provision of database marketing solutions before selling to South Africa’s largest listed media conglomerate Primedia.


In 2001, he joined what is now dbg (and was then a Primedia Group owned business) with his life’s work distilled down into a single, very precise


www.dmarket.co.uk


dbg rebrand


Reflecting what Lees calls “the seismic shift the huge rise of e-marketing and digital data has produced”, the company was very recently rebranded with the two main divisions of the erstwhile company - data company Database Group (DbG) and email service provider Database Group Interactive (DbGi) – consolidated under a single brand, dbg. Lees’ colleague, Group Marketing Director Hannah Graham, explains the motives behind the development: “The recent surge in the importance of e- marketing and the volume of digital customer data has prompted us to unite our full service offer under one name, dbg. This reflects our ability to provide a truly integrated data service, managing both offline and online data, and providing our clients with the strongest possible insight into their customers to inform their marketing strategies - what we call a multi-channel single customer view.” DbG and DbGi had been operating as individual businesses in the market as a standalone marketing service provider and a standalone one email service provider . Graham believes the move will allow the business to make more impact under one brand, give greater clarity as to who dbg is and what it does, and improve customer service, internal communication and cross-selling. Christine Didelot, Marketing Database Manager at Renault UK, adds: “We have been working with dbg for over eight years, collecting information about our customers to create a single customer view and to understand them better. The database is a powerful marketing tool, and with dbg’s help we are learning ever more about our customers’ behaviours and preferences by bringing together increasing amounts of meaningful data from both on and offline sources. I believe that dbg’s rebrand under one name truly reflects the integrated data and email services it offers.”


mission: to make marketing meaningful through the application of data. Subsequently Lees along with dbg CEO Brett Isenberg and dbg Director


Allan Watson (former Executive Chairman and the largest shareholder of two South African businesses that were acquired by the Primedia Group), took an equity stake in the Mailcom marketing business and its Emailcom division. Having secured full control, the trio then sold it to facilitate the purchase of Database Group from Primedia in 2006. The email side of the business was retained and rebranded as Database Group Interactive, before being rebranded once more in June this year under the umbrella dbg badge. These days, the company offers a range of services including email marketing, data services, consultancy, and database and campaign management. Not surprisingly, given the pedigree of its Chairman, dbg is quick to point out that the business is not just about solutions, but is equally a team of strategic and tactical thinkers providing insight, advice and support to drive intelligent ideas that count where it matters most – on the bottom line.


“What was interesting about the early days of what is now dbg was that the company was more interested in data itself than in outcomes. In South Africa, they understood very well that data was a means to an end and it’s the outcomes, it’s what you achieve with the data that really matters.” And this is a conviction that Lees holds to as strongly today as he did


then. “It’s never been clearer to me that we need to integrate customer-based


research with traditional analytics to extract maximum value from data. This is out mantra to our clients and we are always working with them to build their marketing strategies for the future, bringing together the ‘holy trinity’ of direct, digital and data”. n


July / August 2010 19


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