The 3% Problem
Two decades across data and media, from Sky to two founded companies, now closing the gap between what brands know and what they use.
"Services can be incredible training wheels for software or product"
Rob McLaughlin is Founder and CEO of AUDIENCES, a pure play software business he co-founded with Matt Wilkinson to close what he calls "the activation gap", the failure of brands to use first-party data they already own. He argues that less than 3 per cent of media is informed by first-party data, and that the fix is to keep that data inside a client's own infrastructure, where the consumer left it.
McLaughlin came to marketing through a fascination with human behaviour and influence. After a politics degree he struggled to purpose in the job market, he spent a year as an estate agent learning sales and pipeline, then joined BrightTalk, later acquired by Informa. He describes a good but, by his account, boring corporate career until he was 35, across Canon, Barclays and Sky, where as head of data across the buy and sell side he built the craft that shaped everything after.
He founded Loop Horizon, led go-to-market and grew it to around 6 million in revenue before a management buyout, an experience he says gave him the confidence to build again. AUDIENCES is his second company and a different animal, selling software where Loop Horizon sold people, entering the market at enterprise level from day one and now running natively inside Snowflake, with Experian choosing AUDIENCES as, in his words, "their onboarding and activation partner". McLaughlin runs it proudly from London Bridge and, despite what he describes as government headwinds, has no intention of leaving Britain.
I think it's a special kind of stupid to have all the information and choose not to use it.
"It's people, and it's attitude, and it's focus"
McLaughlin rejects the idea that the industry needs more technology or cleaner data. He argues the cloud and warehousing investment has already been made, and what holds companies back is people, attitude and focus. The unlock, he says, is commercial motivation: getting value from data assets you already own.
"You need to have a hunger to want to change something in the industry."
McLaughlin says AUDIENCES hires people fearless enough to take on a problem the industry has failed at for decades. He wants hunger to change something and to achieve something personally, and prizes the absence of a single type. He sees the range of backgrounds on his team as a gigantic strength.
"We're here to turn the UK into a better country for ourselves, for our families, for our children, for everyone we know"
Despite offers to relocate to zero-tax jurisdictions, McLaughlin is fiercely committed to the UK. He believes in the safety net and the NHS, but argues it must be financed, and that money earned from overseas clients and brought home is how you do it. He sees the company's British roots, GDPR and ties to North America as the reason the idea could exist at all.
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