Driving digital experience at Shure

Eric Stine: Hi, I'm here with Rog Villanueva, the director of Global Web Marketing at Shure which is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year. Rog, thank you for hosting us here out in the Chicago suburbs. Rog has been instrumental as a leader and new Sitecore MVP in driving Shure's composable digital strategy with XM Cloud. Rog, thank you for having us here today. Tell me a little bit about your journey. How did you get to Shure?

Rog Villanueva: Thank you for having me, Eric. It's a real pleasure being here and glad you like our offices in Skokie. Throughout my career I’ve always been involved in and liked digital marketing and technology. I always had a passion for it. My background is in computer engineering, and I had many roles in different industries. I was a developer, and I put in the 180 hours a week. I worked in product management. I developed teams, implemented digital transformation projects and website redesign projects.  I've been involved in different areas, in different industries. When I saw the opportunity at Shure, I immediately jumped on it. I know the reputation that Shure has for the quality of its product, not to mention the history and the trajectory of Shure.

When I saw the job description it was very appealing. It's a great opportunity to reflect the quality of those products in the digital footprint and in the digital ecosystems. So, to me, it was another challenge and another great opportunity. It's a great company. 

Eric: It takes a real focus on innovation to keep a company that lives in a technical or a technological space relevant for more than a century. I've had the pleasure of being taken through the history of the company through its founding days, the awards that it has gathered for the impact that it has had on sound. A Grammy, an Emmy. That must place a great deal of pressure on having a digital presence that's worthy of the level of innovation that the company has shown.
How do you think about telling Shure's brand story in a digital environment in a way that is worthy of the company's own history of innovation? What are the things that you think about when you think about digital transformation that are necessary to properly represent the value of the brand?

Rog Villanueva: It's essentially thinking about what's most important. It's about being customer centric. It's putting the people and the customer at the center of all we do. Because Shure makes products for the people. It can be for the audio engineer, it can be for the educator, it can be for the person in government. It's transferring that same quality of products into the digital preference. 

Number one is brand presence. If we talk about technology, Sitecore now plays a very important part. 

When you have a hundred years [behind you] you keep doing that branding, focusing on the customer.

You do that through awareness of the company. You implement the company culture through your employees, through your awareness, through activities you do outside of the company from leadership [down]. 

Eric: It resonates very much with me. I am fortunate enough to have the opportunity to work with specialists in lighting and sound, and they take the technology and the craftsmanship very seriously. When you are providing a technically specific product to an audience that cares very deeply about the technology and the changes and the benefits of it, communicating that in a digital marketplace can be really challenging. You had mentioned XM Cloud, so talk to me a little bit about [that] for a global brand that needs to retain that brand integrity across a variety of languages and cultures. You were just telling me your last two geographies went live, which completes the journey to XM Cloud. I'm curious, how has making that move to the cloud enabled you to deliver the type of scalability?

Rog Villanueva: Yes, and there's a little bit of history behind it. Before XM Cloud and this migration, we were running on legacy and home-grown systems, and it was limiting progress and innovation, [as well as] limiting customer expectations.

For example, if we needed an enhancement, it might have taken a week. It was painful because we had different legacy systems. It was very hard to manage. Now with multilingual we have the same languages, the same regions, centralized in XM Cloud. We have all the content there; we have the same branding there. We integrated with our translation system thanks to the compostable architecture and the headless system that we use with XM Cloud. We manage the content in XM Cloud, and every marketing team has its own region specifics

Because, for example, every region might have different regulations. There's also cultural nuance that you may want to implement. Our marketing teams now can adjust to that. With XM Cloud, we can adjust to that while keeping the brand intact.

Eric: I'm hearing two things here. I'm hearing the ability to react to market conditions and move much more quickly in reaction to what your customer wants. And I'm hearing the ability to maintain consistency across markets while maintaining that global brand identity and global scale.

Rog Villanueva: Correct.

Eric: Are there any other ways that your web marketing efforts have been improved by moving to the cloud or implementing a composable architecture

Rog Villanueva: Yes. Many ways. It's very important because it's addressing not just our external customers, but also our internal customers, [who are] the ones who are working with XM Cloud. Before it might take us days to build something. Now we’ve cut the time in building pages by approximately 40 to 50%. The other thing is performance. With our legacy systems our sites were loading in three to 10 seconds; now some pages load in milliseconds, depending on what data you're pulling. SEO is more flexible now. We can update more metadata, where before it was a little bit challenging. There are all these different advantages, now that we have the website redesign, I think we have built that foundation

The next step is, how we can make the website a marketing tool. Now we must focus on personas, the customer journey, and the customer. We must personalize as well. Essentially, [we must] make the website more customer centric.

Eric: I'm going to use the biggest four-letter word in tech right now, AI. AI is transforming how brands handle content, both in terms of how that content is experienced in a digital world that is now populated by bots and agents as much as it is by people in search engines, as well as how you think about using AI for personalization, for content optimization, for automation. Where is Shure on the AI journey, both in terms of being reactive to the world we live in and proactive about that world?

Rog Villanueva: Shure is a company of innovation and its products and how we're moving into a digital presence. AI is very important to us, and we are on the path. The first thing for Shure is creating that awareness - some people might think ‘what's AI? Is it a terminator thing? Is it the rise of the machines?’ It's about creating that awareness of how it can help instead of hindering someone's work.

The legal aspect is also very important to us. What can you do, what can you not do? You cannot just upload all company secrets to AI because they might get shared. Next, how can we use it? For example, translations. If it took three weeks before to translate something, maybe [AI is] faster. And it's still being reviewed by a human because AI is not perfect.

The other thing is generative AI. It's something to look out for, especially in CMS systems. We're not using it for XM Cloud right now, but that something maybe coming that can help us with media, video production, image creation, and content personalization is something we're looking into.

Eric: You talked about SEO and the biggest impact we're seeing in many of our clients is that what used to work in SEO doesn't anymore because the new search engine might be an Instagram reel. Or chat GPT. Or the Gemini summary. And so having content that's contextualized to be experienced by a bot is another way that we see a lot of our clients on XM Cloud dealing with the impact of AI on digital marketing.

Rog Villanueva: And we're starting to see that in our analytics. You're starting to see AI agents now. The question is how can you optimize for agents? I know for a fact a lot of people are going to one of these agents now, because they give answers right away. It's a game changer and something that we are preparing for and continue to work on it.

Eric: You talked about analytics. Let's double click on that for a second. You've now completed a global migration. You're optimizing the site to be experienced by the customer that you've put at the center of your business on your hundredth anniversary. As you think about the next chapter, now that the platform is live globally, what are the business insights that you're looking to get from the experience? What metrics will you be looking at to determine if the investment was successful? How do you determine effectiveness?

Rog Villanueva: The first thing is project completion on time and on budget. Done, check. The next thing is we start to look at the most basic KPIs or metrics. We look at page views or sessions, we look at visitor engagement. Bounce rate doesn't really exist anymore in Google Analytics, but we look at exit rate or time on page average, average time on site, on page, or average time per visit. We look at the pages being browsed. There's a lot of technical documentation on our site, a lot of downloads, software updates, form submissions.

It's very interesting. We had a lot of interactions on the site - even the negative navigation, we had three layers. With the redesign we simplified things and made it specific for users. We incorporated personas. It's very different now; you're seeing a change in how people are looking for information. We use heat maps as well, to see where people are going and detect areas of opportunity.

Eric: Given the breadth and depth of content that you are creating and managing, how do you think about what will happen to content management over the next three to five years, given how much technology has changed?

Rog Villanueva: The work is going to progress from manual work to AI. People are doing it now, so I think AI is going to be a big part of it, whether it's incorporated to the CMS or using an agent. The problem with that is that it can get very robotic, and sometimes very un-humanized. I believe it's okay to use it, but there still must be that human factor.

Eric: How does that show up in a global company with local experiences? You've got global brand consistency, a global presence and platform, but your interactions are hyperlocal. You're serving very specific communities whether those are corporate audiences to large scale concerts and events including in the entertainment industry. How do you speak to a variety of local audiences and still maintain that brand consistency? Where do you see that going?

Rog Villanueva: I think with AI it can be helpful because you can set those factors or those parameters with personalization. I think it's going to facilitate and speed up time to market using an AI tool. Instead of being your enemy [AI] can be your friend.

Eric: When you moved to the cloud, how did you see the pace you were able to move at change? Speed of performance and time to market are critical, particularly when your brand is built around innovation. In moving to a composable, cloud-native architecture you were able to avail yourself of greater speed to market. How is that showing up in the experience of the marketer today as opposed to previously?

Rog Villanueva: We have improved approximately 40% to 50% in page build. I think that's significant. Before, like I mentioned, it might take us days and now we can sometimes do it in minutes and display results on demand. That was very big for us. Customers want things now. They cannot wait until tomorrow. Deployments are another thing. Now they're easy, they're more seamless, because of the cloud. There are a lot of advantages, and so many things [where] XM Cloud has brought positive things for us.

Eric: What's the best piece of feedback you've received from your stakeholders about the program that you've delivered? What makes you proud of what you've accomplished here?

Rog Villanueva: A couple of things! They like the look and feel because we changed the entire visual. They tell us they can find things quickly, and they like the interface where you drag and drop. There's a whole bunch of advantages, but I think the biggest one is the visual lift we did, the infrastructure, the downtime has reduced to almost none.

Eric: Having been through the project, what was the biggest surprise for you? What was the biggest upside to the positive that you didn't expect? Now that you’re live, what has been the greatest upside?

Rog Villanueva: That's a good question. I never thought of that question because I think that the project overall has been so successful. We completed the project in seven months in 12 languages, 23 regions. It's very aggressive, and I really congratulate our team and our partners because they worked relentlessly, and it was an enormous effort. We accomplished that as a team. It means a lot to me, and I think it's a good example to set.

Eric: Over the past several weeks, I have been fortunate enough to experience a very large number of existing Sitecore customers make the decision to upgrade to XM Cloud. I’ve been fortunate enough to see…XM Cloud selected by some of the greatest brands in the world. As I now go out and talk to dozens of companies about what they're about to experience, what advice should I give them? What advice would you give them?

Rog Villanueva: That's easy. Know exactly what you want.

It's very easy to say, “I want to change the website,” but it's a very thorough process. It involves people, processes, it involves change and sometimes change is the most difficult thing for people. Know why you want to do this. And if you're really committed to that, if you have a committed team to do that, get good partners, like Sitecore and other partners out there. 

Eric: Let's close with a little bit of a lightning round. What's your favorite Shure product? 

Rog Villanueva: I’ve always been a fan of the SM58, honestly. That's our most iconic microphone. It's unbreakable and you see it everywhere. It was my first microphone. I loved it. I think I still have the first one somewhere. It just works. 

Eric: Rog, what was the best piece of career advice you've ever received? 

Rog Villanueva: Just believe in yourself, that you can actually do this. Stand up and do it, and don't look back. Just do it. 

Eric: You're a musician yourself. What inspires you? What do you, what music do you turn to for inspiration? What's the most played song on your playlist? 

Rog Villanueva: Oh my gosh. I have so many. I like progressive rock to Yanni to Rush to Buena Vista Social Club.

Eric: If you were to pick up my iPhone right now, you'd hear a collection of Cher songs on repeat, but that's a story for another day. If you had the opportunity to work with any visionary in the technology industry, who would it be?

Rog Villanueva: Yeah, that's an easy one. And it's going to sound like a cliche, and you can probably guess right. But honestly, I think it would be Steve Jobs. I know he was a tough guy. And some people say he wasn't really a developer, a coder, all of this. But you know what? He had vision. He had vision and he knew what he wanted, and he just went for it. He knew how to direct people. He knew how to motivate people follow him. He just had great ideas. Creativity sometimes supersedes personality. 

Eric: Rog, I've told your story numerous times. I think that you becoming a Sitecore MVP is inspiring. 

Rog Villanueva: Oh, thank you.

Eric: I would love to see many more of our clients do so.  I'm so delighted that you joined me for today's digital visionary series. It's just incredible to see how sure is leveraging XM Cloud to deliver digital experiences at scale. To our audience, thank you for tuning in to this episode of Digital Visionaries and to Rog, thank you so much for hosting us. Thank you for inspiring our audience today. Thank you, Shure, for continuing to innovate, and thank you to all of you for joining us today. Thank you.