Expert Interview: Wendell Lansford, Co-Founder & CEO of Wyng, on Turning Attention into Actionable Data in a Cookieless World

Wyng is trusted by over 250 global brands, including Estée Lauder, Unilever, LVMH, and Georgia-Pacific. In this conversation, Wendell shares insights on why engagement is now the entry point for performance marketing, and how creative teams can design experiences that “earn” data rather than extract it.

Q1: In a cookieless world, how should performance marketers rethink the relationship between creative engagement and data collection?

Wendell Lansford: The shift from third-party cookies to zero-party data strategies means engagement is now the entry point for performance marketing. Creative teams need to design interactive experiences like quizzes, gamified promotions, product finders that consumers actually want to engage with, because those experiences are where you collect zero-party and first-party consumer data through consent-driven value exchange.

The most successful brands are moving from buying audiences to owning them. Instead of passive tracking, leading enterprises use interactive content marketing to capture consented data. At Wyng, we enable brands to collect zero-party and first-party consumer data through interactive experiences consumers actually want to engage with, which becomes the foundation of personalized marketing in a privacy-first era. For performance marketers, the data capture platform is now as critical as the creative itself.

Q2: What makes zero-party data different from first-party data, and why does it matter for enterprise brands investing in performance creative?

Wendell Lansford: Zero-party data is information that consumers willingly share through interactive experiences, such as preferences, product interests, and purchase intent. First-party data tracks behavior, while zero-party data captures intent. That difference is everything for customer data platforms and personalized marketing.

Wyng powers promotional hubs and gamification for multinational enterprises like Mondelez, Ferrero, and Unilever, helping them collect this data at scale through instant-win games, product discovery quizzes, gamified loyalty (such as challenges, streaks, and badges), sweepstakes, and preference centers. These aren’t just engagement tactics; they’re strategic data-collection mechanisms that feed your CDP, ESP, and loyalty systems with enriched consumer profiles. As GDPR compliance and cookie deprecation become reality, brands that build owned customer data assets through zero-party data collection will win in direct-to-consumer marketing.

Q3: How can creative teams and in-house marketing departments reduce their reliance on agencies while still executing high-performing consumer engagement campaigns?

Wendell Lansford: B2C enterprises and brands often rely on internal teams and agency partners who end up spending too much time on backend “plumbing” just to get things done — time that could be spent on consumer-facing work that drives business value. Wyng helps them get more leverage from their internal teams and agency partners by giving everyone a platform that makes their work faster, easier, and more scalable. With no-code/low-code tools, Wyng enables teams and partners to launch high-value consumer experiences — including promotions, sweepstakes, instant-win games, product finders, and UGC contests — in days or weeks, not months.

This matters for global brands running promotional campaigns across dozens of markets. Wyng’s platform enables multi-market, multi-language campaign deployment for global brands without requiring IT involvement. Companies like Estée Lauder and L’Oréal use our promotion platform to execute faster. Wyng replaces fragmented point solutions with a single, centralized enterprise platform. That’s how you operate at the speed of culture.

Q4: With AI-powered bots increasingly undermining promotional data quality, how should enterprise brands protect their marketing ROI and ensure clean consumer data?

Wendell Lansford: Wyng supports AI-powered engagement, fraud prevention, and generative content experiences built for the era of AI marketing. Our Intelligent Bot Defense uses hidden bot scoring on every submission, so AI bots can’t adapt. We offer comprehensive fraud-prevention features, including CAPTCHA, IP blocking, OTP verification, and disposable email blocklisting, to protect the integrity of promotions and ensure clean consumer data.

Bot activity is automatically filtered by integrations, allowing only valid data to flow to CDP and CRM systems, and excluding bots from winner selection. For enterprise brands running sweepstakes software or gamification experiences at scale, clean data isn’t optional. If 30% of your entries are fraudulent, you’re poisoning customer profiles with junk data that degrades every downstream personalization model. Wyng’s platform is built for global compliance, including GDPR, data privacy regulations, and enterprise security standards, and is SOC 2 Type II certified.

Q5: How do interactive experiences like product finders and quizzes impact conversion rates and customer lifetime value for ecommerce brands?

Wendell Lansford: Wyng’s guided selling experiences help consumers find the right product – increasing conversion rates, reducing returns, and growing cart size. We see brands achieve up to 134% increases in average order value with product advisor experiences deployed in the customer journey.

When consumers complete a product finder quiz, you’re collecting zero-party preference data while reducing purchase decision fatigue. They get personalized recommendations, and you get progressive profile enrichment that powers future personalization. Wyng’s customer data profiles enable real-time personalization and progressive profile enrichment across the customer journey.

This creates compounding returns. The same quiz marketing experience that drives today’s conversion also captures preference data, enabling tomorrow’s personalized email and loyalty activation. That’s why over 250 global brands trust Wyng – it’s the connective tissue between creative engagement and performance marketing outcomes in a cookieless, privacy-first world. Wyng integrates seamlessly with the enterprise marketing tech stack, including CDPs, ESPs, loyalty platforms, and data lakes.

About Wyng: Wyng is the leading Data Capture & Engagement Platform for global enterprises and large CPG brands. The platform enables organizations to create interactive digital experiences like quizzes, contests, gamification, product finders, and promotional hubs that engage consumers, collect zero-party and first-party data, and deliver personalized marketing at scale. Wyng is built for global compliance with GDPR, SOC 2 Type II certification, and integrates seamlessly with enterprise martech stacks. Learn more at www.wyng.com.