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Value Tips from Food Retailing Forum

Monday, May 4th, 2009

I received a lot of attention from my recent posts about how to improve the value equation through meaningful marketing, so I assume that this is a very relevant topic for readers and Googlers. A few weeks ago, our friends at MVI hosted a Future of Food Retailing Forum here in Cincinnati. I was unable to attend the event, but one of our star Client Service Managers, Andrea Bollin, provided our agency with a nice summary of the event, which hit again and again on consumers’ value needs.

The main purpose of the conference was to hit many topics that are useful for vendors and suppliers of all types that serve retailers—and we attended to get more perspective for Bridge Worldwide’s major food retail client, Kroger. There were two main takeaways from the two-day conference that hit on both value and meaningful marketing:

1. “The New Premium”—The concept of what consumers expect in a “premium” brand is shifting dramatically due to the economic downturn, a concern for environmental sustainability, and an overall desire by people to make a more positive impact in their purchases. According to MVI, the new premium brands are transparent and have a focused purpose. New premium brands also never mention price, but instead show added value through their social, sustainability, and health/wellness contributions. In a world where premium brands are less and less better performing than low-cost store brands, they must differentiate along other lines that people care about. I’m very excited to see the future of marketing when leading brands innovate and create marketing along these lines.

2. Teach People New Skills—One of the conference sessions shared some emerging themes in consumer messaging. One specific example is the opportunity for brands to help consumers learn or rediscover new skills. A few things are driving this: (1) People are increasingly interested in “doing it yourself” to save money and enjoy an experience, but they need to learn how; and (2) young adults today spent less time in the kitchens, yards, and garages with their parents learning how to bake a cake, landscape, or change the oil, respectively, so there is a skill gap waiting to be filled. Teaching a skill is one of the big opportunities for brands that I explore in the upcoming book, using examples such as Home Depot’s in-store classes. The idea is that brands can close a sale and earn long-term loyalty by helping people better themselves.

Overall, it’s great to see more and more industry minds triangulating on the importance of marketing that itself adds to the value equation by improving people’s lives.

As a special offer to readers of this post, you can read Andrea’s brief summary of the event by downloading it here.

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Posted in Achievement, Cause Related, Conferences, purpose, Sustainability, Uncategorized, Value | 1 Comment »

Adding Sustainability to the Value(s) Equation

Wednesday, April 29th, 2009

(In June I will be going to Rome for the P&G Global Alumni Reunion. My parent company, WPP, will be preparing a small magazine for the event, and I was asked to write an article around sustainability. I have to turn it in next week and figured that I would share it here both for your enjoyment and feedback. Please let me know what you think in the comments below.)

In September 2008, Advertising Age challenged the practitioners of green marketing by raising the possibility that support for sustainability would decrease with the imploding global economy. A study by Duke University showed that CMOs ranked marketing that is “beneficial for society” as the last of five priorities over the next year. Meanwhile, in boardrooms and multiagency brand summits around the world, “value” has risen to the top of marketers’ concerns. While most think this is a clear shift from one priority to another, I believe both goals are achievable by shifting to a model of meaningful marketing that adds values to consumers’ brand decisions.

With the meltdown in the global economy, many marketers have given themselves a refresher crash course in the Marketing 101 definition of the “Value Equation”: (Product Benefits + Brand Equity) / Price. This formula naturally leads many brands to refocus their advertising efforts on long-ignored product benefits. Product demos and narrow superiority claims are back in vogue. Results in many cases are mixed.

I believe this textbook formula is due for a new edition—in the form of an addition to the numerator that recognizes the benefit that marketing itself can bring to the value equation. Let’s admit it: Historically, marketing has been dominated by unwanted, interruptive ad messages that hope to gain consumer attention for a few seconds. But with 3,000 ad exposures per day and technology such as DVRs and iPods that have little use for our messages, we are now forced to earn consumers’ attention by adding value through the marketing itself. We call this “Marketing with Meaning”—and examples include the Nike+ system that helps runners track their workouts, Samsung’s laptop-recharging stations in airports, and mobile cold and flu alerts from Vicks. These brands are putting marketing into the value equation:

Six months after Advertising Age raised the question, new studies show that consumers’ interest in buying green has not withered with the economy. A study of CPG/FMCG categories by IRI and TNS found that buying habits have continued a five-year shift toward sustainable spending, and that 30% of U.S. consumers feel it is important to purchase eco-friendly products. Overall, sustainability is still valued by a broad and growing share of the market.

Brands that are making the most gains through the economic crisis have closely tied sustainability between the product and marketing. The SunChips snack brand, for example, delivered on its brand promise to “grow the best snacks on earth” by moving to a completely solar-powered manufacturing plant; and it recently announced that it would release the first compostable bag by Earth Day 2010. Sales in 2008 were up 18%. Clorox worked with the Sierra Club to earn an endorsement of its new Green Works line of cleaners, and quickly rose to 42% share of this growing category.

Promotional efforts can also have a big impact when they allow the consumer to change behavior with help from the brand itself. For example, my team at Bridge Worldwide developed a program for the Kroger grocery chain in the U.S. that allows shoppers to go online and design their own reusable grocery bag. For each bag designed, Kroger offers a free disposable bag. This small step taps consumers’ creativity, encourages them to share, and saves the equivalent of more than 12 million plastic bags each day. The program is driving traffic to stores and increasing registrations to its loyalty-card program.

At the end of the day, the overarching story that encompasses both value communication and sustainability marketing is that consumers demand more than ever before from the brands that they choose to buy. For too long we have failed to turn our marketing itself into part of the value equation that consumers consider.  We need to make marketing itself more sustainable. As Jim Stengel said recently, “If the money we spent on marketing can be spent in a way that brings joy, help, and service to people… the industry will be far better off.”

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Posted in Conferences, Sustainability, Value | 5 Comments »

Takeaways from the Ad Age Digital Conference #aadigi

Friday, April 10th, 2009

For the third time in the last four weeks, I had the chance to attend a marketing conference this week. I’m usually not this frequent of a conference attendee, but I have been fortunate enough to tie multiple objectives together with each trip. Naturally, one of those multiple objectives is to unearth insights that I can share with you, dear readers, in this space. So I’ve risen at 5 a.m. on a Friday to tirelessly record my takeaways from the very insightful Ad Age Digital Conference in NYC. As with my previous blog summaries of the Economist and iMedia conferences, I share the most memorable points from the speakers who stood out most in my mind. Enjoy!

Fred Wilson, Partner, Union Square Ventures

We started the day not with a marketing mind, but rather with a venture capitalist who sees significant opportunities in the “chaos scenario” that is the field of advertising today. Wilson focused his presentation on the concept of “earned media.” Earned media is the antithesis of paid media, and happens when brands do something valuable or useful that itself attracts attention, rather than relying on CPMs and GRPs. Wilson presented a few examples of brands that are winning here. One example he shared is “Men With Cramps,” a humorous “mockumentary” created for the ThermaCare brand’s menstrual SKU. Our agency actually helped put that together for the brand two years ago, and it won an Effie last year.

My favorite story was the example of a business in L.A. called Kogi; it is a few trucks that drive around the city, park every so often, announce their locations via Twitter, and collect dozens of customers at each stop for their killer cuisine. The marketing plan involves the owners and operators blogging and tweeting their life experiences as they run the operation throughout the city. It’s winning because of a combination of great product (spicy Korean barbecue is novel), a unique and valuable service (traveling restaurant you can track around town), and an open, social brand that people can personally connect with. To me, this is the only model of brand building that will increasingly survive and advance.

Fred tossed out a few other valuable tidbits. He mentioned that CareerBuilder’s Monk-E-Mail viral earned 300 million users who spent 8 minutes each on the site and cost only $250,000 to build. That’s less than the production cost of an average 30-second ad, and got huge results without the multimillion-dollar media buy to go along with it. He suggested that this was a key change of the “earned media” model: less money to media, but likely more time and money toward getting a killer idea. Wilson talked about how he had read data that suggests “clicks from social media convert at 2x to 4x that of paid search,” which makes sense. He ended with examples of the kinds of companies he is investing in within the advertising space; his first question in reviewing a business model is: “Is there some kind of valuable service being provided?” I couldn’t think of a better fit with Marketing with Meaning. You can check out Fred’s presentation on his blog.

Josh Weiss, Managing Director, Delta.com/Self-Service/CRM

On a panel about how technology changes your company, Weiss provides some interesting perspective. First, he shared the good news that Wi-Fi will be available on the entire Delta fleet by the end of 2009. In terms of marketing, he shared the story of how Delta was close to putting open consumer comments on the front page of its website redesign as a way to visibly show that it is a new kind of company, post-bankruptcy. But after much debate at the highest levels of the company they admitted that they were not quite ready for it, and instead launched a separate site, blog.delta.com. It’s a good admission and probably the right call for now. Weiss also admitted the challenge of deciding which mobile platform to design for; he shared that he personally has an iPhone and BlackBerry. Each phone has different benefits, and the fact that he has both is proof that no single option is prevailing.

Bob Kraut, VP of Marketing Communications, Pizza Hut

Who knew that Pizza Hut was taking digital so seriously? Well, with nearly a billion dollars in online orders, it now has to. Kraut shared the experience of his company seeing these sales spike, and increasingly shifting pizzahut.com from a branded vehicle into its largest single “store.” I enjoyed hearing that the company has moved from trying to have a “sticky” home page that keeps people around as long as possible toward a “slippery” page that gets online orderers in and out quickly. Kraut has found that people ordering online are higher income, less price sensitive, and very picky about the right to choose. Kraut also told the story of Pizza Hut’s recent April Fools’ prank, in which it leaked plans to change its name to “Pasta Hut.” The effort earned a lot of buzz and Pizza Hut was a Top 10 in Google Trends (a very interesting new media gauge of success in itself).

Steve Rubel, SVP, Director of Insights, Edelman Digital

Rubel hosted a panel on “What’s Next, Before It’s Too Late.” To be honest, I didn’t hear any breakthroughs from the panel, but Rubel provides some good quotes. He called Second Life “digital marketing’s Vietnam War.” Rubel also captured a key insight, that most brands that edge into social media are only doing it in support of a limited-time creative campaign. He said that “social media is like soylent green; it’s made out of people,” and called on brand marketers to personally get in the social media space on an ongoing basis. The recent Skittles story, for example, was less effective as a one-time stunt, and missed the opportunity to forge a relationship.

Mark Sapir, VP of Marketing for Sports & Entertainment, Topps

Sapir revived many memories of collecting, sorting, and trading baseball cards as a kid. He shared the story of how Topps is evolving its entire approach to a new generation. Baseball cards used to be the main way that kids connected with athletes; at a time when there was no TV or stats in the sports sections of the newspaper, the baseball card was the only way for a kid to really “see” the players. Fast-forward a few decades and kids can watch SportsCenter 24-7 and look up live stats online. So Topps needed a new way to stay relevant and add value; in other words, it needed Marketing with Meaning. So the company has launched ToppsTown.com, which essentially mirrors the Webkinz model. A special code in each card allows kids to unlock virtual cards on the site. Once there they can view their collection, trade with people, read real-time stats, and play games. In the early days of the site and new baseball season, ToppsTown already has 200,000 members.

Simon Clift, CMO, Unilever

Clift had one of the most-discussed presentations of the two-day event with Wednesday morning’s keynote address. I was most pleasantly surprised by his story of Greenpeace protests against the company’s use of palm oil from rain forests. The group created a viral video mocking the company’s “Onslaught” viral video with its own version called “Onslaught(er),” which showed the effects of deforestation. Clift admitted that his company needed to listen and respond to the protests, and ended up working with Greenpeace on a plan to develop more sustainable sources. I believe it took remarkable emotional intelligence for Unilever to partner with the group after a fairly unfair campaign.

I also enjoyed hearing Clift talk about how smaller efforts seem to be more successful in this world of connected consumers and social media. He threw out three of my favorite quotes of the event, all of which point to a new way of approaching marketing: with less media-budget bang and more meaning:

  • “It is possible to become famous on a dollar and a dream. Imagine what’s possible to do with our brands and our resources.”
  • “We may be ahead of some of our competitors. But we’re most definitely behind consumers.”
  • “I’m convinced fat media budgets help make people lazy, and we’ve thought about [whether we] should cut media budgets on some specific projects in order to force people to come up with better ideas.”

Joe Rospars, Founding Partner, Blue State Digital, and Former New Media Director, Obama for America

The story of Team Obama’s success with social media has been told many times in many places, but I still pulled a few new takeaways from Joe’s interview on stage. I found it interesting to hear that a key early decision in the campaign was to create a specific New Media team that was separated from the IT group. Traditionally campaigns had lumped digital marketing into IT, but this separate group helped elevate the discipline, and the team had its own seat at the strategy table. I also learned something new about the power of small donations; it seems that many of the 3 million people who donated gave around $5 each. The campaign looked at small donors less for their actual gift, but more as a way key to binding them personally to the brand. This reminds me of why we participate in the General Mills Box Tops for Education program at my children’s school, where I am president of the board; these box tops add up to only a small amount each year, but every time parents cut one out and bring it in they are building a stronger bond with us. But these small donors did add up for Obama: The 3 million online donors ended up making 6.5 million donations that totaled a half-billion dollars.

Sheryl Sandberg, COO, Facebook

I’ve had a love-hate relationship with Facebook over the past few years. I love the service as a user but hate the overpromises on its advertising platform, which is literally invisible to users. But Sheryl Sandberg earned more love with her fascinating story of how the service is improving people’s social networks in a session titled, “How Many Friends Can You Have?” She broke down various types of networks that people have as follows:

  • Our brains can handle about 150 personal relationships at any one time, which is called Dunbar’s number.
  • Most people know 500 to 5,000 people.
  • Facebook members have 120 friends on average.
  • The majority of our communication is with 10 people on average.
  • We have a close support network of only two to three people.

Sandberg claims that digital technology, especially Facebook, is creating a new concept called the active social network. She defined this as people who: (1) you know something about what they are up to lately; and (2) you communicate with them somewhat regularly. She claimed that Facebook is proven to double the size of people’s active social networks.

She went on to describe the four types of relationships that people have on Facebook: friends, family, coworkers, and “public profiles” (brands and celebrities); and she shared the three distinct types of communication on Facebook: inbox, chat, and wall-to-wall.

Overall, it was interesting to see that Facebook is really getting scientific about its study of human social interaction. It suggests to me that the company aims to become much more meaningful, rather than just waiting to cash out on a new ad model and IPO. In fact, I was blown away that Sandberg admitted that Facebook has realized that traditional banner ads will not work for the firm or advertisers. Rather, they must create marketing that fits with the core idea of the social network itself. Sandberg ended with the example of Honda’s “give a heart” program, which got 1.5 million interactions and 100 million impressions in four days.

Lucas Watson, Global Team Leader, Digital Business Strategy, P&G

I’ve gotten to know Lucas well over the years that we have worked with him at P&G, so it was great to see him represent the world’s largest advertiser on the digital stage. On a panel about “Redefining the Media Mix,” Lucas suggested that the key for brands is not to choose a cutting-edge media innovation first (i.e., “let’s do something on Twitter”), but rather to start with a killer idea, and then see where all kinds of media, both old and new, can make it come to life. He also had a good suggestion for brands thinking about social media: The key is to create a “social media framework” early in the form of a good database that you communicate with regularly. Then, when your idea is ready to go, the network is available for your launch.

So, overall, another good conference where I’ve learned a few new tricks to apply to our clients’ businesses and our Marketing with Meaning concept. My next blogging/tweeting conference will be at the Mobile Commerce Summit in Las Vegas June 3. I’ll be presenting a workshop on mobile+financial services. See you there!

(Here are some of the best Ad Age articles on the event.)

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Posted in Conferences, Uncategorized | 5 Comments »

Takeaways from the iMedia Breakthrough Summit #imediasummit

Friday, March 27th, 2009

After learning a lot at the Economist Marketing Forum in San Francisco last week, I had a chance to head in the complete opposite direction for the iMedia Breakthrough Summit in Fort Myers, Florida. As usual, the iMedia folks hosted a great event that brought together people from the brand, agency, and media sides of digital marketing. Once again my notebook was full of some great insights and ideas that only seem to result from being there. Of course, my goal is to provide you, dear readers, with as many of those insights and ideas as possible in this blog—with a meaningful marketing spin, of course.

Overall, the two main focus area of the event were Twitter and mobile. It seems that the consensus from all was that mobile is close to going mainstream, while Twitter was the exciting new tool that promises to explode. Here are some of the specific takeaways that I collected from the guest speakers:

Christi Day, Emerging Media Manager, Southwest Airlines

I don’t think I have seen anyone who has a brand personality that better matches the brand she works on than Christi Day. Her goal was to make us smile as well as learn as she described how she got Southwest into the world of Twitter. She and her team in media relations first tried out Twitter on a lark in July 2007 and quickly gained a following. Eventually it became so successful and followed that Christi brought in people from both media relations and customer service. Instead of outsourcing Twitter responses to an agency or team, Christi takes the responsibility for herself, 24-7. Her tips for other brands joining the Twitterati: (1) Be Fun—connect to events, stories from real flights, and viral videos; (2) Be Real—show your personality and what’s going on in your real life; and (3) Be Relevant—provide information and notices, and promote fare sales. I was a little surprised to hear that Southwest is not tracking how the Twitter account leads to actual sales, but that is in the works. You can follow Christi at twitter.com/southwestair.

Ed Kaczmarek, Director of Innovation, Kraft

Ed is the newest marketing rock star in my mind after hearing his story of the launch of the Kraft iFood app for the iPhone. It is already a huge success according to Kraft’s expectations, with downloads in a few weeks that met its three-year objective, and PR coverage valued in the millions of dollars. Ed talked about how the iFood app “brings us closer to becoming an indispensable food resource for consumers’ meal planning, preparation, and shopping needs.” This is a perfect example of how a great brand purpose leads to marketing with meaning.

I loved hearing some inside lessons about how Ed’s team got this remarkable innovation through the company by “keeping it under the radar,” and that a big key to success was leveraging Kraft’s database of 15 million consumers to drive initial awareness (another benefit of a decade of meaningful relationship marketing). Another huge help was Apple’s decision to feature the app on its App Store front page, which drove traffic “better than any paid marketing.” The tool is catching hold with new consumer targets including Gen-Y and Men (35 percent of users, “far above” the percentage in the Kraft database).

This is just the beginning for iFood. Ed alluded to upgrades on the way and said that it was built to be a platform for retail customers and even external marketers. Even working with competitors is possible, as Ed said that, “If we really want to fulfill our goal, we have to allow others in.”

Lara Green, Digital Marketing Manager, CoverGirl and Max Factor (P&G)

Perhaps the quote of the event was Lara’s claim that “mobile is no longer innovation” for her brands at P&G. In other words, it’s just the best way to reach the young girls and women that her brands target—and they have done enough experimentation to feel comfortable with this space. Another key to success is the fact that mobile has gotten a strong read in marketing mix modeling, which is the single best way to compare ROI across media alternatives. As evidence of the mainstream nature of mobile for CoverGirl, the brand actually has four mobile focus areas: (1) a strong WAP site; (2) a text-to-sample program; (3) a mobile CRM program; and (4) integration with other marketing activities. I was a little surprised to hear that a beauty product can “look good” in the small space of mobile screens, but its banners are getting 1 percent to 2 percent click rates, and when text-to-sample offers appear in print magazines, the supplies are exhausted in days. Another great example of meaningful marketing from CoverGirl in mobile is a ColorMatch tool that helps people make the right choice on the go and at the retail point-of-purchase.

Dr. Spencer Wells, Genographic Project Director, National Geographic

iMedia consistently mixes in pure digital marketing presentations with diverse speakers such as Nolan Bushnell, the father of video games. I specifically enjoyed the presentation by Dr. Wells, who is in the middle of a long-term project to categorize and glean human migration insights by sampling the DNA of thousands of men and women around the world. The Genographic Project is a long-term investment by National Geographic and partner brands such as IBM. It began way back in 2005 and is now starting to spin off insights. I loved the fact that National Geographic is funding the project and building personal connections by selling a $100 kit that allows anyone to submit his or her DNA and receive insights into family history. According to Dr. Wells, his management worried that no one would buy the kits, and hoped to sell 10,000; but more than 297,000 have been ordered so far.

So, another great collection of insights, some of which will make their way to my upcoming book. For more, check out the Twitter stream here. I hope to see you there next year.

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Posted in Conferences, mobile, Social Networking, Twitter, Uncategorized | 3 Comments »

Takeaways from the Economist Marketing Forum #ecsf09

Thursday, March 19th, 2009

On Tuesday, I had the chance to attend the 7th annual Economist Marketing Forum in San Francisco, a great event featuring high-ranking marketers and thought leaders brought together by global design and strategy agency Landor.

I took the opportunity to use Twitter to share relevant nuggets of information while the conference was in progress, joining a handful of others using the tag #ecsf09. It was a very interesting experiment to serve up this kind of live feed, and several of my Twitter followers thanked me for reporting in (although one person said, “39 Tweets in a day, you’re killing me, goodbye”). But I also wanted to capture my notes here for those who missed my 39 Tweets. Here goes some highlights from the speakers that sparked most for me during the event:

Ward Hanson, Policy Forum Director, Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research

Hanson shared an economist’s view of what marketers should be looking at in the year ahead. He suggested that marketers must start estimating risk in their customer portfolios, essentially treating customers like stocks. Hanson made an interesting point that we are in the first global recession since we’ve been globally on the Internet. He suggested that this can worsen things, such as by firing up the “animal spirits” of rumor and fear. But he also made a compelling case that the Internet could help drive a quicker recovery by: (1) better identifying supply/demand; (2) allowing for online skill retraining; and (3) spreading the secrets of success more quickly. Hanson also directed the audience to look at prices in Google AdWords as an industry-by-industry measure of a turnaround. Finally, he was the first of several speakers to suggest that consumers are looking for more functional and utilitarian messages and benefits from brands.

Christine Petersen, CMO, TripAdvisor

Petersen reported that travel is down 7 percent due to the economy, but traffic to her site is up 10 percent, as those who are traveling spend more time researching to make sure they are spending their dollars well. TripAdvisor is also benefiting from a Facebook app, “Cities I’ve Visited,” which 10 million people have installed and where 10,000 photos were added the first day this option was released. I was impressed that TripAdvisor is starting to help advise hotels on how they can build their businesses. It’s a strategy that ends up helping advertisers and consumers, a win-win-win for everyone that reminds me of how Amazon is creating tools to help authors market their books better. TripAdvisor has also adjusted to difficult times by adding a “Top Values Index” score that combines star level, popularity rating, and price.

Bob Thacker, Senior VP, Marketing and Advertising, OfficeMax

Thacker brought his energetic personality to the stage to talk about how his low-budget brand is working to stand out and gain ground on his two bigger competitors. Thacker had some of the best quotes of the day, such as, “I don’t know any successful marketer who’s a pessimist,” and, “I’ve never had a marketing budget that wasn’t cut.” But my favorite was, “Advertising is a party crasher, advertising is an uninvited guest; so if you’re going to crash the party, you’d better bring a bottle of wine.” That will make it into my book for sure. I grilled Thacker a bit about Elf Yourself and claims that it was not linked close enough to sales, but Thacker defended it as a low-cost experiment that is driving awareness of the brand and paying out. It has reached more than 250 million individual interactions to date. I really liked Thacker’s story of the original launch of Elf Yourself; the company had its agency create 20 viral games using $400,000, a much better experiment than one viral at a higher price.

Mark Chmiel, Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing and Innovation Officer, Denny’s

Chmiel floated to the stage on a wave of success from his company’s one-day free Grand Slam breakfast promotion. It’s a story that has been told in many places, but he added a few interesting insights. First, he told the story of how many people were personally touched by Denny’s offer in this tough economic time. More than 1,000 people sent “thank you” emails and phone calls to the brand, a man wrote a $300 check to “thank you for what you did for America,” and a Denny’s server who went to the grocery store with her uniform on was stopped and thanked by seven strangers. I was also impressed to learn that the Super Bowl ad came AFTER Denny’s decided to do the free meal promotion. After coming up with the promo idea, they looked for “the biggest microphone” to spread the news. My apologies to one Twitter reader, who asked me to question Chmiel about his website’s failure to handle the surge of traffic. Finally, Chmiel said to expect to see some mobile marketing from the brand, as it fits with the consumer need to find its locations, and fits with the habits of its late-night guests (read: college students with the munchies).

Rory Findlay, Senior Vice President and CMO, Beam Global Spirits & Wine

Findlay described his firm’s commitment to better defining “brand behavior” and said that his company believes that “it’s not about talking at consumers; it’s about giving them something to play with.” He told the remarkable marketing story of Laphroaig Whisky, which invites brand fans to join a club that rewards them with their own square-foot piece of land. I was impressed that Findlay is focused on “starting conversations” about his brands, but admitted his biggest challenge is to tie the conversations the brands start back to actual sales.

Maureen Lally, VP of Marketing, Trane

It was a nice break to have a B2B guest on the panel after so many consumer brands. I enjoyed hearing how Trane’s sales staff is 100 percent comprised of engineers, and that they do a lot to help in the building design process. Now the company has begun to take this model online, launching a 45-minute live course that attracted 1,200 people. Lally says that this is a clear sign of a “real thirst for knowledge in the marketplace.”

John Gerzema, Chief Insights Officer, Y&R

Gerzema is the co-author of a BusinessWeek best-selling book, The Brand Bubble, which I wholeheartedly endorse. It’s one of the smartest marketing books I’ve read in some time. I’ve gotten to know John in the past few weeks as he has provided some great coaching for me in my own book publication and marketing process. His speech did not disappoint, and instead of trying to capture it in type, I’m happy to slide share it here:

Calamity: Marketing Your Way Out of This Recession
View more presentations from johngerzema.

Kevin “Kal” Kallaugher, Political Cartoonist, The Economist

After John’s hard-hitting presentation, we enjoyed something completely different: an education on the art of political cartoons from The Economist’s Kevin “Kal” Kallaugher. Kal took us through his artistic secrets while sharing some of the 100-plus magazine covers that he has designed. Kal described how his job is “to use humor to make you think” and that he has learned to “surprise people every time they open the magazine” in order to stay in the game for 30 years. He reminded us that “you can judge a country’s freedom by the amount of satire it can endure”—and that in much of the world political cartoonists work with their lives at risk. Kal ended his session by teaching us to actually draw a caricature of George W. Bush, which I’ll have to scan and share later.

Katherine Hagan, Marketing Director, Environmental Sustainability, Clorox

In a session about sustainability, I found that Hagan brought the most new news. She spoke about Clorox’s significant move to embrace sustainability in order to drive growth, mitigate risks, and reduce its environmental footprint. Her team has actually done a brand-by-brand audit on these issues, and the company plans to drive one-third of its revenue growth from taking advantage of consumers’ interest in sustainable buying. Her research shows that this still means a lot to consumers despite recessionary pressures. I also enjoyed hearing that the Sierra Club “put us through the ringer” as part of the process in which they endorsed the company’s Green Works line.

Overall, it was a very enjoyable event with lessons that I’ll be adding to the book and my strategy work with clients. Unfortunately, I had to catch an early plane back to Cincinnati so I missed Wednesday’s morning session, but check out this link for a look at what the Twitterers are saying about Day 2. Many thanks to the Economist and Landor teams for putting together an outstanding event. I look forward to next year.

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Posted in Conferences, Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

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