Posts Tagged ‘stengel’

Looking Back on Our Burning Question at #Canneslions

Wednesday, July 7th, 2010


“Wow!”

That was my first line to kick off our seminar at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival on Friday, June 25. “Wow!” is also the easiest way for me to describe the amount of work we put into the event, and the combined reactions of those who had a chance to join our seminar. After months of planning and preparation we pulled off our first-ever seminar in Cannes at the annual gathering of the world’s leaders in advertising and marketing. Although I am still in a bit of a daze since coming off the stage nearly two weeks ago, my mind is already racing to develop ideas for the next big way that we can spread the next evolution of marketing. But before rushing on to what’s next, I want to capture and celebrate what we pulled off here.

Before I go on, though, I suggest that you invest the 45 minutes to view our complete seminar footage, which is up and available here. Or if you’re really time-strapped, first check out some highlights in the YouTube video above.

Recap

Way back around October 2009, our President, Jay Woffington, and I had lunch with Jim Stengel, former Global Marketing Officer of Procter & Gamble and now global speaker/consultant and professor at the UCLA Anderson School of Business. My book had just launched and Jim was continuing to spread his belief in brand ideals. We talked about our common desire to change the way marketing is performed, and we agreed that there was no better place than the annual Cannes Advertising Festival—a place where advertising and marketing leaders from around the world gather once a year to judge the best work, compare notes on where the industry is going, and bring back lessons that might be applied to the incredible changes surging through business and society today. We decided to team up and the folks at the Cannes Lions organization were excited to have us onboard for a seminar in late June.

In retrospect, deciding to do a seminar in Cannes and getting agreement from its leaders was the easy part. The real challenge lay in deciding what to do on our big stage. Thankfully we had some help. Two of our top creative leaders at Bridge Worldwide, Jason Bender and George Alexander, came up with the idea of asking a Burning Question. They argued that people in our industry are spending too much time searching for answers to questions such as: “What percentage of my budget should I spend on digital?,” “Do I need a new ad agency?,” and “What should my Facebook strategy be?” They reasoned that marketers are spending too much time looking for answers in new media tactics, and are therefore missing the big, fundamental shift that is happening in business and society. Their idea was for Jim and me to ask our Cannes audience a Burning Question, that, when asked, could help organizations hit the reset button and fundamentally adjust their methods to not only improve business results, but also improve life for customers, employees, stakeholders, and society overall.

To prepare for the event, Jim and I set up interviews with key leaders at some of the world’s largest marketers in the world. We were blown away to get 100% of our requests accepted from IBM, AT&T, Kraft, P&G, Levi’s, Luxottica, Pepsi, and Samsung. We flew camera crews around the country to ask these leaders our Burning Question and learn about how they recognized a need for change, the initial efforts they are making to shift, and the business and stakeholder benefits that are resulting from these early efforts. We were surprised to hear similar stories, and eager to share them with our audience in Cannes and beyond.

And to engage with more than the relative handful of folks who can go to Cannes, we sought to bring marketers around the world into the discussion. On BurningQuestion.com we asked people to post what they believed are the questions we should be asking ourselves. And we even ran a contest to bring two people over with us based on their personal efforts to improve the marketing world. Our winners were Stan Phelps, who is pioneering a new way to “give a little something extra” through his Marketing Lagniappe project, and Tyson Adams, a budding “philanthroprenuer” who just started a business called liveGLOCAL, that sells high-quality coffee and provides books for children in Laos for each bag sold. Both guys are incredible leaders who will continue to drive the next evolution of marketing in their own unique ways.

The Results

After a week of final-final preparation and taking in the other seminars and award-winning work in Cannes (see my blog posts here, here, and here), I was very eager to finally take the stage on Friday. Overall I was very pleased with the seminar. As you can see in the full-length video, we did a lot of things to drum up excitement and ensure that no one was disappointed to be sitting in our session on a Friday afternoon. I think we were able to weave together many threads that were running through Cannes all week and give the group something to thinking about, our Burning Question:

“How can we, in marketing and business, hold ourselves to a higher standard to create a positive impact on those we serve, our employees, and even the world?“

After the seminar we invited everyone in the audience up to the roof of the Palais to continue the conversation. I loved the chance to meet people from places as diverse as Ecuador, Turkey, India, and Australia—all struggling to figure out where the marketing world is going, and all coming away with some new thinking that they can apply to their brands and businesses. I gave away a few hundred copies of my book and collected a pocketful of business cards from potential clients, partners, and even competitors who wanted to keep talking about how we might work together toward this common goal. (Check out some of the after-seminar photos below…)

I find that it’s always hard to look at the time and money investment of an event like this and figure out if it was worth it. This was the biggest thing our agency has ever put on, and ultimately we are betting that by driving the industry conversation forward we will attract new clients and further build our business. Just like all of you, we are betting that we will succeed by creating Marketing with Meaning.

The work is not over, however, as we’ve come back down to earth and back to our desks and day jobs. We are working on plans to further share our seminar and the hours of amazing interviews footage with industry leaders. Jim and I even have a few requests to repeat the performance at industry events and corporate training facilities.

And, of course, I’ve already started thinking about what we could do in Cannes next year. I think the topic will only be hotter in 2011, and we want to continue to build on the momentum we have started. I would love your ideas and feedback in the comments below!

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Posted in Awards, Organizational Behavior, cannes | 1 Comment »

Let’s Ask Ourselves a Burning Question at Cannes

Tuesday, March 16th, 2010

burning question

“A question asked in the right way often points to its own answer.”  —Edward Hodnett

Some of the most important changes in history began when groups of people asked difficult questions of their elders, their rulers, and their textbooks. Questions have sparked democratic revolutions from Boston to Berlin, they have driven scientific paradigm shifts from Darwin to Einstein, and they have triggered social change from San Francisco to Soweto. These “burning questions” compel us to step back from the way we have always lived our lives, help us discover that change is needed, and point us to an answer that suddenly becomes completely obvious—and betters the world. It is time for us marketers and advertisers to ask ourselves a Burning Question that will unleash needed change in the work that we do for our customers, stakeholders, employees, and society as a whole.

It is an ambitious objective, but one that is clearly ready for the first bold action. The historic model of marketing and advertising stands on the brink of failure in many corners. Mass media is increasingly an oxymoron, as our customers shift their precious eyeballs to 500 cable channels and 50 billion YouTube videos. Product and service purchases are screened through the lens of social media, not pricey ad campaigns. And citizens of the world are calling on their governments to protect them from advertisements on their mobile screens and school buses. Simply put, our traditional marketing model is unsustainable.

On Friday, June 25 at the annual Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival in France, Jim Stengel and I will bring together the world’s largest brands and advertising agencies to reveal a Burning Question that will allow us to transform our work and our world. We plan to use this biggest, most-followed gathering of global marketers to spark a revolution—and we hope you will join us.

This revolution will be socialized. As we prepare to spark the revolution in June, we need your help to guide the discussion and plan to offer several ways for everyone to be involved. For starters, we are asking people to visit www.burningquestion.com and share what they believe is the Burning Question that will unlock change in our marketing paradigm. We will share the ideas openly, and Jim and I will draw on your input for our session. In a few weeks we will launch a contest in which we will identify a handful of fellow change agents to join us in Cannes (on our dime). And we will announce more ways to get involved before, during, and after this event. I can promise you that it is something that the Cannes Lions Festival has never seen before—and it will be meaningful and memorable whether you are in France with us or not.

This summer we’re going to set fire to the old assumptions about what marketing is and what it can be. Will you join us?

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Posted in Burning Question, Movement | No Comments »

Connecting with Roy Spence

Monday, February 23rd, 2009

One of the really exciting experiences in our mission to spread the concept of Marketing with Meaning is the chance to meet up with brilliant people who have come to the same general conclusion of where the world needs to go next. Thanks to an introduction from our mutual friend Jim Stengel, I was able to spend some time chatting with Roy Spence last week.

Roy is the Chairman and CEO of GSD&M Idea City, one of the best and brightest advertising agencies in the world. He just released a book, It’s Not What You Sell, It’s What You Stand For, and had a great article in Adweek recently. Overall, Roy has a simple but meaningful message: “Companies that aren’t in the life improvement business are not going to be around for very long.” His firm has helped create memorable work and business success for many leading brands, including two (BMW and Southwest Airlines) that I mention in our upcoming book.

We immediately felt a common bond on the phone during this first conversation. I found Roy to be an incredibly personable and good-natured guy. In terms of our key messages, we share the same overall perspective but come at it in different angles. Roy is focused on convincing brands to focus their existence around a key purpose; Southwest Airlines, for example, is about democratizing air travel. Our Marketing with Meaning comes into play once brands have selected a purpose and need to start doing work that fulfills the purpose. It’s a great synergy and we obviously have a better chance at changing the world by teaming up around our common cause rather than debating definitions and interpretations.

Despite the fact that our companies operate within competing holding companies, Roy immediately suggested some projects that we might work on together, and mentioned several other business leaders and entrepreneurs who share our mindset. We’ll be getting together in person in a few months.

I encourage you to support the overall Marketing with Meaning cause by picking up a copy of Roy’s book today. Let me know what you think!

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Posted in Agency Marketing, Concept | 3 Comments »

Stengel “Retires” to a Higher Calling

Monday, November 3rd, 2008

On Monday, November 3, a recent legend in the marketing world, P&G Global Marketing Officer Jim Stengel, retired from the client side. He is joining the client-service side for the first time in his life, and he’s joining a handful of us who are trying to take marketing to a higher level.

Stengel’s website and a Wall Street Journal article describe his new vocation—to help companies other than P&G succeed through “purpose-based marketing.” Through our work with P&G as a client, we’ve had a chance to see inside Stengel’s model of Brand Purpose. It’s an incredibly powerful new way of looking at brand building, based on P&G’s best brands, as well as best practices from some of the most valuable brands outside the company’s walls.

I cannot share this inside perspective here, but I can point you to a recent speech by Stengel at the University of Cincinnati. In one of his last appearances as a P&G leader, he spoke of his learnings from a lifetime of building purposeful brands, and alluded to the lessons he plans to share. Some of my favorite quotes and examples included:

  • “Our studies show that brands with the most market trust have the highest marketing share.”
  • Tide’s Clean Start program, which provides laundry services for victims of natural disasters, had a “far greater lift” in business impact than traditional advertising, and significantly raised key equity measures.
  • Spend time with consumers, not just asking them how they use your products, but how they spend their lives, and figure out how you can positively impact their lives.
  • “Every employee must live the ideals of the (purpose-driven) brand.”

As I alluded to above, Stengel is not only joining a legion of ex-P&Gers, but he is joining a small group of people and organizations that are trying to define what we choose to call Marketing with Meaning. I’ve actually had the chance to personally share Marketing with Meaning with Jim, and we found a good synergy between the two concepts. Brand Purpose is primarily based on how a brand redefines what it stands for—its driving purpose in society. Marketing with Meaning picks this up by helping Purpose Brands communicate with their customers in a new way—one beyond interruption that helps achieve its purpose. Drew Neisser, of Marketing as Service fame, makes a good point that we all have a common belief in purposeful brands, but that agencies are needed to bring the purpose to life.

Interestingly, in March 2007, just as I was putting together the full Marketing with Meaning concept to share with clients, Stengel spoke at the AAAA conference and said words that struck me:

What we really need is a mind-set shift… that will make us relevant for today’s consumers.  From ‘telling and selling’ to building relationships.”

Jim’s words convinced me that we were onto something with Marketing with Meaning after all: If the largest marketer in the world (and the one who perhaps succeeded more with “telling and selling” than anyone) saw the need for change, the rest would not be far away.

We’ll keep watching and partnering with Stengel as he joins the mission to make marketing more meaningful. It should be a even more successful ride with him onboard.

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Posted in Concept | No Comments »