Real-Time Marketing Unmasked

With the Superbowl just a week away, leading edge marketers are, in the fabled words of Tim Curry, “breathless with anticipation” of the potential Real-Time Marketing opportunities awaiting them. These folks have been scenario planning for weeks if not months with the hope that they can steal the show away from the ads, football players AND reigning RTM champ, Oreo. So its little wonder that RTM will be a hot topic this coming Thursday at the Social Media Insider Summit AND lucky for you, I’ll be moderating a panel on that very subject. Among my savvy panelists will be Teresa Caro, SVP of Social and Content Marketing at Engauge, who was kind enough to once again share her insights on this here blog.  Thanks Teresa.

Drew: Define Real-Time Marketing in the fewest number of words possible.  

Done right: Timely, on-brand content that is relevant to an event or trend, created to elicit an emotional response and/or drive action.

Done wrong: A shiny marketing object, fueled by a knee-jerk reaction, that once posted, makes you the subject of ridicule by your peers.

Drew: What does it take to launch a successful real-time program?

  1. Be realistic about your organization. Every company is different — has different types of legal regulations, different approval processes, different levels of trust in their agencies and employees, etc. The amount of preplanning required is ultimately determined by what it takes to ensure a brand feels comfortable navigating the real-time space.
  2. Recognize real-time marketing is more than a well-timed Tweet. You need to think of it more broadly as timely, on-brand content that is relevant to an event or trend, created to elicit an emotional response and/or drive action. Real-time can be how you handle a physical event in the social space. How you handle a crisis. It’s how you address consumer needs or consumer love or express of frustration. Take it into the offline world and it is the use of data and mobility to share messages with people performing certain actions or in a certain location.
  3. Have a strategy. What are your goals and objectives? What are you looking to achieve? What is your brand voice and tone? You need to have this first so when an event or meme presents itself than you have a filter to determine if the opportunity even makes sense.
  4. Have a plan. The extent of this plan depends on #1, #2 and #3.
  5. Promote it. I don’t need to remind you that the “build it and they will come” does not work here. It needs to be promoted somehow, someway to the right audience through the right platform.
  6. Practice, practice, practice. Don’t expect to hit it out of the park the first time around – and if you do, You Go Girl. This is something that requires practice, a theme, relationship building with your fans so they are ready to receive it and promote it, etc.

Drew: Tell me about your RTM work with Chick-fil-a?  

7.3 million fans on Facebook, 333k followers on Twitter and 36.8k followers on Instagram doesn’t happen overnight. It requires daily care and feeding to grow and ensure there are engaged audiences to receive the content and have an emotional response… Without the ongoing piece, there would never be anyone to create a big bang. As a result, we take an integrated approach of great planned content, real-time fan engagement and opportunistic content. Examples of real-time include:

  • Unplanned and reactive –
  • Planned and reactive –
    • We spend a lot of time working on our monthly content calendars, getting them approved and getting them scheduled, yet sometimes you need to pivot when you have an opportunity such as acknowledging how cold it is through out the U.S.
  • Planned and proactive
    • And sometimes you just need to be prepared for what’s coming and be timely, relevant and unique. How many did something relevant to New Years vs. heading back to work?

Drew: Why is real-time so hard to get right? 

  1. No objectives
  2. No brand definition
  3. No talent
  4. No process
  5. Too much process

Drew: What’s your favorite real-time program that your agency didn’t have a hand in?

Mini (see link.) This isn’t the first time BMW Mini did a campaign like this. They did a campaign several years ago and coupled it with social listening. They found the share of voice they received for the campaign back then, generated sales three months later.

Drew: Should we be talking about real-time as a separate thing or is just part of a smart social strategy today?

Part of a smart social strategy. Goes back to why it’s so hard to get it right… it’s currently a shiny object, fueled by a knee jerk reaction… it’s rare you’ll get this right.

Drew: Will we still be talking about real-time next year? If yes, why? 

Smart marketing and really bad marketing will always be talked about. Take a smart piece of content that was turned around in amazing time and it will always be talked about… Well, that is if it’s promoted the right way.

Drew: Okay.  Lightning round.  Let’s bang through the logistical issues…

  • DN: What does it take from a staffing standpoint?  TC: Depends on how much you want to do, what types, how frequently (special events vs. continuous)
  • DN: Client approval processes? TC: Some brands can’t manage to pull this together because there is such need for multiple approvals of one post
  • DN: What brands should avoid altogether? TC: Topics that don’t align with their brand. Emotionally charged topics.
  • DN: Other barriers to success? TC: Lack of planning. Lack of understanding their own brand. Lack of understanding what they are looking to achieve.
  • DN: What are the right metrics? TC: Depends on your objectives.

Insights on Real-Time Marketing

Thanks to those clever folks at Oreo who stole last year’s Superbowl spotlight, real-time marketing  was among the hottest topics of 2013. (It even warranted its own abbreviation: RTM!)  Agencies and clients scrambled to set up “newsrooms” in the hopes of thrusting brands into “the conversation” at just the right moment.  Similarly, marketing swat teams were poised to pounce just in case opportunity knocked again during live events. Not surprisingly, few matched Oreo’s success at catching lightning in a bottle.  As the year progressed, “newsjacking” became both commonplace and an opportunity for epic fails (see top 16 from Econsultancy.)

As with all such trendy / newish / emerging  marketing approaches, once the excitement wears off, the professionals move in and help bring some discipline to the party. One such pro is Anne-Marie Kline, SVP/Account Management at DigitasLBI, whose agency has helped P&G and Buick among others ride the RTM wave.  I was delighted to catch up with Anne-Marie prior to our panel discussion next week at MediaPost’s Social Media Insider Summit.  As you will see, being a RTM practitioner is neither easy nor for the faint of heart.

Drew: Define real time marketing in the fewest number of words possible.  

RTM happens when a brand expresses humanity.

Drew: Can you provide some brief examples?

Tide: The Onion published a story about a Tide Brand Manager talking about a viral video – it was poking fun at Tide [and] the entire marketing community’s obsession with viral videos.  Tide responded in the only way possible – they made the video and posted it.  The Onion responded and the video took off in social media.  [For Tide examples see these Adweek stories–Sharkweek and Halloween]

Buick: During in Buick’s daily monitoring they noticed the trend of putting the phone down and enjoying life.  #putthephonedown  was trending off and on and Buick started making suggestions of what to do when you put the phone down in full support of Buick’s discovery platform.  Then they hooked up with Rhett and Link of Youtube and created a video all about putting the phone down and created a bigger effort to get people to enjoy #inthemoment. They supported it on their tumblr feed, asked the audience to make a pledge for being in the moment, and finally taking Christmas day off – from social media. [See Adweek story]

Drew: What does it take to pull programs like this off?  

  1. Dedicated resources on both sides on a daily basis.  This is about not only being ready to respond, but to build the muscle memory.   Listen, Create and Distribute.
  2. Present to the approver, next step legal if you have to.  Gone are the days of having multiple rounds of approval.  Relevance has a deadline and you will miss it if you are stuck in a conference room presenting ideas.  The client is much more in the creation, which helps to get ideas into market more quickly.
  3. Senior brand leadership to help clear the hurdles.
  4. Knowledge that you can’t do this for free with a skeleton staff.  It’s not free.  Budget must be earmarked for media and content creation.  Content shouldn’t be created unless a distribution strategy has been thought through.  Earned media has such power, more than is being realized just yet.

Drew: What are the three reasons why real-time programs fall flat? 

  1. When a brand forces entry into a conversation that they have no business being in.
  2. They approach real time in isolation — as a stunt– with no anchor in the broader brand messaging.
  3. Has nothing to do with what people care about.  You have to find the intersection between what is interesting to the audience and the brand purpose.

Drew: What’s your favorite real-time program that you or your agency didn’t have a hand in?

Mini Cooper does a great job on a regular basis.  One of my favorites was what they did around the horse in beef scandal in the UK.

Drew: Should we be talking about real-time as a separate thing or is just part of a smart social strategy today?

I know its called the Social Media Insider Summit, but Real-Time is a core / foundational piece to a sound marketing strategy.  What brand doesn’t want to engage with their audience on an everyday basis in a relevant manner while providing value?  This is what Real-Time can do for a brand.  It is always on and should be an integral part whether you are talking about expressing the idea in social channels or traditional.

CMO Insights: Turning Marketing into Service

A common phrase in the service industry is “the customer knows best.” While waiters and retail associates will roll their eyes at this, especially when it’s delivered by a manager following an unpleasant customer interaction, there’s definitely some credence to it. American Express is one company that takes “customer knows best” to heart, and has used the adage to help inform its marketing strategy for decades.

AmEx CMO John Hayes and I caught up around the time of the CMO Club Awards, and he gave me a glimpse into the intensely service-focused world that runs American Express from the inside out. From creating an Open Forum that lets small businesses help each other out, to starting a publishing arm way before “content marketing” was a buzzword in—wait for it—1971, to offering live streamed concerts to its music fans, Hayes and his team are are not just believers in “marketing as service,” they are the poster children for this approach. 

Drew: One of the big issues that big companies have is how to keep their marketing fresh and nimble and not get stuck in a rut. Over the years, you have been incredibly innovative in terms of your marketing. Have you been able to institutionalize this innovation?

There are a couple of answers to that question. The most fundamental is that you have to continue to focus on the customer. If you become focused on the issues that present themselves inside the company instead of looking outside at the customers, you’re sacrificing innovation. If we’re going to be a great service company, we need to be serving them, we need to be communicating with them, we need to be marketing in the places where our customers or our prospects spend their time.

Being customer-focused is the first part of innovating because what you’re trying to do is anticipate the needs that those customers have and looking for an advantage over your competition, which usually comes from serving your customers in a unique way. The second part is to generate a level of curiosity about what’s happening in the world, both in terms of the talent you bring into the company as well as the culture that you build and maintain over time. We have been able to build a culture of curiosity where people are curious about how to make things work better.

Drew: You’re a great service company, yet one might argue that you also sell a lot of products. Has a service mentality always been front-and-center at American Express? How does being a great service company affect your marketing?

American Express has been around since 1850, and when we first started, we were a freight forwarding company, not a payment company. Then we slowly moved into the traveler business and the travelers check business. The company was 108 years old before the first American Express card appeared. Since the beginning, there has been a focus on being a great service company, whether that service was freight forwarding, opening up markets for people to travel and experience, offering people a safer way to carry their money with travelers checks or offering them something like the American Express card to simplify their lives and make it more rewarding. All of those things come from a service culture, a company focused on service.

This brand has been about 3 things from its very origin: Trust, security, service. So the iteration we experience today happens to be mostly in the form of plastic payments, whether that’s corporate, small business, consumer or for our merchants, but that’s just the way we’ve taken service to market today. It starts with understanding what business you are in and understanding that this is a company that believes it’s noble to serve. From that comes the way we go to market.

Drew: I saw the case history on Small Business Saturday, and there’s a lot of evidence that it drove a tremendous amount of traffic. That was probably among your more measurably effective initiatives, at least from a small business standpoint. But my understanding of Open Forum is that you can’t find a direct link to revenue, yet you’ve been investing in Open programs for years.

I think there are some general trends that are very positive but you’re right. When you get to a granular level, it’s difficult to say this program generated this many cards and this much spending for American Express.

We have a belief that if you serve people well, they will become your customers, because people find it rare to be served extremely well. We don’t require people to be a cardholder to use Open Forum. We created the site because we knew that part of enabling the success of small businesses was helping them understand what other small businesses had already learned to help them be successful. That’s why we created it, and that’s why we made it an “open” network – so people could find the people that would be of most value to them.

When you’ve contributed in a meaningful way to a small business’ success and then say, “Hey, I’ve got some other services for you. I’ve got a card that could help you manage inventory better,” they are quite open to it because they’ll say, “Well, you guys have already been enabling my business, enabling my success,” and that’s the philosophy. Some programs we can measure on a granular level, and some we can’t, but we’re careful not to overvalue the things we can measure or undervalue the things we can’t. 

Drew: You’ve been developing content, one way or another, for small businesses for years. Given that everybody is creating content, and other companies are targeting small businesses like you are, what are you doing to stay ahead?

What’s really important is that we don’t do things just because they’re a trend; we do things because we think it’s the right thing to do for our customer. In 1971, we started a publishing group called American Express publishing. Wow, what a concept. Who was talking about content in 1971? But this company has the foresight to understand that if you’re going to be a lifestyle services company, you’re going to serve businesses and people. You need to talk to them about their life, not what they’re going to use to pay for something.

The philosophy that got this company to create a publishing group in 1971 is no different than the way we think about our company today. If you’re in the service business, every interaction with a prospect or a customer should be a service interaction. We provide those magazines as a service to those customers. If you look at what we do on stage – bringing music to so many people on a live-stream basis – the philosophy is the same. That is our way of serving customers who we know have a passion for music because of the things they do, because of the way they spend their money. We should be helping our customers experience what it is they want to experience, and many of these experiences are open architecture because we want prospects to know that’s what it feels like to be a member.

Drew: Have you seen your role, in the last 10 years, evolve as a CMO? 

My role has evolved a lot. First, it’s evolved from the standpoint of understanding what is happening in the world related to media. How are people consuming media? How are they absorbing new messages? Those things have changed fairly remarkably in the last decade. Part of my job is to make sure I understand how the world works today from a media standpoint, whether that’s social media, digital, or traditional, and how it’s changing. How are brands being established in the landscape today?

My role is also about identifying which elements of American Express will not change from 1850, and which elements absolutely will in terms of how we go to market. Trust, security, and service will not change. This company has existed for 163 years because it’s reinvented itself, but always around the ideas of trust, security, and service.

Drew: What role is Big Data playing in your job today?

Data is a fundamental part of what we do today, and it’s a great opportunity, because data can allow us to optimize on a much shorter cycle. We also see it as an opportunity to serve customers better. I can anticipate your needs, I can help you with the things you want, I can begin to understand what you might need in the future based on data and that data can be very useful in service and marketing standpoint. I won’t talk about marketing without mentioning service because I think there’s a lot of marketing out there that is of no service to anyone and frankly doesn’t have much impact. The things that are sustainable are the marketing elements that serve people well. So data becomes an enormous opportunity not only to find prospects, but to also understand them and to offer things that are a real service to them, so that you can begin the relationship on a service level and not just a sales level.

Drew: If you had to justify the creation of Open Forum today based on data that you didn’t have because you hadn’t yet introduced it, how would you do it? I believe there’s a risk today that marketers might not take the giant leaps of faith in an untested program because its’ impact is not going to be linear.

I think your assumption is entirely correct which is that the data allows you to find the opportunity, execute the opportunity, and prove that it was a success; all on shorter cycles than ever before. You’re not waiting 6 months to say ‘did it work?’; you’re saying ‘let me show you the week after Small Business Saturday’. Let’s take a look at the behavioral shifts we saw. You’re able, because data is as robust today, to see insights to what might have cause and affected certain positive outcomes.

You cannot be a great marketer without experimentation. Experimentation requires great accountability. You have to be experimenting with a purpose and you have to have the data and the metrics that will allow you to demonstrate what worked and what didn’t. It’s okay to fail as long as you don’t fail twice on the same thing. That’s the way we try to operate here, we experiment a lot we have some things that work phenomenally well which the world gets to see on a broad scale basis and we have some things that don’t work at all and we say that didn’t work fold it up let’s not do that again, let’s try some other things. That to me is a big part of how the job has changed because 20 years ago, it was not as experimental as it is today because the data wasn’t as robust, the metrics weren’t easy to access, the cycles took longer and there weren’t as many new permutations to try.

Drew: Let’s talk about the Link Like Love and Card Sync programs. Are they both social? They have transactional elements, which is very different than some of the other things you’ve done. How would you evaluate those two programs, and do they have futures?

They definitely have futures. They come from a very clear observation of many digital channels, which are unlike many traditional media channels, which tend to be really focused on communications. These new channels are distribution channels, they’re service channels; they operate on so many different dimensions that it allows you to create products specifically for these platforms.

I believe iIt’s a missed opportunity if you’re working in the digital space and all you’re trying to do is create a communication. You’re going to disappoint people, because people who consume these channels don’t see them as just communications channels.

If you start to build products and services that exist within these very robust platforms then you start to create more interesting things that people can spend time with on the platform. You’re building something that mirrors the behaviors you’ve already seen customers take in those categories and on those platforms. Our philosophy has always been to build things that compliment the platforms that we’re building them on.  We are able to distribute products, services, and communicate with our customers because the channel is so robust it allows us to do that.

Drew: Let’s take Facebook Link, Like, Love, how does that work?

We have a lot of card members who spend time on Facebook so this program now gives them a way of further utilizing their Facebook presence. We then offer them things based on their social graph, their friends, their behavior, and their traditional spending behaviors. We’re then able to see how well we’ve done because some things have an enormous uptake. We’ve offered other opportunities to customers to sync their cards that have not gotten enormous uptake.

When we launched Tweet Divide, it was basically a similar product on a different platform. We communicated with people who were going to South by Southwest before they went on their route. We also reached them in a variety of ways en route to South by Southwest. There was a special show that we were doing, which we were live streaming with Jay-Z. If they wanted to attend the show all they had to do was sync their card on Twitter, tweet the show, and they would get tickets to the show. The viral effect was unbelievable. It was an incredible show. The headline the next day was something along the lines of “The most innovative new startup was American Express.”

We don’t like to just put everything on autopilot, particularly with something like South by Southwest. If you’re going to do something, we believe it should live up to very high standard of innovation and newness so we didn’t repeat it this year. We are taking the things that worked from it and applying it all over the place.

Drew: As the CMO, how much influence do you have on the entire customer experience?

At any company, that grows with time. I do believe there is a benefit of having been in this position for so many years. You have earned the right to influence many things that ultimately build your brand by doing things, demonstrating the value, measuring the value over time. I feel for CMOs who are just coming into a complex organization and trying to manage all of the elements that they believe are impacting both their brand and their business. It’s very difficult in a short amount of time to get your arms around it. I don’t know of a company structured in such a way that the CMO has control over all of the touch points.

For me, what’s really been tremendous is having the steady support of a CEO who has said “This is important,” and being able to demonstrate to my colleagues: “Here’s the value that we can bring,” and how, if we work to together and bring something that has synergy to the market, we all benefit. We’ve seen the impact that service has on the American Express brand, our customers and their behavior following a positive experience. It’s really been about picking things off and demonstrating the value of each over time.

It took me a few years before I was really able to get people on board and see how we can be more successful with greater synergy. It’s really a plea to consistency. Some people think consistency means boring and tired, and I don’t. We’re demonstrating that we have a consistent level of talent. Our organizational structure has allowed us to build relationships internally, and some things that were difficult 12, 15 years ago are second nature today.

CMO Insights: Preserving Customer Loyalty

Following the year of “content marketing” that was 2013, we can only hope that 2014 is destined to be as rewarding a year for consumers on social media. Many brands are figuring out that earning customer loyalty via great content is on par with nurturing a real, face-to-face relationship, in that being a supportive, useful and interesting friend will almost always earn you an invite to the birthday party.

Some, like Torani, are well ahead of this curve. For a product like Torani, which relies on retailers to establish the first relationship with customers, it pays to keep tabs on the rolodex by not just touching base over social media, but also adding to their daily lives in a fun, relevant way. CMO Julie Garlikov, who won a President’s Circle Award at the recent CMO Club Awards, explains the ways Torani grows and manages its loyal fan base on a modest budget.

Drew: A CMO has a lot of choices in terms of where they invest their time.  What have been your top priorities in the last 12 months?

Our business continues to grow like crazy.   I am most focused on growing our consumer business and improving household penetration.  This includes some significant product innovation, as well as educating and engaging our consumer in new ways.

Drew: Have there been any big surprises in terms of what’s worked really well and what hasn’t?

We’ve launched a lot of new products this year.  What’s surprising is how long it has taken to get some of them off the ground, especially when you’re educating a market on a new behavior.  The other big surprise to me this year is the explosive growth in mobile, which now accounts for almost 30% of our online traffic.  We’re rapidly adapting our ecommerce platform to be better optimized for mobile.

Drew:  Has the fact that Torani does not have a huge multi-million budget forced you to be more innovative?  

We have to find the right partners to work with us who believe in our brand and who want to work with a great, local, family-owned business.  And, we need to focus more on things like PR and creating social buzz to get the word out.  We can’t do a lot of mass tactics, so we look to build really high loyalty with our business and consumer users, turning them into uber fans.

Drew: Have you been able to link your innovative marketing activities to the kinds of business metrics favored by CEOs?

I use a lot of test/invest methodology, trying things out small scale, proving that they deliver and then expanding.  It’s the only way to make ensure the best ROI on limited budgets.

Drew: Marketing seems to be getting increasingly complex in terms of ways to spend and ways to monitor. Has it gotten more complex for you and if so, how are you dealing with that complexity?

Julie: For such simple products, we have a very complex business with many channels and differing needs.  When you add all the new ways to market, it is complicated, and that’s what makes it interesting.  We’ve really focused the team on specific channels and segments and that helps them market the most successfully.

Drew: How do you stay close to your end users when the relationship with these folks is mainly owned by your retailer partners?  

Julie:  We get a great sense from social media and listening of what’s important to our user.  We’ve also been doing a lot of event marketing and mobile tours the past two years so we can hear more directly what our users like.  Between our retail partners and our foodservice distributors, we can be one step removed.  So, we have to create opportunities to engage regularly and we do a lot of research like ethnographies to really understand what our consumer wants and needs.

Drew: Has social media played much of a role in the driving your brand?  If so, how has it helped or how do you see it helping in the future?  

Julie:   We have a very active, loyal fan base that we engage with daily on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, etc.  We also have done a lot of blogger outreach and engage with various bloggers on a regular basis, sending them new products, etc.  This helps get the word out on a small brand and is a big part of our acquistion strategies.

Drew: Content marketing is hot topic at the moment.  Are you increasing your investment in this area?

Julie:  Yes, this is a huge area for us.  We’ve developed videos and will be producing even more as the year wraps up.  Everything from how-to videos to funny content.  We also continue to create enticing inspirational photos and editorial, almost like what you see in a food magazine.  We’ve found that inspiring people with seasonal recipes and super on-trend ideas generates significant sales lift, so content is key for us.

Drew: Do you agree with that notion that marketing is everything and everything is marketing and if so how have you extended the boundaries of your job beyond the normal purview of the CMO?    

Julie:   This is so true.  We’ve actually created a social media/buzz marketer position within our department and moved consumer service into marketing.  That way, if someone engages on Facebook or Twitter or the old school phone, we’re able to have one seamless approach to dealing with their experience.  And, we’ve got a team who does the same thing for our commercial user too.

 

CMO Insights: Marketing Innovation

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Look around your home, and you’ll find that you own at least one product by 3M. Chances are you own many. And the brand isn’t only an American staple, it’s made its way into marketplaces across the globe. From Post-It Notes and reflective traffic signs to your dentist’s favorite cleaning tools, 3M prides itself on providing useful products to customers around the world.

Part of what keeps 3M so successful is its ability to innovate and adapt to consumers’ changing needs in the digital space. Heading up this effort is Raj Rao, who chatted with me during the CMO Club Awards, where he took home a much-deserved Programmatic Marketing Award. And with a title like VP for Global eTransformation, it’s no wonder—Rao lives and breathes marketing innovation on a day-to-day basis. Enjoy, as he gives us a glimpse into the eCommerce operations behind 3M.

Drew: I love that your title suggests forward movement and innovation. What are your responsibilities?
My role in the organization is to use social and digital channels to strengthen 3M’s product innovation and eCommerce commercialization programs product roadmap activity for multiple brands in several global locations. As a marketer, my responsibility is to drive digital excellence through the adoption of world-class cloud and on-premise services that enable our marketers to get to real-time engagement and strengthen the competitiveness of 3M brands in industrial, professional, government and retail channels. A second key responsibility is to foster new skills and capabilities at all levels of our marketing and sales teams so that they can embrace new tools and insights that accelerate our commercialization programs.

Drew: A CMO has a lot of choices in terms of where he/she invests their time. What have been your top priorities in the last 12 months?
The top 4 priorities for my team have been a) content excellence programs that improve our social and online brand engagement programs, b) ROI and marketing analytics that focus our investments on the right portfolio of programs, c) eCommerce webstore functionality and SEO/organic search optimization to lead to higher sales conversion, and d) migration and upgrade of 3M marketing platforms to responsive design capabilities, leading to optimized desktop, tablet and mobile experiences.

Drew: Have there been any big surprises in terms of what’s worked really well and what hasn’t?
The big wins have been the real-time personalization using heuristics and our self-solve tool box. We have seen a significant increase in eCommerce conversion and lower costs of sales lead management as a result of these programs. I was also surprised at the rapid rise of marketplaces in China (like TMall), which eclipses all other 3M eCommerce channels in the APAC region. What has not delivered for 3M is apps. We have not been successful at driving branded engagement in the markets where we have invested. I am not sure that there is a real opportunity for branded apps.

Drew: Many people don’t realize that a huge part of the 3M business model is dedicated to developing new technologies. What roles do technology and innovation play in your marketing strategies?
We strive to create extended product experiences through digital channels. This has been evident in the cloud library service that we have successfully launched, in the custom car wrap business and in our health care brands. The digital channels play a key part in providing a differentiated user experience in all these businesses. Recently we unveiled an innovative partnership between our Post It brand and Evernote. We have an exciting pipeline of innovative solutions that exemplify the inherent technology strengths in diverse 3M markets and channels. Our marketing strategies are to promote user engagement and strengthen our insights so that we can drive focused commercialization programs.

Drew: Content marketing is a hot topic at the moment.  What’s your perspective on content in terms of its effectiveness? Are you increasing your investment in this area?
Yes, we do believe that content marketing holds the key to success with our top two digital priorities. Through our work in the healthcare (dental) industry, where we’ve invested in several content marketing programs, we have seen strong progress with eCommerce sales and actionable insights based on customer engagement. In the social media programs, content marketing is driving much stronger brand engagement, fueling the growth of advocates and influential followers on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. In China, our content programs in TMall and Weibo are leading to remarkable improvements in sales for both B2B and B2C sales.

Drew: How do you evaluate/measure the success of your marketing?  Are there some channels that work a lot better for you than others?
We measure 3 ways: the adoption of world-class tools and processes by brand teams and product marketers; the impact of the programs by audience and stage of engagement; and, the competitive benchmark performance. It is clear to us that our brand URLs are particularly effective for conversion tactics, while YouTube and social channels are well-suited to drive contextual engagement. The call center and webchat are very useful for issue resolution and responding to user issues. I am very impressed by the role that Amazon is playing in delivering high quality eCommerce programs for our consumer portfolio, and increasingly with our long tail B2B markets where we can increase market coverage and deliver new product applications.

Drew: 3M is the parent company of nearly a dozen different brands and operates within nearly every market segment. How do you stay close to your customers when you operate in so many markets and have so many different types of customers?  
3M has over 25 strategic global brands in consumer, industrial, professional and electronic markets. We also have a large portfolio of local brands that are organized by regional or local market. The key to success is the sustained investment in technology platforms that enable these brands to deliver compelling customer experiences. The $1.5 billion R&D budget provides a continuous supply of new formulations, advanced packaging formats, improved sustainability and differentiated benefits that are continuous and aligned to mega trends. We like to keep the customer insights separate yet connected with the technology roadmaps. This enables us to deliver a concurrent stream of “new to market Class V” innovations like the 3M Cloud Library, with “adjacent innovation Class III” products like Scotch Brite brand dish wands.  In fact, the diversity of brands, customer touch points and technology platforms is a tremendous source of strength for 3M. It drives our competitiveness and provides an endless stream of innovation outcomes.

Drew: Innovation is a sexy word but not as sexy to a CEO as ROI. Have you been able to link your innovative marketing activities to the kinds of business metrics favored by CEOs?
Our marketing activities enable the commercialization of 3M Innovation. Our CEO has challenged the teams to achieve a 40% NPVI metric by 2016. This means that new products and services need to account for 40% of 3M’s revenue in 2016. We are not far from that metric, but it is challenging to meet that goal while continuing to delivering 8-10% EPS growth each year. Sometimes this causes a paradox of choice. Should I optimize the current portfolio to drive margins, or should I create new products and invest in telling a new story to my customers? I think it’s a fine balance. Marketing activities like social media programs and YouTube video enable us to remain connected with influencers, while eCommerce initiatives allow us to test price points and packaging configurations ahead of finely-tuned broad market execution. Our CEO also wants our brands to exemplify the innovation positions in their markets in a manner that supports higher prices and premium margins. This can only be achieved when marketing activities are closely aligned to these objectives and allow us control over the conversations we need to have with the customers, versus relinquishing that to the channels.

Drew: How are you integrating social media into marketing efforts at 3M? Have social platforms proved to be a valuable channel for your brands?
Yes, social media has been a significant driver to value to our brands and corporate reputation. Recently, Interbrand called out our social media efforts as a key contributor to our position on the Global 100 Power Brands list. It provides the means for engagement with investors, employees, customers and media. Each of them is a voice for our brand and our global programs. Social media has also become a source for inspired ideas that translate to new products. For example, in China we developed a new line of pedestrian safety solutions, based in large part on social media listening programs that identified unmet needs and a groundswell of interest in new solutions. We also have used social media as a means to drive new product reviews that enable us to have stronger engagement with trade channels. By knowing how customers use our products in daily situations, we are better positioned to place the products in the right store aisle, optimize search results on digital eCommerce platform and train the instore sales personnel on what to recommend. In Latin America, some of the brands are using social media channels like Facebook to lunch new products. This is a really interesting proposition for 3M since it allows us to rapidly assess buyer sentiment.

Drew: Finally, I’ve heard it said , especially when it comes to the customer experience. Do you agree with that notion that “marketing is everything and everything is marketing,” and if so, how have you extended the boundaries of your job beyond the normal purview of the CMO?  
This is a really interesting point. My perspective is that the CMO needs to have strong operational knowledge of sales and customer service. Customers no longer follow a linear path to purchase, nor are they tied to any single channel. They are using digital tools like never before, amplifying brand experiences without any relationship boundaries and demanding more service options as part of the product purchase. So, the role of CMO needs to have that broader perspective on the customers’ experience journey and be prepared to generate appropriate content for that diversity. The big challenge is designing learning experiences for different levels of the organization that foster a new level of understanding, yet challenge us to break free from current channel or buyer/persona silos that are no longer relevant. To achieve this, we need to have courage and be prepared to risk losing some of the cultural heritage that has become embedded in our operational DNA. 3M is very well positioned for this change, and has already taken big steps in several business teams to make the leap forward.

CMO Insights: Global Sponsorships

Phil Clement, Global CMO, AonHere is the 2nd part of my extensive and enlightening interview with Aon’s Global CMO Phil Clement.  This part covers Aon’s highly effective global sponsorship of Manchester United and the impact that program has customers, partners and employees.  I have no doubt that just about any marketer will find what Phil has to say instructive.  So read on…

Drew: It seems that Aon’s sponsorship of Manchester United is a big part of your marketing program. How does that fit into your go-to market strategy?

We’re in 120 countries, and in every country we have additional stakeholders—vendors, governments, regulators—and we have community groups that we interface with. Having a globally established brand is important. The Manchester United sponsorship has been a big part of that because we can use the same team, same language, same sponsorship material, same explanation for what we’re doing, how we’re doing it, and why we’re doing it across the world, because Manchester United is understood in every country.

Drew: In light of that, how do you measure the success of your programs?

Manchester United merits its own type of point system. We focused on three objectives. Because we are a company that has grown via 435 acquisitions, we called the first one Aon United, and we measured that by employee survey. Do [our employees] believe we have an important and engaging brand? Are they proud to work at the firm? We did extraordinarily well. Pride and whether Aon has a strong brand were the two highest responses in the survey. Prior to the sponsorship, the brand one was the lowest, and pride was not nearly as high. We know from our research that positive brands automatically have higher engagement.

The second way that we measured it was in marketing equivalency. We took some of the sponsorship fee and applied it against that. Then we used third party, almost public domain-type measures on the value of the advertising on television and in media, PR, online and in chat rooms. The third measure was client engagement. We looked at renewal rates, new business and crossover efforts. We counted the margin on that business, divided it by half, and did a calculation on whether or not it was a better investment than stock buyback. Everything else—like the fact that our recruiting lines in India went from 25 to 1,000, wrapping around the block—didn’t go into the calculations. The fact that employees were wearing jerseys to work, you can’t count that.

Drew: It’s interesting that this program had such a powerful effect on your employees, and ultimately they are your greatest brand ambassadors. Were you conscious of that going into this sponsorship?

It was very conscious. There’s always a gravitational pull that takes apart companies that have grown through acquisition. So, it’s extraordinarily important to provide additional substance to why you work together, and also excitement and symbolism to gather around. Manchester United has certainly done that for us.

Drew: Do you have a brand police? Does corporate have to approve local activities? 

I have to approve any sponsorship that is above $25,000. Anybody that is good at one profession doesn’t make good sponsorship decisions without the help of others. Our sponsorship strategy is that we want to be the only sponsor there. We want to make sure that it’s consistent with our messaging and that we can talk about 6 pillars that we use in all sponsorship activity: Risk, Talent, Health, Retirement, Data & Analytics, and Access to Capital. We also have pretty good ideas on pricing, which would merit an intervention.

Drew: Does social play a role in your business?

Our core client base does not use social media to get information, because there’s an aversion to talking about your health and benefits policies on social media. They look for things like articles on what it means to have an aspiring manager. It’s a mix of having the right content in the right places and realizing that the decisions of our clients are not driven by social media.

Our colleagues have found that the most effective way of connecting a 22-year-old colleague in India with someone in the U.S. is to provide a forum on Facebook or our internal platforms. We did a program a couple years ago called Pass it On, which focused on getting our colleagues to pass on their knowledge. We had three teams; one flew to Australia, one to Africa and one to South America and we handed off footballs through three routes back to England. Every time a ball came to your city, you did things to celebrate the culture with clients, colleagues and the community.

Drew: As CMO of Aon, what are your New Year’s resolutions? What do you hope to accomplish next year?

A couple things. Over the last 8 years we’ve done a really good job of developing an awareness of our brand. We also need to develop an understanding of what we do. Because we’re loosely affiliated with insurance, and people understand the insurance as consumer insurance they, don’t really get what we do. Internally, I would like to be more connected with my colleagues across the globe. I’m hoping I can create a global dialogue around what I think is the best profession in the world.

Final note: It’s easy to see why Phil was a recent CMO Club Awards winner.