Category: Interviews

CMO Insights: Storytelling for Big Corporations

Posted on by Drew Neisser

In this age of the constant brand refresh, companies like Allstate are becoming increasingly rare. Allstate’s two main campaigns, both playing off of the motto “You’re in Good Hands with Allstate,” have been around for an eternity by advertising industry standards, and yet in many ways, they’re fresher than ever. So how does Allstate manage to find new angles when other brands constantly pivot their messaging?

To get these answers, I reached out to Sanjay Gupta, Executive Vice President of Marketing, Innovation and Corporate Relations at Allstate Insurance Company. Sanjay knows a thing or two about reaching out to people, and his penchant for teamwork netted him an Officers Award at the CMO Awards, presented by The CMO Club. His advice for strong marketing is an old adage we hear often, but rarely see in action, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

Drew: Insurance companies are among the biggest spenders in general and on TV specifically.  Collectively you can’t all be wrong so TV must still be working for brands like Allstate.  What role does TV play in your marketing mix and do you see that changing in the near term?
It allows us to tell our brand story.  For example, last year we debuted a powerful brand ad titled, “We Still Climb,” that helped us launch our new brand idea that Allstate doesn’t just protect people when something goes wrong, but also helps them to live a good life every day.  As part of that effort, we’re leveraging our TV advertising to highlight Allstate’s innovative products and features – including proven ones like our Safe Driving bonus checks, as well as new ones such as our QuickFoto Claim and Drivewise smart phone apps.

As far as our marketing mix goes, people still watch TV – a lot of it.  Though we continue to increase the percentage of our digital media as consumer media consumption evolves, we’ve found that a combination of media types usually yields the best results.

Drew: You have two very different campaigns with Mayhem and Dennis Haysbert ads. What is the strategy behind these two initiatives and from a measurement standpoint, area you able to distinguish the results of them individually versus the collective impact they have on the brand?
The good news is they work very well together, each campaign complementing and working off one another.  Mayhem disrupts – reminding people that all insurance is not the same so people need to be careful in terms of who they choose for their protection needs, while Dennis reinforces why Allstate is the compelling choice to protect everything that’s important to you.  While we know that each campaign continues to work very well individually, collectively the effect is even greater.  And of course, both fall under Allstate’s overriding message “You’re in Good Hands with Allstate.”

Drew: A lot of marketers change campaigns every couple of years.  This doesn’t seem to be the case in the insurance category and certainly not with Allstate.  Why is that?  Are there specific signals you look for to determine if just an ad or an entire campaign has worn out its welcome?
If you have a campaign that continues to prove successful, and becomes even more successful with time, then changing for change sake is not what’s best for the brand and the business.  Of course we measure and constantly watch for wear out and diminishing effectiveness.  But part of the reason “You’re in Good Hands” has remained one of the most recognized taglines in America is because we haven’t changed it in 50 years.

Even though we’ve had some real duration with the look and feel and of our campaigns over the last several years, we are constantly introducing new features and different ways in which we tell our story about Allstate while also leveraging the equity that Dennis and Mayhem have built.  So we not only leverage Dennis and Mayhem, but for example last year we featured several well-known home experts/TV personalities in our ads who provided helpful maintenance and do-it-yourself tips.  We delivered the message that Allstate homeowners insurance offers more, and highlighted product features like claim-free rewards as well as helpful tools and perks at our Good Life Hub (Allstate.com/goodlife) that allow customers to get more out of their insurance every day.

And this year we’re talking about Allstate “House and Home” coverage where we’re offering our Claim Rate Guard and Claim Free Rewards.  So we’re constantly talking about new and different things.  In fact we just launched a campaign aimed at New Households that highlights a lot of great new services and features from Allstate, but it still looks and feels familiar.  We’re still able to leverage the equity of Dennis’ voice in some cases, or of course use Dennis or Mayhem in pure form.  So we’re doing things new and different, but we have terrific equity in both of those assets and we’ll continue to maximize them in our current and upcoming campaigns.

Drew: What are you most proud of in terms of recent accomplishments, and what were the key steps you took to get there?
Our most recent accomplishment that I’m most proud of – and it’s actually still a work in progress – kicked off in September when we launched a breakthrough program and accompanying ad campaign to reach consumers and customers who represent what we’re calling “New Households.”  These are people who are contending with many life “firsts,” such a new car, house and/or a baby.  With these things come new uncertainties – car repairs, home maintenance, questions about financial security, etc. – that today’s young families are typically not prepared to address. These consumers typically turn to a trusted inner circle of friends and family for advice. Yet, faced with bigger dilemmas and decisions than ever before, they’re finding these “experts” sometimes lack the resources or skills to help solve them.

In our quest to be more than an insurance company and help people live a good life every day, Allstate is offering tangible solutions, expertise and savings to help New Households get things right the first time.  For example, to help them deal with their need to maintain their homes, we’re offering a free one-year membership to Angie’s List.  We’re also offering a customizable life insurance product that delivers personalized protection for changing family needs. And we’re offering new features like Allstate Car Buying Service (which helps people save an average of $3,000 or more off MSRP on new car), Allstate Realty Advantage (which helps customers find a reputable local real estate agent, plus they can get cash back of up to $3,000 when they buy or sell their home), and Car Seat Discounts from Safety 1st (which allows customers to save 20% or more on select car seat models). Through these offers from trusted brands, our agency owners are arming young families with information, service and tools they need to feel more in control.

We’re promoting this New Households program with a comprehensive advertising campaign that highlights how Allstate’s Good Hands are doing more than ever before.  The campaign includes a combination of national and local TV, radio, digital media, print, social media and PR. The ads are designed to bring Allstate’s customer value proposition to life for consumers, and position our local agency owners as key resources to help them address everyday challenges.  The campaign leads with real life, not insurance.  It depicts the reality of being a young family vs. the perception you may have had of how perfect life would be.  By taking a humorous approach, we show that Allstate agents can not only relate, but also help with surprising and unique solutions to young families’ everyday challenges.

Drew: What challenges have you faced in your efforts to get the entire company engaged with the brand?
Actually our brand is very well understood at Allstate both with our employees and our agency owners.  It’s a brand that our people speak to with great pride, and they live up to what our brand stands for day in and day out.  But we further reinforced the key tenets of what our brand stands for last year with the introduction of “Force for Good” – a simple but powerful guide for our employees and agency owners that reminds us to always be laser focused on delivering for our customers every day.  We do that by doing the right thing, putting people ahead of policies, and defying expectations by delivering what people would not expect from an insurance company.

Drew: What’s been your greatest success?
The best marketing story you can tell is when your customer experience, innovation and marketing – as well as your product features – are all working well together in a cohesive fashion.  I’ve been fortunate to do that time and time again in my career, but certainly we’re doing that now at Allstate with the compelling way we’re bringing all of these things together.  A good example is the work I just described for you with our New Households campaign.

Drew: How important is mobile marketing to your brand and what does it encompass?
More than 50% of people are now accessing the web through mobile phones, so clearly you can’t ignore mobile. We do extensive work not only in terms of mobile optimizing our web presence and our applications, but we also do quite a bit of marketing on mobile platforms.  And we also leverage mobile to create new product features such as our QuickFoto Claim app and our Digital Locker home inventory app.

Drew: What is your proudest accomplishment related to your company’s social responsibility efforts and how did you accomplish it?
While we do a lot of great things in terms of our extensive commitment to corporate responsibility, I’d have to say our Allstate Foundation Purple Purse program is the accomplishment I’m most proud of.  It stems from our Foundation’s broader signature program focused on providing domestic violence survivors with the financial skills and tools to break free and stay free from abuse. Purple Purse makes it fashionable to talk about domestic violence and the financial abuse that traps women in abusive relationships.

Our 2014 Purple Purse campaign wrapped up in early October and was incredibly successful. We harnessed the power of passion and social media to raise awareness and funds for domestic violence services – including the creation of our first-ever Purple Purse Challenge on Crowdrise, an online platform that uses crowdsourcing to help raise charitable donations.  Just as important, we helped 140 partner nonprofits learn how to fundraise using this technology.  All told, we raised nearly $2.5 million from a combination of consumer contributions and our Allstate Foundation challenge grants.

Popular and eloquent actress Kerry Washington joined us as our campaign ambassador.  We adopted a fashion theme as a key strategy to make it easier for the public to talk about this very dark issue that affects 1 in 4 women.  And Ms. Washington even designed a special purple purse to elevate awareness of the importance of financial empowerment as a means to help DV survivors become free of abuse.  A record number of employees, Allstate agency owners and personal financial representatives joined the Purple Purse movement, and the program generated unprecedented media interest and highly positive earned media impressions (716 million and counting) across a broad spectrum of national broadcast, print and online news outlets including “Good Morning America,” “Extra,” “Morning Joe,” Time, People and the Huffington Post.

I’m especially proud of the way our team leveraged so many key Allstate resources to increase our impact this year, including our media relations team, our marketing team, our flagship social networking partners and our local agencies.  It’s a powerful display of what’s possible when we combine our resources and knowledge to do good for society.

Drew: As a highly regulated industry, insurance has a lot of restrictions when it comes to social media.  As such, what role does social play for Allstate in your overall marketing plan and how do you see that evolving in 2015, if at all?
Marketers tell a story to the audience, and the good news with social media is that we can now make that a two-way conversation.  Fans help tell your story, and certainly if you get something wrong, you can learn and fix things quickly too.  So a good brand with a learning agenda is even a better brand.

CMO Insights: Multi-brand Management

Posted on by Drew Neisser

Building, coordinating and maintaining a single brand can seem like a never-ending challenge. Now imagine juggling over twenty brands in just as many states, each one having its own distinct personalities and idiosyncrasies.  For many, this might be daunting but Dave Minifie, CMO of Centene, a multiline care enterprise, it’s just another day in the office.

After over a decade of experience working at P&G, there are two things Dave isn’t worried about: learning the ins and outs of a new brand, and connecting with the people he meets along the way. Maybe that’s why Dave’s legendary people skills earned him a President’s Circle Award at The CMO Club’s CMO Awards. In my interview with Dave we dissected not only how to make sure every brand he markets is furthering larger goals, but also how a strong peer network is critical to his success.

Drew: How did your nearly 13 years of experience in various roles at Procter & Gamble prepare you for the role of CMO at Centene? What are the biggest challenges you have overcome in your transition, and how did you overcome them?
P&G effectiveness at building marketers and business leaders remains grounded in its “brand building framework.” This model works in every category I’ve worked in – whether toilet paper, dog food, or health care – and the challenges I’ve experienced at each transition in my career have been overcome in the same way: learn the culture of the organization; assess the landscape of the category and your competition; understand, articulate, and drive your point of difference; and ensure your resolve to getting the basics done well, first, never wavers.

Drew:  When you take on a new senior marketer role, what are your top priorities? Do you have a first 100-day plan?
I strive to execute a 90-day plan as quickly as possible.  At Centene, I was able to start executing after about the first thirty days.  In fact, two and a half years later, we are still executing against that vision.  My top priorities are three-tiered.  First, I assess the landscape, both internally and externally.  What are the drivers of the business? What is our point of difference?  Does my organization have the right culture, capacity, and capability to accomplish everything that needs to be done?  Second, we strive to execute all the basics well.  Finally, we can work on accelerating the business.

Drew: Several of Centene’s subsidiaries, such as MHS Health Wisconsin and Sunshine Health, have undergone rebranding under your leadership. What are the most notable changes you’ve made, and how do you foresee these changes benefiting the subsidiaries, as well as the overall Centene brand?
I mentioned earlier how important it is to do the basics well.  When I arrived at Centene, each subsidiary had a different name, different mark, and different look and feel.  This was vital to Centene since we know all health care is local, and must be delivered locally.  In fact, this commitment to the local markets is one of three core brand pillars for company.  However, as we seek to drive scale efficiencies (we’ve gone from $5bn in revenue to $15bn in three years), it quickly becomes apparent that we could move to a common visual identity across the enterprise for each of our health plans.  That’s what we are doing now: updating look and feel, based on our company purpose, and incorporating consumer-driven insights into how connect with our members. We anticipate all eighteen health plan subsidiaries accomplishing their rebrand by the end of next year.

Drew:  How do you drive loyalty in your category?
At Centene, we focus less on brand loyalty or retention than we do on positive health outcomes.  To drive positive health outcomes, we educate our members on pro-active health management techniques, and conduct outreach to members who may need additional assistance.  This includes programs for expecting moms, as well as programs for members trying to quit smoking or dealing with other addictions.  We believe this approach not only improves outcomes, but also lowers our medical costs and increases member retention.

Drew: Marketing budgets are getting increasingly complex as new options and tools become available.  How as CMO are you staying on top of budget allocation and optimization?
Budgets are always tight and always getting squeezed.  We have proactively taken steps to better understand ROI on all aspects of our marketing mix, and where we can assess “real time” with some of our digital out-reach, we constantly test, learn, and reapply.

Drew: Do you think it is important to spend time on your personal brand and if so, how do you do this without being in conflict with your organizational goals?
Personal branding is not important to me.  I do focus, however, on self-awareness and business results.  I think too many marketers get caught up in their own “brand” without understanding their own motivations, strengths, and weaknesses.  Without having personal insight, how will you improve?  If you don’t improve yourself, how can you push your organization forward?  Also, if your business isn’t growing, isn’t taking share, then your “brand” gets tarnished anyway.  In other words, grow your business while improving yourself, and your reputation or brand equity will take care of itself.

Drew: How important is having a strong peer network to your ability to do your job well? (explain benefits)  Can you describe an instance in the past year when your peer network helped you?
Having a strong peer marketing network is critical to success.  At P&G, it was easy to talk marketing and grow personally, because everyone at P&G – even the R&D guys – understands brand building.  In a non-CPG industry, “getting fed” is more challenging.  I need an external marketing network to keep me on top of trends, to test my thinking, and to help me get better.  A recent example is a big idea we are toying with right now.  I’ve tested the idea with several of my close friends and trusted marketing advisors and identified both flaws and opportunities inherent in the execution phase, and we are retooling the idea to make it stronger.

CMO Insights: Programmatic Marketing

Posted on by Drew Neisser

Rachel_Meranus

Embracing change has never been an issue for me.  Hopefully, other marketers feel the same  because marketing is about to change in a fundamental way.  The dream of putting the right message in front of the right person at the right time is about to be realized on a massive scale.  This is the 1:1 marketing idea that Don Peppers & Martha Rogers wrote about 18 years ago finally coming true.  Why am I so confident?

First, “addressable TV” is right around the corner and this means our set-top boxes will no longer be dumb terminals. Instead these devices will be smart, feeding our preferences back to broadcasters who in turn will aggregate and sell our “eyeballs” to the highest and most relevant bidder.  This is not just good for marketers.  It will also be good for consumers in that we would no longer see irrelevant ads–for me, that means no more ads for feminine hygiene or baby products when an ad for a paddle tennis racquet or a new off-Broadway show would actually be relevant.

Second, outdoor is about to become smart as digital displays receive information about us (with our permission of course!) via bluetooth or Wifi and therefore can serve relevant messages in a flash.  Third, retailers use of beacons will enable our mobile devices to receive personalized messages again on a permission basis in real-time inside or outside of their stores.  And finally, the ultimate reason you can trust this prediction is that this sort of highly targeted real-time messaging is already happening online and on our mobile devices!

Ultimately, behind all of this wizardry will be a marketing operating system like the one developed a few years ago by MediaMath, a leader in what is currently called “programmatic” marketing.  These operating systems will enable marketers to tie just about every penny of their ad spending to measurable outcomes, the ultimate dream of our soon to be transformed industry. So it is in this lofty context that I encourage you to read my extensive interview with Rachel Meranus, SVP of Marketing for MediaMath.

Drew: Can you talk a little bit about MediaMath and your growth in the last few years?
We’ve come a long way since we made industry headlines when we introduced the first demand-side platform (DSP) in 2007.  Today, we’re one of the leading change agents in the advertising industry, helping the biggest brands and agencies evolve through programmatic buying and maximize their marketing performance and ROI.  We are on the path of making marketing a software function and continuing to innovate in the industry by adding capabilities to our TerminalOne Marketing Operating System.  For example, we recently introduced closed-loop attribution functionality, in which T1 ingests attribution data to optimize the bidding and decisioning, enabling advertisers to realize the full benefits of advanced attribution in an RTB environment, and automated guaranteed deals to facilitate automated media buys that are traditionally done directly with a publisher.  We are currently developing our propriety cookieless cross-device targeting and measurement solution, and continually enhancing our data management, creative optimization, and analytics offering.

In addition to growing the scope of our technology, we are experiencing incredible human capital growth – more than doubling our number of employees in the past year and on track to do the same this year.  In June, we raised more than $175 million in additional funding; funding that will support our rapid global growth. We have put experts on the ground around the world with our recent office openings in Australia, Brazil, France, Japan, and Singapore, and in 2015, MediaMath will relocate its New York City headquarters to more than 100,000 square feet spanning three floors of the new 4 World Trade Center.

Drew: Can you give an example of a client that is doing amazing things with programmatic? 
Many of our clients – both agencies and brands – are seeing success with programmatic tactics, leveraging geo-targeting, look-alike modeling, and even building proprietary models to identify new prospects through TerminalOne.  One example of a client that is accelerating their programmatic efforts is ShopStyle by PopSugar, the social shopping and fashion website.  They were looking to leverage programmatic media to create scalable return on ad spend, with a focus on campaigns in both the middle and lower funnels.  Using our TerminalOne Marketing Operating System and working with our OPEN partner AddThis, ShopStyle was able to create more robust and scalable profiles based on user data and implement more granular targeting around behavior and contextual variables.  Additionally, utilizing FBX, ShopStyle by PopSugar was also able to expand its retargeting pool and tactics beyond traditional display.

Drew: The big media buying agencies are all over programmatic and have been for a while now.  This doesn’t seem to be case with most brands and their CMOs. Why the understanding gap and why do you think it is so important that CMOs understand the power of programmatic?
We see quite a range when it comes to a CMO’s understanding and level of sophistication with the technology.  Some jump right in and get their hands dirty. Others are treading lightly on unfamiliar territory.

Traditionally, agencies had more exposure to the ins and outs of digital media buying, but for many brands and their CMOs, they haven’t had this much control over or transparency into their digital media buying.  There is still a lot of confusion about how the technology works, but it’s critical for CMOs to understand the power of programmatic, especially when more marketing dollars are shifting to digital.

With a central marketing operating system, CMOs gain the visibility into how their money is being spent, the impact of their media buying decisions, and the ability to identify real-time opportunities with their audiences.  Furthermore, the more CMOs embrace programmatic – within their own brands or together with their agency partner – the greater opportunity they will have deploying first-party data, integrating with internal systems, and normalizing marketing across disparate media types for greater performance.

Drew: MediaMath has made a concerted effort to engage CMOs through your partnership with The CMO Club. Can you talk about your approach to this partnership?
The value of our partnership with The CMO Club is two-fold.  Firstly, we are able to learn, first-hand, from CMOs across a variety of industry verticals what is keeping them up at night.  We are able to be on the pulse of the major challenges that CMOs face, what they view as the biggest opportunities, and how they’re building out their organizations to keep up with the evolution of digital.

Secondly, the CMO Club gives us tremendous exposure to an engaged, interested audience of CMOs, allowing us to educate and inform them on programmatic marketing, which is where our expertise lies.  We’re helping them to understand how our technology applies to their broader goals and addressing the challenges that they face on a daily basis.

Drew: What’s the hardest part of trying to engage CMOs and what kinds of things are you doing to cut through?
When it comes to engaging CMOs, we look to explain why programmatic should be the basis of any digital marketing strategy and have the lion’s share of digital budgets.  This requires us to explain how the technology fits into their stack, the new or different skillsets that are needed, and the ideal team structure that should be put in place to fully take advantage of a central operating system.

However, there are steps that we’re taking to help educate CMOs about the opportunities, what they can do to maximize the return on investment in the short term – from their current digital efforts, as well as what they can put in place for the longer term.  We’re educating them through tailored content, which varies depending on their level of experience with and understanding of programmatic, case studies, and interactive training sessions.

Another way that we’re doing that is by working with brands’ agency partners who bring trading best practices, cutting-edge tools, pooled media buying, and data co-ops into the relationship.  Programmatic technology creates new roles for agencies in which they are able to leverage proprietary modeling and optimization approaches and data-driven creative services, among others.  This benefits the client outcome and that’s what has led to more CMOs having a greater interest in and understanding of programmatic.

Drew: As a B2B brand, what role does social media play in your marketing mix? 
Social media is an important part of our marketing mix, which we use to raise brand awareness, identify influencers, and engage brand advocates in a competitive space.  As a B2B brand, LinkedIn is particularly beneficial to engage influencers, seed our messages in specialized groups, and participate in timely and topical conversations.  Furthermore, as social channels expand their programmatic capabilities, we are able to leverage our partnerships with them.  For example, we use TerminalOne’s decisioning engine and data sources to power campaigns on Facebook and engage target tailored audiences on Twitter.  For these channels, we regularly leverage our original content – blog posts and research – and news to spark conversations that can generate new leads.

Drew: MediaMath recently unveiled new positioning. Talk me through what led you to make this change and some of the challenges you faced along the way.
The industry has been moving at such a quick pace, with new players emerging seemingly every day.  The industry has reached a level of sophistication in their understanding of technology and is recognizing that a complex chart of logos to represent today’s online advertising ecosystem isn’t the answer to their need for scalable marketing.  Rather, they are realizing that it’s achievable through technological unification and a flexible, open platform. Our new brand message, ‘Performance Reimagined. Marketing Reengineered,’ epitomizes both our goal-based approach to drive transformative marketing results, as well as the technology platform that powers it.

Drew: What advice would you offer a fellow marketer who was about to consider a rebranding campaign?
Evolution is inevitable, especially in the fast-changing world of digital marketing.  Therefore, when it comes to a rebranding campaign, there are a few essential steps to consider before diving in, including the need to:

  • Gauge market readiness for change and have a clear understanding of how your brand is perceived in market.  This requires research and due diligence with a brand’s key stakeholders – current employees, clients, prospects, and industry influencers, as well as having a pulse on the competition.
  • Have a clear, concise mission statement to which everything you do as part of the rebranding maps.
  • Know how this change will impact your company and prepare communication plans – internal and external – that also include a roadmap for what will happen post launch.
  •  Manage expectations.  Shifting perceptions and seeding a market with a new message takes time.
  • Agree upon the metrics by which you evaluate success on an ongoing basis and establish a feedback loop to capture reactions to the effort, including the accuracy of your mission statement.

Drew: Given that MediaMath operates in a relatively new field, do you think bringing greater awareness to the field itself is just as important as marketing MediaMath?
We do and it’s the reason why we are so bullish on our educational initiatives.  We introduced our educational arm, the New Marketing Institute (NMI), in 2012.  It’s an extension of our mission to educate, empower, and engage a new generation of digital marketing professionals, providing an educational platform and different levels of certification.  NMI’s team meets with these professionals where they are and brings our best-in-class onboarding process to them – best practices, access to a central repository of knowledge, and an understanding of the digital marketing technology in which their employers have invested.

We also recommend marketers visit our OPEN portal, which includes a Partner Marketplace, enabling them to gain clarity around the vast number of data, media and technology providers that comprise the ecosystem.  By understanding the value proposition and differentiators among partners, they are armed with the information and tools to make more informed buying decisions.

Drew: Your product is really good at helping brands track performance of their marketing dollars. How do you measure your own marketing success?
We measure our marketing success based on a number of factors, including leads generated, opportunities that can be mapped back to specific efforts, engagement with our original content (blog posts and research), how our messages resonate across social channels, and, of course, revenue.

Disclosure: I’m proud to note that Renegade created the “Train Your Brain” CMO engagement program for MediaMath. 

Social Media and Content Marketing

Posted on by Drew Neisser

Every once in a while one’s past and present collide in fun and unexpected ways.  Such was the case when several Duke alums gathered for a conversation on social media in front of a crowd of about 150 fellow Dukies.  With the ambitious title, “Like it Or Not: The Pervasive Influence of Social Media,” representatives from Facebook, Twitter, Google+, The Wild Geese and American Express faced the challenge of connecting their time at Duke with their current careers along with the more daunting task of dealing with yours truly as their moderator.  Happily, it turned out to be a vibrant, informative and thought provoking conversation that concluded with an extensive audience Q+A.

Since many more people wanted to attend than the space allowed, I thought follow up interviews with the panelists would be of interest (to at least some of you). First up is Susan Hammes, Vice President, Digital Brand & Social Media Development at American Express. Susan has been in the middle of some truly noteworthy social campaigns at AmEx, a company that in my humble opinion leads the way in social & content marketing (as you’ve read about before on this blog — see interview with AmEx CMO John Hayes).

Drew: How did your end up in working in social media in content marketing?
Started working at traditional Advertising Agencies and over time discovered a passion for digital marketing.  In particular, I’ve always been passionate about finding right person, right message, right context, something that is critically important to social media and content marketing.

Drew: What role if any did Duke prepare you for your future career?
Duke taught me the importance of curiosity, empathy, and passion – the three keys for just about any career, but particularly essential in marketing.  Duke also taught me importance of working hard and playing hard.  These are ingredients that are necessary as a marketing professional.

Drew: What program or programs that you’ve touched at AmEx are you particularly proud of?
Most recently, I worked on a social content program called #PassionProject.  This was a program designed to put the customer at the center and provide them with a tools to help them realize their dreams.  I’m particularly proud of this as not only did it far exceed our business objectives, we also truly impacted the lives of the participants of the programs.  I regularly received notes from the participants that said we had changed their lives – given them the tools, the compass, and confidence to take their passions to the next level.

Drew: What’s the most exciting part about working in SM/Content marketing right now?
The ability to forge a new path forward and to use technology to create stories and experiences for people.

Drew: What’s the most frustrating part?
Measurement.. and not having enough time to experiment and learn all the things we need to learn.

Drew: Do you see a future for “organic” social media (vs. paid) and if so, what does that look like?
Yes. Influencer marketing and Social influencer marketing will continue to be a critical role.  However, like the past, paid social will continue to play a huge rule (although it will continue to evolve as the platforms and users shift their social platforms to an ever broader set of platforms).

Drew: Zeroing in on content, what are some tips you can provide to others about creating successful programs? Feel free to provide pitfalls as well.
Customer First is the most important aspect.  It is critical that you start with what the customer is looking for – which is to be entertained, informed, inspired.

Identify the emotion that you want to elicit.

And finally, ensure that if you’re doing branded content- that there is a clear and authentic role or enablement role for the brand/product.

Pitfall – don’t think that content will just be discovered- need to think through the owned/earned/paid ecosystem of distribution to help the content be searched/discovered.

Drew: Finally, how import do you think it is for marketers to be active in social media themselves?
It is critical that marketers use and follow social media – this is to understand your consumer.

CMO Insights: Relaunching Brands

Posted on by admin

Relaunching an old and established brand is tricky business.  There’s always the risk that you will alienate your long-time customers as you try to appeal to appeal to a new generation of potential buyers. Knowing this, the marketing team at Hillerich & Bradsby Co. (the parent of Louisville Slugger) decided that rather than steer away from the brand’s illustrious past, they would embrace it while finding fresh ways to engage a new generation of consumers. Coming from Procter & Gamble, H&B’s new CMO Kyle Schlegel had to figure out how to put this plan into effect despite working with a modest budget (by P&G standards) and an entirely different corporate structure.

In the interview below, you will learn how Schlegel and the H&B team revitalized the Louisville Slugger brand by taking a “grass roots” approach, listening to their customers and engaging consistently in social media.  You will also quickly understand why Schlegel was voted a Rising Star at last year’s CMO Awards.

Drew: You face a similar challenge with the Louisville Slugger brand that you faced with Old Spice: younger, “hipper” brands are infringing on your market share. What do you think Old Spice did in terms of marketing that made its resurgence so successful and how do you plan to apply those same lessons to Louisville Slugger?

On Old Spice, the team realized three critical dynamics to the future success of the brand.   The future of the brand had to be rooted in its past in some way, it wasn’t going to happen overnight. We also had to be comfortable with a generation of consumers that may have been lost and focus instead on the entry point consumer that would be the lifeblood of the brand for decades to come.  In restaging the brand around 2000, we explored the full history of the brand and worked closely with consumers on which, if any, of those elements were relevant moving forward.  We next laid out a multi-year plan that would help get us get ever closer to the goal of the #1 brand in the market and, more specifically, the #1 brand with young men.   Finally, we identified a couple of programs that helped expose and sample the brand to the next generation of consumers, including a sampling program in middle schools, where more than 90% of 5th and 6th grade boys received a sample.   These choices set in motion the changes over the next decade and the global success that followed.

On Louisville Slugger, we are taking a very similar approach.  Our team explored the history of the brand and the sport to understand exactly which elements of the foundation would stay in place and where evolution – or even revolution – was necessary.   Next, we looked at a plan over a 3-5 year window where relevance could be regained, consumer by consumer.  Finally, the team had to make changes to the brand and focus in ways that wouldn’t allow us to attempt to regain the “lost generation”, a necessary but difficult choice to instead focus on the next generation of players. 

Drew: You just updated the Louisville Slugger logo for the first time since 1979. How do you balance modernization with respecting the traditions and history of the brand?
We did not take the change and steps to get there lightly.  Throughout the journey, we engaged with every key stakeholder, from pros to amateurs, from retailers to employees and from ages 8 to 80.   Each of these people are “players” when we think about our brand purpose…”we exist to make players great”.    We quickly learned which elements of the brand were sacred (i.e. the oval within the logo) and which elements could cease to be used (i.e. TPX & TPS sub-brands) in service to the ultimate goal of rebuilding relevance with today’s players.

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?
I joined a company and team that had not placed a significant focus and investment on marketing in past years.  My first 18 months in the role have really focused on building marketing fundamentals, clarifying strategies and helping to narrow these strategies on the most impactful activities.   The brand restage was job #1 and took energy from everyone in the organization, leading into market in April 2013.  Last fall, the full impact of capability building and the restage took center stage as the brand launched the first fully integrated marketing plan across retailers, grassroots, media and PR, supporting the 2014 product line launch.

Drew: Have there been any big surprises in terms of what’s worked really well and what hasn’t?
Going from Procter & Gamble to Hillerich & Bradsby, Co. has come with a learning curve for sure.  Overnight, the structure, funding, scale and capability of P&G went away.  In its place, a new set of circumstances took its place.  While the reduced scale and funding are certainly challenges, the autonomy, flexibility and focus are refreshing.  This biggest positive surprise was in the restage.  We were able to pull off the biggest change in the history of a 129 year old brand, supported fully by a new campaign, and do so in less than 12 months; an incredible achievement by the full organization.  On the flip side, we have made a choice or two that I anticipated would work better.   One example was email marketing with top young players.   Through our grassroots relationships, we thought access to databases of thousands of young players would allow great scalability in communication but we learned quickly that this generation of player was not receptive to email marketing campaigns and we had to quickly shift to more one-on-one communication.

Drew: You operate in a relationship-based business. How do you improve loyalty among your customers?
Quite simply…show them you’re listening.  We are working more and more with young athletes and reaching them in more channels.  Each time, this gives us an opportunity to cede some control for where the brand is going and give them a say.  When we show them we’ve heard them by baking their ideas into our brand, loyalty comes with it.  This will be a bigger focus for us going forward.

Drew: One of the big challenges a CMO faces is organizational given all the different marketing channels.  How are you addressing these organizational challenges?
We’ve taken a long look at our marketing organization and how the roles are split, leading to an evolution in the team and the responsibilities.  We increased our staffing by nearly 40%, better clarified tasks (especially things like social media) and worked to provide the right training and the right time to help folks succeed.  Our industry has some natural segmentation and we’ve addressed that within the organization but then, on top, gotten people into new roles that allow for future focus areas, like social media, graphic design and retailer marketing.

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?
The other big surprise, going from CPG to sporting goods, is the relative lack of timely, in-market data.  At P&G, ROI could be broken down to every element of the marketing plan and was available within 2-3 months of execution.   In my new life, shares cover only a portion of the market and often trail my more than 12 months.  We’ve sought to offset some of these challenges by trying to triangulate around some of our biggest spending areas, including working closely with our field sales reps to help provide insight into what is happening at the store level and how that is being influenced by our marketing efforts.  We have also shifted dollars into more digital programs (SEO, social) that allow us to better connect those activities with conversion data to aid judgment and future planning.   Transparently, we’re not there yet, but we’re attempting to add new tools each quarter.

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?
My change from P&G to H&B has come with a good balance of increased and decreased complexity.   The significantly smaller budgets led to a reduction of touchpoints (i.e. TV not possible) but the introduction of a robust grassroots focus comes with new challenges and decisions.  So far as grassroots are concerned, we are a part of nearly 400 individual events but limit this complexity by working with partners in this space that work closely with our team to preplan, execute and track.

Drew: How are you integrating social media into marketing efforts at Hillerich & Bradsby? Have social platforms proved to be a valuable channel for your brands?
Social media was not part of the marketing focus 18 months ago but has become one of our top two marketing priorities, including our #1 media investment.   In that period of time, we have increased our social following by more than 30X to nearly 500,000 fans across channels.   With our limited media budget, we’ve used the majority of that spending in SEO and in driving increased engagement in social media.   We now have an incredible audience and, in a sport where something newsworthy happens every day, we have a treasure chest of content and the highest engagement rate of any brand in the industry.

Drew: Do you agree with that notion “that marketing is everything and everything is marketing”  if so how have you extended the boundaries of your job beyond the normal purview of the CMO?  Asked differently, as CMO, have you been able to address the entire customer experience?  
I completely agree with the sentiment.  Anywhere and everywhere someone comes in contact with the brand should reinforce the brand purpose, the identity and should help get someone closer to demonstrating their allegiance.    Beyond the marketing department, we’ve worked very closely with all other functions.   The two where the most energy has been spent are with Sales and the Louisville Slugger Museum & Factory.   With Sales, we now have strategic marketing discussions with each retailer and have increased our priority here by creating the new position of Director of Retail Marketing.   In the Museum & Factory, we have a built-in competitive advantage.  With over 270,000 guests per year, this provides us with an opportunity to tell the history of the brand and provide a sense of the sport and where the brand is going next.  With consumers from 8 to 80 “in house” every day, we’ve worked closely with the Museum staff to ensure the customer experience is complementary and additive to everything else we do.

CMO Insights: Leadership for the CMO

Posted on by admin

Sorry Kermit the Frog, if you think its hard being green–try being a CMO. The demands are relentless, the barriers to success are often as large inside the company pond as they are out of it and the timeframe for delivering meaningful results are a de minimis hop or two away. So finding a CMO who knows how to not just survive but thrive under these conditions is worth celebrating — which is exactly what The CMO Club did when they recognized Stephanie Anderson with their President’s Circle Award late last year.

During her tenure as CMO of Time Warner Cable Business Class, among other accomplishments Anderson reorganized her group, established a Customer Experience and Knowledge (CEK) team and most recently led the launch of PerkZone, a multi-dimensional customer loyalty program.  (Proud disclosure: TWCBC is a Renegade client and is part of the team that created and manage PerkZone!)  Here is my interview with Anderson conducted around the time of The CMO Awards.

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?
I think when you are in any leadership role you need to spend the right proportion of time with key stakeholders and constituents to get the job done in a collaborative way, without being too far into the details or overshadowing your people.  I use my boss’s rule: 1/3, 1/3, 1/3.  A third of my time is spent with my peer group and up, making sure they all understand the strategy, focus, and priorities for Marketing, Advertising and Offers and 1/3 is spent with my direct reports (3 GVPs and 2 VPs) helping them with priorities and any people/budget issues, and 1/3 out in the market, with customers, suppliers, vendors, events, continuing education, etc.

Drew: Have there been any big surprises in terms of what’s worked really well and what hasn’t?
Not any big surprises about what has worked.  But, one that continues to baffle me is that I have had challenges drawing a straight line conclusion that direct mail influences the web or overall leads, even though we have used purls, phone numbers, vanity urls – but over time, without the DM in our industry you start to see a reduction in overall sales related calls.

Drew: Big data is a big part of the CMO conversation these days.  How are you tackling big data?
This is a tough one.  We are revamping our database as we speak to not just be more encompassing, but really more searchable and friendly.  The data is useless without the ability to pull together the storyline and make decisions based on what you find out.  That is the challenge.

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?
Yes, and more importantly in my case our CFO (who has the office next to mine!).  I, myself, actually drive us harder than the CFO because I want us to always be spending on relevant, revenue impacting marketing initiatives.  I think the easiest and most enjoyable is SEM.  The toughest is loyalty and brand – but we do prove the link to revenue or reduced churn or improved consideration in everything we do.

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?
More sophisticated, not necessarily more complex.  The depth of knowledge you can glean from online activity to inform offline is sophisticated, and extremely useful.  We have one marketing team that has all digital and mass for that reason – because of the relationship between on and off line.  Also, while the analytics can seem daunting, the end results generally help you make better decisions overall, so now you may spend a bit more of your budget tracking, learning and understanding and less on the actual tactics because you’ve mastered and fine-tuned them.

Drew: How do you stay close to your customers when you operate in so many markets and have so many different types of business customers?  
Not so well on the low end, but we are changing that.  We serve very small, small, medium and large enterprises.  It’s easy when you are dealing with a national customer to be responsive, available, etc.  but in the mass world of transactional, very small and small, it becomes harder and pretty soon your relationship is boiled down to email and a monthly bill.  We do have newsletters, are building a value–added benefits program for small business and try to send them information that can help their business grow and/or stay healthy.  It’s getting better as we use campaign and life cycle management tools, but there’s always room for improvement.  Our job is collecting and keeping customers.

Drew: One of the big challenges a CMO faces is organizational, given all the different marketing channels.  How are you addressing these organizational challenges? 
I am going for Best in Class in this area.  I recently implemented what I call an “outside in” structure that takes the customers and competitors in the segments we serve into consideration.  So I have a lead GVP of Small, a lead GVP of mid-market and Channels, and a GVP of Enterprise and Carrier business.  They run the marketing end-to-end for their segment including offers, competitive, life cycle strategy and then I have two functional teams that are shared resources – one is mass & digital and the other is customer experience and knowledge for all of the database and research/retention etc.

It’s a new design, but I believe any structure that puts the customers/prospects at the core of it should work out!

Drew: Content marketing is a hot topic at the moment. Are you increasing your investment in this area?
Content marketing is hot – but not new.  Being in technology, that is the way we work – be relevant, educate and then solve.  I would say yes, we are increasing our investment here but not because we are following a content trend, but because our own thought leadership and solutions have advanced and we need to be able to tell our stories quickly and with the prospect or customer in mind.

Drew: As CMO, have you been able to address the entire customer experience?   
Yes, I actually have a Customer Experience and Knowledge (CEK) team.  We work very closely to survey and research what customers/prospects want, pilot the findings in market and then implement across the company, working especially close with our care organization and field operations.  We all own the interactions as employees of TWC, but my team has the ultimate accountability to make sure we capture and harness the best experience possible and deploy that across our business.